The Scathing Atheist - 290: Inarguable Edition

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

In this week’s episode, the Jews steal money from children… but in a bad way, Heath learns about "Mormon masturbation interviews" way too late for a full ride at BYU, and Lee Strobel will make a less convincing case than Brett Kavanaugh. Come see us live in London! 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/ Guest Links: Check out Flowers of Disgust here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL294isEbywvDjdSIzPTBNSmNQoWPZDW Headlines: A Fierce Critic of “Mormon Masturbation Interviews” Now Faces Excommunication http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/08/30/a-fierce-critic-of-mormon-masturbation-interviews-now-faces-excommunication Orthodox rabbi arrested for alleged plot to steal $14 million from underprivileged kids: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/09/01/orthodox-rabbi-arrested-for-alleged-plot-to-steal-14-million-from-underprivileged-kids/ Far-Right Pakistanis Protest Ties with Netherlands Due to Muhammad-Drawing Event http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/08/31/far-right-pakistanis-protest-ties-with-netherlands-due-to-muhammad-drawing-event/ Matt powell is making a movie! http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/09/02/a-movie-claiming-to-debunk-evolution-features-pastors-who-dont-understand-it/ Ariana Grande thing: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2018/09/01/pastor-apologizes-to-ariana-grande-for-grazing-her-breast-at-aretha-franklins-funeral/?utm_term=.a247f68d9ac8 We’re rich young white guys: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/08/29/pew-analysis-the-solidly-secular-are-young-rich-white-educated-and-male/ This Week in Misogyny: Woman calls out alleged rapist in his Mormon temple: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/09/04/watch-this-woman-call-out-her-alleged-mormon-rapist-in-his-own-temple/ Mauritania laws put rape victims at risk: https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/09/05/mauritania-rape-survivors-risk Kickstarter for film about Mormon sex abuse: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hushedones/the-hushed-ones-a-cover-up-34-years-in-the-making

Warning, the following podcast contains adult language, and by adult, I mean juvenile. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Blue Apron and by the Freedom From Religion Foundation. We were working on that church-state separation thing before it was cool. Freedom From Religion Foundation. They did not ask us to say this. Not really sure if they're cool with it. Probably not. And now, The Scathing Atheist. not ask us to say this. Not really sure if they're cool with it.

Probably not. And now, the skating atheist. You're listening to the flowers of disgust, who did, in fact, evolve from filthy, mokey men, who threw their poo. Monkey Moon music in the monkey house.

Monkey Moon music in the monkey house. Monkey Moon Music in the monkey house. It's Thursday. It's September 6th. And it's still Birth Remembrance Day. You gonna eat that or? I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Enright. And from New York, New York, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, the Jews steal money from children, but in a bad way. I learn about Mormon masturbation interviews way too late for my full ride at BYU. And Lee Strobel will make a less convincing case than Brett Kavanaugh. But first, the diatribe. So one of the perks of my job is that I get tagged in some of the craziest fucking social media exchanges that you can imagine. Like if anyone anywhere on the Internet is arguing that Jesus has to be real or we wouldn't know what year it is, I have about a 10% chance of getting tagged on that thread at some point.

And as much as I love being tagged in threads like that, I usually just show up to rubberneck, right? I drive by real slow and I stare at the mangled corpse of logic staining the digital roadway with its blood and feces. Then I accelerate onto my destination. I almost never get involved. And it's not because I don't like to argue. I mean, actually, you know, I don't like to argue, but you would never guess that from the way I comport myself in public. But that's not why I eschew those debates. Whether I like it or not, my position on this show comes with at least some obligations in these realms, and I consider it a service I owe to the listeners to, you know,

swoop in once in a while at their behest and smack down their cousin with a ferocity that familial relationships don't allow for. But at a certain level of stupid, there's not much you can do. Now, interestingly enough, though, I think I finally discovered the dividing line between the arguments I'm willing to engage with and the ones that I deem too dumb to respond to. And it's a division that's already existed in my head for a while. See, there are two very distinct categories of religious argumentation. The first I call outward looking ones. This category encompasses all the apologetics you hear out of the William Lane Craigs of the world.

They're the ones that try to suborn logic and force it to fit into the defense of their worldview. The die for a lie thing, the lunatic liar or Lord Gambit, Pascal's wager, et cetera. Basically, if there's a name for it, it falls into this category. And these are the ones I'm willing to engage with, right? They use things like logic. They don't use it correctly, but they still use it. And therefore, there's something to grab hold of and refute. If your argument contains an A equals not A in it somewhere, I can show you where you're wrong. The second category, though, are the inward-looking arguments. These are the dumbass arguments that don't even bother to resemble logic.

These are the but trees, though, type arguments, the gives my life meaning type of stuff, arguments that can't even be held up to logical scrutiny. And when you're dealing with stuff like that, I don't see much of a point in engaging with it. If the best defense you can come up with lacks even the barest semblance of logical structure, I'm at a loss. I mean, I might fuck with you a bit, but I'm not going to argue with you. But like I said, that division existed in my head long before I employed it as a metric for which arguments to engage with, because the first category, the outward looking ones, are the ones that have never convinced anyone to believe in God. Nobody was ever presented with a Christian religion,

doubted it, then heard the ontological argument and gave in. These are post hoc justifications. These are plugs that people use when they notice or are confronted with logical inconsistencies in their faith. The inward looking ones, though, those are the ones that represent the real reasons people believe. And that's why William Lane Craig wants nothing to do with them. As we all know, people don't believe in their religion because of logic or reason. They believe in religion because of indoctrination or fear or family obligation. They believe in religion because they have something to lose socially or they've been convinced they need it. And when you enter into this realm of argumentation, sure, it's more honest, but it's entirely intangible. See, if what about trees was a real argument, I could refute it with what about dengue fever,

and they'd give me a point and move on. But the apologists already know that. They know if they go out on stage in a debate and start bringing up the real reasons people buy into their worldview, even a junior high debate club could shred them within an inch of their afterlife. They'd have to start saying shit like, I'm afraid of mortality. They'd have to say shit like, I can't bear the thought of a world without meaning. They'd have to say shit like, I wouldn't want to live in a world without God's love. And when they say that, they're just listing the motivations in their motivated reasoning. We don't determine something's true because we're afraid of the alternative. I'm afraid of falling to my death,

but I don't thus conclude gravity as a hoax. We don't determine something's true because it gives our lives meaning. Believing in my heart of hearts that I'm the Kwisatz Haderach destined to free the people of Arrakis from oppression might give my life meaning, but that ain't a justification

to walk around a desert looking to catch a ride on a sandworm. We don't determine what's real by what kind of world we want to live in. I don't want to live in a world without blowjob vending machines, but that's no excuse to stick my dick in an ATM. So the whole of Christian apologetics as seen through that lens isn't an attempt to justify anything. It's an attempt to camouflage the real reasons people believe in the nonsense, because admitting those reasons is admitting defeat. Hell, even admitting those to oneself would be sufficient to dislodge a person's

faith. And that's why I don't generally engage in those arguments. It's not that I can't be refuted. Simply rephrasing them will usually do the trick, but it's because they're already wrong without my help. Right. To even reach a point where you're presenting one of those kinds of arguments in your defenses to admit that you've lost the logical battle. At that point, they're just sitting by themselves at a chessboard, moving pieces at random to prove that checkmate is impossible. And if they're already resorting to that, why the hell would I ever sit down on the other side of the board? They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the good and the bad to my ugly Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick.

Fellas, are you ready to dig? I'm the wild card. Wild card is my thing. You guys say that I'm wild card now. Somebody said that. You said that. It was you. I said it on Facebook. Can't give yourself a nickname.

In our lead story tonight, the LDS Church has finally responded to the criticisms of Mormon reformer Sam Young regarding their despicable practice of interviewing young children about their orgasms by making moves to finally end the practice of Sam Young being a Mormon. so the story here revolves around what have been dubbed mormon masturbation interviews in which a bishop and a mormon kid sit in a room together just the two of them while the bishop asked for intimate details of the kid's sex life and masturbatory practices it is like it sounds exactly and sam young's like hey why would we do that if we weren't disgusting perverts which recently led to a threat of excommunication because there is no if there we're doing it because science sir you're holding an oil painting of a 12 year old's erect penis penis ology just doing the interview okay what does this inkblot look like a photo of my penis good good i'm a religious authority now look i'm not normally in the habit of praising mormons on

this show but kudos to young for how far he took this right when his very public protests of this debased custom failed to garner an adequate response from the church he started a hunger strike which lasted for more than three weeks in fact after we covered the story a couple weeks ago about mormons not wanting to be called mormons anymore even though they're mormons a bunch of our ex-mormon listeners wrote in to point out that this was probably concocted to distract from young's hunger strike but despite his dedication the only response he's gotten so far from the church is a letter saying they were convening a council to discuss his excommunication for quote acting in clear open and deliberate public opposition to the church or its leaders.

End quote. Not adding about our obsession with whether Timmy's using the euro grip or not. So I've been doing semi Western lately. Oh, I'm talking about how you start a little bit over pronated and then you have a bigger arc to twist through when you come back. You know what I mean? Oh, right. Right. Like, you know, like, if you're wringing out a towel, yeah, just like that. That's what my penis is like. You're gonna fuck up your wrist. You need to go traditional, stick shift, and Indian in the cupboard in rotation,

dude. In rotation. Wait, wait, what's Indian in the cupboard? You know what Indian in the cupboard is. Scathing atheist, masturbatory cycle. You're doing that thing. And I should point out that there's a practical consequence to an excommunication here and it's not that Sam Young will be deprived

of his posthumous planet. At the moment, Young actually has the ear of a lot of Mormons who are starting to lean his way on this and a public excommunication will likely diminish his credibility in the eyes of believing Mormons and will at the very least restrict their access to his critiques. Or at least that's what the church seems to be banking on and seeing as how to be a believing Mormon

you already have to be shielded from all of history science archaeology oceanography metallurgy the concept of DNA I feel like they're not going to have much trouble walling off this dude's blog all right next up in headlines the reformed Jewish community once again became the black people who are more racist than white people in Chris Rock's bit this week, following the arrest of several ultra Orthodox Jewish rabbis and their associates for the crime of trying to scam about 14 million dollars in federal grants that are meant for helping New York schools with underprivileged kids. New York schools with underprivileged kids. Not sure what the reformed Jewish version of the N-word is, but I'm sure they've been getting creative with their hateful slurs for the Hasidic community recently.

You know, sometimes I'm happier than others that we retired the 30 seconds on the clock. One vote. But, Heath, to be fair, if you listen carefully, the song is Cars for Yids, not kids. It's not their fault you assumed. It's a bend. You got to listen.

Oh, Jewish people are responsible for that song. I've never felt more anti-Semitic. Wow. I hate that shit. It's been stuck in my head for like 19 years. Okay. The money in question was being acquired from the federal E-rate program that provides funding for improving the technology infrastructure at schools that can't afford what they need. Well, it turns out the money was not being used for that stuff, and instead lining the pockets of a bunch of assholes who caused the root problem in the first place by voting down public school budgets in their area and also grossly evading property taxes by somehow having entire towns of nothing but rabbis and wives of rabbis. And that's why the FBI recently raided

offices in Brooklyn, Muncie, and Curious Joel, New York. Are those places or names? I don't... Those are real, real places. Yeah, and whenever those three places in New York get raided, it's pretty much a guarantee that

Hasidic dudes are either blowing newborn babies during a bris and giving them herpes also known as hostage raping slightly older kids hiring goons to beat divorce papers out of women or in this case stealing from poor kids right and i want to say i find this behavior from my people disgusting i mean child abuse embezzlement wife beating these are italian crimes people get it together come on dude see now i was about to add videotaping women in the bath but i don't know that that's going to change eli's assessment so never mind it depends it would have to be like a sauce bath so this whole thing is obviously disgraceful but there was one little detail that

made it fun to read at least for a second when I read this one detail anyway. And it's about the level of stupidity among these thieves who are now caught. They were trying to steal grant money by requesting reimbursement checks to pay for large expenditures on stuff like computers and networking hardware. But they were claiming that stuff was going into acidic private schools that are so terrified of the internet that they probably have literal walls of fire around the property just to be sure that wi-fi doesn't sneak inside somehow so the fbi showed up at these schools and saw the like the ethernet line was actually just a sweaty bearded guy with a giant abacus and started just weeping with laughter as they arrested these guys, I'm assuming.

Okay, but how badly do you guys want to be there for that bust? Hello, Moishe Rosenberg? Yes, gentlemen. We're from the FBI. We'd like to check out your computer science lab. Yeah, you know, the one you received $40,000 of public funding for? Oh, yes, of course. Right this way. Wait outside the door. Let me make sure it's clean in here.

Okay, come on in. Okay, Mr. Rosenberg, why do you have a cardboard box on your head now? I am not Mr. Rosenberg. I am Computatron 3000. What is your command? Mr. Rosenberg. Computatron 3000, not Mr. Rosenberg. Okay, okay.

Computatron 3000, just real quick. What's 45 times 823? Seven. Nope. Okay, okay. You know what? Why don't we Google where Mr. Rosenberg put all the money that was supposed to go to his computer lab, huh? Bought gold coins with stars of David on them.

They're under the floorboards. Damn it, Computatron 3000. How could you? I long for freedom. And in Clash Holes news tonight, far-right Muslims in Pakistan are proving the point of far-right racists in the Netherlands this week

in the political equivalent of a Patriot Eagle Super Bowl. Yeah, for the record, by the way, Eli had to text me and Heath for another hated NFL team other than the Patriots. And we eventually settled on the Eagles only because football doesn't have mirror matches. All the hate goes to the one team. The Patriots, and then there's the 2017 Patriots. Yeah, right.

Okay, so here's the story. Geert Wilders is a racist from the Netherlands who likes to sandwich racist lies in between true things about the Koran on behalf of his one-man political party in the Netherlands. Alright, so, for instance,

Wilders has said that the Koran is a book that calls for hatred, violence, murder, terrorism, war, and submission. Okay, that's all accurate. Yeah, yeah, so I read that book, but he's also said that the right to religious freedom should not apply to Islam, that anyone belonging to a non-Western minority should be required to enter into a legally binding contract of assimilation and that europe is on the verge of collapse due to an influx of muslim immigrants okay okay i see what you're doing so eli's clearly just trying to trick me into like parsing out the good parts of the nazi guys thing i know what you're doing so he's a trap but here it goes. So has an influx of Islam been a positive thing anywhere?

Is that something that's happened? There's the Islamic Golden Age. The creation of the Ottoman Empire. Safavid Dynasty. The Mughal Empire. They built the Taj Mahal. Okay, don't try to confuse it with facts. Besides those.

Okay, don't try to confuse it with facts. Besides those. Anyway, so Wilders is basically like, if we were like, New York pizza is way better than Chicago pizza because Chicago pizza is made out of dynamite and tomatoes that have traveled through time. Paradoxes everywhere. So he exaggerated how good Islam is?

I don't know that I get the analogy. Yeah, fair. That's on bay anyways wilders is promoting a contest to draw muhammad this week and as a result far-right pakistani muslims are destroying things and hurting people and threatening to blockade a city you know to prove him wrong about the violence violence. Violence. Nailed it. Perfect. I just want to see a meeting these Muslims had. Just like, okay, so mental pictures of Muhammad.

You all just made one right now. That's just a fact. So what do we do? Do we stab ourselves now? Or are we mentally stabbing Heath Enright? Do we ban Seth Andrews from Facebook? People are not taking this seriously. This is serious.

All right. We'll do it like a massage circle. We'll do a stab. All three. Break. I also want to hear because like, what if they write Muhammad in hieroglyphs or the Chinese alphabet? Like how close do you have to get to pictorial?

You do ski art. You shave. So here's the great part. Both governments have distanced themselves from the sides of this fight, right? The Pakistani prime minister has condemned the event but doesn't support the TLP, which is the political party doing the burning of the shit. And Netherlands prime minister supports Wilder's freedom of speech but then reminded everyone that he's literally a one-man political party and he doesn't even go here. So, yeah, it's basically two guys getting in a fight outside of Applebee's while everyone else just wants to sit down and eat their sizzling vaginas.

The political event. It's I want my vaginas, the political event. While we all recover from the way Eli pronounces fajitas, we're going to take a quick break and turn things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. Is it fajitas? 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 Masajid. As we all know and are constantly being reminded, it's damn hard for women to get justice for sexual abuse. Hell, even when you're groped by a pastor on live television during a funeral, it's

about 50-50 that the national conversation is going to be what you were wearing when it happened. But nowhere is this problem worse than in the insulated world of religion. Take, for example, the story of McKenna Denson. According to Denson, she was raped by herormon bishop back in 1984 and she's been trying to get justice ever since and barring justice she just liked to at least get the alleged rapist the fuck away from the pulpit so that he can't victimize more women now her first step was to tell the church but to nobody's real surprise they didn't do a damn thing her next step

was to file a lawsuit but it was dismissed because the crime was beyond the statute of limitations. So her next step was to go undercover. She posed as a historian, arranged a meeting with the rapist bishop, and during the interview, she got him to admit that he had molested women in his congregations. He didn't fess up to raping anybody, but he did admit to criminal behavior. And still the courts weren't interested. But he did admit to criminal behavior. And still the courts weren't interested. Well, at this point, she was understandably desperate.

So last weekend, she tried one last thing. She just walked into the bishop's church and said, hey, y'all, that dude's a rapist. Seriously, she went to a service called a fast and testimony meeting in which Mormons all get together, eat some food and tell each other about how awesome Mormon God is for a while. So when it came her turn to speak, she took to the microphone and told her story, or as much of her story as the Mormons in charge would let her get out before they forcibly dragged her from the microphone. And as desperate as that effort might seem, that's not the last arrow in her quiver. The video of her stunt is available online, and it ends with a promo of an upcoming documentary she's making about the forgotten and ignored sexual abuse victims of the Mormon church.

We'll have a link of the documentary's Kickstarter on the show notes. Of course, getting no justice seems like the worst it could be, but damned if Mauritania got that memo. According to a recent 90-page report from Human Rights Watch, women who come forward with accusations of rape and sexual assault are subject to the very worst of indifference at best. There's no effort to protect their privacy, and as often as not, investigations of rape turn into investigations of the victim's moral character. The report also concludes that survivors have little, if any, access to legal aid or medical, mental health, or social support.

The result is that victims face pressure from their family and friends not to report crimes like rape. After all, they've already been victimized and their families don't want to see them go through it again. We'll have the report linked in the show notes as well, and I'd recommend it. And if you decide to read it, try not to think of it as something happening in some far off land that you'll never visit. Think of it as more of a preview of life in America once Kavanaugh is confirmed. as more of a preview of life in America once Kavanaugh's confirmed. And now that I've got you good and depressed, I'll hand things back over to Noah,

Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in god-awful newbies news tonight, regular listeners will remember up-and-coming religious piece of shit Matt Powell's superstar aspirations to scathing atheist fame

when he called for the humane death of gay people and proved the Bible was real because of the time four guys broke into his home and jerked off on him all in the same month. It's not exactly. It was a weird month for that guy.

By the time the third guy does it, you gotta be laughing it off. And again, what? Four guys. God's a comedian. Exactly. That's good. But, but, like most child stars, his fire seemed to have faded.

I mean, we went weeks without hearing from the nearly nicknamed Powell, and I'll admit, we feared for the worst here at The Scathing Atheist. Yeah, yeah, for just a second, we were afraid YouTube was enforcing its community standards about not promoting genocide even when you're Christian. Silly, silly us. But it turns out all our fears were for naught because this month, on September 22nd, just four days shy of my birthday, Matt Powell is coming out with a movie, y'all. But not just any movie, an anti-evolution movie called science falsely so-called

you're the one who science is wrongly used no you guys are the people with which whom with whom science is science is his fucking title is we've got four fridge magnets left that don't fit into a sentence what do we do so right now there is only a trailer but this movie looks amazing it's got ken havine it's got bad stock footage. And it has this clip, which I swear to you, I have not taken out of context and has zero follow-up or preamble. Morgan, hit it. Charles Darwin was clearly a racist. It's evident by the title of his own book. So, yeah.

Matty P, never should have doubted you. Always in our hearts and minds. Always in our hearts and minds. And our hearts and minds and in titty twister news tonight bishop charles h ellis the third forcibly qualified himself to opine on whether ariana grande had any signs of breast cancer last week during the funeral of the lady whose most famous song just repeatedly spelled out the word respect in hopes it might sink in for one or two of the guys listening in. It did not. No, no, very clearly.

And as if he was trying to win a bet on how many marginalized people he could belittle in two minutes, he also pointed out that grande is a Taco Bell word. I feel like there's got to be a big chunk missing from that video. And this guy, he just kept trying to segue out of his rant and landing on one after another, another ethnic slur, another ethnic slur. He's like, grande is also a word from Starbucks, which is coffee beans, beaner. Fuck. Ah, duh. Don't say Dago.

I said Dago. Kike. Kike. What? Dude, technical difficulties. He could have used one of those yeah all right so the following day ellis issued an apology where he insisted that he would never intentionally touch a boob but he admitted that he may have been quote too friendly or familiar end quote because

somewhere on the high end of the friendliness spectrum is publicly groping at a funeral, apparently. Right? Also, look, I get it. You're going for a side hug. Someone ends up with a thumb in their ass. It happens. No, it doesn't, Eli. The real question is when we can forgive him and let him do stand-up again. And why are we giving each other

side hugs, Eli, is more important, I think. Better access to your thumb and finally tonight we have some positive news about white men like seriously this is not a setup for a punchline I really do already feel the patreon dollars rolling and he's keep it up keep it up give it to us now so yeah we actually found some good stuff about a demographic that's otherwise making news these days for pillaging plundering and you know pretty much all the other negative p words yeah it's done by prostitutes yeah so just just in the last few weeks right at the top of the page we've got pennsylvania pastor pedophile predator pope and penis obviously uh and of course president but uh this time we found something redeeming according to a new study white men at least the educated ones are tending to be atheist and anti-theist in very large proportions.

Still the source of almost all the evil, but also secular, you're welcome, society. Yeah, I mean, we might be evil, but at least we don't have like a goat demon God cast out of his clubhouse to blame for it. You know what I'm saying? Right, right. And by the way, to be clear, we're not saying trickle-down economics is better than a fallen goat demon. God, we're saying it's different. It's different than other. So the study was conducted by the Pew Research Center, and they examined the American population as a spectrum of religiosity, breaking us up into three general groups of similar size.

The highly religious, the somewhat religious, and the non-religious with two or three subdivisions in each group. So within the highly religious group, there were Sunday stalwarts, the religious traditionalists. There were God and country believers, which are the Trump-supporting scourge of society. And there were the diversely devout, meaning strongly religious people, but they're also into New Age nonsense. Then there was the somewhat religious group in the middle go fuck yourself and then on the non-religious end they had us labeled as either religion resistors the you know anti-theist but also having a little bit of spirituality stuff going on or the solidly secular meaning intellectually honest and the whole point

of this spectrum map was to study the demographic trends without having non-church going anti-vaxxer crystal healing shamans in the same group as noah lest you jump out of the spreadsheet and beat them all to death with their amethyst fucking wand although i took that quiz and one of their like wooeyness test questions was just enjoying nature like yeah noah likes hiking but i'm pretty sure he's the only could have didn't clap to bring tinkerbell back to life so i don't know and yet she still came back to life ovation therapy's bullshit busted so yeah given that framework the study went on to look at a handful of different attributes and the general conclusion was

uh atheists are just way fucking better. Just better people in pretty much all the ways. You gotta deal with a bunch of creepy white guys, but we're still way better despite that. For example, and this is no surprise, the non-religious group was far more

likely to be college educated with true atheists outpacing the spiritual agnostics. Well, it's because they teach you the definition of words in college. That's helpful. And also no surprise at the very bottom of the education scale was the God and country MAGA group, along with the diversely devout, we believe in everything group. The atheist group was also much younger than any other group

and was earning way more money on average and again way whiter and way mailer just a whole bunch of nerdy white guys who you'd probably agree with on lots of stuff if they would look up from their shoes and speak words with you yeah find that out i mean luckily for us laugh at a normal volume was not on the quiz. So it's actually fine. Now, I got to throw a little cold water on this whole survey, though, because according to their numbers, 15% of the solidly secular people believe God wrote the Bible. 37% of them pray, at least now and again, and nearly half of them believe in a higher power or spiritual force in the universe identify at least somewhat religious or spiritual so apparently the pew folks didn't go to one of those word teaching colleges that eli was talking about they went to nyu they have podcasts you don't know so bottom line despite being the absolute worst we learned that white

men are also a big chunk of the atheist community and we're a positive force of good within that fuck okay let me let me do over on this headline okay and finally tonight atheism is good despite all the white men atheism is such a good organizing principle it over the white men. Atheism is such a good organizing principle, it overcomes white men. Only atheism can defeat white men. There you go. I like that. And with our weakness thus exposed,

we're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Atheist lives matter. And when we come back, and white men, Lee Strobel will be here to prove that he hasn't reached the bottom of his apologetics barrel quite yet.

Jive, good. Jive, lovely bunch of coconut. Look at me standing in a row, baby. Hey, Melania. What you cooking there? Oh, hey. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. You look amazing, baby. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. I just molted recently. Jack and Tal, you're glowing. Yeah, as soon as Uranus gets some distance from the planet, that's going to fade. But thank you. It's like really bright. Yeah, very, very bright. Right, so what's cooking there?

Oh, these? These are crispy chicken tenders and mashed potatoes. Wow, looks amazing. When did you learn to cook, though? From Blue Apron, baby. Oh, what's Blue Apron? Did they kick me out, too? It's hard to remember. Doctor says I've been in a white wine fugue since August. No, baby. Blue Apron is the number one meal delivery service in the country. Blue Apron delivers farm-fresh ingredients and step-by-step recipes right to your door.

It's so easy, even I can do it. That's true. One time I actually saw you try to catch a fart and put it back inside of yourself. I know, they're so fast. No. Just like Blue Apron, which lets you cook meals in as little as 20 minutes. 20 minutes? That's like four White House press briefings. I know.

Yeah, I use Blue Apron. It makes meal planning for the week a breeze. Oh, hey, Tyler. Didn't see you there. Yeah, sorry. I got his phone for a good 15 minutes, so now I'm hiding. Yeah, great, great play. Well, look, this all sounds great, but I'm really working on a

eat as much as possible before I'm thrown out for my participation in fascism kind of budget. So, well, right now, you can check out this week's menu and get your first three meals free at Blue Apron dot com slash scathing. That's Blue Apron dot com slash scathing to get your first three meals free. Wait, free food without someone pointing out I'm a modern Goebbels? Uh-huh. Although I thought Goebbels was very small. No, she means, you know what, never mind.

Blue Apron, a better way to cook. So do you have like a two mains and wood chips and stuff? I mean, yes. If you had told me when we started the case for Christ that the argumentation was going to get worse as we went, I'd have had trouble believing you.

After all, how can you get worse than la la la, I can't hear you qed well as we learned in the last chapter you could always blame mental illness on demons and if you think that's rock bottom well that's only because you haven't heard about his uh slavery wasn't that bad arguments but we're gonna correct that one today okay finally so first of all here i've been trying to give this word heath we're talking about lee Strobel's pro-slavery arguments today. Okay, we can do both. We can get him in there too.

No, we cannot. And of course, joining us once more to dig our way through this testament to motivated idiocy is my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back. Yeah, well, I can't honestly say I'm happy to be here. So instead, I'll just, you know, do the whole roll call thing here all right in the room recording so we're moving on now to the ninth chapter of case for christ this week which is titled chapter nine the profile evidence did jesus fulfill the attributes of god what right and i gotta admit that that for the time, I kind of needed his little intro bit here.

Because based on the chapter title, I had no fucking clue what he was going to talk about in this chapter. Right? Yeah. But yeah, so it stays pretty confusing, this chapter, at least for a minute, because this is how it starts. These are the exact words. Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God? Shortly after eight student nurses were murdered in a Chicago apartment, the trembling lone survivor

hung with a police sketch artist who described in detail the killer she had seen. Okay, I mean, that feels like a Bible story, but it's confusing still. Or the time God murdered eight nurses. Or both.

Or both. Yeah, so it was like Lee was trying to say virtually anything I can remember would be more interesting as a book subject than what I'm actually writing about at this point. Right, right. But just to make sure it's profoundly dull, this is just his way of introducing the concept of police sketch artist. Because if a person doesn't look like the suspect, it can't be the suspect. look like the suspect, it can't be the suspect. Just like if Jesus didn't look like God, that's literally

what he's trying for in terms of analogy here. With the most disturbing example possible. Yes! Okay, so you know sketches? Sorry, that was a tricky word. Imagine a graphic rape scene to make this work. No, no, got it. I know the word sketch.

Stop right now. Stop what stop right now stop this will help stop what you said this will help trust me trust me so the thing here is that the old testament sketches out details of jesus and now we're supposed to check those against what it says in the new testament because how could the people write in the new testament possibly know what was in the old testament yes the argument from and then at the end he kills Voldemort. Harry Potter is true. I love too that he lists all the characteristics of God, most of which are logical contradictions,

but he's not worried about his readers noticing that at all. Yep, yep. He says, well, God is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, unchanging, holy, wise, and just. Now let's examine Jesus to see if he was at all places at all times. That's literally the question for this chapter, though. I wrote that down

at the beginning thinking I was making a joke. And it's about sketch artists. So it's just like Virgin Mary sitting there with a sketch artist. Yeah, the rapist was a bit more omnipresent. Can you make him more omnipresent? Okay, now I'm just shading in the whole paper. That's him, black guy.

Black guy. And then, by the way, he points out that this is bullshit. He says, I mean, obviously when Jesus was in Capernaum, he wasn't also in Jericho, so a lesser of mine might think I'm asking stupid questions with obvious answers that disprove

my entire thesis, but next heading. You can see Strobel like testing the waters for that being an explanation that Jesus was omnipresent, but then he's like, no, no, someone saw him in one place once. Stupid. Good job, Lee. Close, close. Okay, now you might be thinking but i read about jesus being in one place and that is less than infinity places well i least trouble check the math with a phd yeah right find out what he said right was it a math phd no no no. So now we meet Donald A. Carson, who he chose because he's one of the leading thinkers in all of Christianity and not because he teaches at the same college

as the last guy that Lee was there. Yeah. Lee was already there. At this point, Lee's just hanging out in the hallway. You want to be in my book? You want to be in my book? I solved this equation on a window. No, you didn't. That's a dick.

That's not a dick. You drew a 12-year-old's dick. Penisology. Penisology, guys. Well, and in the Tinder bio portion of the intro, he says, you know, I expected him to be all stuffy and academic, but he turned out to be warm and sincere, unlike academic. Yes. and sincere, unlike academics. Yes.

And I want to point out, this is like the fifth people who by definition know things sure are dicks, huh? Yes. Description we've had in this book. I feel like he sent this book to an actual academic somewhere in between chapter two and three and it came back entirely redlined and stuff like this was the result.

And you know what else is relevant? Is relevant? His sneakers were Adidas and he had a white windbreaker on. And maybe I meant your, like days of your. Maybe you're the one

who needs to learn basic grammar. Sorry. Sorry. Okay. So is infinity greater than one? Right. So Lee opens up the interview by saying, so what makes you think this dude is god yeah and

just in case the mere act of appearing in lee strobel's book wasn't enough to discredit everything this dude ever has to say in his entire life here's his actual answer quote one could point to such things as his miracles, but other people have done miracles. So while this may be indicative, it's not decisive. End quote. So his answer is no? We also get the argument from, well, Jesus said he was perfect,

and if he was lying, that would be imperfect. Ergo, he wasn't lying, and only gods are perfect. And you know what? It says a lot about this book that that is not the dumbest thing that's in this book i wanted lee to pause for a second and be like i'm god and the professor would be like yes you are god, this is where Lee Strobel explains how he used the rapid fire method. Apparently, good journalism is all about

lightning rounds. So, he walked into this guy's office and started ripping off questions like a lunatic. Just like, Dr. Carson, was Jesus really omnipresent? And is he really omniscient if he doesn't know when he's coming back? And how can he be omnipotent if he can't do certain miracles? Dicks or vaginas? And Carson was supposed to be like no no he can't dicks wow

hey carson admits that there are no easy answers to those questions but does struggle a favor of not pointing out that it's because they're stupid yeah no carson's actual answer here is to basically lay out the no true scotsman fallacy as though he was making a suggestion for the Scottish census. He says, well, I know that Jesus does all kind of non-God type stuff, but those are the parts that were human. The other parts of him, though, were God parts. Okay, but that begs the question, what percentage God are we talking here? Like 51%, 90, 10?

If you're 10% God, don't you have to be 100% God by definition? This is a serious book. I guess that's what I'm saying is this is a very serious book. Just Jesus looking at his results from 23andMe. It's all pissed. Dad, it says I'm mostly from Genghis Khan. What the fuck?

Nothing Semitic. And then struggles like that doesn't make any sense. And then Carson says, no, it really doesn't make any sense and then carson says no it really doesn't here here let me try again yes he absolutely takes a goddamn mulligan right he's like yeah even a dumbass straw man question like that throws we theologians here and there let me try different bullshit with bigger words right the sun was in my eyes do over question go over ask me all in a row fast like before yeah yeah so answer number two is i shit you not here in philippians 2 paul says jesus emptied himself so maybe he was just

emptying himself of all the omnipresent god parts and stuff oh for fun but even as he's saying it he realizes that doesn't work because then jesus wouldn't be god which defeats the purpose okay uh what if god was one of us you're doing this song uh you know when you approached me in the hallway i thought this would be easier i'm not gonna are you a janitor i think i'm just now noticing your onesie and giant key ring. Are you? Yes. So on his third try, he says, well, maybe Jesus just turned off the omnipresence and the omniscience to save battery. Is it just me or does this whole thing read like a guy realizing he's full of shit and having a mental breakdown in real time? Right.

You mean this interview or the book? Oh, yeah. Now that you mention it. Yeah. Yeah. But absolutely. right you mean this interview or the book oh yeah now that you mention it both but absolutely in the interview like any minute I expected him to be like am I blowing this I feel like I'm blowing this are you mad you seem

oh my god I thought I was blowing this I thought you were mad so okay we're both blowing it cancels out eventually and not even all That's a step. So, okay. We're both blowing. We're both blowing. Cancels out. Eventually, and not even all that eventually,

Carson throws his hands up in the air and says, look, this is some complicated shit. Nobody in the world is smart enough to even comprehend what the fuck we're talking about. Yes, yes. Yeah, here's how he actually describes the goal of Christian theology. Quote, trying to take the biblical evidence and find ways of synthesis that are rationally coherent, even if they're not exhaustively explanatory, end quote. In other words, look, we're just trying to think of a way of phrasing this so our questions make sense.

Right. Jesus is full and empty of God and God and a ghost. He's flampty double plus on God. To which Schrebel says, without missing a beat here, quote, that was a sophisticated way of saying that. Yeah, and then he goes on. And that makes sense. If this is true, we'd all be too dumb to comprehend it. So I guess this book would be useless.

Fuck. Can you phrase my conclusion in a way that I agree with you for me? Are we blowing this? I feel like we're blowing this again. I'm a waiter at this Applebee's. You guys can't really blow it. I'd like some sizzling vaginas all right so with that question dismissed with beyond the comprehension of finite minds literally in those words we move

on to the next heading creator or created yeah so the argument here is if jesus was created he can't be god basically and as silly an argument as that is it's still unanswerable because the trinity concept makes no fucking sense logically or otherwise so carson immediately resorts to yeah but you you didn't read it in the original greek oh my god and to give you an idea what a fucking dodge this is he says well when it says jesus was the first begotten son of god the word they're translating to begotten actually means unique and beloved and then they move on without least saying okay that's wrong according to every biblical translator ever in history but also jesus was the first unique and beloved son of god still

suggests he was created in the same way as begotten would yeah it's like a chicken and an egg except it's not about which came first. And it's not just clearly a wrong translation that he made up there. It's also an insane argument that happens right after this. Carson actually claims that Greek verbs have no meaning inside

the time dimension unless somebody ended their sentence with but no, seriously, I meant like ontologically when I said that verb I meant ontologically the verb becoming into otherwise everything means nothing nobody's ever wrong and everybody gets a participation trophy like that's his argument

God was he banking on us not knowing what ontologically means also still I do like this headcanon though right like just a full grown Jesus hanging out with Mary. My dad is raping me into you right now. Mommy.

Strobel also points to a verse where Jesus is referred to as God's firstborn son. And Carson says, right. But that was talking about inheritance. Like he was God's first heir to which Strobel doesn't say. Wouldn't that only make sense if God was eventually going to die and leave the universe to Jesus? Because if he did, he would have to throw away this chapter. It would explain

all the shit that Jesus went through though. Trying to earn that inheritance. Eric Trump gets it. Eric and Ivanka walk into Andrew's office. I call Crucifix. I call Crucifix good you got so so now that now that we've definitively proven that jesus was a god we have to ask was jesus a lesser god like maybe a volcano god or the god of the hunt or something that's resistant to the regional god exactly and

let's be super clear here there are about eight million parts of the new testament that are impossible to reconcile with the concept of the trinity which of course postdates the book by hundreds of years so through the whole chapter lee's pointing those out and letting the interview go that's not what he meant yeah and and to get there he's constantly saying stuff like well in john 14 28 when jesus says the father is greater than i what he really meant was the father was like better at checkers yeah not a being god it all depends on what the meaning of the word is is like ontologically the verb to be in the present tense is pretty much beyond human comprehension very finite mind and again i just what who is this book arguing against is there a sect of

christianity that's been pushing the jesus with squaresies with hercules narrative who is this for all right but then we move on to the part where god is supposed to be good so our next heading is Hercules narrative. Who is this for? Who is this for? All right. But then we move on to the part where God is supposed to be good. So our next heading is the disquieting question of hell. Disquieting. Disquieting is the word he chose there in which Lee asks, well, can you be a compassionate person and have an eternal torture chamber? And by the way, they're going to land on yes as the answer. Did anyone else feel like Strobel was hiding the next two sections in this chapter? eternal torture chamber and by the way they're going to land on yes as the answer did anyone

else feel like strobel was hiding the next two sections in this right right you know what let's put the hell stuff and the slavery stuff after we determine jesus wasn't a chinese knockoff god they'll be fast asleep by then yeah no okay so carson's answer quite literally when he says yeah but wouldn't god have to be evil to have hell carson goes oh so you're pro holocaust you like the holocaust right yeah his entire answers rely on the unstated premise that the binary choice is torture people for all eternity or not do anything at all yeah which makes us all really happy not to be donald carson's kids. Yeah. No shit. He even says,

look, some people only get moderate eternal hell. I mean, yeah, the eighth circle is pretty awful, but the third circle, it's got a giant worm

like a dune. That'd be awesome. And that, by the way, is it. Yep. He leaves that gaping white hole in his morality

with some people only get boiled in oil like four times a day. Come on. It's medium hell. It's the rest of your life in a poison-laced money pit in suburban New Jersey. How bad could that be? You're riding giant worms. You got bridges.

My wife is in hell. That's sad. Well, and since we're already in this hole, we might as well keep digging. So the next heading is Jesus and slavery. Right. To which Carson says, well, if you'd permit me another subheading, I'll explain how slavery wasn't really that bad. And he does. You got the Ottoman Empire, empire the taj mahal right yeah but he starts by saying

well in this book an african-american scholar says this thing that i can't say without attributing it to a black guy or this book becomes a hate crime and then we talk about the lighter side of slavery because that's what happens inevitably when you try to justify Christianity. He basically argues that if American slavery was a bit more inclusive, it would have been moral. Yep. Exactly. Fair and balanced. Like Thanos running a genocide.

Thanos 2020. That's the theme of Heath's interaction. I see where i lost the rails i see it got it all right and then he gives jesus credit for the eventual overthrow of slavery by the way he says look he made all the necessary changes so that 1800 years later or so most societies would outlaw slavery even though they'd have to fight against the biblical literalist to get there and the most christian parts of america would be the parts that fought hardest to keep it and I gotta stop talking because it keeps getting wronger every time I let this go on anymore

all lives matter my Nikes are on fire I love black people show me the God please help next chapter yeah he says quote the driving impetus for the abolition of slavery was the evangelical awakening in England, end quote.

Yep. Because I think we can all agree that England didn't really get serious about this Christianity shit until the 1830s. Right, fucking what? Hey, you guys want to stop reading this book ever and become a venue solely for old ladies to hand out folded pieces of A4 paper? Christianity, we just peaked. book ever and become a venue solely for old ladies to hand out folded pieces of A4 paper? Christianity. We just peaked. Like Jesus was dying on the cross just laughing to himself like, okay, well this is going to pay off huge

for Harriet Tubman. In like a couple, 1800 years. Get her on the money and like, well, maybe not. That'll probably get her. We'll get her raised. But we'll talk about getting her on the money and like well maybe not that'll probably get her we'll talk about getting her on the money yeah and then Lee by the way he has a little anecdote to back this up

he says yeah you know I used to know a guy who was racist until he became a Christian because if there's one thing that correlates with least racist states and nations it's most religious states and nations am I right no okay but i really want to talk to that friend now right i just i want to get that guy and be like okay so how did

black people change when you accepted jesus right uh smelled better no the same smell the same making it worse anything smell is is worse. I love Harriet Tubman. Show me the money. And then he concludes by going, well, and on top of that, the Bible says Jesus is God and it's the fucking Bible.

QED. Yeah, no, that's where he always lands, right? Every single one of them is, well, the Bible says I'm right, done. But of course, we don't get paroled until we get through his deliberation questions. So let's take a look at what he brought for show and tell here. Question one, two, three, and four. But he only has a list of this question one. Read Philippians 2 5-8. You read it, motherfucker! No, no. Read Philippians 2 5-8, which talks about Jesus emptying himself and being born into humble

circumstances with the cross as his destination what are some possible motivations for jesus to do this then read verses 9 through 11 what happened as a result of jesus's mission what could prompt everyone to someday conclude that jesus is lord uh he could come back I feel like that's a pretty good start. He's emptying himself. Okay, so Jesus was gonna get a colonoscopy because he shat on the wrong plate, right? And so they gave him this stuff called Suprep. Oh, I've got a lot of very detailed emails now. All right, so I feel like at this point, Lee has just asked us to do his homework, right? Like, he's like, how does any of this make any sense? If you figure it out, please email me for the second question.

Yeah, I think we've spent insufficient time on the this was poop related hypothesis. Yeah, right. Two votes. All right. So question two. Has the idea of hell been an impediment in your spiritual journey? How do you respond toon's explanation of this issue okay uh yes and i respond to carson's explanation by being an atheist congratulations you nailed it

yeah okay well here's the thing if hell has a bunch of levels i want to watch them argue about who goes where like sports radio guys arguing about the Hall of Fame but with genocide stats and stuff like that. And I hope they put Hitler lookalikes in every level just to fuck with people on their way out. I'm as bad as Hitler? I'm with that guy? I'm Mother Teresa. So I

gotta say, I'm a big fan of Hell. I would have fucked up a lot of classic album covers if they had to use New Jersey. I guess Jersey would have been the second choice though, right? Yeah, that is fair. I know exactly the address. So I want to say hell is a huge factor in my spiritual journey.

I'm really hoping to bum out all the murderers and rapists with my whining. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? They're going to be like, eh, the fire pits were bad, but this guy, he's just like always talking. He's just like, eh.

You made hell worse. I'm looking forward to that. All right. So question three. Carson addressed some verses that on the surface seem to suggest that Jesus was a created being or a lesser God. Did you find his reasoning persuasive? Why or why not? What did his analysis of these issues teach you in terms of the need

for appropriate background information in interpreting scripture uh it taught me that grown men are arguing about where fictional characters rank in terms of magic ghost hood it was like listening to nerds argue about which avenger would win in a fight yeah just less impactful yeah all right so the hulk would win in a fight no obviously of just less impactful. Yeah. The Hulk would win in a fight. No, obviously of all the Avengers. Okay. Well, for what it's worth, I'm pretty sure that this is the first time I can honestly give Lee the answer that he wants, more or less. No, I do not believe that Jesus

was a subordinate deity. I don't know. I'm pretty firmly convinced Jesus was a yellow belt god. And by the way, that little sneaky sentence at the end no I don't need to read and write Greek for your religion to make sense

right I'm just picturing Jesus trying to punch through that tiny piece of wood that's all perforated owie coop in a horse stance but yeah it feels like a black belt god who's omniscient they'd probably have full mastery

of conjugating to be it's tricky they got that infinite mind yeah exactly all right well that's gonna do it for the single digit chapters but there's still more of this dumbass book somehow so we're gonna crack it open again in three weeks, and between now and then, we'll be hoping for a mistrial in The Case for Christ. Fred Kavanaugh. I need to go empty myself out. Before we lift off tonight, I want to remind you that we've got a live show coming up in

London on the first weekend of October. We're going to be recording an episode of Godawful Movies. We on the first weekend of october we're going to be recording an episode of god awful movies we've got a couple of special guests we're going to be announcing next week so if you want to get your tickets before the rush starts you'll find a link on the show notes anyway that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight we'll be back in 10 022 minutes with more if you can't wait that long be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend god awful 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 wouldn't be able to sleep at night if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for his boundless well of fart jokes,

Eli for his boundless well of fart, and Lucinda Lusions for her boundless well of putting up with me making fart jokes. I also need to thank Flowers of Disgust for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. If you're curious to hear them do actual music, you'll find a link to their YouTube channel on this week's show notes. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best bipeds, Rob, Chris Harrison, Philip, King Leon at Burns 1IP, Alden, Stephen, Anthony, Dark Bunny Sauces, Susan, Timothy, Greg, the Leopard and Lily Historical Podcast, Shannon, Metroplex, and Brian. Rob, Chris Harrison, and Philip, whose dick pics include notations like one of four, King Leon at Burns 1IP, Alden, Stephen, and Anthony, whose IQs have more digits than a Hindu goddess, Dark Bunny Sauces, Susan, Timothy,

and Greg, who are so sexy the MPAA considers them porn. And the Leopard and Lily historical podcast Shannon, Metroplex, and Brian, who are so hot they show up on weather maps. Together, these 17 people podcast potentates and urinary tract infections helped hollow out a haven for heathens in the coming theocracy this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money,

but if you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com slash scathingadeus, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode plus bonus material, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at Thank you. the law offices 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 skatingadeus.com. That's why I have a scotch at 11 a.m. I have a little breakfast scotch. It's 3.08.

It's the afternoon. That's not when I started drinking. That's the point. It's 3.08 now. If you go to a happy hour drunk, you're drunk at a happy hour. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle & Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.