The Scathing Atheist - 296: Jet Lagged Edition

Episode Date: October 18, 2018

In this week’s episode, Quebec’s prime minister will insist he’s just hiding his treasure underneath that sideways X, Gwyneth Paltrow expresses pride in Goop's truthiness score of 10% maybe not lying, and Lee Strobel’s brain splurts will descend one layer deeper into insanity. 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/ Headlines: Secular Americans among most likely to vote in 2018: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/12/secular-americans-are-among-the-most-enthusiastic-voters-going-into-the-midterms/ WV Lawmaker tells women to “get their coathangers ready” and calls a psychologist pedophile for defending LGBTQ kids: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/07/wv-politician-says-liberals-should-get-coathangers-ready-for-abortions/ http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/11/coat-hanger-councilman-calls-psychologist-a-pedophile-for-defending-lgbtq-kids/ Mark Taylor: Dems sent Hurricane Michael in retaliation for Kavanaugh: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/10/christian-prophet-dems-sent-hurricane-michael-in-retaliation-over-kavanaugh/ Kat Kerr: To celebrate Kavanaugh, Aborted babies “Partied in Heaven” http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/09/christian-prophetess-to-celebrate-kavanaugh-aborted-babies-partied-in-heaven/ Quebec leader argues crucifix “isn’t religious” http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/12/quebec-leader-crucifix-in-national-assembly-can-stay-since-its-not-religious/ Scottish Christians furious over gov’t anti-bigotry campaign: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/11/scottish-christians-are-furious-over-an-anti-bigotry-campaign-by-the-government/ Doctor: 90% of products on Goop not supported by science: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/14/medical-doctor-90-of-goops-wellness-products-arent-supported-by-science/ http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/11/gwyneth-paltrow-disagrees-that-goop-products-are-based-on-pseudoscience/ This Week in Misogyny: Mormon leader urges women to fast from Social Media for 10 days: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/12/mormon-president-tells-women-to-take-10-day-social-media-fast/ Christian author: Rape doesn’t count if she doesn’t scream: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/16/christian-author-reiterates-that-rape-doesnt-count-unless-the-victim-screams/

Warning, I told Noe he couldn't cuss in the customs line, so he's been saving up. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by ZipRecruiter, Stamps.com, and HIMSS. And by the fact that all the things we're qualified to do are embarrassing answers to what do you do for a living once you get out of your 20s. Unlike podcasting? Exactly. And now, The Scathing Atheist. I'm Jody Delaney from southeastern Virginia, home of the 700 Club. And much to old P-Robe's chagrin, I can assure you that we did, in fact,

evolve from pansexual, polyamorous, gender-fluid monkey people. It's Thursday. It's October 18th. And it's National Chocolate Cupcake Day. If I catch you with vanilla, so help me God. Bird at the stake. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright.

And from Kendall, Vecchio's, New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband, Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, Quebec's prime minister will insist he's just hiding his treasure underneath that sideways X. Gwyneth Paltrow expresses pride in Goop's truthiness score of 10% maybe not lying. And Lee Strobel

to send one layer deeper into insanity. But first, the diatribe. The Diatrap. Right outside of my hotel in Edinburgh, there was a monument marking the spot where the town gallows used to be. It's called the Covenanters Memorial, and encircling it are the words, many martyrs and covenanters died for the Protestant faith on this spot. And my first thought, coming as I do from America, is that that memorial seemed oddly exclusionary,

right? I mean, this is just the spot of the gallows, not the special Protestant-only gallows. Plenty of people died there for all kinds of cruel shit that had nothing to do with lutheranism you know there's no marker there for people that died for their lack of faith or their premarital sex or their theft of a loaf of bread but after contemplating it for a minute i realized that that was probably an overly american reaction and now first of all in all fairness to scotland it's not like there's a well-funded bread stealing union out there proposing and paying for monuments and it's not like memorializing the soldiers that died in World War II as some kind of insult to the people that died of lung disease in the early 40s. But more importantly, it's not like Scotland is America. See, as an American, I have this weird relationship with history. And I guess I can only really speak for myself, but I literally feel like

pre-American history is a different kind of thing. I don't know if I can explain it exactly, but I feel like my history only goes back 411 years and really only 242. And all that other stuff is somebody else's history that I'm only allowed to borrow. As I'm walking around Edinburgh, I keep seeing these plaques that say like, you know, 700 years ago, such and such a king took a piss in this very spot. And I keep wandering through these graveyards where you're surprised if you see anybody who died in the century before last even. And when you're an American, you don't see shit like that. Oh, most of us never even see it for a weekend in Edinburgh. More than two thirds of Americans have never left the North American continent. And according to one survey, some 11 percent never leave the state they're born in. Now, to be clear, obviously, the American continent has shit going on in it 700 years ago and a thousand years ago and 10,000 and 20,000 years ago.

We just don't know what it was. Right. Some powerful American king may very well have pissed on precisely the spot I'm sitting right now. But we don't have a written history of this area. And disturbingly, few of us can trace our heritage to that history other than to say we killed it anyway. So we have this profound disconnect that very few other parts of the world are afflicted with. And if this is more than some idiosyncratic tendency that I personally have. If this is like a generally American trait, it has real consequences on how we behave culturally and politically, right? I mean, we think of all the problems of history as shit that happened

somewhere else to some other kind of people, right? In the minds of a lot of Americans, fascism never happened here, not because we have a small historical sample size, but because America has some magical immunity to it. And this brings us back around to that monument outside my hotel in Scotland and why my first reaction was so misguided. See, Scotland has actually had religious wars. They've actually had a full-blown theocracy. And as a result of that combination, they've actually had a period dubbed the killing time. And plaques like that

one are an effort to inoculate the future. They're like a cultural antibody honed to a particular cultural disease. And here in America, we are disturbingly unvaccinated. See, I feel like people in Scotland or almost anywhere else in the world would be better suited to our present circumstances. We've got this burgeoning theocracy popping up around us and consolidating power for generations to come. And most Americans can't see the warning signs or more accurately, can't see that those are warning signs. They see a theocracy on the horizon and don't know enough to swerve out of its way. Like they see their political goals, right? Banning abortion, dehumanizing gay and trans people, choking off immigration.

And they see theocracy as an expedient way to get there. And because they don't have any cultural memory of the killing time, they don't see how that's going to blow up in their faces. The point is that nobody wins when the wall of separation comes crashing down. The religious right will win some victories early on, but history makes it very clear where this kind of thing goes. Even if we set aside the misogynistic and bigoted goals that motivate the current fledgling theocracy in America and substitute in noble ones, the diagnosis would be the same. Just look at the Iranian revolution in 79. A lot of the motives behind that were valid as all fuck.

And since the religious authorities were the only ones promoting those goals, a lot of moderately religious people gave over power to them, trusting them to take care of their problems with the Shah's rule. And they did that more or less, or some of it, or started to try to do some of it. But along the way, they also set about their actual goals, their internal goals as a religion, which are, of course, to put their own institution at the forefront of power. And before you know it, people are being caned for premarital

sex and women can't go to football games. Probably not what those revolutionary students were storming embassies over is what I'm saying. And it's not like examples are hard to find here. History is replete with object lessons on the dangers of theocracy and the ways it manifests. But if you fail to heed history and you act like it's somebody else's story, you don't know to act when the wall starts to crumble and when i look around america in 2018 i see a country determined to learn that lesson the hard way they're talking about you jesus interrupt this broadcast bring you a special news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight are international men of mystery heath enright

and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to go back to the 110-volt lifestyle? I will miss boiling water in under eight seconds, but I will not miss the feeling that I'm charging my cell phone with the voltage used to raise Frankenstein. Yeah, so knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein

is not the monster, but wisdom is knowing that book is boring and was only written to get out of fucking Lord Byron. It's true. Okay. And with the founding document of the science fiction genre

probably disparaged, I guess we can take a quick break from a word from this week's first sponsor, ZipRecruiter. Get a club foot. Well, hello. I'm Melania Trump.

And I'm Sarah Huckabee Sanders. And we're here to promote our new podcast, Sarah and Melania's Happy Funtime Podcast. Oh, please stop. Guys, I got so many emails from people. And we're also here to remind you to stay smart. And you know what's not smart? Reminding the electorate that they don't have to serve you food or allow you to have that veil of normalcy while you do terrible things.

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ZipRecruiter.com slash scathing. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Also, don't lecture people on family values when your brother set a dog on fire. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, not smart. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, we had to come back to America. Despite the fact that we weren't here.

And that was depressing. A couple weeks in socialism followed up by a return flight to the kleptocratic oligarchy run by people who would ask me if those two words were a type of bird. Okay, to be fair I asked if it was possible to eat that kind of bird. Right, but you're not in charge. So, yeah, in order to ease our rebound pain I thought I'd open up on a little bit of good news this week. According to a recent survey by the Atlantic and the Public Religion Research Institute,

secular voters are among the most enthusiastic demographics polled when it comes to voting in the midterms. According to their press release, quote, religiously unaffiliated voters seem most excited about supporting or donating to causes, going to rallies, and expressing opinions online, among other activities. End quote.

Right. Other activities like, for example, naming a senator from memory or not helping sexual predators or reading one entire book with no pictures. There's a lot of things we like to do. Let's hope one of them is a vote. And look, I know we harp on that a lot, and I guess too much might even be a fair descriptor, but despite being 25% of the population, the nuns account for something like 15% of the electorate.

Even when the guy on one side is promising a theocracy and literally says he's going to make people say Merry Christmas again. Right? But just for the record, Donald, if you're listening, I will happily say nothing but Merry Christmas if you show me a DNA test that doesn't come back as a Big Mac with a Hitler mustache. If you can do that, whatever you want. That was a weird backstory to give the Hamburglar.

I'm going to say that right now. But in retrospect, it was the only backstory to give the Hamburglar. I'm going to say that right now. But in retrospect, it was the only one to give the Hamburglar. It's true. And in turdemic news tonight, City Councilman Eric Barber celebrated the appointment of beer lover and winner of 2018's reddest face, Brett Kavanaugh, to the Supreme Court by taking to Facebook and saying,

quote, better get your coat hangers ready, liberals. And by the way, better get your coat hangers ready, liberals. And by the way, that's your coat hangers. Apostrophe R.E. Yeah. What the fuck? Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm more offended by the coat hanger thing itself or by the fact that an elected official doesn't know the goddamn difference between your and your. Or that Eli spelled it right wrong in the quote.

He switched it from wrong to right wrong. I'm pretty sure that was just Noah going through my notes. Yeah, it was. But it does get worse. See, after that, Barber proceeded to get himself sued for calling

a local psychologist and LGBTQ advocate a pedophile for defending gender non-normative kids. Yeah, but given what we know of his intelligence, he probably thought that he'd be allowed to sue Elon Musk if he said that. It's true. Two degrees. It's like Kevin Bacon. Right.

So Barber, who, despite looking like he's going to get you like an awesome deal on a used SUV, just you wait. Left the Democratic Party three years ago. And this is the real reason. Because his city council stopped praying before meetings. And he's been, you know, acting like the hero in a Christian movie ever since. By which I mean committing crimes. He's been committing

a lot of crimes. And not the cool Guy Ritchie character crimes either. The boring, lame crimes that we get movies about. Turns out that when he is not lecturing other people

on morality, he's getting arrested for disorderly conduct, possession, a DUI, another DUI, and my favorite, in 1999,

breaking and entering. Really? Yeah. So, not sure when this movie is coming out, but my question is who's going to play him? K. Sorbs or David A. R. White? I think he needs to get

beat up by Jason Statham either way. Oh! Just in real life. Not for a movie. Just in real life. Jason, if you're listening, get your wrenches out. Let's do this. life yeah i'm just not for a movie in real life jason if you're listening there you are get your wrenches out let's do this and in miscarriage of justice news in addition to brett kavanaugh's wonderful job creation in the uh coat hanger sector we also learned about two

other very important results of his confirmation to the Supreme Court. One involves a magical attack by radical liberal airbenders and waterbenders, and the other involves an aborted fetus dance party. And to answer your question, yes, you should be picturing all that stuff together as part of the greatest movie trailer ever made. Yes. together as part of the greatest movie trailer ever made yes all right official company proposal to change the term platinum night at our live shows to aborted fetus dance party uh two votes already did it especially on the side so uh we're gonna start with the alt left elemental warlocks thing and this one came to us from everyone's favorite mustache mullet combo that grew a body around it mark taylor so uh taylor finished up his shift as a hockey themed male

prostitute last week and sent out the following tweet quote does anyone else think it's strange that justice k is sworn in and we have a major hurricane inbound what d's scared ds scared i think he's saying democrats scared yeah they should be um should we though like should we i mean apparently we have storm from the x-men on our team so yeah i'm feeling pretty bold whatever continuing continuing retaliation absolutely we will not be intimidated warriors arise oh time to go to work you know what to do do they i feel like they don't i feel like they don't know what to do um and that is followed by dot dot dot dash end quote and um that-T in Morse code at the end. You know what to do. End quote.

I would love to know what message he thinks he just sent to Christians, right? Are they supposed to create a southbound typhoon to spin in the other way to take on Michael? Oh, hurricane fight! Yes. Oh, hurricane fight.

Yes. Yeah, so apparently we have Storm on the payroll, but she only does spite hurricanes and only after the fact. It's a weird expenditure. Anyway, that brings us to the second big result from the Kavanaugh confirmation. And the only way to up the ante on a story about a weather-manipulating mutant and a Christian firefighter prophet

is to follow it up with an all-in-one weather-manipulating mutant Christian prophet and her aborted fetus party. And that means, as you all well know, Kat Kerr. Kat Kerr. Damn it. Ah, I knew it. I knew it.

So, you remember Kat Kerr. Kat Kerr. Damn it. Oh, I knew it. Okay. I knew it. So you remember Kat Kerr, perhaps, from cutting up bars into a thousand pieces and then throwing those millibars at Hurricane Florence in order to dissipate the storm. You may also remember her from the red light district of your hentai-themed retirement community. Yes, I do. Yes, you should well during a recent sermon she explained how god picked brett kavanaugh to reverse roe v wade and she also added quote god kept showing me letting me see all of these millions of babies who were aborted

that are in heaven they sang and. They had a party in heaven. Oh, Jesus Christ. Oh, that's a good image. A little fetus spinning poi on the middle of a dance floor. Come on. You look a little closer and they're just smaller fetuses

with really long umbilical cords. But for what it's worth, though, there is a secular equivalent any time a hurricane hits a Planned Parenthood clinic hard enough. So this isn't something that just the Christians have. Don't need religion.

All right. Well, just one more quick note before we wrap it up. If anyone out there is good with animation, we're hoping to make our own movie about this. So please send us your best clip of, you know, like a used condom and a used feminine hygiene product singing and dancing together. The ideal soundtrack would be something like Baby Come Back. But feel free to get creative. Whatever you come up with. Don't micromanage, Heath.

Let them do it. Use Baby Come Back. Oh, okay. And in lowercase T news tonight. You know, as Noah and Lucinda traipsed through the misty dales of Edinburgh last week, Heath, my wife and I were in French wine country, which is where our next story takes place. Nope.

Next story takes place in Quebec. Close enough, Heath. Close enough. Anyway, Francois Legault Absolutely not. No. Will soon be Quebec's premier. According to Wikipedia, the premier of Quebec is like being governor if nobody cared about your state. So, it to Wikipedia, the premier of Quebec is like being governor if nobody cared about your state.

So it's like being the CEO of a podcasting company. Exactly. And so far, the changes he's proposing seem, I want to say confusing. I'm going to go with confusing. So on the one hand, he's promising to stop government workers from wearing religious paraphernalia on

the job and depending on what that job is that's a really really good policy the problem is a lot of time ideas like that are just you know barely concealed bigotry against religions that wear magic hats which is the not christian ones yeah. Yeah. It's frustrating when the bigots get one right by accident. Like eugenics, but they fuck it up and they make it all about white people and it ruins the whole field and it's awesome. And now it's ruined. So if this policy is implemented fairly,

it wouldn't be a problem. In fact, probably a good idea. However, that doesn't look like it's going to be the case because this week, Legulae. Still no.

No. Okay. Just to try it again in english announced that the giant crucifix in the quebec national assembly can stay because it's not a religious symbol nope sure as well to be fair living in quebec is a lot like being nailed to a cross with thorns wrapped around your face. So it's like, you know, it'd be a good cultural identifier too. Fair, fair. Yeah. So according to Legoland. That's actually closer. Okay.

Thank you. Go ahead. Okay. So the two, I'm going to call them perpendicular lines, are a, quote, historical symbol, not a religious one, even though it represents the Christian values of the province's two colonial ancestors, end quote. Not adding, and super does not represent the values of the indigenous people they murdered the fuck out of. Yeah, right. It's a T, as in teepee. We're being reasonable.

Anyway, as you can imagine, the usual band of grumps have called this, you know, barely concealed religious preference, which casts his actions to remove religious headgear in the light of bigotry against non-Christians. But luckily for us, he had a second press conference to clear everything up. Morgan, cue the audio. Hello, everyone. It is me, Francois Lagoon. Apparently, there were some questions about my statements last week. But first, I brought wine. Woo, wine.

There, this guy gets it. Yeah. I get it. Mr. LaCroix, first, nobody listens to that show, so nobody gets that joke. Secondly, how do you respond to critics who call your defense of religious symbology as historical, barely concealed theocracy? Right. So let me explain. I probably should have.

These two intersecting lines we have here in our National Assembly, they are for a construction project that we have not gotten around to. We're going to knock down this wall. When we do, this is where we're going to start. So, great. If there are no more questions, I have one. Oh, there are so many more. I also was wondering why you painted no Jews allowed on the wall underneath it. Oh, this.

Well, I was painting the wall and that is just a pattern of where I started to paint. You want us to believe that you started painting the wall and your brush strokes just happened to spell out no Jews allowed? Yes, happens all the time. Now, who wants some wine? Yeah, wine. This guy. This guy. And with those French Canadians put firmly in their place,

we'll pause for a quick word from our second sponsor this week, Stamps.com. Look, look, look. Melania stuff. Melania stuff is my favorite stuff. Hey, Melania. What's the matter? Joe. Hi, Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

You look great, baby. I do not. Somehow I'm aging inwards. I wish you wouldn't lie. Yeah. You look like one of those fast motion videos of them rotting a peach. Yeah, accurate. Anyway, what's the matter?

It's all the merch we need to send out to the patrons of Sarah and Melania's Happy Funtime podcast. Not a real thing. We got Glantage t-shirts to send out. Melania and Sarah talking plushies. And of course, all these bumper stickers. I barely sleep as it is, guys.

Okay, well, why don't you try stamps.com, Melania? Stamps.com? What's stamps.com? Oh, with stamps.com, you can access all the amazing services of the post office right from your desk, 24-7, when it's convenient for you. So, like, when I go to the mailbox at 2 in the morning and see Mike Pence furiously stuffing an op-ed into the slot? That's right. You could be mailing stuff too. Just click, print, mail, and you're done. It could not

be easier. The Skating Atheist uses it to send out all their merch and Patreon rewards. And with our new podcast, there'll be even more of that soon. No, there won't. I will literally die though. Okay, Sarah. So how do i try it well right now you can use scathing for this special offer which includes up to 55 free postage a digital scale and a four-week trial don't wait go to stamps.com before you do anything else click on the radio microphone at the top of the home page and type in scathing that's stamps.com enter scathing so like one hour twice a week doing an opening arguments thing i like it no right a man wrote the bible a horse which one if it's a legitimate race right cooking can be fun hey i'm proud of a

man this week in misogyny so here i, whisked back away from the socialist relative paradise of Europe, or ex-Europe, back to the lovely land of Georgia, which has apparently become the vote suppression capital of America in my absence. See, a significant portion of Georgia is terrified at the thought of earning the distinction of being the first state in the union to elect an African-American woman as their governor. But a slightly larger portion is excited as all hell about that. And when you can't convince the majority, the white Christian in Georgia's philosophy has always been that you suppress the voices that disagree with you. And that's not exactly exclusive to Georgia. Hell, religion has been perfecting this trick with women since prehistoric times. Let's face it, if the women all voted together, we could elect whoever the hell we want. So stifling our voices has always been a goal of

Christianity. And it's not always as direct as it is when you're a future Supreme Court justice at a high school party. Take, for example, a recent proclamation from the president of the Mormon church. You see, Mormonism isn't doing super well in the media right now. They just excommunicated that dude who was protesting their weird obsession with asking little boys how often they touch themselves. They're getting called out for mishandling sexual abuse allegations. They just reprimanded a woman for breastfeeding during a service. Basically, it's a bad time for Mormons to be aware of the news cycle. So what does the president do? He goes out over the weekend and calls for all Mormon women to take a 10-day fast from social media. That's right, just the women. Wouldn't want them expressing their opinions and absorbing knowledge

in the run-up to the midterms, after all. But to be fair, not all religious leaders are trying to silence women. For example, Christian author Dr. Don Boyce wants to hear more from women, specifically the ones actively being raped. This professional homophobe decided to chime in during the Kavanaugh confirmation hearings to explain that even if things happen exactly as Dr. Ford described them, it wouldn't have been raped since she never screamed. He explained, quote, rape is having sex with a woman while she screams for help. No scream, no rape, according to Deuteronomy 22, 23, and 24, end quote. And by the way, he goes on to acknowledge

that she didn't scream because he was holding his hand over her mouth but apparently that's a divine loophole he's willing to accept so quick before dr boys realizes that by his definition it wouldn't be rape if i forced a tire iron up his asshole in his sleep i'll hand things back over to noah heath and eli thank you lucinda and in Heath and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in kill or be killed news tonight, Scotland is better than America. The mountains are nice and low so you can climb them in an afternoon. Every inch of the place is dripping with history. You can't understand what anybody's saying so you don't have to talk to people. Also, haggis is pretty good.

I mean, no, but it's non-gross. Really? No illusions? You are a culinary mystery? Wrapped in an enigma, my friend. No getting a beat on this guy. That's exactly what they had to say the recipe for haggis was to get me to eat it.

It's a cold pocket. But even better than all that, Scotland isn't a den of religious bigotry slowly devolving into the prequels to the handmaid's tale and as if to rub that in about the same time my wife and i were visiting their lovely quasi country the scottish government was unveiling a new anti-bigotry campaign that encourages the citizenry to call out public displays of homophobia and racism up to and including calling the police okay that's a campaign that it's hard to disagree with unless apparently you're a scottish christian

just a bunch of scottish nazis lighting up across don't don't tell doc iron brew nice to know as long as Christians consider anti-hate policies a personal attack will have a job. Yeah, right. Security and all. So, yeah, Scottish Christians are apparently up in arms about a stop being the worst kind of humans campaign because they feel that it's directed at them. And it is because they're the fucking bad guys to a cartoonish degree. So much so that they can feasibly get pissed off about a sign on a bus that reads quote dear homophobes if you torment people because of who they love

shout words that we are not going to write i'll write them or use violence because you don't like who someone is holding hands with you should be worried if we see or hear abuse we're calling the police that's because love lives in this country not hate yours scotland end quote and some guy read that and was like i should publicly point out i think this message applies to me yes yes they might as well have written homophobe says what unsupposed what it's funny that's's actually what Siri says when any Scottish person asks her anything. Right. Yeah. Okay.

So despite Scotland's diplomatic decision to not specifically add P.S. We know you're all Christian because that's the only place for homophobes to hide anymore. A Scottish Christian group called the Barnabas Fund made it clear that they were the subject of that valediction by saying that the campaign unfairly targets believers because you know they're unfairly bigots or at least overwhelmingly more likely to be bigots and when they're forced to reckon with that by hearing themselves described every time someone ventures to define bigot they respond by pressuring people to stop defining bigot so much. And finally tonight, we have a new development in our ongoing coverage of Gwyneth K.

Paltrow and her website, goop G O O P, which stands for Gwyneth K. Paltrow. Just in case anyone's new to this, Goop is where the G-Unit sells her brand of luxury nonsense items. It's basically

the Louis Vuitton of pseudoscience. Except the $5,000 bag you buy may or may not actually function as a container of physical objects. Right. It's like the Louis Vuitton of auras. right next to a costco that sells a palette of auras for 99 cents right next to a guy handing out free auras well

yeah um just in case it wasn't obvious already we got an official number last week on just how much lying they're doing over at goop according to a recent fact checking review of their website and their product line about 90 of their wellness products have no data to support their alleged wellness benefits okay okay but to be fair to goop bullshit is industry standard for selling things to women right so like no that's true you know what we admire about goop is that they go above and beyond so uh the fact checking was done by jen gunter a doctor of real medicine which is apparently a title that needs to exist and he said sometimes and according to gunter quote 90 of products sold on goop.com under the guise of wellness cannot be backed by science. Many flout common sense, never mind biological principles.

The bulk of their products are useless, but some could be harmful, end quote. So just to be clear, as you leave the store, you're hoping for nothing. Yes, you're right. You're hoping for, you just spent like 15 grand on a golden dildo.

Seriously. Gwyneth Paltrow literally endorsed that. She did. And your best case scenario is a dick shaped piece of gold that does not poison your liver with green tea extract or shoot you in the labia with a steam laser. That's best case scenario. Yep.

Right. That's right. Okay, wait. So 10% is good. Most of the rest is useless except the stuff that's actively harmful yeah so uh i mean it's great that we have some responsible science people checking up on giant scam operations good work by dr gunter not only does it provide important consumer protection but in this, it led to my favorite part of the story.

Following Dr. Gunter's fact check, Gwyneth appeared on a BBC morning show to talk about Goop and their 10th anniversary as a business. And during the interview, she makes a series of non-answers that made Sarah Huckabee Sanders take away Gwyneth's cheese plate. It was over the top. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, take away Gwyneth's cheese plate. It was all over the top. That's when she added, quote, a lot of time we'll find that a third-party product that we sell, people make claims about products. Yes!

End quote. What? Exact words. Gwyneth, did you just speak in ellipses? Did you incomplete your own words out of your own face? Is that what happened? That's pretty much what happened. Yep.

So that was just meaningless nonsense. But she really amped it up for the next part. After strongly denying that her website promotes pseudoscience, she was asked, okay, but didn't you just pay $145,000 like a few weeks ago to settle a consumer protection lawsuit regarding false claims about pseudoscientific health benefits. And here's the response she gave. Quote, one of the products we sell, some of the regulators in California said, you can't say that it does that. And so we never had any customer complaints about it at all. And so we never had any customer complaints about it at all. But we chose, we didn't say, we didn't have to admit that we, you know, any wrongdoing, end quote.

She wraps a towel around her head. And you can't see me. She might as well have ended it with, are you an alcoholic? I like beer. Smoke bomb. And just dive out of the room. And with visions of Chief Justice Paltrow echoing through our heads, we'll close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

And when we come back, Lee Strobel will get a long overdue visit from expletives. That's goop phonetically. Yeah. Why did we let Eli convince us to meet him in a vegan restaurant? Yeah, the waitress told me they don't allow shoes in here because shoes kill bugs. Right? Hey, guys. Sorry I'm late.

Yeah. Eli? Hey, guys. Sorry I'm late. Eli? What are you wearing? What do you got going on? It's a hairpiece. You know, felt like a change. Uh-huh. Right. So you felt like a change, so you bought a toupee?

Okay. One, it is not a toupee. It is a hairpiece. Said that already. It is made of 100% elk. I can smell that. I am told that fades. And two, 66% of men lose their hair by age 35. So, you know, what else was I going to do?

I mean, you could have tried 4hims.com. What's 4hims.com? A one-stop shop for hair loss, skin care, and sexual wellness for men. I don't know, guys. Online supplements? Isn't that usually horse semen? No. No.

Not usually horse semen. But HIMS connects you with real doctors and medical-grade solutions to treat hair loss. So not horse semen. Not horse semen. No. grade solutions to treat hair loss. So not horse semen. Not horse semen, no.

They sell well-known generic equivalents to name brand prescriptions to help you keep your hair. These are prescription solutions backed by science. Wow. So no embarrassing doctor's visits? Yeah. I would hate for you to be embarrassed, guy who just loudly asked about horse semen in a toupee twice in a row. So, how do I try it?

Well, our listeners get a trial month of HIMS for just $5 right now while supplies last. See website for full details. This would cost hundreds if you went to the doctor or pharmacy, so go to 4hims.com slash scathing. That's right. That's F-O-R-H-I-M-S dot com slash scathing. Forhims.com slash scathing, huh? Okay. Now, I'm starving.

You guys have got to try the tofu sausage here. No. So, they just made tofu cubes into a dick shape? Is that what happened? Yes. Yes, they did. Okay. Well, then no. Well, maybe. Ah. Yes. Well, maybe. Ah.

Yes. Or semen. You know, nobody really looks on the bright side of dystopian fiction. Everybody wrings their hands about 1984, but nobody talks about the relative lack of obesity-related diseases. And who hasn't wanted to shoot Josh Hutcherson in the face with an arrow now and again? And sure, there would be some downsides to Fahrenheit 451, but they'd be more than worth it if it meant no one ever had to read Case for Christ again. It's not a Christian book bonfire.

It's a Christian book bonfire. It's a Christian book bonfire. Yeah. Ah, yeah. It feels way worse to toast marshmallows over trees that don't have hate speech written on them. Right? Like, yeah.

Yeah. So we've made it all the way to the double digit chapters and joining us to celebrate that milestone is my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back. Yeah. Celebrating is what we're doing yeah this is party well okay

at the end of this bit yeah so let's dive in uh this is we're going into chapter 10 the fingerprint evidence did jesus and jesus alone match the identity of the messiah so we start off meeting the hiller family who you already know is gonna get murdered raped or murder raped he keeps doing this too it's just like okay so fingerprints that's that's another tricky word so imagine you walk in on a typical murder rape no no stop talking stop talking also who the fuck wrote your dictionary? What are you doing? A murder rapist.

Why? Fun fact. Most of our dictionaries were written by a murder rapist. Look it up. Google. Nope. Never Google. Never Google what Eli says to Google.

Right. So the key is that the Old Testament's ability to predict what would later be written in the New Testament is like a fingerprint of Jesus. That's what he's going for, and he has to murder a husband and a college co-ed to get there. Yes, and thus we meet Louis S. Lapidus?

Lapidus? Okay, Lapidus, we're going to say. He's a pastor that Lee met with after Sunday services. So at this point, we're just walking into churches going, if you believe in Jesus hard enough, I'm going to put you in a book. And he's a Jew for Jesus, y'all. Yes, he is.

And Lee is so excited that he knows a Jew. It's crazy. His description might as well be, and I felt, no horns. I think they fall off when you believe in Jesus. Not sure. Didn't ask. Kind of awkward. And as you've no doubt

guessed, when it comes time to describe Lapides or whatever, he basically says, Jew-y looking. He sure does. I'm surprised he didn't include shifty in his list of adjectives. The entire paragraph, it's basically like, you know, he looks like, you know, come on. You know what I'm saying? He looks like he's really funny.

Like he's from New York City. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And Lee goes, as a Jew, did you hate Christians so much? like he's from New York City yeah you know yeah and Lee goes as a Jew did you hate Christians so much and of course

Lapidus answers back I did hate them so much it probably explains why we Jews could miss a Messiah staring us right in the face for these last 2,000 years because of the hate

the Jew hate by the way do you guys have a bigger desk I can use Lindsey Graham do you have a bigger desk you want to yell at a Jewish do you guys have a bigger desk i can use lindsey graham do you have a bigger desk you want you want to yell at a jewish kid while i get a bigger desk there's this amazing moment where lapapop says he says the first time he read the new testament he thought he was going to be reading a handbook of anti-seemitism. And I was like, seriously, dude, that's the Koran.

Get it right. So he lost his Jewishness when his parents got divorced. It's at times like that you see that you need a personal relationship with God that you just can't get by Jewing. I wanted Lee to be like, okay, but what about when Christian parents get divorced? Yeah. Cut. to be like, okay, but what about when Christian parents get divorced?

Yeah. And it's here that in passing, he basically admits he was just sick of getting ostracized by Christians so he stopped being Jewish. Yeah. What the fuck was that? He's like, yeah, I was in the army and some guys from the south

burned a cross one night. So, you know, being a Jewish like I was, I was smart about it and stopped being Jewish. That burning cross saved my life. I was like, oh, you're done? That's the end

of your thing? You were hoping you were going to clarify the burning cross thing? No? Cool. Okay. We're moving on. Saved your life. It was a positive burning cross story. Yeah, right. Okay, but suffice to say, he tried on all the religions,

even Satanism, and Christianity was the one that wasn't too soft or too hot or too hard or too cold. It was the best religion of all of them, the one that would coincidentally confer upon him the greatest immediate social benefit.

Huh, who'd have thought? And by the way, I just love this little montage coincidentally confer upon him the greatest immediate social benefit huh who just thought and by the way i just love this little montage of i tried all the religions bullshit here that he doesn't yeah it's like really all of them okay name one thing about buddhism anything about buddhism go ahead hats hats you said that's okay on. But eventually, Lapidus realizes that he's just been running from Jesus, the obviously one true son of God, the entire time. Yeah. Okay. And so then we get to hear from a crazy street preacher who chained himself to a cross in

protest of bars existing, right? A drug-addled, aging hippie cum pastor in Southern California is telling us about finding truth from a raging lunatic voluntarily locking himself to a torture device. This is the case for Christ. Yeah. And some Christian happened by and whipped the shit out of all of his Hinduism. So he had to believe in Jesus. Yeah.

And the way they proved Jesus was real was by pointing out that Lapidus couldn't auto-generate rocks. Yes, that is it. He told the Christian people that God is everywhere. You know, we're all gods. And somebody was like, okay, make a rock appear then. And Lapidus was like, boom, rock in my hand right here. I'm on LSD. And he got laughed at because god couldn't create a real rock and sadly lapidus

didn't realize that he actually created a rock that he couldn't lift and that would have helped his argument if he was paying attention i mean to be fair if your god make a rock isn't nearly as dumb as the arguments in this book right the person didn't say if you're god show me a piece of 500 year old toilet paper that says you can make a right right well paper as you know but you know what never mind um so the moral of this chapter by the way is that when you're out bothering people with your jesus pamphlets don't puss out every time one of them claims to be jewish exactly well and then he finally gets to the fucking point of the fucking chapter and starts talking about all the

prophecies that were retrofitted onto Jesus by people trying to sell the Jews a used Messiah. So he quotes at length from Isaiah chapter 53 verses 3 through 9 and 12. Feels like he could have used a contiguous quote, but no. bible via glenneth paltrow

yeah except but if you include verse 10 where god promises to see to it that the messiah will bear many children and that his generations will rule in israel the point really falls apart fucking quick i'm sorry i just love that he leaves out the verses that don't work. Like, oh yeah, he's gonna be a tall, I mean, guy with sure hair. With hair. And

none of this, none of this, none of this. You get it. It's a fingerprint. The metaphor I'm looking for here is for these two squirrels. Well, and now we get a heading that really feels like Strobel's going to do a variation on Chris Rock's difference between N-words and black people bit. The Jewishness of Jesus. Yes. Jews ain't control the media.

Kikes control the media. and then he goes on and on pointing out stuff that was retrofitted onto jesus without ever realizing that like these people in the future must have known what was written in the past isn't a convincing argument right yeah he finally decides to read the new testament and he's like wow son of abraham son of david it's all fitting together it's like a a futurey book but backwards yeah what what's the reverse prophecy just time dimension we don't even have a word for that do we they just like say what happened it was exact words yeah yeah he also says he couldn't put it down and truly there is no greater sign of bullshit than when someone says they can't put a holy book down. Case for Christ is the hop

on pop of religious books we've read and I put it down 876 times before I finished this chapter. Exactly. Alright, so then one weekend Lapidus and his buddies decide to spend a few days in the Mojave Desert. No reason.

Just a bunch of dudes soberly hanging out in the desert together in the late 60s in California. Just hanging with PJ and Squee again. You know, boofing it up. Fist boofing. Regular boofing. Belching up the boof with a straw.

Typical regular guy stuff. Not gay. The coyness of this book about drugs is nuts like his being a drug addict is your story isn't it right like even their goddamn rock bottoms are boring as yeah and this is where he has to wrestle with the disturbing implication that jews are probably tools of satan i'm just reporting here not editorializing right well yeah if anything you were editorializing to make him sound like less of a Nazi. He was saying Jewish people are choosing to be tools of Satan. Yeah.

He's saying you're either on God's side or you're still Jewish. Like Jew or Jew not. There is no try. That's what he said. So, yeah. So he asked God to reveal himself um he has an indescribable spiritual experience while in the desert with his buddies in the late 60s ergo Christianity is the right religion again the case for Christ 180 pages in before he's entering a hippie fever dream into the evidence but the best part is what

he's like and at first my friends were really happy because i wasn't a drug addict anymore but but then they were like hey man could you maybe go back to meth you're super and and then lee finally gets around to interviewing him right at the very end of this chapter, his opening question is, so what the hell's wrong with all those incomplete Jews? His answer seems to be some are too lazy. Others just evil.

Yeah, right. No, but, but he does add afraid of their mother. I get it. My favorite answer. He says,

Jewish people are known for being smart, but, uh, nope, they're not. And again, with all of these, he's just so close to the truth again. He has this moment where he's like, yeah, I mean, you sit in these religious institutions being told to ignore all the people who tell you your beliefs are bullshit. I mean, they even send in professionals to make you more confident. They write books about never mind you were talking you were talking all right so lee tosses a couple challenges to him starting with one the coincidence argument which he summarizes as what if jesus and all the

prophecies were just one big coinkydink but lapidus assures us that that's laughable because someone did the math. And the odds that Jesus would just coincidentally fulfill even eight of the prophecies is one chance in 100 million billion. You see, math not included. Yes, right. Okay. This is the greatest. I looked up the math he's talking about, and it's priceless. This is the greatest. I looked up the math he's talking about and it's priceless. This is real.

It's from a book called Science Speaks that we definitely need to review. This Christian math professor had a room full of students and he just named eight prophecies from the Bible and had them shout out odds for each one. So he was like, all right alright everybody, riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, that's one of the prophecies about Jesus, go. And everyone just shouted numbers. And he was like, okay, I heard somebody said one in a hundred, great, great. And then he did the other seven prophecies

on his list. And then he just multiplied all those numbers. What? Science. I get it. Also, I'm sorry, one in a hundred? Like, did this guy picture 99 other animals and then he moves on to two the altered gospel argument which finally broaches the but what if they were just making shit up and had already read those books topic yeah and that one is dismissed by pointing out that the people who knew jesus well

would have had the power to stop rumors from happening i mean think about that like when's the last time a rumor started about a person can you think of any historical precedent give me a break p tapes he also explains how jewish people are tattletales and constantly being dicks about every little detail. That was what he mentioned here. And they send emails about how bourbon has to be from Kentucky without doing a very casual Google search to realize you're wrong about that. Right. But that kind of counters his original argument, doesn't it? Like, oh, trust me, if Jesus wasn't the Messiah, the Jews would know about it and ignore him.

Never mind. God! Every time I talk long enough, you go. Finish your thought. No, go ahead. No thoughts. I feel like you had a thing. No? You want to rank them? Done thinking. And then we get three. The intentional fulfillment argument

where we ask whether Jesus was intentionally born in Bethlehem to the line of David. Yes. And we spend as much time on that one as we did dismissing the last one. I love the idea of Jesus trying to rig it so he gets killed just like in the prophets. You know, like Roman guys are about to nail through his elbow and he's like hey hey so no that's great that's great but i was thinking what if we go through the palms right the palms like fresh new thing right your boss is gonna be like what creative he's interesting waving his side at the roman guard. Ooh, I hope nobody stabs me.

Shit. Then finally, we get four, the context argument, where he forestalls the you're reading those passages out of context argument by yelling he can't hear you before you start talking. Yeah, but Lapidus assures him he's not reading any of them out of context, not even the mistranslated ones. Nope. And again, he's so close.

He literally says, look, don't take my word for it. Don't take your rabbi's word for it. Research it yourself. And then you can hear him pause and be like, and, and ask God with an open heart if Christ is the Messiah. Right. After the research.

And then he lists a bunch of Jews who eventually knew better. Like, if they can do it, so can you, Park. You might as well be showing before and after pictures with, like, testimonials. Like, with Jewelway, I lost my

hooves in only six weeks. Thanks, Jewelway I lost my hooves in only six weeks thanks Jewelway right and the thing all of these stories have in common is quote I looked as hard as I could in the chamber of secrets for no sign of Harry Potter but damn it he's the boy who lived yes right okay and as if that wasn't enough suffering he then asks us to do his job again with a bunch of deliberation questions starting with question one even if you're not jewish and you are not jewish no let's be honest here is there an aspect of lapidus's spiritual journey that is similar to your own were there any lessons you learned from lapidus about how you should proceed? I also stopped being a Jew for a living.

Well, there you go. Well done. I mean, I've eaten peyote of the desert, I guess. Well, I'm thinking he did it backwards. So I'd start with being a Christian sellout and then do a bunch of drugs. You get way more drugs that way. Oh, that makes sense. You want the money and then the khakis and then the drugs.

I mean, the stick figure who fell on the wet floor provides lessons, so in that way, I'm going to say yes to the second part. Alright, question two. Lapidus considered his Jewish heritage and unbiblical lifestyle impediments to becoming a follower of Jesus. Is there anything in your life that would make it difficult to become a Christian?

Do you see any costs that you might incur if you became a Christian? How might this compare with the benefits? Let's see. Do I, as a woman, see any cost that I might incur if I became a Christian. Fuck Lee Strobel. How about that? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously the costs are pretty big. I'm getting constantly persecuted by Starbucks Jew cups at that point. Happy holidays.

That sounds awful. But the benefits, you got sincerely held crime spree. That's a tough call. I don't know if I had to come up with my idea first, but. Yeah, the cost of being a Christian. I think that's about $40,000 a month more on Patreon. I'm in. Pronouns are linguistic slavery.

Clean your room. I think I missed the question. All right, we'll move on to the next one then. Question three. Lapidus thought Christians were anti-Semitic. In a recent word association exercise at an East Coast university, just on East Coast university, one of them. Not going to say which.

Traded on the East Coast. Yeah. Maybe you've heard of it. The word most often associated with Christians was intolerant. Do you have a negative perception of Christians? What do they stem from? How might this influence your receptivity to the evidence of Jesus? Interesting question.

Okay, well, I actually studied at ECU, and my funny New York-looking professors gave me plenty of anti-christian propaganda so there you go especially the clockwork orange rig with uh christian movies on a loop yeah that'll do it yeah yeah i have negative perceptions of christians they stem from christians and they do influence my receptivity and that I'd tell a Bigfoot believer to go fuck off way nicer than I'd tell you to, Lee. Weird that your takeaway from that study was they must have gotten that idea from the Jews, right? Yeah, I mean, look, let's be fair.

This show has turned all of our Christian word association into a real downer. Fucking it all up. All right, well, the good news is that Jesus is most of the way booked at this point. So we can't go on much longer. The bad news is that it can go on.

So we're going to dig back into this thing in a couple of weeks. But between now and then, read something that isn't horrible, guys. Like anything. Work on that. It's well written. Right? Yeah. Russian.

Before we slide off the map tonight, I wanted to thank everybody who came out to see us in the UK one more time. Also, I want to thank Michael Marshall, Andy Wilson, and all the organizers and volunteers at QED

for making us feel so welcome that far from home. Cannot wait to see you all again. Anyway, that's all the blast movie 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, I'd have to employ a term like sub-episode or quasi-show if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for keeping Eli too busy to cause international incidents while we were away i also want to thank

eli bosnick for keeping his licking to a minimum on this trip i want to thank the lovely lucinda illusions for keeping me sane through several airport security checkpoints i also want to thank jody for providing this week's farnsworth quote and for making our ancestry sound way sexier than i've ever been envisioning up until now but most of all of course i want to thank this week's most amiable atheists and i've been saving them up for a couple But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most amiable atheists, and I've been saving them up for a couple of weeks, so deep breath. Scott, Matthew, Stephen, AJ, Goose, Jude, Chris, Derek, Daniel, Ryan, Jeff, Reed, Zero, Some Game, Hayden, Zane, Brian, Bob, Kelsey, Miles, Sarah, Matt, Avigo, Tall, Taylor, Uncle

Chip, Michael, Jessica, Stormy, Decisus, Holly, Richard, Slars, Will, Mary, James, and Kudson Elaine, whose generals are so exemplary that the sheer volume of adjectives it would require to sufficiently compliment them all in the same episode might cause a vocal singularity and end the show early. Together, these 35 thrilling theist thwackers threw thorough thanks through our theories

of thwarting the threats of theocracy this week by giving us money. And if you'd like to join their ranks, you can make a per-episode donation to 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-timeisode donation to patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking

on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of P. Andrew Torres, 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 scathing at skatingads.com.

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