The Scathing Atheist - 297: Trans Substantiation Edition

Episode Date: October 25, 2018

In this week’s episode, the Trump administration decides trans people aren’t, Megyn Kelly stomps around her house in a snit trying to find the receipt for an Al Jolson costume, and the “Make You Own Dead Sea Scroll Replica” section of Hobby Lobby turns out to have a sinister purpose. 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 Heath on the latest episode of InKredulous: http://www.merseysideskeptics.org.uk/2018/10/inkredulous-episode-045/ Check out the Satan and Rainbows podcast here: http://satanandrainbows.libsyn.com/website Headlines: Trump is gonna undo trans people: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/us/politics/transgender-trump-administration-sex-definition.html http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/21/trump-admin-may-treat-trans-people-as-non-existent-revoking-legal-protections/ GOP Rep. Urges Christians to Vote in Midterms to “Block Any of Satan’s Work” http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/20/gop-rep-urges-christians-to-vote-in-midterms-to-block-any-of-satans-work/ South Carolina would like to discriminate against Jews: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/20/s-carolina-let-our-taxpayer-funded-foster-care-agencies-exclude-non-christians/ Museum of the Bible discovers that 5 of its Dead Sea Scrolls are fake: http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/23/bible-museum-discovers-5-dead-sea-scrolls-are-fake-doesnt-realize-the-irony/ There are more witches than presbyterians http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/16/by-one-measure-witches-outnumber-presbyterians-in-the-united-states/ Burzinski is getting a tv show because the world is hell http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/16/quack-doctor-gets-reality-show-to-promote-fake-and-dangerous-cancer-cure/ There’s a certification exam for astrologers seeking fake credibility: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/style/astrology-exam.html http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/18/theres-a-grueling-certification-exam-for-astrologers-seeking-fake-credibility/ Pat Robertson: Dead Journalist Not Worth Risking “$100B Worth of Arms Sales” http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/18/pat-robertson-dead-journalist-not-worth-risking-100b-worth-of-arms-sales/ also, JD should investigate George Soros for putting together migrant caravan: http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/pat-robertson-the-justice-department-must-investigate-george-soros-for-orchestrating-the-migrant-caravan/ This Week in Misogyny: Man gropes woman on Southwest flight; invokes Trump’s “Grab her by the pussy” line in defense: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2018/10/23/president-says-its-ok-grab-women-by-their-private-parts-man-accused-groping-woman-flight-invokes-trump/?utm_term=.a44a7b4a4f8b Protesters Block Menstruating-Age Females from Hindu Temple Despite Court Ruling http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/18/protesters-block-menstruating-age-females-from-hindu-temple-despite-court-ruling/ A Male Catholic Pharmacist Refused Medicine to a Woman Having a Miscarriage http://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2018/10/17/a-male-catholic-pharmacist-refused-medicine-to-a-woman-having-a-miscarriage/

Warning, the following podcast has been rated R for strong language, partial nudity, and mild drug use. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Robin Hood. And by the new Catholic sandwich shop that's sweeping the nation with fresh new ways to devour the body of your savior. Trans Subway Stantiation. Trans Subway Stantiation. Our guy fuck kids too. Nailed it. And now, the scathing atheist. of heavy metal and progressive rock. Please listen anyway.

And keep in mind, whether you're gently playing the keys of a Mellotron or shredding on a flying V, we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's October 25th. And it's National Sourist Day. And every day is National Sourist Day when... Okay, I see what you mean. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Enright. And from Antonin Scalia's New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband Georgia, this is the Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, the Trump administration decides that trans people aren't. Megyn Kelly stomps around her house in a snip trying to find the receipt for an Al Jolson costume. And the make your own Dead Sea Scroll replica section of Hobby Lobby turns out to have had a sinister purpose. But first, the diatribe.

I've said before on this show that if I've got to pick one holiday and it's the only one I get every year, I'm going Thanksgiving. It's the one with football. But if I had to guess, my wife would go with Halloween. She's got a bit of a goth streak in her, and I have a feeling she'd do the yard and haunted house year round if she thought she could get away with it. Plus, she gets to play dress up. She gets to paint her face. She gets to eat the shit out of the way too much candy she buys in hopes that this will be the year people start trick or treating again. And don't get me wrong. I'm all about some Halloween, too.

I get Kit Kats. I don't do the whole costume thing. But for the entire rest of the year, asking my wife what she thinks about dressing up like a sexy version of a cartoon character gets a way much less amiable response. I'm 100% on board with this. So when we get home from the UK and settle in, before we're even over the jet lag, we're at a store picking up some Halloween decorations. Now, we've got a lot of young kids in our neighborhood, so we don't go scary exactly. I'm not out to create nightmare bait, so we didn't go with my original zombie orgy idea or anything like that we just put up a little cemetery of foam tombstones that i can chase around the yard every time there's a strong gust of wind

and scatter some plastic bones and skulls and shit around the yard a few spider webs hands taken out of the ground but by the scale of what lucinda usually does it's mild as all hell but apparently even that's a little too much for this neighborhood. See, it had occurred to us that none of the other houses in our area were spooking it up for Halloween. Not so much as a plastic spider anywhere else on the block, but we figured maybe we were just showing up to the party a little early. Or maybe we thought we'd be the neighborhood trendsetters. Or maybe we didn't give a fuck what the people around us were doing because putting fake spiderwebs and skulls and shit in your yard is fun. And I've been around Georgia long enough to know that the Bible Belt Breeder Christians freaks the fuck out anytime we acknowledge that the human body has a skeleton in it.

So I guess I knew that some of my neighbors would be warding off a hex from their living rooms. But honestly, I didn't expect any of them to speak up about it. We put the decorations up on Saturday. The intervention happened early Monday afternoon, right? And probably because on the seventh day she rested. Now, I've already more or less met this lady before. She lives a couple houses down, and the other day she was canvassing the neighborhood for Jesus. I was recording at the time. So she left a little Christian care package hanging on my front door. So when I'm standing outside restaking those flimsy fucking tombstones for the 11th time and I see her walking up, I guess I already know what's coming. Or if I don't know exactly, I know it's not going to be something I enjoy.

So a couple perfunctory things about the weather and whatnot. And then she cuts right to the point. She says, I just wanted to come by to talk to you about your yard. She says, we've got a lot of impressionable kids in the area at one point, as though the kids in one neighborhood are more or less impressionable than the ones in another. And in these here parts, the kids are made of silly putty. But then she says she's concerned about the message our decorations might be sending. And then she pauses so long, I feel like I have to respond. So I just play along and I say, well,

what message is that? And as much as that seems like the question she was prompting me to ask, she seemed flummoxed by it. So she's gathered together her answer. And my inner monologue is just going, please say Satan. It's so much better for the diatribe. This obviously is going to be if you mention Satan. But she leaves the prince of darkness out of it altogether. And she says that she's concerned my decorations glorify death. Kind of. Kind of her religion's whole thing, me thinks. I'm not saying there's a paradise at the end of it, lady.

saying there's a paradise at the end of it, lady. But now I didn't say you're concerned that children will see my yard and decide that death is a cool thing they might want to get in on. Or at least I didn't say it with my mouth, but I did the best to say it with my heart. Right. And on some level, it must have gotten across because she felt the immediate need to justify that nonsense with some other nonsense. And just as I'm reflecting on what a great place this town is for diatribe material she finally drops the bomb i know is coming and she says and i quote this is a christian neighborhood and and at this point she's just come out and said conform to my religious biases right she just doesn't know it or she doesn't see anything wrong with that she doesn't even anything wrong with that.

She doesn't even comprehend the imperious levels of presumption required to speak on behalf of the religious beliefs of a neighborhood. I mean, sure. Said my wife and I aside, I wouldn't be surprised to learn every other house in three blocks in any direction is filled with Christians. But I seriously doubt they all conform to her foam tombstones from Walmart tempt children unto the devil interpretation of that faith. And even if they did, the idea that it would give her the right to dictate the lawn ornamentation of her neighbors is insane levels of pretension heaped on the already towering pile of presumption. And the most fucked up part about this is that if we swapped in a different holiday and switched roles, I'd be the villain that Bill O'Reilly has been waiting his whole life for. They'd be making Christian movies about her heroism in ignoring me and keeping her manger up anyway. See, she's perfectly capable of seeing that

there's something really wrong with telling other people how they can and can't decorate their homes for Christian holidays. But somehow she manages to switch that awareness off as soon as there's a plastic skull a couple of yards down. Anyway, once it became clear that I wasn't going to pack up all my Halloween decorations at her behest and then drive her to the Piggly Wiggly, she pretended that the real purpose of the visit was to make sure I wasn't going to put up anything else that was really scary, you know? And if I thought about it at the moment, instead of five minutes later, I probably would have said, you mean like a Stacey Abrams lawn sign? But I didn't. No, I kind of capitulated. I just assured her that no, this and a few carved pumpkins would be the extent of our seasonal decorum. And then she left confident that an

invisible wizard in the sky was proud of her. And I walked away with a subject for this week's diatribe. So everybody left happy, I guess. But there's an important thing in that interaction that I think is worth chewing on. Consider their silly ass war on Christmas nightmares. I mean, no one in the atheist world gives a shit about what they put on their fucking houses for Christmas, right? From most perspectives, this is a baffling thing for them to worry about. But your fears reflect your desires. In their mind, if we're in charge, right, we're bound to come after their lawn decorations that annoy us eventually,

not because it's something we'd actually do, but because it's something that they would do if they were in charge. They accuse us of teaching atheism in school when we talk about evolution, not because indoctrinating children is our actual goal, because that would be their goal if they were in charge. They warn that the secular world is trying to turn your kid gay when they have whole clinics dedicated to rewiring the sexual orientation of children and nobody else does. You know, I don't know about about you but sometimes i'm tempted to dismiss their self-deluded paranoia as hyperbole for the sake of marketing but the more i think about it the more that seems like a mistake you can learn a lot about a religion from what it fears they're talking about your jesus interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight are yakko and dot to my wacko heathen right neil i posnick fellas

are you ready to vamoose uh fun fact animaniacs is 25 years old so uh not a fun fact yeah i don't know fact i'm old all right in our lead story tonight you should have voted for hillary clinton in the general election and uh just as an ongoing policy whenever i say a sentence probably safe to assume i intended that hillary thing as a tacit premise to my sentence and a tacit closer yeah you should have voted for hillary so okay it's not that i disagree with you i just feel like people are gonna think they accidentally are on an old episode i don't fucking care what episode they think they're on they should have voted for hillary clinton okay so this week's extra important reason why everyone needs to be reminded not to vote like a petulant five-year-old

is because of the petulant five-year-old who's now in charge of our country and his latest plan to legislate the trans community out of legal existence yeah after someone explained at length that executive orders lacked the ability to turn them into dinosaurs or send them back to transylvania or whatever he had a wand and everything he was so sad yeah so according to the new york times the department of health and Human Services is currently working on a new definition of gender as it applies to Title IX, which is the civil rights law that bans gender discrimination in educational institutions that receive federal funding. During the Obama administration, that definition finally began to see gender as more of a fluid concept and started to recognize the trans community. And, of course, that was a giant problem for sincerely held bigots,

whose early morning cum cleanups became even more full of ignorant terror and sexual confusion than they already were. Right. And if you didn't vote for Hillary, you helped those people get their fellow bigots into power. That's what happened. And now, they're trying to roll back whatever progress happened under Obama because if we don't all pay for schools that persecute trans people,

then we're all persecuting Christian people. That's the theory. You should have voted for Hillary. I guess, like, somewhere in the West Wing, a group of interns spent all day trying to come up with a non- non evil reason they could pretend they were doing this. And they failed. Yep.

Right. Because there are no non evil reasons to take away legal protections from a persecuted minority. And they did it anyway. Yep. Okay. Okay. Okay. What if we say that trans looks similar to trains and people will be afraid that trains are being protected in their school coming? They don't want to train in their bathrooms. Nobody wants that. Chugga chugga chugga. That's terrifying. That's a way better argument.

Literally so much better. So under the new rules, gender would be defined as binary, unchangeable, and literally determined by counting your penises at birth. And for the first time ever, GOP theocrats are asking for a system that's clear, grounded in science, and objective. Which is weird. Coming from that house. which is weird um coming from them yeah yeah yeah unlike the physical existence of millions of trans people which is apparently like super vague and abstract and hard to grasp conceptually yeah i can't focus on them oh and uh just to be clear this new definition could make it possible for the entire trans community to be denied health insurance or denied legal recourse against hate crimes or uh denied the ability to get medical care at a

fucking hospital you should have voted for hillary clinton and and at best it insulates anybody who might want to discriminate against them right like you don't even need a conjunction to get to that scenario. That's what it's for. That's what it's for. So, yeah, apparently Donald Trump was having a staff meeting last week and he's like, all right, guys, we're going to list the biggest problems in the United States right now. Everybody just, you know, shout them out. We'll brainstorm. And all at the same time, everyone was like, no concrete definition of gender that's based on how many penises you had at birth. So that's a big issue right now. that's a big problem in the united states white house staff

members are constantly trying to divide up rooms into birth penis groupings and shit's getting out of hand so you know boys and girls mixing everybody starts peeing on the floor dogs and cats living together pandemonium so that's the reasoning i guess and uh just by chance the new evangelical friendly definition would just happen to remove personhood from the trans community and would take away their civil rights protection at the federal level but you know that's the price you pay for orderly birth penis groupings in rooms you should have voted for hillary clinton you fucking assholes okay and i want to make one thing perfectly clear because i'm already seeing the apologies coming out this move is funded by the church all All of the churches.

Literally, over the next couple of weeks, you're gonna see some fucking like trans rights or humans rights profile pictures from your local woke pastor, but if you follow where his money goes, it's to shit like this. This is funded by all the churches.

All of them. And in Go To Mount news tonight, in case we haven't mentioned it yet, you should vote on November 6th. Correctly. Or earlier than that. Yeah. You can vote now.

You can vote absentee. Fake your death. Vote twice. Whole bunch of stuff. Anyways. How would that help? If you fake your death, you're allowed to vote twice

in California. Because there's a caravan. Alright, well, Trump's going to retweet this episode now. That's the good news. Nice! Patreon. Oh, and by the way, if you show up to vote and there's weird shit going down, just

get a provisional ballot. Bottom line is you should vote. You should vote, is our point here. Yeah yeah think about it like buying a powerball ticket except with consequences okay noah there is a guy in south carolina right now who never has to watch a christian movie again maybe we don't talk bad about our new best friend. He could be a listener. Okay, but look, I get it. If trans rights and the future of our democracy and healthcare and women's bodily autonomy isn't just, you know, isn't

quite doing it for you to get you excited about voting, why not do it for Satan? Just Satan fucking a bunch of kids under a pizza place turns to camera. I'm Satan, and I approve this message a pizza place, turns to camera. I'm Satan, and I approve this message. You should have voted for Hillary.

That's right. So according to House Representative Mike Bost from the 12th District in Illinois, Republicans need to vote in order to, quote, stop and block any of Satan's work, any of his demons work, and anything that would be a lie. Oh! And block that. Yeah. Weird list. The three things he's taken a strong

stance against are a satyr that personifies all of the world's evil, hordes of incorporeal hellspawn that are coming to get you in the night, and untrue things yeah exactly if the item c composites item i don't anyway so listeners might remember mike boss the way that heath just did for handing donald trump a giant bag of prayers in response to school shootings. School shootings in a Ziploc bag with post-its.

Like that said Ziploc on it. He didn't even get an off-brand. Got one. He got a nice one for the president. Yeah. And by the way, he is also known for saying the country was under attack from people who believe, quote, we are not a Judeo-Christian believing nation, end quote. Okay.

Well, as a big thank you, I think it's time for everyone to send Mike Bost a giant bag of something. Dicks is the first thing off the top of my head. Maybe a giant bag of dicks that each have a prayer on them. Maybe confuse them. Or foreskins. They love that shit. It's in their book. I feel like my suggestion just got deleted from the episode.

I made suggestions. Everybody. I know you didn't, but I'm guessing the reason boss is concerned with the voting pattern of his constituents right now is because he's only up nine points in the polls against his opponent. So yeah, I mean,

if you're in the area or hell, even if you aren't, I think a damn good way to start a canvas might be, quote, your current representative thinks you should vote to stop an evil goat demon. I mean, I don't know how successful that would be. I know it would work on me. He's got a front yard full of dicks. He's a really weird dude. He's being weird. Honestly, that would work better. Go with your guts, people. Go with your guts. And then you should have voted for Hillary news tonight. The state of South Carolina heard about Trump's latest plan to legalize discrimination against the trans community.

And they'd like to keep that train going. and they'd like to keep that train going. So they wrote a letter to the administration that basically said, hey, great stuff, dehumanizing, classic. While you're up, can you go ahead and grab us the same thing for the Jews? From the bigotry fridge that you apparently have. Wait, sorry, last thing.

Also, everyone who's not Protestant. That really happened. And it actually might work, thanks to RFRA, and thanks to the people currently in charge of interpreting those laws, should have voted for Hillary. I dare say that South Carolina is going to lose its reputation as a progressive hub of tolerance. I just love that Christians have become their own

satanic church at this point. Yeah, right. But first, we want to pour milk on them. You gotta... Or not. Wait. Yes.

Aren't like Proud Boys drinking a bunch of milk now? Yes! What the fuck is that? Because it's white. Literally because it's white? Literally because it's white. Oh, we got because it literally because it's white oh we got to do a little chocolate milk counter protest yeah okay so the letter from south carolina was

written on behalf of miracle hill ministries which is a christian themed foster care agency protestant christian underlined protestant not cath. You're helping kids, but decidedly not because, you know, doing good things is good, like the fucking Catholics think. They already believe in Christ, so helping kids is kind of meaningless in the grand scheme. They just do it anyway. And at that point, your main concern is going to be making sure those Mexicanican catholics aren't finding a way to steal back any babies and making sure jewish people and atheists don't get their stockpiles too big sure with south carolina baby it's really hard to say what the fuck is going on if it's not just straight up bigotry at the expense of homeless children it seems like that's what it is if it

wasn't that yeah yeah it's hard to say not because you can't find the words, but because they just don't belong together in a sentence unless you're making a slippery slope argument. I'm just picturing people sitting around in this place, this boardroom, being like, what other Ginsburg dissents can we act out? Who? What if we make cakes?

Can we make cakes? Yeah, so just to review, South Carolina is asking for the White House to selectively turn off the human rights for all the non-Protestants in the state. And they're not even trying to hide the motivation. Nope. They literally don't want us heathens getting our sticky little fingers all over their weirdly large horde of Christian orphans. Another great sign that South Carolina is crushing it. They have a weirdly large horde of Christian orphans.

And now they're looking for what appears to be a legal timeout on the 14th Amendment. Right. And their argument is basically, you know, come on. You think about canceling the 13th for Kanye. Don't be a dick. Give us the 14th Amendment. Right. And their argument is basically, come on, you think I'm not canceling the 13th for Kanye? Don't be a dick. Give us the 14th. He doesn't even want it. He doesn't even want it. His password is just zeros.

And in you want some antiquities news tonight, president of Hobby Lobby, founder of the Bible Museum in Washington, D.C., and chief regent of his employees wombs steve green had an embarrassing weekend when it came to light that five of the 17 dead sea scroll fragments he's displaying in his museum are forgeries he's so stupid that he spent millions of dollars on um and by the way if you just saw the headline on this, you might be fooled into believing

that that means 12 of his 17 fragments are legit, but no. The five that were deemed forgeries were also the five that were tested. The real number of legitimate ones might be as high as four, but it's more likely something like zero.

Okay. But Noah, in Steve's defense, how was he supposed to know that almost perfectly preserved Bronze Age scrolls that include post-King James corrections and omissions were fake? I mean, they were signed by Jesus. You don't just turn that down. Hold on.

What are these dogs playing poker on the back? Oh, Jesus. No, Jesus liked to play hold'em. Yeah, he was. The bulldog is cheating. We are just barely exaggerating. Okay, we should also disabuse you, by the way, of the illusion that the press is telling that Steve Green is some kind of surprised victim of this con.

Look, even before the Bible museum opened last year there were serious questions about the authenticity of his dead sea scroll fragments granted these were somewhat overshadowed by the three million dollar settlement he paid the justice department when he got caught smuggling looted artifacts from iraq into the country for his museum but even sites like cnn were running stories in the run-up to the grand opening pointing out that the scroll fragments were probably fakes. Right, which makes it so much worse. Yeah, right. It's like going to jail for smuggling a kilo of powdered sugar up your ass.

And then, years later, getting seriously injured while shoving a kilo of sugar inside of your ass again right now it's worth noting here too that it's not like the doubts about their authenticity came from carbon dating or some test that sounds like a throwaway tech line from star trek they came from experts glancing at them for 11 seconds and going well them are bullshit. Right? So biblical scholar, a Dead Sea Scrolls expert, Kip Davis, who was originally hired by Green to translate these fragments, was telling anyone who would listen that they were just old parchment that somebody inked Bible passages onto the month before last or so. And he knew this because, get this,

the idiots had squeezed their letters in around the existing tears in the paper. And because in one, I shit you not incident, one of them contained what appeared to be an annotation from a 1973 edition of the Hebrew Bible. Okay. So there's a reference to President ronald reagan in the front piece but maybe that's just is that a prophecy hold on does that say at the real jesus hashtag bless yes i mean it's hard to see because it's going you know diagonally down in smaller letters right before that rip. Is that a hashtag?

All right. So the key takeaway here is that the Greens had every reason to believe that the fragments were fake when they bought them. They were just trying to create a chain of custody to support the later claims that they had them, and they were willing to pay millions for fakes if they could make that happen. You know, just like they were willing to pay millions for fakes if they could make that happen. You know, just like they were willing to buy stolen property. The fact is that the Dead Sea Scrolls are the one archaeological find that most Christians know about. And you can't exactly have a state-of-the-art museum of the Bible without a few scraps on it. So when the media portrays Steve Green as the victim here, just keep in mind that tickets to the museum go for about 20 bucks a head. And keep in mind that Steve Green's major life accomplishment was

declaring his company a person so he didn't have to pay for birth control. Yeah, that. What we're saying is and we say this as a company, any crime you do to Steve Green is a wash. No, that's not at all what we say. Company or? That's official policy. Before that beep.

And in which and in which please news tonight. According to a new report from Quartzy.com, there may now be more witches in the United States than Presbyterians and Christians are freaking the fuck out. But it would explain why muller is getting so many indictments though ah there it is yeah from the constant fear that witches are casting spells on their political rivals to scare pieces in the christian post that suggest wicca is just the satanist avocado to spread on the toast of millennials that the undying one has been waiting for people are losing their fucking shit over the fact that the girl you should have been

trying to fuck during high school now represents a higher percentage of the pupils than the girl you were trying to fuck to no avail uh we were trying to fuck very different girls in high school eli okay i i don't understand the math here how can all the girls in my high school represent a higher percentage of the population than all the girls in my high school represent a higher percentage of the population than all the girls in my high school. It's like I did a Bob Bob Brinkman on you. I got you. Swing and a miss. With my riddle.

Four years. Exactly. Now, look, it's easy to dismiss Wiccans as harmless, but Wiccan leadership has a huge problem with assault. Yeah. Ting people with the long, boring explanations of how a spell is like a prayer that connects Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, sure, they say they care about the Earth, but does that stop them from controlling the weather? I think not. Yeah. Also, that thing they do where they're a religion and they promote untrue things as though they were real. That's a danger, too. Either way, it's obvious that some changes are coming to religious news and probably to our show, which is why we've brought back the time machine to check out some headlines from the future. Beep, bop, boop, and we're back for headlines.

A quick reminder to vote in the 2024 election. Your vote has never been more important. Well, there was that one midterm in 2018, but yeah, especially since Supreme Court Justice Kavanaugh took away the voting rights of everyone who can't butt chug a 40. It's a bad example, but yeah, I get what you're saying. Anyway, one group that many politicians are trying to sway to the polls this election is the Wiccans. State Senator Michael Smith was quoted as saying, I've always believed my connection to Gaia is very strong.

I have yet to see my opponent naked in the moonlight at Sovereign Fest at all. Smith's opponent refused these allegations, saying he was in the salt baths at the time in a cockle mask. However, his Snapchat story doesn't really back that up. And that's going to do it for headlines. Quick reminder that the sixth annual Eli Bosding Memorial Run Walk has been canceled since Eli couldn't really run or walk. But we appreciate his mom signing up nonetheless. That was sweet. And while we find some more productive uses for that time machine,

we're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, Robinhood. By clicking trade, you agree to all coordinating fees as agreed to by... Jesus! Never fear, citizen. Robin Hood is here. You shot my computer with an arrow. Indeed, fair wench. For you, we're about to be ravished by trading fees. Okay, first of all, I'm a... I'm a dude. Second of all, Robin Hood? Dude, second of all, Robinhood?

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Perhaps a kiss from the lady for my services? No. 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 Misogyny. This week in Misogyny. So an unidentified woman is flying from Houston to Albuquerque on Southwest Airlines the other day. And already this is a sad story, right? She had to be in Houston. She later had to be in Albuquerque.

She had to get there on Southwest. Anyway, she's napping on the flight. And when she wakes up, the guy in the window seat behind her has his hand on her tip. She confronts him. The airline reseats her. And when the plane lands, the FBI is there to meet the groper in question. So at first he tries to pretend he didn't do anything, but that blows up when they ask how else she would have known he had hairy fingers and filthy fingernails. So in his defense, he points out that, quote, the president of the United States says it's okay to grab a woman by their private parks, end quote. So yeah, it fucking matters. By the way, that was the second woman gets sexually assaulted on Southwest flight that broke in the last seven days. Funny how no man

gets falsely accused of rape on a Southwest flight story is broken that time frame. Almost like one is a problem of pandemic proportions and the other is a boogeyman on par with voter fraud. Weird. Anyway, hate to say it, but that's the least bad story I've got for you this week. For our next story, we'll have to go all the way to India. Now, this starts with some good news that we've talked about before. India's Supreme Court recently overturned a centuries-old ban on women entering a particular Hindu temple. See, by Hindu tradition, menstruating in the temple would be a particular Hindu temple. See, by Hindu tradition, menstruating in the temple would be a grievous sin. So to be safe, they bar all girls old enough

to menstruate from entering it. Well, the courts in India rightly decided that that was sexist as hell, so they put a stop to it. Or at least they put a stop to the people doing it legally. Because this week, we learned that the protesters at the sabhamara temple don't really give a shit what the supreme court says according to a report by the associated press as soon as the gates to the temple in question were open quote a crowd of male devotees searched toward the temple about a thousand police used batons to try to control the protesters who attacked them with stones and damaged police and tv vehicles and bullied female devotees to turn back. End quote.

All the problems in India, and this is the one the populace takes up arms over. And for our final story, we'll whiskey around the world to the only place with worse water than India, Michigan, where a pharmacist at a local supermarket refused to provide a woman medicine to help complete the miscarriage she was in the middle of. He also refused to transfer the prescription to another pharmacy. And when she desperately explained that the fetus she was trying to terminate wasn't even viable, he called her a liar.

And he probably also reached over and knocked her books out of her hand. The victim in this case, one Rachel Peterson, has teamed up with the ACLU and sent a letter to the chain that employs this asshole, demanding that they discipline him and implement company-wide policy to make sure future customers don't go through the same thing. The ACLU has also filed a complaint that described the pharmacist Richard Kalkman's actions as discriminatory and cruel. But if they want for some other adjectives, I got a few. Hell, I'll even do a quick language warning to open the complaint. Right in my wheelhouse. Anyway, while I prove Carlin's seven words just lack creativity,

I'll hand you back over to Noah Heath and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in Quack Watch news tonight, charlatan, conman, and fucking murderer, Dr. Stanislaw Brzezinski announced he's getting his own TV show this week because we all live in that episode of Community where we roll the one, but like over and over and over again. Well, no, I mean, it's a great show if you root for the cancer. That's true. That is true. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with Brzezinski, he's basically the opposite of Michael Marshall. Like, if you told me that Marsh had fucked around with some alternate dimension shit,

and that's why Brzezinski exists, I would believe you. He's been selling fake cancer cures since the 1970s, despite multiple attempts to stop him. And as I said, now he's getting his own TV show. Yeah, and this whole time, he's been not curing cancer with antineoplastin, which is a made-up, science-y sounding nonsense word for his thing that doesn't work. Yep. And before you ask, neither does propaleoplastin. Neither does meh mediumplastinin none of the fucking plastins work and that's why his entire career has been selling medical trials yeah because he isn't allowed to

call anything actual medicine and despite literally never working for over four decades any of that stuff ever working he's still allowed to sell trials somehow. And gets to use the honorific doctor somehow. Just keeps sending in his findings. Yep. Another loss. Yep. You know what?

I'll try two mehmoplastins this time. We'll just give that a try. Now, there is a colloidal silver lining here. The ironically named docuseries My Cancer-Free Life hasn't been picked up yet, possibly because they haven't found a TV network with a large enough basement to fill with dead bodies. But hear me out. I say we kill two kids with one stone here. We get the O Network, famous for promoting pseudoscience already.

network yeah famous for promoting pseudoscience already we get gwyneth paltrow and brzezinski together in their first joint tv adventure we could call it oops the cops and in bsat news there exists in the world an official certification exam for astrology. Oh, good. I learned that this week. Feels like any of us could have told you that, you know, we all tie at astrology. But if you'd like to pay for that information, there's a company offering that service. For only $545 or 28 easy payments of $19.95, you can get a full test preparation course along with your six-hour test that includes 600 multiple choice questions, a true-false section. Pro tip, it's always false.

And an essay portion they have an essay portion you should have voted for hillary clinton by the way okay heath i'm pretty sure like the only thing you can't blame non-voters and third-party voters for is astrology just did all right so as the one guy here who studied astrology at one point, this does not surprise me at all. Right. There's always all the woo has a ton because they have to sell the books. The worst thing about being into woo is how much time you spend learning about nothing. It's like the fine arts degree of pseudoscience. I'm sorry, Noah.

Do you just expect me to whip out a pigeon without having practiced in an institution for several years? Chug-a-law! Chug-a-law! Alright, so... You know how you walk into a sidewalk shanty made of

stolen sheets and you're looking for a serious professional scientist to tell you about your job promotion as it applies to Jupiter. But you can't really tell how good they are at doing that. Well, thanks to the International Society for Astrological Research and their certification of astrological proficiency exam or ISAR CAPE, that's no longer a problem and it was administered this year during the united astrology conference in chicago which was attended by about 1500 astrologers and they spent the week honing their skills with professional development workshops such as the astrology of a new vision of capitalism. That's real.

Also, eclipses, portals of destiny, and how to work with the moon, which sounds very similar to the wine lecture we saw in France called transformative hermeneutics of quantum vine gravity. It's a fascinating field that transcends use. Alright, I feel like the comparison to a fine arts degree was really my joke, but there's room for everybody in here. I mean, to be fair, Noah, you didn't

get to see the absolute battle of wills that took place inside Heath when the very pretty girl who had free wine explained that when the moon is up there's less gravity we are not welcome back at that wendy's yeah and uh one other detail about the isar cape uh if you manage to score high enough i think you need you need a score above Q to 12. If you beat that, then you move on to the final round, which includes an ethics class. Uh, I'm going to repeat that.

They do an ethics class at the end. So I'm assuming you pass the test and then they're like, stop it. Stop doing astrology right now and then nobody listens and they become strong all right well i would imagine you guys i got a guy at the front of a class going now you're probably asking yourself why if i know the future i am teaching astrology to nine overweight nudists in the conference room at this Ramada. Well, it's on account of ethics. Also, stars want you to cover up your penis, Dave. Dave.

Stars were very clear before the meeting started. So this whole astrology exam might sound like a scam to make money from dumb people who are trying to take money from dumb people that being said i'll leave you with a statement from the official spokesperson for the united astrology conference quote it is not for morons which sounds very credible. I must admit. Although, personally,

I thought their original slogan was a little better. It was, uh, astrology, you're stupid. No, you are. And finally tonight, in putting the cash in Khashoggi news, host of the 700 Club and Upside Down Lightbulb after a house fire, Pat Robertson has been squeezing out evil shit like he's trying to pad the highlight reel for his scathing atheist obituary. Oh, pretty padded, man.

Yeah. Yeah, right. You'd think it was padded enough. But it started last week when he opined on the relative worth of a Muslim life and continued this week as he called for vengeance against a Jew for an imagined slight. Continued this week as he called for vengeance against a Jew for an imagined slight. It's like there's a checklist of evil sayable things on his bedside table and he's trying to get through it quick. Like he's in a lightning round for a game show that he's also hosting. Yeah.

Yelling shit out. All lives matter. I'm with him. Pass. Just doing their jobs. You will be erased. I'm evil him. Pass. Just doing their jobs. You will be erased. I'm evil. Okay.

To be fair, medically, hatred is all that is keeping Pat Robertson alive at this point. Yeah, that's true. All right. Bones well for me. So let's start with this widely reported comment on the death of Washington Post contributor and former alive person Jamal Khashoggi. After the news broke that Khashoggi had been killed and dismembered by a Saudi Arabian death squad and not in that order, P. Robes was quick to urge restraint in our national response as Saudi Arabia buys a shitload of guns from us. All right.

Let's everybody be cool about the dismembering death squad. Hey, man, that sounds evil. Let me finish. I am a shill for the international arms dealer who sells to dismembering death squads. What? Stop looking at me. I made it better. Second half.

So, well, now, P-Robes admitted that Wahabis can be, in his words, obnoxious. You know, like when they torture American reporters to death for drawing attention to their genocide against the Yemeni people. That is very obnoxious. But he does remind his viewers that, quote, we've got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of. It'll be a lot of jobs. A lot of money come to our coffers. It's not something you want to blow up willy nilly. Willy quote nilly.

Yes. He then went on to praise schmuck a large for his courageous capitulations to that series of mutually exclusive cover stories. The Saudis floated before admitting that their agents killed that guy. I mean, to be fair, it is impressive. Can't say it's not impressive how he behaved. Alright, so on the heels of making national news for

reminding people that we make good money off the Saudis killing people, P-Robes doubled down when he aligned the tectonic plates in his face long enough to call for an investigation into George Soros for being the subject of that conspiracy theory about george soros funding that caravan of refugees heading north through mexico towards the u.s border

and cecil hung up on him in robertson's mind soros apparently paid for and orchestrated the entire thing in an effort to embarrass donald trump because apparently p robes thinks that costs money honestly robertson seems to be aging closer and closer to my idiot drunk high school friends somehow like backwards towards the i don't know just like and then soros planted that bomb in his own mailbox to take attention away from the caravan and then he planned the next school shooting for whenever that happens

I will point this out to make Jew Jew profit I love that at this point the boogeyman of the religious right is giant group of refugees like yeah you're so bad that an overdone movie trope of good guys is your villain it might as well be teens trying to save a

ski center at this point all right so to his credit p robes admitted that they didn't have any hard evidence that george soros had anything to do with this and he didn't offer up any soft evidence either but as he said there was suspicion and that's plenty to warrant a federal investigation if you're not going to be a supreme court justice or if you're a Jew I'm honestly I'm not sure which of his bigotries is undergirding this story to be perfectly honest yeah and everything about Pat Robertson is soft, hellishly soft. It's what the witch's curse promised. Not much undergirding him at all.

Alright, well while I blow cobwebs off that P. Rove's obituary one more time, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Vote better! And when we come back, we'll stick our heads up a bull's ass to see what we find. Oh, sure, you can say we should do that

you know we try to keep ourselves on track on this show nearing our focus as an atheism show to the harms of religious thinking but when you wander among the sacred cows as often as we do, you wind up stepping in all kinds of crap. And once again, we'd like to scrape off the accumulated shit in a segment that we call... How Bullshit Is It? So tell us, Heath, what metal muffin of madness do you have for us today? Today, we'll be talking about urine therapy. All right, that can't be a thing.

Sounds real to me. Yeah, I mean, it probably started off as a really hasty excuse by somebody got caught doing something, but regardless, it's definitely a thing. Okay, so I'm already regretting it, and I haven't even asked the question yet, but what is urine therapy? It refers to one of several medical applications of pee. It's an umbrella term that includes using urine to cure

or prevent illness, cleanse the bowels, or enhance beauty. Enhance beauty. I mean, beautiful is different things to different people, Noah. I wish you wouldn't judge. Okay, so do they drink the pee? Yep, they drink the pee.

They do. They also wash their faces in it. They bathe in it. They apply a few drops under the tongue. They even massage it into their gums like cocaine. They do a lot of stuff with pee. Why would they do that? Why wouldn't you do that is the question. I haven't done the gums thing

yet, but as soon as we are done here. Well, I do it because you're already doing it, yeah? Thank you. Helping? You feel more beautiful? Send us a picture. Send us a before and after. Okay, so they do it to answer your question because urine is magical, Noah.

It's magical. The entry in Skeptic's Dictionary lists 64 conditions that advocates claimed it can fix, including cancer, depression, smallpox, aging. It can prevent aging? I don't know. Also, leprosy and baldness. Oh, really? Yeah. It also adds that some enthusiasts see urine therapy as a divine manifestation of cosmic intelligence.

I mean, peeing into your own mouth is exactly the intelligence level I imagine God at. That would explain a lot. Yeah. Well, according to the first alternative medicine site that came up when I googled piss drinking under a heading titled The Medical Proof that they had, they claimed that urine is quote an enormous source of vital nutrients vitamins hormones enzymes and critical antibodies that cannot be duplicated or derived from any other source what end quote which I feel like the enormity of it is subjective.

A vital source of hormones. A vital source of hormones. It's that last part that's throwing me off. Where do they think your pee got the nutrients and vitamins that isn't somewhere else? Yeah, right. Do they think we produce the vitamins and nutrients? I'm very confused. Right. We produce them, but only for the purpose of immediately excreting them as liquid waste.

Yeah, right. That's what they think. Okay. All right. So please tell me that this is some obscure thing you dug up that only like six people believe in. Well, I couldn't find a reliable number on how many people actually practice urine therapy right now. But I feel like it's pretty telling that the American Cancer Society felt the need to release the following warning. Oh, no.

Quote, available scientific evidence does not support claims that urine or urea given in any form is helpful for cancer patients. End quote. We're the American Cancer Society, and you needed to hear us say that. You know who's got a bad job? The guy who had to write that. Right? Like he squeezed his dying mom's hand when he was seven years old, and he was like, I'm going to beat cancer for you, mommy.

And 20 years later, he's like, again, we repeat, jerking off your dog is not the cure for cancer. Putting your penis in a bowling ball and rolling it down the alley anyway is not a cure for cancer. Sorry, mom. Did not think. Jesus. Okay. So a lot of ways I guess you could go with this question but where does piss drinking come from and i well move over heath uh lots of cultural traditions

have hailed the medicinal effects of urine reports dating back to ancient rome greece and egypt suggest that urine has been used to treat maladies ranging from acne to cancer as long as we've been writing shit down. Which means the practice of getting caught peeing on each other and going, um, it's for medicine, is also as old as writing shit down. Right, yeah.

Yeah. But the modern history of urine therapy starts in the early 20th century with British naturopath John W. Armstrong. According to the Wikipedia article, Armstrong was inspired by his family's practice of using urine to treat minor stings and toothaches. Oh, gross. with Proverbs 5.15, which says, quote, drink waters out of thine own cistern and running waters out of thine own well.

Oh, Jesus Christ. So obviously drink your pee. I'm Jesus. So he mixed folk remedies and biblical metaphors and got medicine. Oh, it's like hearing about Heath's childhood. It's just like i remember as a boy when i'd get a toothache my father would piss all over my face nope pushing it

pushing it back down pushing it pushing it back down it was a fun break medicine i'll write a book yeah toothpicks maybeothpicks, maybe. Pee, maybe not. So starting in 1918, Armstrong started prescribing urine therapy to everybody he could hold down. And in 1944, he published a book on the subject called The Waters of Life, a treatise on urine therapy. It's a book still used by urine therapists to this day. Amazing that the field wouldn't have advanced in the last three quarters of a century. I mean, Noah, how much advancement in urination has there

been? We don't even have a sprinkler setting yet. It comes with age. You don't do the sprinkler? Yeah, I do the sprinkler. Yeah, but it's weird how alternative medicine textbooks and holy books are the only things that can never advance and still be taken seriously. Weird, isn't it? Yeah.

Anyway, Armstrong's writing eventually made its way to India, where they have a long and proud tradition of drinking pee. In fact, in 1978, their prime minister, Mararji Desai, did the hometown proud when he did a 60 Minutes interview with Dan Rather about how awesome drinking his own pee was. He called it, quote, the perfect medical solution for the millions of Indians who cannot afford medical treatment end quote so telling people with no medical insurance to eat shit is basically just a a new take on an old strategy apparently yeah the year is 2024 grand imperial leader trump demands his people drink their own pee to own live let them eat urinal cake exactly queen said that um so does does urine have any actual medicinal uses nope does not uh or i mean if it does they aren't known to any science i mean i guess there's probably something extracted from urine somewhere or something

but there's definitely no known medical benefit to drinking your own pee. That's official. Question, what about other people's pee? Yeah, that too, also no benefit. Okay. And I should be clear that this also extends to topical treatments. Pee finds its way into a lot of modern folk remedies for like jellyfish and wasp and bee stings or like poison ivy, foot fungus fungus you get a cut or a sunburn but to be clear

that's you're just peeing on yourself it has no medical value and according to an article in scientific american it might actually just make the injury hurt worse because now you've peed on it right or at least it makes you feel worse okay Okay, so how harmful is it? Harmful is it. Exactly. Thank you, Noah. We are asking for a friend. So compared to lots of things we talk about in this segment, not extremely harmful, I guess,

but it's a weird bar to compare it to. Yeah, right. Let's just say drinking your own pee probably won't hurt you if you do it in moderation, but that's a weird thing to say also. In moderation. Okay. I should really stress the probably in that last sentence.

And it definitely won't help you. Okay. Well, I guess that all that's left to ask is, how bullshit is it? It's, uh, Donald Trump's face looks super healthy and not at all like a cancer themed troll doll. Levels of bullshit. There you go.

All right. Well, I can't be the only one who's feeling thirsty. So we're going to pause for a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk to you instead of just talking at you. Before we put the mics back in their holsters tonight, I want to remind you that if you can't get enough Heath in your life, there was a rare sighting of an incredulous episode this week, and Heath was guesting on it live from QED.

If you want to give it a listen, and trust me, you do, you'll find a link on the show notes for this episode. 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, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Monday. An even newer 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, this episode would need an asterisk if I neglected to thank the man who puts the sin in single Heath Enright. I need to thank the man who puts the best in asbestos-filled house, Eli Bosnick. I need to thank the man who puts the sin in single Heath Enright, I need to thank the man who puts the best in asbestos-filled house Eli Bosnick. I need to thank the gal that puts her finger in my—nope, course correction. Going a different way. I need to thank the woman who puts the joy in my life, which is just a different way of saying finger in my ass, really.

Anyway, Lucinda Illusions. I also want to thank Nate from the Satan and Rainbows podcast. If you want a little more critically reviled heavy metal and progressive rock in your life, you'll find his show on the show notes as well. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Justin Jeremy, Thomas, Gerald, Stenmark, Andy Corey, Bald Primate, Diane, Ryan,

Vincent, and Shelby. Justin, Jeremy, Thomas, and Gerald, whose condoms could have stopped that whole Exxon Valdez thing before it got out of hand. Stenmark, Andy, Corey, and Bald Primate, whose gender ambiguous names preclude a genital compliment, but who deserve one anyway, so hey, nice genitals. And Diane, Ryan, Vincent, and Shelby, who are so fair, mirror, mirror on the wall,

printed a formal retraction. Together, this dozen delegates for disbelief decided to divert dollars to the durability of our doubtful deliberations and defend dupes deceived by the dogmatic dipshits this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the alliterative qualities it takes to give us money, but if you think you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist,

whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help but you don't have the money to donate after going full-size candy bar this year, good on ya. And you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review on itunes telling a friend about the show and liking us on facebook legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of p.o.d. retorres tim robertson handles our social media on 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 skatingadius.com all right i thought i thought he got peed on i feel like he got peed yeah the preceding podcast was a production of puzzling a thunderstorm llc copyright 2018 all rights reserved