The Scathing Atheist - 310: Circular Reasoning Edition

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

In this week’s episode, the Supreme Court gets super confused about that whole attack helicopter thing, Heath does NOT redacted with a redacted up redacted’s redacted, and we’ll check back in with Lee Strobel to see if he’s shut up yet. To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: http://www.amazon.com/Diatribes-Godless-Misanthrope-Scathing-Presents-ebook/dp/B00J53FZFI/ref=sr11?ie=UTF8&qid=1396141562&sr=8-1 To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out out half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7143587-gam178-science-falsely-so-called Headlines: Smirking MAGA hat kid claims he was saying a silent prayer during: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/20/smirking-maga-hat-kid-i-was-just-saying-a-silent-prayer-during-that-encounter/ SCOTUS allows Military Trans ban to go into effect: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/22/politics/scotus-transgender-ban/index.html?fbclid=IwAR3P9O6SSdgRzBAz3SguM5QdssgCMBc8LXNAkrct3xgux1xxnPdspXNE6MA News Station Exploits Mom’s Grief, Suggesting Psychic Can Find Dead Girl’s Bones: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/22/news-station-exploits-moms-grief-suggesting-psychic-can-find-dead-girls-bones/ AZ GOP legislator introduces bill to fund border wall with tax on porn: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/21/az-gop-legislator-introduces-bill-to-fund-border-wall-with-tax-on-internet-porn/ Michael Cohen paid Liberty University IT guy to rig polls in favor of Trump: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/17/michael-cohen-i-paid-liberty-universitys-it-guy-to-rig-polls-in-favor-of-trump/ Jenny McCarthy’s Anti-Vax Army Now Considered a Top 10 Global Health Threat: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/18/jenny-mccarthys-anti-vax-army-now-considered-a-top-10-global-health-threat/ 250 Dutch pastors just signed the anti-LGBTQ "Nashville Statement": https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/01/06/250-dutch-pastors-just-signed-the-anti-lgbtq-nashville-statement/

Warning, the following podcast contains extravagant profanities like multi-syllabic fucks and whatnot. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the Covington High School mascot, Smuggy the Punchable Face. Go Smugfucks! And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hey everybody, it's Rob from Connecticut. Scathing Atheist. Hey everybody, it's Rob from Connecticut, and after working as a paramedic for the last 10 years, I can confirm that most of us, some of us, did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's January 24th.

And it's talk like a grizzled prospector day. It's what? I'm so drunken alone. Sorry, what date did you say it was? I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath drunk and alone. Sorry, what date did you say it was? I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Aaron Burrs, New Jersey.

Ten minutes away from Covington Catholic Cincinnati. In Good Husband, Georgia. This is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, the Supreme Court gets super confused about that whole attack helicopter thing. So the Supreme Court gets super confused about that whole attack helicopter thing. Heath does not round up a posse of Native American war veterans and beat up every kid at Covington Catholic because that would be wrong. You're welcome, Andrew. And we'll check back in with Lee Strobel to see if he's shut up yet.

But first, the diatribe. Okay, so I know we're primarily a comedy show, so I'm going to apologize in advance for this week's diatribe. It's a sad one. So if you normally listen to this show on the way to work to get a few laughs in through the commute, maybe you skip ahead to the headlines and you listen to this bit some other time because I'm going to be talking about death this week

and not in the abstract. So if you've been to an atheist convention in the last decade or so anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere, there's a pretty solid chance that you met Deborah McTaggart while you were there. And if you met her, it's highly unlikely you wouldn't remember it. She was crazy short, her hair was about two shades off of a fire hydrant, and she was gregarious for a Canadian. And even if you never made it to conventions, there's a pretty good chance you knew her as Heretic Woman from Beyond the Trailer Park. She was very much a member of the family of atheist podcasters that I'm proud to lend my fraternity to and a cherished member at that. She wasn't just the kind of person that everybody liked.

She was the kind of person that you couldn't even envision somebody disliking. And I say was because on Sunday morning of this past week, she died in her sleep. She was a frighteningly young 46 years old. And she was a listener, she was a colleague, and she was a friend. She liked Lucinda more than me, but to be fair, everybody who knows us does. And Lucinda's about the only person on the planet that could make her feel tall, so that probably factored into it as well. But my world definitely got a little darker when i saw the news on facebook this week so what do we do right i mean we're atheists there are a lot of differences between us and religious folks but this is kind of the main one isn't it the fact that they get

to hide in an imaginary shelter when storms like this come and pretend they didn't get wet i mean i still contend that religion doesn't help people you know when their loved ones die and as evidence of that i'd offer up every funeral ever but at least it helps them ignore the real hard parts right but not us we have to take death right in the fucking heart all at once and that's hard to do, but it's what your loved ones deserve, right? We shouldn't rob them of their totality to paper over our own fears. What Deborah was is all she will have ever been. And love it or leave it, she was the author of every bit of it, right? She was the thing she did and the word she said and the people she touched. And we don't get to co-op that and write a fourth act fanfic where we get to see her again someday at the great big reason con in the sky.

She gets sole ownership of her life, and our fantasies, no matter how comforting, shouldn't dilute that. But that's when atheism is at its best, too, right? When it forces you to learn the lessons that death teaches. We can't cop out behind euphemisms because they all try to spackle over the finality of it, right? We can't say she's resting in peace because she's not resting. We can't say she's in a better place because she's in the ground. And we can't say she's looking down on us because she's dead. So what can we say? Goodbye, right? That's it. But we can say it better than anybody else in the world because we can say it all the way and we're not saying goodbye to her by the way she can't hear us right there's no

reason to talk to the person who's died we're saying goodbye to life on behalf of ourselves and everyone else we're nodding to the impermanence of life and reaping whatever lesson that has for us and look i know that no real comfort, but that's not because our worldview is flawed. It's because death just isn't comfortable. Nothing we pluck from an antiquated book is going to change that, or an unantiquated book for that matter. Death is terrifying,

and one death makes you think about all of them, your own, your spouses, your friends. And when reality asks you to do something like confront the idea of life carrying on without you, or carrying on your own life without somebody that you need there, it's tempting to hide from that. As a species, we've built churches, temples, and pyramids to hide in. And even when none of them worked, we kept building more. But no matter what we put between ourselves and death, death is going to get through. If we ever find a cure, I'll be in line with everybody else, but we haven't.

Death is reality, and to hide from one is to hide from the other. To be an atheist is to look death squarely in the face and say, I know. There's no clause in there that says you can't be scared shitless when you do, but you have to do it. It's the only initiation we have. So why do it? Why not just lie to ourselves and make it easy? There are whole institutions that would be happy to indulge us in this pleasant fantasy for a reasonable price.

Well, the fact that Debra's religious and atheist friends had the exact same amount of grief to deal with on Sunday is a pretty strong argument in favor of saving your money, but it isn't the best one. The best one is Debra herself. See, she was a person who perfectly exemplified what it was to know all of this shit in advance, right? To have looked death in the face and acknowledged it. She was an exemplar of what it's like to live one's life knowing that every interaction could be the last one you ever have with that person. It doesn't matter who you are. The last time you talked to her, the last time you saw her, it was damn pleasant. And we don't score lives the way that religions do where they weigh your good against your bad or worse yet, weighing your adherence to your religion over and above everything else.

The only way we can measure a life from our perspective is how much darker the world gets when that life stops. And my world got a lot darker last Sunday. world gets when that life stops and my world got a lot darker last sunday and because that's pretty much impossible to transition to comedy from i feel the need to make it clear that we recorded the rest of the show before i decided that this was going to be the topic of the diatribe um had that not been the case we'd have been a little bit more solemn at the start of the headline so you know you know, from here on, comedy. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the Alvin and Theodore to my Simon Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick fellas. Are you ready to engage in hijinks wacky enough to distract everybody from wondering what kind of Mengele-esque experiment ended in Dave having three chipmunk offspring? I mean, if people would read my fan fiction. No. In our lead story tonight, we have some news about the garbage human beings

that they're producing at an all-boys private school in Kentucky called Covington Catholic. In fairness, the kids they get are almost entirely coming from rich, white Christian families in the suburbs of Cincinnati in the swing state of Ohio. So their parents are the same people who just couldn't decide between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Except it turns out they're racist liars.

And yes, they could. Yeah. And they chose Trump. So not a great starting point for the moral character of their average student. But instead of trying to fix that, Covington Catholic managed to amplify that, uh, fuck facetude. And now their student body seems to be entirely the bad guys from Karate Kid. And got to see these bigots

on full display last week when they harassed a bunch of people in Washington, D.C. during their class trip, including a now viral video of their students taunting a Native American man taking part in the

Indigenous Peoples March. Wait, wait, wait, Heath. You're saying teenage boys in MAGA hats came to Washington to protest women having bodily autonomy and they somehow managed

to make it worse. Well, OK, so but to be fair, when one of your nation's two main political parties is racism, this kind of thing is going to happen. And, you know, we do need some people on that team. It's like shirts and skins. So here's a little background on the bigot mill that is Covington Catholic, just for context. And I'll just need this one quick example to give you everything you need to know. Following the release of the viral video last week, a photograph also went viral showing what appears to be a Covington Catholic basketball game during which their students in the stands are wearing literal minstrel show blackface yep and also they happen to be taunting an african-american player from the other team in that picture when i first saw this i was like yeah okay well you know it's good work with photoshop let's lampoon these bigots good

satire but i assumed it had to be fake because that's fucking insane. Well, turns out it was real and fucking insane. Yeah. Oh, wait, sorry, Heath. I'm just now reading the press release from the totally normal right-wing PR firm that all people have access to. And apparently, yes, that basketball player was black first. I am the New York Times. I am the New York Times. Thank you, the New York Times. I am the New York Times. Thank you, the New York

Times and Jake Tapper. So getting back to the incident in the video, first thing to note, the school trip was already bigot themed before the kids even left for D.C. The all boys school, I'm going to repeat that, this is a school of all

boys. They were going to an anti-choice rally. Yep. Where they dressed up in MAGA hats and harassed female protesters. And that's when a big group of these kids started walking around, mumbling, bigot, bigot, bigot, bigot, bigot, snipping. Fucking bloodhounds for bigots until they found their bigot jackpot in some black hebrew israelites attending a march for indigenous peoples jesus yeah they had to be getting out charged to see which slurs apply

in that situation right damn y'all got one for this if anybody's got one for this i'm impressed numbers flying in front of their faces in the tv movie? Okay, obviously the problem here, way too many marches going on at the same time. Get it together, people. Right. Get a slack going. So after that altercation turned into a shouting match, one of the Native American men in the march,

a Vietnam veteran named Nathan Phillips, walked over and tried to calm down the situation. And that's when the Covington Catholic mob surrounded the guy, started taunting him and chanting bigot stuff like the tomahawk chop, among other things. And one student in particular stood right in front of Phillips, refusing to let him pass for a crazy long time and just smirking in his face just like every asshole you're picturing from your childhood yep and that kid is the one you saw the most if you watch the video well he's both christian and rich so that means he gets to make nonsense excuses based on his faith and he gets to have a professional public relations team handle the whole thing. And of course, he gets to become the victim in their narrative.

Yeah, somehow. Here's a couple of highlights from the statement he released. And again, he had a professional, like really expensive PR team to help write this and come up with the best possible lie. This is the best possible lie they came up with. Quote, I believed that by remaining motionless and calm, I was helping to defuse sick the situation. That's defuse. Yeah. He spelled that like diffusion, like the opposite of what he was trying to say. Yeah, really? Yeah, exactly. The fucked up cultural diffusion that spreads ignorance cross country if they have a bigotry party to rally behind. Sometimes across oceans, too.

So, yeah. Brexit. Continuing. I realized everyone had cameras and that perhaps a group of adults was trying to provoke a group of teenagers into a larger conflict you know like they do typical adult thing yeah it's all stuff right to teenagers all the time i said a silent prayer that the situation would not get out of hand end quote box okay so his actual excuse was resting racist face. Yep, it was. Oh, that's so stupid.

Well, at least no legitimate press agency or social media platform ran this obvious lie as though it was important to get both sides of this. I'm sorry, what? Oh, all of us? Okay, we have news that all of them did that. 100%. Okay. Yep. 100%. Yep. So, bottom

line, I know we can't officially be in favor of a kid getting punched in the face by a Vietnam veteran. Because no one yelled at us. Yes, he did. Watching that video, I've literally never

wanted more for a kid to get punched in the face by a Vietnam veteran. That's legal. And I want that a lot. Like, I want stuff like that all the time, a lot. I hate most kids. And I think Vietnam vets deserve some release, also. Because a lot of my stance is kind of lining up here.

But again, that is not our official, official, don't punch a child. It's not company policy, no. We're saying don't punch a child. But I'm just being honest about what's in my heart. I really wanted a Vietnam vet to punch that child. And for those of you looking for like the religious angle on this, just consider this exhibit A3443 that if you dig into literally any evil in this country, you're going to find religion funding it with taxes they don't pay. Yeah, and you don't you really are not going to have to dig either, right?

They're going to prominently display the name of their goddamn school. I was about to say, yeah, there you go. That was the religious angle. Bible, Catholic, people. And in transmission news tonight, Christian hate scored a big win this week when the Supreme Court capitulated to the knee-jerk bigotry bone that Trump threw to evangelicals to shore up his numbers so long ago that he almost certainly forgot he'd done it until the SCOTUS news broke on Tuesday. So, yes, the Supreme Court allowed Trump's transgender military ban to go into effect this week, despite mountainous evidence that is cruel, hurtful, serves no purpose beyond discrimination, and actively harms our nation's military readiness. Yeah, but we can't have conservative Christian soldiers being forced to stand next to a trans person.

That's like forcing a rabbi to stand next to a conservative Christian soldier. Fuck. All right. We ended up being the Nazis again. God damn it. No. Dollar in the Nazi nazi jar man that thing is getting full we are gonna have a hell of a pizza party all right so the policy born of an overlong shit's worth of twitter fumbling was first announced in july of 2017 and then later he made grown-ups dress it up in real president words and because he's technically a grown-up and he technically won the silver medal in presidenting, possibly without felonious levels of cheating, real professionals had to turn his.

And another thing I don't like about the queers into a national policy, which then had to be adjudicated by the highest court in the land, which got it wrong along party lines, by the way. No. Yeah. Just I'm trying to think like what would have been a good way for a liberal person who cares about trans rights to help stop this? What would that be? Maybe tweeting, maybe voting for Hillary Clinton. No stamps are tricky.

Yeah, that's a whole thing. Um, you guys have anything? No, no, no. Uh, but, uh, in other news, Caitlyn Jenner shot herself in the face this week saying, quote, I didn't think the bullet would hit my face. It's a good week. It's a good week it's a bad week it's you know all right now the military for their part never wanted this stupid fucking band to begin with right it's not like you know potentially

get exploded and one of earth's shittiest places for 20 grand a year is a super easy sale to begin with so they'd prefer to do it with as few unless you're one of them dot dot dots as possible they sought to clarify the ruling in the aftermath by fervently begging news outlets not to call it a transgender ban even though that's what their commander-in-chief said it was when he announced it not a transgender ban we don't want to use that term it It's just some new conceptual penis origin regulation. There you go. Yeah. The best part is they literally had to pretend to do research to, quote, find new data so that they could make it.

This is the checking in the back to see if we have that of human dignity. Yes. Some guy walking around in a circle in Pentagon. Are human beings worthy of respect? Oh, just need another week on this one. Coloring R's and P's on a piece of paper. Yeah. We can backorder human dignity.

Is that helpful for you? Well, yeah. No, actually, that is the answer here. So, okay. Now, I should point out there are exceptions in this thing. So, according to the best sources I can find, the ban won't affect people who, yeah, no, actually, that is the answer here. So, OK, now I should point out there are exceptions in this thing. So according to the best sources I can find, the ban won't affect people who, quote, have been stable for three years in their biological sex prior to joining the military and quote. So, you know, the cooties go away eventually, I guess. It also says that service members that are diagnosed with transness after joining the military can stay in the military as long

as they promise to stay the gender they started at. So I guess don't ask, don't tell worked out so good the first time we're going to give it another go. And you know who you don't have to thank for that? Merrick fucking Garland. Oh, yeah. Was he going to be? No.

Did he change the vote? Well, we'll get to it. And look, we'll get to it. And look, we have a fair amount of trans listeners, and we for damn sure know that we have trans listeners who are serving. And just in case it wasn't clear from us to you, you are valid. This shit is going to pass, and we are so fucking sorry it hasn't happened yet. Yeah.

And to be clear, by the way, there's more to come on this, right? This is not the final word from the Supreme Court. If you want all the details from a legal angle, let me plug Andrew's show opening arguments, which I'm sure we'll be covering this decision in detail. But for now, like while we continue to decide if this bigotry is legal, we're going to let the administration roll with it. We're holding on. That's fine. Yep. And in biggest douche in the universe news tonight, fake psychics are fake. Sorry, unclear, unclear. Psychics are fake. Yep. And everyone who says they're psychic is mentally ill or lying.

Just for clarity. And apparently news station KTUL in Tulsa needed a reminder of that this week when they aired a segment in which professional evil bitch Natasha Brock claimed to know the location of two murdered girls' bones. Oh, Jesus. Fucking stupid. So, if you're wondering what a news station full of adults did with this information, it was not throw it in the

goddamn garbage they contacted the family of the murdered girls and then followed the family to the location that the psychic told them to go to with cameras only to discover that the bones that the psychic had told them about weren't even human. She just came across bones? And did just bones. Yeah, and the mom got there and immediately she was like, no, those are ribs. Those are ribs

from a pig. There's a Chili's to-go box right there. What are you talking about? Pan over her all the whereveras, just got a napkin in his collar. Right. And then you're going to finish that. OK. And then the segment just ends.

Like, seriously, they don't go back and interview the psychic about being wrong. They're just like coming up next is toothpaste paste made of teeth. Stay tuned. Yeah. next is toothpaste paste made of teeth stay tuned yeah i mean look they might not get many predictions right but i'll never be held accountable for this is one that all the pro psychics nail they sure fucking do and look we should point out that the like psychics helping cops finding dead people thing is total bullshit outside of TV and movies. Yeah. News stations producing segments like this is the reason why lots and lots of sane people

don't know that and leads to tremendous pain for grieving parents like the ones in this segment. So, yeah, in this week's news, fuck Natasha Brock, but super duper fuck people who pointed a camera at her. Yeah.

Yeah. Just want to see, to see Chris Hansen standing behind that film crew with his own camera. So, KTUL fucked up another story. I'm Chris Hansen. Sure hope you guys don't shoot yourselves in the face right now.

Don't. Don't do it. That's what I said. Next up in headlines, my Google alert for Mexican border wall porn paid off again this week. But this time with a headline instead of a video. And you know what? That's probably a good thing considering the story is about Arizona State Representative Gail Griffin, whose picture came up on my Google alert for davy crockett lunch lady

and case it's not clear gail griffin is an evangelical christian and she hails from the grand old party and she wants a tax on porn to pay for donald's wall. She looks like if snot from American Dad did drag as Sally Field. I don't think it matters where the snot comes from. My question is, is she flexible on what we build the wall out of? Because there may be

a solution. We might be able to put a Shakey's pizza right there. She looks like maybe she's got some mortar to her face. She's like a clay type of face. Yeah, and it's sinking under the weight of the hair. Okay. Clay face is social studies teacher. Yeah.

So, Gail Griffin proposed a new bill last week that would place a tax of $20 on every person who wants to watch porn on the Internet. The new bill would force every Internet service provider in the country to block all pornographic material. And then if you want to watch porn, you pay the $20 tax and get your computer unblocked.

Keep in mind that Gail Griffin is 84 years old. So I'm pretty sure she's picturing a soda machine scenario yeah yep yeah so here's how the math breaks down um she's one of those tax and spend republicans yeah no clearly so uh here's how she's going to tax and spend in order to raise $5.7 billion for border wall, we'd need $20 from just about every single adult and child of any age in the entire United States. So math checks out. That's who wants porn. Well, no, true. Not a good idea.

Regardless, that's not a good idea also it's unconstitutional and i'm pretty sure i'm being detained i am feeling i will ransack a birding station i am feeling very detained next up in headlines according to convicted felon michael cohen who's already been sentenced and gains nothing by admitting things at this point, according to him, we were correct about pretty much everything we've been saying about Donald Trump since 2015. And Cohen also told us a bunch of stuff that's even worse than we thought. And the latest example is Cohen's admission that he paid the chief information officer at Christian fundamentalist hate school, Liberty University, to rig online polls in favor of Trump during the 2015 primary season. Yeah, they had to cheat to be popular in their own goddamn party.

Guys, we have been going about this all wrong. We set up some minion memes about killing yourself. We send them out into the universe. We can kill Trump's base overnight. These people are easy to convince. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm still stuck on the idea that somebody at Liberty University had the audacity to call themselves the chief information officer.

He had a card. He had to put that on a fucking card and he didn't just he didn't oh yeah okay fuck staples keeps calling him back are you sure i'm sure but it says i know what it says so at this point a story like this isn't surprising at all this is exactly the kind of thing we've come to expect from news about the Trump campaign. But this time, it's almost suspicious the level of Trumpiness we got. Like, every detail of this is Trumpier than last. So, first of all, when you're looking for an information technology expert or an expert in any other real reality thing,

Liberty University isn't going to be the best idea that's not where you want to go as evidenced by the fact that the guy they hired john gauger didn't even succeed at the poll rig part of the plan was to get trump listed in the top hundred of a cnbc poll about the best business people in the country and Gager failed. His theological hacking got bested by the secular firewall at CNBC. So he didn't even do that. His click bot fails and the guy's like, all right, looks like we're going to do this the old fashioned way. Click one.

Trump. Awesome. Click two. Nailing it. Here we go. Click three. Three already. This is flying by. Awesome. Click. Two. Nailing it. Here we go. Click. Three. Three already. This is flying by. My wrist hurts.

Well, it's a good thing to know, though, that online polls from the seventh most popular cable news network are harder to rig than the electoral college. Yup. Yup. That's a fact. So, here's the Trumpiest detail of the whole thing uh trump and cohen didn't even fully pay the guy no still owe him money this is so amazing they breached the

contract according to the wall street journal the trump campaign agreed to pay gauger fifty thousand dollars for his work and at some point in 2015 he showed up at trump tower to get his money but instead of a check for the amount on the bill like you might expect from a grown-up who hired you for a job michael cohen was there and he handed gauger a walmart bag with 12 grand in cash. Couldn't even get a bag from a good store. Also, along with that Walmart bag of cash for less by a lot than the amount, he also got a used boxing

glove that Cohen claimed was worn by an MMA fighter during a match. Trump couldn't even spring for the second fucking glove. Yes. Also, that's literally the example they use in economics textbooks for useless thing. A left glove by itself. A right glove by itself.

Gloves are perfect compliment goods. He gave him the prototypical useless thing. God. Point being, getting employed by trump is useless at best yeah michael cohen knows that better than anyone so yep that's just another depressing look at how our democracy got hijacked but if there's a silver lining in this uh i'd say it's the following the other team is hiring people from Liberty University. Sometimes. As long as you don't point out that we're losing,

that's really, that really does pump you up a bit about. Yeah. So let's not point that out. Yeah. Buy a lot. We'll beep that. Exactly.

And in WM Triple D's news tonight, you might be stupid, but are you listed as a global threat stupid if not guess what you have jenny mccarthy beat yep yes you do uh former lady who people wanted to see naked current baby murderer and for some reason still new year's eve host jenny mccarthy and her movement of quote vaccine hesitancy end quote made it onto the World Health Organization's list of 10 threats to global health in 2019. Well, I feel like they need to drop that hesitancy term, though. If these people were just, you know, a little timid and we got to stab a bunch of trembling idiots with a needle, I'd be fine with this.

But that's not what's happening. They're just hesitating. Yeah, right. We need a new name for this. So let's go with like vaccine falsers or the truth falsers, something like that. Or, you know, I'm fine with just shorthanding them as global threat number eight.

Oh, that's great. Yeah, that's what they did just now. Eighth most dangerous thing that exists according to the consensus of experts or thing deemed worse than dengue fever by people who know a lot of shit about dengue fever. Yes, that's right.

Andrew Wakefield and Jenny McCarthy are such massive pieces of shit that they made it onto a list with Ebola and AIDS. Yes. Literally. Wow. The WHO pointed out that there's been a 30% rise

in cases of measles globally. And while not all of that is due to anti-vax shit kickers, any of it is. And that's fucking bullshit. Yeah. You know what else is bullshit? She's married to Donnie Wahlberg. I don't like that.

I don't like that. I swear to God, if she infects donnie walberg with her fetid petri dish of fucking unvaccinated rickets vagina he is a national treasure he's a national treasure i was just gonna say it just gonna say beat me to it heat and finally tonight in hold my heineken News, Christians in the Netherlands got jealous of how fun it looks to be an American bigot right now. So a group of Dutch evangelical pastors decided to get themselves an official bigotry declaration document. Their articles of discrimination was signed last week by 250 Christian leaders, all male, some of them also politicians. And apparently it's an exact copy of the fucking Nashville statement.

Jesus. And in case you missed it, that's the 2017 hate manifesto drafted here in the US that took the phrase, we hate gay people and fluffed it out into fancy Congress words. And then it got adopted by a bunch of our most powerful religious groups here. Yeah. Including a bunch of the ones who pretend to be cool

because, you know, they have a Black Lives Matter and gay pride flag next to their book that recommends killing those people yeah right no they're all they're all defending themselves you gotta read it constitutionally then it just says it got hate sags so apparently these assholes got together for their latest meeting and somebody was like stupid question but like you guys are gonna to think I'm stupid. But who are we hating right now? Is there like a list? Do we have a list of who we're hating?

At which point the leader guy rifled through his paperwork and he was like, holy shit, get the fuck out of here. No, we do not have a list. This is crazy, right? It feels like we should have a list. Okay, so LGBTQ people. And we. Okay. So, LGBTQ people. And we're done. There we go. Good work, everybody.

Atheists. Now let's go fuck with more American tourists and pretend our language really sounds like this some more. All right. Come on. I'm going to say Smoondin really seriously. Why don't we do it? So, I'm assuming this all started this whole netherlands thing um when trump got mad about our wooden shoes trade deficit and decided to export some toxic

ideas to even the score i don't know and uh american religion cancer is so aggressive we managed to infect the fucking netherlands the unwitest white people on the planet but you get a few american ideas and you're putting out new resolutions just like whereas anne frank was a regressive lefty snowflake is the sentence over americans are bad at writing they start it with whereas and then it's just done sorry i'm not willing to praise someone who defied law enforcement black boots matter yeah so obviously you never want to see terrible ideas spread like this but it's not all bad news turns out their pampered lives spent in a secular socialist paradise made these Dutch bigots soft and lazy. So they didn't even bother writing their own material. Again, they just

copied off America's homework and translated the Nashville statement into Dutch or any of the other 20 languages they all know from their amazing high budget public school system that teaches most of the population about real things way too well for religion to be a major influence there so you know point being the majority of dutch people are fully aware of religion cancer so most of them heard about this and they were like oh great thanks for signing all your names to a confession letter right good job right. Good job with that. Your homework for next week, by the way, is to grab the cheese from the small tray on this large wooden platform.

Just, oh, the big metal U-shape? Yeah, ignore the big metal U-shape. That's unrelated. That's just, go ahead and grab the cheese. We'll be out there like, excuse me, I'm collecting names for national public ridicule, sir. Move, move. I want to go.

I want to go. And now that we've admitted that moderately more us-like is necessarily a bad thing for a country, I need a moment to come to grips with that. So we're going to close the headlines there. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, Lee Strobel will give us the hard sell. You know how sometimes you'll be engaged in a long project that you've been looking forward to accomplishing for a long time.

And even though you've been wanting it to be over forever, when you start to get towards the end, you realize you're actually going to miss it. And you kind of wish it would go on a little longer yeah me neither which is why i'm pleased to say this is the pen ultimate installment of the case for christ fellas we're almost there it's just this and the therefores how excited are you not excited no the boo until the therefores are gone he's his his team boo. Yeah, well, you know, I won't point it out yet, but it's not like we've got a good book lined up after this one. And, of course, joining us once again in this celebration is my lovely wife, Lucinda. So, Lucinda, are you eager to finish or what?

Yeah, I'm used to it. All right, so quick before I can reflect on the double entendre there, let's dive into Chapter 14, the circumstantial evidence. Are there any supporting facts that point to the resurrection okay guys be honest when when you read that you at least wondered whether lee strobel was going to offer up his own book as evidence for jesus like exhibit z was going to be plus if there wasn't a jesus this book would have been a crazy waste of time, huh? Call me a liar? This is a selfie of Lee Strobel dabbing

like he's on a field trip to Auschwitz. He's pointing at an empty tomb. This points to the resurrection. But instead of that, which would have at least been succinct, we have to start off with irrelevant dead people. And since he feels the need i guess

to up the morbidity with each chapter the opening sentence of this one is literally quote no witnesses watch timothy mcveigh load two tons of fertilizer based explosives into a rider rental truck and quote and the oklahoma city bomber was of course, in case you were having trouble with the concept of circumstantial evidence. Yeah, no, this is good. You know what I had not considered yet? The argument from Timothy McVeigh. That's an important ground to cover. And ultimately, this leads around to him saying,

you know, circumstantial evidence is the best kind of evidence. So really, we're lucky to not have a bunch of first-person accounts fucking up the solid case we're making for Jesus. Okay, so this leads us around to his circumstance expert, philosopher, apologist, actual smart guy you might have heard of, and signatory

of the Nashville Statement. This is the 13th interview. J.P. Moreland. And the fuck me description at the beginning tells us all about how animated and bouncy he is when he gets excited. To hear Lee tell it, J.P. Moreland sounds adorable. Right?

There's also maybe my favorite moment in the entire fucking book, that awkward little bit where Lee openly envies JP's ability to, quote, construct his case in complete sentences and whole paragraphs without wasted words or extraneous thoughts, end quote. That's part of the whole book. Oh, my God. It humanized Lee so much for me. He's a guy's writing a whole book while wistfully envying those of us with the ability to think in whole sentences. And after praising this guy for speaking in a coherent series of words, such as the elusive sentence, praising him for leaving out extraneous thoughts. That was the other part of that praise.

Right after that, Lee Strobel immediately launches into two enormous run-on sentences that don't matter at all. Containing literally three parentheticals. Two sentences with three ridiculous parentheticals. Like, he might as well have a hyphen right in the middle of this whole thing and just be like, And then I started crushing up 80 milligrams of Ritalin on the desk it tastes like bitter my mom says i have to keep taking it my mom has dark gray hair and silver rimmed glasses look i feel lee strobel's pain but seriously his example of this dude's razor sharp mind is that he could stop talking while Lee changed the tape on his tape recorder and then start talking again. Which leads to the obvious question. Who did he interview that couldn't do that?

We are on the 13th. I'm changing the tape. Bananagrams. Sorry. Well, he also takes a moment to shit on philosophy here. He's like, sure, he does all that gay Kierkegaard stuff, but he also does real

stuff like history and chemistry and stuff. And then Lee Strobel promises us via J.P. Moreland, five undisputed facts that act as circumstantial evidence for Jesus being the Lord and Savior. Five examples that are in the words of the book

quote, not in dispute by anyone. End quote. Okay, let me figure this out. Undisputable. So five putable facts that nobody, never, damn it, let me start over. You get one of those rails.

You got some more riddling? Great. We're going to go through all five in order, and we start with Exhibit 1, the disciples died for their beliefs. Yeah, he details how hard the disciples had it in starting a religion but we all agreed that at least some of the religions that started were wrong right so how can this be offered up as evidence that any one of them is right he's like trying to convince us he's like they didn't have a mansion waiting for them in the mediterranean dude they had a forever life in a gold covered sky city you don't want to use the what they had waiting for them argument.

No. Also, they were like in the desert in the year whatever, 30-something. Like, it sucked, I'm sure, too. Right. Yeah, this is the infamous die-for-a-lie argument, which is severely undercut

by the existence of suicide bombers in different religions. Okay, right. But, okay, so to be fair to the argument, suicide bombers aren't claiming to have seen tangible evidence, right? They're working from a standpoint of faith by their own admission. So the die for a lie argument posits that the people dying for Jesus actually saw him, so they would have known for sure if they were lying about seeing him. The real problem with

this argument is that there's no evidence that any of this happened there's just bible stories right also historical examples galore of christians who didn't claim to have seen jesus personally desperately trying to martyr themselves also you know crazy exists that does it's a thing that is out there also wrong exists yep wrong is a thing. And stupid. And big fat liar. So, you know, they were crazy, wrong, stupid, big fat liars. Or Jesus is the God of the universe. So, you know, already that's a one in five chance about God. About to get four more reasons.

So there you go. Oh, yeah, I know the math ads. I hope we could pay for the wall with this kind of math. reasons so there you go i know the math we could pay for the wall with this kind of math so yeah his first undisputed fact is only valid if you take the bible as a credible source next well that would be exhibit two the conversion of skeptics exhibit two it's exhibit b man i don't know how they do it in fucking court but this isn't a court. It's exhibit A, B, C, especially when you have a sub list later on of five things. You dumb fuck. Okay. Learn to think in sentences

or something. And look, as weak as the argument is, right, which is to say some people who didn't believe in Christianity eventually did, even that relies on a credulous reading of the Bible. Right? He's talking about the Apostle Paul for fuck's sake. If you don't take this book

literally, that's the guy that invented the religion. Hey, Lee Strobel, describe this M.C. Escher painting. Okay, cool. It's a hand, drawing a hand, drawing a hand, drawing a hand, drawing a hand. Hey, hey, you're done. You're done.

Hand. No. I'll let you know yeah leaf's like okay so do you have any credible evidence and without missing a beat moreland says i sure do here in the gospels it says yes jesus yep the bible sure does agree with itself about being true occasionally right not even all the checkmate Checkmate atheists. Occasionally. And apparently, though, if you want to dispute Paul's veracity, you need to write a six-volume biography about him

and explain how he performed all those miracles he very clearly claimed to have performed. I was baffled by this counter-argument. Look, if you can't tell me how many fingers I'm holding up, the answer is pineapple. The answer is pineapple and here's your bill and I don't pay taxes. Right. And I can lynch gay people. Fuck.

But the hits just keep on coming as that one gives way to exhibit three, changes to key social structures. Yeah, okay. This is the argument from incessant Jewiness, right? Basically, he says, look, look, Jews were way Jewier than, say, Persians were Persian-y. And despite how Jew-y they were, they still became Christians. Yeah, it's a weird argument. He seems to be saying here, look, when these Jews gave up their religion for a new

fate, they gave up their religion for a new fate. Hand-drugging, hand-drugging. Super-duper solid point, Lee, absolutely. Question, what's the most popular religion right now in the Middle East? Is it Christianity? Is it? are you winning

all right but okay so just so that this chapter doesn't get easy on us we subcategorize here and strobel invites moreland to give a list of five things inside his list of five things right so then we go through the five key social structures that changed when jesus came along yeah first of all they stopped killing all the goats and slinging the chickens uh i lived in brooklyn no they fucking didn't no the christian but also these are all great news the new stuff like yeah you're a jewish guy in the desert and the new rabbi's like, hey, by the way, you can stop wasting large amounts of food and stop strangling chickens with your bare hands from now on. You're going to do that. You're going with that guy.

That's the new rabbi for you. Okay. Secondly, and it never fails to amaze me how quick Christians are to point this out. They stop focusing on being good human beings so much. By the way, also, in addition to the last thing I said that makes your life a whole lot easier. Focusing on being good human beings so much. Yeah. By the way, also, in addition to the last thing I said that makes your life a whole lot easier, you can also fuck however you want now. It's just like, great, on board. Fantastic.

Quick question, though. Do you know how to resurrect? You know what? Never mind. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. On board. And then quick, before we can realize nothing in that last section made any sense we move on to exhibit four communion and baptism yeah okay the argument from communion would be

really fucking weird if we were wrong uh is it less weird if they're not i feel like it's way more weird if they're right the way it's the least weird is if they're all liars pretending to believe in space cannibal magic. That makes it hilarious. He's fucking weird. Yeah. And this starts off with a weird little admission slash analogy. He says, okay, look, Christians celebrate Jesus's death. And that's fucking weird bunch of

people who love jfk might celebrate his handling of the cuban missile crisis but they're not going to celebrate his gruesome murder and as people who drove by the grassy knoll on saturday morning at 11 a.m last weekend holy shit does this one fall apart yeah right something tells me that the presidential library wasn't quite as crowded that day falls apart much like the lie of the lone gunman hypothesis back into the left people read a book no no read a youtube video there it is there it is interesting theory um so both sides i guess based on what they're saying um god is actually j, JFK, and also John Benet Ramsey. It's a cool trinity. It's better than the one they've been selling the last 2,000 years.

And then finally, we get Exhibit 5, The Emergence of the Church. Okay, yeah. If you hear that subtitle and think to yourself, holy shit, this guy's reasoning couldn't possibly be circular enough to argue the existence of the Christian church is circumstantial evidence of the Christian church being correct. Can he? Then you haven't been paying any attention at all, not just to this segment, but to this book. Yeah, now it's just M.C. Escher about to 69 himself, drawn himself with cum. The argument from that. Gross. There's also a bit.

Can anyone explain this to me here? The bit where he argues Christianity must be true because people name their dog Caesar. I'm confused. What is like, you know, the important names are Peter and John. People name their dog Caesar, which I'm pretty sure means he's insulting my dog's name.

And Marjorie Tyrell Bosnick is majestic as fuck. Yes, he is. So, one, she's real. Two, I win. Yeah, we named dogs after Caesar because they're not majestic and august. I mean, I know we have, we all have a mutual friend named Caesar

that listens to this show. I don't think he'd find it as convincing as he did. I hope he has a dog named Jesus. Yeah. And then he ends it with, you know who else was a Christian? The Guinness World Record holder for most cases ever, ever won. That's who the fuck was a christian the guinness world record holder for most cases ever

ever won that's who the fuck was a christian what the world's tallest man but the chapter's not quite over yet and so there's one last subheading that reads taking the final step oh right yeah just in case you were in danger of taking this asshole seriously. Lee adds a little addendum where he offers up, J.P. Moreland offers up as evidence of his religion being true, the fact that he feels in his heart like it is. Stupid. And Lee's like, wait, doesn't that fall apart if you think about it at all

and moreland goes no only if you think about it correctly yeah moreland might as well poke him in the chest and be like what if jesus has been here lee all along he does he does he does it might as well that's actually the ending. That's their big close. Yeah. It's crazy. Like clinically insane. Both of these people, right? JP Morgan. JP Morgan's like, yeah.

So now that I've proven to you that Jesus got resurrected, we should probably go find Jesus in real reality. And Lee Strobel's like, yup, we're doing this together. You're walking with me., we're doing this together. You're walking with me. We're seriously doing this. Seriously doing this right now. I'm going to find the physical person of Jesus. I want you to just repeat it back to me so you can hear it.

What you said. Put it in the book, man. People are going to read this thing probably. We're walking down the hall. You're committing to this bit. Where are we going? All right, we're doing this. All right, but our work here isn't quite done yet because Lee Strobel is still slaving under the unevidenced opinion

that making us think more about the stuff he just said helps his argument. So it's time for a few deliberations. All right, pop quiz time. Here we go. Question one. The disciples were in the unique position of knowing for certain whether Jesus had returned from the dead, and they were willing to die for their conviction that he did. Again, according to the Bible.

Can you think of anyone in history who has knowingly and willingly died for a lie? What degree of certainty would you need before? I'm not done yet. Hold on. Hold on. What degree of certainty would you need before you'd be willing to lay down your life for a belief how thoroughly would you investigate a matter if you were going to base your life on it i'm so no one has ever asked lee if he would die for his wife or he hates his i'm

so confused like so he's honest about anything. I'm sorry. Someone who died for a lie. Gee, shucks. Do we cover those people constantly on this goddamn show? I saw a video of a guy nearly hack his arm off because he thought that his chi was going to protect him. What about that maple syrup kid in Canada?

Do I win? Have I won yet? Also, I'm pretty sure Jesus died for a lie, no? JFK, John Bonet Ramsey, there's a bunch. It's not a small list. But for me personally, I wouldn't die for the truth either. Yeah. All this tells me is the apostles were stupid. All this tells me is the apostles were stupid.

I myself, I'm just going to take that last question about how thoroughly one investigates something before basing their life on it. I'm the only person in my family who, A, isn't a Christian and B, has read the Bible. Yes, either, not and. Exactly. So you lose. Question two. What are your most cherished beliefs? What would it take for you to abandon or radically rethink those treasured opinions, especially if you truly believe you are risking damnation of your soul if you are wrong?

How does your answer relate to the historical facts that thousands of Jews suddenly abandoned five key social and religious structures shortly after the crucifixion of jesus and i'm just going to open this up by saying evidence okay there's like all the beliefs cherished or otherwise evidence would get me to abandon any position what i love most about this is that this is such an interesting question if it is asked by anybody but a christian yeah right anyone but a christ, you're like, oh, what a good question. And then a Christian is like, boo, this is trap.

It's a weird trap. You're going to tell me a word means in Greek, aren't you? You're a telemonitor. Yeah, I mean, abiogenesis is a fascinating subject. They just don't want to talk about it at all. Crystals. Oh, Lee, Lee, Lee. I'm going to go with $8. It would take $8, Lee Strudel.

We take PayPal. You have a lot of evidence to believe that's true, Lee. Do you want to save my wife's soul or not? Money where your mouth is, asshole. Yeah, my most cherished beliefs. I don't cherish beliefs. That's dumb. Why would you cherish them? and a giant mob of people that threatened to kill me would get me to pretend whatever the fuck they wanted or a guy offering free food and free cum like a lot of ways this could work for them okay question three other than the resurrection of jesus can you think of any explanation that would simultaneously account for all five categories of evidence that J.P. Moreland discussed?

How do you think someone like him would respond to your hypothesis? Well, I think my favorite thing about this question is the implication that society's changing over time is in need of a specific cause. Yeah, let's see. Okay, so can I think of anything other than the resurrection that would explain it? How would Moreland respond to my... Yes and poorly.

Yeah. I just took the second one I wrote probably by sticking his fingers in his ears. All right, but it can't be over quite yet. Finally, question four. Moreland ended his interview by talking about the experiential test what would have to happen before

you'd be willing to take that step yourself a stroke you'd have to be correct my wife would ask why I was making that face. I'm confused.

Searching for some Jesus. Alright. Well, okay. Gotta be honest here. I'm at a bit of a loss. I have closed 15 of these segments now and I'm not sure how to do one with good news. But here it is. We've got one fucking chapter to go,

guys. So when we do this segment again in three weeks, it'll be for the last time. Thank fuck. Before we spin this episode and tuck it under the loaf, I wanted to offer Lucinda's apology for the lack of a twim this week. She promises to be back with extra misogyny next week. 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 alter

my job description if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for setting aside his dream of being an international Rochambeau champion to do this every week. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for setting aside her dream of having an international Rochambeau champion to do this every week. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for setting aside her dream of having

a normal husband. I need to thank Eli Bosnick for setting aside his dream of being successful enough to look down on people like Keith, Lucinda, and me. I also need to thank Rob from Connecticut for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, and if you're dying to know what his line of work has shown him that draws our common sapient ancestry into question, I'm afraid you're gonna have to keep wondering. But most of all, of course,

I want to thank this week's most luscious listeners, Bruce, Jason, David, Steven, Simone, Bowtie, Beck, and Chris, LittleBrother89, Sarvis, TheBuck, and Kaylee. Bruce, Jason, David, and Steven, whose Jacqueline apologizes if it fucked up anybody's viewing of the Super Blood Wolf Moon thing, Simone, Bowtie, Beck, and Chris, who are so bright

they can never really see an eclipse, and LittleBrother89, Sarvis, TheBuck, and Kaylee, who are so sexy, mirror, mirror on the wall, just assume the Buck, and Kaylee, who are so sexy, mirror mirror on the wall, just assume they were excluded. Together, these 10 people, deer, relations,

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If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAtheist.com. Eli, what's the name of the book? My Butt Fucked Me in the Butt. What was it? Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt. Eli, you really should have just gone with, like, what are you talking about, Heath? Fuck my butt. Fuck me in the butt. What was it? Pounded in the butt by my own butt. Pounded in the butt by my own butt. Eli, you really should have just gone with like, what are you talking about, Heath?

That would have been the best. That's true. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.