The Scathing Atheist - 313: Case Closed Edition

Episode Date: February 14, 2019

In this week’s episode, you’ll remember that edible arrangements both exists and is terrible, Donald Trump praises important abolitionists like George Wallace, and Lee Strobel’s book will turn out to have an ending after all. Come see us in Denver! https://theorientaltheater.com/event/332075/God-Awful-Movies-LIVE-in-Denver 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: Trump praises religious leaders for achieving the "abolition of civil rights": https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/07/trump-praises-religious-leaders-for-achieving-the-abolition-of-civil-rights/ https://www.advocate.com/religion/2019/2/07/trump-praises-karen-pence-teaching-anti-lgbtq-school Investigation Reveals Rampant Sexual Abuse in Southern Baptist Churches https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/10/investigation-reveals-rampant-sexual-abuse-in-southern-baptist-churches/ Anti-Vaxxers Protested WA Lawmakers for the Right to Harm Their Kids: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/10/anti-vaxxers-protested-wa-lawmakers-for-the-right-to-harm-their-kids/ Liberty Counsel tells everyone who's not hetero and married to not have sex on Valentine’s Day: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/09/liberty-counsel-if-youre-single-or-gay-dont-have-sex-on-valentines-day/ WV Legislator, a Baptist Pastor, Says “The LGBTQ” Are a “Terrorist Group”: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/10/wv-legislator-a-baptist-pastor-says-the-lgbtq-are-a-terrorist-group/ This Week in Misogyny: Apple and Google offer apps to help Saudi men subjugate their women: https://www.cnn.com/2019/02/13/tech/saudi-app-absher-google-apple-intl/index.html Christian school tells girls to ‘bind breasts’ before show: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/11/christian-school-tells-female-dancers-to-bind-breasts-with-bandages-before-show/

Warning, this week's profanity contains a podcast. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Wix.com, Stamps.com, and by Blowjobs, quite literally the only thing he wants for Valentine's Day. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Uh, hey Beavis, did you know that we, like, evolved from filthy monkey men? No way, fartartknocker. That's cool. It's Thursday.

It's Valentine's Day. And if you just realized that, you are fucked. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Kevin Spacey's New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. You never run out of bad New Jerseyites. It's amazing. Nope. It's always there.

It's not going to happen. On this week's episode, you'll remember that edible arrangements both exists and is terrible. That's not true. Donald Trump praises important abolitionists like George Wallace. And Lee Strobel's book will turn out to have an ending after all. But first, the diatribe. You know, it's bad when they lie to you, but the effort they put into the lie matters. Like, there's a problem in my marriage if my wife's lying to me and sleeping with some other dude behind my back, and the less thorough she's being in her attempt to hide it, the worse it is. And it would pretty much be rock bottom if she stopped lying altogether and said,

I'm going to go fuck Todd. There's a pizza in the fridge. And in case it's not already obvious, this week's diatribe is about the Supreme Court. So here's the thing about today's court. To hear them tell it, there's virtually nothing in this universe more important than religious freedom. They're so concerned with religious freedom that they've expanded out that definition to a hitherto undreamt of degree. They've concocted this ridiculous standard by which I can violate your religious rights by doing something to myself.

See, for all of this nation's history up until five years ago, religious freedom meant, you know, this is a Jewish deli. You can't make me serve a ham and cheese. And now suddenly it means this is a Christian deli. You can't make me serve a Jew. You know, suddenly you have the religious freedom to not cover contraceptive care for your employees. You have the religious freedom to use tax dollars to improve your religious school. You have the religious freedom to not serve customers who violate your religion's dictates these would all have been laughed out of any previous iteration of the highest court and they know that i'm not going to delude myself into thinking i know more about judicial precedent than neil gorsuch but he doesn't mind lying about it right and as bad as this is and it's really

fucking bad there is at least an upshot. Right. Because if you cloak your bigotry in a call for religious freedom, then at the very least, religious freedom should be safe. And that matters. I'm no fan of religion, but I'm a huge fan of religious freedom. If it wasn't for that, I'd have to find a real job. So the silver lining around this cloud of bigotry should be that we have no concerns about actual religious freedom being trampled on. You know, if you're going to sell yourself as an incorruptible crusader for religious rights as an excuse to do all the bigot shit you want to do, a desire for a convincing fiction should force your hand when actual religious freedom cases show up, shouldn't it? Well, as it turns out, no, because they're barely even lying to us anymore.

Meet Dominique Hakim Marcel Ray. Ray was convicted of murdering a 15-year-old girl some two decades ago and was sentenced to death by an Alabama jury. So bad dude, not the hero of any story, but he's still a human being and deserves to be treated as one, except that in addition to being a murderer, he's also a Muslim. And that caused problems. See, a Christian child murderer is afforded certain privileges by prison policy and state law. And among those privileges is the ability to have a faith leader at his side during his execution. Dominique Ray wanted the same thing. And I don't have a hell of a lot of sympathy for child murderers, and I don't have a lot of sympathy for people who need the correct magic words uttered over them, but I have a lot of sympathy for a terrified dying man who wants something familiar close to him as he dies at

the hand of a state that hasn't realized it's not medieval times anymore. Which puts me one up on the folks running the prison apparently because they told him no. They said he could have the Christian guy that all the Christian murderers use, but it was that or nothing. Now think about how little a religious person has to do to sympathize with this inmate, right? Even the faintest effort to try his shoes on, let alone walk in them, would do the trick. They need only imagine any situation whatsoever where they wanted a priest or a pastor or whatever. It doesn't even have to be the last moment they'll exist. They just imagine that moment and imagine being told, nope, you'll have to settle for this imam.

And bam, they understand what's wrong with that. But of course, they have no desire to try on his shoes because they're all gross and Muslim. So when Ray's lawyer hears about this, obviously he's pissed. He files some papers, sends this up the judicial chain of command, and the 11th Circuit puts a stay on the execution while the issue gets sorted out. But Alabama needs to kill people quick. So they appeal that decision to the Supreme Court, the one that's dedicated to protecting religious freedom that they're rewriting centuries of judicial precedent, and they vacate the fucking stay and pave the way for the

anomalous execution last Thursday. In this instance, there actually was a clear case of religious bias. You know, Christians had one set of rights and Muslims had another, and the court couldn't be bothered to give a shit. Every American alive today has always lived in a world where Christians had more rights than people of minority faiths, but now they're codifying it. They're doing it under the auspices of religious freedom, even. But at this point, the court has all but admitted on the record that religious freedom is just a mask they're wearing. And once we all get used to living in a world where the laws on the books give more and better rights to Christian people who fuck the correct gender, the need for the mask will lessen, and pretty soon they won't even bother

to lie to us anymore. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are two star-crossed lovers, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, gonna start off knocking out

one more vulgarity for charity donation this week. Teresa would like us to roast her boyfriend, Nick. Nick's a big fan of Star Wars novels and tabletop games. And I figured this would be a good Valentine's Day one since in the biographical stuff she sent, she mentioned that they've been together for seven and a half years, but he won't marry her because he thinks weddings are, quote, an antiquated, overhyped, expensive tradition steeped in religious and patriarchal nonsense and therefore unnecessary end quote

interesting yeah okay well regardless of all that nick looks like the world's first in cell with a girlfriend doesn't he it's because of an aggressive seven-year argument that's currently ongoing about the settlers of katan very so respect is So, respect is what I'm saying. Nick, Nick, buddy, bring it in. That overhyped, expensive tradition steeped in patriarchal and religious nonsense is a party to celebrate how much you love each other. Bring your whole family together and you dance and you eat food

and you celebrate her. And she gets to wear a pretty dress and take photos with her grandma. Shit's not about you, bro. She probably learned the game root for you which means you owe her and nick i mean this from my heart the only thing more hack than a wedding is the guy who thinks his woker than thou take on marriage is an excuse not to make his girlfriend really, really, really happy. Like we finished playing pandemic legacy levels happy. All I'm saying, Nick, is it's Valentine's Day.

And the sooner you step up, the sooner it will be too late for her to realize you look like you escaped from one of those labs that tests makeup on monkeys. Hurry, get an edible arrangement. Stick with it, Nick. You're doing great. It's a happy lie. Yeah, uh-huh, yeah. And while Nick thinks on what he's done,

we'll take a quick break for a word from our first sponsor this week, Wix. And that's my idea for later sheets. My goodness, kid, that's a million-dollar idea. How do I buy some? Oh, yeah, no problem. I got some in my car. Uh, I mean, do you have a website or something I could look at or order off of?

Uh, no. No, but my trunk is full of later cheese. So, if you'll just wait here, I'll go grab it from your trunk. Wait, wait, wait, you don't have a website? Why don't you just go to Wix.com? Wait, what's Wix.com? It's website creation without limits.

They got 500 templates, the ability to add your own text, images, and videos without needing to know any code. Wix makes turning your dreams into reality a breeze. Wait, I can just make a website? Like, I can just do it myself? You sure can. With Wix's easy to use website builder, you can just drag and drop what you want on there and everything automatically formats the desktop

or mobile. Wow. Think of all the later cheese I could sell. Well, what are you waiting for? Get started now by going to Wix.com slash podcast. That's W-I-X.com slash podcast to get 10% off. Wix.com slash podcast, you say. Latercheese.com, here I come. That's the spirit. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, Donald Trump stacked up 300 Egg McMuffins on a throne of diamonds last week and gave a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. And as usual, the vast majority of his sentences were either verifiably false or contradicted by something he'd said on a different day. time thanks to either his uh motion picture reading level or otherwise thanks to a freudian

slip with racist Tourette's Trump told the crowd of religious people that he's proud of them for all the great work they've done in the quote abolition of civil rights yep I mean Keith you are writing off just a brand new level of honesty. I mean, maybe he was just like, and now my new head of foreign affairs, Cobra Commander. So before we get into the first ever presidential honesty flub that I'm aware of. Not the first one Lester Holt's aware of. I'd say it's worth mentioning a couple other things that Trump said during his speech. For example, his very first

order of business was to praise Second Lady Karen Pence for the amazing work she's doing by teaching art class two days a week at a school that's run by a Christian hate group known as Christianity. In case you missed it,

we're talking about Emmanuel Christian School, which has homophobia built into their curriculum, along with an official policy of refusing to hire anyone from the LGBT community, period. So naturally, Trump's very first bullet point in his speech was giving Karen Pence and Emmanuel Christian a round of applause and he actually clapped himself for the round of applause he started with his hands inches from his

mic because he's a very stupid person all the goddamn time all right how about that international rape cabal that pretends to care about protecting children while systematically victimizing them huh really give it up for those guys. I know it's going to sound like one flat. Everybody blow their own microphone for those guys, too. Yeah, right. Yeah, yeah. No, like anybody can teach kids to draw for a few hours a week,

but it takes a special kind of lady to do it with bigotry. I mean, but sans bigotry, can you imagine that even being an applause point? Right? Like also pence's wife mother got a job and it didn't hit her probably he honestly probably thinks that's her name but getting back to the big highlight which was obviously trump falling ass backwards into bigoted honesty. That's pretty much exactly what happened to his voting base on Election Day of 2016, too. So I guess it fits.

So according to his staff, here's the line he was supposed to read. Quote, many of our greatest strides from gaining our independence to abolition to civil rights to extending the vote for women have been led by people of faith and started in prayer end quote so first of all that's stupid uh just about everyone on all sides of every issue in u.s history was religious and right sometimes yeah but more importantly donald trump thinks the north was the good guy in the civil war but but only because they prayed better. That's why he thinks that is. It's like the black people near Liam Neeson who prayed better. So either

that or the President of the United States got confused by a fucking hyphen and wasn't capable of reading the sentence on the teleprompter that Sarah Huckabee Sanders was also mouthing to him like a stage mom from in the wings. And in Megan's Chorus Line news tonight,

the Catholic Church actually got some good news this week, but it still involved raping kids. It just didn't involve them raping kids. So this story comes to us via a six-month investigation by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express News that identified 250 staffers and volunteers with Southern Baptist churches that have been charged with sex crimes

in just the past 10 years. Okay, and let me emphasize the word charged here, right? Unlike the Catholic stuff, this investigation makes no effort to quantify how many were accused, let alone how many actual sex criminals there are here. Yeah, we should emphasize that when you combine the fact that about 46 out of a thousand rapists are arrested with systems churches, especially have put in place to protect their staff.

This number is way higher. Yeah. Yeah. Orders and magnitude higher. Right. And if you're dealing with a hundred rapists,ists at a time, I guess we arrest four of them plus a slave or something. Yep. A rapey torso. It's a weird system. It's a very weird system we have.

I don't make the rules, Heath. All right. So this story is part one in a three-part expose, and it opens on the story of Debbie Vasquez, who was 14 years old when she was molested by her pastor. Four years later, the married pastor, who was 12 years her senior, would leave her pregnant. So as an adult, she paid her way to the Southern Baptist Convention, where she urged Baptist leaders to adopt policies to help prevent the same thing from happening to other girls, to, at the very fucking least, adopt policies similar to the new and improved Catholic ones. They rejected every proposal she had that was in 2008 so the papers went out to see what had happened since oh oh let me guess their cemetery

maintenance costs went up right yes right because they murdered debbie vasquez different implication in my mind but uh but no, they interviewed her. Mine was much more moral, just to be clear. It was. All right, so to nobody's surprise, the intervening decade was filled with pastors, youth leaders, Sunday school teachers, and church volunteers raping children. It also describes perpetrators writing out the statute of limitations, church leaders sitting on their hands and convicted sex offenders re-entering the baptist workforce i mean for fuck's sake the story highlights a registered sex offender who's still employed by a baptist non-profit that works with student organizations and the name of the charity is touching the future today, Inc. It's like he's waving his pedophile dick in our faces here. He's like, hey, Bill, what do you think we should call our charity?

How about Rapists and Rapist Protectors? It's a little too subtle. Maybe Show Me on the Dollar? It's good. I like it, but it's vague how about touching the future today oh that's perfect that's perfect i like it nailed it absolutely what you guys don't know is that show me on the dollar.com and rapist and rapist protectors.com are already like parked by the catholic church and look as bad as all of this is, and it'll get worse, no doubt, when parts two and three come out, we should still also be clear on how little this exonerates the Vatican. Because I know a lot of Catholics are sharing this story as if to say, see, it happens everywhere.

You guys are just picking on us because this country's anti-Catholic. But here's what this story doesn't include. It doesn't include a sovereign city state investing billions of dollars in covering up the crimes and protecting the criminals from justice to this very day. Right. It doesn't include pedophile priests being sent to ever more vulnerable populations. It includes a lot of moving on, but not like with a fucking system in place to make sure they go somewhere where it would be even harder for the kids to get help. right? It doesn't include the guy in charge of dealing with these complaints getting promoted to God's incarnation on Earth. Those are the most heinous aspects of the crime,

and those belong to the Catholic Church alone. Also, Catholics, other people rape too is a weird flex that you should drop. Yeah, you should already know something's wrong by the time you get there. And in herd impunity news tonight, ah, Washington, home state of my beautiful, talented wife, legal weed, and now the largest

measles outbreak in decades. All thanks to baby killing stupid people. What the fuck? Okay, you guys like dead babies so much, now you get to smoke the whole bag every anti-vaxxer has to smoke a bag of dead babies whenever we want and i want that all the time so it's a lot yeah we should point out that this is baby killing stupid people all the way down and all the way up washington is one of the 17 states that allows no as an acceptable reason for not protecting your and more importantly,

everyone else's kids from some of the most dangerous and deadly diseases in world history and other diseases. It's just a fucking panoply, a statement to which the anti-vaxxers best possible recourse is. Yeah, but only some of them. That's true. That is true. Well, Washington, the state, may be getting ever so slightly less dumb this week as there is legislation in the state house that would keep religious and medical exceptions, but get rid of the exception from I read a blog once. Okay. So they're keeping medical exemptions and also non-medical exemptions.

Yeah. But they're getting rid of a third category that they believe exists. Yeah, right. So the new proposal is, okay, you can still refuse out of stupidity, but your stupidity better have a special hat or something. Sincere fucking hat. Yeah. Magic hat. Yeah. So as you can imagine, the ignorant baby killers of Washington state are not happy about this. protest during a public hearing this past Friday with nearly 700 parents showing up to express their concern that they might not be able to refuse their children life-changing medicine based on their own ignorance. Well, unless they're willing to say the word religion out loud once

ever. Yeah. Yeah. As, as, as much. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, luckily for us, we've got the audio, but more importantly importantly our sound editor morgan has run it through our brand new scathing atheist honesty filter morgan fire that baby up okay order order uh chair recognizes bedraggled vegan looking woman whose eyes are way too wide? Hi, everyone. I have a mental illness that is untreated and it has really allowed me to fixate on information that I know deep down is

bad and untrue, but if I admit that to myself, I also have to admit that the center of my life is my kids, and I am crying now. I'm clearly unstable. I need help. Whatever you you do don't listen to me you should probably take my children away okay great work thank you for that uh now the chair recognizes farmer who drove three hours to give his opinion on a medical issue yeah oh thanks I lack education as well as an underlying ability to understand.

But because of America's ideas about bootstrap culture and faux egalitarianism, nobody has ever told me that my feeble attempts at self-education is a miserable failure. education is a miserable failure. So instead, a series of ever more dishonest and evil people have convinced me my lack of understanding is in fact knowledge of a great and powerful secret. And I am here to demonstrate why democracy is a bad idea. Okay, that was absolutely terrible. Now the chair recognizes... Oh, sorry. Sorry, I have to do this. This is a rude thing that I have to do. I also have a mental illness. Great. Got it. And finally, a person who knows what the fuck he's talking about is going to go last and try to condense several hundred years worth of scientific knowledge into a tweet sized explanation for people who are actively dishonest about how open they are to his expertise.

Thank you. This was a terrible idea. We should not do this at all. I'm not a science communicator. I'm a scientist, which is a very different job than the one I'm being forced to do. Now, I went to school and

am in a very demonstrable way a smarter and even better person than the people I'm being asked to pander to. You should listen to me because I'm better than you. Please don't bring diseases from the Middle Ages back. And while we send out a squire to patrol the moats for lepers, we'll hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucid. A man wrote the Bible. A whore is what she was. If it's a legitimate race. Then it's your slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! for lepers, we'll hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucid. Let's face it, in today's fast-paced, interconnected world, it can be hard to find time to be the misogynist that God wants you to be.

But luckily, there's an app for that. It's called Absure, and it was created by the Saudi Arabian government to help men track the women under their divinely dictated subjugation. Now, this is far from just a tracking app. It also gives men access to a woman's visa, national ID, traffic record, health records, and even allows the men to decide whether women can travel abroad and how long they can stay. It's kind of like a Swiss army knife of misogyny. And as bad as that is, it's the kind of backward shit we've come to expect from the Saudi

government, even under its new and improved ladies can drive reforms. But it's quite a bit less than we've come to expect from American tech companies like Apple and Google, both of which offer the app on their platforms. Well, Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon is hoping to change that by shining a huge fucking light on it. He sent a letter to the CEOs of both companies asking them to remove the apps and to further prevent their technical infrastructure to be used for enabling, quote, abhorrent surveillance and control of women,

end quote. At the time of this recording, neither company has responded except to say that they're looking into it. But I feel like if there's anybody out there that should be able to look into shit really fucking quick, it's Google. But of course, not every effort to make the lives of misogynists easier is high tech. Take, for example, the problem of boobs, particularly the way that women flaunt them around with all their jiggling and gyrations. I mean, maybe sometime augmented reality will allow for an app that adds digital burkas

to all of the women in your field of view. But until we reach that promised land, men will have to settle for tape. And no, the tape doesn't go over their eyes. That would be such a better story. But instead, I get to share the story of Sanford University, a Christian college in Alabama that sent out an important notice to the female students who intended to compete in a singing and dancing competition. They were told, I shit you not, to bind their fucking boobs so that nobody

in the audience would see, quote, noticeable movement, end quote. And how, pray tell, does one bind their boobs? Well, don't worry, they were happy to offer up a few potential solutions, such as aspanages, tape, or multiple bras. So yeah, apparently the college didn't even have the sense to deny this when it came out publicly. Hell, this statement even said that they did it so that, quote, none of the students were embarrassed or singled out by what the lights could show, end quote. You know, in case later in life they realize how shameful it was to have mobile boobs. Anyway, I've got a quick letter to pen to some of these singers and dancers on other things they can tightly wrap those ace bandages around.

So I'm going to go ahead and hand things back over to Noah, Heath and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next up in headlines, we have a very special Valentine's Day message from the Liberty Council. Case anyone's not familiar, that's the hate group of Christian attorneys founded by Matt Staver. And they spend most of their time promoting legal action against anti-religious organizations like, you know, science and gay people. Most recently, they made headlines for lobbying Congress to rethink its anti-lynching bill that would make the textbook example of a hate crime into a hate crime. Yep. And this week, they've been promoting a fuckless valentine's day during which single people and gay people should not be having sex and ideally not be existing

right liberty council yeah here's how far i am from batshit christian insanity when i read the title of this article i was like how would a single person even have? Oh, they mean not married. Yes, right. Exactly. And then you realize that like gay is a subset of single to them, right? It's like you have to unlock the stupid one word at a time. Words matter, guys. Words matter. So Liberty Council is calling this thing their day of purity.

And they announced it with a video from their communications director, Holly Mead. So, Holly Mead, picture Kim Davis without all those live teeth getting in the way. And according to Holly Mead, quote, the Day of Purity is an opportunity for young people to take a stand for purity. I'm going to guess it's purity. What do you think she's going to say? My guess is purity. It's purity. It's purity.

The Day of Purity is an opportunity for young people to take a stand for the word in the title that I started that sentence with. In today's culture, students are bombarded with messages luring them to become sexually active at a young age and to experiment with their sexual preferences. luring them to become sexually active at a young age and to experiment with their sexual preferences. But research confirms that practicing purity before marriage has spiritual, physical, emotional, and social benefits. End quote. Why are these people always such obvious closet cases?

Experiment with their sexual preferences. Hey, you know who's tempted to be gay? Gay people. And that's fine, but that know who's tempted to be gay? Gay people. And that's fine, but that's who's tempted to be gay. That's pretty much the whole thing. I'm sorry, wait. Let's back up. Did she just say that research had confirmed the spiritual benefits of something?

Yeah, sounds like pretty fucking fancy research. Got some Ghostbusters equipment, I guess. And then they graph purity along with spirit units and they look for a trend. I don't know. So in response to the day of purity, we here at The Scathing Atheist are promoting a day of enormously prolific gay fucking. And non-married fucking. And whatever kind of fucking you can think of that would anger these bigots. And that includes almost all the fucking.

It does. All the fun fucking. Pretty much all of it. And to whatever extent it's legal, you should be sending those videos to the Liberty Council. And also Heath. Happy fucking Valentine's Day, everyone. Happy Valentine's Day. Right.

Heath apparently forgot what our listeners look like. But go ahead, people. Send him videos of you fucking. Okay. Or he won't learn. Don't listen to Eli. I think you're lovely in your own way. And finally tonight,

in limp terroristed news tonight, you'll get that in a minute nailed it west virginia legislator and mean cartoon of kevin from the office eric porterfield needed gay people to just let him explain this week and it went as well as it has every single time a straight white guy has said that in the history of ever yeah uh. Hey, straight white guys, everybody, go ahead, bring it in. Take a knee. Quick PSA for you guys. Friends don't let friends finish when they say, let me finish. You just don't say any more words.

Don't let your friends say any more words. You guys let Heath say more words all the time. I'm talking to you guys on this record. You don't let anybody finish. Nope. Nope. That's true in so many ways. We're looking at you, Louis C.K. So here's the story. Last week, a different Republican was trying to amend a bill to block cities from enacting anti-discrimination rules, which can be tricky. So Porterfield decided to help by calling the LGBTQ community a bunch of socialists and then quoting milo yiannopoulos's dangerous faggot tour during a committee meeting yeah it doesn't doesn't matter

if those are the lyrics to the rap song buddy you're still not allowed to sing along to just that part you gotta do this for years you gotta right yeah so obviously this didn't go over well and rather than apologize for using a slur in the middle of a government meeting porterfield doubled down calling the lgbtq community quote a modern day version of the clue clucks Klan, end quote, and explained that they were a, quote, terrorist group who are persecuting him. Yep. End quote. Okay. I have questions.

First of all, does he think the modern day version of the KKK is not equal to itself? When are they in his head? That's confusing. Also, gay terrorists are persecuting me is by far my favorite excuse from a repressed gay bigot

who got caught being gay. That's fantastic. Yeah, right. And after six years of doing this show, it's amazing how many of those excuses it has to compete with. We should have written them down. It's just a little bit of work work but we'd have a big list now that's on us anyways not to worry uh this is west virginia so unless he becomes a democrat nobody's going to call for him to step

down he will uh continue to lead government in that state even though he is possibly the least qualified person to do so however that does give does give Heath and I a business idea. Oh, Jesus, not again. Morgan, hit the music. Hi, I'm Eli Bosnick. And I'm Heath Enright. You know, in today's environment, it can be hard for a white person to know what to do when you accidentally reveal that you're a giant bigot.

And that's why here at The Scathing Atheist, we've combined a solution with white people's favorite activity, multi-week seminars. That's right. Introducing Shutting the Fuck Up, a 10-week course in mediating racial partisanship caused by misexpression. This 10-week intensive course will cover all the subjects white people need to keep up in today's fast-paced world.

Like not volunteering stories about the time you went hunting for black people. And not volunteering stories about the times you wore blackface. And not covering up for proven racists and then pretending you never did when they talk about how awesome Hitler was. And much, much more. We'll cover the three core tenets of shutting the fuck up. Shutting the fuck and up. So reserve your space today for just 12 easy payments of $345.

Shut the fuck up. It's the right choice for white people. For a while. Still going. If you have right choice for white people. For a while. Still going. If you have to ask, still longer. Now. Nope. Ten minutes after the last guy asks.

That's when. And then more. And on that note, we'll shut the fuck up. He, Thelai, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, Lee Strobel will finally shut the fuck up. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, Lee Strobel will finally shut the fuck up too. Hi, I'm No Illusions, and when you run a small business like I do, you're used to dealing with new headaches every day, like equipment malfunctions.

Noah! Noah! You're never gonna believe what I got stuck in the printer. Office drama. Noah, you're not going to believe what part of his body Eli got stuck in the printer. It's great. And unexpected lawsuits. And just to be perfectly clear, by printer, I mean the guy who's screen printing the shirts for the live show. Okay, but thanks to Stamps.com, there's a new headache you don't have to worry about, and that's rising postage rates. With Stamps.com, you save five cents off every first

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That's Stamps.com. Enter scathing. Help me. No. Okay. You heard him there. No. No. In November 2012, a 36-year-old Salvadoran fisherman named Salvador Alvarenga set off on a two-day fishing trip.

But when a storm hit, he was swept out to sea and his radio disabled. He survived by eating fish, birds, turtles, and eventually the companion that didn't make it until he washed ashore in the Marshall Islands in January of 2014. When asked about his record 438 days lost at sea, he said to have summarized the harrowing experience in only seven words imagine reading lee strobel's case for christ but we made it guys here we are clear on the other side of the pacific and tonight we'll be summarizing the 15th and final chapter of the book how excited are you? I am fucking excited. Atlas Shrugged, here we come. Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I quit the podcast. And of course, joining us in this celebration is my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back. This is Valentine's Day. This is what we're doing on Valentine's Day. Well, we're recording it on Tuesday night. Okay, so here we are.

We finally reached the promised land, the conclusion, which he grandiosely dubs the verdict of history. What does the evidence establish and what does it mean today? All right, so we open up on November 8th, 1981. Lee had locked himself in his office because he was thinking about Jesus really hard. So when his wife knocked and he wouldn't let her in, that was the sound of him thinking really hard about Jesus. Yeah, right, right. I guess to me, this is where the saddest moment of the book comes. It's the part where he admits that it took him 21 months to write this.

Took him 21 months to write this. And okay, so this descends into a TLDR for the entire book, wherein he reminds us of what we read because he's expecting Christian levels of reading retention. But it actually works out well for us since it gives us an opportunity to summarize our criticisms and not have to revisit this book with the summary segment. So we're going to start the summary of chapter one. Can the biographies of Jesus be trusted?

Can Mel Gibson's documentary be trusted yeah right passion was there really that's the question the number of passions he's not even posing a straw man here he's got like a single piece of straw that he's pretending to wrestle like jim carrey and liar well and then we revisit uh chapter two. Do the biographies of Jesus stand up to scrutiny? Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry. Note to author.

You get to say that Craig Blomberg argued X. I get to say if he did so convincingly. That's how books work. Yeah. Even in his tiny little summary, he says, the way the gospels line up is evidence of how true they are. Also, the way they fail to line up as evidence of how true they are also the way they fail to line up as evidence of that yep the way they agree and contradict is evidence that they're true

gospels get a nice inconspicuous b minus inaccuracy so you know a plus inaccuracy i guess but then we pop out of the New Testament for a paragraph to ask once more, is there credible evidence for Jesus outside his biographies? And okay, this opens with the weirdest hurdle to brag about Jesus clearing. Okay. He quotes one of his interviewees as saying, we have better historical documentation for Jesusesus than the founder of any other ancient religion as though that were the bar we typically use to determine credibility

right well you don't have a signed contract per se but the claim that he owes you four thousand dollars is better evidence than the life and times of zero asters so i guess this was the argument from height right yeah yeah i'm gonna stack up four thousand one dollar bills and you stack up all the money with zoroaster on the front okay great we got our piles you owe me like three grand that's seriously the argument in this entire chapter jesus is god by several feet in terms of book height. Well, better question. Does this mean that according to Lee Strobel, there was a turning point at which Christianity started being true? Like there must have been a book that tipped the scales like Zoroastrian, the Thai.

They were equally true. Now it's true. You believe really hard. And okay, in a grim reminder that we were nearly a third of the way through this book before we considered our first piece of physical evidence, we revisit the chapter titled, Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict

Jesus' Biographies? Okay, now I'm just curious which archaeological discoveries did not contradict the Bible. What would not? Trying to find some dirt that isn't 6,000 years old to touch with your shovel. Need some new dirt. Do we need compost?

If I could dig just in the compost from this month. And then he fires up our nose streak again with the summary of the chapter titled, Is the Jesus of history the same as the jesus of faith hell jesus of the faith isn't the same as jesus of the faith right well and this is where he honestly argues that you can't trust atheists because they start from the assumption that miracles aren't real his argument is literally look if you force us to start from reality, it's impossible to argue our side. That's a defense of his religion. Okay, so now we revisit the question,

was Jesus really convinced that he was the son of God? And I feel like if this chapter doesn't start with a list of other people who were convinced they were the son of God, it's trying to hide something, right? And no, it does not start with one i would not love to red pen this thing for him and then we get the chapter title that wins my most tautological question anyone ever got wrong award was jesus crazy would he claim to be the son of god oh yes And this is where he reminds us that a real psychologist proved that Jesus not only wasn't crazy, but was the sanest person in the history of sanity.

Like Trump. All right. You stack up your doctor's notes that say Zoroaster was sane. Oh, you don't have one? That's what I thought. Jesus wins by one sanity unit infinity percent infinity and one of the pieces of evidence the psychologist used to get there by the way was that jesus had no quote inappropriate emotions end quote yeah this

is a guy who screamed himself hoarse at an out of season fig tree hey man did you just spit in that blind guy's eye well yeah yeah but i did it very calmly the son of god jesus is calm he's calmer than you he also adds and this is why we love him that crazy people can't do miracles yes okay this is just proof interesting this is just proof that lee strubble has never gotten oral sex from a girl with a nose ring otherwise you wouldn't put that i'm just saying so somehow he manages to get this nonsensical question wrongest of all he says okay so was jesus omnipresent or did he exist in only a single location at a time omnipresent exactly was he immutable or did he start out as a baby and wind

up as an adult immutable exactly okay he wasn't immutable but he had immutability. Yes, right. He chose to occupy the time dimension every so often. Always. Always. But see, that's what I love about these chapter summaries. They have to concentrate the crazy. He got to spread it out over whole chapters earlier.

These are the Tinder bios of apologetics. Not letting my father's death slow me down from living my best life aloha well then we ask the question that seems crazy amounts of unnecessary if you actually think you've convincingly demonstrated that jesus has the attributes of a god was jesus's death a sham and his resurrection a hoax. The answers from Lee Strobel were no, not a sham on the first part. End of chapter.

Question was in and form, so the second part was already done. We're set. Yeah, and it's just another argument disproved by the existence of eli oh really lee nobody would intentionally get themselves crucified as part of a prank war i beg to differ sir okay but you guys got to admit andrew's face was priceless wasn't it right no it really was come on poor guy he was always scared and after that we revisit chapter 12. Was Jesus' body really absent from his tomb? And this is where we learn that William Lane Craig's evidence wasn't just convincing. It was striking. Oh, Jesus.

The evidence was sultry. The evidence was full of unbridled enthusiasm. What the fuck does he think a thesaurus does? Where does he come up with this stuff? Based on how he writes, I think he thinks a thesaurus hunts other dinosaurs. Then it's time to dig back into the question, was Jesus seen alive after his death on the cross? And he even repeats the asinine quote,

the appearance of Jesus are as well authenticated as anything in antiquity. Anything in antiquity! When I type that in the notes, the paper clip asks me if I meant something true. There's a brown squiggly under, I've never gotten a brown squiggly.

What? Alright, so let's put this in language that Lee Strobel can understand. I'm going to stack up these physical objects from antiquity and you stack up your resurrected Jesus. Did I win yet? Are we done?

See, Heath, what you're missing is that the truest things get truer over time. The way I get hotter the the farther away from you are. But just because we're done with the summary doesn't mean we're done with the chapter or even that we're halfway fucking through it. So then we move on to a subheading that seems to somehow presage the Trump administration. It's called Failing Mueller's Challenge. It's called Failing Muller's Challenge.

Yeah, and this part opens with Lee candidly admitting that he was shocked by how convincing he was being right now. Literally. He actually uses the word ambushed. He was ambushed by himself. Yes. Amazing note. Yes. Well, and he admits here that he really wanted Jesus to turn out to be a myth because it would be so, quote, safe and reassuring, end quote.

Because you know how reassuring it is to think about the eternal unthinking darkness of the other side of death? Yeah, he longed for that. About like I do since I've read this book. Yeah, there's no such thing as secular bias on this. Like, we want your stupid thing to be true. You do whatever you want your whole life. You pillage, you plunder, you steal, you rape. You're about to die and you say, I accept Jesus really quick and you go to heaven.

That would be fucking great. Who wouldn't want that to be true? But, you know, you guys also caused the abolition of civil rights as we learned this week from the President of the United States. So we have to yell at you. Hurts us more than it hurts you. No, it doesn't. But, you know, still stop. Yeah. Yeah.

The people it hurts in order is the kids you fuck, gays, women, racial minorities, people who pay taxes, you, us. Yeah. We ranked them earlier. And he offers up such patently absurd justification as the clincher for him. He says, according to famous historians so and so it takes two full generations for myths to develop which it was probably a much easier sell in a pre-911 world but also the earliest records we have are from two full generations

after jesus's death well and to bolster the earliness claim he offers up one dispute of papyrus fragment and the claim that the gospel of mark was based on an even earlier work that could be super early yeah yeah and here's a piece of blank papyrus that shows the resurrected body yeah they drew what was in his tomb

here obviously christ is god look i know this isn't how it works because Lee Strobel's a lying liar, but you guys ever wonder what Lee Strobel thinks is the most true? Is it cave paintings? I bet it's cave paintings.

I read his book. He's trying to stack up caves. This is fucking difficult. But they're going to be huge, though. You can tell. And that's what the titular Mueller's challenge is, by the way. So a historian in 1844 challenged people to find a single example of myths accruing within a few years of an event.

And nobody could do it. Now, within a few years is a bullshit standard since the earliest thing we have is at least 20 years after Christ's death. And the earliest thing that mentions all the mythological shit is even newer. But even by that bullshit standard, 9-11 truthers still disprove this argument right and even if you define myth as supernatural you still have the miracle of the sun or some wings of 9-11 truthers right right and if you define it specifically divinely you have the miracles of Sai Baba so yeah and some 9-11 truth yeah and what you definitely do not have is the truth exactly right yeah exactly so then he checks his work he asks in one subheading if his collection of the evidence has been sufficiently

thorough and the words that immediately follow the bolded question are i shit you not quote yes it has been confidence confidence is so important he's literally writing this just like should i keep writing about you know what i'm gonna stop myself right there stop selling i am buying my book right now have Yeah. Lee Strobel, have these $20. Thank you, Lee Strobel. Thank you for those $20. This is all in the book. And now that we're all convinced Jesus is the unique son of God, or stupid, what should we do with that information? Why, Lee's compiled a quick list for us here.

Yeah, but even in his list, he's going further than his own bullshit evidence takes him. He keeps saying stuff like, if Jesus conquered death, well, then obviously he can open the door of eternal life for me, too. But that doesn't even follow. Again, even if we grant your dumb shit, I could produce a solid defecation. That doesn't

mean I can impart that ability onto Eli. But, again, you gotta admit, Andrew's face was priceless. And worth it. So scared. Eli gets hotter as you get further away. Running with his little legs.

It's like a nine iron. It's good from about 100 yards. But Lee is still not done rambling here. So we get yet another subheading to teach us how to be Christian, titled The Formula of Faith. Yes, this book literally has a goddamn altar call. Yeah.

And he gives up this path to the Jesusness in three easy steps, starting with one, believe. Yep. Yep. Step one is just accept this shit and quit with all the damn thinking step two don't make lists of steps um step three are you still reading this what what did i just say or put your dick in the box wait sorry different different list what's in the box all right then we get to the actual step two which

is receive because the way this works is that you have to believe it's real before it'll do anything and if it doesn't do anything you're just not believing hard enough yeah and this starts with a weird gripe about how all the other religions make you do stuff right you just envision like lee fumbling a prayer wheel and a yarmulke going around like that. There has to be a better way. He's trying to do nunchuck moves with to fill in just my eye, my eye and myself again.

Okay. I probably really have. And finally we get step three, which fucks up the rhyme scheme here. Become. And finally, we get step three, which fucks up the rhyme scheme here. Become. This section was definitely called, like, sleeve for a while.

You need to become the arm of God. Believe, receive, cleave. And this is where he points out how much better a person he is than he used to be. And by implication, how much better Christians are than non-Christians. Just, you know, better humans all around. Right. Deceive.

Fuck. Fuck. That would be perfect. Damn it. I kind of nailed my last few sentences, though. I'm sticking with become, but that would be perfect.

Damn it. There's also a brief moment of self-awareness where he's going like, I guess that might sound like a load of shit to you. It would have sounded like a load of shit to me if I weren't already this religion. But I am. And if you made it this far in this stupid fucking book, you probably are too. So what the hell?

I can admit it. James McAvoy turns to the camera. What the fuck are you going to do about it? What the fuck are you going to do about it? But then Lee magnanimously invites us to think for ourselves in a subheading titled Reaching Your Own Verdict. But just don't, you know, draw a conclusion based on the flimsy evidence that he's offered up, mind you. He's got a particular way that he wants you to reach that verdict right well yeah he says if i've convinced you be a christian if i haven't convinced you read better books and then be a right yeah right keep studying yes and and in this conclusion

chapter lee did us the favor of leaving out the deliberation questions but it's kind of become a tradition so i wrote a few on my own to polish this book off once and for all so question one what was the least convincing argument that lee offered up oh god tough one i'm gonna go with hysterosity according to height it's good uh cities moved around a lot back then. I still can't get over the idea of a fidgety city exasperating its mom in the car or something. Will you sit still? Not touching. Can't get mad.

You're a city. This is weird. Maybe pull over. All right. Least convincing argument from Lee Strobel. I'm going with giant contradictions in the Bible don't count because the order of words in Greek don't matter. Greek didn't go from left to right or top to bottom. You're supposed to read it like a word cloud.

And that's an argument we got. Yep. All right. Question two. What argument against his religion that he left out was the most glaring omission? That would be the argument from Donald Trump trump oh nice one yeah the existence of mormonism that would have fucked a lot of it up all right how about the fed that if we accept his epistemology we also have to believe that darius the great won his crown by killing a sorcerer pretending to be the rightful king

and then jacking off a horse yeah you read weird books can i give you that feedback uh i'm gonna go with the argument from raving atheist aliens all right and finally question three the question that really matters are you a christian now well see as the only married woman on the panel here, I get to duck this one. Because if I was a Christian, I'd need my husband to tell me what my opinion was to begin with. Oh, right. No, good one.

Pass. Okay, well, I've got a tweet scheduled for the day before I die. So not yet. Aquinas. Yes. No, I'm not again it was fun though it was great

hold on okay let me take a look at Lee's numbers here again over 5 million copies sold another 13 books in the case for collection damn tempting Lee I gotta say it's damn tempting to be convinced. But no,

still an atheist, but maybe we'll still hit the big time and get picked up by YouTube or something. Until then, we're gonna thank Lee for finally shutting the fuck up. We're gonna thank you for listening along, and we're gonna close this book for the last fucking time. Yes.

Delete, delete, delete. Yeah. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have my oven preheated to 451 degrees. Before we lock Eli back in his cage for the night, I want to remind you one more time that you can come see us live in Denver on March 9th. But if you want VIP tickets or you want to come to the Platinum Night, you need to get that shit quick. They are both almost sold out. We'll have links on the show notes for more information. 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, The Skeptic Heart, 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 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, this podcast would be like an aborted masturbation if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for always being there for me when I need him. I need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lusions

for always needing me when I'm there, and I need to thank the lovely in his own way Eli Bosney for always being elsewhere when I need him to be. Also need to thank Beavis and Butthead for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, and Rob for facilitating that introduction, but most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Melanie, Joshua, Emily,

Julianne, David, Toxteth, Madison, Stephen, and Andrew. Melanie, Joshua, and Emily, who are so classy their kick-ass has to be uncorked, Julianne, David, and Toxteth, whose intellects were granted a formal exception to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and Madison, Stephen, and Andrew, who could make a glory hole out of an Einstein ring. Together, these nine noble non-believers who necessitate

neology to naturally name their notorious new blessings nudged our net worth northward this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the delicious genitalia it takes to give us money, but if 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 app-free version up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended app-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices

of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robertson handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScalingAdeist.com Edible arrangements are amazing. That's what? The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright

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