The Scathing Atheist - 317: Irrational Edition

Episode Date: March 14, 2019

In this week’s episode, Jenny Mccarthy will refuse to accept the existence of Denmark, Heath will make a pi joke for three math nerds, and George Pell will spend less time in prison that we’ve spent doing this show. For more info about American Atheists’ Annual convention, click here: https://www.aacon2019.org/ 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: MMR vaccine still doesn’t cause autism: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/05/major-study-of-650000-patients-finds-no-link-between-mmr-vaccine-and-autism/ The United Methodist Church Has Formally Adopted a Stance of Anti-LGBTQ Bigotry: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/26/the-united-methodist-church-has-formally-adopted-a-stance-of-anti-lgbtq-bigotry/ Trump's science adviser won't challenge him on climate change misinformation: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/10/trumps-science-adviser-wont-challenge-him-on-climate-change-misinformation/ Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case Involving Taxpayers Funding Church Renovations https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/04/supreme-court-wont-hear-case-involving-taxpayers-funding-church-renovations/ Utah is about to make it legal to have sex outside of marriage: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/07/utah-is-about-to-make-it-legal-to-have-sex-outside-of-marriage/ Unplanned got an R rating and is gonna fucking TANK: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/05/the-anti-abortion-film-unplanned-got-an-r-rating-for-disturbing-bloody-images/ Video shows a South African preacher pretending to bring a dead man back to life: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/02/27/video-shows-a-south-african-preacher-pretending-to-bring-a-dead-man-back-to-life/ This Week in Misogyny: Brazilian minister of women warns gender equality will lead to domestic abuse: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/12/brazils-minister-of-women-gender-equality-will-lead-to-domestic-violence/ An 11-Year-Old’s Forced Birth in Argentina Shows the Cruelty of “Pro-Lifers” https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/07/an-11-year-olds-forced-birth-in-argentina-shows-the-cruelty-of-pro-lifers/ Iranian women’s rights activist sentenced to 38 years and 148 lashes: https://womenintheworld.com/2019/03/11/iranian-lawyer-who-defended-womens-right-to-remove-hijab-gets-38-years-148-lashes/?fbclid=IwAR3PlKZeHEiqrKJt0gZDZfAnTDTn2U9se_x0uNRsAWreX9mAFmE6TguEgHQ An Aborted 6-Week-Old Embryo Got a Green Light to Sue an Alabama Abortion Clinic https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/09/an-aborted-6-week-old-embryo-got-a-green-light-to-sue-an-alabama-abortion-clinic/

Warning, the following podcast contains excessive profanity. Sorry, just seeing that George Pell will be eligible for parole in 2022. Correction, the following podcast contains insufficient levels of profanity. This week's episode of The Scaling Atheist is brought to you by Wix, ZipRecruiter, Stamps.com, and by Boeing's newest aircraft, the 737.1. Now, with less careening into the ground at 600 miles per hour. Boeing. On second thought, we shouldn't have named our airplane company after an onomatopoeia for bouncing.

And now, the scathing atheist. This is Michael from Denver, Colorado. I grew up attending churches and private schools that promoted young earth creationism. I grew up attending churches and private schools that promoted young earth creationism, and I had that education supplemented at home with further content from the likes of Amish Wolverine, Not-A-Doctor Robbie Zacharias, and Dwayne the Galloper Gish. However, I also was at the Godawful Movies live show in Denver, and what I witnessed there added to the enormous pile of evidence that compels me to say that, as a survivor of creationist indoctrination,

I assure you we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men and women. Go to the live shows! It's Thursday. It's March 14th. And it's Pi Day. Yep, and the rational time to start celebrating is about 3 hours, 49 minutes, and 20.5 seconds after midnight. So too late. I have no illusions.

I'm disappointed we didn't mean dessert and Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Artie Lang's New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Jenny McCarthy will refuse to accept the existence of Denmark. That pie joke was amazing for one nerd. And George Bell will spend less time in prison than we've spent doing this fucking show.

But first, the diatribe. Of all the bedtime parables about children being devoured by carnivores, I guess the boy who cried wolf is my favorite, but that story only really works if it's the same kid on wolf duty all week, right? Like, it's a much more fucked up story if little Andy goes out one night and yells wolf just to fuck with everybody, then little Bobby goes out and does it again the next night. Then Chucky does it the next night and then Davey goes out the next night and sees a real wolf.

Right. And that parable, the one too gruesome and fatalistic for anyone to bother writing, turns out to be the appropriate one for our present circumstance. And the parts of Andy, Bobby and Chucky will be played by William Miller, Hal Lindsey, and Harold Camping, and the part of Davey will be played by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists. See, scientists by their very nature are understated. Colloquially, people talk in certainties, but scientists talk in error bars. It's a hallmark of scientific communication to never overstate the evidence almost to a fault right like even when their level of confidence is functionally indistinguishable from certainty they'll still call it sigma something that's why you got atheists walking around talking about being

6.998 on the dawkins scale scientifically minded people avoid absolute declarations so when these motherfuckers start screaming holy shit we're all die, we should damn well sit up and listen. But we're not. And a lot of the reason that we're not is that while scientists were careful not to ever exaggerate their findings and couch their declarations in appropriate academic humility, Andy, Bobby and Chucky were scouring their thesauruses for the most bombastic adjectives English had to offer over every stupid fucking thing that annoyed them. English had to offer over every stupid fucking thing that annoyed them. Women voting, interracial marriage, television, video games, the Teletubbies, whatever it was, it earned the most flamboyant and unrestrained rhetoric. It would be a harbinger of doom. It would be the death of humanity.

It would be the end of the world and not just any old end, but one with zombies and blood to the horses, bridles and dogs and cats living together and shit. Even their end of the world had to be ornamented with comically inflated imagery. And so when Poindexter starts using the barest hint of that language to describe a real apocalypse scenario, we, the information consuming public, have heard way worse. We've lived through way worse. We've lived through ends of the world that we're supposed to have dragons and scorpion horse locusts. How worried can we really be about an apocalypse that's just wet? Now, some people push back on my effort to exonerate science here, but a lot of that's because they didn't really interact with scientists so much as science

journalists. And while some of them are really good, a lot of them exist solely to pluck out all those carefully worded caveats and present the most bone chilling and or miraculous sounding version of events they can get away with. The scientists say, hey, these invasive bees are moving northward. And the journalists say these killer bees are coming for your children. So maybe you start thinking back over the apocalypse as you've survived and you say, hey, wait a minute. Wasn't it the scientists that got us all freaked out over Y2k but even there their names are unsullied what the scientists said was hey we fucked up all these computers and if we don't fix them they're gonna think it's 1900 and they were right so we fixed them mostly but then that warning got filtered through chicken little

journalism religious fervor and the conspiratorial thinking that basically defined the 90s and suddenly it becomes an end of the world j Jesus is coming type moment that passes like the great disappointment. But this time with the climate change shit, it's for real. Davey's always been our most trustworthy wolf scout, and he's screaming wolf at the top of his lungs. But we're not listening. We can't even hear him because somebody screaming wolf has just become background noise in our modern society we've grown numb to the most terrifying possible thing to grow numb to and to a certain extent i can almost forgive the doom criers that got this ball rolling back in the days when the greatest

feat of human ingenuity was a really tall pile of bricks if the world was going to end back then it wasn't going to be because anything we were doing and there was nothing we were going to do that would have stopped it back then making shit up about the end of the world didn't have the same downside. Of course, as any Millerite wishing they still had a farm on October 23rd of 1844 could tell you, there was still a downside, right? But it was just it was the kind of downside that could only punish those idiots that listened to William Miller. And when the boy who cried wolf is the only one that's getting eaten, the story is a little easier to take. But in the modern day, and let's start that modern day clock ticking with a flash of light in Alamogordo, false apocalypse alarms take on a whole new level of insidious because we actually can end the world now, both through our actions and through our inaction.

And when the smart people have always gone to great lengths not to overstate their findings, start talking about tens of millions of people dying and societal upheaval across the globe, they shouldn't be competing for time with people warning about the danger of gay pride parades and lustful song lyrics. And they damn sure shouldn't be reduced to using the same language. But that's the

universe we live in. A universe where the average person is ignoring the doctor that tells them they have cancer because the homeopaths that said that before were wrong. And if anything can bring about the end of the fucking world, I feel like that's going to do the trick. They're talking about you, Jesus.

We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the aisle and window to my middle Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to fly oh oh i call aisle i call what no absolutely not i'm three feet taller than you not on the podcast on the podcast yes in all mediums i am way taller than you he's the tall one all right well why we reflect on how surprised we are that didn't lead to a distasteful ethiopia joke we're gonna pause for a quick word from our first sponsor this week wix um hello hi uh alex it's heath uh who heath and right uh i paid you several thousand

dollars to design a website for me uh sorry doesn't ring a bell. We spoke yesterday. You called me every day, four times a day until I paid you the deposit. And I've heard nothing from you since then. Oh, still no. Sorry. Okay. Well, I really need a website for this later cheese thing. We got to get it going. Oh, you tried Wix.com? No, I hired you. Remember, we just talked about this. Okay, but now I'm curious, what's Wix.com?

Oh, it's like the best place to create the website you want. You can choose from 500 templates. You can start from scratch with their easy to use tools. It's really great. Right, but I hired you. I paid you. Who is this again? Heath, it's Heath Enright. No, this is Alex. Okay. With Wix.com though

you get like built-in SEO tools, unlimited storage, custom domain, and like email marketing tools. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alex, that all sounds great. I honestly wish I used Wix.com now. Oh, you can get started right now by going to Wix.com. That's W-I-X.com slash podcast. And you get 10% off. Wix.com slash podcast. Got it.

Now, have you done anything for my website? Like anything at all? Sorry, who's this? I will stab you. Oh, hey, Noah. How's it going? I will stab you. Oh, hey Noah, how's it going?

And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, a massive new study that tracks 650,000 children over more than a decade has once more definitively proven that vaccines do not cause you to turn into a giant green rage monster when you're angry. Which is, at this this point exactly as necessary as yet another study proving they don't cause autism.

But we have one and it involves an entire small country's worth of test subjects. And it found zero correlation between vaccines and autism. And nobody's goddamn mind was changed on the subject. Some guy just stabbing himself with vaccines all over his arm, just yelling at a mirror, trying to get mad like the Hulk, trying to get himself all worked up. He reads the study like,

fuck, really? Okay, well, this is just gangrene then. This is no good. Yeah, see a real doctor.

At what point do we gather all the doctors around and explain that it was never about the trueness of things? I feel like someone needs to break it to them. Yeah, I don't want to break it to them, but I think we might have to. So yeah, so this study was published in Annals of Internal Medicine, which regular listeners will remember for their increasingly threatening rejection letters about Eli's proposed chronic Lyme disease study. for their increasingly threatening rejection letters about Eli's proposed chronic Lyme disease study. Researchers from the Staten Serum Institute in Copenhagen looked at every birth in Denmark between 1999 and 2010

and found, quote, no increased risk of developing autism after getting the MMR vaccine, end quote. And while they didn't bother to mention it, I'm going to have that they did find a decrease in the risk of developing M, M and R. All right, guys, plan is working.

No more mumps in Denmark. And now we wait. Yeah. All right. But so, okay. The study though, did more than just a top line analysis.

And that kind of matters because there are sort of two tracks in the anti-vax movement. Right. So there's the all the way insane track where no new data ever gets factored in against the but I done heard, though, that initiated the conclusion. But the other track is the incredible shrinking conspiracy theory track that does take in new data, but only so that they know where they need to plant the goalposts now. Right. And on this second track, we move from the, you know, it's the face,

the Marisol thing to, okay, it's something else to, okay, it's not that vaccines are bad. It's just that we're giving too many of them to kids to the, okay, but vaccines cause autism and at risk kids argument.

And this gargantuan study forces them to dig those goalposts up and move them yet again because once more for the people in the back, know the fuck they don't. All right, fuck, you start digging. It causes autism in at-risk children, but in small groups. Classic scam by big data. in at-risk children, but in small groups. Oh, my God. Classic scam by big data. So it must be small amounts.

Okay, I got a new one. How about we say it doesn't cure autism? I'm a baby murderer. And there's a Methodist to my madness news tonight. The United Methodist Church, the second largest Protestant denomination in the United States, got together last month to officially rule that they are, in fact, their religion. Yeah.

Sticking with that plan of only having to look sane compared to Pentecostals. Been working for them since 1736. Why change it up now? Yeah. So catch this snake. All right. We don't do that. Look how reasonable I am. No, I will not. Yeah. So this is in light of the newly proposed LGBTQ friendly one church plan, which did not pass out of the UMC's General Conference Legislative Committee.

And instead, the aptly named traditional plan was implemented instead. Lovely. Yeah. Just doing some abolition of civil rights like the president thanked us for our jobs. Yeah. So the traditional plan says that, quote, the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching, end quote. And that, quote, self-avowed practicing homosexuals, end quote, cannot be ordained as ministers, appointed to serve or be married in the church. And on top of all that, churches and clergy members will be required to denounce same-sex marriage and all non-celibate LGBT clergy by 2021, or they'll be kicked out of the UMC officially. There's a deadline? Yes. Say you're not human.

Do it right now. We're going to count to three. One, two, three. Okay, we're going to count to 57 million. One, two. I love the self-avowed practicing homosexual, right? Like if you're just in denial, but you can fuck all the dudes you want. No, no, I was avowed by a different guy.

And also, by the way, for the record, to all the faithiest bullshit artists that try to pretend that there's a progressive wing of Christianity, let's be super clear that just not being vocally bigoted still isn't economically viable for Christianity. Yep, they are. They are still the bad guys. And look, I'm sympathetic to the Methodists who feel that this has come out of left field. But at the same time, it is actually important to acknowledge that these gay, accepting non-bigoted methodists are wrong about their religion they are homework the bible is super duper clear on how it feels about gay people this is not a deviation from god's word it's an adherence to it look, you just don't get to be hurt when your tax-free wrong answer provider is occasionally honest about why they exist in the first place. Right.

And in CO2 legit news, after two years of presidential work that apparently did not involve any science-y stuff, Donald Trump finally decided to get himself an official science advisor. You know, just in case the leader of the country does end up crossing paths with this esoteric field called physical reality. So that's exciting. That being said, it's 2019, so I will be ruining the good news momentarily. Yes, you will.

Let's just be happy for a second. The president is letting a reality expert speak with him at least once in a while. I mean, only through the puppet pals, but still. Right, yeah. Something tells me you could permanently surround him with Data's holodeck poker buddies and it wouldn't make a difference all right well time to ruin it yeah the new director of the white house office of science and technology is kelvin drogmeyer and if that's your name as we all know you have two choices in life you can become an evil scientist who works in a Nazi supervillain's lair, or you can become the science advisor to Donald Trump at the White House. So really one option. He took it. But when

this first got announced, it seemed like a weirdly reasonable move by the president as Mr. Drogmeier is a well-respected meteorologist. At least he was until recently. But after an interview with Vice News last week, we all learned that Drogmeier is a sycophantic coward who will not be correcting the president about the reality of climate change, even though he's a meteorologist. Oh, look, Donald Trump's presidency has destroyed my faith in government and democracy. But if you destroy my faith in meteorologists, I got nothing left. I've got nothing left. Yeah. So according to Drogmeier, he doesn't feel like it's his place to set the president straight about the enormous amount of anti-scientific false information that's being

spread by the White House, even though that's literally his place. I just described the job. That's the zip recruiter, like a tag on it. Yeah. And it got even worse when Droegemeier took a question about the cause of climate change. Here's an actual sentence from the country's top science advisor, who, again, is allegedly a meteorologist. Quote, if you say humans are the cause of climate change, that's incorrect.

Is it? He continues, because climate change is due to humans and natural variability, end quote. For fuck's sake. Yeah, it's humans plus the existence of probability matrices in the universe. Look, I stabbed him 50 times, but it was traffic on the way to the hospital that killed him. Right, right.

Well, it's not round so much as an oblate sphere. Look, for fuck's sake, we are three inches away from reporters forcing White House spokespeople to prove they're not crossing their fingers when they speak. Hands up. Come on. No, no. Well, that microphone that we dressed up as Melania Trump is indistinguishable from the real Melania Trump. So let's check in on the White House to see how things are going. Beer, beer. I'm so sorry for shaking your hand so hard, Mr. President. Please have mercy on me and Canada. Never!

Beer, beer, beer, beer, beer, beer. I'm sorry, Mr. Trump? Your science advisor is here? Ah, yeah, Cookie Kevin. Get him in here. Uh, hello. Good afternoon, Mr. President. Tyler, Tyler, you gotta see this guy.

He's got a bum knee that always knows when it's gonna rain. It's fantastic. Nope, Mr. President. Tyler, Tyler, you gotta see this guy. He's got a bum knee that always knows when it's gonna rain. It's fantastic. Nope, nope. If you'll remember, Mr. President, I told you I'm a meteorologist. Meteorologist. So I use a complex set of- A meteorologist, exactly. Wow, I am impressed.

So what's up, big guy? What's going on, Cookie Kevin? You here to tell me pack an umbrella? No, no, no. Because this guy. No, I was hoping to speak to you about the notes in your budget for the. Bored, boom, fired, writing a mean tweet about you. Writing a mean tweet. It's the Puppet Pals.

ALS, right, right. The Puppet Pals. I haven't seen them since Fat Steve hung himself. I want to see the Puppet Pals I haven't seen them since Fat Steve hung himself I want to see the Puppet Pals Hey, I'm Poopsie I'm Poopsie Yay, Poopsie My most trusted advisor Listen, Poopsie, get in here

I gotta talk to you I sold America for a real estate deal in Russia And they are just 100% gonna catch me. Mr. President, what do we say about telling secrets to Poopsy? I can trust Poopsy, Tyler. You wearing a wire, Poopsy? You gonna rat on me, Poopsy? Uh, no, Mr. President, I would never rat on you. Actually, I was hoping I could talk to you about the thing... All right, listen up, Poopsie. Koch brothers have been funding white supremacists for years, and the shit is just hitting the fan.

I mean, Russia's had Nazis in their pockets for years, so between the two sides, they make up, like, my entire online base. Oh, uh, okay. So, about climate change... Poopsie, I gotta tell you, a lot of them are cops. I mean, a lot of them are cops. Like Comey was telling the FBI that the KKK had successfully infiltrated the police force since fucking 2006. And people are just finding out. I mean, it's not even hard to look for that shit comes up on Google. Boopsy. Yeah. Yeah. No, totally. Um, but see carbon, there are just massive data dumps that have been published with like thousands of police officers explicitly helping white supremacy. I mean, for God's sakes, they texted, they'd keep an eye out for them in Portland.

Like it's just, it's all right there in black and white. Okay, so when carbon goes into the atmosphere... Don't get me started on the colleges, okay? So-called conservative think tanks are having their donors listed. I mean, they've kept literal Nazis on their board

for years. Convicted pedophiles serving as my go-between with Saudi Arabia. I mean, people are looking at Epstein, who during his trial might as well have labeled half the girls as Donalds back when he was convicted, let alone now. Oh, okay! Mr.

President, I gotta go now. Okay, you get out of here, poopsie. Thanks for letting me let ass out to you. It means a lot. Uh, so, Steve hung himself? Yep. Yeah. Where?

Third door on the left. Don't forget to knock. Might be a line. Yeah. Got it. I will knock. And speaking of having trouble finding good help, let's take a quick break from our second sponsor this week,

ZipRecruiter. No, we'll be paying in money well well you can use the money to buy lotion okay thanks anyway hey hey uh noah what you doing there oh i i posted my job listing on one of those job websites and just all I've gotten is scam calls and applications from the wrong candidate. I mean, look at this email. Please to give me job reply with bank account number and I start Monday. Yeah, that's what's going to happen. So why don't you use ZipRecruiter? What's ZipRecruiter?

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Hope that's okay. Wow. Yeah, actually, ZipRecruiter is so effective that 80% of employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. What? I've had this posting up forever. Yeah, I can tell. Lots of Harambe references in there. Yeah, remember? I do. do i do it's funny well right now our listeners can try zip recruiter for free at this exclusive web address

ziprecruiter.com slash scathing that's ziprecruiter.com slash s-c-a-t-H-I-N-G. ZipRecruiter.com slash scathing, huh? All right. I'll give it a try. Oh, great. Another scam. Please bank account number and mother's maiden name for job, please. No, no, no. That's going to be Eli. Oh, right.

Yeah. Eli, no. But it's for the Prince of Nigeria. Nope. No, it is not. And we're back. Next up in headlines from the SCOTUS, it nearly killed us file. The Supreme Court pushed the snooze button on American theocracy last week when they decided not to hear a case out of Morris County, New Jersey, where local churches were challenging the state's decision not to allow them to renovate their churches with the bricks that they'd chiseled away from the wall of

separation. Look, I get it. Everyone's a little short around tax. Oh, wait a second. All right. So here's the case in a nutshell. City decides to make some funds available for historical preservation to government buildings, historical sites and churches and they justified handing over taxpayer dollars to churches by saying they

could only use the money for non-religious parts of the churches nope but yeah then somebody with multiple brain cells looked at this realized that money is fungible and all parts of churches are religious so they sued come, we're building a solid gold atheism room. It's for you. You guys can go in there and just do nothing. But specifically it was the FFRF

suing on behalf of local atheist David Steckety. So they lose. They went on appeal and then the bad guys appeal again. But that fizzled out last week when the SCOTUS declined the case and left the lower course ruling in place. All right. We're going to keep the First Amendment, but passively. We're not saying we like it.

We're going to leave it for now. It's the year 2019. And the best news we've had from the Supreme Court all year is the Constitution stays for now. Yeah. Well, right, right. So, yeah, in the atheist blogosphere, this is largely being portrayed as a victory, which is understandable. They sold Dunkirk as a victory, too. And that's what we've got here.

A movie? A movie? Is that what you said? A movie. Okay. What would you say you do here? Yeah, this is not. We don't have that kind of time. i might have to beep it out anyway because yes the scotas turned this case down

but alito gorsuch and canna beer issued a statement that basically said yeah this one is ever so slightly too illegal for even us to justify bring us a slightly better one and a shrubbery yeah yeah well no but their statement read in part, quote, at some point this court will need to decide whether governments that distribute historic preservation funds may deny funds to religious organizations simply because they are religious.

And I'm going to end the quote right there just to call bullshit on the wording. We convict murderers simply because they're murderers. Right, adding simply because they're murderers. Right. Adding simply because here is a transparent effort to conjure victimhood out of the very nature of adjectives. Are we really okay with verbing nouns because of their nouniness? Yes.

That's how fucking words work. Yes, exactly. What are you talking about? That's the whole fucking thing. And next up in headlines in singles ward and the beaver news thanks to a new bill called sb43 that just passed through both houses of the utah state legislature it might finally become legal for unmarried people to have sexual intercourse in utah what We're just waiting for a signature from the governor.

Seriously. Actually, hold on. I feel like I kind of buried the lead. Let me start over. I feel like you did too. Next up in headlines, sex is currently today illegal for single people in the state of Utah.

Right now. That's a fact. And until this becomes official, I'm going to continue following the law like a good citizen. And that's the only reason I've never had any sex in Utah. Or anywhere else. Keith's in a protest dry spell, everybody. On behalf of Utah.

Yeah, but that's so fucked up. Like, if we were recording in Utah, it would have been illegal for you to bury the lead. That's crazy. And I got to say, I'm sorry, Heath. I didn't know this at the time if i had known all of this information i would have at least offered you a pity fuck at the mormon mall yeah oh all right well now you know they had a job but you know i like that's locked in so according to their again existing law today it's a class B misdemeanor

for any unmarried person to quote, voluntarily engage in sexual intercourse with another. And the penalty for breaking this law is up to six months in jail

and a thousand dollar fine. Jesus. So, I have some questions. First of all, how exactly do you think they were enforcing this? Right. I'm hoping they have like a sting set up, right?

Like undercover cops like, ah, you just had sex with me. That'll be $1,000. Also, it sounds like it's perfectly legal for a married person to have sex with anyone they want. It's only the unmarried person who would be guilty of a crime. Right. But it turns out they already had that covered in Utah by also having a criminal penalty for adultery. And SB 43 would actually get rid of that adultery law too,

along with a law against sodomy. That being said, I'm still curious about their wording. If a single person can't have sex with another, it's what it says there, are they allowed to fuck a married person? It's a weird system they have going. You want me to go to jail? Exactly. Let me fuck your wife. All right.

This is, well, if that's going to work in any state, yeah, fair. Right. But most importantly, Utah, do you guys really need the word voluntarily in there it's illegal to voluntarily have sex outside of marriage like no i mean i definitely agree that wording is better compared to without that word but i'd like to think you just you know not have laws that make a sexual assault victim into a criminal. Yeah. So hopefully that's where it lands after the governor signs off in 2019 to get rid of laws against adultery, sodomy and all single people fucking that Utah has right now in March of 2019. that Utah has right now in March of 2019.

And speaking of states so misogynistic, they feel the probably justified need to word their laws in such a way as to make it clear that you won't get arrested for being raped. We'll take a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. But first, a word from our final sponsor this week, Stamps.com. Hi, welcome to Typical Fipping Thor. How may I therveth you today? Yeah, just a quick thing. You know that old guy right there is looking at adult websites on your rent-a-computer, right?

Yes, I do. Cool, cool. Well, I'm looking to ship this box, so if you could help me out with that. Right, yeah, let's just put this on this scale here and measure the... Yeah, well, just looking for a simple way to ship things. Let's just put this on this scale here and measure the city. Yeah, well, just looking for a simple way to ship things. Oh, so you tried stamps.com, huh? What's stamps.com?

Oh, it's the best way to ship stuff. Stamps.com brings all the amazing services of the U.S. Postal Service right to your computer. Wait, so you're saying I can skip the post office? Even though the post office is a perfectly lovely place and I have nothing bad to say about it, but you're saying I can skip it? You sir can. With stamps.com, you get five cents off every first class stamp and up to 40% off priority mail. Wow, that's a pretty huge discount. Pretty huge discount. It sure is.

And right now, Scathing Atheist listeners get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale without any long-term commitments. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in scathing. That's stamps.com. Enter scathing. Stamps.com. Enter scathing, huh? Okay.

Well, I'm going to go. And I guess good luck with your adult website guy over there. That's my dad. Okay. He's always here. That tracks. Yeah. A man wrote the Bible.

A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate race. Then you're a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man wrote the bible a whore is what you want if it's a legitimate race cooking can be fun hey i'm proud of a man this week in misogyny okay i've only been gone for a week but to look at my inbox you'd think i'd been gone for a year so sit back and settle in i've got a worldwide tour of misogyny for you this week and each stop along the way will be in a shittier part of the world than the last one. So we're going to start in Brazil. Yes, the first and therefore least shitty place we're going to talk about

is the country they named getting all your pubes ripped out after. Now, in the Brazilian government, apparently there's a position called Minister of Human Rights, Family, and Women. And right there you can see the spark of a problem, right? Our ministry is about rights for humans and women. But it gets worse. Because the person in that position is Christian preacher Damaris Alvarez. Who came out against equal rights this week by claiming it would lead to more domestic violence.

She explained, quote, If they think boys and girls are equal, as was preached in the past by some ideologies, boys will think since girls are equal, they can handle being hit, end quote. Now, there's way too much wrong with that for me to sweep up all of it, but holy shit, lady,

maybe stop your Tasmanian devil hellspawn from hitting children regardless of their gender. Also, not sure if you've noticed, but the inequality status quo has led your country to the fifth highest rate of femicide in the world. So I feel like any direction, but still has a solid chance of being in the right direction. Anyway, we'll move south from there to our second story, which comes to us from Argentina. And before any of our Argentinian listeners say, hey, how are we worse than Brazil? Let me point out that this story is about an 11-year-old rape victim that was forced to give birth in that

Patagonian shithole. Because in that country, women need permission from the government to get abortions. And so do little girls, apparently. And at least on occasion, their requests are ignored. So anyway, fast forward 23 weeks and two suicide attempts later, and you get to last Tuesday when the fetus was removed through cesarean section on its way to almost certainly dying anyway. Because in Argentina, underage rape sometimes goes two directions. But our tour just keeps getting shittier as we cross the Atlantic and wind up in Iran, where we get the story of Nazrin Sotoda, whose name I'm probably

butchering, so apologies to her for that. Nazrin is a lawyer in Iran who has dedicated her life to defending women prosecuted for removing their hijabs in public. Unfortunately for her, the Iranian government has dedicated her life to something else entirely, and they get final say in the matter. So we learned this week that Nazrin, who has long been a thorn in the side of Iranian theology, will spend the next 38 years of her life in prison. And just in case those six times as long as George Pell gets for face raping children wasn't enough to teach her the lesson, they also included 148 lashes because they're just daring me to use the word barbaric here. But we have one geographical

station yet to hit on our tour. And if you're wondering how I'm going to find a place even worse than Iran to close on, it's only because you've never been to Alabama. That's right. The Iran of America is back in the misogyny news today, or I guess still in the misogyny news, not like it ever left, but this time they've outdone themselves. What could rise to the level of insanely misogynistic even by the standards of Alabama? Why, how about granting an aborted fetus the right to sue the abortion clinic that killed it? Do you think I'm kidding? Or is that really just hope disguised as certainty? Because yes, this is fucking real. Eli's Irish abortion clinic lady has just graduated to legal strategy.

And we're not talking about some silly shit that somebody filed and is awaiting a smackdown by the first actual legal mind that touches it either. This was approved by a judge. And just so you know how prejudiced this proceeding is at the outset, the six-week accumulation of sales is being referred to as baby Roe in the court filings. No word yet on who will be acting as the embryo's puppeteer for the proceedings, but something tells me you and I will find a reason to talk about this a bit more before it's all over. Something tells me you and I will find a reason to talk about this a bit more before it's all over. And with that promise, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli.

Thank you, Lucinda. And in god-awful boobies news tonight, if you follow Christian Cinema as closely as I do, you're Noah or Heath. Right. But if you follow it about one one-thousandth as much as i do you're noah or heath right yeah but if you follow it about one one thousandth as much as we do you've already heard of the upcoming anti-abortion movie from the producer god's not dead unplanned yes the not even a little bit true story of real life activist and certified crazy woman, Abby Johnson.

Okay. I mean, that sounds at least half true, that story. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with Abby Johnson's gripping tale, she's a conservative Christian who started working for Planned Parenthood as a teenager, unaware that they performed abortion. But then she was asked to assist in a 13-week abortion during which she realized it was a baby when she saw it fight for its life and was then fired for not pushing more abortions to make planned parenthood more money i thought it was an alien i thought it was one of those xenomorphs i don't know it. It's true. But seriously, like they were pushing her

to make them more money. Yes, that's what she says. Yeah. Planned Parenthood is one of those nonprofits. They have a sales team with abortion quotas to inflate their nonprofit stock price.

What the fuck are you talking about? Abby, now you've been working here for months. You haven't had a single unplanned pregnancy. Take occasional dicks for the team, would you? Yeah. So that is literally what she claims in her books except nothing about it is no so there wasn't an abortion scheduled for the day she says she assisted the doctor who performed abortions where she worked was like she would never be asked to help with this kind of procedure and and she quit Planned Parenthood because they caught

her stealing confidential patient records and giving them to Christian anti-abortion activists so she's not a reformed abortionist she's a shitty fucking spy who got caught and now the worst movie makers on the planet are going to repeat this lie on the big screen. Yeah, and that's Dinesh D'Souza's thing, damn it. He called that with the shitty fucking spy who got caught and everything. But it's not all bad news. See, the fucking idiots who made this movie obviously let Carly Fiorina do their special effects because this week, Unplanned received an R rating. And you know what that means?

No, God's not dead money for you, bitches. Exactly. Apparently, Abby Johnson was like, yeah, they made me do like sign spinner tricks outside the clinic. It was fucked up, except with a bloody fetus instead of a sign. It's unbelievable.

So apparently the movie is just like Tarantino with fetuses, and now they're mad about getting an R rating. This is your fault. I love that little embryo squares off with the orderly, pulls out a little Atari Hanzo scalpel, yeah. Now,

to be fair, a little movie called Passion of the Christ also received an R rating and ended up doing just fine. However, for those of us who are going to watch and review it, and you know we are going to watch and review this piece of shit, we'll at least know to bring a poncho. It's going to be like a Gallagher show. Exactly. Great.

Exactly. Right. And finally tonight, we may have finally seen the second coming of Jesus. And it turns out he's a black guy from South Africa. Well, it's either that or Pastor Alf Lukau of Alleluia Ministries is a liar. He did not, in fact, resurrect a person from the dead using the powers of his magical golden microphone one of those two scenarios happened one way or another lots of christian people are unhappy and that makes me happy today is a good day south africa christianity like you mean it yeah right i mean i know i an atheist, but I'm actually kind of rooting for this guy to be the second coming.

That's the way funnier outcome for America. That would be the best. So if anyone's curious about this, there's actually a video of the whole event, and it's pretty fucking great. Before the resurrection even starts starts we get this amazing little uh pre-game show i guess and that includes a quick interview with some relatives of the allegedly dead guy who are all clearly in on the scam and who are all brutally bad at acting you guys seem awfully grinny describing your dead side. Yeah, well, got a really positive

outlook on today's miracle. I know we can do it. The best part happens right after the weird little interview section. That's when everyone notices that the corpse in the open casket is very visibly breathing.

Yes! The pastor notices too, and he yells, wake up. I mean, continue waking up. And that's when the guy sits up straight, like he's playing God awful bingo. And then they parade him around this church while the pastor's team of hype men that he has yell Jesus based trash talk into their microphones. Oh, my God.

It's like a toddler playing hide and seek. Just the oh, where could my dead friend be? Dead friend? Nope. No dead friend under here. It's just like, behold behold the snore of rebirth yeah so uh obviously you hate to see people getting scammed like this speak for yourself um but there is some good news several of the funeral services that these people use to get a casket and transportation for their fake dead guy ended up hearing about the so-called resurrection.

And now they're taking legal action against the pastor for being a giant liar. One of those companies is called Kings and Queens Real Funeral Services, which is already fucking fantastic i i would give anything to hear the story of how the word real gets included i think you just did noah i think you just did and uh kings and queens real authentic real real funeral services put a post on facebook explaining how you definitely have to be a dead person for them to provide you with any funeral stuff. Says it in the name. And they ended that post by saying, quote,

to all our beloved clients and prospective clients, which was a weird choice of phrasing, thank you for the continued support during this confusing time we continue to strive for excellence offering a service that gives you honor dignity and comfort end quote not adding prospective clients need to die first we really thought that was already super clear but apparently not lawyer said we got to write that here. There you go. Must be dead. If you plan on dying this year, please call ahead.

We are just packed. And we could really use. And just for the record, the church is already backpedaling on this. According to a local news site, Alleluia Ministries is now claiming that the resurrection didn't actually happen in that moment, which is true. But then they kept talking and claimed that they were completing a miracle that God already started.

And according to Pastor Lukau, the guy in the casket was already alive. Yes. Yes, he literally used the words already alive. One of the dumber phrases in existence that I'm aware of. And also a central tenet of Christianity. And on that

note, I guess we can close out the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. And you, Manji. And when we come back, we'll be already alive too. It's time for the part of the show that comes next, the listener feedback. This is the part of the show that happens when this sentence ends. We've just got one email we're responding to today from listener tv and here it is guys i love the show and love the stuff on pell but your attack on capitalized naturopaths is bullshit sorry Sorry, absolute bullshit. Oh, really?

Yep, really. This, quote, allopathic medicine is the only true medicine is bullshit. Naturopathy involves the study of plants. It is not homeopathy. are numerous peer-reviewed scientific studies on the effect of plants such as St. John's wort for depression and anxiety, arnica for severe bruising. Severe bruising. Doesn't work

on mild bruises. No. And comfrey or bone knit for bone breakages. A plant used by Native Americans for thousands of years. Oh. Ever used Valium valium yes i have not okay one of us has perhaps well it is synthesized from valerian wait but if i haven't used it is it still synthesized from hold on hold on a second all right well for one of us, it's synthesized from Valerian. Continuing, naturopathy is complementary medicine.

It's the other part. Okay. Here in Australia, on average, 22,000 people die per year due to side effects and incorrect prescribing of prescription medicine. Here in Australia, yep, we were already here in australia uh here in australia a doctor does two weeks study on nutrition in their seven year course exclamation two fucking weeks when it's clear that the leading cause of death in the u.s uk and oh my god, use a goddamn Oxford comma. U.S., U.K. and Australia is heart disease directly related to diet. Is it just me or do you smell more and more like patchouli as you read through this thing?

Sorry. Continuing one more time. Look, I love all your shows, have listened for ages. What? Well, but I get really perturbed by your espousing of anything that isn't Western medicine as bullshit. Why? You are skeptical and you like truth. I do. As do I.

Eh. But we can't tar all natural medicine practices as bullshit. Oh, yes, we can. We're natural medicine practices as bullshit. Oh yes, we can. We're gonna, we're gonna any minute. Get ready,

get ready. But the end of that sentence was, we can't tar all natural medicine practices as bullshit. The same way we can't worship Western medicine as the only God. Cheers, TV. That makes, oh, very confusing.

Oh dear. Okay. So if you've been no are you ready yeah so if you've been listening as long as you say you have i fear that you're doing it wrong bro so okay let's be super clear anything that isn't western medicine is bullshit and maybe you should have done any amount of research from any objective source before sending this email. That way, you could have learned that you were wrong in the privacy of your own home all alone instead of in front of all of these other listeners. Yeah, I got to admit, I am super duper skeptical that TV has been listening for long. skeptical that TV has been listening for long. I'm pretty proudly the dumbest person on this podcast, and even I

Googled a bunch of this shit into nopedom pretty easily, TV. Okay, so let me read you the opening sentences of the Wikipedia article with a quick nod to Susan Gerbic and her army of skeptical wikiers. I have approved this definition. Suzy Gerbs!

Naturopathy is a form of alternative medicine that employs an array of pseudoscientific practices branded as natural, non-invasive, and as promoting self-healing. The ideology and methods of naturopathy are based on vitalism and folk medicine rather than evidence-based medicine. End quote. Right. And look, even if you don't trust the cucks over at wikipedia.com, that rag, here's what they say according to naturopathic.org, quote, naturopathic practice includes the following diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, Clinical and laboratory diagnostic testing, nutritional medicine,

botanical medicine, naturopathic physical medicine, including naturopathic manipulative therapy. Oh, it does include the manipulative therapy. Yeah, it does, in case you were wondering. Public health measures. Yeah, sanitation. Hygiene.

Counseling. This is thegiene. Counseling. This is the terrifying one. Sewers. Minor surgery. Wait, there's more. Get ready, because I'm going to pull a pin out. Homeopathy. Yep.

I'm going to pull another pin out, because it doesn't matter where you put them. Acupuncture. Prescription medication. Nope, not unless you're also an md intravenous and injection therapy terrifying and naturopathic obstetrics uh natural childbirth that's where you birth a child with a tree yeah that is a painful childbirth so uh yeah tv little little So, yeah, TV, little point here. It is homeopathy according to naturopathic.org. By the way, I also read a definition that described naturopathy as healing using natural forces, like using the elements of like fire, wind, earth, and air. Yeah, it's medicine plus, right? Okay, so quick hint for you, TV.

If you're using the word allopathic, you're full of shit. Okay? That is a bullshit term. It's not used anywhere outside of bullshit. It's a bullshit term designed by con artists to distinguish real medicine from bullshit without having to use the terms real and bullshit. It's a reverse euphemism for real it means real yes in fact at tv you know who coined the term who literally came up with that term the guy who invented homeopathy tv really the guy yep real doctors by the way they're fully aware that plants are one of the many physical objects on earth that might contain healthy stuff or might be useful in medicine they get that and more

importantly i really don't want to go into the details of like this cures this and this cures that and and what those studies break down to and the problems with them. The unspoken problem of did you know that blank is as effective as real medicine in these peer reviewed trials is that one, that's not true because of a variety of factors. But two, it's used as an excuse to prevent people from taking medicine. Right. Look, when I was in high school and in super serious danger because of my mental illness do you know what a naturopath prescribed me b12 and saint john's wart and it didn't work how'd that go it didn't work yeah it was bad well and also like i said because this is just

alphabetical bullshit that this this whole email look as to your scare tactics about misprescribed drugs what the hell point do you think you're making right like people die from misprescribed drugs you know what nobody ever died from me sticking a popsicle stick up their dick hole therefore me sticking a popsicle stick up your dick hole is healthier than taking medicine you see how that's really fucking stupid that's the same argument you just made popsicle sticks come from plants well that's 100 natural also as to the nutrition thing guess how many weeks of state mandated courses on nutrition naturopaths take did you guess more or less maybe see a dietician if you want an expert in fucking nutrition one way or the other doctor doctors relative lack of nutritional education does not

make naturopathy more or less bullshit right and we should point out like that's a pretty common heuristic that you hear thrown out by pseudoscience promoters like they only get blank amount of training for this and what it ignores is that doctors get very little specific training in everything that isn't their speciality like yeah they get incredibly limited training in podiatry but you know who doesn't podiatrist they get a ton of fucking podiatry yeah also i feel like doctors should be spending way more time on non-diet stuff than diet stuff i feel like you know the endocrine system is way more complex than eat vegetables. Well, right.

That's the other thing. Does it really take more than two weeks to tell people eat vegetables sometimes and shit? And what's more, TV, and this is important, it's wrong in a way that kills people. Right? Like living unhealthy people could hear your bullshit justification is something you clearly didn't bother to know anything about at all. And it could cause them to choose fairy dust over real medicine and become dead people. Right. Side note, one of those people could be you. Right. You could be one of the people who dies. Yeah, exactly. So please stop killing people with ignorance TV. It's kind of our whole thing to get people to not do that. And then you wrote and said that we should let people do that

more. And look, if you're skeptical, I get it. Stick around. I promise you won't have to wait long before we once again report on a dead kid whose parents tried to cure them with non allopathic maple syrup.

I don't know wasn't he a naturopath yep he sure was murder and that's all the feedback you get you want more keep sending us those emails tweets and Facebook messages and we'll probably not

embarrass you for 10 minutes you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingatheist.com. St. John's World. Before we raise the drawbridge tonight, I want to remind everybody that the American Atheist Conference is coming up on Easter weekend

in Cincinnati Swing State. That's April 19th through the 21st. It's chock full of good speakers. Also us. We're going to be doing a live Godawful Movies there on Friday night. We'd love to see you there. Check the show notes for more information. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,020 new minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Monday. An even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, 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, Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, this episode would be embarrassed to show up at work tomorrow if I neglected to thank Keith Enright for holding down the fort while I was gone. I need to thank Eli Bosnick for not burning down anything that wasn't insured. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for putting up with me for seven pretty much uninterrupted days. I want to thank Andrew Torres for stepping in and helping cover some of my slack. I also want to thank everybody that came out to see us in Denver. I also want to thank Michael from Denver for providing this week's Farnsworth quote and for his ringing endorsement of coming to the live shows.

I totally agree with him, by the way. You should come. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most marvelous mammals. And I got two weeks worth to get through. So deep breath here. Tony, Tom, Tanner, Ian, Dino, Andy, Paul, Stephen, Chris, Shane, Octane, Zig, Smash, Ryan, other Ryan, Mark, other Chris, other Stephen, Patrick, Cassie, Els, Patron, Nathan, Derek, TheOxfordComics, Useless, Michaelina, Andrew, Vermin, King, Luna, Kunal, A Giant Clam, Dustin, Justin, Jake, James, John, Josh, Jack, Jacob, Genevieve, Jennifer, Joshua, Jonathan, and Jacqueline. Whose genitals are so overwhelming even a compliment form wouldn't fit into this show with about a bit more lube. Together, these 47 people, hydrocarbons, mollusks, rodent monarchs, and incorrect punctuation assessments

tossed up some spackle on the wall of separation this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the suppleness it takes to give us money, but if you think you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage

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I love that the only ones still flying are America. Yeah, no, right, right. The whole world, now Canada too. Well, right. The whole world. Now Canada, too. Well, he talked to Dave Boeing and everything's just fine. Dave Crash. Yeah. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2019.

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