The Scathing Atheist - 320: Stoned in a Bad Way Edition

Episode Date: April 4, 2019

Georgia Heartbeat bill: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/04/02/georgia-fetal-heartbeat-abortion-bill-governor-brian-kemp/3331514002/ After Catholic Mom’s Leggings Rant, Notre Dame Students Wear Them in Protest https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/28/after-catholic-moms-leggings-rant-notre-dame-students-wear-them-in-protest/ Liberty U. to Students Reporting Title IX Violations: “You Report. We Decide.” https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/03/30/liberty-u-to-students-reporting-title-ix-violations-you-report-we-decide/

Warning, this podcast contains words that rhyme with sass, stitch, spit, and smotherfucker. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Robin Hood. And by my desire to fight the MyPillowGuy. Everyone has dreams, and that's mine. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hey there, pagans, heathens, and other assorted ne'er-do-wells. This is Junk Shop Library from the Junk Shop Library YouTube Bible Study channel. Just wanted to let you know that after extensive research here in the library,

I can and do confirm that we all did indeed evolve from filthy monkey men, just like Jesus. It's Thursday. It's April 4th. And it's World Rat Day. Happy birthday, Michael Cohen. Ronkinder Rat. I'm Noah Lusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright.

And from Chris Christie's toll booth, Cincinnati Swingsteen, and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, the religion of peace makes a kill-your-gay-kid law. We learn from Laura Ingram that the liquid metal guy is actually a trans fuckbot, and we are excited. And Price Blankenagle will be here to drop whatever the opposite of pearls of wisdom are. But first, the diatribe. In 1991, Richard Dawkins introduced one of the most enduring analogies in the atheist world with his online essay, Viruses of the Mind. In it, he presented religion, among other things, as a mental virus, noting that it would persist despite conferring no survival advantage. And this provided for an interesting new way of examining religious phenomenon,

and that was heartily embraced by the atheist community. Dawkins and Dan Dennett expanded on the concept in the early years of the New Atheist Movement, and friend of the show Daryl Ray expanded it out to an entire book in his 2009 work, The God Virus. But there's a big problem with this analogy that gets insufficient attention, in my opinion. Hell, one might even call this problem a fatal flaw. See, despite all the ink that's been spilled in the opposite direction, religion does confer a survival advantage, both historically and today. Now, there are several different ways to argue for a historical survival advantage in religion.

You know, it would improve social cohesion. It would make it easier to fire up the tribe for a fight. Thoughts of an afterlife might make them more willing to fight. Religion protects societal norms against socially detrimental behavior. There's a lot of directions to go. But in the modern day, most of those fall away. Today, religion works against social cohesion, you know, in a statewide civilization. There are remarkably few times when fighting is to society's advantage today and we have laws judges and cops to protect against socially detrimental behavior but there is still one survival advantage that religion has and to see it all you have to do is find an atheist couple in a super religious one and ask them how many kids they have and if you don't have a random sampling of religious and non-religious families

handy to do the test, we can also just look at Pew Research Center's data. According to the 2015 data, which was the most recent I could find, Christian families in the U.S. have 2.2 kids on average. Nuns have 1.7. Now, that might not seem like a huge difference, but keep in mind that it means that the average Christian couple leaves more humans than they started with. And the average atheist couple doesn't. Right. We get reduced by point three. They get increased by point two.

And the numbers get more stark when you start looking at it by specific religion. When you look at self-identified atheists, the number goes down slightly to one point six. And when you look at just Mormons, the number skyrockets to like 3.5 kids per couple. What's more, the numbers move along a spectrum with the religiosity. The more religious you are, the more kids you have. People who say religion is important to them have 25% more kids than people who say it isn't. I mean, sure, I guess at a certain point of religiosity, you know, become a celibate priest or something, and then the term having kids takes on a whole new meaning.

Of course, I'm still willing to bet the average is still up from 2.2. It's also worth noting that this basically holds true across all the major religions. Now, I say basically because it's hard to find numbers on Buddhism and there aren't enough American Buddhists for the pew to get good data on that. Buddhist majority countries vary wildly in terms of culture. And it's just it's a hard one to pin down. But with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus, all of them show this same trend. The more pious you are, the more children you have. And honestly, if we don't acknowledge that, it gets really hard to explain why religious people continue to exist at all.

Right. Religious people lose their religion way more often than non-religious people find god and even when non-religious people do become religious they very rarely become conservatively religious right like an atheist raised in a non-religious home might decide they're christian one day but they're far more likely to join some like jesus light liberal church that ordains women and keeps his homophobia hidden. They're not super likely to join the Westboro Baptist Church. So if they weren't having more kids than us, they just logically disappear through attrition. Right. And as obvious as this may seem to anybody who's ever been to a Walmart and the Bible Belt, it's all but ignored

in the atheist literature about mind viruses. And this is not something we can afford to ignore. Hell, it's the main reason our atheism show has to carve out a dedicated segment every week for the misogyny news. It's the reason Heath, Eli, and I had to go to theaters and watch a horror movie about the abortionist under your bed last weekend. It's the reason grown men gather in Rome and earnestly argue that the Jesus bread won't turn into magical human flesh right if you use a lady wizard. Religions, the successful ones at least, always seek to control the means of reproduction. Their sexual taboos, their inordinate hard-on for families, their disempowerment of women, these things all work together to ensure that women can be reduced to

Christian factories. And when they're not feeling particularly subtle, they'll just say shit like be fruitful and multiply or start things like the Quiverful movement with the expressly stated goal of outbreeding the secularists. And if we want to understand their goals or their means of empowerment, we have to fully reckon with that. And when we reduce religions to a mental virus, we're in real danger of overlooking the Darwinian process

that keeps religion around. And by the way, nothing I'm saying here should be taken as a critique of Daryl Ray's book, The God Virus. Daryl is no stranger to the religious goal of leading society around by the uterus, as his later works make abundantly clear. And despite its flaws, there's still a lot that can be learned by examining religion through an epidemiological lens. It's just that we need to be careful to keep the weaknesses of our analogies in mind while we do so. Otherwise, you'd end up with a whole swath of people mistaking parables and analogies for reality, and we've seen where that leads. They're talking about your Jesus. I interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the cis and boom to my ba,

Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick fellas. Are you ready to shake your pom-poms? It's cis-cum-ba, you savage. This is the hill I die on. What the fuck is a cum? What are you talking about? It's like, you know, cis-cum-ba? Yes, cis-cum-ba.

That is what he is so much. The boom is the goddamn firework exploding. So while I get inordinately angry about a cheer from the 50s, we're going to have to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, Robinhood. So Heath, what can you tell me verbatim about Robinhood? Well, Noah, Robinhood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission-free. While other brokerages charge up to $10 for every trade, Robinhood doesn't charge any commission fees. So you can trade stocks and keep all your profits.

Plus, there is no account minimum deposit needed to get started, so you can start investing at any level. The simple, intuitive design of Robin hood makes investing easy for newcomers and experts alike. You easy to understand charts and market data and place a trade in just four taps in your smartphone. You can also view stock collections such as 100 most popular with Robin hood. You can learn how to invest in the market as you build your portfolio. Everybody discover new stocks,

track your favorite companies, and get custom notifications for price movements so you never miss the right moment to invest. Robinhood is giving listeners of the Scathing Atheist a free stock like Apple, Ford, or Sprint to help you build your portfolio. Sign up at

scathing.robinhood.com Robinhood. Superman can't fight these streets what and now back to the headlines in our lead story tonight uh as easy as it is to dismiss the ill informed fears of bigoted rednecks in america who warn of the coming of sharia law on account of them letting them wear them ninja dresses in congress now it's important that in so doing we don't lose track of how fucking terrifying sharia law really is for the people who are under the threat of it and as if to provide an object lesson the nation lit of brunei

just announced plans to implement said conservative islamic doctrine leading to accurate headlines like brunei is gonna stone children to death for being gay yeah this is killing the uh clickbait headline guy at like boingsplush.com just like ah fuck uh brunei stoning kids to death for being gay uh with this one simple trick? You can do this, Sergei. Okay. Brunei goes back in time to stone babies to death for being gay. And your aunt just shared it. Fantastic. How is it a

minion meme now? Alright, so these changes were first proposed under the conservative Islamic monarchy in 2013 but international cries of are you fucking serious led to a half decade plus a kind of pretending they weren't serious but but they could be talked into it if you were serious which is scheduled to come to an end about the time this episode comes out yeah say what you will but every day is outfit stuff day when you're a conservative Muslim. It's also worth noting, by the way, that the government hid this announcement on an out-of-the-way page on their AG's website.

Right? Like, almost as though they're ashamed of how barbaric their religion is. All right. Religion of peace, fair and balanced, ignorance of strength. Okay. All right. Let's see. A couple of quick announcements.

Janitors are coming in at 6 now instead of 7. We're going to stone gay kids to death and Casual Friday is back! Wait, what? I know! I am also excited about Casual Friday. No more questions on the penalty of death. That was pretty much it.

If they'd had a press conference, that's how it would have gone. And while the death to gay people even if they're children, has rightly garnered the lion's share of the press, I should note, it's not like getting rid of that provision would make these reforms humane. This is Sharia law. example chopping off the arms of thieves stoning heterosexual adulterers to death and of course all the restrictions on freedom of expression religion and women moving about that we've come to expect from conservative muslims someone typed these ideas into an iphone and then sent it through space to another iphone right yeah oh and i love this quote too the sultan of brunei said of the changes that he quote

does not expect other people to accept and agree with it but that it wouldn't suffice if they just respect the nation in the same way it also respects them end quote no i mean if by that he means respect his country enough to stone it to death for a non-crime, then sure, you can have that. Yeah, and I'd like the Sultan to respect my opinion that dictators who get $50,000 haircuts should be stoned to death. Well, by his own logic, yeah. And if you stone

the rich to death, they're nice and tender when you eat them. Everyone wins. That's the point. There you go. And in Law & Order special bigots unit news tonight. Last week, as we were preparing headlines for our show, we noticed that the San Antonio City Council recently voted to approve a bunch of new restaurants

in their Texas airport, but only after a Chick-fil-A was removed from the list of options. And, as a result, Christians were losing their fucking minds. However, we can't just report every time a Christian loses their mind. Our show would make hardcore history look downright pithy if we did that. We couldn't even cover every time a Christian lost their fucking mind in the San Antonio airport. We could not. Don't have the time.

And another one. Just now. But just because we realized that airport doesn't want chicken bigots isn't headline worthy, doesn't mean that the Attorney General of Texas realizes that. Jesus Christ. That is right. Permanent Novocaine lip, Ken Paxton, got on Twitter, like all great civil servants. Yeah, no, that's where they go. And sent the city a threatening

tweet letter basically saying, I'm 100% sure this isn't against the law, but maybe if I pretend hard enough, you will too? Yeah, and by the way, I just googled Ken Paxton, and

that Novocaine lip does not go away at one single moment in his entire life. It's never gone. He looks like a baby who's always shitting right now and really happy about it and like proud of it. And he's smiling like an idiot. Having a happy little baby stroke. Happy baby stroke is the perfect way to describe his visage. Yeah. And the name of me describe his visage. Yeah.

And the name of me and Heath's band. So, you know, come check us out, guys. We are on SoundCloud Platinum exclusively. So here's the real quote from his letter. Quote, the Constitution's protection of religious liberty is somehow even better than Chick-fil-A's chicken. Oh, Jesus Christ. It would have to be, to be fair. How dare you? It-fil-A's chicken. What? Oh, Jesus Christ. It would have to be, to be fair. How dare you?

It's bad. It's bad. It's delicious. I don't like them. It's delicious. Just be honest. It's bad. It is bad.

It's bad chicken. You don't eat chicken. He continues. I don't eat any more. I ate all the chicken once. He continues. I ate some chicken in Canada. You don't know it. I ate chicken. You chicken in Canada. You don't know it.

I had chicken. You don't know. I didn't like it. He continues. Unfortunately, I have serious concerns that both are under assault at the San Antonio airport.

Please see the enclosed letter from my office to the Secretary of Transportation, Elaine Chao, highlighting my concerns that the city's recent action to remove Chick- highlighting my concerns that the city's recent action to remove Chick-fil-A from the city's new airport concessionaire contract may violate federal law and applicable federal regulations. You should also note that I have

directed my office to open an investigation into whether the city's action violates state law. And it's done. I trust the city will fully cooperate with my investigation into this matter and will abide by relevant federal and state laws in the future. I opened a Google window. Cool. Get William Barr to summarize that investigation. Just like,

mmm, chicken. Done. Okay. Yeah. that investigation just like chicken done okay yeah and apparently he thinks he's pretty sure that cities aren't allowed to hate a hate group because that would make them a hate hold on yeah right and this is a pure flicks movie now right right like two years from now we're going to the theaters to watch unsanitized or something whatever the chickening so yeah the attorney general of texas isn't sure whether vicious bigot is a protected class of person business however at least he and i agree on one thing and that is that the best possible use of his power should be spent making sure nobody discriminates

against chicken restaurants. And that he should do literally nothing else. That we agree on. That is the only legal problem in Texas. They're doing great. Keep a stiff upper lip, Ken. Oh, sorry. Sorry, Ken. Sorry.

That was just... And in KY Jealous News, thanks to some good question mark wait for it news out of Kentucky this week, we learned that the Bible is right about twice a day. We also learned that Utah and Kentucky are in a really weird contest. Within days of each other, both during the year 2019, just to be clear, Utah made it legal for unmarried human beings to have sexual intercourse, and Kentucky passed a bill that's going to make it illegal to fuck an animal in the KY state.

Again, really weird contest. I'm not willing to say there was a winner other than animals and single people. They weren't really in the contest. Well, I mean, there definitely wasn't a loser. I mean, my production of Romeo and Juliet is is ruined so i feel like i'm a loser so the new bill in kentucky was proposed by gop state senator julie adams and it's the first time this sort of law made it through the state legislature following several attempts in the past to ban animal fucking. Several? Those attempts failed.

What? Several times. Really? But now it's finally official. How do you vote against that? What do you say on the floor of Congress? No, bye. I got a thing.

Right, right. I don't know. Yeah, so Governor Matt Bevin signed the bill into law last week and Kentucky has finally prioritized its love of the Bible over its love of fucking animals. Yeah. Well, sort of. The wording on the law is aggressively narrow. Yeah. Here it is.

The new law is going to ban any sexual act that's quote committed between a person and an animal it continues for the purpose of sexual arousal sexual gratification abuse or financial gain end quote wow seems really odd that there would be a list of reasons didn't need to continue after I said continue. Yeah, no, it could have ended after a person and an animal, unless someone in the Kentucky legislature honestly believes that one might need to bone a goat medicinally. Your Honor, I was fucking this goat for religious reasons.

Yeah, so what? This is a riffraff fuck. This is great. Yeah. So the penalty for breaking the new law includes a prison term up to five years. And here's where it gets super weird again. Apparently, the penalty also stipulates

that offenders will be prohibited from owning animals, living in a household with animals, or working within proximity of unsupervised animals. I guess that part makes sense. But only for five years. That's the ban.

Hopefully they'll have to go like barn door to barn door like Megan's Law and declare themselves animal fuckers to all the animals. I don't know. Also, for some reason, Kentucky decided to add that if the violator doesn't own the abused animal,

they have to give it back. Which means that was an issue at some point. We should write in that you have to give it back. I don't care what the state of Kentucky says, fucking someone's dog is dead. That's your dog now.

See, that argument happened. That argument happened. Also, it doesn't matter if you're in love. Write that down too. We have to really be specific on this. This law had to get way longer than I thought it would, y'all. A lot of the law is crayon

in the margin, yeah. So, congrats to Kentucky, I guess. They finally caved. Yeah. So they'll now be joining 45 other states who all decided long ago that people shouldn't be having sexual intercourse with animals. Wait. Yeah. If you're thinking to yourself, hey, did that add up to 50?

No, the fuck it didn't. It's still perfectly legal. Again, in the year 2019, for human beings to have sex with animals in Wyoming, New Mexico, West Virginia, Hawaii, and of course, Washington, D.C., our nation's capital. Of course. Yeah, even if you don't have a good reason, like in Kentucky. Yep. And that brings us back to the good news question mark, wait for it thing I said before. Yes, the Bible says you shouldn't fuck animals.

And yes, that's the correct policy. It is. Yes, they nailed that one. Yeah, they're right. the bible says you shouldn't fuck animals and yes that's the correct policy it is yes they nailed that one yeah they're right those two times a day that you want to fuck an animal you decide that jesus is more important but that leaves them being wrong just about every other minute of every day especially the part when the biblical penalty for bestiality is exactly the same as the biblical penalty for being a gay person yep it's murder with rocks in case you missed it and the majority of people in states like kentucky want that book to be the law for everybody yeah all right well the fact that eli just learned he's a three and a half hour drive from a legal

sheep fuck has nothing to do with why we're taking a break now but we are so we'll hand things over to my lovely wife lucinda give me the keys a man wrote the bible a horse which if it's a legitimate rate it's a slut right cooking can be fun hey I'm proud of a man. This week in Misogynist. Hey, fellow Georgians, I've got some good news. Thanks to some misogynist conservative legislators in my home state, it's now illegal to abort anything if it has a heart that can be detected with the most precise scientific instruments known to man. So don't take legal advice from a podcast and all, but I'm pretty sure that makes it legal to abort misogynist conservative legislatures. But let's not talk about the Georgia heartbeat bill because my doctor says I'm at a blood

pressure medicine limit and I can't find a black market for that shit. So just to keep my mind off of it, I want to spend this segment talking about the exact opposite of the state of Georgia, higher education. So let's start our tour of American universities in Notre Dame, where a Catholic mom recently made news by Rip Van Winkling her way into the modern day and sending a letter to the editor of the student-run paper complaining about the scourge of leggings. That's right, leggings. scourge of leggings. That's right, leggings. In her screed, she said, quote, it's strange that the fashion industry has caused women to voluntarily expose their nether regions in this way, end quote. So, first of all, you're wearing the leg and drawing lady. Your nether regions aren't supposed to show. Secondly, nobody has ever caused anyone to voluntarily do anything. That's how voluntarily works. And thirdly, are you fucking kidding me? Women's fashion finally

comes up with something comfortable and you want to take that away too? Fuck you. But I wasn't the only one irate when I read this. Apparently, as her rant has sparked quite the protest on campus, with both men and women wearing leggings in solidarity with not being like that bitch lady from the 1800s. And from there, we'll move on to a school that's a college in name only, Jerry Falwell's own Liberty University. And thanks to Sarah Beth Kaplan for bringing this one to my attention. So apparently, their website has a section on how to report potential Title IX violations. For those unfamiliar, Title IX is the section of the 1972 Education Amendments Act

that says, quote, no person in the U.S. shall, on the basis of sex, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any education program or activity receiving federal funding, end quote. And the overall message behind Liberty University's webpage about it seems to be, don't get your hopes up. And just to make sure you get the message,

the slogan at the top of the page is literally, you report, we decide. It then goes on to explain that they have a team of professionals that know Title IX violations better than you, so you should probably just quit your bitching and get back to home ec. And as much as I'd love to tack on a third story here, when you choose Azure theme, Christianity plus college, you have mighty slim pickings to choose from. So on that note, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in pas de deux news tonight. Listeners might remember last...

Thank you. I'm a brilliant... Dance. Listeners might remember last October when Quebec's premier, or premier, as they would say. No, not... Francois Legault. No, also no he promised to stop all government workers from wearing religious symbols like yarmulkes hijabs and turbans which in case you aren't familiar is

such a terrible fucking idea i feel like i'm being accused of it on twitter instead of real life yeah i mean quebec should not do that but we definitely get to make fun of you forever if your worldview includes the phrase respect our hats this is serious absolutely absolutely yeah we'll accommodate the dumb stuff for you i guess i guess we should do that but you have to admit we're accommodating dumb stuff you have to say it out loud i want you to all say it out loud how sure are we that que Quebec shouldn't do that? I mean, look, I know they're getting there through bigotry, but sometimes OJ actually did it, regardless of why my father-in-law thinks so, right? So, yeah, last week he proposed a bill to do exactly that, ban all religious symbols for public servants.

And on top of that, he's planning to use Canada's not touching, can't get mad, not withstanding clause to immunize the law from legal action. Man, you know you fucked up when you have to invoke something to keep Canadians from getting mad at you. You do. Yeah. So about that um how do i explain this okay so canada has this thing called the charter which is basically their bill of rights except they left england by asking politely instead of losing a war like we did so we have these things called provinces no not and. We have agreed to disagree. Are we disagreeing about the existence

of the United States? Are you not clear on who won the Revolutionary War? Last word. Okay. And they have these things called provinces. So they have these things called provinces. And provinces, they're well, they're like college football teams i mean most people are just like yeah sure that's my college football team but then there are people

who are like yeah go penn state sometimes you fuck a kid we love you joe potts and that's how canadians feel about provinces so section 33 of the charter of canadian rights and freedoms basically allows a province to you know negate the bill of rights for five years so that the provinces still matter yeah i mean five years a slave was a really polite story but you know, it's still bad. And I should point out that if this sounds just totally ridiculous to you, on the other side of things, the end result seems to be universal healthcare, so fuck it. Maybe it's better?

I don't know. I'll do it. Yeah, but the thing is, our version of Quebec is fucking Texas. So we'd be getting universal AR-15s. Right. It's going to be the same.

Right, yeah. And don't get jealous, Eli. If you consider healthcare a basic human right, and you should, we've been suspending that shit for 243 years in count. We're way in the lead. That's true. And we are ahead of it.

So what does this mean for Canada? It means that French guy bad soda is going to pass an absolutely insane, super obviously anti-Brown people law in his own words, quote, to protect our collective identity, end quote. And then, you know, he's going to do the most cabaqua thing possible and pretend the rest of Canada doesn't exist if they disagree with him. Their collective identity is no hats.

Not wearing a hat. Bigot. And finally tonight, Laura Ingram made the news this week after the Fox Corporation decided to let her keep having a primetime show despite being the female version of James Spader in every 80s movie.

Which actually makes perfect sense considering Fox News is the journalism version of James Spader in every 80s movie. You do not talk about Jay Spizzle like that. He is a gem. He is. So Ingram is the host of The Ingram Angle, along with her own radio show Turned Podcast. And during a recent episode, her guest made

the claim that okay, trans people are trying to create a new species of human being. I'm listening. In a lab? It's really not clear. We'll get to it um and if you're wondering whether the new life forms are going to be part human part machine yes they will what um

the trans community is building gender kinetic cyborgs and honestly i am fucking psyched about that awesome i love that this is what they think every time a Christian brings it up. Because what happens is they read gender is a construct, and what goes in their brain is robot penis. And they're just like, what? Wait, I'm sorry. Is the gender cyborg thing something that comes up often? More than once on our show.

I did an episode about it citation needed so um during one of her recent episodes entitled transhumanism and the assault on traditional gender and masculinity oh that's a good start yeah that's the title of the episode during that episode she spoke with dr paul nathanson, a Canadian gender relations professor whose major focus of research is the persecution of men. He's GoBot Jordan Peterson. And he started by explaining how feminism caused the existence of the trans community by challenging the notion of gender. And that's when Ingram responded, quote, their goal is the destruction of the traditional family, though, is it not? That's what's really going on.

At which point, Dr. Nathanson was like, what? At which point Dr. Nathanson was like, what? I mean, I think I agree, but like that's not what we're talking about. You're stupid. Moving on. Oh, my God. She thinks trans people go home at night and like drop to their knees and ball up their fists and yell to the sky. Families. What? Yeah. up their fists and yell to the sky families what yeah and uh that's when we got one of the most absurd exchanges of words i've ever heard nathanson says quote trans people are trying to use social

engineering to create a new species which is what the transhumanists have been doing for the past half century and uh stop it right there nope transhumanist is a word it's not what you think it is buddy it's not related to transgender no also not related to uh transition metals on the periodic table lots of words contain those letters idiot transmission engines is what they're hoping to use i believe and continuing trans people are using medical and other technologies to develop a new species, end quote, exact words. Can we just say it takes a lot of nerve for anyone in Laura Ingraham's presence to accuse other people of that, considering that if she nodded, she'd pop a goddamn staple, right? All right.

Yeah, and it gets even crazier. This lunatic just claimed that trans people are actually part of a conspiracy to create a new species of humanoid life forms on Earth. And Laura Ingraham says, quote, and the new species will be looking like what? Will it be part human, part animal? Like what? Will it be part human, part animal? And Nathanson says, quote, I think human and part machine. And then Ingram says, part machine.

Hmm. Again, exact words. I'm not exaggerating even a little bit. This is their goddamn conversation. Not adding, hmm, I'm the bad guy. I'm the bad guy in history and for not even that much money. She's worth $45 million.

Get the fuck out of here. You know how trans people are trying to turn people into robot turtles? You know how I've always said that? Patreon, everybody. We don't want to kill you you hear that that's us pivoting because you didn't give us enough money on Patreon bloop

oh sure hope I don't go to hell see no consequences we will pivot back for 46 million dollars and not a penny less you have 24 hours We will pivot back for $46 million and not pay less. You have 24 hours. We will murder a humanoid trans robot every five minutes. God damn it.

All right. So quick thing before we wrap it up. To all the trans people listening right now, this is a weird story to hear but great fucking work we know now that you're making a secret cyborg army and we want the fuck in

we will not tell anybody just you know send us a tweet of you blinking twice and we'll be ready to send you the signal blink blink exactly while we joyfully prepare for the logical calendar and we'll know to be ready. That'll be the signal. Blink, blink. Exactly. All right. Well, while we joyfully prepare for the logical calendar

our robot overlords are sure to usher in, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Triple robot penis. When we come back, Bryce Blankenagle will be here to smell like salad for a change. Don't get us hooked up. When we started this show in 2013, we quickly added a segment where we'd read through another book of the Bible every few weeks.

And to be honest, we kind of expected the show would run its course before we ever finished the Bible, but eventually it ended. And we read the Quran, and we read the Book of mormon and we read the case for christ and despite desperate efforts to unlearn how to read after we finished that one we knew we'd have to pick another book now i don't mind saying choosing the next one was a tough slog because eli and heath realized as long as they kept the deliberations going we wouldn't have to read another shitty book but eventually i caught on to what they were doing and we settled on reading the shortest thing that made our candidate list. And that decision is going to take us back into

the wacky and wonderful realm of Mormon theology with the pearl of great price. Of course, if we're going to do Mormonism, we're going to need the help of our resident expert on all things Mormon. Bryce Blankenagle is the host of the Naked Mormonism podcast, where he takes an unflinching look at the bloody and insane history of the Mormon church. And when he's not studying up on Mormon theology, he enjoys spiking Eli's brownies with THC. Bryce, welcome back. It's been too long, man. It's always a pleasure, Noah.

Thanks for having me. All right. So I called you the other day. I said, hey, we were thinking about doing the Pearl of Great Price. And this was weird. I could hear you come. Noah, we're like, what, 3,000 miles apart? I wouldn't be surprised if your windows broke from the unshattering orgasm I had.

I mean, I got to say, I'm surprised that NASA didn't issue a statement that it was a threat to the ISS or something. I'm still in recovery here. So the thing is, like, if you want to know about Mormon doctrine and theology, the last place to find it is in the Book of Mormon. Right. I mean, you grew up, you know, nominally Mormon, I think is how you've said it before. And you know that like reading through the Book of Mormon, it tells you nothing about the church today. And that seems counterintuitive. But,uitive, but it's a common misconception. But the thing is, Mormonism claims four books of scripture.

They have the Bible, the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants, and the Pearl of Great Price. So basically, the Book of Mormon is elementary school, whereas the Pearl of Great Price is high school. And then I would say like Doctrine and Covenants is kind of like grad school, but maybe that's a conversation for the future. Anyway, so what is it? The Pearl of Great Price. It was canonized in the October 1880 General Conference of the Church, along with another, you know, a few other sections in the Doctrine and Covenants.

So what's in it? Well, the Pearl of Great Price is a compilation of a ton of fascinating Mormon theology. So, like, you want to know about God being an alien from Kolob? I do. The writings of Abraham. The Mormon apologetics for Joseph Smith knowing about relativity 35 years before Einstein was born. Enoch's drug trip when he was talking to God. Joe's drug trip when he was talking to god joe's drug trip when he was talking to god and of course mormon discrimination of people of color holding the

priesthood until 1978 all of that everything i just said comes from the pearl of great price oh um okay so so like the pearl of great price is like j is like Joseph Smith's greatest hits album? Sort of. I would say like the Doctrine and Covenants are the greatest hits, and then the King Follett Discourse, that's like his billboard topper. Okay. The Pearl of Great Price is kind of like the hidden bonus tracks that most people, including Mormons, don't know about. It's rarely cited or quoted in church,

and it's even less frequently discussed in believing circles. But it is like universally accepted canon. Yes, exactly. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we're going B-side. Awesome.

What are we going to find when we get there? So it's broken down into five different books. You have the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham. Then you have the Joseph Smith Translation Book of Matthew. We're going gonna do it then you have the Joseph Smith history and then you have the articles of faith all right so it seems like the best way to go about this then is to take them in turn uh so uh what is the book of Moses all right so the book of Moses this is kind of interesting so a little background Joe published the book of Mormon in March of 1830 and then started the church in April of that same year.

So he sent out the first mission troop of that year, and they passed through a town called Kirtland, Ohio, where they converted a guy named Sidney Rigdon, who was a well-known Campbellite Baptist preacher. Rigdon wanted to know more about the Book of Mormon, so he went to New York to meet Joseph Smith. They hit it off immediately, and they started a project of creating a quote-unquote new translation of the Bible. I'm sorry, a new translation from what? They're from the Greek? From the King James. Okay. Because they didn't know Greek or Hebrew or German Lutheran.

Wait, they were going to translate it from English to different English? English to different English. Translation. So early the following year of 1831 then, that's when Joe told all of his dozens, nearly scores of Mormons to relocate

to Kirtland, Ohio. And that's where Joe and Rigdon continued their translation of the Bible. So the book of Moses is Joe and Rigdon's rewriting of Genesis from God's first-person perspective, beginning on Mount Sinai. Just what you guys wanted, right? After reading

the Bible and Koran, another retelling of Genesis. But from the first person. Okay, so Chris Matheson stole this idea from Joseph Smith. Interesting. At least Chris Matheson stole this idea from Joseph Smith. Interesting. At least Chris Matheson's God has like a reasonable excuse of insanity, right? Okay. Yeah, no, that's fair. All right. So let's talk about my early favorite here from what I've seen in your notes, the Book of Abraham. What can you tell us about that one?

Okay. The Book of Abraham is a really fun one. okay um i did a four-part series on this because it's a book that just keeps on giving uh but we need a little background for this so joe claimed that the book of mormon was written by native americans on a book of gold plates in reformed egyptian which i know i'm i'm diving pretty deep down the crazy hole here. I know it. But really, when we're talking about Mormonism, you have no choice, right? To talk about anything, you've got to dive deep into that crazy bowl. Take my hand and let's walk down this journey.

Yeah. So this book of gold plates written by Native Americans and Reformed Egyptian, This book of gold plates written by Native Americans and Reformed Egyptian, Joe used a magic rock in a hat to translate it into Jacobean English, like the King James Bible. So as Mormonism gained popularity and picked up tabloids all throughout the early 1830s, people began to hear about this wacky guy, Joe Smith, who could read unknown languages. Egyptian was a popular subject that people were talking about. It was something of a meme that we could call it. Now, historians today have

actually coined the term Egyptomania to describe Western culture's fascination with ancient Egypt throughout this early to mid-19th century. So a guy named Michael Chandler was one of these Egyptian artifact dealers. He heard about the famed Joe Smith translating the gold Bible from reformed Egyptian and thought, hey, I bet I can make some money off of this guy. So he did. Yeah. He in 1835, he sold four mummies and multiple scrolls of papyri to the Mormons for $2,400. And then Joe began the work of quote unquote translation once again using his precious shit-colored seer stone and Mr. Hat. And Mr. Hat.

Yeah, exactly. And by the way, that's like 68 grand in today's money. Yeah. We should also say too, like there was a whole cottage industry of pseudo translation at the time. Oh yeah, certainly. Right? Yeah, it was like it was its own little pseudoscience. It was basically the interpreting the crop circles of its day.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's why it's Egyptomania. A lot of people claimed to have a deciphered, you know, Egyptian alphabet that they could, you know, translate into English, but none of them proved tenable until Champollion's translation method actually became popularized. So Joseph Smith was just jumping on that bandwagon, right? And he began his translation of this Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1835, but it wasn't completed and published until 1842 as the Book of Abraham. Now, this came after the Mormons had been removed from two different states, Ohio and Missouri. They fought the Missouri Mormon War of 1838, and a lot of stuff had happened in that seven-year period, right?

Luckily for us, the original notebooks that they used to create his translation in 1835, they survived the journey. And we can see his thought process today by looking at those journals. Oh, cool. And you can see these on the Mormon church-owned josephsmithpapers.org. It's, you know, it's complete and total bullshit. I mean, the Egyptian and alphabetic language

that Joseph created, it probably will require like a how bullshit is it segment all on its own. But he did make a translation. But at first glance, you can tell he had no fucking idea what he was doing.

Some of the characters in these notebooks have like three to five words that represent them. Others of these characters have over a hundred words taken from one small mark on the papyri. And I know it's great for podcasting, but I actually copied a couple of pictures into the show notes just for your pleasure, Noah.

What do you see there, man? Oh, this is amazing. Yeah. So like this, this one hieroglyph is like three sentences. This one is one. This one is nine. Like this one hieroglyph means an entire paragraph and a half of shit. Amazing. I mean, I shouldn't have to say this, but there is no language that operates like this. No. Right?

There's no language that's so efficient that it requires over a hundred words of the translated language to explain like a backwards E with a long tail here. Yet three other marks combined only make eight words. It's just insane. But because this is Mormonism and facts are the enemy, Joe claimed that it was Egyptian papy papyri which was written by father abraham himself and apologists have been attempting to resolve the discrepancies both with like the 1700 year dating problem and with the actual content of the fact similar ever since 17 i like industrial revolution mesozoic what's the fucking difference am i right come on right it's like native american wooden submarines right i mean why not exactly i looked at a right it's like native american wooden submarines right i mean why not exactly i looked at a sword that's how i know how metal works i looked really hard

though but they're really fucking invested in this right so a mormon apologist named hugh nibbly he was kind of seen as of the 20th century the foremost mormon apologist he actually learned egyptian in the late 1960s when the papyri were rediscovered for the sole purpose of crafting the apologetic case for the book of abraham and about a dozen books have been written by mormon egyptologists attempting to carve out the quote-unquote historical plausibility for the book of abraham to be what joe claimed that it was but alas that pesky thing that we call science really fucks with Mormonism, and even they admit it on their official website when it comes to the book of Abraham.

Really? Yeah. This is from LDS.org, a translation in the historicity of the book of Abraham. This is one of their gospel topics essays. Quote, None of the characters on the papyrus fragments mentioned Abraham's name or any of the events recorded in the book of Abraham. Mormon and non-Mormon Egyptologists agree that the characters on the fragments do not match the translation given in the book of Abraham. From further on, scholars have identified the papyrus fragments as parts of a standard funerary text that were deposited with

the mummified bodies these fragments date to between the third century bce and the first century ce long after abraham lived yeah assuming abraham lived well but so that's you know that's the hallmark of bullshit right like when the real guys come in they're like no this is just a really kind of a standard thing that we find everywhere but when joseph smith translates it oh my god that's the words of abraham himself who have somehow that have somehow been preserved okay scripture amazing and it took less than 10 years after joseph smith's death for somebody who had learned egyptian hieroglyphics to come along and say, like this, this isn't real. Yeah.

Like this is not how the real translation is. Which, which had to be so rough for the Mormons. Cause that would be like today, right? It would be like the aliens showing up, turning to the railions and going, no man,

that is completely, that's not even close to what we were saying. Like, I mean, a for effort, but no F plus for execution, guys. Come on. All right.

But wait, there's more. Joey also did Matthew. Yeah. So this is back to that translation of, you know, the book of Moses is like this new translation of the already translated King James Bible. Right. So the book of Matthew, or the Joseph Smith translation, Matthew, you're going to find in the Pearl of Great Price.

This is just Joe's rewriting of the Mount of Olives sermon by Jesus. Now, I personally, I don't know why this specific extract was included from the Joseph Smith translation Bible, but it sounds like he rewrote it in order to prophesy of himself. And also, of course, to fuel the persecution narrative that Joe leveraged repeatedly throughout his entire life.

There's really not much else to say on that other than Mormon apologists sometimes claim that his Bible translation nearly got him castrated in 1832. That sounds like a great story. But, hey, you know, look, if a few of these summaries weren't kind of pointless and boring, we wouldn't be talking about the writings of Joseph Smith, now would we? Truer words never spoken. Now, speaking of which, the next one is autobiographical? Yeah. So this is the Joseph Smith history. And it's, I mean, it ranks my second favorite in the Pearl of Great Price.

The Book of Abraham, of course, is my favorite because it's so much fun. But the Joseph Smith history in the Pearl of Great Price. The book of Abraham, of course, is my favorite because it's so much fun. But the Joseph Smith history in the Pearl of Great Price, this is the canonized version of Joe's story concerning his early life, his first vision, and his acquisition of the gold plates and the translation method. Now, this version that you're going to read through, this is the version that Mormons are taught from a young age and the version that most of them consider to be historical truth. But there are a few problems because it's scripture, right? Notably, this was written in 1838 and published in 1842, meaning this is 22 years after it supposedly happened.

And it's autobiographical written, obviously, with an agenda, right? Also, there are other versions that predate this canonized version and the differences are substantial. Now, Mormon apologists try to claim that the differences are there because Joe just simply tailored his early history to like the specific audience that he was telling the story to. Kind of like how we might tell a different version of how our day went to like our parents, to then our kids, and then to our significant others. But the differences aren't incidental details. They're foundational aspects of this story. For example, how many angels appeared to Joe in the Sacred Grove?

Did it happen in 1820, 1822, or 1823? Did God appear, or was it God and Jesus as two separate dudes, or was it just a whole bunch of angels? Did God tell Joseph that all the religions are evil and their professors corrupt or just tell Joe that he's forgiven of his uncontrolled debauchery as a teenager? Was the angel that appeared to him named, unnamed, or was it named Moroni or was it named Nephi? Did the adversary bind Joe's tongue and hold him down to suffocate him before he could get the prayer out? Or was that just convulsions from the detour? There are foundational flaws in this story.

I just love thinking about that list, like from the perspective of someone with no context. Right? Like, it's amazing how little Mormon shit you have to hear before it's completely insane with or without context. But without context, that list is amazing. Well, that's because this shit you're talking about is usually completely unbelievable unless you're indoctrinated. Right. Right. I mean, you ask any ex-Mormon some of the reasons they left. Usually problems with the first vision, the book of Abraham, or polygamy are mixed around as like the top three reasons why they left.

Man, I was hoping homophobia would crack that top three, but okay. Well, okay, so I should rephrase that. So like these are the top three historical issues causing the current mass exodus, especially millennials, but like cultural issues are important as well. And usually homophobia or misogyny top that list. But as far as history goes, we are taught that this story is scripture and therefore axiomatic truth from a young age. And when we learn just a dollop of the real history,

those Mormon shelves come crashing down. All right. Okay. So and then we wrap up on the articles of faith. What's that one all about? So the articles of faith are actually pretty interesting. And I would wager to guess that most ex-Mormons in the listening audience probably memorized these as they were kids in primary, just like I did. And they actually have a pretty interesting history. Basically,

they contained 13 points of basic and fundamental doctrine of Mormonism. Joe composed these articles of faith as part of a letter to the editor of the Chicago Democrat in 1842, the same year that the Book of Abraham was published, which was two years before his assassination. And of course, these articles of faith, like all Mormon scripture, have been edited by the church today. But that's just for clarification, of course. No other explanation needed right like all of the divine revelations it just needs to be clarified from time to time yeah of course clarified edited changed the words of god yeah yeah sure why not yeah all right so let's let's take a quick broader view of all five of these taken together before we wrap up so in

terms of crazy is the pearl of Great Price above or below the Book of Mormon? You know, that depends entirely on your criteria of crazy, right? So it's more diverse and fascinating, but there's absolutely no continuity from one book to the next. They read like appendices to Mormon scripture. So Joe's theology only increased in crazy as his 14-year ministry matured, and you get snapshots from all over that period in this one little book. All right. Well, I mean, it's not saying much to say that this one's more diverse than the Book of Mormon, which just tells the same fucking story over and over again. It's like saying, well, it's more diverse than, you know, Utah.

It takes compliments where you can get them, man. This is Mormon scripture. All right. All right. So it sounds like it's going to be fascinatingly crazy. How about in terms of so boring, I want to rip out my eyes so I can hang myself with my optic nerves. Is it above or below the Book of Mormon in that one?

Well, so it's like that's like the baseline of reading any scripture. But honestly, I don't think you need to worry about that. And like being bored reading the Pearl of Great Price, it can be consumed in an afternoon. It's not repetitive. And the books never exceed more than eight chapters. And the Book of Abraham even comes with awesome little pictures. I mean, this book is hyper distilled, wacky Mormon theology and history in potent little doses. This book is the fentanyl of Mormonism. So it's going to be a lot of fun for

you guys. Awesome. Well, way to give us the hard sell. Something tells me we might be coming back to you for clarification along the way here, but I can't thank you enough for laying the groundwork for us. And of course, if you listen at home, want to learn more about the history of the Mormons that they don't want you to know about, check the show notes for a link to Bryce's serial Mormon history show, Naked Mormonism. Bryce, thanks for hanging out, bro. So say we all know a good honey. Before we snuff the roach tonight, I want to remind you once again that tickets are still available for American Atheist 29 convention in Cincinnati over Easter weekend. We're going to be there doing a live show on Friday night.

If you missed that, we'll be hanging out at the con all weekend. We'll be easy to find. Check the show notes for links to more info. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend, Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, and an even new episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this episode would get Pig Glass for kickball if I neglected to thank Heath for his infectious

guffaw, Lucinda for her delightful giggle, and Eli for his maniacal cackle. I'm sorry, man, there's no other way to describe it. Also want to thank Bryce once again for his repeated willingness to compile a ton of research for us at a moment's notice. Again, check the show notes for links to his podcast to learn more. Also, I need to thank Junk Shop Library for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Be sure to check their biblical breakdown on YouTube. Using the link we'll provide in the same place. But most of all, of course, I got to thank this week's most simmering Simeons. OJ, Regular J, Jeff, Other Jeff, Lane, Bailey, Incubus, Inc., Connie, Larry, Cole, Cody, and Samantha.

OJ, J, Jeff, and Other Jeff, whose balls of steel give the TSA no end to trouble. Lane, Bailey, Incubus, Inc., and Connie, whose IQs are so high Edmund Hillary tried to climb them. And Larry, Cole, Cody, and Samantha, who are so hot the sun them bathes. Together, this dozen dashing disbelievers decided to donate to our dedicated disassembly of the dumbassery, deistic douchebaggery this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist,

whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. 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 scathingatheist.com. I'm not out of breath. I could keep going but I just ran out of stuff to say is all. I'm gonna murder Eli on this hill. The sis is the firework moving up into the air. The boom isn't exploding. The bah is the crowd.

It's sis, boom, bah. Wait, crowds don't go bah? Are they sheep? I know, I know, but still. It's sis, coom, rah. Everybody knows that. All right Alright now. Great. Now you summoned a mummy. Alright.