The Scathing Atheist - 357: They Edition

Episode Date: December 19, 2019

In this week’s episode, Christian bigots will tell us that in their day they didn’t have these fancy singulars, Donald Trump takes up the gentile man's burden to save the Jewish people from themselves,and Noah will manage occasional coherence after seven days without a cigarette and I think that’s asking enough. --- 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=sr_1_1?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://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Check out Dr. Elyce Helford’s site: http://www.elycehelford.com/ --- Headlines: Christian Hate Group Condemns "Bizarre Disgrace" of Singular Pronoun "They": https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/12/11/christian-hate-group-condemns-bizarre-disgrace-of-singular-pronoun-they/ https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/they-2019-merriam-websterRepublicans Are Pushing a “Fairness for All” Bill That Would Hurt LGBTQ People: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/12/12/republicans-are-pushing-a-fairness-for-all-bill-that-would-hurt-lgbtq-people/ Whistleblower reveals Mormon church hoarding twelve digits meant for charity: https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/mormon-church-has-misled-members-on-100-billion-tax-exempt-investment-fund-whistleblower-alleges/2019/12/16/ Christian Moms Group Condemns Hallmark Channel for Airing Lesbian Wedding Ad:  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/13/style/hallmark-channel-ads.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur  Church Leader Who Condemns Homosexuality Caught Soliciting Teenagers on Grindr: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/12/16/church-leader-who-condemns-homosexuality-caught-trolling-for-sex-through-grindr/ --- This Week in Misogyny: Christian Leader Who Grabbed Reporter’s Butt on TV Arrested for Sexual Battery: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/12/14/christian-leader-who-grabbed-reporters-butt-on-tv-arrested-for-sexual-battery/ MN Mom Sues Pharmacies After Employees Refuse to Fill Birth Control Prescription: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/12/13/mn-mom-sues-pharmacies-after-employees-refuse-to-fill-birth-control-prescription/ Ohio Lawmaker Admits Doing No Research on Insane Ectopic Pregnancy Bill: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/12/15/ohio-lawmaker-admits-doing-no-research-on-insane-ectopic-pregnancy-bill/

Warning, we were already saying fuck a lot before the nicotine withdrawal. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the one-stop Christmas shop for people you forgot. Dammit-o-shits! Fancy fruit? Flowers? Literally anything? Come on down to Dammit-o-shits. And now, The Scathing Atheist. I'm Dr. Elise Rae Helford, and as a secular Jewish feminist and professor

of English, I assure you we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey folk of all genders. Find me at E-L-Y-C-E-H-E-L-F-O-R-D dot com and learn about how you can read my books on film and popular culture or take one of my awesome courses. It's Thursday. It's December 19th. And it's National Oatmeal Muffin Day. The fuck it is. Fuck you, oatmeal muffins. Gross. I'm no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from ex-Democrat Congressman Turncoat Motherfucker Jeff Van Drew's New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Christian bigots will tell us that in their day, they didn't have these fancy singulars. Donald Trump takes up the Gentile man's burden to save the Jewish people from themselves. And I'll manage occasional coherence after seven days without a cigarette, and I think that's asking enough.

But first, the diatribe for fuck's sake we're supposed to be skeptics here y'all and i get that most of you are i'm talking to a minority when i say this but but get your shit together, okay? Like, okay, so on Facebook, I've got like six or seven family members and 3,000 listeners. And ever since I announced that I was going to quit smoking, I've been getting a ton of advice via that medium. And most of it's been really good, really supportive, really reasonable, et cetera. But a disturbingly large amount of it has been the kind of shit that a skeptic should be ashamed of. Now, I'm not talking about people recommending herbal supplements or that I align my chakras.

Even a bad skeptic knows better than that. But some of the advice I'm getting is every bit is misinformed and dangerous. Let me give you a quick example. This is the exact advice that I've gotten from more than a dozen people at this point. The best way to quit smoking is cold turkey. Now, it wouldn't take you a hell of a lot of research to disprove that. It's literally the worst method that scientists bother to test. Like, there are worse methods, like, you know, smoking more cigarettes and shit. But of all the ones they decide are common enough to bother testing, that's the worst one. It consistently ranks as the least effective way to quit smoking in

every single scientific study that I have ever seen. Using nicotine replacement therapy like a patch or gum or whatever, or using some non-nicotine pharmaceutical isn't the magic one, but from the numbers I've seen, it increases the likelihood of success by somewhere between 50 and 70 percent. That's fucking huge. I mean, look, the total number of people who successfully quit is still super low because the baseline rate of success is lower than 10 percent, right? Fewer than one in 10 people who make a serious effort to quit by their own definition of serious actually succeed at it. So if the numbers for people using the patch are like, you know, one in eight, that's still a really low overall success rate. That still means that most of the people, you know, who use a nicotine patch aren't going

to quit. But luckily for us, we don't have to rely on people we know. We have fucking data. On this one, we have mountains of meticulous data. All we have to do is avail ourselves of it before we go shouting out medical advice to people online. And that's what we're talking about here, people. This is medical advice. I don't mean to be the preachy non-smoker guy less than a week off my last cigarette, but cigarettes are literally the leading cause of preventable death in this country quitting them as i understand it greatly reduces risks to my health i'm sure i read that somewhere and giving bad advice about this advice that is demonstrably false to a person who is desperately trying to improve their health that counts as

medical advice what's more this isn't a hard one to answer. You know, I mean, I get that there are some things that you just, you hear so often, you maybe assume that they're right, you don't bother to check. Sometimes you hear something and you can't remember where you heard it and you mistake a bad source for a good one. And sometimes it's just something that's, you know, hard to Google. Like one quick Google search doesn't really hash it out. But this is literally one of the easiest data points to find on the entire internet. It is absolutely untrue that cold turkey is the best way to give up nicotine. And yet, when I tell people, yeah, I'm going to use a patch on the recommendation of my doctor who examined me and has an advanced degree in knowing this shit, multiple people chime in to give me a counterpoint based on their rigorous research

into what Uncle Ted told them. Look, skepticism isn't just about telling other motherfuckers they're wrong. Hell, it shouldn't even mostly be about that. The point is to be right. And being right isn't a matter of memorizing all the facts. It's about mastering a process. It's about finding and following the best procedure for sussing out truth from bullshit. And preferably that's a process we apply before we give medical advice to strangers. Right. And I know that the people who reached out incorrectly did it with the same love and compassion as the people who reached out correctly. I get that. And I don't mean to shit all over them or anything. I'm flattered that you care enough about me to share what you know or even what you think, you know.

But God damn it. This is our whole thing. We're the rationalists. Right. I mean, if we're not going to be rational, nobody is. And we have to hold ourselves and one another to at least as high a standard as we're holding natural green mommy to. And for our own health, maybe we don't make easy targets for post-smoker noah's rage while we're at it all right so apologies for making the whole first seven

minutes of the show about how i can't have a fucking cigarette but you're the motherfuckers that donated all that money to modest needs to make this happen this is your fucking fault right i'm pretty sure those needy families would have been pretty stoked about $99,997.50, but no, you motherfuckers had to blow past the goal like it was in reverse. This is your fault. You deserve this. In fact, I'm taking back the apology. This diatribe was almost just me yelling fuck as long as I could hold to you,

and you're lucky you got sentences at all. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are my fellow non-smokers, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to stand as close to the

entrance as we fucking feel like standing? I would love to see them stop you. I can't wait to see that. I mean, that's fair that's fair that said you haven't vaped until you've done it inside a revolving door i'll say that right now no it's just pressing himself up against entrances loving it you bet your ass i am loitering you really want to get into this right now

you really want to get into this do you want me to smoke cigarettes excellent all right in our lead story tonight we have some pretty fantastic news about the dictionary anna what are the guys talking about? It's the newest, the greatest Christian freak out. That's right. Christians are freaking the fuck out about dictionary news. It's because Merriam-Webster announced a pronoun in a way that was already happening for centuries. But now we have lots of people, for example, those who identify as non-binary using this pronoun in defiance of God. using this pronoun in defiance of God writing Christianity's face.

And also in defiance of God's official grammar and style guide that they think he has. And bigots everywhere are having a dictionary-based collective hissy fit, and it's delightful to watch. Okay, Heath. Not everyone who has an issue with this is a bigot. Maybe they just really care about, wait, I heard it, I heard it. Yep, there it was. I mean, I'm a

guy who still laments, vocally and often, the loss of thou, thy, thine. If anybody could sympathize with actual pronoun pedantry, it's me and you're just assholes.

You see how I used that non-gender specific you there, and you freaked the fuck out about it? Voo all our assholes. France has a... You guys are idiots. Also, just to reiterate, we've been using they this way

before also. Just just you're ridiculous so just in case you missed it gender is a spectrum so dick born male and vagina born female are two out of uh well theoretically infinity different gender identities think about it and lots of people prefer to be addressed with non-binary pronouns like they and them. And that's why Merriam-Webster decided back in September to update their definition of the word they to include the non-binary singular pronoun usage. And that's when a whole bunch of Christians who apparently look up the definitions of very basic words every morning to check on it. They woke up to a terrifying new system, and they freaked out, and they told all their friends about it. And there was a giant spike in searches for they on the Merriam-Webster website.

And a whole bunch of keyboards also getting angrily flipped off desks all over America's heartland was another result of this. And this all added up to an increase of 313% for that search in comparison with 2018, which was the highest spike of any word. And that's how they became word of the year for 2019. So what you're telling us is they did it, right? And then just to rub salt in the wound i called them they how about that so now these people have to look up more words in the dictionary just to make sure shit doesn't change on them again and they are not taking it well they're not good with words They don't like doing this dictionary stuff.

Yet they do it anyway. But in response to this grammatical persecution that's happening, the Christian hate group of lawyers known as Liberty Council and their chief bigot counselor, our favorite Matt Staver with one T. Matty Staves. Matty Staves. He decided to remind everyone that they've been hating trans people since before it was cool over at liberty council they saw hating trans people at a really small venue in a basement it was way way before it was their basement they were having a meeting in a

basement but whatever you know you know what i'm saying so they wrote up a big official statement about the word of the year complaining about this and they made it exactly six sentences before it turned into a link for their year-end fundraiser jesus where they'll be using that money to pay for a bunch of more legal challenges to trans people being full people on behalf of the god of the universe who needs a team of bottom tier lawyers to handle this stuff yeah apparently yeah yeah and by the way those bottom tier lawyers 100 pretty pleased with sugar on top please sue us i mean look you're under you're educated unprofessional goons please sue us so i can show up at court in a custom printed suit with pictures of your dad on it. Please. Yeah. No, we'll call you pedos.

We'll call you pedos. He's got Matt Staver's dad's suit. You know, it's going to be a whole thing. He's going to wear it to like Christmas parties if you guys don't sue us. Otherwise, I have it for no reason. Almost no. Yeah. So that was fun.

We learned about a new secret commandment from the secret Bible. Apparently it says, thou shalt not they and they shalt not thou or something like that. And that gives us a great new plan for a secular town hall display. So 10,000 Heath points for anyone who can put up a 10 commandments display at a courthouse somewhere that's redlined to say, he, she, they shall not at the beginning of each of those words. And also, you know, maybe redline something at the end that says, most of these are a priori knowledge, regardless of your exposure to the Bible. We know not to like murder people, obviously.

Well, yeah, I was just a minority of them that aren't just be Christian said in a different way. Yeah, not the dumb ones, but the obvious fucking ones that actually matter to society. We already have that. Thank you. Yeah. It's built into like humans. And in fairs, not fair news. Representative Chris Stewart, a Republican from Utah, introduced a new bill titled the Fairness for All Act into the House of

Representatives this week, which would grant LGBTQ people different rights. Still rights, just, you know. Some of them. Lesser, different-er ones. Okay, fairness for everyone who puts their

finger on their nose right now. Done! Just me. Okay. So that's fairness for christian people we'll just say fairness though you guys all had a chance yeah so the bill and those pushing it claims to introduce protections for lgbtq people but its very obvious main purpose is to introduce protections for people who want to discriminate against lgbtq people for religious reasons right right he's like see we both get something you get to have rights so that i can deprive you of them it's a win-win yeah so if this bill were to go through it would allow any religious business owner or service provider to refuse service to gay people, as well as taxpayer-funded faith-based foster homes and adoption agencies

to discriminate against prospective same-sex couples or Jews, atheists, Muslims, single parents, etc. Wow. Yeah. If we're revisiting protection under the law, then we're taking some away. Everybody already had that since right after slavery ended. The Christian right is tooling with reconstruction with this. But, but, hear me out now,

you didn't hear the other half. Gay people will get to take as many pennies as they want from the little tray, even if they don't need them, even if they're paying with a credit card. So gets well not all of them but some well yeah don't be a dick so there's a couple loopholes or maybe just cases of bad writing in this bill that i absolutely love the first is that the bill explicitly states that you can't racially

discriminate for religious reasons which you can tell they think is like getting ahead of the game but it's just super fucking stupid well and that's somebody clearly being like oh sorry yeah okay he makes a good point let's not tool around with reconstruction that makes us look look kind of bad well unless the black people are also gay that's there we go what's it's like they're like they're like well you know they've been getting too damn much mileage out of that make it black music just you look preamp that shit yeah so secondly based on the wording and their fake protections for gay people that they included the beginning of the bill you'd have to like declare that your bigotry was for religious reasons so they're standing up for gay

people against secular bigots i guess it's unclear so he comes up with a system by which one group but only that group is allowed to deny one group but only that group their rights and calls it the fairness for all act right like i mean i, we should at least all get to discriminate against gay people equally under that law, right? Jesus, he doesn't even get that part right. Either way, this bill will probably go nowhere, but that doesn't stop a bunch of people from trying. So, nice little reminder,

every single election matters, even the ones where you don't have to bite down on a block of wood and vote for a guy named Pete. Get your block of wood out, whatever. Yeah, right. Just in case anyone on this call needs some practice checking that blue box, regardless of

which name is there, we're going to take a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. A man wrote the Bible. A whore is what she was. If it's a legitimate race. You're a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This week in Massage. If I ever needed to sum up the part of the world that I live in with a single hyperlink, I finally got the news item to do it. And maybe you've already seen this one too. Comes from all of a hundred miles to my northeast in Savannah, Georgia, where television news reporter Alex Bizargian was covering the Savannah Bridge run on live television when Methodist youth

leader Tommy Calloway runs along and smacks her square in the ass again on live television now the look on her face as it happens is one of those i'd give my left arm to put her in a room alone with this guy in a chainsaw expressions and the asshole in question was arrested for sexual assault shortly thereafter but before his arrest he sent out this bullshit excuse apology where he claims that he was trying to touch her back, not her ass, which is one of the dumbest excuses I've ever heard. He was trying to slap her in the spine and squeeze her back muscles. But even if that was true, unless she was choking at the time, it would still be assault. Randomly smacking people is against the rules, regardless of where you get them.

Anyway, it looks like this guy is going to be legitimately punished for this, which is great. But holy shit, a poor woman trying to do her fucking job and getting violently manhandled by an overprivileged Christian who can't even convincingly pretend to know what he did wrong when he got caught is the best exemplar I have ever seen of South Georgia misogyny. Of course, it's not like the misogyny gets much better in other states. Like how about the story out of Minnesota where a mother of five named Andrea Anderson is suing not one but two pharmacies for refusing to fill her prescription for the morning after pill. And as if sending her three places for a public slut shaming wasn't enough, according to Anderson, the pharmacist at the CVS called a third location and told her that that location also refused to fill her prescription on moral grounds.

So then she went to that third location and they told her that, yes, they did speak to a CVS pharmacist, but no, they did not refuse to fill her prescription. But no, they did not refuse to fill her prescription. So even when the pharmacist found someone willing to fill her fucking prescription, they lied to her about it in the hopes that she would simply give up on getting the medicine that her doctor prescribed to her. Oh, and before I sign off, I wanted to give you a quick update on that batshit crazy ectopic pregnancy bill in Ohio. Remember that bill that would require doctors to reimplant ectopic pregnancies despite that being impossible? Well, one of the bill's dozens of sponsors, state rep John Becker,

was asked about mandating miraculous medical breakthroughs by the Cincinnati Inquirer last week and freely admitted that he never even bothered to ask doctors about anything at all in his bill. And obviously, this is no surprise. It's pretty clear from the demand that no doctors had any input in it whatsoever. And women have come to expect that the people legislating their medical decisions won't bother to talk to doctors

before issuing their pronouncements. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't still get pissed off about it and hold their feet to the fire when they do it. And while I go find a fire and John Becker's feet, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next up in headlines in We Were Saving It for Latter News, a former portfolio manager for the Mormon Church has come forward to the IRS with allegations that the Mormon Church is squatting on about $100 billion in accounts intended for charitable purposes. Saving it for Latter-day Saints. I just got that.

Thank you. Let me say that number again, by the way. That number was $100 billion. Okay, that's, you know, less than Gates, more than Buffett. That's, you know, less than Gates, more than Buffett. That would be the second largest hedge fund in the country, all intended for charitable purpose, all not being used for that or taxed or taxed. Yes. I mean, and we could literally take that entire chunk of money and just steal it straight into government coffers. And we'd pay for the cost of religious tax exemptions for about one year that's all we would sell we should still do that but the problem is enormous that's not going to solve it very long or you know we could like use it for roads and schools

and shit i feel like yeah but everything everybody just pays taxes on stuff that tax we tax normally tax the taxable stuff fuck and look i get that we're all used to bazillion dollar fortunes not getting taxed so it's easy to lose sight of how fucked up this really is the largest charity in the world though is the bill and melinda gates foundation they have less than half this money and they actually do charity with it this money is coming exclusively from either the tithes of Mormons or the interest on the tithes of Mormons. It's all being collected under the guise of charitable work. And even if that charitable work includes questionable shit like, you know, saving the souls of people in island nations without ready Internet access, an awful lot.

At least that'd be an honest use of the money. They'd be doing what they said they were going to be doing with it, but they're not. They're investing in property and running businesses and hoarding the money and swimming around in it Scrooge McFuckin duck style to the tune of 12 figures. Wow. Yeah. yeah okay well i feel like we could announce a wealth tax and then just stake out a forest in palmyra new york and watch them try to bury all that fucking money and we just take it then yeah yeah oh yeah you know what happened it got slippery yep yeah that's the guys's thing slippery treasure what are you gonna do it got super no we saw it we were here

hey no yeah it was there. What are all these pinwheels on your gold? There's a lot of pinwheels on your gold, Mormon people. And look, not a lot of this is legitimately protected by religious exemptions. That's the point here, right? The dude who came forward alleges that Ensign Peak Advisors, the company he worked for that handles the church's investments, should not be legally classified as a nonprofit. The exemption requires that the company in question operate exclusively for religious, educational or other charitable purposes.

Their only purpose is to invest money and then make more money out of it for the Mormon church. And sure, the Mormon church is allowed to make good investments, but they should at least have to pay the piddling fucking taxes on those profits that other billionaires pay. Like as rigged as our fucking system is towards billionaires, they're still cheating that system. Wow. Yeah. When Jeff Bezos is tweeting hashtag eat the Mormons, not a good time. You're being assholes. Anyway, I strongly urge you to read the expose in the Washington Post.

I can't do it justice in the confines of this show. I'm waiting for the movie. It'll be a good movie. But I can offer up the all too important reminder during the I'm going to ring this bell at you until you put money in my bucket season. When churches say they're collecting money for charity they're usually lying and most of the time that isn't even illegal nope and next up in headlines the hallmark channel does not know what the fuck to do and it's delightful oh it's wonderful. I love this story. So Hallmark recently aired an ad for Zola wedding planners that included a lesbian couple whose faces made physical contact during that commercial.

TV plain vanilla rating in serious jeopard but then they got a backlash backlash from non-bigots and now they they've promised to put the ad back on now i'm hoping we can keep this going for years just twitchy christian parents never knowing what's next on hallmark channel they're holding their remote control, quivering hands. They're ready to side tackle their kids or their TV if a scary ad pops up, whatever. Well, what I love about this is the extent to which Hallmark is trapped by its own bullshit, right? Like they've spent years catering to the Christian right by producing non-content they call movies while demanding their writers never

show premarital fucking or more than one kiss on screen all while pretending they're just you know harmless garbage for white people like pumpkin spice lattes but now that anyone has noticed them doing anything close to acceptance they're gonna fucking explode like the war games robot it's delicious right yeah delicious and and let's be super clear here like the line that the hallmark channel was skating too close to for christian comfort was literally the goddamn golden rule the only good thing that jesus ever really said yeah so did he even say that he does yeah he did but it was already in the fucking old testament too oh he stole it yeah right he then transitions into but seriously

the world is gonna end like oh yeah you know every he does that with everything that he says you really gotta pull out a lot of context before you get anything useful there yeah so the initial backlash to the ad came from christians Christians everywhere who still watch broadcast television with commercials, apparently. And they're worried that their super hetero kids who watch the Hallmark Channel are going to turn gay. Obviously. But the pressure really ramped up when the evangelical activist group one million moms that's right all four thousand of them got together and demanded to have the ad removed and one million moms even put together a petition with literally dozens of supporters called one million signatures and the

petition actually includes a quote from the New Testament that calls for literally the genocide of gay people. It does. That's the one. And Hallmark was like, wow, it does say we're supposed to murder the fictional lesbians in our ad. All right, we'll have them fired. What if we fire the fictional lesbians? We'll pull the ad. Start with firing. fired what if we fire the fictional as we'll pull the ad start with fire yeah so they caved and they

pulled the ad claiming their company has a policy of avoiding politics and then the rest of the world explained that being bigots is a political stance that counts too so now hallmark is double caving and everyone hates them and i'm so happy okay i don't know what they're doing i hate to admit it but now i kind of want to watch hallmark channel do the full anti-sjw spiral right like this fall uh destroying christmas with logics and facts well yeah i mean let's be clear about the size of this petition here yes one million moms is one lady and some paid twitter bots but for all they know she's the one that watches the hallmark channel right like i'm just

saying even if this group was titled more honestly i feel like that's a channel that has to sit up and take notice when they get a letter from like half a dozen moms or seven if sheila can get a sitter.com. Yeah, so this could have easily gone back and forth a few dozen times since I checked on the story yesterday. But according to my latest refresh, Hallmark promised to eventually bring back the commercial, but it hasn't happened yet because right now they're just rocking back and forth, ugly crying, not knowing what to do.

This is so great. They're like a dog at a divorce hearing they're getting yelled at by both parents to come to their side of the courtroom come on boy to decide on the custody and they're just crying i have no idea what to do and it's fantastic to watch i love this story because and i love it most because they're a terrible fucking channel that made me watch a feature-length motion goddamn picture about the high-stakes world of pumpkin pie contests in suburban ohio fuck you that was them and finally tonight in prostituting your own horn news the odds that stephen anderson and tony perkins are sharing a dick right now got that much higher this week when yet another virulently anti-gay preacher was caught trying to gay wrong. This one comes to us from Missouri, where Barry Pointer, one of three elders of the Kirksville Church of Christ and a professor at

Truman State University, faces six months in prison and up to a thousand dollars in fines for soliciting prostitution from an 18-year-old dude. Wow. Yeah. Sounds like it's almost a kid pro quo, but I would need to see this transcript. I think they've got one. Yeah. And look, I think it's fucking insane that we live in a country where you would imprison

somebody for offering to pay for sex, right? I mean, you know, time and place and all that. I'm all for arresting the dude who offers that up when the question is super salad but ultimately it should definitely be legal to go to a prostitute of any gender and offer them money to fuck but i can't feel bad about it when it's an asshole like barry pointer whose church is a font of slut shaming and homophobia and shit and it's because of people like him that we live in a country that would arrest him so I'm fine seeing his ass rot. Yeah, but

just circling back real quick, let's not preclude a classy brothel from offering soup and salad and appetizers. Oh yeah, but you should still tell them whether you want soup or salad first. Oh, oh, Olive Garden, this is the lateral business move you've been waiting for jump on it

all right limited breadsticks though in those ones the limited and as if this guy's theological background wasn't enough to thwart my instinctual sympathy the way he did this would be apparently he was busted after reaching out to an undercover cop posing as an 18 year old student then offering to pay the dude's gas in exchange for unspecified sexual favors adding that he quote might throw in an arby's card lol end quote he's like, all right, this exchange of gasoline for a hege feels kind of dirty. Let me add a touch of class. Plus, hey, beef and cheddar, send. Nailed it.

It's just nice to know that some prices are immune to inflation, even after all these years. And apparently, by the way, the reason the cop was posing as an 18 year old online in the first place is because the Truman State University Police Department got a tip about this motherfucker harassing male students for sexual contact and offering to pay for gas and Arby's cards in exchange for it. Man, did that small talk get weird, right? It's just some kids on campus. Gosh, the price of gas these days am i right and look i get that hypocrisy is hard to understand for some people but i'm sure this makes sense anecdotally right like so this guy's thinking okay i'm gay i'm evil gays must be evil but that's not how it works dude you're just an asshole that happens to also like fucking dudes

or like trying to with no real hopes of success despite the fact that you're willing to pay for it you fucking loser and while eli sadly puts away his arby's cards we're going to close the headlines for the night heat the light thanks as always Subway? And when we come back, Christians will argue that they're helpless and we'll find it pretty damn convincing. Tell you what, what if I throw in three stamps on a Subway club card?

You could steam them off and then stick them back on. Oh no, this is one of the punch ones. This is a punch one. Never mind. It's not transferable okay it's not transferable that's not transferable after trudging our way through the bible the quran and the book of mormon in 2018 we decided to suffer through the number one apologetics book on Amazon. And when we finished, we looked at the

way the following year was shaping up and decided it was the perfect time to dive into a big old number two. But we also figured Eli should do most of the swimming on this one. So after a long V4C hiatus, we're back with yet more mama bear apologetics. Now, it's been a while since our last visit with Hilldog. So quick refresher., so far we've learned that we should buy the book that we're reading and that we should read it. That's pretty much everything, right, Eli? Yeah, that and that the words you know aren't words. You're wrong. You're wrong about the words. Yeah. All right. So tell us, Eli, what other words doesn't the dictionary know the definition of

oh so they and so many more so many more now i should note that this chapter begins part two of the book which is titled lies you've probably heard but didn't know what they were called no no that sentence appears in a book as a heading if i said that in the text i would carve out my own intestines as apology yeah well get ready because those lies and this is going to be the rest of the book, those lies, which Hillary Morgan Farrar will be tackling for the rest of this book, are, in order, self-helpism, that's this week, naturalism, skepticism. Oh, goody. Post-modernism, moral relativism. She's going to talk about post-modernism in this book.

Emotionalism, pluralism, new spirituality, Marxism. Sheotionalism. Pluralism. New spirituality. Marxism. Get ready to eat. Feminism. And progressive Christianity. And me, but not as much of an asshole. Wow. Okay, well, now

that I know the titles of all those lies, I guess I can decide if they're real. Thanks, Hillary Morgan Farrow. I'm happy to do a little blurb for you, a commercial, whatever, testimonial. However, this first chapter in the section, chapter five in the book is titled, God Helps Those Who Help Themselves, Self-Helpism. And fool that I am or time that it's been since we've read this piece of shit I thought this book might actually be about the problem of trickle-down economics believing Calvinists in right-wing

Christianity but no no no no this chapter is about the dangers of trying to improve yourself well no obviously because look like any step towards being a better person is a step away from what this book is selling. That's true. That's true. Yeah. So pop back down. Do less. That's what this book is about.

Pop back down the chapter. Pop back down chapter. You got it. So the author of this chapter is Tia C. Cannon. What? Yep. And she starts us out with the example of her childhood television set and her family's ill-fated attempts to fix it and while i will spare you the cutesy three

paragraphs of reminiscing that's supposed to make this chapter relatable her point is that we like her television are broken and quote only our manufacturer can fix us. End quote. So being Christian is like being an Apple product. That makes a lot of sense actually. Okay. Honestly, that was such a bullshit name.

I assumed it was a bad anagram. The best I could come up with was taco nannies, satanic neon, and a snot canine. So not i like that one but for the record tz cannon no illusions thinks your name is stupid okay to be clear yeah and so does heath enrigged which brings us to our title section what What exactly is self-helpism? So she opens up by telling us that trying to improve yourself is good in theory, but quote, we can't fix what is fundamentally broken within ourselves.

Only God can fix that. As the term self-helpism suggests, self-help is a completely unbiblical take on human brokenness. It's a message boiled all the way down lied about is that we need search no further than within ourselves to find both the cause and remedies for our brokenness end quote hey little life hack here it is always easier to sniff out the flavor of the religious bullshit when you remind yourself that they're using the God to hide the eye. Right. Right. Like when a religious leader or author says only God can fix you and then goes on to speak for God. They're just saying only they can fix you with a little plausible deniability sprinkle.

They're juking that fucking first person. Three easy payments of $99.95. Exactly. So yeah, it might not be as shiny as the future chapters about Marxism or feminism, but in case it wasn't clear yet, the enemy of this chapter is not believing that you're broken

or believing that you're broken, but believing you can fix yourself. Yeah. So a whole bunch of these readers were like going through, fuck, okay, it's about holding myself down with my bootstraps. Hold on, that's tricky. I've been doing it. Well, you know what? That actually makes more sense than what I was trying to do, though.

It's like physically impossible to do the up thing. So I guess here we go. Tie it down. Twister. And as if that's not bad enough, TSE is going to give away the game here by spending the entire

opening of this session telling us that, damn it, people are spending money on self-improvement instead of ghost wizards. Yeah. She has like a paragraph and a half about

how much money people are spending on self-help and how much money people are going to spend-help and how much money people are gonna spend on self-help. She might as well wrap up with, that money is ours, dammit! Ours! Well, yeah, wait, this chapter is right in the middle of a book

on how to be better at being you. Fuck you! This is a self-help book! Exactly! This is what it is. Even according to Amazon. Yeah! But the real problem of self-help it is. Even according to Amazon. Yeah. But the real problem of self-helpism, at least according to TSC, is idolatry. Quote, humanity takes something good and even powerful and then mistakes it for God, giving powers that are God's alone.

End quote. The verb help is what she's talking about. Help is the God only power she just described yes it is so now it's time for a brief history of self-helpism and she's going to begin that history with eve taking the apple in the garden of eden you know what just in case you were going to take any part of this chapter seriously, she says, quote, when Eve decided to take things into her own hands and bring Adam along with her, our ancestors helped themselves, albeit to a heaping portion of death.

Oh, Jesus Christ. And if you think about it, the Nazis were helping themselves to living space. Take that, Tony Robbins, you fucking Nazi. And then she actually goes into the actual history of self-help books, which, hey, credit where credit's due. Interesting as fuck. Like she says that the phrase God helps those who help themselves. Actually, not from the Bible, but from poor Richard's almanac by Benjamin Franklin. from the Bible, but from Poor Richard's Almanac by Benjamin Franklin.

Yes, kind of obvious with God helping instead of being a weird sadist voyeur, so that's definitely not the Bible. Right, right. You know, you can tell because it's clever. Yeah. And from thence, we get the 1859 release of Self-Help by

Samuel Smiles, the 1902 release of Jamie Allen's As Man Thinketh, and of course, the favorite book of douches, myself majorly included, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. Wait, that's your favorite book? It's not my favorite book, but I really like that book. You like that book?

I really, really like that book. I would have guessed that you liked that book if you put that out of true or false. That's so hurtful. is very manson read that in jail to learn to teach women to murder on his behalf and he nailed it and it works no you're right sorry withdrawn withdrawn sending you a copy for christmas so a little side note here uh t rantasaurus claims that she read how to win friends and influence people in fifth or sixth grade and then she goes on to describe its message as quote success through self-confidence

which is super not what that is but but to be fair it's also not the babysitter club so she'd have been full of shit if she did nail the blurb too right, right? That is true. Fucking 10-year-old renown to win friends and influence. Fuck you. Hmm, father forgets. You know what? I'm really ready to do this. Just walking around the halls of your middle school with a murdery harem behind you. You know what?

All right. See? Every moment you grow closer. But according to our author, none of them were as bad as the man who brought self-helpism into the church, Norman Vincent Peale. Okay, but no, but that's legit, right? Because everything bad reaches its nadir when it's combined with religion. That's true. That's fair.

Yeah. That's fair. Yeah. So Peel's message in the power of positive thinking of self-confidence and happiness is right against Christianity's message. And honestly, she's kind of right, right? Like she's right. She starts thinking positive for a second. Ah, shit.

Think medium. Think medium. Think medium. All right. Now I'm doing like wooey Buddhist stuff. This is Morgan. Right. So now it's time, as we're going to end all chapters, to roar like a mother.

You guys ready? No, but only because I can't remember your middle name. Excellent. Yep. Juicing. Ju-juicing. So first, we're going to recognize the message. And she's broken that down into the diagnosis, the remedy, and the source.

So the diagnosis of self-helpism is that it tells you, try and follow me here, if you feel unhappy or like you deserve a better life, you do. And that, stay with me. That's bad? Yep. It's not just bad. It's linguistic theft because oh really what quote when we scatter a few seeds of self-helpism along with a few seeds of moral relativism we won't get happiness instead we'll end up with a lush growth of self-centeredness

blooming in our hearts end quote quote. Which we can counterbalance by pretending the sculptor of the galaxies is going to take care of our emotional boo-boo. So the remedy that self-helpism proposes is self-discovery, which she spends about a paragraph and a half shitting on because it's silly to think you're lovable or worthy. She spends five seconds self-discovering and just starts scream crying. I want to be with myself.

Yep. This is no good. Right. And so finally, the source of recognizing the message, the source of self-helpism is the self. So, my theory here is they're going to apply the diagnosis, remedy, and source thing to

the other lies in this book, but the third one didn't really fit for this formula. So, self-help source is the self. Also, help. I think they were just, that was the the self. Also, help. It's the best. Like, I think they were just, that was the, oh.

Also, letters. This is tricky. Now, so now it's time to, oh, offer discernment, which will also be divided into diagnosis, remedy, and source. And again, the diagnosis here is that self-helpism makes you feel entitled to happiness, which you're not because you're a piece of shit and only God can fix you. Now go wait in the truck. And here's an especially terrifying quote from this section.

Quote, we must remember, mama bears, that the only reason we have anything good coming our way is because God is good, not because we are. Well, not because you are. Wow. Yeah, God abandoned the Jewish people and chose us. Nobody move around and fuck it up. Just relax. It gets worse. Us.

She continues, be aware when you hear people touting rights. Often what they call a right is really a gift to which they feel entitled. Oh, she's talking about black people,'t she at this point right like kaboops talking about black people fairness for all acts yep and the remedy and the source are the same as the previous section except she spends a lot more time hysterically asking god to spank her again for being a naughty girl but her basic point here is that any philosophy that believes in the power of humans to change themselves and be better is at core humanist,

which, again, she is super sure is a bad thing. Super sure. Good work. Yeah, she found her way to nihilism. And then she wrote a self-help book about it. Yep. About Christian nihilism. Must be exhausting.

Yeah. So now it's time to A, argue for a healthier approach than believing you are deserving of love and capable of change without the magic forgiveness of a wizard. And her healthier approach, surprise, surprise, is the Bible. right no just use the bible's tempered approach to self-help don't beat yourself up so bad that you don't wake up within 48 hours and you should be good also little side note here in this section one of her proofs that self-helpism doesn't work is that you can't just

buy one book on self-help and be all better the doy you have to make a vision board to read a book okay but then literally within her own paragraph she realizes she's inside one of the thousands of books about understanding her religion so she explains that the bible her word choice not mine is sufficient i love it when their own existence disproves their argument it happens so much don't get me wrong i also have trouble believing that tz canon exists outside of an over sex 1950s space opera novella, but someone's writing that sentence. They definitely exist, and it disproves that sentence.

It does. It does. Coffee bazooka will be writing my next chapter. No. No. She concludes this section, quote, Just remember, no matter what you're reading or listening to, psychology must always bend the knee to theology.

Okay. I mean, that's obviously stupid and wrong, but lots of this chapter is directly shitting on that, you know, garbage libertarian who reads Atlas Shrugged at 18 and thinks he's Neo from the Matrix forever. Yep. So I'm on board with that part. And I know what you're thinking. Okay, Eli, so far this chapter has just been wrong and also kind of sad, but are we going to get explicitly dangerous?

Yes. Yes, we are with R reinforced through discussion, discipleship, and prayer. So bad at acronyms. I forgot we were in the middle of this roar thing. So here's her first example. Quote, when it comes to the issues we deal with on a daily basis, discuss with your children what is within our power to fix and what is within God's power. Doing the dishes, being kind to the unpopular kid at school?

Yeah, hold on a second. Let me just give a donation to a Republican for sponsoring a bill to guarantee the Christian right of bullying. Great. Sent it. Sorry, back to my book about kindness. What was I just saying? Babbling. Example number two.

When your children come to you with a problem, begin by telling them, let's see what the Bible says about it. Jesus. Well, if they're coming to you with a problem at all, it says you should kill them with rocks. So at least, I guess at least that's an easy solution. It does say that. Kid shows up with a problem. All right, don't worry, son. We'll just pay your dad 50 shekels.

And this is all I can care about. We're fine. We live in the city. How loud did she yell? Change your book, assholes. So now it's time to PAWS. P-A-W-S.

No, that's not an acronym. They just wanted something bear related. Yeah, because when they thought bear, they thought paws. thought pause that's the closest thing jesus christ now it's time to roar pause bear honey roar it's time to pause for prayer and this is a series of prayer guides that shit on the topic like here's an example quote lord as i move from the lie of self-helpism to God-helpism.

Okay, you're not even fucking trying. Stop. Just stop. I ask that you bring every thought captive to you. Help me to teach my children the balance between independent thinking and dependence on you. Expose and help me to recognize the wolves

in sheep's clothing, to recognize psychology disguised as theology so I can protect my children. May I teach my children to make the Bible their first self-help source, end quote. And give me the strength to understand language enough not to distribute the word lie over both God and self-help. Like an idiot earlier in my own sentence. Oh, all right. So we've roared like a mother. Now it's time for the discussion questions.

Gentlemen, are you ready? Oh, if that ends it, yes. It does end it. One, icebreaker. If you feel comfortable sharing about this, what is one area of your life over which you feel completely powerless? The other people? I'm going to say N slash A. God is with me. I am Neo. I know Kung Fu.

Oh, good. Good. Two, main theme. You are a steward, not your own savior. One of the fruits of the spirit is self-control, yet the Lord also warns us against striving. Psalm 46, 10, Nesb. What do you think is the difference between taking responsibility for ourselves in a healthy way and striving in an unhealthy way? Consent and sufficient lubrication. Oh, excellent. Excellent.

Three, self-evaluation. Most people are on a spectrum. Wait, most? Where's everyone else? Where would you put us? I don't think that works. There's almost everybody's on it. And then you see the dotted I and Jeremy Bear me.

There you go. Draw a line on a piece of paper. No! No, you're a fucking bug! You just draw a line, have a line on the opposite page, that's your whole fucking job! Picture a line. No, no.

Okay, label one end of that line, passive patty. And the other end, striving Susie. You want me to fucking write the words you just wrote them you've already written them you just have to put a fucking line between jesus fuck you book passive patties spiritualize their laziness not recognizing that obedience is a necessary part of sanctification or spiritual growth. Striving Susies think that everything is their responsibility and forget that God sometimes works in us at a different speed than we would like.

Where do you think you fall on the spectrum and why? What can the Patties and Susies learn from each other? Okay, all right, wait. So her readers need a visual aid and a silly alliterative couple of names to grasp the concept of on a scale of one to any other number and she knows it right she figured that out going in all right not working. You guys are real dumb. Okay. Make friends with a person named Susie

and stand in a rainbow together at different spots. Does this make sense? Number four. Brainstorm. Draw a vertical line down the center of a piece of paper. Oh, for fuck's sake! And label one side me and the other side God.

On one side, identify the things in your life that are our own responsibility as stewards of God's gifts. On the other side, identify those areas of life in which God is the one responsible for making things happen. Are there any items on the God side of the paper for which you've been taking responsibility? Identify them. Talk with the group to get additional feedback on your assignment. Remember, the answers aren't always within. I love that the literal message of this entire chapter is, no, you can't. That's so amazing. But she can't even list a few things that are supposed to be on

the god side of that thing because it might literally kill someone when they stop doing that thing and the lawyer made her stay right about it number five finally release the bear pick one responsibility in me list that you need to be a better steward over. What steps can you take to make that happen? Then pick one or two things you've taken control of that you need to offer up to God. Pray for the strength to be diligent in areas where diligence is needed and to release control in areas where only God should be holding the reins. And instead of doing any of that shit at all,

we're going to close things out for the night. But we'll be back in a month or so to learn even more about where the mama bear shits in the woods. Before we take this script to the side of the road this week, I want to thank the hundreds of listeners who have reached out to Lucinda and me to offer their support and advice and well wishes on our battle with nicotine. Even the ones that fucked it up and got me all diatribe-y earlier. It's really helped to know how many of you are supporting us in this.

Incidentally, if you'd like to follow along with my journey a bit, I've been blogging about it on NoahQuits.com, which you can check out. And you can follow it for no reason other than to piss eli off when my blog has more followers than his and he's been doing this for like years now anyway that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight but we're back in 10 022 minutes with more if you can't wait that long be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show the skeptic act debuting at 7 a.m eastern on monday an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend god awful movies debuting at 7 a.m eastern on tuesday and an even newer episode of our half

sister show citation needed debuting at noon eastern onm. Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'm not allowed to go where the food is until I thank Heath Enright for being the smooth Turkish to my and domestic blend. I want to thank Eli Bosnick for tasting good like a cigarette should. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lutions for having come a long way, baby. Oh, fuck, this sucks. I also want to thank Dr. Elise Helford for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. One more time, that website was E-L-Y-C-E-H-E-L-F-O-R-D.com. If you don't want to remember how to spell that, just check the show notes for a link.

But most all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Matthew, Jess, Regular Size Dan, I'll Go to Paris, J-A-V-G Podcast, and Karen, who are so bright. Wise men show up looking for babies underneath them constantly. Wise men show up looking for babies underneath them constantly. Together, these six people podcast are reminders that Heath is only as alone as he chooses to be. Help to carry this project forward into another year by giving us money. Not everybody has the money to give us money, especially this time of year. But if you'd like to leave a little something in our stocking, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingadeist, 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 scathingtheist.com. And if you'd like to help but you don't have any money, that's fine, too. You can, like, follow us on Twitter and stuff. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robertson, and Handel's Art Social Media. Our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used for permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAtheist.com. Contact him on the contact page at scathingalias.com. I'm losing it, man. I'm losing it, Morgan.

I can barely hold it together. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2019. All rights reserved.