The Scathing Atheist - 363: Beaded Curtain of Separation Edition

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

In this week’s episode, John Roberts gives the beaded curtain of separation a solid tug, religious people pine for the days of mysterious cholera outbreaks, and we’ll turn jews gay with our atheism. --- Check out this week’s sponsors: Ziprecruiter: https://www.ziprecruiter.com/scathing Bouqs: https://bouqs.com/offers/scathing --- See us live in LA: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-la-tickets-86927786349 --- 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/ --- Headlines: The Supreme Court Will Decide If Taxpayer Money Should Benefit Religious Schools: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/22/the-supreme-court-will-decide-if-taxpayer-money-should-benefit-religious-schools/ UK Councillor: Education Group Corrupts Jewish Kids with “Atheist, Gay” Ideas: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/24/uk-councillor-education-group-corrupts-jewish-kids-with-atheist-gay-ideas/ The New Orleans Saints Allegedly Helped the Catholic Church Cover Up Sex Abuse: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/25/the-new-orleans-saints-allegedly-helped-the-catholic-church-cover-up-sex-abuse/ Black Preacher: Mike Pence Is One of the “Most Persecuted Christians in America”: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/22/black-preacher-mike-pence-is-one-of-the-most-persecuted-christians-in-america/ Paula White: Christians Must Pray That “Satanic Pregnancies” End in Miscarriage: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/25/paula-white-christians-must-pray-that-satanic-pregnancies-end-in-miscarriage/ Paula White Claims That Prayer Reduced Crime After 9/11: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/24/pastor-paula-white-claims-without-proof-that-prayer-reduced-crime-after-9-11/ Propublica releases database of priests credibly accused of sex abuse: https://projects.propublica.org/credibly-accused/ and https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/28/propublica-created-a-searchable-database-of-credibly-accused-predator-priests/ Brazilian Government Appoints Creationist to Lead Science Agency: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/01/27/brazilian-government-appoints-creationist-to-lead-science-agency/

Changing a light bulb should be simple. Whoa, whoa, whoa! Uh-oh, that's not supposed to happen. Quickly submitting and tracking a claim on the Bel Air Direct app actually is simple. Bel Air Direct. Insurance simplified. Warning, Lucinda was unavailable this week, so, like, you're not even gonna get her sweet lilt around the fox this time. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Zip Recruiter, Bokes, and by not forgetting to get the person in your life flowers for

Valentine's Day. Flowers for Valentine's Day. Don't be a nozzle. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, I'm Wayne, a professional dog trainer. And while we know that dogs evolve from wolves, we're certain that we did, in in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's January 30th. And it's National Escape Day. You'll never take me alive! I'm no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick. Oh, damn. He's really gone. Okay. Well, from Richard Kuklinski's New Jersey, Cincinnati Swing State, and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, the Supreme Court rules that the church and state were on a break. Still gone. Okay.

And we'll make Jews gay because we're atheists. But first, the diatribe. Did he go out the window? It sounded like he went out the window. Yeah, went out the window. You ever notice how when religious people accuse science of robbing the world of its mystery they only bring up fun inconsequential mysteries right like they get really pissed off that we've explained what a rainbow is but they're never pining for mysteries like why do we keep getting

cholera you have this one from christians but also from that whole swath of spiritual but not religious and i believe in something nincompoops that we can lump together as irrationalists. And even the phrasing is an admission of guilt, right? They say that science robbed the world of its mysteries, but I feel like the word you're looking for is solved, right? Isn't that what mysteries are for? When you answer a question, you haven't stolen it. You've given it purpose. A question without an answer is half a thing.

It goes against human nature to want an answerless question. If it didn't, people would have loved the finale to Lost. And yet, this nostalgia for stupidity is pervasive, and it's pretty clear why, right? After all, there are an awful lot of careers out there built entirely upon not knowing the answer, but with style. And for most of human history, we actually, as a species, didn't know shit. You know, the world's filled with unsolved mysteries everywhere you look. And because humanity is so bad at not knowing the answer, we just started making shit up. Of course, we couldn't prove any of it because it was all made up bullshit.

So by means of natural selection only the flimsiest bullshit survived anything that lent itself to direct empirical testing tended to get rooted out so very naturally humans created invisible untestable unpredictable entities to explain all the mysterious phenomena of the world and it's not even that humans preferred those answers right it's just they were the least testable and therefore the most likely to propagate. And this is working fine, I guess, for thousands of years before science comes along and fucks it up. You know, why do we have all this cholera? Because of sin, probably. And, you know, even if I'm wrong, the net result is less sin. And even if I know I'm making shit up, I don't have to feel guilty about it. After all, anybody else who might answer that

question would also be as full of shit as I am. And maybe they'd be worse at it. Maybe they would take advantage of all these people more than I already do. So it's best for me to defend my bullshit to keep other people from coming along with even worse bullshit. And I guess that moral justification works great until somebody comes along and starts actually reducing cholera. And if morality was a prerequisite for justification, this is the point in the story where religions would just start packing up their fucking tents, right? The first time somebody ever demonstrated that cholera was completely unrelated to sinfulness. But it's not so they don't. And so now we have people who speak wistfully of universal bewilderment and in so doing elevate ignorance to the level of a virtue.

They create an ignorance fetish and call it a love of mystery. Well, look, I love mysteries, too, but the best part is the fucking end. Right. Especially when the mystery is why do people keep vomiting to death? But if you demand virgin intellectual horizon, hey, guess what? Science is the best fucking friend you ever had. The horizon is way bigger than it used to be, and it is expanding constantly at an increasing rate. Every answer brings new questions with it, so there's always more mysteries. Of course, people with the ignorance fetish don't care about that.

Right? It's not enough for the mystery to be unsolved. It has to be unsolvable because if any question has an answer, like a genuine answer that we can actually, you know, eventually build a consensus around that answer isn't God. And so they fight us every fucking step of the way because every step towards understanding reality is a step away from religion. And if they just considered that for a few seconds, they'd pack up those tents and go home. But guess what? It's easy not to notice shit like that when you already have an ignorance fetish.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the genitive and bockative to my accusative, Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick. Fellas, are you ready to declench? It's all about breathing, Noah. It's all about breathing. Yeah, we're all about the peggative case. Absolutely. Well, this intro just got way more interesting, and Heath and I need some alone time.

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Okay, but why don't you take the forms with you just in case? That is, you're handing me a vial of acid right now that's that's just a vial of acid doesn't read the signs and now back to the headlines in our lead story tonight the beaded curtain of separation of church and state is poised to get that much less substantial in a couple of months thanks to pi kappa scotus and the case of espinoza v montana department of revenue uh the court heard oral arguments last wednesday and based on all the pearl clutching bullshit from kavanaugh i don't think this is going to go well for us yeah this is going to have a serious effect but more importantly it has montana in the title that's unacceptable for something

serious effect right right nothing should echo out from montana to where i can hear it well maybe that's part of the strategy right they're hoping it'll fly under the radar because nothing ever matters in montana someone will be like wait a second is that nah montana all right so here's the case in a nutshell montana passes a law giving a tax credit to people who donate to private school scholarships and since giving taxpayer money and foregoing taxpayer money is effectively the same and since private school is religious school a solid 80 of the time the montana supreme court said oh no no no you can't do that and struck this law down and now despite the montana constitution

having an amendment that expressly forbids shit like that the supreme court is going to rethink it for them well i mean we'll see because the supreme court has plenty of federalists and they're all about states rights i'm sure they're going to be consistent totally intellectually honest on this i'm not worried oh absolutely you, sometimes people ask us, like, why we don't make this show a church as a goof or to point out the hypocrisy of religion. And we don't do that because we like roads and Medicare and shit. But pretty soon the reason we don't do that is because we're going to be the only ones left to pay taxes. So, all right.

So the heart of this issue is what's known as a Blaine Amendment, which 37 U.S. states have. Stop legislating other people's bodies, Blaine Amendment. Nope, no. It's an amendment that forbids direct and indirect funding of religious schools. And by the standards, those cases have always been decided on. It seems like the Montana Supreme Court clearly got this one right. So what's at stake here is the constitutionality of the blaine amendment stop me if this sounds familiar the supreme court is

deciding not whether it's illegal for states to give churches taxpayer money but whether it's legal for them not to cool cool so trump's supreme Court is running a protection racket for Christianity. That's what's happening. And of course, standing out in this disingenuous display of faux persecution was the embodiment of white fear himself, Brett fucking Kavanaugh, who started bitching about how the Blaine Amendment had its roots in anti-Catholic bias, which is about as true as when Christians say Planned Parenthood is because eugenics, or at least would be if Montana hadn't passed their law in the fucking 70s. And when you measure the relevance of what the Blaine Amendment meant in 1875,

we should remind everybody that this court has already declared America to be pretty much over racism when they repealed the Voting Rights Act. So, you know, this concern for historic prejudice is new. Yeah, well, I mean, as concern for historic prejudice is new. Yeah. Well, I mean, as long as we're correcting stuff that was caused by prejudice, Brett Kavanaugh can go ahead and leave. Okay. Serious question. I want to know the answer to as a lawyer.

How would you argue your case in front of Brett Kavanaugh? Yeah. Every time he said something, I'd be like, oh, sorry. Does anybody who didn't cry when talking about boofing with squee on national television last year have a question? I'd just love to get to all their questions first. Then we'll get to the boofing with squee, gentlemen. Going right through Jeff Blackwell's head every time. Trying to stifle a laugh.

And in Tally-ho Jews news tonight. The Orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill, England, which is why that joke I just made is hilarious, is resisting efforts by the Office for Standards and Education Children's Services and Skills or OFSTED

to monitor Jewish schools because at least according to one Tory counselor government oversight of education will turn the students into gay atheists look virtually any educational oversight is going to tend them towards atheism I I get that but because of the educational part but I'm dying to know how the gay part works i think they um put their dicks side by side not not no that's not what i was asking you oh never mind then so little backstory here stanford hill is a home to a very large orthodox jewish community or as i call them 16th century polish larpers a larping crew just pulled out their airpods hey fuck you fuck you all right let's let's go listen to the dollop let's listen to a show

that appreciates us that respects us yeah so these communities forgo traditional education opting instead for a series of jewish parochial schools called yeshivas, which teach the study of Torah, but not things like reading or math and not shouting out when the magician is performing. They miss a lot in the yeshivas. But you were palming the card. They were right. That's not the point. Kind of. That's the point.

Okay. Right. So, Ofsted noticed this and has proposed monitoring things like whether students with disabilities are being accommodated and whether the girls are taught that they're human beings. You know, liberal, atheist, gay shit like that. And as a result, Tory councillor Aaron Klein is freaking out. Eli? But are the guys talking about latest greatest Jewish freak out? Thank you, me. line thank you me so here's what klein had to say quote and i'm gonna do the voice because you all know the voice is what he speaks okay the haraidi community prides itself with a youth clean and pure from crime the way they do it have a british jewish accent yeah i way they do it. Doesn't he have a British Jewish accent? Yeah. I can't do it.

Blood just started to come out of my nose. You all heard Heath try to kill me just now. I say the Harari community. No, I just turn into like a alien thing when she opens it and it's like, kill me. And again,

I'm going straight. The Harada community prides itself with a youth clean and pure from crime. Most boys and girls are getting married around the age of 19. After years of learning in yeshiva to respect your partner, we pride ourselves with a divorce rate of one out of 10. Why bring Ofsted to our yeshivas? They give the children's ideas of atheist, gay, early childhood sex. We don't need all this.

Thank you. End quote. Okay. They have their own ideas for early childhood sex? I feel like they should refer to the experts here. I'd like for them to not decide on that. Is atheist a type of sex? I feel like they should refer to the experts here. I'd like for them to not decide on that. Is atheist a type of sex? What am I missing out on here?

I love, here this group of people is desperately trying to think of something that their students aren't worse at than all the other people. And all they can come up with is lower divorce rates. Because they've largely stripped women of their autonomy but that's it right yeah the top five percent in honor killing what do you mean that's not good i said top five percent yeah so uh when he was asked by the press if he had um heard what he just said that's fifth percentile not 95th you're doing it backwards man yeah so klein pivoted to mayor phil glanville who is gay saying quote you mentioned philip glanville i believe he is gay good luck to him no thank you we don't want offstead coming and mixing confusing our children

for us it's adam and, a man and a woman, a boy and a girl, end real quote. Wow. I was joking before, but they really do have their own ideas for early childhood sex. They just confirmed it. That's a weird flex.

Indeed. Also, good luck. What does that mean? Good luck to him? He concluded by taking a shot at Ofsted's science requirements, saying, quote, We teach our children that God created the world some 6,000 years ago within six days and rested in the seventh. Ofsted comes in and says you must also teach the atheist version. The world was made by itself from evolution millions of years ago.

Leave us alone. It's all baloney. End real quote. Well, given the masterful understanding he just demonstrated, I think we can all trust his assessment. But now that I know that we'd have to stop lying as the next argument down from the divorce one, I can see why they

pull that one out of the quiver so quickly yeah so uh this story actually does have a happy ending really uh rare for our show yeah as of right now it looks like off said we'll get its way they're going to go into schools and mayor phil glenville who uh klein mentioned delivered the following scathing statement at the Hackney Council meeting the following week. And he had some good luck, I guess. Oh, yeah, for sure. Quote, we reiterate...

Oh, wait a minute, you're not going to do his voice? That would be kind of racist to not do his. That's weird. Yes, here we are, there we go, Michael Marshall, here we go. We reiterate the commitments we made to stand up to hate, whether it's anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or indeed homophobia. Anyone who has opened the Hackney Gazette recently

will see that there are people in this chamber who don't share those values and make cheaper tax, including on me. I would use some of Klein's words to say politely, no thanks to you, Mr. Klein. No thanks to your bigotry. No thanks to your views on bus lanes, red routes, or diversity, the role of Ofsted, or myriad other things. Sorry, they have an Old Testament understanding of bus lanes?

They do, yes. That's trying to be its own story. He continued, It's also a no thank you to your view of morality. You do not have a view of morality that is suitable for this chamber or this council. When you question Ofsted, you're questioning your commitment to keep

all of our children safe. End badass motherfucking quote. Yeah, drop a mic. And next up in headlines, in go fuck yourself news with an eaux on go new orleans saints are apparently heading up the football related wing of evil christianity and that's kind of impressive considering they're part of the, which seems to be a sports league with a Christian bigotry theme among their owners. And the Saints are a standout within that group.

Impressive. And that includes helping the Catholic Church cover up for pedophiles. That's what the Saints did. Wow. Wow. Like, that would be like being the rapey NFL team sorry sorry no that would be like being the domestic abusey

NFL you know what you have more stuff so just in case anyone missed it here's a little background on the Saints their superstar quarterback Drew Breeze does advocacy work with the anti LGBT hate group Focus on the Family.

Yep. Classy. Also, they had an internal bounty system for grievously injuring opposing players. Yep. Not really Christianity related, but I'm sure they sent thoughts and prayers to the victims, so that's nice. Yeah, no, but to be clear, there was no rule that they had to wake back up within 48 hours. No, not mentioned. And then we found out last week that the senior vice president for communications for the saints, Greg Bensel, basically their top PR guy, he was helping out the archdiocese of New Orleans with their messaging in terms of how to

release their giant list of clergy members who were credibly accused of sexually abusing kids. A person with that information exists, and the Saints pay him a six-figure salary to be an expert on messaging like that. Wait, why did they think about that team because of the name they assume that the saints would be the most catholic team i mean you know maybe they were right also i want to hear that advice right like he's on the phone he's like all right have you tried having people form their identities around your team so that when people inside it do bad stuff it has to compete with their sort of hometown loyalty for the.

Oh, that's your whole thing. Yeah. All right. Well, you know what? Let me get back to you. Let me get back to you. That's what we've been using. It's a lot of synergy here.

You got to admit. Yeah. So here's how we found out about all this. One of the priests that was rapists. We're going to say rapists. It's one vowel away from an anagram. Sure. Yeah.

One of the rapists is currently being prosecuted. And the plaintiff's legal team requested a whole bunch of documents about the internal communication within the church. And among that evidence, they found 276 documents linking the archdiocese with the New Orleans Saints. The Catholic Church wanted to know how to put a positive spin on employing a long list of rapists. And somebody was like, oh, no, no, we're good. I know an NFL guy. We're perfect. I'll go ahead and send him an email using our church computer.

And Greg Bensel at the Saints got that email, and he was like, yeah, no, I am perfect for this. Let me explain in a whole bunch more emails using my company computer. That all happened. All right, well, given some of the things Eli has made me email back and forth about with my company computer,

I don't want to cast any stones on that part of the story. Okay, fine. Not stones. Can we throw paintballs at Neil Gorsuch? No. No. And in persecute that you think that news tonight,

Bishop Vincent Matthews Jr., World Missions President of the predominantly African American and 5.5 million member Church of God in Christ, took a moment during his church's celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. to introduce Vice President Mike Pence and call him one of the most persecuted Christians in America. Yeah, he might get persecuted all the way into the Oval Office.

It sounds real rough. Oh yeah, think of all the persecution. White people from Indiana. All of America's Christians are tied at zero in terms of persecution. Sure, one of the isn't the wrong designation. Sure.

That's fair, yeah. So here's the quote. One thing I love about this man of God, you know, if you don't know anything. And holy shit, does the rest of this sentence count on that? Is that he is one of the most persecuted Christians in America. The biggest criticism that he gets all over television and everywhere else is that he actually believes in the Bible. They hate him for believing in the Bible.

End quote. Yeah, right. Just like MLK. Same reason. Yep. Yep. believes in the bible they hate him for believing in the bible end quote yeah right just like mlk same reason yep yep the white house is basically a birmingham jail it's like but no no the very similar the birmingham jail had black guys in it so i mean still does right so pence responded to this weird praise by calling the introduction overly generous so even pence didn't buy that bullshit and in his speech he talked about how mlk was an inspiration to him in his youth and how great the trump administration has been for black people explaining almost quote you guys were some of the very fine people just on the other side he said yeah right you were included compliment all right well clearly we're

doing a shit job at this christian persecution thing so we're gonna need a quick huddle and while we do that we'll hear from our second sponsor this week, books. Hello! Welcome to Typical Florist Experience. How can I help you? Are you, um, Floon Poff from our D&D campaign? No, all florists just happen to sound like me, don't you know? Okay, yeah.

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from the book company by going to books.com slash scathing and checking out with the code scathing. That's B-O-U-Q-S dot com slash scathing? Mm-hmm, that's right. And they have the link in the show notes, don't you know? Great. Well,

oh, you've killed all my flowers. I'm sorry. Yeah, you should be. And we're back. Next up in headlines, Donald Trump's spiritual advisor and ghost of Eleanor Shellstrop future, Paula White.

In headlines twice this week. Kristen Bell is terrified of that. She's absolutely terrified. That's not a good. That's a nightmare for her all the time. If she knows who Paula White is anyway. Yeah. Donald Trump's spiritual advisor, Paula White.

Two different reasons she was in the headlines and neither was a journalist just screaming into a camera that Paula White has more access to the president of the goddamn United States than the Washington Post does. Yeah, right. Would have been a very reasonable segment if that had been the thing I'm talking about. But no, Paula White made the news for presenting mathematical proof that prayer reduced crime after 9-11 and then the next day she made the news for testing out some other powers of prayer by asking god to miscarry all the satanic pregnancies out there not exaggerating yes oh paula paula paula you gotta space that shit out girl it's about consistent brand awareness too much up front wow yeah all right so let's i guess we'll start with the 9-11 thing even though

christians with magical powers decide to start after 9-11 in their magical prevention of crime so she's up at her podium doing a sermon and if you haven't watched her do one of these it's worth a quick look because she tries to make her little sermons into a rap and she like claps along to herself yes but she has the rhythm of a 53-year-old white lady from Mississippi. So she almost injures herself every time. Steve Martin is a jerk. It's very – like there's a reason I don't try to do rap either and neither does Steve Martin. Yeah. Because you're both 53-year-old white ladies from Mississippi.

Yeah, right, right, obviously. So she's doing whatever you call that and she says do you know that they said when we prayed during 9-11 that crime went down more than anything because it took tragedy for the righteous to pray and who is they you might ask oh oh is it go fuck myself correct yes go fuck yourself. She continues, it is statistically proven because of the power of prayer that crime across this nation and across the world drastically went down. And by statistically proven, she means end quote. Yeah, I'm not sure what statistical proof would look like in that instance, but it wouldn't look like the crime rate failing to drop in the year 2001 for the first time in nine years. That's not what it would look like. Would not look like that.

No. And that brings us to the prayer for miscarriages from the pro-life advocate. Yeah. She's doing her impossibly off rhythm clapping thing again the very next day and this time it's going so badly that she has to physically brace herself against falling over from bad rhythm by grabbing her lectern seriously watch the video but here's the problem the lecterns wobbling like that shitty table at tgi fridays that needs coasters to shim it and she's starting to panic but she keeps going and she says quote we cancel every surprise

from the witchcraft like wobbly stuff for example we come against the marine kingdom we come against the animal kingdom and okay i'm gonna stop right there for a quick question um what do you guys know what the fuck she's talking about i mean what does she think fish are is both a logical question to draw from that and not one of the top 10 weirdest things you need to know at the end of her saying that. Or, okay, theory, maybe fish hate Paula White as

much as we do? Okay. That's impossible. Maybe. She got bit by a fish? Well, regardless, she then closed it out by saying, we break the power in the name of Jesus. We command any satanic pregnancies to miscarry right now. End exact quote.

So follow up question. What? Yeah. No. Great question. Well, you know, if we believe that they believe what they believe, she just asked God to murder human babies. Right. It's a good thing they don't actually believe what they believe or that would be criminally fucked up.

Yep. And yet they don't call it the pedophile news tonight. prove that the catholic church still isn't taking its responsibility to protect children from sexually abusive predators seriously by asking only one question you'd have a lot of choices actually that would be super easy um but one of the questions that's somewhere on that list is why the fuck they haven't taken all the various lists of credibly accused priests and mushed them together on one list that say could be searchable online. Well, luckily, the good folks at ProPublica, and this is demonstrably true, care more about protecting children from pedophile priests than the Catholic Church does

because they went ahead and did that. Yeah, okay. Well, that's great stuff. Good work for exposing evil people in general. But for Catholics, at a certain point, it's like, wow, you know, most of these apples are rotten. Why am I even in this barrel? That's weird.

They say even one is a problem, and I'm in this barrel. Maybe just don't be Catholic. What are you doing? Okay, wait. So you're saying that the good apples in the barrel are invisible. I just can't see. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and get out of the barrel. I'm going to get apples in the barrel are invisible. I just can't. You know what? I'm going to go ahead and get out of the barrel.

I'm going to get out of the barrel. I'm going to go out here. And I'm getting raped by an apple. Yep. So the searchable database, which you'll find linked in the show notes, was compiled from 178 lists released by U.S. diocese and religious orders. So to be clear, information the Catholic Church could have released in this format at any fucking time. And it's also woefully incomplete because even if we believe that the lists that have been released are comprehensive,

even though they've been demonstrated not to be multiple times, as the site points out, 41 of the nation's 145 dioceses haven't released anything at all. But even given all that missing data, the list contains 5,800800 names about half of whom are still alive well honestly if the catholic church sues pro publica for like copyright violation i will not be surprised i feel like i feel like devin nunez is somehow being slandered too so yeah yeah he's in there yeah Yeah, he's his lawyers. Probably so.

And let me save everybody else the trouble of looking it up. By the way, there are something like thirty five thousand Catholic priests in this entire goddamn country. That means that of the living priests in the US, about one in twelve has been credibly accused of sexual abuse. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Right. And since every time. And that's low.

Exactly. Exactly. Since every time a diocese releases another list, it's A, got a shit ton of new names on it. And B, is later proven to be incomplete. All we can say for certain is that the real number of predator priests is significantly higher than one in 12. That's terrifying. This is a big number. You're illegal.

The whole, that's illegal. Any group that's your number, you can't be allowed. Nambla. Nambla has lower numbers. It probably does. It probably does, yes. Lower. And in not in a Brazilian years news tonight.

Okay, that's your one. Fair, fair. Murderer and guy who wants to fist fight Jesus, President Jair Bolsonaro. Jair Bolsonaro, yeah. Yep, him. Continued his campaign of being Bizarro Universe Donald Trump this week

by appointing a creationist to run the agency that oversees graduate study programs within the ministry of education side note eli apparently owns a bunch of superman comics set in a latino universe i i don't think he does because let's be clear Bolsonaro is just South American Donald Trump right? Bizarro Universe Trump would be an intelligent secular leader who was removed from office for a crime he didn't

commit and had a goatee probably yep exactly so the appointee is one Benedito Guermamerez ag agatar nido and he's now gonna be in charge of the and i hope i'm pronouncing this correctly let me just go ahead and say you are not ahead Or, Deneville Superior, or, as they call it, Capes.

Okay, Capes is a word, but I mean, you're using it. As is or. Thank you. Thank you. Partial credit. is a word but i mean as is as is or thank you yep thank you partial credit so according to science magazine quote nito was recently quoted in a press release as saying that intelligent design should be introduced into brazil's basic education curriculum as a counterpoint to the theory of evolution so that creationism could be supported by scientific arguments no okay no yeah first of all no correct also i love that he thinks we'll do the work for creationism yeah like you just

shove it into our sciencey area and we'll sprinkle some science on it for you it's like the friend when you're smoking and your friend comes over and he's like, oh, let me get a hit off that. And you're just like, oh, no creationism.

You can't. We asked if anyone wanted to throw in, oh, creationism. You're a bad roommate. Right. So as you can imagine, actual scientists in Brazil

are not psyched about this. Yeah. In that same article, evolutionary biologist Antonio Carlos Marquez of the University of Sao Paulo's Institute of Biosciences said, quote, it is completely illogical to place

someone... Wouldn't he have like a Brazilian Portuguese accent? Let me do it for you now. It is completely illogical to place someone whose promoted actions contrary to scientific consensus

in a position to manage programs that are essentially of scientific training. End quote. Not adding, please don't murder me though, you crazy Bond villain of a president. Right.

And on that note, we're going to close off the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, we'll get downright festive. Last month, we tried out a new segment that was partly motivated by our desire to expand the list of holidays atheists can lay claim to, and partly by the fact that I could have sworn we still had a How Bullshit Is It segment that we hadn't used, but I was wrong, and it was Christmas Day, and the episode was due out the next morning,

and these guys were out of town. But due to the overwhelmingly positive response, Reed, more than one person said they liked it, and nobody said they hated it, we're pleased to present another installment of the holiday buffet the idea here is simple as an atheist who celebrates christmas i can assure you that we're allowed to celebrate whichever holidays we want they have to let us so we're dipping into the rest of the religions this year and offering up a few more choices for what you might want to celebrate in february heath you picked the earliest holiday so why don't you start us off which february holiday did you select

i went with setsubun from shintoism so uh here's here's a few details about it to start you off what we're commemorating the day before the beginning of spring. In Shintoism, they're pretty sure that happens on February 3rd. Where it's celebrated. Mostly Japan. When it's celebrated. Again, somehow February 3rd is the eve

of spring in their head. Best aspect. Gender reversal exercises. That's a pretty good aspect right yeah i like it worst aspect age reversal exercises uh and that that could be cool but i mean like especially in situations where ignorant people think prostitution is happening and there are age reversal exercises going on anytime when people mistakenly think that prostitution is happening that there are age reversal exercises going on. Anytime when people mistakenly think that prostitution is happening, that's

a problem. Or just that. Yep. Keith, what are the situations where age reversal exercises are cool? Uh, like... You can wear a diaper. I can wear a diaper. Okay. Not what I was going to say, but yeah, Noah had an answer right away. We'll go with that.

And one more little detail for you. How it's celebrated. And it is celebrated with girthy sushi. Nice. Super wide uncut sushi. Also silence and also throwing stuff.

I'll explain when we get there. Those two don't usually go together. Yeah. Okay, so here's why Setzabun would be a holiday for the beginning of spring on February 3rd. It's meant to be a New Year's Eve for the lunar solar calendar. So spring wasn't defined by the equinox. It was just the first season after winter, and they decided winter would end and spring would begin on Lunar New Year's Day, which became February 4th. So Setsubun was meant to be a day of cleansing to get rid of all the evil built up over the last year and to drive away the demons who were trying to start you off on the new year with more evil and this led to a ritual called mame maki which means beans scattering what you know naturally

because demons hate beans yeah demons are all keto or have ibs it's one of the other that's why i love holidays right there's always a twist ending in the description if you haven't heard of it before. It's always like a thing that kind of makes sense, a thing that logically follows from that. And then we write our names in magic butter. Yep. Yes. So the Mame Maki ritual is traditionally carried out by the Toshiya Toko of the household. carried out by the Toshiya Toko of the household.

That's the person in the family who's born on a year that has the same Chinese zodiac sign as the year being entered on the day after Setsubun. And by person, of course, I mean male person. Obviously. And if nobody lines up with the right zodiac sign, it's just the head of the household. And this person picks a different family member to dress up with a demon mask and go outside and then try to walk back in the door but when they do the toshia toko throws a bunch of roasted soybeans in their face and slams the door oh it's it's not clear how long they have to commit to the bit, but somebody ends up getting hit in the face with beans and then has to stand outside for a while. In February.

That's rough. You know, kids, your mother used to let me throw seeds in her face all the time before you were born. Yeah. So the general idea is that the beans and the little skit are a symbol of purification. And then it's time to bring some luck for the coming year. So everyone eats one roasted soybean for each year of their life, sometimes plus one for extra luck. Okay, idea for the U.S. version. Your Toki Tshobi has to dress up as a demon and

try to get past the American gladiators! Alright, alright. Yeah, no, the U.S. version of this automatically has a bean rifle, so this is adding up. This is all good work. It's all coming together. Alright, some good ideas for our version. And

that brings us to the eating part. My favorite part. in some parts of japan it's customary on setsubun to eat a type of furomaki or fat rolls called ihomaki and ihomaki literally translates to lucky direction roll so as part of ritual, you eat while facing in the coming years, lucky compass direction, which corresponds to that year's Zodiac symbol compass. Why? I don't know.

And you're supposed to eat in complete silence also, which means plenty of people I'm sure must fuck up the compass thing, but they can't ask questions or argue about it because of the silence thing. Except maybe like frantic hand signals. I don't know what they do, but it's probably funny to watch. I got to say, I am all about a shutting the fuck up based holiday. I love that part. Yeah.

We just shut up and fucking eat. That's like part of the thing. That's so good. Amazing. Yeah. eat that's like part of the thing that's so good amazing yeah so part of the tradition for setzebun is based on the idea that the new year was the time when the spirit world and the physical world got really close to each other physically close i guess so the demons would see a guy with a super anti-demonic bigot mask getting pelted with beans and they'd stay

away but the demons would sometimes get close enough to mess with any tools that you might have left outside of your house of course as demons are want to do demons are want to do that and i i guess the demons would set up pranks with the tools like they hide a rake in the grass. So you'd step on it like a cartoon character and get hit in the face. I don't know. Well, regardless, that's why it's customary to bring all your tools inside on set. Is it not customary to put away your shit on all the other days? It should be.

Does all of Shintoism need a talking to from Heath's dad? It does. It needs some maybe some toothpicksicks some lessons yes absolutely right in your ehumaki exactly that's why it's not cut so one last thing this leads to my best and worst setsubun is considered to exist outside of the normal time dimension in a sense. That's tricky. Yeah, it's tricky. And Shintoism decided to celebrate that

atemporality by practicing role reversal in both age but also in gender. So young girls dress up like old women and vice versa. And people sometimes take part in cross-dressing too. And apparently this custom is still practiced today among traditional geisha and their clients

while entertaining on the day of Setsubun. Now, sadly, plenty of idiot tourists think geisha are prostitutes. So this must lead to very upsetting moments when combined with the age reversal thing but it seems like it has the potential to be a super interesting day of gender and age bending when nobody's being stupid and ignorant i i think and like you know again we get to do however we want with the atheism holidays so let's let's get into it sorry keith call me stupid and ignorant yeah uh you're stupid and ignorant what are geishas if not prostitutes are they accountants no sometimes dude sometimes massage parlors really just give you massages there's well what are geishas what are they they are like practiced in the skills of music and

entertainment and like yeah poetry and conversationalism and not fucking you for money. That's like not what that is. Eli and I learned all that. I'm surprised you forgot the lesson we learned when we were in Tokyo. Anyway, that's Setsubun. Bean throwing, demons, directional sushi luck, and maybe an interactive seminar on gender studies i don't know cool cool stuff i'm in i'm all right so my holiday is way worse i picked nirvana day okay what we're commemorating the death of buddha all right no if you don't want to meditate just say so you don't

have to be nasty okay where it Where it's celebrated. East Asia mostly by Mahayana Buddhists. When it's celebrated. February 15th for most people, but some people do it on the 8th just to fuck up the formula. Best aspect. Sitting still is easy.

It's so hard. What? It's so hard. It's so hard. It's so difficult. It's so much harder than everything. It's so hard. Meditation. It's so hard. What? So hard. So hard. It's so difficult. It's so much harder than everything. So hard. Going into meditation. It's so hard. It's very difficult. It's not.

I've been hit on my body with sticks so many times because it's not easy for me. Worst aspect. Getting hit by sticks, apparently. It's like a wake-up stick. It's not like a smash you in the face stick, but it's like a blast. It's smaller than your thumb. It's okay. Do-up stick. It's not like a smash-you-in-the-face stick, but it's like a blast. It's smaller than your thumb. It's okay. Do nothing.

Pop back down. How it's celebrated. Literally doing nothing. It's very hard, though. No, it's not. It's a trickle of nothing. So Nirvana Day, or Paranirvana Day, is the anniversary of the Buddha's death at the age of 80.

He died surrounded by monks, and his last words are said to be all conditioned things are subject to decay. Strive for your liberation with diligence. But that's definitely bullshit, right? His last words were almost certainly like, I think I pooped a little

and then he died or something. I'm dying. Okay, last thing. Don't make this into a religion. I pooped. And I'm dead. I ended on pooped. I ended on I'm dead.

To be fair, though, to be fair, still better than Joseph Smith, even if that's true. True that. And of course, as this is a Buddhist holiday, you celebrate it by doing nothing. So really not much for me to say here, but if you've been looking for an excuse to test drive meditation, it's a pretty solid excuse to give it a whirl. That would be on February 15th. Maybe you can meditate on

why you forgot the previous day was Valentine's Day. That's right. If only someone had a blog that could guide our secular listeners through the practice. How's that blog going, by the way? Good? Not the point, Heath.

That is not the point. You're putting up a lot of posts. Hey, that blog going, by the way? Good? Not the point, Heath! That is not the point! You putting up a lot of posts? Hey, Eli, do you have a holiday? Yes! My holiday is... Blog Day! Fuck you! Ash Wednesday. What we're commemorating.

The beginning of Lent and of dying and turning to dust. Where it's celebrated. All over to dust. Where it's celebrated. All over the world. When it's celebrated. Ash Wednesday is exactly 46 days before Easter Sunday, which, as we all know, is a movable holiday based on the cycles of the moon. Fun fact for Noah and literally nobody else, the earliest date Ash Wednesday can occur is February 4th,

and the latest date Ash Wednesday can occur is February 4th, and the latest date Ash Wednesday can occur is March 10th. Best aspect. Telling people that they have something on their faces, or, as was my tradition when I worked in the city, drawing a smiley face on my forehead in eyebrow pencil and telling people that your priest has Parkinson's when they ask about it. Worst aspect. Getting a lazy priest and looking like a bird shat on your head all day.

Yeah, well, first runner up, just getting touched by a Catholic priest. You know where that's fair. Do birds shit ash? Some of them. Jersey birds. Jersey birds, too. How it's celebrated. Smudgy foreheads and giving up something you like all right so most of our

listeners will probably be aware of ash wednesday either because they used to be catholic or like me once a year everyone looks like an elizabethan coal miner but not a lot of people know its ins and outs or more importantly why we should absolutely keep doing this. Yeah, I mean, hell, I don't know that last part, and I've read the script. Why we should keep having Ash Wednesday? Yes. So here's the problem with Christianity. Oh, right here.

You found it? Get excited. Finally, finally, we found it. We've been doing this for years. Eli has found the problem with Christianity. Please go ahead. Refer people back to 363. Now they'll know. So when Christianity took over all the pagan holidays,

they very quickly realized that when the only celebration you have is their guy who died, you basically have two holidays, right? Like when he was born and when he died. So as the church grew in age and austerity they had to make more and more of jesus's life into fan fiction so they could celebrate the summer solstice and shit enter lent the final season of game of thrones of holidays now originally lent was a 40-day fast starting on Ash Wednesday to commemorate the 40 days Jesus wandered in the desert arguing with Barack Obama. What? I'm sorry, Barack Obama?

Oh, yeah. Pretty sure Eli's only seen the History Channel special. Oh, okay. Yep. Got it. Yeah. Okay. thinks Christianity, a 40 day sunrise to sunset

fast got softened to give up chocolate, which then got softened to give up something entirely intangible like anger so that all your fucking aunt has to do is post on Facebook that she was giving up anger and then she was good. Oh,

you gave up anger for Lent? Really? Cool. Will you stop being Catholic if I prove you wrong? Ridiculous. Impossible. And you're stupid. But a lot of people wonder, like, where did the ashes come from? Well, according to Wikipedia, the head-putting part starts with Gregory I, who was pope, from 540 to 604 A.D.

And what you have to understand here is that back in the year 600, the ashes were probably the nicest thing you owned, right? Right, yeah, especially. And I think I read that the ashes have to be the burned palms from Palm Sunday the year before. Yeah.

Last year's. So they have to keep just a weird collection of ashes all year leading up to the next Ash Wednesday weird collection of ashes all year yeah leading up to the next ash wednesday lots of smudgy kid fucking documents going on in the back now nowadays many churches practice something known as ashes to go so starting in 2007 many priests from catholic anglican and lutheran denominations started going to public places and just giving forehead crosses to anyone who asked for it. And this trend of ashes to go can get, I'm going to say, a little extreme. According to Wikipedia, quote, on Ash Wednesday, 2017, Father Paddy Mooney,

the priest of St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in the Irish town of Glen Maddy. Sorry, the stereotypes there are just really bad. It's pretty amazing, yeah. Anyways, that guy, Hoity McToity, set up an ashes to go station through which commuters could drive and receive

ashes from their car. Jesus. The parish church also had a drive through prayers during Lent, which people submitted requests into a box left in the church grounds without having to leave their car.

Jesus. Is it weird if I ask you to supersize my forehead smudge? Just an Amazon drone flying past people shooting them in the head with an ash gun. There you go. Done. Perfect.

Teamed up. So I know what you're asking. You're saying, Eli, okay, that history is fine. But why should we keep Ash Wednesday? Well, I think we could all use a day where our stupid is written on our forehead. Think of it. Each ass Wednesday, we could arise as a nation and write our silliest and biggest misdeeds of the year upon our foreheads

for the world to see because for just one day, we all deserve to feel what it's like to have a face tattoo. All right. Well, you've got a few more holidays to choose from at home. Take one, two, three, or none.

You're an atheist. You get to do shit like that. And we'll see if we can offer you a few more March selections on the next Holiday Buffet. Before we hoist the 363 episodes trophy tonight, I want to let you know that despite what I might have previously reported, there actually are a couple of tickets left for the LA show on February 15th. We were able to add a couple of seats, which is awesome because that show sold out crazy fucking fast. So if you missed your opportunity to get tickets the first time around, don't do that to yourself again.

Think about how awful it felt when you learned it the first time and then check the show notes for a link, get your tickets quick. 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 crowd debuting at 7 a.m eastern on monday an even new episode of our sister show's hot friend god

awful movies debuting at 7 a.m eastern on tuesday and then even newer episode of our half sister show citation needed debuting at noon eastern on wednesday obviously i'd bring shame upon my family if i neglected to thank heathen right for putting the sir and absurd i want to thank eli bosnick for putting the hymn and whimsical and i want to thank Heath Enright for putting the sir in absurd. I want to thank Eli Bosnick for putting the him in whimsical, and I want to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for putting the oh my in comical. I also want to thank Wayne for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Dude, don't tell Heath your job

exists or it's going to fuck up our whole thing. But most all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, John, Eric, Josh, David, Beelzebub's favorite heathen, Chris, Wanda, Rubik's, Tesseract, Jim, Jay, and Jane. John, Eric, Eric Josh and David whose orgasms are Mount St. Helen's primary what I was going for examples Bielsa Bubs favorite heathen Chris and Wanda whose sexual magnetism is the only reason the magnetosphere is even allowed

to take breaks and Rubik's Tesseract Jim J and Jane whose IQs are so high the DEA asked their intellects for a urine sample together these 11 illustrious illustrators of elegance elevated our eloquent elegies about the aologic of illegitimate illumination this week by giving us money. Not everybody with money can give some to us, but if you can, you should. You should make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access

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