The Scathing Atheist - 380: Beach Body of Christ Edition

Episode Date: May 28, 2020

In this week’s episode, Eli won’t be here because of something to do with a kid, we learn about which guru was killed by which theocratic emperor...and how that affects your June barbecue plans, and the past will come to life because we prerecorded the current events stuff --- 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 our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ ---

Warning, the following podcast contains adult language, because we're adults and speaking. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by The Refractory Period. The Refractory Period, the only reason I've accomplished anything in the last 32 years. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, this is Alton from Orange County, California, longtime fan of the show. Well, until today, I had never seen a photograph of Eli Bosnick. And as much as I may have had my doubts,

I am now certain that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men. Like, really certain. It's Thursday. It's May 28th. And it's International Hamburger Day. Which doesn't exist if you're vegan, which is why Eli isn't here. I'm no illusions.

I'm Heath Enright. And from baby Bosnix, New Jersey. Yeah, baby. Ooh! Probably right now as you're listening to this. Also, Cincinnati Swing State and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, I learned that I can't go high pitch without sounding like a red-tailed hawk with asthma. We learn about which guru was killed

by which theocratic emperor and how that affects your June barbecue plans. And the past will come to light as we pre-recorded the current events part. But first, the diatribe. Russian Revolution, if I'm not mistaken. And at the time, it was mostly used derisively. So I'm hesitant to apply the label to it here. But suffice to say that our culture started to consciously shift towards more inclusive linguistic conventions around then, or at least a better part of our culture did. Like every attempt at social reform, this one had its opponents. And like every other attempt at social reform, it had overzealous adherents that armed the detractors with infinitely

mockable things like the term vertically challenged and the fight against the prejudice against left-handed people contained in the term right-hand man. Now, to be clear, that's not a legitimate criticism of political correctness, right? If I gorge myself on ice cream and get sick, that's not an argument against eating. And as the husband of a four and a half foot tall left-handed chick, I can confirm that our society needed to be reminded about those people's plights, even if the term vertically challenged still strikes us as silly. But legitimate or not, these types of things were used against political correctness. And I think it's fair to argue that the backlash to that movement is a lot of what fueled the rise of right-wing talk radio and

eventually Fox News. Conservative white people were being asked to make ever so slight changes to their vocabulary for the sake of someone other than themselves. And anybody who's tried to get those assholes to wear a mask during a pandemic knows how well they tend to do it, sacrificing for the sake of others. Of course, the backlash against political correctness wasn't limited to the political right. As loathe as the lefties are to claim him, Bill Maher is definitely not a Republican, and his show Politically Incorrect debuted in 1993. And this represented a different type of backlash.

One of the ways that this backlash manifested itself, and here I slowly work my way around to the point, is through the rise of shock comics which before its modern refinement was just andrew dice clay you know working the word pussy into nursery rhymes and sure depending on how you want to define shock humor there were some people that did it really well but there were also a lot of other people and not all of them were clever enough to realize that hickory dickory doc also rhymed with some chick was sucking my cock so we fast forward to the late 90s early 2000s and you got a universe cram full of would-be comedians and radio djs and eventually fucking would-be internet personalities as well all vying to

shock an increasingly hard to shock public a public that's seen it all and look the laziest way to do that is just to think of something that you can't imagine somebody saying in public and then saying that in public so you know these folks are all going after the obvious targets the things that are most guaranteed to get a rise out of people so they say racist shit and they say sexist shit and they say anti-religious shit now at the same time there's also this nascent new atheist movement and it's driven to the forefront of social discourse on September 12th or so of 2001, when the country really started reckoning with the dangers of religious extremism for what seemed like the first time. So in this instance, the shock comics or whatever the next level down from shock comic is wound up being the proverbial broken clock, getting it right twice a day. is wound up being the proverbial broken clock getting it right twice a day they were poking fun of religion because you know they thought it would make people gasp not because religion was bad but it was bad and people who were pointing that out ended up overlapping with the shock

comics the atheist movement fed them and everybody who's ever been on the internet knows what happens when you feed the trolls now in our defense we didn't know they were fucking trolls. Right. And when we figured that out, we basically jettisoned them. But but to get there, we had to have this weird reckoning where we woke up and realized we were in bed with a bunch of sexist, homophobic, transphobic, racist assholes. Right. And presumably, I guess they had the moment where they woke up and realized they were in bed with a bunch of us. Right. We were travelers whose destinations shared the same road for a few miles so for a

while we thought we were all part of the same caravan that's an easy mistake to make and when we got to the fork where our paths diverged we were you know pretty happy to see them off because they were a bunch of assholes to begin with and we were only suffering their company because we don't get to pick who's on our road but that's not everybody's experience right because a bunch of assholes to begin with, and we were only suffering their company because we don't get to pick who's on our road. But that's not everybody's experience, right? Because a lot of people jumped on board this caravan while those two groups were walking together. They don't know the difference between them and us.

They weren't here before the shock comics showed up. So what they saw was a movement they joined splitting up. They saw a schism where there was none, and they thought the whole caravan was going to break apart you know those of us who went to the conventions and the meetups and the clubs and shit we weren't surprised by any of this that wing of atheism you know the the troll wing they only showed up online when there were religious people to piss off they weren't interested in community building or legal fights or you know anything like that they

they were interested in pissing on other people's sensibilities what was the means for us was the goal for them so by the time we were getting started they were already done now they're not here anymore right now i'm not saying there are no trolls in the atheist movement nor that there are no misogynist homophobes transphobesobes, etc. I'm saying the shit posting trolls have moved on because the rest of us have normalized the criticism of religion at least enough that it's no longer low hanging fruit for them. In fact, nowadays, those same people are just as likely to talk shit about atheists as they are about Christians or Muslims. They've realized some people are passionate about that, which makes it perfect bait for them.

Right. So my point here isn't that atheists are unenlightened people or that the atheist movement purged itself from all its bigoted influences. I'm just saying that when we realized how bad we were, we tried to get better and we continue to try. And there is no downside to that. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is nobody in particular since Eli's away and we're all busting a little extra ass this week. But don't worry, we've been stocking up on some slightly used headlines for the last couple of weeks.

So without further ado, we'll join headlines from the past already in progress. And paper caper news tonight, ah, the Museum of the Bible. Whether it's buying black market artifacts from ISIS, trying to return a Bible they thought had been to the moon, it hadn't. It's so good. Or discovering that their entire collection of dead sea scrolls were fake,

the museum proves more and more each day that like its namesake, it's total bullshit. And this week they added even more homegrown theft to their resume when it was discovered that 13 of the ancient papyrus biblical fragments on display at the museum were in fact stolen from Oxford University by one of its own professors and that man has now been arrested amazing it's the da vinci penal code art is coming to life and they're not even aware of it yeah amazing so according to the guardian the professor in question quote has denied any wrongdoing and he said that the claims were a malicious attempt to harm his reputation and damage his career.

End quote. Though, let's admit, he kind of already did that when he sold stuff to the Museum of the Bible. You know what I'm saying? Right. And regardless of who it was that sold this to the museum, the museum bought pieces of an ancient Bible from just some guy. What did they think happened? They thought

he just found them in a jacket pocket from a garage sale and was like, hold on, is this the fucking Bible? I'm going to sell these. I'm going to sell these to the Museum of the Bible. One last note on this story. According to a report from last month, the museum has returned, quote, an additional

5,000 ancient papyrus scraps and 6,500 ancient clay pieces because their providence cannot be verified, prompting concerns that they could be looted or stolen, end quote. Wow. Also, apropos of nothing, I've got some stuff that I found to offer this museum. Yeah, you and me both. I got some things to sell. Yeah. So again, much like its namesake, when it comes to comedy, the Museum of the Bible is

the gift that keeps on giving. And in Israel McCoy news. Fantastic. We have two stories out of Israel about corruption, fraud, and dark magic. Also, unrelated, Benjamin Netanyahu is going to keep his spot as prime minister despite all the corruption, fraud, and dark magic. Yeah, he is. But that's been selling magical amulets to block the coronavirus. And also a bunch of religious groups importing magical fire from Jerusalem to other parts of the world.

And yeah, I'm going to repeat that last thing. They imported fire. That happened. I mean, Heath, can you blame him? I hear it's a hot commodity. Awful. Show me your tits. Come on. No one's doing your thing. I wanted, Heath, can you blame him? I hear it's a hot commodity. Awful. Show me your tits. Come on.

No one's doing your thing. I wanted to do your other thing. What's my thing that no one's doing? He's not here. Okay. Okay. So we'll start with the charity fraud being run by a group in Bnei Brak, Israel. Side note, this place is known as the Corona capital of Israel,

thanks to all the infections being spread by, you know, adherence to stupid ancient rules. And by the way, that's in comparison to Israel. Yeah. The country of Israel is like, hey, Bnei Brak, maybe relax on the Judaism. Not a good sign. So the charity is run by ultra-Orthodox Rabbi Chaim Kanyevsky.

And for 3,000 new Israeli shekels, which is about $836, you can buy a COVID-19 security system that includes a virus-blocking amulet and a maintenance plan that includes a series of remotely delivered rabbinical blessings. Okay. A lot of questions about the maintenance plan, but more importantly, I love the idea of someone wearing a magic hat and sporting the doodly-doo sideburns and reading this email and being like, would you look at this ridiculous bullshit that happened so according to the charity's website here's how it works you donate 100 shekels a month for 30 months and you get the amulet and the magic spells in exchange and they give the money to families

affected by the virus that's what they say and when a local journalist got in touch with the charity and asked hey can i donate a smaller amount they were told that 3 000 shekels is the minimum because that's how much the charity gives to each family that was their reason apparently piles of money only work in certain discrete units and you can't mix them up or divide them or anything okay i don't want to be this guy but leave it to an israeli newspaper for their first question about a magic amulet to be about a discount you know what i'm saying like come on people so again the charity claims the money it's going to help families being affected by the pandemic but that

probably includes lots of families who assumed they were safe after getting a magical fucking amulet yep and then got sick i'd bet so this charity is basically collecting money and then giving it back to the victims of their charity and that brings us to the magical fire, the second story out of Israel this week. And this is one of my favorite new pieces of trivia. I didn't know about this until just now. Did you know about this already? I did not know about this, and I cannot stop talking about it. This is my favorite thing. Orthodox communities where tens of thousands of pilgrims go to Jerusalem on the Saturday before

Easter to attend something called the Holy Fire Ceremony. Allegedly, this is when a column of blue fire appears above the spot where they say Jesus was placed for burial after the crucifixion and everyone lights their candles and lamps from this magical blue column of fire. And then they bring that fire back to their home country to use for fire stuff. Yeah. And look, if history teaches us anything, Christians are not to be trusted with fire stuff. So that's a bad. No, that's a bad idea.

They should not be allowed to have it for at least another thousand years. I don't know. Two. Let's call it two. Yeah. Even it back out. So obviously, this year was a bad time to be having a giant pilgrimage and a giant gathering anywhere.

Definitely Jerusalem, among other any any major anywhere just anywhere and instead of the normal custom the leaders of these christian orthodox groups decided to send 10 different jets with one leader on board each jet have that guy pick up a magic torch bring that open flame back onto the airplane and fly home that really happened they did that so this whole thing cost almost a million dollars for all the travel and security but against all odds it might not be the dumbest example of the holy fire ceremony no apparently all the different groups that show up they end up getting in lots of physical altercations especially about like who gets to to have the magic fire first and light their thing first yeah no one likes sloppy seconds i get it right so in 2002 it turned into a giant riot according to wikipedia quote the ceremony was marred in 2002

when a disagreement between the armenian and greek bishops over who should emerge first with the holy fire not even who got it first who would emerge first and be like oh i was first like the ceremonial i had it first emerging thing but yeah they got into a fight over who should emerge first with the holy fire it led to a struggle between the factions in the course of the scuffle the greek patriarch twice blew the armenians candle out. I love that. Forcing him to reignite his holy fire using a cigarette lighter while the Greek patriarch was spoiled. Stop it.

You stop it. That lasted for a Bugs Bunny comedically long amount of time. Guaranteed. Yeah. So that guy had to reignite his torch with a cigarette lighter. And continuing the quote, the Greek patriarch was despoiled of one of his shoes. Just one. Somebody grabbed his shoe and was like, got your shoe during the fight.

I love that. Tradesies. Tradesies. I will give give you your shoe you give me the holy fire this is serious we're adults we each got a private jet we are clergy who fly on jets with open flames and we're rolling around on the floor i have your shoe we've blown out each other's candles. Where do we go from here? That'll happen. And in the end, the Israeli police had to enter the premises to restore order. I mean, look, tradition's tradition, but probably should have been the last year when it resulted in a slap fight, right? Right?

Isn't that when you stop? Nope, not in this case. And by the way, I actually saw a video of the fighting and it's fucking amazing. It looks like a giant mob of Eli clones getting beat up by a giant mob of Cecil clones. It's fantastic. Also, we need to attend the Holy Fire ceremony next year. Absolutely. And start a fucking fight.

Patreon goal. We just show up in like Mad Max spiked football pads. I'm fucking in. With little wind guns that we can blow out. Oh, those things. You pull it back and it like shoots the puff of air. Yeah, that's we're definitely doing. Oh, fucking Patreon goal.

Not needed. This one's on us. And in pole dance news tonight, if you've been asking yourself, how many of these evangelicals would Trump have to kill before they stop supporting him? It turns out it's eighty three thousand eighty two and counting really fucking fast. Yeah, no, it's eighty one thousand something. When I first wrote this yesterday it'll be 84 000 by the time everybody hears it tomorrow so yeah rare sliver of good news for 2020 but in typical 2020 fashion it comes in the form of potential for things to suck less in 2021 and if you dig below

the surface it turns out to be illusory but it's the best we've got so here we go according to a recent survey from prri trump support amongst amongst white Christians in battleground states has plummeted over the last month. Sorry, no, I'm just taking notes for 2024. So racism, no effect. Sexism, positive effects. Plague, negative. Go on. Go on.

All right. Okay. Good notes. okay good notes so but this all means that a bunch of these people were like economic meltdown shit plague murder hornets hold on did we fucking elect the antichrist the antichrist yeah but not that many of them okay so so yeah the rock solid support trump has had among white evangelicals is finally starting to show signs of strain. In the March version of this survey, they found that 75% of white Christians had a mostly or very favorable view of Trump. In the May version, that number dropped to 48%. Now, that sounds really good, but it starts to break down when you look at the pre-March numbers. Turns out that 48%

is actually a lot closer to his average in battleground states than the 75% was, but the number spiked in March due to the known phenomenon of rallying around the president in times of disaster. Even, even when he causes it. Yep. I feel like American Christians would have all like stood around the little boy with his finger in the dam being like,

pull it, pull it. Yeah. like stood around the little boy with his finger in the dam being like, pull it, pull it, pull it. Yeah, he's probably not the Antichrist. Maybe we can get the Antichrist to primary Trump. It'd be good for the GOP. No, they'd certainly throw their support that way. Now, to be clear, I'm undercutting the shit out of all of this with the details and whatnot. But ultimately, this adds up to really good news.

cutting the shit out of all of this with the details and whatnot. But ultimately, this adds up to really good news. In the state's most critical to Trump's victory, among the demographic most critical to Trump's victory, fewer than half have a very or mostly favorable view of their incumbent. That is historically bad. And to all the people who are throwing up their hands right now and saying, yeah, but he's going to win anyway. I want to point out that I get the defeatism. It's easier to steal yourself for that now than ever risk feeling like you did in november of 2016 again but if you sincerely hold that position despite every poll and every major election that

we've had since he took office you're not basing it on the data so that's the good news yeah and like don't behave in a way like okay to steal yourself but don't behave in a way that undercuts the chances of trump losing exactly exactly don't do anything that might help every single piece of evidence that we have suggests that he's going to lose this election right but you should still vote yeah we can't we can't emphasize that enough how much you need that's kind of the behavior I was talking about. That's the point. Yes, exactly.

That's why I'm bringing it up. It still matters, guys. And in old dog's new tricks news, unwrap your worthers and turn up the font size to 11, old atheist, because according to new research, you aren't dicks. But it's not just that you stay not dicks no matter how old you get okay mostly the fact that eli sounds so surprised isn't ageist guys it's just a reaction like to thinking of me as old atheists for so long i get i get the surprise so according

to eastern illinois university's ryan p bur, unofficial researcher of the Scathing Atheist podcast. Go ahead and put that on the resume, Ryan, by the way. Unlike Christians, older non-religious voters aren't becoming more Republican. According to data collected from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study of 2018, about 37 percent of Christians between the ages of 18 and 35 are Republican. Gross. But among Christians 55 to 64, that number jumps up to about 50 percent and only goes up with age. Nuns, on the other hand, not only have lower numbers of Republicans, but those numbers stay relatively low with age. Only 14.9% of nuns identify as Republican, and that number only jumps to 24.4% for nuns between

the ages of 55 and 64. Okay, but let's all remain vigilant. In 2018, we didn't have, you know, enlightened new voices in the Republican Party like Mitt Romney luring us in. So it's a little different. He said something that was arguably not evil the other day. Seriously. Arguably not evil, Noah. Arguably not evil. W did the same fucking thing.

It was crazy. So wait a minute, Eli. Wait. You're telling me that the ability to reject antiquated lies that are logically incoherent and tinged with traditions of bigotry and sexism is negatively correlated with republicanism? This is fucking crazy. Yeah. Brian P. Burge is good at stuff. Yeah.

So big ups to all the old atheists out there for reality mattering in spite of the passage of time for some reason. Apparently that's a factor. Turn on some honky tonk, set your VCR to channel one and pat yourself on the back. If you can still reach. You can't. Don't hurt yourself. Eli doesn't know how to use a fucking VCR.

You have no idea what you're saying. I don't even know what a VCR is. Oh, those are old person letters. That's all he knows. It's like TiVo? VCR is. It's just a comedy reference to me. Oh, those are old person letters. That's all he knows. It's like TiVo? No. Yeah. VCR, Betamax, HIV.

I don't know. Exactly. Okay. And in Lacker-Ready set-go news tonight, Dr. Donangia Lacker-Ready of the Kansas City Heart Rhythm Institute wondered if intercessory prayer could help patients healing from COVID-19 and apparently missed the day in medical school where they explained no. And rather than just like reject his proposed study outright because it has less plausibility than the circle, circle, dot, dot, cooties vaccination,

it looks like the Institute is actually pissing away money and resources, double checking to make sure that magic still doesn't work. Okay, so the assumption is that Christian people who believe they have literal God magic are not already praying for the dying people? Yeah. And they need to be reminded? Like, all right, guys, great job in the study so far,

but we need you to bring it up from a seven prayer to an eight prayer right if you don't mind pray pray pray pray pray pray yeah what the fuck a study yeah all right so the four month study will consist of 1 000 patients half of whom will receive universal prayers offered in five different religions including christianity hinduism islam, Judaism, and sour berry twist. The other 500 will serve both as a control group and as the ready excuse when prayer inevitably fails. Because, you see, Lacker Ready will then point out that he couldn't keep people from praying for the control group, so it was insufficiently controlled to support a negative result. In other words, even if they were studying something real instead of the color of a monkey's

aspirations, this would still be useless. Okay. But they are going to prove that Hindu gods and sour berry twist gods are equally powerful to the Christian. Right? Yeah. It's going to be a fun meltdown for them when they realize that.

I'm sorry. I'm just picturing a SWAT team bursting into a little girl's room. Were you praying for grandpa? Were you praying for grandpa? Data's on the line. And sour berry twist. Sorry. Okay.

And no, by the way, this is not remotely the first fucking time this has ever been done. The largest I can find was a multi-year, 1800 patient, 2.4 million dollar study that was published in 2006 and showed that prayer actually worsened people's recoveries if they were told that they were being prayed for. That's awesome. Yeah, we've talked about this before, of course.

And when the results came back overwhelmingly negative, all of the asshats at the MindBody Institute that pulled it off and the fucking jackasses at the John Templeton Foundation that funded it and immediately set about doing was undercutting their own goddamn work and pretending none of their results counted. So look for us doing a smaller version of that study in early September. I mean, some of you look for it. Some of you. Some of you statistically will be dead of COVID-19

because we're wasting money on bullshit like this. But the rest of you will know that prayer doesn't work. So, squaresies. And in god-awful streaming news. I'm so excited. Pure Flix.

They're great. Great stuff. But Pure Flix clearly has an old earth creationist bias. I think that's clear. And for Ken Ham, that meant two things. First of all, that's offensive. Come on. But more importantly, a big demand wasn't being met in the christian

media space until now amish wolverine and his answers in genesis team just launched answers.tv a streaming service for young earth creationists so they can finally enjoy some video content on our 6 000 year old planet without all that big science propaganda you get from pure flicks and the hallmark yes and and pure flick subscribers can finally look down on somebody so yeah everybody wins yeah so apparently new york times crossword author jeopardy winner and i'm not bitter and jealous at all about him outnerding me completely hemet meta signed up for this service because he's a responsible journalist and he basically found ken ham and ray comfort's youtube channels turned into, well, pretty much the same thing, but

with a very prestigious .tv domain subreddit. There were a few new items worth mentioning. First of all, they have a video of the Bill Nye versus Ken Ham creationism debate, but not the watered down version.

This is the uncensored cut yeah oh yeah bill smacks ken ham in the face with his dick in that one y'all the sound effect is amazing it's like a bloop like a bloop and besides the dick slap that i wasn't aware of that noah just mentioned besides that you're probably thinking what the fuck would that mean what would what would be censored out of a debate like that? Well, according to Hemet, literally nothing. It's just the original video. They just added uncensored.

They just put the word uncensored, yeah. I guess it never got censored in the first place, so technically it is uncensored. Well, no, they're not lying. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Other highlights from the new streaming service include a video called

The Homosexual War, A Biblical View, literal title. other highlights from the new streaming service include a video called the homosexual war, a biblical view, literal title. Okay. That's just an objectively amazing title. I would watch the fuck out of that. Also a spoiler alert, lots of slapping.

And by the way, the graphic for that video has a rainbow flag on it and it might as well be getting raised by gay soldiers at Iwo Jima somehow it's so terrified of just the rainbow also they have a video series for teaching kids the alphabet like this is amazing from a creationist perspective the alphabet and yes they literally got that wrong wait what yeah i'm gonna say that again they got the alphabet wrong and even when they technically got it right they got it fucking stupid it's amazing that includes the lesson about the letter k which says k is for new new. As in K-N-E-W. What? Is she trying to be dicks?

And even better, the lesson for the letter X, it says X is for explode. Explode. X is in the word explode. They couldn't get an X word. They couldn't look up an X word.

Xenophobia, guys. Come on. You got to know that one. We yell at you all the time. Founding documents. I mean, if your business model is based on the earth is younger than this tree that I can touch, fuck it. K is for new. You know what I'm saying?

K is for fucking new. And one last item from answers.TV that has been mentioned. They have a lecture video called, Does Science Support a Flat Earth? Ooh. Well, apparently they've landed on no, it doesn't. And I cannot wait to find out why. No, it doesn't, according to them. And by the way, Answers.TV, we know you're listening.

If you haven't created this already, we will happily, happily pay for Mark Sargent, the Flat Earth guy, and Ray Comfort to meet up and argue about how the science of young Earth creationism contradicts the science of the Flat Earth.

Please. Please take our money. A thousand extra bucks if they let Bill Nye smack him with his dick. Yep. Yep. We give that last offer a lot. And in just say no-ga news today. Crushing it today.

Oh, thank you. Questions about yoga. You know, here on the Scathing Atheist. Oh, it's a whimsical story. It is, yeah. Got it. We've been accused of not giving enough credit to the pastors, preachers, rabbis, and imams who are with us in our fight for church-state separation.

So this week, we want to give a big scathing shout out to the 105 pastors in Ohio who have come together over the last few years to keep yoga out of Ohio's schools. This is the kids sitting on the floor in gym class. Gym teacher walks over. Get the fuck out of child's pose. We are secular here. We're a secular gym class. Because we're so committed to church-state separation. Exactly.

They are. Yes, I'm just a child sitting. It wasn't even posed. Damn it. Okay. Sorry. It's weird. It actually turns out that pastors in go-fuck-yourself states do actually know about the establishment

cause. They're just pretty sure it's there to keep the established religion in place even in their own letter to the schools they give away the game saying quote while proponents of eastern religion allege yoga brings benefits to student practitioners our biblical faith tradition brings just as many if not more scientifically proven benefits what our thing has one perhaps two benefits or even more i don't know i don't know and we should point out there actually is some disagreement about this in the atheist community so gentlemen thoughts is yoga a religion no i mean they're both easier to do if you can comfortably fit your head in your ass. That's true.

That is true. Like a religion. Got to breathe into that fire chakra real hard. Either way, when Heath and I see a financial opportunity to jump for, Noah asks how high we are. So without further ado. Hi, I'm Eli. And I'm Heath. And we're here to talk to you about our brand new yoga program for Christians,

Stretching the Truth. That's right. With Stretching the Truth, you can engage in ancient British military stretches without any of the demons or Satan worship guaranteed. Just listen to one of our programs. And breathe in the goodness of Jesus. Excellent. And now let's reach up. Yep. All the way as high as if you'd stacked all the historical evidence of Jesus. Yep. Just like that. Just like that. And with stretching the truth, you'll get in shape while keeping your incredibly fragile worldview

in the shape that it is. And if you're having difficulty in this position, you can lean, like really lean on anecdotal evidence. That's right. That's right. Your cousin did get better. Yes, she did. Christian yoga. Stretching the truth till it burns.

Quick side note, when I wrote that sketch, I did a Google and there is Christian yoga and it's way funnier than anything I'll ever write. So, I did my best. That's fair. You are only humanly loved. Right, yeah. They have a playlist on YouTube

and you should check it out. It's the fucking best. And in Shea Butter emails news, Republican lawmaker and literal domestic terrorist in both the redundant and non-redundant sense of that. Matt Shea made headlines this week for two different reasons.

And thanks to his general pattern of being a complete failure in life, both stories are mostly good news about Matt Shea being a sad, sad failure whose parents don't love him because he fails at everything and he's a failure. And that includes a recent protest he led that ended with the state of washington sending him a bill for almost five thousand dollars in vandalism damage and also the second piece of news is that he will not be running for re-election in the washington house of representatives damn it i mean don't get me wrong. He's great for Washington, but I had so many headline intros stocked up for when he did more dumb shit.

Yeah. So, you know what? So, for the record, this story is also in Shea and a haircut news, waiting for the other Shea to drop news, and Shea it ain't show news. Oh. Shea it ain't show.

See, I was hoping someone would primary him with the slogan, Shay anything. Just for the record, I wasn't even slightly exaggerating about the domestic terrorist thing. He's a Christian nationalist, domestic terrorist who literally wrote and distributed a manifesto. I mean, he has a manifesto. He gave it out. The title of the manifesto is The Biblical Basis for War.

So basically, the Bible, but pared down into his own words about the righteous genocide parts and styled in Pacific Northwest, angry shack-writing manifesto style. He also tried to create the 51st state of white Washington just for Christian people. He did. It's like his entire existence is to help us win arguments on the internet.

He's helpful either way, even though he's not going to be in the house anymore. So here's the latest match. Hey, failure last month, the satanic temple staged a protest at the state Capitol after getting refused the right to give an indication to open a legislative session on the grounds that the Christian stuff was mostly upside down. I'm pretty sure that was a problem.

Well, this gathering of everyone's ex from college singing on some steps was way too much for Matt Shea to handle. So he put together a posse of sovereign citizens and they showed up to double protest. And just in case this mob of Duck Dynasty extras carrying Old Testament shofar horns and wearing tactical camouflage inside a building just in case that wasn't silly enough he also brought a secret weapon olive oil apparently the plan was to anoint the steps outside the capital to block the satan magic but it turns out that if you pour olive oil on historic masonry work it costs a whole shitload of money to clean it up and repair the damage. So he just got a bill for $4,761.34.

Well, but in his defense, how could he have possibly known that dumping slippery oil on public stairs would have a bad outcome? slippery oil on public stairs would have a bad outcome so in response to all this the gop establishment decided that matt shea is not fit to represent their very virtuous brand the republican party i'm going to repeat that the republican party was like dude you're gross you're off the team you are gross to us the republican party not Party. Not good. Not a good sign for Matt Shea. So he will not be running for re-election. But he is planning to run for some other bullshit position in some small committee thing. Whatever. I guess we still get news

about him. So the other thing is he might still remain a public figure. And as funny as it would be, people should not fill up super soakers with vinegar and terrorize Matt Shea wherever he goes. No, they actually shouldn't. You definitely shouldn't do that.

That would not. That would just be funny, but not what you should do. No, it wouldn't even be. It wouldn't really even be funny. It would be funny to some people, but that's not the point. It's funny for Heath to say it, but it's not funny if you do it. It wouldn't be funny then. You're saying don't do that.

Yes. And on whatever note that was, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, we'll take the lid off some holidays and be left with always.

You know, some people listening to this show might find themselves in the odd position where they've already left for what they're calling paternity leave, even though they don't have a kid yet. And that probably has their coworkers feeling pretty salty after they've already agreed to do your job for six weeks so that you can watch your wife breastfeed and ask if there's any way you can help. So if you're in that situation or any other where you need a better excuse to take time off of work than the one you're currently using, we're happy to present it in yet another... Holiday Buffet. All right, so the whole idea here is to look to outside cultures and present holidays that Americans largely won't be familiar with.

So we usually pick from outside the Christian tradition. So for my non-Christian religion this month, I chose Catholicism. And for the holiday i chose corpus christi what we're commemorating the bizarre catholic fascination with magical cannibalism where it's celebrated uh catholic countries mostly so basically like like if the u.s keeps it impoverished as a matter of foreign policy and it's Christian, they probably really like the Feast of Corpus Christi. Yeah. And since we imperialize ourselves into a good amount of poverty, too, that includes here in the U.S.

Right, right. But great. Yeah. But mostly amongst minorities. So, yeah, nailed it. Yeah. When it's celebrated. All right.

Well, it's a Catholic holiday, so it's fucking stupid. The Catholic liturgical calendar is key to Easter, which, as we all know, happens on the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring. And that means that all the other movable feast days have to be at least one step dumber than that. So in Corpus Christi's case, that means it's the first Thursdayursday after trinity sunday itself the first thursday after pentecost which is the seventh sunday after easter so the ninth thursday after anyway meaning that the feast of corpus christi could be anywhere from may 21st to june 24th this year it'll be on june 11th see this is the reason god sent us a plague this year it's these pagans and their demonic moon holidays getting us in trouble best aspect all latin recitations sound like you're trying to summon a demon

worst aspect the fact that they didn't pick a saltier savior how it's celebrated eating food including course, the magical flesh of Jesus. Okay. Feels like there should be a special recipe on Corpus Christi, so it's not just a normal community. Do they have that? Yeah, like a flatbread, or at least add some squeezed cheese. Something.

Yeah. Are there Reformed churches that have cheese with the cracker? Interesting. We'll find out. So there's really not much to talk about in terms of the celebration itself, but the history is worth going into and here's why if we spent every minute of every episode of every show that we've ever done or will do talking about how goddamn weird it is that catholics symbolically consume their god and won't admit it's symbolic we would still spend too

little time on it i mean think about the name of this holiday yes corpus christi means body of christ but like body as in the law and order svu use of the term corpse that we're eating right corpse is the direct translation it's a holiday called the feast of jesus's cadaver and people seem insufficiently weirded out by that they named a city after it yeah and then hillary clinton has one stem cell potluck to appease the lizard it's a double standard because she's a woman right and apparently okay so the feast of corpus christi was proposed by among others thomasinas, the poster child for how low the philosophy bar managed to fall in medieval Europe.

I'm not willing to even use the word philosophy. Yeah. Get out of here. Right. You get into those. I don't like that. Aquinas was one of the theologians, in fact, assigned to determine the authenticity of the so-called miracle of Bolsena.

So the miracle goes like this. And there's a priest who's having his doubts about whether that cracker really turns into Jesus. And he's performing the ceremony and the Eucharist bleeds onto the corporal. That's the cloth that the cracker and the chalice sit on while the priest is casting his little spell. And the evidence of the miracle

is that there were indeed drops of blood on the corporal. Okay, well, if the cracker bleeds, that means they're just doing the wine because they want more blood? What the fuck is that? That's insane. This miracle actually made it worse somehow. It made the cannibalism worse.

So anyway, Aquinas confirms this little miracle by smelling a bloody rag or whatever and that got him thinking about how weird it was that catholicism didn't have a holiday dedicated to how awesome eating jesus was so he said to have suggested this to pope urban the fourth who then issued a papal bull that established the feast of corpus christi now the bull doesn't mention the miracle of bullsena at all so there's some dispute as to whether the two are related okay well regardless i'm calling the pulpit that catholic churches have the hannibal lectern from now on that's my turn for that forever that is the official scathing atheist terminology in fact yeah yeah hannibal lectern freedom sunday

fuck you guys now so the other key figure here is St. Juliana of Liège. And where Aquinas may or may not have mentioned this in passing to the pope, Juliana apparently dedicated her life to carving out a special feast day for the Christcracker. And what I love about this, other than the fact that her lifelong dedication gets stuck under the Wikipedia contest where Aquinas says hey maybe gets top billing is that in her account of this christ appeared to her and gave her the holy charge of pleading for a day dedicated to the eucharist which would be a fucking insane thing for jesus to do right like like in in their fucking story he shows up to just some random pauper chicken

liege and he's like you know i feel like 53 days dedicated to me is one shy of enough can you do something about that you lady pauper yeah he just comes down floats in like a ghost hey julie it's jesus yeah just relax no i know i i I was going to come back and do like a whole big thing. This is not that. Take it easy. No, no, no. I'm just popping in to make sure you're all focusing on the cannibalism. Like really focusing. Are you?

It feels like you're not. So I want you to make it a holiday. I'll be back super soon for the other thing. I swear to my dad. Probably because you guys haven't had a feast for my eating me day yet. Probably has something to do with it. Now, apparently, this has grown into one of those celebrations that God takes very seriously. It's one of five days that a diocesan bishop isn't allowed to be away from his diocese

without an emergency excuse from his savior. He's going to have a hall pass from Jesus. Or like a cough. Well, right. well right yeah well if he's got a cough that's a totally different thing yeah and in a lot of countries this is also a holy day of obligations which means as near as I can tell that like just God gets extra pissed if you skip out on

your church shit hey hey uh just just Jesus one more time uh follow up on that holiday thing I was talking about. I don't want a bunch of me leftovers in like Tupperware. Nobody likes that. It's gross. Kind of smells.

Attendance is mandatory at that thing. Okay, bye. Now, as I've already said, mostly this celebration is just a feast and it's not even usually that, right? Mostly for most Catholics, it just means mass takes a little longer and you have to go to church on a thursday but apparently the jesus cracker gets to be grand marshal in a little parade before they eat him so i guess that's something hey julie

sorry i swear this is the last thing uh i would like a marching band okay bye i'm the messiah but now of course normally i'd close by suggesting some way that atheists might appropriate this holiday for our own purposes but it's a celebration of cannibalism so uh i think the best way to celebrate this one is just by not being catholic again this year so much fun all the time all right and the holiday I chose for June is the martyrdom of Guru Arjun Day. I love a good martyrdom. Beautiful reason for a holiday. What we're commemorating.

The torture and execution of Sri Guru Arjun Dev Ji. His name might also include Sahib at the end or shahidi at the beginning or end and he's the fifth of 10 sikh gurus and he compiled the first official edition of the adi granth which eventually got expanded into the guru granth sahib but not shahidi assholes and that's the name of the central religious text of Sikhism today. And also he came up with his name at a DUI fucking checkpoint where he continuously mistook the cop's look of suspicion as a prompt to continue. Where it's celebrated. Mostly in Punjab, India, but also anywhere that has a Sikh community

yeah no actually if you want to know exactly where it's being celebrated you have to yell Ali Ali Oxen I'm so proud of that joke I mean Anna's gonna have a baby but I have that joke and that's still pretty good she doesn't have a baby yet you have that joke right now as we're recording

it in your fucking face Anna when it's celebrated guru arjun day is on the 24th day of jeth which is the third month in the seat calendar that means it falls sometime in may or june which also means it's fucking stupid because it's supposed to be an annual commemoration of a death but it almost never actually is and it's extra stupid because it's supposed to be an annual commemoration of a death, but it almost never actually is. And it's extra stupid because the original Sikh calendar was modified from its lunar-based original version into a solar calendar that fixed the start of each month to the Gregorian calendar and actual solar years. So they were all good. But then, So they were all good. But then in 2010, some kind of official Sikhism calendar committee decided to make it lunar again to coincide with the Bikrami calendar of Hinduism.

So now it's floating again. And I'm guessing this was just to spite Islam going with the Hinduism thing. And that's going to be a running theme spiting Islam. Yeah, well in this holiday this religion and this podcast actually, yeah. Best aspect. They made a holiday to spite Islam. I'm quite certain.

At least one. Worst aspect. They made a holiday to spite Islam. At least one. Not good. How it's celebrated. So i'll start with the backstory of guru arjun he rose to power in the late 1500s and became the leader of sikhism for about 25 years during this time he compiled that holy book he built up settlements and he reorganized the tithing system to pay for all his projects. And this led to a large increase in the

Sikh following. And the Mughal emperor, Jahangir, a devout Muslim, was obviously not happy about that. So in 1606, Jahangir had Guru Arjun arrested and asked him to convert to Islam. Ask isn't the right word, but I guess he asked with a question mark the first time. And allegedly, Arjun refused, so he got tortured and killed. And that's a holiday now. Yeah, like that's all of Sikhism though, right? Like every Sikh story ends with, and then we were massacred by Muslims. I half expect there like a funny thing that happened at the dry cleaner story to end like that.

I'm sure there are some. I'm sure of it. Yeah. So there's a bunch of dispute about whether Guru Arjun was killed during the torture or got executed by drowning after the torture. Seems like a weird argument without any important ramifications. I don't see how that matters particularly Regardless right after mentioning The drowning the very next

Sentence from Wikipedia Described the guru's martyrdom as quote A watershed Event in the history of Sikhism which felt like The first salvo in the spite Based edit war between Sikh and Muslim Which is The perfect encapsulation of this entire Like the first salvo in the spite-based edit war between Sikh and Muslim editors.

Which is the perfect encapsulation of this entire holiday. Oh, I want in on this so bad now. Like if they put them in a bag before they drown them, I should say like, and the holiday was created for the sacked, soaked Sikhs' sake. You know, there's so much with this. Come on. It's alliteration. You you gotta admit that's pretty good so obviously there's a giant historical conflict in south asia between hinduism and islam

and guru arjun day is so very clearly an attempt by sikhism to pretend they're also important in that it's like a bunch of yankee fans and Red Sox fans yelling at each other. And then one stupid fucking Mets fan being like, we're also here right there. Shut the fuck up. Nobody cares. Mets fan, go away. It's very similar to that. Now, obviously, the long history of majority religions persecuting minority religions is cruel and tragic and terrible. But the common factor there is the word religion.

I mean, just listen to the sentence. So when a third religion tries to chime in, it just highlights how stupid everyone is. Yes. No, religions get exponentially dumber with each new religion you add. Yes, exactly. And according to Google, there are about 4,200 religions. Really? Yeah. 4,200 religions. Really?

Yeah. 4,200? That's what Google said. God damn it. Yeah, we haven't even taken out one on this show, right? Like, there's not even one that we've killed with this show yet. We're never, this is losing fucking battle. So, here's the other major theme in the conflict between Sikh historians and Muslim historians on this.

According to the Mughal account, the execution was a political event and that's it. They claim there was a dispute between Emperor Jahangir and his son and the son was planning a rebellion to take the throne and Guru Arjun blessed the son who ended up failing in his attempted coup. And this obviously made the emperor angry, so he had Arjun killed. But according to Sikh historians, the execution was part of an ongoing campaign of persecution by the Islamic regime. So again, we have an extremely stupid argument between two things that were pretty clearly both true in this case and in no way represented an argument, and the outcome of the

argument doesn't matter if you asked emperor jahangir at the time it's pretty obvious he would have said yeah i was definitely killing the leader of the heathens and god is super proud and if you asked guru arjun he would have said yeah i was clearly killed because my sect was challenging the leader of the heathens and god is super proud i don't understand how this argument matters or is an argument well i mean to be fair if you asked guru arjun at the time you would have said but but like the point still stands i get what you i would have tried to say yeah that's what he said in bees yeah so again that guy getting tortured and killed or perhaps tortured and executed which is totally different that's the reason for the season and the basis for guru arjun day and people celebrate this

torture murder with songs reading lectures and candy so happy fucking guru arjun day all right so yeah something tells me we didn't offer up anything that you're going to be adding to your june to-do list but we'll try to do better on next month's edition of the holiday buffet before we let the lights go out in Georgia tonight, I wanted to give everybody a baby update. Eli and Anna's kid is still aquatic as of the time of this recording, but they're scheduled to induce labor today, as in the day this episode comes out.

So mark your calendars, folks. Eli's kid is, was, will be born on International Hamburger Day. Anyway, that's all the blast we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Day, debuting at noon Eastern

on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd get demoted if I neglected to thank the Heath Enright of the present who has busted ass to help hold down the fort while Eli's away. I need to thank the Eli Bosnick of the past who already busted ass to help hold down the fort while he's away. I need to thank the Luc Bosnick of the past who already busted ass to help hold down the fort while he's away. I need to thank the Lucinda Lusions of the future who will be back next week with more Twim. I also want to thank the

Alton from Orange County, California in all the Christmas ghost tenses for providing this week's Farsworth quote. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most marvelous masked mammals, Daniel, Neil, Jonathan, Zeronian Entity, Emil, Hail, Satum, fuck I did that wrong, Barry, Derek, and Robert. Daniel, Neil,

and Jonathan, who COVID-19 knows better than to fuck with. Zeronian, Emil, and Hale-Satum, whose opinions carry so much weight, SpaceX downgraded their rocket to the Falcon Big Boned, and Barry, Derek, and Robert, whose dicks are so big they get their own X in the supermarket lines. Together these nine naughty non-believers nimbly

nailed down our next nutritional nugget this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, especially right now, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingadeus, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended every 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 scathingadeus.com.

And if you'd like to help, but that doggy in the window ain't gonna save up for itself, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following at P-I-A-T-P-O-N on Twitter. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres. Tim Robertson handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used for permission. If you have

questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact information on the contact page at skatingadius.com. You know what they call it when you get really bored because of the pandemic, so you just start jerking off on different objects and seeing how it looks? Coronanism. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.