The Scathing Atheist - 384: Dead Wrong Edition

Episode Date: June 25, 2020

In this week’s episode, we’ll learn that the odd numbered amendments are the optional ones, we’ll learn that Trump is pretty sure 14 is odd, and the Boy Scouts will finally get around to adding that ‘mansplain’ merit badge. --- 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/ --- Guest Links: Check out “Does This Still Work” here: http://dtswpod.com/ --- Headlines: Trump Administration Won’t Release Information About How Much Taxpayer Money Went to Churches: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/on-small-business/mnuchin-says-names-of-small-business-borrowers-wont-be-released/2020/06/11/4fa98c22-ac10-11ea-a43b-be9f6494a87d_story.html The Trump Admin Still Won’t Reveal What the “Religious Liberty Task Force” Did: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/18/the-trump-admin-still-wont-reveal-what-the-religious-freedom-task-force-did/ Hate-Preacher Franklin Graham Slams Dr. Fauci for Saying “Science is Truth”: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/21/hate-preacher-franklin-graham-slams-dr-fauci-for-saying-science-is-truth/ The Boy Scouts Now Offers an “Inclusion” Merit Badge: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/18/the-boy-scouts-which-bans-open-atheists-now-offers-an-inclusion-merit-badge/ Trump’s new campaign strategy: Without him, there will be no religion: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/22/trump-under-a-liberal-supreme-court-religion-will-be-almost-wiped-out/ and https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/23/trump-legal-adviser-i-will-not-back-down-if-they-try-to-cancel-christianity/ and https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/02/22-of-americans-wrongly-think-a-democratic-president-would-ban-the-bible/ An Arizona Church Hosting Trump Claims Its Machines Kill “99% of Coronavirus”: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/22/an-arizona-church-hosting-trump-claims-its-machines-kill-99-of-coronavirus/ UK Government Finds That Non-Religious People Are Less Likely to Die from COVID: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/20/uk-government-finds-that-non-religious-people-are-less-likely-to-die-from-covid/ U.S. Soldier Charged With Giving Classified Info to Satanic Neo-Nazi Group: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/06/22/u-s-soldier-charged-with-giving-classified-info-to-satanic-neo-nazi-group/ https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/army-soldier-charged-giving-classified-info-neo-nazi-group-n1231766 --- If you’d like to check out this week’s “God Awful Mini”, you can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6LMlHiBzj4

Warning, if you don't want to hear adult language, it's already too late to fuck off. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Adam and Eve, and by Flaming Razor Hula Hoops. Flaming Razor Hula Hoops. Because I will find a way to keep these motherfuckers at Kroger's six feet away from me. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, Scathing Atheist. Hi, D.

I'm George Romaca. I'm Joe Dixon. We host Does This Still Work, the podcast. We look at old popular entertainment and ask, The Scathing Atheist. It's Thursday. It's June 25th. And it's National Chocolate Pudding Day. Yet another part of my childhood ruined by Bill Cosby. I just can't anymore with the pudding. I'm no illusions.

I'm Heath Enright, and from Cincinnati Swing State and Good Husband Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll learn that the odd-numbered amendments are the optional ones. According to Trump, that includes the 13th plus one. Well, yeah, no, that one too.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. They're both odd. And the Boy Scouts will finally get around to adding that mansplain merit badge. But first, the diatribe. i will admit that the rhetorical deck is kind of stacked against us even though we're the only ones telling the truth and when you're trying to convince people your side of an argument being demonstrably correct is certainly an advantage but but for a lot of people, it's not definitive, especially when your truth is so much uglier than their lie. In a sense, we're always destined to be the asshole in the room because the lie is that your loved one is living on in paradise, and any attempt to puncture that lie is, to most people, a dick move, right? How dare you

take that comforting illusion away from people? In many ways, this question is more central to the religious debate than the one about God existing. And that's because to some people, it's the more important question. Most of us live in countries where God has been defined down to a more or less impotent figure who could work in mysterious ways, but mostly doesn't. And that means that whether or not he exists isn't going to make any real difference in your day-to-day life. Right? He might be a moral arbiter, but since his moral judgment always lines up with your own it doesn't really make a difference in terms of your behavior of course you and i know better because we recognize all the fucked up consequences of theism both for an individual and a society but we're not trying to convince you and me the people sitting on the fence often look at god like russell's teapot you can't prove

him you can't disprove him and the world is the same whether he's there or not. And if you take religion from that angle, the one that incorrectly assumes the proposition of God to be neutral, then atheism is nothing more than the asshole trying to take heaven away from Larry's grandma. But this all rests on the dubious proposition that religion, or more generally belief in an afterlife, helps people cope with death. I mean, I get how that intuitively sounds correct. As I pointed out many times before,

there's no evidence that religious people actually are better at coping with death, right? They don't seem to need less therapy or have less trauma or get over it any quicker or anything. But to be fair, that's almost certainly because they don't actually believe what they're saying they believe, right? Clearly, if you really believed grandma was in heaven, you'd feel better than if you knew that she was just dead. Unless, of course, grandma was a horrible person and you've been looking forward to dancing on her grave for quite a while. But the point is that an apologist could argue that the whole reason religion isn't doing a better job helping people cope with death is because of the assholes like me that keep pointing out that the afterlife is a myth in a sense it's not fair to fault something for being ineffective if i'm out there actively trying to make it less effective now the whole notion that everybody just needs to lie to themselves better brings up a host of complex moral questions that makes this a pretty precarious

limb for apologists to strand themselves out on in the first place right like if the entire world agreed to lie and tell larry that his recently deceased grandma was alive and well and he just missed her she was just here a minute ago we'd have made her death easier for him to cope with but i don't think anybody would argue we behaved morally but whether or not the ends justify the means many people still carry around this misguided notion that we're the bad guys because the lie we're trying to expose is a comforting lie. But there's more wrong with this argument than its simple lack of morality. It also assumes that the belief in the afterlife only helps. That is not remotely the case. You know, consider,

for example, that heaven is just half of the posthumous destinations Christianity has to offer. I mean, I guess that's different from denomination to denomination, but there's exactly zero of them where everybody gets to go to paradise, right? And even talking about the various beliefs between denominations has given Christian theology way more credit than it's due. Sure, there are some sects that have very specific rules and beliefs about the afterlife and believers that rigorously adhere to them, but most don't, right? Like most Christians in the English-speaking world have some sort of wishy-washy theology that's mostly informed by Hollywood. You know, there's a heaven and there's most often a hell, but there are also ghosts and shit. And that's not just because some people are bad at

their religion, by the way. The defense to keep the door open to the afterlife is nobody knows what happens when we die. The only answer that makes any sense is nothing and everything else is equally wacky so to hold the door open for one branch of christianity we must also hold it open for all the ones with stricter heaven qualifications we must also hold it open for reincarnation we must hold it open for whatever weird ass theology was going on in what dreams may come or ghost if your argument is nobody knows and therefore your patently absurd thing is possible, all the other patently absurd shit is also possible. This is not just a theoretical concession that you have to make in some larger argument. This happens inside the brain of the Christian.

You built your entire hope on the concept of doubting the obvious, so you can't help but also doubt your hope. Right? Doubt is how you got there the other day i was sitting with a recently widowed christian friend a neighbor pointed out that some clock on her wall had stopped and the time it had stopped was around the time of her husband's heart attack the day before she became convinced that the clock had stopped at the moment of his death and became so distraught that we had to take the clock down put it in a closet she had to take medicine medicine. She needed to lay down. She desperately wanted to know what it meant. Now, you and I would know exactly what it meant. It meant the fucking battery ran out on the clock, right? It was a clock that sat amongst 80 different trinkets on

the wall that she almost certainly never looked at to figure out what time it was. There was a digital clock nearby. It had probably been stopped for days or even weeks, and it took a neighbor that doesn't normally come over to notice the clock was stopped. But because her mind was open to all these bizarre and inexplicable possibilities about death, she had to entertain any number of explanations beyond the mundane coincidence that was really behind this.

Her belief in an afterlife did not comfort her in that moment. It did the exact opposite. There are plenty of reasons why the lies of religion wouldn't be morally justifiable, even if they did what they claim to do. The fact that they don't makes the conundrum that much easier to dismiss. Joining me for headlines tonight is the Mandalorian to bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is the Mandalorian to my baby Yoda, Heath Enright. Heath, can I handle your knob?

Do or do not, Noah. There is no track. In our lead story tonight, one of the myriad scandals that would be the only thing we talked about on this show for two months under a normal presidential administration is the fact that as of this moment, the federal government is releasing our tax dollars directly into the hands of churches for the purposes of paying the salaries of their clergy. Literally happening. The only way to more thoroughly disrespect the intent of the First Amendment's religious protections would be to do the exact same thing while peeing on just that part of the bill of rights and then flushing 15 times yeah and and we learned a couple of weeks ago that if the trump administration has its way we will never learn how much money went to which churches. And that came in the form of an announcement by Stevie, please don't call me Stevie Mnuchin, who announced that unlike all the other loans offered by the government,

these ones were secret. Well, you know, we can't have other countries learning about our secret theocracy recipe. They might handle the pandemic better than us that'd be a big problem yeah can you imagine i'm sure john bolton will release a book so there are obviously legal questions about whether he can do this at all and a dozen or so news agencies plus the american atheists have already sued the federal government for lack of transparency over this issue like even before mnuchin announced his intent to stonewall across the board but his excuse apparently is that unlike

other government loans the the ppp loans the specific types being misappropriated to pay clergy are calculated based on employees salaries so giving away information on the specific amounts would also inadvertently reveal salary information about a whole bunch of people you see oh oh the salaries of key employees at tax-exempt non-profits which are fucking public information from form 990 that they have to give you if you ask for it can't reveal those is that the one he's talking about not all the tax-exempt organizations have different rules for some of those and not others yeah, yeah. A couple of problems with that argument, like, uh-uh and so fucking what?

But even if it was all true, that would hardly justify keeping this information secret from the goddamn government accountability office, which Mnuchin is apparently also doing. And look, there are all kinds of reasons to be pissed about this, right? Like, for all we know, the majority of the nearly 400 billion dollars allotted to this program went to just Trump donors. Right. For all we know, the money was funneled towards states and districts that voted Republican. And there's no reason to doubt that kind of corruption, given what we've seen out of this administration. But irrespective of the details. Right. Yeah, I would. but irrespective of the details right yeah i would but irrespective of the details we know that the amount going to churches specifically is far greater than no dollars at all and by itself

that's a scandal worthy of a fucking gate suffix okay even if we allow this obvious lie excuse about the salary information you can tell us the total for each religion and each denomination and each state right no salary gets revealed specifically by that well right and yeah let's be super clear about this churches should be every bit as pissed about this as atheists are trump has already shown a clear preference for one branch of one denomination of one religion and you're fucking crazy if you think all the denominations are receiving funds equally or have access to them let alone all the fucking religions right something tells me there aren't a hell of a lot of mosques getting approved and there's a super high chance evangelical

churches are getting the lion's share of the money and lest our love for euphemism disguise the point here evangelical is not a denomination it is a term that pollsters and pundits use because white baptist doesn't sound good yep all right next up in headlines we have a follow-up story about the religious liberty that we purchased in 2018 and how that investment is going for the american public oh okay of course I'm talking about the Religious Liberty Task Force. That's the government panel created by Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions

that had some amount of people, lasted for some amount of time, cost the American taxpayer some amount of money and secured or enhanced or manufactured some amount of religious liberty during their time. And according to the administration, the final results of that project are, go fuck yourself.

It's a secret. Yeah, something of a theme in this week's headlines. Yeah. So just in case anyone missed this when we yelled about it two years ago, the whole point of the Religious Liberty Task Force was to address the very serious problem of Jewish bakers getting forced to make swastika wedding cakes by jackbooted liberal thugs of the Obama administration. Apparently, Trump continued employing those thugs and the task force was a workaround to avoid firing those people. Not sure. It's important to him that the administration doesn't have a big employee turnover right yeah and just by coincidence the goal of that jewish libertarian cake initiative aligned with christian business

owners who were being persecuted into not persecuting mostly of gay people yeah in all seriousness the task force was trump's early effort at cementing the evangelical vote for re-election by creating a committee to legalize bigot bakers and bigot adoption agencies and kim davis right that's what that was yeah exactly and the scotus was like hey we have a SCOTUS here. Right. Yeah. No, the fucking Religious Liberty Task Force job was to weed out all the fucking Christian persecution in America and repel all of its tigers. Much of bullshit. So the task force started in July of 2018. But later that year, Jeff Sessions got fired. And then I'm pretty sure Trump just forgot about the task force.

Or maybe he got frustrated with all the complicated Bible holding practice. So it appears to be gone at this point. And now a whole bunch of government watchdogs and journalists want to know what the fuck they were spending money on. Especially considering that protecting religious liberty was already a thing we did. Well, Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed made a FOIA request that basically said, hey, Religious Liberty Task Force, what would you say you do here? Don't make me set up a meeting with the bobs.

So the administration sent him a big packet of the group's internal communication except pretty much the whole thing was redacted like like they were building a cold fusion bomb to protect the segregated cake shop sector and they couldn't tell him it's a national secret national security nonsense all right well to be honest though look if nobody on this task force looked into a bomb that killed all the non-protestant people they weren't doing what Trump put them there to do. So there's that. The holy hand grenade, yeah. So I looked at the documents just to see for myself, and Leopold is not exaggerating when he says it's all reacted.

All the relevant information is missing. They even blurred out the full-page logo that's all over this thing that they came up with for the task force fucking what jesus oh you know what i bet it's got a picture of muhammad on it so yeah we don't know much but we do have full confirmation now that they spent a good deal of their time drawing a coat of arms with latin anti-lgbt slur words on it but information like who was involved in that task force and what the fuck they did and who they met with that's all classified for national security and we already knew it was just a bunch of bigots in a treehouse that said like no women allowed no gays allowed but now it's so much worse with this

spycraft shit well right because they're not refusing to say how much they spent on it because it was so little right exactly and in fighting truth and nail news tonight christian hate monger and longtime father's shadow resident franklin graham is furious this week after dr anthony fauci had the audacity to tell cnn's audience that quote science is truth just because those two words are synonyms right like i know the thesaurus doesn't exactly say that but that's because they're trying not to piss off fucking franklin graham into graham crackers but the science of the matter the science will set you free nothing could be further from the science i didn't change the meaning of any of those goddamn

things right it fits but franklin graham still got all pissy despite the fact that pauchi was obviously and clearly telling the science yeah this is the usa we're all about science justice and the american okay no well yeah but it does that whether you use truth or science it doesn't matter yeah yeah the only one that's um that's not wrong there is tautological right so the offending quote showed up when fauci was called upon to explain the rise in covet 19 cases that were seeing in more than half of U.S. states. And after screaming, because you idiots keep bowling and getting tattoos and shit in all caps italics for a minute,

he lamented the fucking nation's anti-science bias, adding, quote, when they. His whole life is all caps italics for a while now. It should be at least. Yeah, right. is all caps italics for a while now. It should be, at least. Yeah, right. So he says, quote, when they, and that's talking about people with an anti-science bias,

see someone who's talking about science, there are some people who just don't believe that, and that's unfortunate because, you know, science is truth, end quote. And Franklin Graham wanted to be super clear that he, for one, did not know. Science is truth, and if you're curious about the list of idiots making the plague worse we'll hear from them in three two one fuck you fauci yes exactly i am franklin fucking graham exactly laid a trap perfect they all walked around the

red x yep like they do so graham's response came in the form of a facebook post the thinking man's tweet where he dismissed bauchi's claim because science is sometimes wrong which itself by the way is wrong science is perpetually incomplete and scientists are wrong but the collective enterprise of gathering data testing hypotheses and correcting our errors is truth right that's what that word means in fact it's so fucking true that it even admits how true it isn't. And if Graham was trying to make like a semantic distinction here or something, he might have a valid, if useless point. He was not.

No, no. What he's trying to do is contrast science's truth with the demonstrably false claims of his dumb ass mythology, which elevates him from wrong to lying. mythology which elevates him from wrong to lying yeah just because of your fancy degree from cornell whatever the fuck jewish probably i do not take whatever you say as gospel science yeah that's our birds asshole yeah it's worth adding here by the way that one side of the argument claims infallibility and it's the same one that faults the other side for being fallible and has never been correct about anything and has never corrected anything and has a book about how to best own slaves so that's in it yep that grandeur news the boy scouts of america just introduced a diversity

and inclusion merit badge to the program in solidarity with black lives matter oh fuck you yeah yeah fuck them indeed i'll get to exactly why but it's probably obvious to everybody why. Fuck them. I mean, yeah, I'm all in favor of inclusion and solidarity with Black Lives Matter. It's the Boy Scouts of America that can go fuck them. Yes, absolutely. Also, apparently they're still doing a system of physical badges that you sew onto your creepy fucking uniform because, you know, every kid wants to look like idiom mean became a park ranger in a fucking musical but this is like you said mostly good news like in in theory learning about diversity and inclusion is now officially a requirement for becoming an eagle scout

the highest rank at boy scouts of america yeah right, as long as you keep it theoretical, though. Yes. So one more time, I'm glad they're doing this. But in practice, the people we're going to be doing the diversity and inclusion training are the leaders of the Boy Scouts of America. So we'll see how that goes. I'm picturing like a David Attenborough narration about people of different races in their natural habitat. It's very upsetting. I can't imagine it'll be a lot different from what I just pictured, which I feel bad about picturing, honestly. Maybe if they have the kids tell

them about diversity. I don't know. Yeah, that would be so much better. So, this is a group, by the way, just to circle back to why fuck you, a few other reasons. This is a group that didn't allow gay children to join until 2014 and didn't allow gay adults to be Scoutmasters until 2015. Except that last thing, they still don't do that all the time. Right now, they don't.

They ended the national ban on gay Scoutmasters in 2015. ban on gay scoutmasters in 2015, but they specifically said each local charter is allowed to make their own rules in accordance with their own beliefs. And just for the record, 70% of those charters are run by religious groups. Guess what they do? And speaking of which, this national organization that just announced their inclusion merit badge still has a complete ban on atheism right now yeah 2020 right right like yeah when you hear that the boy scouts are teaching about diversity your first question should be for or against right and your first assumption shouldn't

be for no no so the new merit badge was part of a big official statement from the boy scouts national executive committee they're very proud of this it's entitled bsa's commitment to act against racial injustice which again it sounds pretty good but just in case there was any doubt about just how much worse than michael scott they're going to do with this diversity training the letter proudly i guess humble bragged but not exactly it proudly states that they banned the confederate flag 30 years ago 30 years yes yes 30 when i was it's actually not even quite 30 years it's less than 30 years ago so congrats on being a major player in the civil rights movement of like 1991 but you're still a bunch of bigots and fuck you one more time oh shit well the boy scouts have a some of my best

friends are black badge is what passes for good news around here so we're gonna pause for a second and tell you about this week's sponsor adam and eve so Noah, you know what the best part of staying at home is? Is it the fact that I live in Georgia and my other option is going to the parts of Georgia that I don't pay to keep Georgians out of? No, it's playing at home is what I was going to say. Your

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adam and eve i bet they wouldn't let me use any of the taglines i come up with i have a few and we're back and in campaign in the ass news tonight trump's re-election strategy for 2020 started to come into clearer focus over the last few days uh now obviously we knew it would mostly consist of lying corruption and xenophobia but it remained to be seen what mix and form those ingredients were going to take fun game how are you going to mix those? Yeah, right. Right. But one clear theme emerging this week has been the very clear message that if Trump doesn't win reelection in November, there will be no more religion.

You promise? Yeah, right. You can imagine. Wow. I don't know, though. Biden is still friends with Obama. We'll probably still have Islam. Yeah.

Christianity's canceled. Right. Yeah. No, it's gone. Yeah. So we got this angle from a couple of different sources, and I think it's safe to say we're going to see this ramp up in the coming weeks. To start with, there's this interview Trump recently did on the Christian Broadcasting

Network, which right now that's like fucking InfoWars with an extra helping of jesus so that tells you all you need to know but during the interview he's asked about the recent supreme court decision that admitted that firing women for fucking women when you wouldn't fire men for fucking women is sexist and he uses this to springboard into his you need me to appoint anti-gay judges even though one of his judges sided with the majority on that one yeah you lost one there didn't you donald yeah that was fun oops also by the way translation of what donald was saying there the civil rights act of 1964 is social justice cancel culture gone too far yep also the 14th amendment is social justice cancel culture gone too far that one too yeah no it's odd if you add it up correctly we also got confirmation that this is a campaign-wide strategy

when trump legal advisor jenna ellis took to twitter to warn the idiots who assume this guy is just gonna stay up there all day quote i'm going on record I love this quote so goddamn much. I'm going on record now. If they try to cancel Christianity, if they try to force me to apologize or recant my faith, I will not bend. I will not waver. I will not break. On Christ the solid rock I stand, and I'm proud to be an American. Okay. End quote. Wow.

If a fucking tweet could have fireworks. Anyway, she's clearly trying to trick people into thinking that she's responding towards some kind of thing of some sort. To nobody? Yeah, right. This is literally no different than me taking a Twitter to say

that I will never lick my elbow no matter how many squids ride bicycles at me. What the fuck are you even talking about? Firework. Bald eagle. Like, as part of your tweet. She just started the USA, the chant on Twitter in response to nothing. That is American exceptionalism right there.

Isn't it, though? Isn't it? And as much as I'd love to say that this american exceptionalism right there isn't it though isn't it ah and as much as i'd love to say that this is a pointless strategy it's worth reminding everybody that unofficial researcher of the scathing atheist ryan p burge at all recently conducted a survey where they found that 22 percent of americans were worried that a democratic president would literally ban the bible and while 22 is nowhere near a majority it's disturbingly close to enough to win a presidential election so wow that's 22 of people watching kirk Kirk Cameron movies as documentaries. Yep. Fantastic. Exactly.

Next up in headlines, after a commanding victory and also a crushing defeat in a water chugging contest against himself in front of dozens of loyal fans in Tulsa on Saturday. Hey, hey, tens of dozens, okay? Perhaps tens of dozens, but I'm going to say dozens. It's also dozens. It is, yeah. Donald Trump headed to the Dream City megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona, for another campaign event this week. And normally, you might think that's a big health risk during a pandemic.

But don't worry. According to Pastor Luke Barnett of that church in phoenix they installed a new air filter system that kills 99.9 percent of covid units units of covid 99.9 percent are gone through ionization what yep yeah you know what i'm i'm impressed that he didn't just go ahead and say open bracket tech close bracket. Yes. So the name of the company that makes the new ionizer is called Clean Air EXP. And according to their website, you can control indoor air quality the same way a thermostat controls air temperature. No, you can't. way a thermostat controls air temperature no you can't apparently you can set your clean air exp to remove only 50 of the covid if that's what you like i like a nice 65 why would you have a dial

but pastor barnett and their church cfo brendanrow, posted a video explaining how their new system works. Side note, fuck you for having a CFO at your church. Get the fuck out of here, CFO. Anyway, according to Zastrow, quote, it's ionization of the air. It kills 99.9% of COVID within 10 minutes. I don't know what size room would be done in 10 minutes, but maybe all of them all i guess all the rooms

yep it can do it takes particulates out and covid can't live in that environment it needs particulates so as long as everyone just inhales once every 10 minutes jesus christ if everybody even if you were right you'd still be wrong fucking idiot so here's the thing though with covid19 it's not airborne yeah it's spread mostly through respiratory droplets and yes the word respiratory has a i and r in it and you think of air, respiratory breathing air, but that's nothing. That's just nonsense associations. So unless everyone who needs to occasionally cough or speak, or I don't know,

exhale from their lungs in that entire church, climbs into the HVAC system for each of those moments. And also everybody times it out. So nobody has to exhale at the same time and encounter each other inside the HVAC system. Unless all that happens, the air filter system doesn't really matter. Ionization just means they're shooting the air that passes near the device with high voltage to give it negative charge, more electrons. The virus doesn't like fly around looking for air

molecules, counting the protons and electrons, making sure they're even, sometimes getting duped by the negative air. That's not what fucking... The negative air is not like, we got particulates. Who needs particulates? What the fuck are you talking about?

No, it rejects it because it's negative. Idiots. Look, and also, did you get rid of all the surfaces? Because I feel like you have to have surfaces. I feel like all the things have surfaces. They're just grinding big surfaces into the ionizer. No, this isn't working. This is a negative surface.

No, no, no. Just to be as fair as possible, not that they deserve this or have any idea what I'm about to say, but there are some studies that show a room with an air ionizer can reduce certain pathogens. But again, the airborne ones.

Yeah. For COVID-19, everyone would need to be wearing like a high voltage electron cannon over their face like Bane. Or they could wear a fucking regular cloth mask like all the doctors are recommending. Or they could not have a giant indoor meeting like all the doctors are recommending. I recommend both of the last two would be great.

Yeah. Just lose your election. You're going to lose. You're losing. And speaking of which in french benefits news tonight just in case we needed any more confirmation that religiosity is not your friend when it comes to the covet 19 pandemic the uk office of national statistics just released a report that shows that non-religious people are doing a much better job of not dying from the

virus huh weird yeah now granted some of that's probably due to the correlation between religiosity and being old, right? But that's not enough to account for the statistical difference. So yes, definitively, religion makes you worse at being alive. Okay, but I will admit it.

They are better at being dead. No, you're right. No, that's true. An atheist has never done a posthumous miracle and then got sainted like certain things they do better dead all right so the number they released specifically looked at the mortality rates between various demographics when it came to religion the lowest rates among both males and females were among the no religion category the number was nearly 15 higher for both men and women in the Christian cohort and even higher in every other religious group except for other religion or not stated. Okay. All right.

In fairness, though, religious people are always telling me, I'll pray for you. I feel like that's a factor in helping out atheists. Yeah. So, yeah, no, I didn't even think of that one. We don't pray for that. So, yeah, no, I didn't even think of that one. We don't pray for that. Now, the explanation for why Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Sikhs are dying at a higher rate than Christians probably is the result of these other factors. Obviously, most of those groups are going to contain a higher percent of recent immigrants.

And that means that those groups are more likely to be lower income. They're more likely to live in areas with higher population density. And they're more likely to maintain cultural norms with a lot more group contact. higher population density, and they're more likely to maintain cultural norms with a lot more group contact. And honestly, if increased chances of dying weren't damning enough for that country's Christian majority, those other factors should be. You'd think so. Yep. And finally tonight, an evangelical Christian soldier in the U.S. Army got indicted by a federal grand jury this week and charged with attempted murder, conspiring with terrorists, and I guess attempted magical treason or something like that after he got caught trying to help out a satanic neo-Nazi cabal of dark wizards.

That all really happened. And in related news, our job is really weird. Yeah, but it's nice to know John Carpenter's still working, though, right? Like, he's in his 70s. It was my job to see a headline, to look for a headline that said all that and be like, oh, this is perfect for my job. This is perfect. Very strange. So the terrorist cabal is called the Order of the Nine Angles or 09A. And according to Hope Not Hate, which is a watchdog that tracks hate groups, quote, 09A seeks to harness supernatural forces and overthrow the alleged Nazarene slash Magian, in parentheses, Jewish, influence on society. Also reduce the population of mundanes

through acts of extreme barbarism. Quick timeout. That's all those things I just said? A few words away from Eli describing how he hates normies. So that's fun. Really close. Anyway, continuing. And they also seek to usher in a new imperial aeon ruled by a race of satanic supermen who would colonize the solar system.

End quote. I have no idea how terrified of these people I should be. Right? Like, it's such a weird mix. Some. The answer is a non-zero answer. It's more than zero. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. They're dumb, but still. So here's what happened with this army guy, Private Ethan Melzer. I guess I should start by saying he grew up in Kentucky, so that's your first clue, that's your first problem. And apparently the life for a white Christian guy in Kentucky is really hard.

So he was having a hard time, he was very disgruntled. He googled something like magic Nazi space travel and he found 09A. Eventually he got deployed to Europe with the army and he started communicating with that group this April. Then in May, he told the terrorist group about where his unit was going to be so those dark wizards could ambush the unit. What? And then kill all the Jewish people in the world with magic is the rest of that plan.

It's muddled. And apparently Melzer did this all on a so-called restricted messaging application. He was helping out neo-Nazi terrorists attack the US army and he figured yeah okay i better get on whatsapp that's encrypted i won't get in trouble also he was actually talking to an

fbi agent the whole time of course he was yeah well you know if auditioning for a citation needed episode was a thing that would explain all of this as it stands i have no fucking clue so any amount of neo-nazi activity like we're saying before that's at least non-zero scary even if those neo-nazis can't count to fucking nine but don't worry this particular group definitely will not be taking over the u.s military to further their aryan goals in outer space taking over the U.S. military to further their Aryan goals in outer space. Only the guy we elected is doing that. Yeah, yeah. System works. Wow.

And now that we've accidentally discovered the group was started by Donald Trump and he meant to write angels the whole time, I think our work here is done. Heath, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, we'll revisit the terrifying, scissor gouging world of Sid Davis. In 2020, the world has gone out of its way to seem terrifying. But if you're feeling overwhelmed by the deadly virus, the police brutality, the murder hornets, the Nazi sympathizer in the White House or whatever crazy shit this year is going to throw at us in July,

you can always take comfort in the fact that the world you're living in will never be as terrifying as the one inside Sid Davis's mind. Makers of such classic social guidance films as LSD, Trip or Trap, Alcohol is Dynamite, and Seduction of the Innocent, his was a terrifying world entirely populated by venereal disease child molesters and one-eyed children that only learn to respect the power of scissors the hard way but he's one of our favorite subjects for a segment that we call god awful mini so tell us heath what will we be breaking down today?

We watched Girls Beware by Sid Davis. It's the sequel to his masterpiece Boys Beware, which was a cautionary tale about the danger of child molesters. And Girls Beware is a very woke gender reversal exercise about the dangers of child molesters. Turns out, Sid Davis realized this, child molesters are not all gay, like he assumed before. And despite all the problems with that, the general message of the two movies together is, beware men.

And that's honestly not the worst idea. That's true. It's the best one he ever put in a movie. We give him a little positive introduction there. Speaking of which, let's go ahead and ruin that. Noah, how bad was this mini? Well, if you like the missing child pictures on the milk carton, but you never get to find out where those bodies were found, you will love this mini. Jesus, it's so fucked up. It's so fucked up it's so fucked up oh all right so we're gonna

start this one i was a little 10 minute video we'll have it linked in the show notes it's it's a fun watch if you like terrible things so it starts off by setting a record i think for the least appropriate music for the message because the words say girls beware but the music says that those four dogs on each other's shoulders got a trench coat and now they're gonna get into the club after all it felt like that was just the music that some people were playing in like the next room next to where they're right yeah exactly it was so wild And that there were four dogs that got a trench coat and sneak into something. I don't know. Also, this starts with the title card for the title of the movie.

It says, Girls Beware. Why can't they get a title card to hold still? I don't. Is that like technology? We didn't have, just put it on a table, put a camera on the table, and you're good for a second, right? You would think, but they didn't figure that shit out until the early 70s, I think.

Yeah, right. No idea. So we get this shaky-ass Girls Beware title card. We get the shaky-ass in cooperation with the Inglewood PD and school district. I'm sure that's a point of pride for both of them. Yeah. Kind of made it seem like there were other groups

that did not cooperate. You know, like it was kind of passive-aggressive. Honestly, I expected the next title card to be like, and fuck the Rotary Club, Steve. Fuck your stupid fucking Rotary Club. Asshole. All right. So now we're going to meet our narrator, Norma Neufner,

policewoman. That's such a lie name. Right. Norma. Well, yeah, Norma. Okay. Neufner. Neufner. I was like trying to see if the letters rearranged or if it spelled Right. Norma. Well, yeah, Norma. Okay. Neufner. Neufner. I was like trying to see if the letters rearranged

or if it spelled something backwards or something. Yeah, it doesn't. It's disappointing. I was just surprised they had police women in 1961. I didn't figure that was a thing. So here's the thing, though. In Boys Beware, it was a man cop telling us stuff. So now it's a lady cop. Sid

Davis, very progressive. Right, yeah, he did the woke gender reversal. Now he's got a female police officer. Good point. But she's like, yeah, I'm a policewoman. I have sex with men, just to be clear. I take the calls from hysterical us people. So that's what I do.

Exactly, yes. She's working on the lady crimes. She doesn't even get, she doesn't get like a badger. She's working on the lady crimes. She doesn't even get, she doesn't get like a badger. She's not a police officer to be clear. Like we see her later on the job, just wearing a dress, no uniform.

Yeah. So she's on the phone with a mother worried about her missing daughter. And we're going to flash back to that missing daughter. This is Judy. Now, Judy is advertising her babysitting services at the supermarket. And she gets a phone call from a man she's never met that says he'll be there by to pick her up for a babysitting job in 15 minutes. Right.

And mom and dad aren't home at this moment. So Judy leaves a message on that, like, super important notepad next to the phone like this the telephone and notepad culture was crazy serious like we caught the oh yeah did you have that oh yeah yeah my parents were so fucking serious about correctly noting whatever you you answer every phone call right away oh so i always got in trouble for taking the pencil right like because if i needed a pencil i would take that one and i'll know the fuck I wouldn't, but yeah. Oh, yeah, I learned that lesson real fast. Dad stretching the

cord to the phone one time trying to get a pen or a pencil that wasn't quite close enough. Cheering at you the whole time. Yeah, right. Yeah, and also, by the way, this apparently took place back in the era when bow tie wasn't exclusively a gimmick or a quirk because the child molester

that picks her up has bow tie just disturbing that's a clue i'm sorry that's got that needs to be a clue all the time all right so now we get judy's mom coming home she finds the note she follows up she calls the number and it's just some random lady and the video feels the need to show us some random lady yeah right also we don't need the narrator and the movie yes just as a general concept like we landed on this insane compromise we're watching movie clips with no audio and a narrator explaining what's very clearly happening on the audio in the clip that we're watching just use it's it's right yeah if you would shut up and let this lady talk she could tell us what's going on right but so the mom calls this number and it turns out it's just a fake it's like a random number so some woman picks up and is like yeah i have no idea about your daughter i get these calls

all the time i think i think a kidnapper just writes like eight six seven five three oh nine is his go-to fake number and that's me and like i don't know yeah but mom is curiously non-plus by this by midnight though she starts to get worried like by fucking midnight that's so slow right really yeah you know already as soon as you make this phone call okay this is a kidnapper giving an obvious fake number. What other scenario was there? Right. Or at least it was your like, it's your daughter lying so she could go hang out with her boyfriend or something. Yeah.

She kidnapped herself. No, a fake kid, but like a prank by her hilarious daughter from 1961. That's great if that's what you know, that we find out very quickly now. And then because this is a Sid Davis movie and Sid Davis doesn't fuck around, the narrator's like, a week later, we found her rotting corpse picked clean by buzzards

along a lonely desert highway. And by the way, we're still listening to the cartoon dog music the entire time. It does not stop. It's crazy. Yeah. Something so fun is happening next to this movie.

Yeah, right. So, okay. And then Norma has to go break the news to Judy's mom. And here's the actual line from the video. You can never find the right words to tell a mother that her daughter has been murdered. Yeah. What would that even mean? And secondly, do you nail it when it comes to telling moms

about their murdered sons? Are you better with dads? That seems oddly specific in terms of nouns. Yeah. It's weird to make that distinction. But yeah, that's a tough conversation. Just like, okay, so, funny story. Nope, nope.

Okay, that's a bad conversation. Just like, okay, so funny story. Nope. Nope. Okay, that's a bad start. A great philosopher. No, no. According to the Oxford English Dictionary. Defines murder rape. I mean, that's apropos. Yeah, so and then the narrator comes on and and goes like you know judy never did anything wrong she was just careless and who she trusted like yeah he was wearing a fucking bow tie you

should you should have known yeah dude tucker carlson shows up to pick you up you've never met him before that's ridiculous right fuck out of here Is that a bow tie and a monocle? What are you doing? Are you an evil Kentucky colonel? You have to tell me. Are you carrying around a Persian cat to stroke? Hold on a second. So, yeah. So now we meet Barbara, the gallant to Judy's goofus.

Right now. Right. Barbara is out. She's babysitting one night and a guy comes by to murder rape her and she sends him next door. Well, yeah. out she's she's babysitting one night and a guy comes by to murder rape her and she sends him next door well yeah so the narrator cop is like all right i'm not saying it was your dead daughter's fault but barbara is a great example of how not to get murdered and literally yeah apparently a sexual predator shows up to the front door while while barbara's home by herself and she's like ah try the next house over.

See if you can get any success going there. They're careless with their children. What? I wanted the neighbors to come over and just be like, hey, did you fucking send this guy to our house? Are you serious? I sent him to your house. You sent him to my house. Alright, this is funny.

Alright. What about asshole across the street? Yes. Yeah, there we go. Asshole across the street. Teach him to mow. All right. This is funny. What about asshole across the street? Yes. Yeah. There we go. Asshole across the street. Teach him to mow his fucking lawn. And okay. So now we meet Sally and Elizabeth at the movies.

Right. And these two older boys, the fucking narrator describes them as older boys that would like to be their first. They're fucking men. Right. That's the term for that much older boys these are 45 year olds yes but also giants they're like seven feet tall and they show up at this theater full of kids really upsetting and they want to be friends with sally and elizabeth and they like lean over the

thing and then they jump over the seat and they're sitting next to him it's very creepy the whole thing well and the narrator says this is the weirdest line in the whole fucking movie. The narrator says, friendships are easily made in a crowded theater. Right. Are they? How so the movie? Like people start shouting across the crowd at theater.

Like, so what kind of music do you listen to? What? What kind of music? Nevermind. Okay. Does anyone in my area closer want to be friends i'm a giant i'm 45 year old giant yeah and so the the lines like they were secret the two girls were secretly pleased that two older boys talked over the movie in an unsolicited effort to flirt with them and i'm like oh sid davis wrote these lines didn't he yep sure dad said my man wrote yeah hey those

lines girls beware of sid davis that's what we learned right there right so then during intermission of the movie okay hold on did movies have an intermission? I guess. Is that a thing? I guess. In 1961, that's when this movie came out. Yeah. Back in the day, the 23-cent hamburger, apparently movies had intermissions. Wasn't everybody smoking like four cigars in the theater already? What did they need?

Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. But during intermission, Sally showed off to all of her friends all this mature dick she was swinging around on. And then the older boys offered him a ride. Now, Elizabeth knew better, right? She tried her best to cockblock Sally. Yeah. But it didn't work out.

Right. Yeah. Elizabeth's pretty great here. The guys are like, oh, you ladies need a ride home. And she's like, nope, we got a ride. Sally's like, hey, Elizabeth, I think they want to hang out with us, is what that meant. And she's like, nope.

We're 14. You're 45. Please leave. So good. And then finally, it was like, what if we just give Sally a ride home alone? And Elizabeth, she's like, that doesn't really make any sense. I said, my parents are already giving us both a ride. Like, why would we she's like, that doesn't really make any sense. I said, my parents are already giving us both a ride.

Like, why would we both have cars going to the same place? She's my fucking favorite. All right. So now we cut to Sally in the front seat sandwich between the two boys here. And she's pretty impressed with them, like, having a car and, you know, an IRA. Did cars just have, like, a bench in the front for a long time they did yeah bench seating oh jesus yeah okay but yeah no it's just a big ass fucking couch

in the front okay i guess i've been in some trucks like that but yeah just you don't you don't picture it with car okay old timey movie stuff. But these boys drove right past her house and straight to Lookout Peak. And that's when she knew she was in trouble. Now, I don't want to make a joke about this scene because what they're trying to show is, like, apparently these two boys gang raped this girl. Right. And not a lot of horrible like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Not a lot of humor in that. And there shouldn't be. But the way that, of course course it's a fucking 1961 movie that they're going to show in schools they can't talk about that they should but they can't at that point so what they do to to like show you that that's happening is both of these men going to kiss this girl at the same time yeah at the same time they they bump heads. Like, we watch them smash heads like cartoon characters. It seems like you just do all the permutations one at a time. I don't.

The logistics of that fucked me right up. You guys are going straight for the DA. All right, all right. I just feel like we can work up to that. Just like rock, paper, scissors or something. All right, so by midnight, her parents started to worry because that's when parents start to worry, I guess. Right. It's legally just a date until then in 1961.

Like kidnapping doesn't count until midnight. Yeah, right. Right. Exactly. So they call Elizabeth. They find out that, you know, she took a ride home from these boys. And that's about the time the cops found her walking dazedly home from lookout peak the fucking narrator says it was a night they'd all remember i'm like that's a weird way to describe a rape but yes i'm sure it is yeah and hey uh maybe the

police just go to lookout peak instead of patrolling the walk home yeah right yeah exactly all right so now we're going to cut to our final example here this is where we're going to cut over to the soda shop to remind you that rape is hiding everywhere by the way burgers were 23 cents back then it says that on the sign and that's all i could focus on for a second it's like it's so antiquated that i didn't even know how to make a cent symbol on google Drive. I almost had to put like dollars 0.23. Yeah, the problem with this for me was all I wanted, like all I can think about for the rest of the movie was I want burgers,

malts, fries, chicken, fish, and shrimp. Yes, in that order. I'm that guy who shows up and is like, technically the sign says 23 cents for burgers malts fries chicken fish and shrimp if you want to get technical I would like all those things very small amount 23 pennies of each of those yeah but this is the malt shop where

Mary met Robert now Robert is the fucking is to malt shops as Roy Moore is to hot topics apparently right that's the guy and the narrator I love the narrator norma neufner so much right here because she just lays into this motherfucker right she is so roasting this son of a bitch from the second she's like immediately he's on screen she's like and here's this motherfucker right here

finished high school no fucking job living in his mom's basement but yeah he's uh creepily saying hello to high school girls and he's like 19 or 20 yeah and i don't even know if if high school girls is like this girl actually looks like 12 or 13 the other girls actually yes this one is middle school yes yeah i would say if i had to name an age 11 super super fucking young yeah terrified so this one was kind of disturbing. Yeah. But Mary was sure impressed that the older boy wanted to talk to her. So she rode off with him.

So Robert goes in for the, they show the two of them in a park and we see Robert go in for the kiss and the camera turns away, you know, like, because that's, it's, it's a grown fucking man and a little girl and they don't want to actually have to have this happen so the camera turns away which is good except it's like so goddamn fast and embarrassed to be there that's the most jarring pan i've ever witnessed outside of one of those camera phone things in a natural disaster right the movie literally looks the other way while a grown man. That's what happens here. Well, OK.

And and then we get this bizarre fucking ending. And this is the whole reason we're doing this movie is because of the way it ends. We should now show the dire consequences of, you know, whatever just happened. We're not going to talk about what it was. Right. And the dire consequences apparently involve this girl being pulled out of school and taken away from her parents. OK, that's what I thought they said. That's insane. Like, what is the movie telling?

What is the movie trying to say here? I don't know. Right. Because it's like the movie comes on. It's just like when finally she told her parents what happened but by then it was too late for advice what I have no idea what the fuck that means and then they said she had to be quote taken out of school and placed under the guidance of juvenile authorities for getting raped god the 60s were fucked up. So the moral is there's a there's a line. After which you don't tattle on your molester or else you end up in a foster home.

Right. Yeah, exactly. I don't fucking know. And like, by the way, the whole thing ends by zooming in on a file, which is presumably Mary's permanent record. Right. So it's just ominous. And then everyone will always know you've been raped, kind of a moment at the end of this terrifying shit.

Those aren't real, right? There's no permanent record. I'm pretty sure there's not. I certainly hope there's not. And quick before I'm called upon to summarize the moral of that story, we're going to close the mini off. Until next time, don't forget, everyone's trying to kill you,

and you are in perpetual danger don't worry Sid I'm keeping it alive before we lay me down to sleep tonight I wanted to let you know that Eli is set to make his triumphant return next week he's been off for a while but don't worry he's been dealing with a bunch of smelly shit indiscriminately smeared where it shouldn't be this whole time so you know he's been keeping in practice to do headlines when he gets back anyway that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more if you can't wait that long be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister shows hot friend god awful movies debuting at 7 a.m eastern

on tuesday and an even newer episode of our half sister show citation needed debuting at noon eastern on wednesday obviously i'd be embarrassed to show my voice around here next week if I neglected to thank Heath, the plural of Huth, and Lucinda, the plural of Lucindum. I also need to thank George and Joe from the Does This Still Work podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Got to admit, I haven't checked out the show yet, but after listening to Heath and Eli realize what a bunch of shit boondock saints was in real time, I'm fascinated by the concept.

If you want to get ahead of me on the homework, you'll find a link to their show on the show notes for this episode. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most marvelous mammals, Jeff, Dale, Ken, I Got Fisted by Jesus, Do an Etruscan Episode, You Cocktease Motherfuckers, and the trans woman, Erin Ann Jose. Jeff, Dale, and Ken, whose erections

bend light, Fisted by Jesus, an Etruscan episode whose IQs have more ones than zeros in the internet, and Ann, Erin, and Jose, who are so hot, fires huddle next to them. Together, these eight amiable atheists aided our aims to alienate the Abrahamic a-holes this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the alliterative qualities

it takes to give us money, but if you're up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com slash scathing atheists, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheists.com. And if you'd like to help, but money and you aren't on speaking terms, you you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at ScathingAdias.com. And if you'd like to help, but money and you aren't on speaking terms, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, or following at PIAT

Pod on Twitter. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robinson handles our social media, our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, we also wrote all the music that was used for this episode and was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScathingAdias.com. Anyway. Got to learn the force push.

Right? The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.