The Scathing Atheist - 390: Fox News Christian Edition

Episode Date: August 6, 2020

In this week’s episode, we discover the worst thing about Greg Locke, Roy Moore thinks about suing the discovery process of lawsuits for defaming him, and Seth Andrews will be here to tell us what he was thinking before he was thinking. --- 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: You can find Seth’s book here: https://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Former-Fox-News-Christian/dp/1977229794/ --- Headlines: 10 GOP senators propose rule denying federal COVID funding for states that don’t allow churches to gather in person: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/07/29/10-gop-senators-states-must-open-churches-if-they-want-to-receive-covid-funding/ Greg Locke creates a mask mandate at Dunkin: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/01/after-pastors-anti-mask-tirade-dunkin-announces-mask-mandate-at-all-locations/ Georgia Senator Is Criticized for Ad Enlarging Jewish Opponent’s Nose: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/27/us/politics/jon-ossoff-david-perdue-ad.html MI GOP Candidate to Voters: I’m “Truly a Christian” (Unlike My Jewish Opponent): https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/01/mi-gop-candidate-to-voters-im-truly-a-christian-unlike-my-jewish-opponent/ Authors Demand Removal from Anthology After Right-Wing Atheist’s Insane Foreword https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/07/31/authors-demand-removal-from-anthology-after-right-wing-atheists-insane-foreword/ GOP Lawmaker Who Celebrated KKK Leader’s Birthday Resigns from Baptist Church: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/07/31/gop-lawmaker-who-celebrated-kkk-leaders-birthday-resigns-from-baptist-church/ Judge Roy Moore Sued Sacha Baron Cohen for Defamation and It’s About to Backfire: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/02/judge-roy-moore-sued-sacha-baron-cohen-for-defamation-its-about-to-backfire/

Warning, Lucinda's not here today, so I doubt we'll even make it through the fucking warning before we start cussing. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by MySheetsRock, Stamps.com, and by the new low-cost solution for assholes who won't wear masks in public, tackling those motherfuckers and strapping a wide strip of tape over their faces. Masking tape. The name finally makes sense. And now, The scathing atheist. Greetings. I'm from New Zealand, and on behalf of all New Zealanders,

I would like to apologize for Ray Comfort. However, due to the nature of geopolitics, I like to think that Americans first inflicted him upon us through exporting their religion. So, no takebacksies. Here's your problem now.

You see, it all began when we did, in fact, evolve. From Filthy Monkey Men. It's Thursday. It's August 6th. And it's Corporate Baby Name Day. What? Are you serious? Citizens United is really getting out of hand. This is nuts.

I'm Noah Lutions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Bernie Guts went to NYU, and so did Eli. This is New Jersey. Cincinnati, Swing State. And Good Husband, Georgia. This is The Skating Atheist.

On this week's episode, we'll discover the worst thing about Pastor Greg Locke. Roy Moore thinks about suing the general discovery process of all lawsuits for defaming him. And Seth Andrews will be here to tell us what he was thinking before he was thinking. But first, the diatribe. Let me be clear, at least on this one thing. If your argument is that two plus two equals salt, the fact that you've read up on it extensively just makes you dumber. I mean, don't get me wrong.

I'm deferential to expertise. But to be an expert in something, the thing has to exist. You can't be an expert in something the thing has to exist you can't be an expert in sexing chupacabras no matter how much you read up on the subject i don't need to examine astrological charts to know stars don't influence our personalities i don't need to read books about homeopathy to know that water doesn't have memory and i don't need to work my way through girdles ontological proof to reject the notions of God. I'm reminded of this constantly because there are a couple of jackass apologists who follow me on social media and chime in constantly to scoff at my oversimplification of theistic arguments. Have I even read such and such obscure theologians specifically chosen for their obscurity?

Am I even familiar with St. saint burton howard's 22 statements or whatever do i even theology bro and of course i haven't of course i'm not in a fucking course i don't because i'm not a fucking idiot two plus two doesn't equal salt i already knew that without reading any books on the subject now i'm not saying an intelligent person can't learn about this shit, right? Like, I got a lot of colleagues that want to get down in the muck and wrestle with these dumbasses. And if that's your thing, I'm sure it helps to read up on all the abstruse dumbassery that they're going to throw at you. Some people are just fascinated by the variety in religious beliefs or enjoy the mental exercise of picking apart bad arguments. Some people are just trying to get their heads around what they used to believe.

But for it to be an intellectual pursuit at all, you have to start off by rejecting the premise. You can learn a lot by reading Shakespeare's plays, but only if you admit that they're works of fiction going in. But that doesn't seem to occur to the apologists on my fucking Facebook page. They chime in with their well-sourced arguments and their obscure citations and seem to think they've just demonstrated some kind of intelligence. But this is definitely one of those rare cases where demonstrating knowledge betrays stupidity. I mean, if the person arguing on behalf of Jesus comes at me with some, but what if you're wrong or why are there still monkeys level bullshit? I realize they've just never seen the counter arguments, right?

They believe what they were told. They never really questioned it. And they clung to the first half-ass argument the preacher man gave them. And I can respect that to a certain degree, right? Like as much as I love to learn new shit, I know I can't learn everything. There are certain subjects I don't bother to look into. That's true for everybody. You know, if you show up with arguments that are that bad you haven't shown yourself to be stupid just

uninformed but if you show up with the latest and greatest in christian apologetics that's because you're stupid i mean think about it we're talking about people who got all the way through an apologetics book without realizing that they were wrong. Multiple books in many cases. That's pretty fucking stupid. They went all the way through without ever thinking to themselves, oh, wow, a couple thousand years we've been trying to pin this shit down and this is the best we've managed, huh? What's worse, they went back for seconds. They kept going back until they exhausted all the mainstream shit and went looking for the obscure stuff. That, my friends, is your stupidity

doubling down on itself. And that's what makes it so hilarious when they brandish this like some kind of badge of brilliance. I see him toss off the arguments of atheists for being unsophisticated as though their nonsense required sophistication to refute. Of course, I have to clarify that I'm not saying all religious people are stupid or that all non-religious people are smart. The whole smart versus stupid dichotomy doesn't work all that well when it comes to entire human beings. You have to be on an extreme for either of those labels to apply to you across the board. So I'm not talking about stupidity or intelligence of a person as a whole. I'm talking about the narrow stupidity as it applies to religion.

A person can be brilliant in any number of different fields and still be narrow stupidity as it applies to religion. A person can be brilliant in any number of different fields and still be a fucking idiot when it comes to religion. But honestly, if you have the mental capacity to be brilliant in terms of math or science or philosophy or something, and you still can't puzzle out the God thing, that actually makes you dumber on that subject than a person who's just too dumb to puzzle it out joining me for headlines tonight are the triforce of power and triforce of courage to my triforce of wisdom heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to be held aloft by an elf no i shared my breath of the wild erotic fan fiction with you privately you know i am ready to be held aloft by an elf? Noah, I shared my Breath of the Wild erotic fanfiction with you

privately. You know I am ready to be held aloft by an elf. It's called Breaths of the Wild. Okay. Yeah, that's odd. I also wrote one. Majora's Mask Mandate. Nice. Alright, well, we've got some private artwork to commission Angelo

for, so while we do that, we're going to pause for a word from this week's first sponsor, My Sheets Rock. Lou, Lou, Lou, just getting a midnight snack. Midnight snack is my favorite snack. Dude, close the door. Ah, no, what are you doing sleeping in

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Plus, they've been a lifesaver in the summer heat. Okay, so why are you in the fridge too? Oh, I had a dream someone was going to steal my almond milk, so. Got it. Yeah, I'm trying. I don't know, Heath. What if I don't believe you? Don't believe me? Their five-star customer reviews speak for themselves.

Plus, they offer a 90-day risk-free trial and free shipping and returns. Check out MySheetsRock at mysheetsrock.com slash scathing and enter the code scathing for 10% off and free shipping. MySheetsRock, the coolest sheets ever made. Sounds good, Heath. Now, can you just slide over? I want to get to the cold cuts. Okay, but stay away from my almond milk.

Okay, obviously. Mine. Yeah, we know it's yours. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, damn near one in five Republican senators signed on to a letter urging Trump to cut off federal coronavirus funding to states that don't love jesus uh face face every one of you specifically they're urging him to quote place restrictions on any forthcoming covet 19 relief funding to states and localities to prevent

churches houses of worship and religious schools and institutions from reopening end quote did i mention fucking face yeah make no mistake here what they're urging trump to do would literally cause people to die withholding relief funding during a pandemic would be killing people as revenge for making churches not kill people yeah okay maybe i got it maybe the republicans are going for some kind of high score situation. Right. OK. Yeah. They're playing grand theft autocrat. All right. So if you ask the undersigned, of course, they're going to tell you that they're not calling for special treatment for churches because if their arguments werely targeted and to justify that they make repeated references to the fact that cities are fine letting black lives matter protesters gather in way larger numbers than they're allowing for churches so these assholes never get to bitch about participation trophies ever ever again their entire fucking

argument seems to be well black people got a thing with crowds, so Republicans should get one too. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, their guy got killed by cops 2,000 years ago, and they still aren't over it. It's fucking... Sir, stop resisting. Sir, stop resisting. I'm nailed to

a cross. And I should note that this letter makes seven references to religious liberty or religious freedom it is five paragraphs long clearly they're trying to sell this fiction that like restricting unnecessary in-person gatherings across the board is a burden specifically and uniquely placed on religion and as if they wanted to help me summarize the hyperbole at the end of this fucking headline, here's how they close the thing. Quote, we appreciate your commitment.

They're writing this to Trump. So Trump's commitment to protecting American citizens' right to exercise their faith, their right to pray for peace, and to healing a deeply divided nation. End quote. And while we're giving you credit for stuff you actively work against, your commitment to good looking skin and cardio. Right. And in lockdown news.

Last week, again, just in time for it to be too late to be featured on our podcast. Motherfuckers. It's like they have some kind of email chain. They know to stay away from Thursday. You gotta mix it up. Just randomize it. Show favorite Pastor Greg Locke hooked to the internet with his best car rant yet in defiance of having to wear a mask at Dunkin' Donuts.

Okay, if you're getting so goddamn worked up by your trip to Dunkin' Donuts, you're so fucking excited that you're too winded to have a tiny layer of fabric over your face for a few minutes, apparently you're Greg Lopp. Yeah, right. And you shouldn't go there anymore whoever you are you're capable of getting that pissed about anything dunkin donuts related he opens up this ramp by saying that his mask and this is a quote separates the body i'm dying to know where he's putting that thing yeah listen to me listener you must watch this video oh it's so good it's got him comparing mass to the holocaust it's got him comparing mass to abortions at one point for some reason he says masks don't work and then he describes physically threatening an employee who

politely asked him to put one on but the best best best best, best part is when Pastor Gregory Hamster Farts Locke announces himself to be the only human on earth with a more irritating coffee order than my own. twice a day. Twice a day. He goes to Dunkin' Donuts and orders two medium coffees with quote seven creams, five sugars in each one. Jesus Christ.

To which he adds by the way, again, real quote, yeah, I know, I got a problem. Okay, well, first of all, that is nowhere near as difficult or irritating as it's not even close secondly that's nowhere near craig lock's problem but okay here's some details about dunkin donuts the medium coffee is 14 ounces and the extra large is 24 ounces. Oh my god. So either Pastor Locke really fucking needs those four extra ounces or

he's an idiot. Or, and I guarantee this is the real answer, he just doesn't have it in himself to say, and I want that with 14 creams and 10 sugars. Or 28 creams and 20 sugars. He goes twice a day to avoid that. Right, yeah.

He was doing 14, 10, felt dumb about that. All right, splim. So this week, we got a little update on Greg's temper tantrum. And I got to believe this is because we have a listener at the Double D. Duncan has announced that it will require guests to wear a mask in all its locations nationwide, which means Pastor Locke is going to have to take his unending thirst for two medium coffee milkshakes elsewhere. And in I'm just a bill on Capitol Hill news. Oh, well done. just a bill on capital heil news oh well done the republican party of 2020 is getting tired of constantly being called out for opposing the black lives matter movement and that's why

republican candidates are making it clear that the gop platform isn't just a one-dimensional thing for example besides the opposite of black lives mattering they also stand for not being jewish and we got two big examples of that message last week in campaign ads for prosecutor james linderman of michigan and also u.s senator david purdue of georgia they're both running against a jewish opponent and their message to voters was basically guys y'all know i'm running against a Jewish opponent. And their message to voters was basically, guys, y'all know I'm running against a Jewish guy, right? Jewish. Can you imagine Jewish? Honestly, the guy in Georgia, I am 0% surprised, right?

I believe his slogan is, and no, they still haven't apologized for killing Jesus, right? It's pretty close. So let's start with James Linderman, the prosecuting attorney for Emmett County, Michigan. In the upcoming primary, he's running against fellow Republican Stuart Fenton, who happens to be Jewish. put out an ad with a graphic of a not dead baby on it that says jim linderman is truly a christian vote life vote family vote christian values which i feel like implies that jews are fake christians right it doesn't yes right which is doubly ironic because christians actually are fake jews they're super mad about that so the local media got in touch with mr fenton after that ad went out that was super offensive to him but and they asked him why he was a liar who's trying to pretend he's a christian

at which point i'm assuming fenton was like oh yeah, sorry to be deceptive. I'll wear some identifying pieces of flair from now on. Jesus Christ. But his campaign manager loudly cleared his throat at that point to block that. And Fenton gave his official response saying, quote, what's the message that Linderman is sending? Keep the Jews out? It's very unchristian-like. Which was further confirmation that that fenton is definitely not

a christian right yeah i feel like we should test him by bringing a wiccan to his office in iraq right just okay mr true christian go on yeah right right yeah i don't know i don't think i'd want to tempt him but yeah i get your point oh yeah good good idea not to do the tempting so that brings us to georgia gop senator david purdue a member of u.s congress since 2015 his democratic opponent in november is going to be john asaf a jewish man who i'm assuming often parties with noah and lucinda as the only three non-Christian people in that entire state. You guys, correct me if I'm wrong, you're working on a Nat Geo special, like David Attenborough doing the voiceover about, you know,

you're a very curious endangered species adapting to the environment of Georgia. Okay, all right. We actually have a Hindu now, too. Really? All right, so very excited. Congrats on that. Hindu. So the Purdue campaign released an attack ad last week depicting Mr. Ossoff next to New York globalist Chuck Schumer with the caption Democrats are trying to buy Georgia.

Also, Mr. Ossoff's nose was digitally enlarged in that ad. I guess you could say their attack was a bit too on the nose. And here's the excuse we got from the Purdue campaign about this horribly anti-Semitic ad they ran. They said the nose alteration was an error by an outside vendor. They're claiming it was caused by resizing and filtering the original image which means the purdue campaign is working with a graphic designer who has a nose enlarging function in their software that doesn't enlarge any other

parts of a photograph there's no chance there's not a button on that guy's software with an anti-Semitic slur written on it as the title of the button. To be fair, we should have been a lot more specific when we asked him to, quote, play up his jewiness in the photo. So that's on us. But you got to admit, though, this is a step down from the digitally added blood of Christ we put on his hands in the original one.

And in the price is wrong news i'll admit it we probably have a little more fun than we should with the republican atheists here at the skating atheist which is any fun at all really yeah you guys are adorable but like disco and herman cain it would probably be better to just let them die on notice. But damn it if they don't keep throwing us into our briar patch. I need to tell you about it. So this week's nugget is about one of the members of their board of directors and person who you probably never should have taken seriously, Robert Price. You might remember him for his works.

Oh God, he's on their board of directors? Of course he is. You might remember him for his works on Mythicism, including The Case Against The Case for Christ. Yeah, Mythicism. Another thing you probably shouldn't have taken seriously, guys. Well, this year, Mr. Price took a little jaunt into the world of sci-fi and fantasy, adding a sixth volume to the popular 70s series called Flashing Swords. Well, at least he was going to, and that's his volume

before the publisher delisted the book from Amazon when the preview revealed he had dedicated his entire editor's introduction to being a fucking crazy person. It was so bad like the audiobook version of this thing was recorded in the parking lot of a dunkin donuts pulls up next to greg lock oh are

you doing it oh i'll do i'll go on the other side i don't want to bleed into your eye double up i do a little now put a mask on sadly very, we are not able to read the full introduction, but a part of it was available through Amazon's sneak peek feature. And that part reads thusly. Oh, good. Sports and games must no longer be based on competition. Let someone feel dejected because of his mediocrity. I'm with you. Poor little flowers

this in case you hadn't noticed is no way to prepare young men or women for adult life in a free market economy and in a world full of powerful national enemies yeah well i mean i'd love to defeat russia by finding the perfect intersection of supply and demand for podcasting. But this burgundy ribbon on my wife. I won this. I love that they make this argument like it's particularly effective when we examine it against the backdrop of everyone we know from high school who was really good at football. Right. Like all the guys who scored four touchdowns in a single game whatever happened

to them uh they defeated all our national enemies unemployed from a shoe store okay yeah very next sentence in this sci-fi fantasy collection intro yeah we're not leaving out any connect there's nothing here that's gonna make this work for you quote speaking of powerful national enemies the continued false rape accusations start the same end seeking to make masculinity even the natural male interest in women into a rape culture of course such wolf crying works against women because soon it will become habitual to dismiss every rape accusation as the shrill lying of yet another lena dunham oh what a terrible world it would be if we didn't take rape allegations seriously can you even imagine this section

concludes and again this is not the whole intro but, but this is what we could see. This is how it concludes. No wonder we are observing a sudden epidemic of transgendered youth. An epidemic? They are responding to the propaganda which suffuses our society like clouds of mosquito poison pumped out of trucks coming down the street. What? pumped out of trucks coming down the street. What? And then, I assume he concluded,

anyway, here are some sci-fi and fantasy. And by the way, it turned out that was as much bullshit as the rest of the intro. Speaking of transgender mosquitoes, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Y'all like flashing sorts? So yeah, the authors in the book, in the collection, saw this and of course retracted their permission to use their work, which in turn caused the publisher to delist the book from Amazon. Which means Robbie P has an introduction nobody's using and Noah somebody just finished their book so Robert Price

if you're listening call us buddy quick while I figure out how to get multiple flashing fonts into a Kindle release we're going to pause for a word from this week's second sponsor Stamps.com. Okay, but our bubbles can combine

as long as nobody from outside either bubble has visited our bubble. Nobody outside, right, exactly. Okay, but how big can the bubbles be then? Oh, I honestly don't know. I don't really know how it works. Hey guys, are you doing?

We're trying to figure out the new normal. Like, who can we see and when? Is it okay to eat outside? It's also confusing. Yeah. Well, at least your business could adjust to the new normal thanks to Stamps.com, huh? What's Stamps.com? Stamps.com brings all the mailing and shipping services you need right to your computer in the comfort of your home or office. Whether you're a small business sending invoices, an online seller shipping out products,

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Right now, our listeners get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale without any long-term commitment. Just go to Stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in scathing. That's Stamps enter scathing thanks noah that's one more thing we don't have to worry about okay but what if we want to go out to eat i have no idea man and we're back next up in headlines in alt reich. Nice. You guys remember the story about the Republican politicians using anti-Semitic propaganda in their campaigning? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, those are the moderates. The GOP also has people like Alabama State Representative Will Dismukes, a Baptist pastor who proudly announced that he gave the invocation at a birthday party for Nathan Bedford Forrest last week. Jesus. Mr. Forrest just turned 199 years old. And the party was held to honor his dedicated service as a Confederate general who got a silver medal for second place in that Civil War thing. He was also the original, very first

Grand Wizard of the KKK. Yep. Okay. This guy is very obviously David Duke making up a pseudonym on the spot, right? Got there and he was like, oh, my name? It's William Dismooks.

Okay. What a fucking weird impetus for a party. It's like, hey guys, 199 years ago, our ideas were relevant. Woohoo! Cake! Yeah, so when the news came out that Dismukes

was the keynote speaker at a fucking Klan rally, he was pressured to resign from his job. Really? Not as a GOP politician, of course. Oh, okay. Yeah, right. This gave him a nice little bump in the polls, I'm sure. I mean, his job as a pastor. And in response, Dismukes

claims that his Baptist church in Alabama was caving in to anti-Southern sentiment and cancel culture. He also added, I wasn't even thinking about that KKK connection. Okay. Fun fact, KKK connection, also the name of our new online dating app. It's ours?

Yeah. So quick little PSA for Republicans who speak at Klan events. Doesn't really matter what you were musing to yourself during the rally. That's not what we're concerned with. I was thinking about Jewish people the whole time. Not a good excuse. That makes it worse, in fact, I would say. Yeah, no, the fact that you hear Nathan Bedford Forrest and don't think of the KKK literally is the problem, man. That literally

is what we're talking about. And also, quick PSA for the voters of Alabama District 88. Hey, you shouldn't be allowed to vote anymore. You guys are done. You know how bartenders at TGI Fridays, they get fired if a secret

shopper comes in and the bartender doesn't ask for ID when they order a drink. Well, you voted for a Nazi. That's a fail. We need that to be the official rule immediately. While we're waiting on that, let's just hope the Republican Party can learn to get

woke from the politically enlightened folks at Pleasant Hill Baptist Church of Prattville, Alabama, who made this guy resign. The Republican Party did not. Antifa. And finally tonight,

former Alabama Chief Justice, self-proclaimed Jewish friend-haver, credibly accused child molester, and white Christian Republican guy who lost a senate race to a democrat in alabama roy moore is currently involved in a lawsuit against sasha baron cohen for the crime of roy moore being fucking stupid all and also being a pedophile moore is claiming that cohen is guilty of defamation for suggesting that he's a pedophile and cohen is claiming that Cohen is guilty of defamation for suggesting that he's a pedophile. And Cohen is claiming, but you are.

What? Yeah. Sorry for showing that video of you saying the things you said. You lose, but I'm sorry. I don't know what. No, to which Roy Moore said, but your honor, I don't think he even means it when he says that. It didn't sound very sincere. So this thing all started two years ago when Roy Moore did an interview on Cohen's satirical show, Who is America?

Without realizing the show is satire and entirely engineered to make the guest look like an idiot. and entirely engineered to make the guest look like an idiot. Moore didn't even realize this once he got on the set with Sacha Baron Cohen, who's pretending to be a former Israeli commando and wearing a ridiculous prosthetic face with approximately 20 of my eyebrows glued across his forehead. Yes, it's true. Eventually, Cohen pulls out a fake device that he claims they invented in the Israeli military to protect children from pedophiles. He explains how it's a sensor that detects pedophile pheromones. And he says, so the phrase sweating like a rapist is actually based on science.

At which point Roy Moore says, mm-hmm, and leans way back in his chair, trying to kind of slide away. Cohen continues and describes how the device starts beeping when it's near a child molester. So to show how it works, he waves the wand next to himself, and nothing happens. And then he waves it near Roy Moore, and it starts making noise. This goes on for minutes before Roy Moore finally decides toore finally realizes he's in a prank and then he went home called his lawyer and filed a defamation suit for 95 million dollars okay technically he should be

suing the wand for defamation take it serious right gotta do the wand i love that amount like i could have bought his reputation with a gift card that might still have a few bucks on it from anywhere but now all of a sudden it's valued at 95 million dollars no sir i feel like you overshot that a little bit so the latest hearing in that case happened last week initially cohen's lawyer liz mcara, tried to have the case thrown out because very obvious satire is legally protected. But that didn't work for whatever reason. So now she's arguing that Cohen can't be guilty of defamation for stating a fact. And she basically just stared at Roy Moore in the courtroom and said, OK, so if we're going to proceed,

the courtroom and said okay so if we're gonna proceed we'll need to do a full discovery process to determine you know here in court roy moore look at me officially determine if the plaintiff is in fact you roy moore i'm talking to you gonna determine if you're in fact a pedophile at which point i assume a Roy Moore-shaped puff of smoke was all that was left in the courtroom? Well, apparently Roy Moore is way too stupid to understand what's happening because he still has not dropped the suit. I guess he's banking on the U.S. court system

not having access to the Israeli wand technology. Fingers crossed for roy morris i think he was making up that fair amount of stuff all right well it's always good to end on a cliffhanger so we're going to close the headlines there heath eli thanks as always shrill lena dunham and when we come back seth andrews will be here to give me voice envy again i'm excited to welcome tonight's guest back to the show. Seth Andrews is the host of the Thinking Atheist podcast and the author of Deconverted, A Journey from Religion to Reason.

But I've asked him on today to talk about his brand new book, Confessions of a Former Fox News Christian. So first things first, welcome back, Seth. Good to be here. It's funny. I always have to. I didn't realize when I titled the book, I have to make a distinction. Like, did you work for Fox News? And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I say I'm a Fox News Christian in the way that I say that, or I was a Fox News Christian in the way that I say I used to be like a Reagan evangelical. You know, I was a viewer, I was part of the culture, but I didn't realize that was going to be the case until the book came out and people asked me. But no, no, no. I'm a Fox News Christian, meaning that I was sort of on the receiving end of that culture. Oh, that's interesting. It did not occur to me to think that. But yeah, no, I guess I can see people looking for the clarification there. I'm curious if I'm going to hear from the network at all.

I can't imagine. I mean, they're going to think I'm a small fish and nobody cares, but you never know. Hey, man, a good lawsuit by Fox News could really push some paper for you. That's all I need. Yeah, great. Yeah, they'll bleed me to death, but I might sell a few extra books.

Yeah, there you go. All right, now, before we get into the book itself, because like me, you're stuck in one of the dumb states when it comes to the pandemic and all the other stuff, too. So I'm curious, how's quarantine treating you there in Oklahoma? Are you guys? It's terrifying. It's terrifying. No, I mean, this is strawberry red state, Oklahoma, and people are either tired like they're worn out and I get fatigued. And people are either tired, like they're worn out, and I get fatigued. Right.

I understand. You know, we're social animals, and it's so frustrating to be isolated from other people, and we miss our routines, we miss our loved ones. So, I mean, that part I can kind of get, right? So, they roll the dice and say, ah, fuck it. I'm going to go and just be with my people, and whatever happens, happens. Fuck it. I'm going to go and just be with my people and whatever happens, happens. But there is another part of the state that is convinced that this is all part of some vast Illuminati-type conspiracy to rig the November election and even worse, to somehow spread a one-world government. And to microchip people with vaccines. Look, my own mother, and I'm not throwing her under the bus because quite frankly, I

think she's got it coming. She shares this conspiracy theory on Facebook and I only know about it not because she follows me because my own mother unfriended me years ago. I guess she can't stand it, you know, all the heathenry that I post. But my wife is still friends with her on Facebook. And she shared this conspiracy theory that Bill Gates once roomed with Fauci back at Cornell. that Fauci used to be the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that once made the gases that killed the Jews during the Holocaust. George Soros was behind that. And the primary stockholder in the pharmaceutical company

was Jeffrey Epstein, who was killed in prison. I mean, it's crazy. It's crazy. And my mother shared this online, and I'm like, just a slight, just 10 seconds of searching online reveals everything that's wrong. First of all, Bill Gates would have had to have been like eight years old. Yeah, right. Exactly.

Exactly. Which is how old Fauci would have had to have been when he was making those gases, I guess. Right. Right, right. And Soros, he was from Hungary, not Germany, and he came from a Jewish family. He escaped the Holocaust. I mean, Jeffrey Epstein was never the primary stockholder in this pharmaceutical company. I mean, if you look at any of the details of the story, and in fact, it turns out that it was sort of satirical. Somebody made up a conspiracy using names in the headlines just to

sort of satirize conspiracy theories. And what do the conspiracy whack jobs do? They grab it and go, see, I told you. And so this is going on in Oklahoma. I see a lot of it around here. And it makes me fear for the species. I mean, I'm terrified. I'm rooting for the killer asteroid. You know, we don't deserve to survive the apocalypse. Well, and what's so terrifying about it is something like this forces people like you and me, people who live amongst them, to come face to face with the fact that this is not the fringe. No. Right? This is not the fringe. Right.

This is not just some tiny little, this is, it's at least enough of a majority to like get the schools to open back up and whatnot. Yeah. Yeah. And I write about this in the book. We talk, and again, I have to put the caveat that these are trends. There are always exceptions to the rule because if I talk about statistics and trends and those types of things, there are going to be those who don't fit into the cookie cutter or can think

of examples that refute that and they are going to throw those out in your email inbox. It's going to be filled. But there is a lot of data behind the reality that people who lean into this sort of MAGA conservatism are more prone in terms of their brains to messages that speak to fear, right? The amygdala fires up and they double down and they want to erect the wall and they become extremely tribalistic and xenophobic. And they are also a lot more prone to believe and embrace conspiracies. There's actually like, the brains of these types of conservatives may be different than the brains of people who are not. And I don't even know what to do with that, right?

I mean, how do you circumvent that? Education doesn't seem to be working. I mean, if I go and I refute the George Soros, Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Gates conspiracy theory and say, no, it's not 5G and microchips and everything else. That's not if I give them the data, it doesn't make any difference. It bounces

right off of them. No, you're part of the conspiracy or you're a sheeple. You've been snowed by it. It's one or the other. There's a Rush Limbaugh is a huge right-wing radio behemoth that the MAGA conservatives just love. And he actually wrote decades ago about what he called the four corners of deceit. And he included science and scientists in his list. I mean, they're one of the top four.

I mean, talk about being primed to distrust the evidence. This is a culture that thinks, well, if the scientists are saying it, they're all part of this star chamber conspiracy to kill God anyway. Why would we take anything they have to say to the bank? No wonder Fauci is swimming upstream trying to get a few things done in this country.

People are just resistant to the data, you know? Yeah. All right. So you've definitely steered this conversation back towards the book a couple of times. So let me help you push some paper here. We already discussed the fact that Fox News Christian does not mean person who used to work for Fox News. But I'm curious to know, like, what does that mean to you? What is a Fox News Christian as opposed to just a Christian? Well, and I want to make another

distinction. There are, I mean, it's not all that common, but I do have people who are atheists, non-religious people who are political conservatives, meaning that they are, they call themselves fiscal conservatives or whatever. And that's a whole other conversation. So I'm not necessarily talking about the person who is acting the way they act. They're voting the way they vote because they are convinced that voting against the Republican Party means they're going to be taxed to death and maybe they've got concerns about borders, blah, blah, blah. And so I'm not talking about that ilk necessarily. I'm talking about a culture of people that get their information

about the world from one or two primary sources. It's interesting when we look at the 2016 election of Donald Trump, the research shows that while non-conservatives actually got their news from a variety of different sources, whether it was NPR, whether it was CNN, or whether it's online or even local news, the research found that the people who voted for Donald Trump, 40% of them got their news about the world exclusively from Fox, from a single network. In fact, the mayor of New York actually credited the network, Fox News, for tipping the election in Donald Trump's favor in 2016. I mean, it's a staggering claim. This network is number one. It's just massively dominant in its time slot. It is a monster moneymaker. And of course, that sort of popularity becomes what they think is a credibility builder. Well, of course, I mean, if it's that popular, they must be doing something right, which is terrifying, right?

Because that's a majority rule approach to what is factual and what is not. And I mean, I hope we don't determine truth by what's popular. That's terrifying, right? But it's a tunnel vision type of culture. And Fox News is brilliant at saying we are, quote, fair and balanced. That's a trademark slogan. What's the implication? Everybody else, they're unfair. They're unbalancedbalanced don't trust them you can trust us and then they shape this narrative and if you look at the origins forgive the long answer if you look at the origins of fox news the power players roger ailes the president for 20 years of fox news he was back part of the nixon administration repackaging freaking Nixon and Republican talking points so they would catch on in the culture. Roger Ailes actually tried unsuccessfully to start a

conservative news network a few years before he was appointed to Fox. It failed, but you can see his focus, right? He's packaging conservative talking points as news, and there's a huge culture of Americans waiting to gobble it up. Yeah, there was, you know, pre-Fox News, there existed this trope that the media had a liberal bias. I remember seeing books about that when I was a kid, and it was nonsensical by and large. There were probably a few issues, especially environmentalism, where there was definitely a pronounced liberal bias. But, you know, liberal bias is very often biased towards reality, right, when it comes to issues like climate change. So that trope existed. And Fox News, boy, I'll tell you, they really did a number on it on monetizing that.

So I would say the most disturbing thing that I learned in reading your book is that Fox News is only one year older than my marriage, which was terrifying. It made me feel real old. So that means it was around when you were still a conservative Christian. Were you one of those people that got their news exclusively from the single source? Oh, yeah. I mean, it was really sort of a David and Goliath holy war against the evil other, which is stupid because Fox News has never been David, right? I mean, to say that they're against the mainstream media while being a ratings giant is just a contradiction any way

you slice it. But, you know, it fed a lot of my own perceptions about the world. I'd been raised in an evangelical home. The world is under attack by Satan. We're approaching the end times. The United States belongs to my specific God. Our founders were all Christian. Even the right to own guns was somehow linked to my God. I'm not sure exactly why Almighty God needs me to have firepower. Right. I'm not really sure what munitions have to do with God, divine protection, but okay, fine. And so all of my perceptions had been sort of created

in this cocoon of fundamentalist Christianity. And so when I see Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly and all those people on Fox News who were talking about the fact that the United States is under attack, the seculars are coming, the liberals are coming, the godless are coming, and they want to take away what we hold most dear.

Well, as I enjoyed unbelievable freedom and latitude to do and worship and pray and carry out any religious tradition and celebrate religious holidays. And as long as I had all of this freedom, but at the same time, I had convinced myself and Fox News and that culture of right-wing media had convinced me that, man, I'm persecuted. And if you read the Bible, Jesus commands the believer, you need to be persecuted for my sake. So here I am with all this freedom and latitude. And if I don't actually experience persecution, well, how am I supposed to be a good believer, right? If Satan doesn't care about me, then I'm ineffective for God. What am I going to do? Well, I just make it up. I just manufacture the persecution.

Now I'm a great Christian, a crusader in God's army. And this explains a lot of the total horseshit about the war on Christmas every year, right? You and I have to endure the war on Christmas. And then Donald Trump comes out and he's like, you can now say Merry Christmas again, as if he had reached into the throats of 300 plus million Americans. He had liberated them at the vocal cords. So now they can actually speak the words without being oppressed. And the MAGA conservatives and the Fox News Christians just eat this nonsense up. It's maddening.

Oh, yeah. No, maybe the best line in your book. and I hate to spoil it for people who haven't read it yet. But, yeah, Trump sets himself as literally the savior of the savior in that moment. So speaking of he who should not be named, I'm dying to know, do you think that the Seth Andrews of, you know you know whatever 20 years ago would have voted for donald trump you know i i i don't think so look i you know i was it's like this i had already started cherry picking my faith back in the 90s i had my best friend came out as gay which was just abhorrent to me because i had been trained that, you know, we called them the homos and the lesbos and we dehumanized them, right? We thought, well, they're just perverse people who've broken God's master plan for human sexuality and they're the other. I totally othered them. So then my best friend writes me a letter and tells me that he's gay. And I totally

just tilt. I just went into overdrive. I had no idea how to process it. We didn't speak for a year. But I had to sort of come to a point where I thought, well, this man, he is an important part of my life. And I am now willing to discard the anti-gay verses of the Bible to accept him. And so I started to sort of fashion my own faith based on my own moral compass. That was in the 90s. And I started to become slowly less bigoted, less judgmental about a lot of different people. And even though I probably would have wanted to protect the Republican Party because I still felt it was the party of God, I can't imagine I would have watched the jaw-dropping circus of Donald Trump and not just thought, oh, you know, screw this. I can't imagine. I mean,

to me, it just seems obvious. I look at the Republican Party now and what Hemet Meta at Friendly Atheist has called the moral rot of the evangelical right. And I just think, no, I don't even think of when I was a believer. I don't think I would have stayed on for this ride. I just don't see how anyone can look at Donald Trump with any objectivity and get behind him. His own autobiographer, his own biographer, Tony Schwartz, wrote The Art of the Deal back in the 80s. Tony Schwartz, during the election of 2016, comes forward and says, warning, hang on, everybody. I made all this shit up.

This is all fiction. I thought it was harmless at the time. We were selling books. I had no idea the guy was going to run for president. Right. And nobody cared. His niece's book is out, which I think is actually a pretty good examination of Donald Trump and his formative years and sort of his father and brother and how he came to be who he is, et cetera. who he is, et cetera.

And the fact that Donald Trump essentially is a trust fund baby who's been bailed out his whole freaking life and got bailed out again by becoming a reality TV star who was never a great businessman or real estate investor, has filed bankruptcy how many times, defrauded college students, et cetera.

I mean, his whole life is a fiction. Nobody cares, you know? And I just don't think i would have i think i would have cared i'd like to think i would have cared you know maybe i'm deluded and kidding myself but well the thing is that we we do know that eventually you got out anyway right so yeah it's a very good chance this just would have accelerated it. Maybe. It may be. It certainly, I think, would have distanced me from these people who are telling, essentially, the Franklin Grahams and the Paula Whites and the Robert Jeffresses and all these mega pastor evangelical types who are waltzing in and out of the White House at will and

enjoying monumental Christian privilege, telling the rest of us how to live, I'm sure, in my bones, I'm sure, I would have thought to myself, these hypocrites have no business telling anybody else how to live. I desperately, it's happening in small microcosms. There are Republican groups like the Lincoln Projects and Republicans Against Donald Trump,

an organized group producing media, scathing amazing media online that's speaking out against him because they are operating from a moral center. They're like, this is morally wrong. This is not us. I have a saying that I like to use. I'm like, if Donald Trump is us, then shame on us. And none of this, well, you know, the Lord sometimes uses terrible people to do his will. That's just total horseshit. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but that sure is the go-to for these people, right? The whole, well, you know, David and Bathsheba, he wasn't a great guy, but yeah, they love

to go there. I was telling somebody, you know, look, if your spouse exhibited these characteristics, predatory behavior, pathological lying, unbelievable rampant insecurity and outward ego, you know, crushing people under boot, bilking your vendors, you know, groping your own daughter for pizza. I mean, whatever. If your husband did this shit, what would your reaction be? Oh, I wouldn't live with that. What if your son did it? Oh, God, it'd be terrible.

What if your neighbor did it? I wouldn't want to have anything to do with him. What if the president of the quote-unquote free world does it? Well, you know, sometimes God uses flawed people. It's a total double standard, and it makes me crazy. I'm sure we're going to take a lot of shit for—do you talk a lot of politics on this game? Oh, yeah.

Every time I get into it, I'm always inundated with people who are like, well, you know, you're spot on when it comes to religious criticisms, but I sure wish you hadn't taken up the religion of liberalism or that your orange man bad trump hater which is a way of of essentially ignoring the long litany of evidence that should cause us all to walk away from the man you know it's it's a little disheartening i mean we see it sometimes in the atheist, quote unquote, movement. Yeah. Well, I will say we pretty effectively ran off all of our all of our Trump supporting listeners in November of 2016. If not before, I was I was shocked to find that we still had a few.

All right. So I have one final question for you. I'm going to try to end on something a little uplifting at least here. In your opinion, as a former Fox News Christian, is there an antidote to Fox News? Well, I don't think you're going to beat that network with another network. I think what we have to do, and I'm not Yoda on this subject, okay? I think what we have to do, and I'm not Yoda on this subject, okay? But I think we have to change the culture beyond the broadcasts.

I am in this weird place now where I'm a guy who is reasoned out of unreasonable ideas. All right? So I'm an example that somebody can go through and come out the other side and hopefully be a better person. I mean, I feel like I'm a more reasonable, more centered, more humanistic person. I'm kinder. I'm less judgmental. I'm more open to the evidence. I'm more tuned in with the world around me. I feel like my life's better. So I'm living proof that it's possible. But I'm also struck by the fact that I'm surrounded by brick walls, and I'm tired of getting no ground as I try to have these conversations. But I still think the conversations are important, and we should continue to attempt to have them.

I don't think we walk into the room with people who are Fox News Christians and say, this is tempting, but to walk in and say, is the Kool-Aid delicious? That's real tempting. But I think we start with a lot of Socratic method. We ask a lot of questions and we present a different point of view. There's a story that was told in a documentary

called The Brainwashing of My Dad about a guy who was locked into Rush Limbaugh, and he just had totally become that guy. And when he was introduced to other ideas, in a kind way, he was introduced to other ideas, he slowly began to acclimate to a world larger than the pod that he existed in. And so I think we're going to have to defeat bad speech with better speech. I think we solve the cultural problem as best we can with relationships and conversation. I think if we just scream at each other, everybody's doubling down, the amygdala's fire, the backfire effect kicks in. And so I think if we do our best to try to speak, not shout, to have conversations, to try to

humanize the other that they have been taught to fear. I'm a secular, liberal, humanist, democrat, insert adjective here or noun here. But if they get to know me as a human being and they like what they see and they come to trust me, then they can't put me in a box. And that's the moment when real conversations can begin. It's an imperfect answer, but it's all I got, Noah. It's all I got. A hope springs eternal, man.

Like the fact that there are people like you out in the world that really did buy all the way in and don't anymore is basically all i can cling to at this point all right well i'll tell you what the new book is out now by the time this interview comes out should also be available on audible read by the silky smooth voiced author be sure to check the show notes for links to pick up your copy seth thanks again for hanging out man dude it's a pleasure and thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. Before we put our masks back on tonight,

I want to thank Tim Robertson for all the work he does for the company. I always say at the end of the show that he does our social media, but he does so much more than that. He's really become an integral part of the Puzzle and the Thunderstorm family, and it's hard to remember how the fuck we managed to do all this shit without him. Tim, thank you, sir. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't

wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday, an even newer 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 Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd be the villain in this story if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for helping keep me sane,

Lucinda Lusions for being the sane one when Heath fails, and Eli Bosnick for reminding me that sanity is overrated. And once again, Lucinda apologizes for her absence. She should be back next week. I also need to thank a New Zealander for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. That's been in my inbox since before the pandemic, so let me just say to all of New Zealand, on behalf of all of America's's atheists we forgive you now please put in a good word with jacinda for us if you have a chance but

most of all of course i want to thank this week's best people traveling texan margaret phil amy stephen is a sandwich jeff cameron and carl travel in texas margaret and phil whose fists are so fast they make quantum entanglement jealous amy stephen and is a sandwich whose iqs are higher than i have to be to make it through gam movies and jeff cameron and carl who are so vir they make quantum entanglement jealous, Amy, Steven, and Izzasandwich, whose IQs are higher than I have to be to make it through gam movies, and Jeff, Cameron, and Carl, who are so virile they have to wear condoms just to send dick pics. Together, these nine naughty non-believers nudged our net worths northward

this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com slash skating A.D.S., 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 skatingads.com. And if you'd like to help, but not if it costs you money, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, or following at P-I-A-T-Pod 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, S. Morgan Clark, will also write all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingadius.com. You want to split that almond milk? No. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and the Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.