The Scathing Atheist - 394: Co-morbid Edition

Episode Date: September 3, 2020

In this week’s episode, we’ll steal the good holidays from gods we don't believe in, Heath will have had a very lovely birthday (thanks for asking), and we learn that people with comorbidities are immune to COVID-19. --- 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: Get “The Gospel of Bowtie” here: https://www.amazon.com/Gospel-Bowtie-Testament-Spaghetti-Monster-ebook/dp/B081W6JJY5/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=The+Gospel+of+Bowtie&s=books&sr=1-2 Learn more about Atheist United here: https://www.atheistsunited.org/about --- Headlines: John MacArthur intentionally misrepresents COVID-19 data so he can kill his parishioners for money: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/30/christian-pastor-misinterpreting-the-data-tells-church-there-is-no-pandemic/ Jerry Falwell Jr. Will Get a $10.5 Million Severance Package from Liberty University: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/26/jerry-falwell-jr-will-get-a-10-5-million-severance-package-from-liberty-u/ Trump Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Board Finds Nearly All Proposals Unethical: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/20/trump-fetal-tissue-research-ethics-board-finds-nearly-all-proposals-unethical/ Atheist Group Provides Meals for Hungry People in Los Angeles https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/22/atheist-group-provides-meals-for-hungry-people-in-los-angeles/ Center for Freethought Equality releases secular scorecards for 116th House: http://www.cfequality.org/issues/congressionalscorecard/house-116/ Atheist Group Provides Meals for Hungry People in Los Angeles https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/22/atheist-group-provides-meals-for-hungry-people-in-los-angeles/ Dilbert creator claims he can make Joe Biden's name spell out 666: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/08/26/dilbert-creator-joe-biden-is-satanic-and-i-can-make-his-name-spell-out-666/ https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/trump-world-favorite-persuader-scott-adams-sees-satanic-coincidences-in-biden-campaign/

Warning, this week's episode contains hornets. I'm kidding, they're cuss words. This week's episode of the Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Stamps.com and by the Pirate Traps from Goonies. Are you living in a state full of idiots that can't be bothered to wear masks or socially distance even though they're a bunch of elderly overweight smokers with diabetes? Are people still trying to visit you even though the black fucking death is creeping around every corner? Then why not try the pirate traps from Goonies? The pirate traps

from Goonies. Let's see my in-laws get past a fucking bone organ. And now, the scathing atheist. This is J.K. Fosnight, translator of the Magic Plates, upon which were inscribed the Gospel of Bowtie, a New Testament of the Unrisen Son of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and now available on Amazon. We know by divine knowledge from the prophet Bobby Henderson that we evolved from pirates, but judging from the current state of world affairs it seems much more likely that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's September 3rd.

And it's just 23 days till my birthday, everybody. My birthday was great. Thanks for asking. I have no illusions. I appreciated bananas. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Trump National Golf Club, Bedminster's, New Jersey, Cincinnati Swings State, and Good

Husband, Georgia, this is the Skating Atheist. He has that coming. On this week's episode, we'll steal the good holidays from the gods we don't believe in. September 26th is National Mesothelioma Day. And Eli's going to celebrate by breathing inside his house. I am. And we learn that people with comorbidities are immune to COVID-19. But first, the diatribe.

It doesn't matter if you've never heard of the racism index before. Now that I mentioned it, you already know that Christians score crazy high on it. Of course, we've known for a long time that religious people are way more likely to be racist than non-religious people, but until now, we've kind of had to hedge our bets when we point that out, right? Because religiosity is correlated with lower incomes, lower education levels, living in rural areas, and all of those things are also heavily associated with racism. So sure, the association could be because religion makes you racist, but it could also be the many things that combine to make a person religious also often combine to make a person racist. Plenty of data exists to tease out those correlations, but you need to be a hell of a lot more savvy with statistical analysis than me to do it. Well, lucky for us, Robert P. Jones

is a lot more savvy with statistical analysis than me. And that's a damn good thing because he's the CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and really wouldn't otherwise be qualified for that shit. And after noticing that survey after survey showed that religious people were more likely to be racist, he decided to do all the statistical analysis required to show which direction the arrow of causation was going. Now, this analysis starts, of of course with the racism index. Because you can't exactly just call people up and ask how much they hate black people on a scale of 1 to 7. Even if you could count on them being honest. Many of the most pernicious forms of racism aren't conscious.

Like the people who start sentences with I'm not racist. But actually believe both halves of those statements. So Jones needs a slightly more sophisticated tool. So he comes up with a questionnaire that asks questions like, do systematic barriers make it harder for minorities to succeed in America? Right. Or is the Confederate battle flag more a symbol of racism or a symbol of Southern heritage? All of these questions are phrased as matters of opinion, but obviously they have right and wrong answers. And the wrong answers are the racist ones. So the racism index is just a number from zero to one, where zero means

you got all the questions wrong and one means you got them all right. Once you've got that, all you need is a big sample along with some other basic demographic information. And once he had that, Jones showed pretty much definitively that it is not a case of covariance it is not a case of racism wanting to cloak itself in religious garb for the sake of legal protection according to jones and more importantly one of the most robust data sets ever assembled on the subject christianity makes you racist and the more christian you are the more racist you tend to be. I should caveat this with the fact that he was only pulling Americans on this. And while it might seem tempting to extrapolate out to the rest of Christendom,

America has a unique history when it comes to race relations. In fact, when you think of the history of American theology, it's kind of inevitable that this would be the case even today. For hundreds of years, American theology in the South had to coexist alongside slavery and needed moral justification for it the whole time. And even after that, it needed to coexist alongside and reinforce notions of white supremacy to justify segregation, lynchings, and all the other manner of officially

sanctioned racism. And while it might have been better in the North, that doesn't mean it was good. It's not like antebellum churches in the North were integrated. Look, this is a country where everything still has lingering racism embedded in it. Our housing codes, our justice system, our textbooks, our process of electing presidents. Why would it be any different in our theology and unlike pretty much any other example of systemic racism there's no way to hold theology accountable there's no way to force it in the right direction or even nudge it in the right direction and sure religions could just do that shit themselves but if you want to see how well they're doing just walk into any church in the goddamn country and

tell me how many different races are represented in In his new book, White Too Long, The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Jones highlights several cornerstones of modern evangelical theology and shows how they arise from overt attempts to codify the cultural supremacy of white people. Now, I'm no expert in theology, so I couldn't do the arguments justice, but he takes basic principles

like the focus on one's personal relationship with Christ, the Protestant work ethic, the extra biblical notion that God helps those who help themselves. And he shows how they both stem from racism and continue to reinforce racism today. And by the way, Jones is not an atheist looking to discredit American Christianity with its sordid past. He's a devout Southern Baptist trying to reform his faith with an honest reckoning because for him there's something real at the core of all of it right he thinks that if you strip away all the theological accoutrements there would still be some core essence to the religion that you could build new ones upon but you and i know better right when you strip away all the packaging from a

religion there's nothing left to change a religion's theology is to change the religion. There is no truth at the center of the lie. Hell, there is nothing at the center of the lie. So for a person like Jones, blinded as he is by his own belief, he sees a ship of faith that was hijacked by bigotry and must be wrested back from those mutineers. But in reality, there was never any other destination. From the time the fucking boat was built it was always a vehicle for bigotry they're talking about you jesus interrupt this broadcast

bring you a special news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight are the reading and writing to my arithmetic heathen right and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to educate? I mean, R-I-T-I-N is how I spell writing. Yeah, there's that. Yeah, a lot of the time. No, you don't always nail it. I feel like we're way too focused on alliteration. It's a stupid thing. Who cares? Why does it have to be

three R's? Now that it's going to seem lazy for me not to have an alliterative toss to the ad break, I guess, we're going to take a quick minute for a word from this week's sponsor, Stamps.com. Sassy. Stamps.com. Hold him still. I'm trying. He's flapping a lot. Hey, guys, what are you doing? Oh, hey,

Noah, Heath and I are trying to avoid the post office because of the pandemic, but it turns out pigeons are actually, like, way harder to train than I thought. So much harder. Well, why not try stamps.com? What's stamps.com? Well, 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, or just working from home and need to mail stuff, Stamps.com can handle it with ease. But more importantly, Stamps.com is your last chance to save the post office

from Trump's desperate attempt to sabotage the election. That sounds pretty good, but is it going to save me money? Right, right, yeah. With Stamps.com, you can also use UPS services with discounts up to 62% and no residential surcharges. Who am I kidding? Offering UPS isn't going to do anything. You motherfuckers are just going to stand there while we get destroyed by President Manbaby. You animals.

What's happening? You evil fucking animals. Noah, you're doing this. It's in the copy. Buy some stamps. Write a letter to your senator. Whatever. Noah, it's in the copy. Buy some stamps, write a letter to your senator, whatever. Dave has worked here for 40 years, and we're pretty sure he's going to straight up shoot himself

when this is all said and done. Okay, okay, okay. A guy shooting himself is in the copy for the ad. It's in the must-reads. Stamps.com, help us, help us. We're dying. I sure hope my pigeon does it I felt it

and now back to the headlines in our lead story tonight we have a follow up to a story we covered two weeks ago and to some extent a follow up to three out of every four fucking stories we've covered since april so in case all of the covid denying murder pastors are starting to run together in your mind i should remind you that john macarthur is the one in la that runs the grace community church and sued the state for forcing him not to kill his parishioners as as quickly as efficiently as quickly anyway we'll get to it well he's back in the news this week spreading a conspiracy theory

almost as dangerous as christianity he's gone full covid19 denialist and to bolster his bullshit he seized on a popular misreading of cdc data that suggests that because 94% of COVID deaths had comorbidities, only 6% of the reported deaths are actually from COVID. It's the dumbest fucking. Yeah. So based on that, he felt confident declaring that there was, quote, no pandemic, end quote. Great. Cool.

So moral of the story, nobody should go to Grace community church and vandalize exactly six percent of even though that would represent no vandalism don't do that i'm saying do not like that'd be hilarious and a really cool like funny clever thing but you should not no i mean technically you can vandalize all of the property but if you also wash a window, then MacArthur won't believe any vandalism happened. So you can't get away with it. Okay, so first, let's look at the data that he's misrepresenting. Presumably, he's talking about an updated table

that the National Center of Health Statistics put out last week that tallied the provisional death count for coronavirus disease 2019. And yes, he's going to use the list called death count for COVID covid 19 to argue that there aren't deaths from covid 19 yeah specifically the part where it says quote interesting peaked my interest yeah right where are you going quote for six percent of deaths covid 19 was the only

cause mentioned end quote that's what he's taking from right now what you should take away from that is that like of the 180 000 plus deaths in this country from covet 19 nearly 11 000 of them were perfectly healthy people when they got the fucking disease but if you're homicidally stupid your takeaway is that 169 000 people must have died from some other damn thing right like which is basically like saying well the car wreck didn't kill him. The fact that his guts were on the outside of his body afterwards did. Okay. Okay. I'm going to try to make this a little simpler for you, MacArthur.

If Dick Cheney shoots me in the face, okay, and then the doctors at the ER run into complications with my comorbid eyebrows, my cause of death is still the fucking gunshot. Sure is. Yeah. ER run into complications with my comorbid eyebrows. My cause of death is still the fucking gunshot. Sure is. Yeah. Now, obviously, John MacArthur isn't the only person misappropriating these data to argue that the pandemic isn't real. So I want to be super clear about what's actually being said here.

The data show that if not for this novel coronavirus emerging in the human population, 180,000 Americans plus would be alive right now that aren't. Right? I mean, some of them probably would have got hit by a car later or something, just statistically. But yes, the overwhelming majority of those people also had other medical conditions. But that's true of, like, most of the shit that kills people.

Right? Less healthy people die more. That's what being less healthy means. You know, this would be true to some extent with virtually any major cause of death. But when we tally up the deaths from heart attack, we don't subtract the overweight people and put them in a separate, you know, death from being overweight category for a reason. Right. Plus, COVID causes a bunch of the comorbidity conditions that they're talking about. So it's like if heart attacks made you fat, and then we still put people into death from

overweight category of heart attacks. Yeah. So with all that in mind, let's take a look at MacArthur's murderously ignorant take on those data. Quote, I don't want to offer myself as any kind of an expert okay so done talking yeah end of the quote wouldn't that be nice yeah no even that part was a lie god you gotta chop it but a rather telling report came out this week and for the first time we heard the truth the cdc the centers for disease Control which is the national organization government organization

that is to report to us truth about disease said that in truth six percent of the deaths that's this guy talks for a fucking living six percent of the deaths that have occurred can be directly attributable to COVID 94 percent cannot of the 160, 000 people that have died 9 210 actually died from covid there is no pandemic end quote give or take 9 210 yeah well right that 9 210 is the margin of error within his error of ridiculous stupidity. Right, yes. And look, there are a lot of versions of this argument out there that try to downplay the threat with this. But those people were all already messed up argument, right?

But like either all these comorbidities just got way deadlier in 2020 or there's a goddamn pandemic, right? Because these are the excess deaths we're talking about. What's more, John MacArthur knows that. He knows he's putting people in danger so that he can take their money more easily. He also knows his congregants don't understand shit like comorbidity. And he also knows that he can lie to them because gullibility and ignorance are prerequisites to being his congregants. They're comorbidly ignorant and gullible. Exactly.

Exactly right. And if he wants to prove me wrong, he can fucking finally respond to my put your mouth where your money is challenge. About one in 55 people in the U.S. have an active case of coronavirus. If you really believe it's not dangerous, you would let 54 random people spit your mouth, John MacArthur. And if you're afraid to do that, we know it's because you're a fucking liar. I mean, I don't know, Noah. It seems like a good challenge, but

this is a guy who's suing to fill up a room with himself and COVID deniers. I think he might take you up on it. Yeah. Well, you know, we'll find out. We'll find out. Yeah. And in I Quit the Podcast news, Liberty University had a tough decision on their hands this month.

What parting gift do you get for the covid spreading, gun toting, homophobic, transphobic head of your university who's finally stepping down after it was publicly revealed that he watched his wife get fucked by the pool boy? fucked by the pool boy. Goldwatch seems too on the nose. Already has a pool boy. So Liberty University settled on $10.5 million. Yeah. Right. But giving female faculty

a health plan that covers birth control would be unethical. Right. That's where God draws the line between those two things. God draws a lot of weird fucking lines.

He does. He does. He does. So if you're wondering why Jerry Falwell Jr. is getting more money than the three of us combined will ever make in our entire lives, it's because he did nothing wrong. Huh. Yeah. That's correct. So according to the Washington Post, it's because he's, quote, departing from the university without being formally accused of or admitting to wrongdoing, end quote.

OK, well, that's an awkward meeting for that board of directors, though. All right. You guys want to claim that not pleasing your wife is wrongdoing? Is that what you want to get into? Did not think so. Ten point five million. Sign the check. Yeah, no, if he'd been handling the wrongdoing himself, the jokes would be way harder to write.

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So when he was asked by the Washington Post why he was stepping down if he hadn't been accused of anything, Jerry Falwell Jr. said, quote, there wasn't any cause. I haven't done anything, end quote. So yeah, this seems like a

great time to remind you that you can support this show for as little as a dollar an episode over at patreon.com slash scathing atheist. Patreon.com slash scathing atheist will never make you watch us fuck our wife. Unless you count the time Eli made Anna watch The Devil Within or on GAM. Well, you just had to listen. You didn't have to watch it. Yeah. Fair.

And next up in headlines, the National Institute of Health Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board, or NIFTRIAB for short, called a quick timeout on their extremely bitter naming feud last week

so they could vote to end the existence of the thing that defines their entire job. Yeah. There's vote to end the existence of the thing that defines their entire job yeah there's supposed to be a team of doctors who review potential projects in the field of stem cell research but this is a government panel chosen most recently by the trump administration so it's a bunch of evangelicals and despite being handpicked to be full of pro-lifers, that panel just voted to sacrifice thousands of lives by refusing to approve funding for COVID-19 vaccine research using fetal cells. Yeah, that vaccine's coming along way too quickly and without complications.

I'm glad someone can slow this process down. Really make us take our time. No, it's all right, guys. We'll make it up on the back end by skipping phase three trials if Trump gets his way. All right. So let's meet the NIFTRIAB of 2020. The head of the 15-member panel

is a former president of the anti-choice activist group Americans United for Life. And her name is Paige Comstock Cunningham. and that's pretty much all you need to know the rest of the team are people who work for somebody named page comstock cunningham beau regard sessions the 19th i was just gonna say in total 10 out of 15 members have professional experience in the medical field of forced birtherism.

Yeah. They also have one Jewish guy who's actually a legitimate doctor. And right after this vote happened, he called the whole thing a travesty. Oh, I bet he made the prayer they started every meeting with super awkward, didn't he? I bet exactly that much that he's the only one who ever noticed it was super awkward though and here's why their one jewish friend called it a travesty normally the board would be asking standard questions about medical ethics is the research justified does it follow best practices but the trump version decided to add a series of like Bible themed riddles into the mix hidden inside the questions that technically had medical words.

So they were part of the thing. For example, researchers were asked, why do you have to use human fetal cells for your project? I think it's because they're trying to cure COVID in earthling humans. I think that's the answer that most of them gave. They were also asked how they're going to minimize the total amount of cells. As I understand this one, they're going to use a heaping tablespoon max. They promise no more building forts and having fetus fights. You know, it's fun, but we won't do that anymore. Right, yeah, it's Shakey's Pizza.

but we won't do that anymore. Right, yeah. Shakey's Pizza. And each research team, they're basically required to obtain a fetal diary that documents the hour-by-hour schedule of the fetal cells

that they require. Like Eli asking the waiter about the leisure activities of the lettuce before it goes into the salad. Hey, Heath, those waiters all miss me now that's love love to bring me a body temperature tomato juice again i can't wait

neither can they we are strong so the whole charade is based on these people believing that medicine based on fetal cell lines is a dead baby injection. That's obviously stupid, but just for the record, even if it was literally a ground-up baby cooked in a spoon and injected into your arms, we should still definitely grind up some babies and cook them in a spoon and inject them into arms if that's the only way to make a vaccine for COVID-19. I know it might be hard to decide which babies get ground up for that, but that's an honor if you think about it, right?

Oh, Jesus Christ. We'd have a little contest to decide. That's the most adorable Hunger Games ever. It's a win-win. Okay, yeah, no, right. Like, in the opening field, it would just be filled with plastic bags and choking hazards. Yeah, mattresses where you can put them face down to sleep. There's a bunch of things.

Bags of glass, gas-powered sharp things. Yeah, there you go. There you go. Johnny's touch blade. Parents who smoke. And in good without God news, as we wade through this septic tank of religion looking for the funniest shaped turds here on The Scathing Atheist,

it can be nice sometimes to raise our faces to the sky and remember that up there on the surface, atheist groups fucking rock. So the badass motherfuckers in question this month are the Atheists United branch in Los Angeles, who provided much needed groceries for 75 to 80 needy families and individuals. All in all, 20 volunteers helped distribute over 1,000 pounds of food. Hell yeah. I mean, I know it wasn't like a 20-person bucket brigade with a 1,000-pound bag marked food where the lead guy would run around to the other end of it after, but that's what I'm picturing in my mind, and that's nice.

Yeah. Additionally, they set up a table for voter registration. They handed out voter education materials from the Secular America Votes Project, which is run by the Secular Student Alliance. And they even set up a computer for the census. I mean, all this event needed was a naked Elizabeth Warren sensually hand feeding people pastrami. And this event would officially be a Heath and Wright wet dream. Okay. Yeah. Honestly, though, I actually like it better when she aggressively feeds the pastrami. You know what I mean? Like a little too fast for me.

I'm doing okay with it, but it's like, just give me a second. That was good. I want you to keep doing that. Get the heart rate up. I get it. Two votes. Yeah. So, once again, huge shout out to Atheist United for doing something so awesome. If you are in the LA area, you can check them out in the show notes. Or once again, huge shout out to Atheist United for doing something so awesome. If you are in the L.A. area, you can check them out in the show notes. Or, hey, why not start your own chapter and do some good where you live?

Mix in a little brisket. Yeah. Yeah. Corned beef. And in lore war score news tonight, the Center for Freethought Equality released their scorecard for the 116th Congress this week and gave every member of Congress, or every member of the House anyway, a score from 0 to 100 based on how well they humanist. Specifically, they were scored on caucus memberships and their support for any one of the 32 pieces of legislation introduced in this Congress that the CFE deemed to be of great importance to humanists. of great importance to humanists. And it makes for a damn valuable resource for those of us who watched the DNC last week

thought, damn it all to Jesus and want to build a more secular party starting with something other than the capstone. Those motherfuckers whipped out Jesus so often, I thought they were going to get around to apologizing for calling AOC a fucking bitch by the end of it. The Democratic Convention was basically a giant trail of Jesus candy

leading to an unmarked van. Well, right, right. And I'm fine with it. Yeah, exactly. Secularism was in the van the whole time. So, yeah, right. Yeah, no, I yeah. Yeah, I don't know exactly how I feel about it.

It annoyed the fuck out of me. I know that. But yeah, so it's worth stressing that this is an offshoot of the American Humanist Association and the scores reflect that. So, like, yeah, some of the bills are just about atheist specific stuff like resolutions against blasphemy laws and in favor of recognizing darwin day but most of it is stuff like hr5 which would add sexual orientation and gender identity to the civil rights act of 1964 or hr 5036 which would ensure medical professionals can't use religious beliefs to discriminate against patients or the george floyd justice and policing, which does a lot of shit that's nowhere near enough.

But still, the key here is that it's not just a how atheists are they scorecard, because anybody who's been paying attention to the online atheist community at any point on any level for the last decade knows that doesn't mean shit. OK, this is because I tried to book Richard Spencer as a guest, isn't it? OK, you can stop trying to set up elaborate punching schemes. You just end up hurting yourself every time. And Spencer is backing Joe Biden.

So there's that. Biden told Spencer to go fuck himself. He did. He did. It's great. That really happened. Point is, a literal Nazi leader thinks Trump is a little too ignorant for him. Yeah, right. No, that's the moral of the story, I think.

Come on, man. He's like he's making us Nazis look bad. Right. It seems to be the argument. And the results are of this scoring, by the way, about what you'd expect. Now, I'm going to be honest with you. The way they release this data is shit. It's it's not sortable. You can't view all the votes on a single page.

They don't break it down by party. You literally have to look up each name, each bill. It's a a fucking nightmare so i can't tell you as much as i'd like to but in bronze strokes all the zeros were republicans all the 100s were democrats and all 13 members of the congressional free thought caucus aced it and by the way i want to emphasize this as hemmett pointed out over on the friendly atheist in order to get a zero one had to oppose the goddamn emmett till anti-lynching act and yet several republicans managed at nine i think and by the way yes fucking mark meadows and louis gomert are on that list yeah they are i guess they found some kind of difference between Democrats and conservatives. You're right. Somehow. Weird.

And in everyone's got a fucking podcast news, Christian author Roderick Millington is promoting his new book, The Devil's Playground, with a fascinating bonus feature. 21 audio clips of the voice of Satan. What? Like a hot mic situation with satan the devil is he on a bus with billy bush yeah right but he starts playing the boss fight from cuphead hey wait a minute there he is he starts explaining consent to the guys on the bus this is serious i'm the devil but you know consent so yeah according to the guys on the bus with him. This is serious. I'm the devil, but, you know, consent. So, yeah, according to the

blurb, quote, the book's unique strength lies in its selection of 21 audio clips, with readers able to listen to genuine examples of demons threatening and cajoling, including the first ever recording of the voice of Satan. This information is

vital in an increasingly secular and materialistic world. It will allow Christians of all denominations to be better prepared to recognize and prevent demonic influence or attack. Hey, what's that random voice from nothing? What'd you say? Kill Christian babies and eat their pituitary gland. Cool, cool, cool.

That sounds good. Hold on. Wait a minute. You sound familiar. I'm prepared for this. Cool. Cool. That sounds good. Hold on. Wait a minute. You sound familiar. I'm prepared for this. Well, you're Joe Rogan. You're on Joe Rogan. I heard you. So the recordings in question use the phenomenon of EVP, also known as listening to nothing until you believe you just heard something. What does EVP stand for? What is it?

Electronic voice phenomenon. Yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. Made up. You just listen to blank. Yeah, exactly. Listening to static. No, Eli defined it correctly.

It's just, okay. Or in Millington's case, lying. So luckily for us skeptics, Mr. Millington has released one clip for free. So listener, buckle in, because this clip is Satan saying, come into the fire, come to me. Morgan? That was it.

Great. Yep. Yeah. So, good to know. Satan lives in Eli's office and shows up when we're trying to get 10 seconds of silence for the noise removal on the editing software. Satan likes to speed skate with Eli. Makes sense. Yeah, yeah. I just love that

this unintelligible garble spread out on some random frequencies is the devil's preferred means of communication and that his message is basically you want to come over? Netflix and chill. Okay. Well,

unlike Noah and Heath I am convinced and I'm pretty sure our listeners are too so I think we can all agree hail Satan and let's get him a lozenge a lozenge for the big guy like a Halls and finally tonight Dilbert sucks

it's just a bad cartoon it's bad and that's because Dilbert's creator, Scott Adams, is not talented. He's not a talented person. He's a bad person. He's bad. He's bad at his job. He's bad at everything. Being a person, yeah.

You know when your aggressively boring co-worker at your shitty office job tries to tell you a joke and it's terrible and you just want to print out an xkcd cartoon and paper cut his eyeball until he stops well dilbert is that terrible joke from your boring co-worker turned into 31 years of badly drawn cartoons 31 years he's been doing this since 1989 successfully somehow and yes you know okay the collate button on the copy

machine is tricky sometimes people from the hr department do walk like this but you're still doing the eyeball cutting and you should because scott adams is also a trump supporting alt-right conspiracy theorist who thinks that joe biden is literally satan the prince of darkness yeah and that's because the name joe biden is just a clever way to hide the number 666 which satan is apparently required to have in his name when he's in the earth realm yeah no just fucking all of the attacks on biden conflict right? He's powerless. He's Satan, the prince of darkness. He's low energy. He's monster energy drink.

He's socialist. He'd be a bad president. Pick a fucking lane. So Scott Adams foiled Satan's master plan for global domination last week during an episode of his podcast, Real Coffee with Scott Adams. Okay, see, now I think it's not real coffee. Yeah, right? It feels like it's not now. Like, what is that? You're just too much

protesting. And here's the scoop from Scott Adams. First of all, Biden once said the phrase, I'll be an ally of the light and not the darkness. And yes, that's kind of the opposite of the Satan thing. But that's exactly what satan

would say also fires are made of light no they're not and there are fires now okay happen there are fires there are there are fires adams also pointed out that joe biden lives underground just like satan sure so goddamn church lady it's amazing yes according to adams i only know two people who are famous for living underground satan living in hell which he thinks is underground like yeah right and basement dwelling biden can you think of a third one i don't think so uh president bunker boy and that brings us to the 666 that's hiding in plain sight and apparently the underworld regulations actually require at least two of those in plain sight built into your identity. The first is Biden's campaign slogan of Build Back Better or BBB for short. And you cannot hide the number 666 in anything else but three capital B's.

Yep. But more importantly, it's right in Joe Biden's name. Here's the exact words from Adams. Quote, just imagine the capital J in your mind. You got it? A couple minutes. Drink some real coffee

if you're having trouble. You tired? Have a little more? You lie? You got it? No. Cool. Capital J, man.

Capital J. Type it, maybe. All right. You got it no cool capital j man capital j type it maybe all right you got it capital j now just move with your mind the o to the left until it's on top of the j oh it's a backward six now and the next letter is the lowercase e but no it whatever just we're gonna push through some of this moving on oh yeah the next letter is the lowercase e what does the lowercase e look like But no, whatever. Just we're going to push through some of this. Moving on. Yeah. The next letter is the lowercase e. What does the lowercase e look like? If you turn it upside down, a six. G.

But that's just two sixes. Six, six wouldn't mean anything, right? It'd be a number. But the next letter is capital B for Biden. And capital B is where you hide your six. So J-O-E-B is 666, end quote. But then he's like, oh, fuck it. I left out the Iden part. Iden, Iden, identity, 666 identity. identity six six identity job i didn't is satan identity

my god it's an antichrist too lazy for a kurt cameron script wow yeah so you're probably thinking okay the, the math all checks out, but it feels incomplete. It does. Is Kamala Harris also Satan? And yes, she is. Oh, okay. Kamala and Harris both have how many letters? Six letters.

Ooh. Okay, but isn't that just six six, which means absolutely nothing. Shut up. I'm almost there. Identity. Nope. Not. Okay.

Vice President of the United States. six words, they're both Satan. He really reasoned it out like that. And as Hemant Mehta pointed out, Donald turns into 666 plus ID if the lowercase L counts as a secret capital I. L counts as a secret capital I. Also, I just realized that Mike Pence has nine letters. Flip that over. Six letters. So Mike Pence, Mike Pence, Mike Pence.

Fuck, he's right behind me. Oh, no. Quick, Heath, bring a woman into the room and leave. It's your only hope. Yeah, right. Yeah. Quick, while we try to corral the vice president into a revolving door with women on both sides. We're going to close the headlines for the night.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Eli thinks Wakanda is real. And when we come back, we'll at least be a few seconds closer to the end of this goddamn year. Hi, I'm President Donald Trump, asking you that when the election comes around in just two months from today, please don't vote. Requesting an absentee ballot can take minutes, minutes of your time.

What are you, made of time? No. Only Xaloxar the chronomancer is made of time, but as much as he controls it, it controls him. Plus, you live in a blue state where it doesn't matter, or a red state where it doesn't matter. You've got better stuff to do with your time, like post about politics on Instagram or Facebook. That's where the real change happens, not in the voting booth. Or hey, maybe you're not political at all. Good for you, guy. All the most interesting people don't care about where they live, the people around them, or what's happening to the civilization they live in. You're just too smart to be political,

you big unpolitical smart smarty. Because if even a fraction of a fraction of the people who didn't vote in the last election had voted for Hillary Clinton, I wouldn't be president. We wouldn't have this awesome plague right now, and our economy wouldn't have the statistical hold of a severe knife wound. So again, November 3rd, two months from today, stay home, don't vote. Thank you, and may God bless me and only me. It's me and only me. It's September now.

A fact I point out because a significant percent of our audience probably did not know that. You see, for much of the world, myself included, every day is Tuesday and it's been April for almost 37 fucking years now. Ned? Ned Ryerson? Ongoing effort to help those folks differentiate between the months. We're going to offer up a couple extra celebrations you might consider adding

to your atheist calendar in this month's Holiday Buffet. So this month, I went with another Hindu holiday, specifically Pitripaksha, also called Pitrupaksha and Pitripoko

and Solashrada and Kanagat or Jitaya. specifically Pitripaksha, also called Pitrupaksha and Pitripoko, and Solashrada and Kanagat or Jitaya, or Mahalayapaksha or Aparapaksha, because everything in Hinduism is the precarious compromise at the end of a really yelly fight where nothing was resolved, but everyone was sick of yelling. Just going to bed mad next to Shiva. What did you say? Nothing. That was my other face

what we're commemorating dead people where it's celebrated wherever mortality and hinduism coexist okay so nowhere well it's nowhere. When it's celebrated. It's a 16-day thing that covers the second fortnight of the Hindu lunar month, Bhadrapada, and ends on the no-moon day known as Sarvapitri Amavasya or Pitri Amavasya or Padala Amavasya or Mahalaya Amavasya or just Mahalaya. This year, though, that's September 1st through the 17th. Best aspect.ian food lamb vindaloo papa dom i hate you so much worst aspect about an hour and 15 minutes after the indian food yeah how it's celebrated all right so this one is all about death and your ancestry, because in Hinduism, your older relatives don't stop asking you for favors

just because they're dead. So the crux of this holiday is something called a Shraddha, which is a ritual that one performs in homage to one's ancestors. Okay, I'm not programming the VCR again. You're dead. You're dead. See, and in honor of my grandma Betty, I'll be using two-letter words in boggle well there you go yeah so i'm not going to pretend to understand all of the ins and outs of this shit but apparently in

hinduism the afterlife has a super long tutorial at the beginning called petra loca it's a realm between heaven and earth governed by yama the god death. And apparently you go there for the span of three generations. So like when your kid's kid dies, you get promoted to full-blown heaven. And if you don't have kids, you just don't get to go to heaven, by the way. And by kids, I mean sons,

because this comes from a very sexist tradition. Oh, all right. Well, at least I'm tied with people who have only daughters. Yeah, me too. Even. Just Heath and a bunch of guys who are really good at braiding hair, hanging out in purgatory forever.

All right. So anyway, during Petri Pakcha, the eldest male of each generation is supposed to perform the Shraddha rites to Yama to smooth things over for his ancestors in Hindu purgatory. There's a lot to this, but the central aspect is a food offering. Now, the food can be anything as long as it includes kheer, which is a sweet rice with milk, lapsi, which is a sweet porridge made of wheat grains, rice, lentils, spring beans, and pumpkin gourds. Nice.

So apparently this holiday is like one out of every three TV shows that Lucinda watches. Lucinda introduced Yama, the god of death, to pumpkin spice lattes. That's canon. Now, you can't offer up your Shraddha on just any old day of the 16, right? Apparently, there are different days reserved for different types of death and deceased. So, like, the fourth and fifth days are for people who died in the past year. The ninth day is for women who died before their husbands. The 14th day is for people who were killed by arms in war or suffered a violent death wikipedia doesn't say what you're

supposed to do for the wife that got shot last year but i'm pretty sure you just get her in whatever okay it's parentheses then exponents man go get the pumpkin gourd figure it out god damn it grandpa died of cancer on the battlefield just to be a confusing jerk. Yeah, right. So, of course, there are a lot of aspects to these Shraddha rites that vary regionally because it's Hinduism. But basically a guy, and it has to be a guy because religion is a type of sexism, takes a ritual bath and puts on ritual garb and then takes a wet barley flower thing, says some magical shit and drops the food offering. barley flower thing, says some magical shit, and drops the food offering. And apparently you know your offering was accepted by your ancestors if a crow comes by and eats it.

You're not allowed to eat, by the way, until this happens. So the crow would be a messenger for Yama. He comes, he accepts your offering. Then you feed a cow and a dog. Cool. No fucking clue. And then you and your family get to eat. Okay, so I went down an internet rabbit hole

of crow rental traditions that spring from this custom. I actually did this too. I was not disappointed. Long story short, there is a guy on Fiverr with a morbidly obese crow who owes me a very weird lunch if I ever see him. So yeah. You rent a cage with a cow and a crow

and a dog all together. You can't take them across the river at the same time. It's fucking weird. Yeah. So I want to be uncharacteristically serious as I recommend this holiday to the atheist world and not just because you get to feed a dog in it. Look, there's no afterlife, right? We all just die when we die. So

fostering traditions that encourage people to honor their ancestors is the closest we can really hope to mattering, if that means looking into who they were. It also gives us that much more reason to be good people in an age when so much of our fucking lives are being posted online and digitally preserved for the next generation. Most people who know about their ancestry just kind of look through it for the odd connection to a historical figure or another. Just kind of look through it for the odd connection to a historical figure or another. But unless we normalize an interest in just the mundane people a couple of generations up from you, none of us stand a hell of a lot of chance of being remembered. So, you know, just keep that in mind. Podcasting is immortality.

We're fine. Get a croak out. And Heath, what was your holiday this week? I went with the holiday that's called the beheading of John the Baptist, the holiday. Wow. What we're commemorating. The beheading of John the Baptist. It's a beheading holiday.

Yeah, usually that's just a French thing. Where it's celebrated. Anywhere with evangelical Christian people who follow liturgical traditions. So basically all over the world, wherever you can find white people, plus a few other places in the U.S. It's anywhere with a Wal-Mart super center in town. Yeah. This year they're celebrating by letting you subscribe to Wal-Mart. It's great. Really great. When it's celebrated.

Lots of people have the beheading party on August 29th, but several churches still use the Julian calendar. And during the 21st century, that date on the Julian calendar corresponds to September 11th in the Gregorian calendar. Also, some churches celebrate on the Saturday before Easter. What? And some do it on January 7th. Go fuck yourself.

Wait, was John the Baptist a hydra? It gets worse. They also have beheading-related sub-celebrations on February 24th and May 25th, based on the three different times that John's head got lost and then found again. Okay. Apparently, the first and second findings were both on February 24th on different years. The first time, his head got buried in a dung heap, but then the wife of King Herod's steward,

King Herod's who killed him or had him executed, the wife of Herod's steward secretly dug through that pile of shit, stole the head and buried it on the Mount of Olives. Nice of him. Then centuries later, a minister built a church there and found the head when he was digging the foundation. But he just left it there, worried somebody would steal it. Then the head got magically transported to a walking trail somewhere just outside of Jerusalem, and it sat there for a while. Creepy when heads do that. And then in 452 AD, John the Baptist got kind of pissed about the new location, didn't seem very impactful on that trail there.

So he appeared as a ghost to some monks and told them where to dig it up. It exchanged hands a few more times, like a fucking fruitcake. And after one more appearance by a super offended ghost of John, the skull ended up in constantinople a few more centuries went by islam started existing and some christian leaders decided to hide it again to make sure a muslim army never got the skull magic skull magic sure no the skull magic yeah then in 850 patriarch ignatius of Constantinople saw a vision of the skull. He told the emperor and the emperor told his relic finding operatives that he had to go get it.

And on May 25th, that delegation definitely didn't just find any skull. They found the real one of John and they put it in a church again. they found the real one of John and they put it in a church again. So that's the third finding, May 25th, which is also like a sub holiday of the beheading holiday. John's ghost shows up one last time. Okay, you know what?

We're putting a tile in it, okay? Hook it up to your phone. You have to turn on the Bluetooth. Turn on the Bluetooth. God damn it. How it's celebrated. It's a feast day. So the celebration is mostly eating,

but it's not technically a feast day. According to certain traditions, some call it a commemoration day, but there's a feast either way. And also a day of fasting before the feast, but not really assuming they have anyone paying attention to the loopholes in the rules. They're really stupid rules.

According to the loopholes in the rules, they're really stupid rules according to the official policy you can't eat food from a flat plate you can't eat with a knife and you can't eat food that's round feels like a weird attack on bread bowls specifically

spreading butter on your roll with a spoon really John, rounded knife still gives you the heebie-jeebies. That's enough. We'll see. Best aspect. The Wikipedia blood feud between six different religious venues

that claim to be in possession of the skull of John the Baptist. According to the Vatican, John's head is on display at the Basilica of St. Sylvester the first in Rome and Pope Benedict of the Hitler youth. Just to be clear that that guy, he reaffirmed that claim officially in 2012.

Well, if anybody's going to know about skull measurements, he's the guy. And according to Islamic tradition, on the other hand, the head is buried under the Umayyad mosque in Damascus, Syria, He's the guy. And according to Islamic tradition, on the other hand, the head is buried under the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, Syria, which used to be the Basilica of St. John the Baptist.

In terms of other outstanding claims of skull ownership, though, there's a group of monks in Romania that claims it. There's a palace that's now a museum in Munich. And also the Amiens Cathedral in Rome claims it. And there's also a faction of historians and people who think they're descended from the Knights Templar who claim that the Knights took the head during the Holy Inquisition

and they're still hiding it inside a, you know, riddle-activated secret chamber that only Dan Brown can figure out. All of these people are liars who make money on tourism related to a beheading based holiday. Yeah. I mean, they're newer liars who make money

on tourism related to a beheading based holiday. Yeah, but considering Eli's history with fact checking, I mean, we are liars making money off a beheading based holiday right now. It feels weird condemning them for that. That's fair. We own the skull of John

the Baptist. Eat it Vatican. Liars. Come to my house and I will show you my skull. Worst aspect. The entire celebration is based on that time when King Herod of Galilee thought his stepdaughter's

burlesque show was really good that's what happened he was like great show with the burlesque you're my stepdaughter really enjoyed that you get one wish any wish you want and her mom made her wish for john the baptist's face on a platter so happy fucking john the baptist beheading day everybody yeah in this case the fucking worst aspect is the holiday itself that's a that's a new one all right so eli what do you have for us this month i went with yom kippur what we're commemorating yom kippur. What we're commemorating. Yom Kippur is the Day of Atonement. So God being mad at us, I guess.

Where it's celebrated. Mostly Brooklyn. Eli. Okay, and everywhere else there's Jews, I guess. When it's celebrated. The 10th day of the month of Tishrei, which this year means from sunset on September

27th to sunset on September 28th, which as my fellow ex-Jews will know, actually means whenever the hell dad feels like eating on September 28th. So Jewish hell is mostly hungry dads. Got it. Yeah, for sure. Best aspect. Getting away with murder. That's not how it works, pretty sure. The murder has to be legal, like stoning people in Leviticus. You can't just get away. I don't think you can get away with it. Or the Bush doctrine self-defense

thing they're doing in Kenosha. Me and Noah are such better Jewish people than you. Worst aspect. A Jewish holiday without food? Eye of the beholder. You can eat those how it's celebrated so yom kippur is actually the second part of a two-part jewish holiday that's kind of like a combination of catholic confession and new year's eve the first part rosh hashanah is the jewish new. And it's actually pretty boring. Apples and honey, sing some songs,

get how old the universe is wrong by an order of magnitude, bing bang boom. But, Rosh Hashanah takes place seven days before Yom Kippur, and that is where things get interesting. Wait a minute. An order of magnitude? That's just a thing that you and

Heath say when numbers are big. I have no idea what it means. None. Pop, pop. That's what it means. So according to Jewish tradition, God inscribes each person's fate for the coming year into the book of life on Rosh Hashanah. But then he waits until Yom Kippur to seal the verdict.

Okay, that's pretty fantastic. I love it. God does like a pump fake, like a dad at a sleepover pretending to walk away after lights out. Spins back. Ah, all done right now.

All you kids go to hell. Now, some Jewish scholars also believe that Yom Kippur falls on the day that Moses received the Ten Commandments from God and then found out about the golden calf and had a hissy fit. But most people agree that's just kind of thrown in there, like when you're fighting with your girlfriend and you want to bring up that thing your sister did two Christmases ago.

Yeah, that strikes me as more Jewish. So these seven days are known as the Days of Awe. So these seven days are known as the days of awe. And during those days, Jews do everything they can to make up for all the sins they committed that year. Okay, is it like awe or like awe? Both. Okay, both. But just in case you half-ass it or got us distracted by the latest TikTok drama,

Yom Kippur is the religious version of Hail Mary, which I should admit is a football term I don't understand based on a religious tradition I don't understand, which I think is actually based on Yom Kippur.

So, yeah. Yeah, actually, this is why praying at football games is illegal now. It's really the Jews' fault. It really is. That's why they don't

let them play football. Just like Coach Dave says. That's what Trump's going to say at the Big Ten meeting. The Big Ten meeting would be about football, potentially. Right? So, the least pleasant and most important part of Yom Kippur is the fast. No food or water from sundown to sundown, unless you're a child or have a medical condition.

But, you're also not allowed to wear leather, bathe or wash your hands, put on perfume or lotion, masturbate or have sex. Okay. Noted. So basically platinum night is illegal on Yom Kippur. Plus you can't bathe. The rest of the holiday you're supposed to spend

in temple at what ex-Jews like myself can confirm is the world's longest service. Like, if I didn't know that Christians had shit like night church and lock-ins and gay conversion therapy, I would say that Yom Kippur is where Jews win the whose religion sucks the most contest. Yeah, but I don't even think Jews still win in the which religion sucks more baby dick category at this point.

That's true. That's true. Competitive. So at the climax. Praising. Of the day's prayer comes Teshuva, where you confess to not just your sins, but to everybody's sins. And you're forgiven, you hope. And I guess pretty early on, someone must have realized that if you had to confess to just your own sins, someone would notice that ancient Israeli Eli

sure had his head down for a long time. So, Teshuvah is the final prayer that roughly translates to, and I'm sorry for stealing and for lust and for genocide and, you know, whichever of those that I did. And just to be super clear, I don't really know Eli that well. Like, his parents are cool.

You can't vet the kids. Yeah, whatever. I am Spartacus too. And at the end of it all, and in some sects, everyone else in the world, you are sin free. Yom Kippur at sundown is the best time to die when you're a Jew because you get the easy pass into heaven. Hey, fun fact. This is exactly what my great grandfather max did at the age of 90

lucky bastard either way if you're looking for a get out of jail free card yom kippur is the holiday for you all right well now that we've settled off the most convenient time to die question i think we can close this segment for the night but we're back next month with another selection from the Holiday Buffet. Before we ride into the sunset for the week, I want to remind you that there is a new episode of D&D Minus coming out tomorrow. If you haven't checked out our newest project, there's never been a better time to hop in.

And if the idea of other people playing D&D doesn't sound entertaining to you, that's because you're underestimating Eli's skills as a dungeon master look for a link in the show notes anyway that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more if you can't wait that long be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister shows hot friend god awful movies debuting at 7 a.m eastern time on tuesday and an even new episode of our half sister shows i teach and needed debuting at noon eastern on wednesday obviously i'd have fallen short as a host if i neglected to thank Keith Enright for casting pods like fishing lines. I need to thank Eli Bosnick for casting them like they were spells.

Cause he's a magician. I also want to apologize if I implied that Lucinda was going to be on this week. Things are kind of touch and go right now. She tries to help her family juggle all the weird shit that happens when you combine coronavirus back to school and living in one of America's stupidest enclaves is she should be back next week. Also want to thank JK.K. Fosnight

for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Incidentally, if the whole transphobia thing has you looking for a new favorite author named J.K., be sure to check the show notes for a link to his book, The Gospel of Bowtie, A New Testament of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people,

L. Ronald, Profitius, Pete, John, David, Philip, Michael, Nicholas, Chris, Jolene, Princess of Power, Dave, and Emery. L. Ronald, Profitius, Pete, and John, we, Michael, Nicholas, Chris, Jolene, Princess of Power, Dave, and Emery. L, Ronald, Profitius Pete, and John, who are so hot local fire departments have to be warned not to try to put them out. David, Philip, Michael, and Nicholas, whose ejaculations have been deemed emergency fire hydrants should the need arise. And Chris, Jolene, Princess of Power, Dave, and Emery, who are so bright they have to be extra careful around magnifying glasses. Together, these 12 tantalizingly taught trustees at Truth tilted the table towards testable claims this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give

us money, but if you do and you're so inclined, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash skatingatheist, 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 skatingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help but money is too damn expensive to spend on free shit, 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-P-O-T 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 writing engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used for permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingads.com. so uh morgan you just missed eli learning that wakanda was not a real place the preceding podcast was a production of puzzle in a thunderstorm llc copyright 2020 all rights reserved