The Scathing Atheist - 403: Electile Dysfunction

Episode Date: November 5, 2020

In this week’s episode, you’ll take a deep breath, stop clicking refresh for a minute, and laugh at something for a bit. Because you desperately need and deserve that. --- 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: Learn more about Modest Needs here: https://www.modestneeds.org/  Check out The Bible Says What!? here: https://thebiblesayswhat.podbean.com/ --- Headlines: Jerry Falwell Jr. is Suing Liberty University for Ruining His Reputation https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/10/29/jerry-falwell-jr-is-suing-liberty-university-for-ruining-his-reputation/ Pissing pastor resigns, gets sued: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/11/02/peeing-pastor-resigns-shuts-down-ministry-and-gets-hit-with-2-million-lawsuit/ Angry Christian Mom Condemns Uber Eats for Ads With “Queer Eye” Star in Leotard: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/10/29/angry-christian-mom-condemns-uber-eats-for-ads-with-queer-eye-star-in-leotard/ The Christian Broadcasting Network is Worried That Witches Cast a Spell on Trump https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/10/26/the-christian-broadcasting-network-is-worried-that-witches-cast-a-spell-on-trump/ Kenneth Copeland: Christians are now immune to COVID: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/progressivesecularhumanist/2020/10/televangelist-kenneth-copeland-claims-christians-are-now-immune-to-covid-19/ Atheists Warn Chicago Cops: Don’t Get Your Horses Blessed at Church Services: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/11/01/atheists-warn-chicago-cops-dont-get-your-horses-blessed-at-church-services/ Preacher: 60 Million Aborted Fetuses Would Totally Vote for Trump if They Could https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/10/29/preacher-60-million-aborted-fetuses-would-totally-vote-for-trump-if-they-could/ --- This Week in Misogyny: Poland’s women kick much ass: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/31/europe/poland-abortion-protests-scli-intl/index.html Lindsey Graham: Women can go anywhere … if they’re anti-abortion: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/11/01/gop-senator-women-can-do-anything-if-theyre-anti-abortion-and-traditional/ Christian Leader: Men responsible for how their wives vote: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/10/30/conservative-christian-leader-a-man-is-responsible-for-how-his-wife-votes/

Warning, this episode contains profanity, and frankly, all things considered, you're lucky it contains anything else. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Adam and Eve, Stamps.com, and by weed. Weed. Because it fucks up the sound quality when I bite through the microphone with rage. And now, The Scaling Atheist. This is Mike Wiseman from the Bible Says What the podcast.

And not only does every pastor I talk to worship a documented child killer, but we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men and women. It's a great day. Okay. That was my It's Thursday. Go ahead. It's November 5th. And it's never been more awkward that we record this show on a Wednesday afternoon. Just let me refresh one more time.

I'm refreshing. I'm refreshing. Heath, we have to podcast. Refresh. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm refreshed. Heath Henright.

And from Jared Kushner's New Jersey, Cincinnati Red State, and Waycross Swing State, this is the Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll send Mama Bear Apologetics off with a super funny, super good song. Huh? Refreshing. Fuck! And I'll find out that Quentin Smoking has a final exam. But first, the diatribe. All right, so normally I try to record my diatribe

before dinner on Wednesday so I can get the show out early for patrons and get to be done working before midnight. But this week, I didn't even start writing the damn thing until almost midnight. I just, I kept hitting refresh, staring at that election map waiting for some clarity eager to properly calibrate my anger for this one now i didn't exactly get clarity hopefully you have some by the time you hear this right hopefully things continue the way they're

looking and biden takes it in the squeaker and if's the case, we only need to turn our anger up to 10.99879. Because, you know, as idiotic as this outcome is, at least it doesn't appear to be the stupidest thing imaginable, which, let's face it, is what we've come to expect from this dumbass fucking country. You know, all that being said, I'd say this is dumber than 2016. Right? Like, even assuming a Biden victory, knowing everything we know now about Donald Trump after four years of corruption,

lies, incompetence, fraud, negligence, vituperations, racism, misogyny, xenophobia, self-dealing, nepotism, divisiveness, and binding all that shit together like the mortar, the relentless, frothing-at-the-mouth stupidity. After all that, the best we as a nation can muster is a tepid, probably not, I guess. That's it? I was so fucking wrong. I thought because I had such a low opinion of the American populace, I couldn't possibly be overestimating them. I thought so little of us that it didn't

even seem mathematically possible for us to be worse than I gave us credit for. But we are. worse than I gave us credit for, but we are. For there to be even the remotest chance of America rescuing some shred of its international dignity, we needed a goddamn landslide. We needed a mandate of historic proportions. We needed to stand up and say enough in a single fucking voice. And I genuinely thought that's what we do. I genuinely believe that we would have never made this mistake in 2016 if we really knew what we were getting into. And I was wrong. Millions of us, tens of millions of us are just willing to march blindly into some theocratic idiocracy, even as the bodies dropped by the thousands around us. And for what? What did they get out of it? You know, it's literally just that they get to win.

It's spite. There's no agenda. Trump hasn't accomplished anything. He hasn't even promised to accomplish anything this time around. He literally ran with no platform other than to agree with himself and that was enough for damn near half of american voters and i honestly don't know what to do with that it seems to undercut the whole foundation of humanism to me is it naive to hope that these fucking idiots will ever be worth our trouble? Should we just look after ourselves, gather in a tight circle, and point our guns outward in all directions? I mean, as stupid as that fucking sounds, it's getting really hard to argue that there's anything more sensible to do.

We're surrounded by idiots that would send you to the gas chamber just to avoid losing a fucking Twitter fight. In 2016, I was wondering if we could be safe. In 2020, I'm left wondering whether we should be. And look, I don't want to promote hate. I don't want to say we should hate the other side, but we should kind of hate the other side. We're talking about people who have no particular qualms about kidnapping children as a deterrent to their parents. And if we insist on continuing to imbue people like that with some kind of basic humanity we risk finding ourselves forever chained to this station this position where we stand there gawking at the electoral map going how the fuck can any of this even be close to ascribe some kind of moral foundation to the average american person is to reject all the

observable evidence at this point i'm not saying that the people on the other side are evil i'm just saying that their actions are functionally indistinguishable from evil i mean keep telling yourself that that asshole with the trump sign in his yard is the kind of person that would run into a burning building to save a neighbor he wouldn't put on a fucking mask to save a neighbor. And whether that's because he's evil, stupid, or undereducated and misled doesn't matter much when you're that neighbor. Our nation is rotten all the way through. It is deeply, fundamentally, foundationally broken. And our tendency to see the good in the people around us, our combination of empathy and cultural blindness leaves us in a terrible position if we want to fix it. We refuse to recognize the problem because to truly grasp

how evil and shitty America is, you have to admit how evil and shitty the people you care about are. Your friends and your family. You have to admit that Uncle Frank isn't just an asshole. He's evil. Your Aunt Kathy isn't just stupid. She's dangerous. And even after you just watched them spend four years pledging undying allegiance to someone as unapologetically malicious as Donald Trump, you still bristle when I apply terms like that to them. Even now, as you watch him leap to his defense and threaten to take up arms against democracy, you can't help but think, evil Noah, really? Evil? Yes, really. We can't afford that kind of naivety anymore. This is a life and death struggle and the deaths are already in the six figure range. We need to stare the ugliness of America right in the fucking face without pretending that

America is some immutable system that happens in Washington, D.C. and state capitol buildings. It's us. We need to see how evil and terrible this nation is, even if we can only see some of its blemishes when we look in a fucking mirror, because the story about the emperor's new clothes takes on a much darker tone when it's 20 degrees below zero, and it has never been colder than it is right now. They're talking about you, Jesus. joining me for headlines tonight are the steve kornacki and john king to my like whoever vanna white's the election map over on fox news heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to look at the number refreshing again i'm refreshing heath heath that is not what

you know same okay it's not, but is there anything is an update on Pennsylvania? Nothing since the end of the diatribe. No. Alright, well I double checked that. We're going to pause for a quick word from our first sponsor this week, Adam and Eve. Hi, I'm Eli Bosnick.

And I'm Ethan Wright. Are you stressed out? Are you feeling a little high strung? Who put this chair by my desk? Chair's always been at your then, right. Are you stressed out? Are you feeling a little high strung? Who put this chair by my desk? Chair's always been at your desk, buddy. Well, that's stupid. That's stupid. Oh, great.

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Hey, Binky, how you doing, little buddy? Don't aww at me, you bald mick! Okay, fair. Okay, fair. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, we had an election yesterday, and there's going to be a winner declared. I love it when I can say a sentence that ends in a period right now, but I can't't or maybe I can't. I don't know. Well, let's talk about some stuff. As everybody knows and as everybody already knew going into Election Day,

the giant volume of mail in ballots are going to take a while to count. So we don't have a definitive winner as of Wednesday afternoon. But regardless of the winner, here's a depressing sentence that ends in a period we do have a president right now and it's donald trump at least until he's removed from office and jailed forever for committing treason level election fraud by declaring the elusive they as guilty of election fraud and declaring himself the winner at 2 a.m. Yep. To be clear, they is counting. Yep.

They is the concept of counting votes. Exactly. Yep. Yeah. It was so weird watching his Twitter timeline today because he kept yelling that they should stop doing counting, but he didn't stop doing that after Biden got the lead in Michigan. So the Biden campaign at a certain point is like, oh, OK. You're stupid.

Mr. Trump, Mr. Biden already knocked over all the milk cans and took the bear. It doesn't matter if you get one more throw. The cans are OK. So here's a few of the exact words from the president of the United States. Just in case you somehow magically made yourself go to sleep in the last 48 hours and you missed his attempt at a Twitter coup and then an oratorial coup. The Twitter coup didn't really work. Yeah. No.

He started with a tweet that said, quote, we are up big, but they are trying to steal the election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the polls are closed. End quote. And to be clear, when he tweeted that, he was down in both the reported popular vote and the electoral college vote that had been declared. vote and the electoral college vote that had been declared. So just for the record, you actually can't see that tweet right now because Twitter realized they probably shouldn't display treason on their website. Right.

And in response, the Trump campaign posted the statement on Facebook, too. And apparently Mark Zuckerberg's not the liberal shill that Jack Dorsey is. So Facebook left up the post, but they did put a notice next to it that says, this is dangerous lying, but we're still going to leave it there. And considering Facebook's role in the 2016 election, it seems like Zuckerberg should just have to follow around Trump for the rest of his life, holding up a poster board that says dangerous lie whenever Trump talks in real life. I feel like that should be a rule. Yeah, but then he lets Russia pay 500 guys to hold up signs that say Zuckerberg is lying. We're right back where we started. You know, it

gets. So following that tweet, Joe Biden gave a quick speech from outside his campaign headquarters in Delaware about his optimism regarding the remaining vote count. And then about an hour later, Trump walked out on stage at the White House, read off a bunch of numbers that he clearly didn't understand. No, no. The total number of percents is tricky for him. And then he said, frankly, we did win this election. He also added added we'll be going to the u.s supreme court we want all voting to stop like you say when you win an election yeah cut to mark zuckerberg

standing there going like okay wait do i hold up the sign for we want all voting to stop i don't it does though so in response to trump calling for all the voting to end, I think the vast majority of Americans responded, Okay, we'll stop? We'll stop. That being said, I've been voting hard for all of Wednesday so many times, and I'm not going to stop until I am forced by a courtroom. But here's the real question now can i poop in nate silver's shoes no you still cannot poop in nate silver's shoes hate being the new guy i'll do it and in school of hard cox news former president of liberty university would like to put the year 2020 behind him

the year in which yes the year in which he negligently kept his school open in spite of covid took a picture of himself with his pants undone with a woman who wasn't his wife and put it on instagram officially revealed to the world that his wife was fucking the pool boy while he watched and then got so drunk he fell down the stairs and his wife had to call an ambulance for him. Jerry Falwell Jr. wants you to forget all of that happened this year. So he's suing Liberty University for making him look bad. Yes.

Okay. But in fairness to Falwell, they should not have hired him. I think he's right. oh, well, they should not have hired him. I think he's right. If they don't hire him, he's just like some dude who enjoys cuck stuff who doesn't know how to stay in his drinking lane and go downstairs on his ass one step at a time

like the liquid cat. That's tons of people who never make the news. It's a third of this podcast. All right, but honestly, though, if I was given the option of wiping 2020 from my memory altogether the only thing that would give me pause is the jerry stuff in that bit where ben shapiro's wife told him a wet vagina was a disease don't take this from me jerry that's our yearbook so according to pr newswire quote in his complaint filed in the commonwealth of

virginia circuit court for the city of lynburg, Mr. Falwell claims that Liberty University needlessly injured and damaged his reputation through a series of statements published in print and spoken in large public forums and streamed online following his forced resignation from the university. I'm starting to think that guy who sued a reporter for trespassing when they asked questions on his campus doesn't know how the law works and quick reminder here at the end falwell received a 10 million dollar severance from liberty university so i want to say just for the record right now i want to clear the air that if noah and heath ever find the red box and give me $10 million when they fire me for it, I can promise here and now I will not sue them. What? What's the red box? You know what?

Withdrawn. Two votes. Let's just move on. Two, three votes. And in Karen Height 451 News, a Christian activist group, One Million Moms, had another roundtable meeting at Karen's house last week. And as usual, they scoured their exhaustive archive containing all the advertisements for every consumer product from the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. And they selected their finalists for which persecution to whine about. for which persecution to whine about.

Last time around, it was an ad for Frank's Red Hot from January of 2019 that implied a naughty word. So they listened to a few bawdy radio ads for morphine tonic and phosphate soda, but they finally landed on a new TV commercial for Uber Eats. The ad appears to be aimed at selling food delivery. That's what it sounds like, right? commercial for Uber Eats. The ad appears to be aimed at selling food delivery. That's what it sounds like, right? You hear Uber Eats? That's what they would advertise for. But it also secretly changes

the sexuality of children by showing them Jonathan Van Ness from Queer Eye wearing a gymnastics leotard. I love that the Christian outrage machine is running out of shit, right? We've gone from Teen Vogue wants to teach your children anal sex to a gay person existed on my television.

All right, so I'm sorry, not to backtrack here, but Karen Height 451 is so much more memorable of a name and it's so much closer to the real number. You guys should really consider that think about it come on ladies so along with van ness the ad also featured five-time olympic gold medalist simone biles who did some gymnastics and named some food that would get delivered that was the ad of course this turned a bunch of kids into cisgender women of color yeah and then van ness would do the same thing thus making kids into non-binary white people and that second part was a big

problem for the maternal horde also the of color thing if i had to guess and staying within their factor of error they tweeted about it to their 4800 followers with a link to their strongly worded op-ed according to the moms quote casting a cross-dresser in its ads screams liberal agenda and turns off potential uber eats customers for anyone curious or struggling with sexual identity watching someone prance around in the opposite sex's clothing is not the answer yeah everyone knows the answer is electroshock therapy just ask the vice president yeah right so so we're really going with prance around in our press release are we prancing okay all right okay so first of all if i'm struggling with my sexual identity watching jonathan van ness and his majestic beard wearing simone biles's leotard

showing off his lithe graceful body doing gymnastics and naming delicious foods is exactly what i would want just so many great ideas i want that if i'm not struggling with my sexual identity we all just want that right but you not want that but more importantly i'm not switching over to door dash like a fucking communist and losing my rewards points for mariettes that's crazy either way one million moms and their twitter community of 4800 people is much smaller than our puzzle in a thunderstorm team also known as one trillion podcasters and also much much smaller than one bazillion people who hate bigot moms yeah so i sure hope one million moms in their twitter group doesn't get hijacked like the proud boys hashtag i would that would be a damn shame if that were to happen

yeah and in which guy did you vote for news you know it might take us years to pick apart the results of this week's election which way the undecided voters went and how covet affected voting are all long-term questions with no easy answers luckily for us we don't have to wait because the christian broadcasting network already has a theory Broadcasting Network already has a theory. Donald Trump was attacked by a bunch of witches. Of course. Yeah.

A year ago. They attacked him a year ago. Then he got impeached. Then like 250,000 Americans died while he pretended COVID was a hoax and counting. Then the spell kicked in and affected his vote this year. Yeah. Yeah. Then the spell kicked in and affected his vote this year. Yeah.

So for those of you who missed it, all of America's witches and 75% of its undercuts used their magic powers to bind Donald Trump this past Halloween, which is fucking stupid. Last Halloween of 2019 with a one year fuse on the spell. So Heath, as a former Wiccan, I assure you that witch magic is dictated by the divine wheel of, you'll have probably forgot we did this by then, and that wheel cannot be rushed. Well, regardless, if witches actually had magic powers,

then eight out of ten of their Facebook posts wouldn't be about how capitalism is the reason they got fired from their part-time job at a yoga studio. But the folks over at Christian Broadcasting Network are stupid and dangerous. They put an article on their website asking their users

to use their prayer magic to stop the witch magic. And now we need the witches to stop the prayer. Maybe our best bet would just be to coax all the religions into some kind of thought magic Ouro boris until they all starve to death or something yes good idea and i gotta say this whole article is absolutely worth reading because there's so many terrifying ins and outs so one little quote trinity college in connecticut tracked witchcraft's prevalence for some 18 years trinity college

the alma mater of tucker carlson oh really lovely he's doing great things for that endowment some witchcraft research it continues researchers found that in 1990 there were an estimated 8 000 wiccans in the u.s that number grew to 340,000 in 2008. By researchers, they mean that guy we met who knows how to do the Google? Those are the goddamn census numbers. Research. You can just look those up.

But my favorite part of this article is that it ends with an interview with a Roman Catholic priest and the designated exorcist of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, Father Vincent Lampert, who says, quote, Some of them may be doing it thinking it's just fun, but they are gambling with evil. And just because their motive is one way doesn't mean they're not opening up an entry point for evil in their own life. I think evil will present itself as something good, maybe initially to attract people's attention, to draw people in. But then ultimately, people are going to discover it's all about fracturing lives. End quote.

Okay, well, so with that reminder that whatever we win and whatever we lose, at least we're not on the side of the argument that's duty-bound to be afraid of its own goddamn imagination, we'll take a quick break for a word from this week's second sponsor, Stamps.com. No, no, no, no, it needs to be higher pitched. Yeah, okay, much better. Hey, hey, Heath, did you borrow borrow my why is eli dressed in blackface again no no don't make me put a dollar in the jar i'm a chimney sweep i'm a chimney sweep why are you a chimney sweep okay so you know how this holiday season more people are going to be

mailing stuff than ever before i imagine so yeah so what better way to beat the lines at the post office than by dressing as a Dickensian orphan? Okay, but why not just try stamps.com? What's stamps... Okay, okay. No, you do it. You can do it. What's stamps.com? Heath, he's not really a chimney sweep.

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holiday season at the post office this year. Sign up for stamps.com instead. There's no risk. With our promo code SCATHING, you get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage and a digital scale no long-term commitments or contracts just go to stamps.com click on the microphone at the top of the home page and type in scathing that stamps.com enter scathing stamps.com never go to the post office again all right noah we are in oh man so i swept all those chimneys for nothing? I mean, not for nothing. Chimney looks great. Thank you.

A man wrote the Bible? A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate race. You're a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This Week in Misogyny. Well, we don't have a clear picture of the electorate, and we won't for some time.

But when you consider the extent to which women's rights were on the ballot in this election, there's one thing I'm willing to say for sure. If you set a white woman in America on fire, they might not put the flames out if it means getting their hair wet. I mean, for fuck's sakes, ladies, we're the majority here. And if you need an example of how this shit works, might I suggest you look at Poland? As you'll recall from last week, Poland's extreme right-wing government just effectively banned abortion. And so the women of that country basically said, the fuck you did.

In what was apparently the largest demonstration Poland has seen since the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than 100,000 people turned out in Warsaw to protest the decision. Protests went on for days, and the latest news, as of the time of this recording, is that the government has delayed implementation of the new ban. Meanwhile, back in the good old U.S. of A., Lindsey fucking Graham prevails in the most expensive Senate campaign in the history of the universe, even after saying that women could go anywhere in this country, quote, if you are pro-life, if you embrace your religion, and you follow traditional family structure, end quote.

So in other words, you can go anywhere you want as long as it's somewhere he says you can go. He said a remarkably similar thing about black Americans about a week before that. And still, we sent him back to the goddamn Senate. Of course, I can't blame the women in this country entirely. I mean, they voted better than the men did, at least. And it's also worth reminding myself that much of the time when they didn't, it's because they're victimized by the same shit we're fighting against every week on the show. And just in case we were in danger of forgetting that, plenty of Christian leaders were piping up to remind Christian women that God wants them to vote how their husbands tell them to. Like, for example, Jesse Sumter of the Christ Church in Moscow, Idaho, who took time off from

packing hundreds of people at a time into small spaces amid some of the worst pandemic numbers in the country, to remind the church's Twitter followers, quote, brothers, a friendly reminder for elections, make sure your wife votes exactly as you do, end quote. And how the hell one makes sure of how their wife votes is entirely beyond me. But it sounds an awful lot like advocating for voter intimidation to me. So, you know, if laws ever start applying to religious people, he might have to worry about that. Anyway, I've got a page to refresh incessantly, so I'll wrap things up there and hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in vaccine the light news tonight, good news, Christians,

cinder and in vaccine the light news tonight good news christians you can cough on each other again what's more you can go you can minister to people who have tested positive for covid let them breathe all over you and then go hug other christians or even lick them and if you don't believe me you're doubting the word of god himself. It was everywhere but New York. Maybe you've heard of him. As interpreted by Kenneth Copeland. Ah. You know, the word of God interpreted by Kenneth Copeland is usually just a giant glowing collection plate.

So this is new. This is interesting. Well, it's similar to... Okay, so you're probably thinking that Kenny learned this through some divine revelation or something. But no. No. He deduced it.

Did it with his deducement. And he provided evidence. Quote, yeah, quote, I was noticing today President Trump and his beautiful first lady without masks. They are immune. They are immune. He said it twice. That's in the quote.

And this display of our president giving God thanks for helping in that time. And he walked out immune somehow. Glory to God. Woo. Thank you, Jesus. Come on, man. We're immune. We are going through this thing with a Holy Spirit immunity from the works of the devil.

End quote. Okay. Well, that's induction. He induced induced it he did it with inducement okay no you're right you're um so uh i guess my thought is prove it handle some snakes drink some fucking covid we'll become the scathing christian if you prove it we might be the scathing christians by fiat depending on what we learn about pennsylvania okay well he doesn't need pennsylvania okay so yeah uh that's pretty damn definitive uh and as much as i think christians should go out and start licking each other right away to celebrate the news it's worth pointing out that this is not the first time that copeland has claimed that god had cured covid for some or all of his listeners. Nor is it the second time. I mean, I don't even think we're in single digits anymore,

but this time was different because in the past, one was required to touch his hand through your TV screen to receive immunity, or in the most memorable instance, Copeland would have to keep the virus at bay by personally spitting on it. So it's probably best to take a middle-of-the-road approach and only lick a medium amount of each other until we learn more. Stay conservative.

And in Thomas Equinus news. See, you know what? Humanity doesn't deserve you, Heath, and America definitely doesn't deserve you. That's brilliant. Big percentage. Equinus. Equine. It's a horse i'm

going to talk about a horse thing in a second so despite their sterling reputation throughout history for being completely reasonable the chicago police department might have had a little stumble this week as part of their community outreach to the downtrodden white evangelicals of the city, officers of the CPD celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assisi by heading over to Grace Place Episcopal Church and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church to get a blessing for their horses. Yep. So insensitive.

Everyone knows all horses are Jewish. How's that? because they eat hey moving right along so this is offensive for several reasons also illegal the officers were on the clock and in uniform representing the city and doing a pr stunt for a magical tax-exempt horse whispering service from some Christian sorceress lady in a robe. And that's why the Freedom From Religion Foundation had to write a letter to the Chicago Police Department that basically said, wow, can't believe we have to explain this, but stop spending time and taxpayer money on a farcical theocratic ceremony.

spending time and taxpayer money on a farcical theocratic ceremony strange women lying with wands distributing wards is no basis for a system of government and law enforcement but you know they said it super nicely for some reason without any mountie python references okay you say that heath but did you know chicago Chicago PD has never shot an unarmed black man who weighs the same as a duck? Never. Not once. Good point. Keep that in mind. So the blatant disrespect for state church separation is the obvious problem.

But most importantly, I'm offended because the FFRF had to spend fucking time on this and they had to do it nicely. See, I don't know that they had to be nice. Yeah, good point. But they did anyway. I mean, yes, the constitutional principle they mentioned is super important. But the top line explanation for the Chicago Police Department is you're fucking stupid. That's stupid. police department is you're fucking stupid that's stupid but the chief of police in exactly zero american police departments is a logical atheist person telling their officers no your job today

is not horse magic you're fired for even asking fired for asking yeah so what we're trying to say the ffrf is that we'd be happy if you want to run your letters by us we can remove the nice from them. We'll do that. Before you send it. We're in. And finally tonight in not fee tuss news. See that's the pun you deserve this week America. How dare you. How dare you.

Hey. Thank you. Lead pastor at Skyline Church. Still better than the chili of the same name. In San Diego, California. And man who looks like if Alex Trebek shaved off his mustache and ate it. Jim Garlow took to the internet this week to voice his concern for a group of uncounted voters. And no, it's not the mail-in ballots that were thrown out.

Or the people at high risk for covid who can't vote in person jim garlo is concerned for the 60 million aborted fetuses who he claims all would have voted for donald trump well okay come on we would have fucking eaten some of them in our q and a parties wouldn wouldn't we? Come on. It's like a Schrodinger's fetus situation. Quote, I want to talk to you about something that's happening right here in our community and in our nation. It's the election. You tend to think of it as being Republican versus Democrat. It's not.

You might think of it as being right versus left. It's not. It's right versus wrong. It's good versus evil what do i mean by that funny how people on the left don't have to clarify what they mean when they say that what do you mean by that one party the democratic party has the platform that allows you to dismember to rip apart a baby in the womb with no anesthesia right by the point of birth what the anesthesia is the cool yeah no from now on we'll inject the fetus with morphine that'll go great

whatever you want man and one democrat governor actually says you can kill the baby after it's been born that is barbaric end quote so murder yeah there's murder there's a pro-murder democratic governor that you can't name because it's a secret you sure you're not talking about every republican governor and the death penalty because that would make sense if that's true or their covet 19 response oh yep yep that it. Sorry, that's the same repetitive. And as promised, he concludes, quote, 60 million babies that have been killed in the womb. If they could

be polled, they would be voting for Donald Trump and Republican candidates because they would like to have the privilege to live. End quote. That's all right. I guess we all need a minute to thank a lady who killed her little Trump supporter in utero so we're going to close the headlines for the night

Heath, Eli, thanks as always Refreshing? No, we have to podcast There's a C segment, when we're super hoping that turns out to be true of bad things too right now obviously yeah lemon lemon and well there's one bad thing whose terminus is still up in the air more or, we can at least say for certain that we've reached the end of Mama Bear Apologetics, that book by Hilary Morgan Ferrer et al. That we've been breaking down for the last 31 years. So, yeah, it was bound to end eventually, even though there were times when I'd have sworn otherwise. So, Eli, where does it all end? Well, Noah, this week we're going to tackle

what I would say is the final boss of the entire book. Change of any kind in any form because the last chapter of Mama Bear Apologetics is called Christianity Needs a Makeover, Progressive Christianity, written by Elisa Childers. Yeah, okay. This book needs a makeover, written by a new author we hired to write our final chapter.

Like a movie that needs a new Act 3. Because otherwise, the book was going to end with Hilary Morgan Ferrer talking about feminism. Yeah, right. Probably a good move, actually. Jesus, it was bound to happen eventually. They've devoured everything in sight, and now they're eating themselves. Yes, they are. And we're going to start this chapter with a metaphor so pained,

I think there are Eighth Amendment grounds to dismiss it. Well, I mean, it's cruel. I wouldn't say unusual. We've read the book. Yeah. It's an and, not an or. So Elisa explains that progressiveity is like mixing all the sodas from the soda dispenser together a little marxism here a little feminism there and wham

you have progressive christianity but unlike the aforementioned gross soda mixture which based on your feelings about dr pepper i can only assume that noah and heath love elisa assures us that progressive christianity is not harmless that's correct and the chapter and the chapter nailed it nailed it don't keep talking for reasons i can't even begin to comprehend that soda concoction when i was a kid we called it a suicide okay thank you so much noah we called it that too but i was so worried that if i pointed that out you guys were just gonna tell me that that my dad was hinting something to me. I think maybe he still was.

It could be both. I'm not saying he wasn't. And just in case we don't believe Elisa, because that's fucking stupid, Elisa is going to tell us the chilling tale of when she, as a young mother, was invited to a discussion group at her church led by an agnostic. Thunder, lightning, lightning, thunder. And Elisa knows what you're thinking. I guarantee

she does not. I'm not even convinced she would know what that would entail. So you're probably thinking, something as terrible as that could never happen to you well guess what quote little did i know at the same time there were groups classes meetings online forums and conversations happening all over the country flooded with people questioning historic christian beliefs such as the atonement the exclusivity of christianity the authority of

the bible the literal resurrection of jesus the nature of sin the definition of heaven and the reality of hell end quote boy and that just christianity in a nutshell for you though like i learned that there were thousands and thousands of interpretations all of them with the same amount of biblical justification so i set about correcting all but one of them. All but one. Yeah, she concludes like with a fucking flashlight under her chin, as far as I know, I am the only soul in that class who came out with his or her faith intact. The rest went on to-

Oh, there's a battery. I'm going to switch it. Okay. She's slapping it against her hand. The rest went on to identify, along with the church itself, as a progressive christian community thunder lightning cat scream so everyone was still christian just progressive now which means elisa saying i kept my faith intact literally meant I'm very proud to say I kept my bigotry intact. That's what that means.

Yeah. Those are the parts she's talking about them changing. So with the scary story section out of the way, it's time to roar like a mother for the last time, which I'm not going to lie. This made me a little sad because this is the last time I get to torture Heath with this terrible anagram actually you know what I'm excited let's R recognize this fucking message they centrifuged Christianity

and the evangelical sine qua non is bigotry please proceed tell us about that Elisa absolutely so yeah Elisa's gonna point out what I actually think is a valid criticism of progressive christianity at least from a theological perspective so if you dilute your religion down to saying nothing is certain there are no hard and fast rules according to elisa at that point you

can't also say your religion is based on the perfect word of the omnipotent, omniscient creator of the universe. Now, I should caveat that her solution is that the Bible is the perfect word of the God and we should act like it. While our solution is for your woke friends to stop pretending that Jesus managed to slip Black Lives Matter into the Sermon on the Mount. When everyone was kneeling for Jesus during that sermon, it was a kaepernick thing actually no no no stop it you're also a problem right but elisa also fails to acknowledge that this like choose your own religion fucking keep your thumb on the page version also goes the other way right which is why trans and gay rights can suddenly become central to so many people's concept of religious freedom, even while they're on their third divorce. Right.

No, it's like if instead of spinning the couch to the left and coming in the other way, you just like watch TV in the front yard from now on. So after pointing out the progressive Christianity has no core beliefs beliefs elisa is going to tell us the five core beliefs to progressive christianity first up a rejection of the exclusivity of christianity that jesus is the only way to god to which her response is predictably no and and she doesn't really give any evidence for this she just dedicates a paragraph to shitting on Rob Bell again for describing God in terms of energy and force. And in summation of the book that I did not write, all dogs go to hell. Great. Just like those Marxist fetuses that get aborted in every single human being before 2,000 years ago.

That's right. And most of the ones since. Yeah, the vast majority of other ones. Yeah. The second core belief of progressive Christianity, a rejection of the atoning blood sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. And again, she just shits on Rob Bell some more.

I'm starting to think that he took her lunch money or something. And if you're thinking of this namby-bamby, what if we weren't a human sacrifice cult stops at Rob Bell? She also tells us that, quote, in a blog post about how to talk to your kids about Easter, a progressive Christian children's pastor wrote that telling kids Jesus died for their sins could be psychologically damaging. Jesus died for their sins could be psychologically damaging. All right, now drink this blood or you'll be tortured in a lake of fire with those Marxist fucking fetuses. You're a dog. You're a child.

And I'm a grown up. Yeah, that's what she's hoping for. So the third belief of progressive Christianity is a lowered view of scripture. progressive christianity is a lowered view of scripture and what she means by that and makes very very clear is that some assholes think that rabbits don't chew their cut that's right according to elisa any view of the bible that isn't this is the perfect inerrant word of god is a lowered view of scripture also just listing the things that are like that the emancipation proclamation a lowered view of scripture that that's the we'll skip that one tag on the back of my shirt lowered view of scripture that's a good one i didn't sound as stupid so the fourth belief of progressive christianity is a redefining of words parentheses linguistic theft

and parentheses quote for example when i told my agnostic pastor that i was uncomfortable with where some of our class discussions were heading she sounds fun he encouraged me to ask him any question i had he promised to answer honestly and said that no inquiry was off limits. I asked, do you believe in hell? And do you believe the Bible is divinely inspired? He answered unequivocally yes to both. That put me at ease enough to continue in the class. Although I was very confused at how he could believe the Bible was divinely inspired yet question its truthfulness. A few months later, flashlights back under the chin i came to understand what he meant by divinely inspired he believed the bible was inspired much like the

writings of c.s lewis or a.w tozer but not in any special kind of way and hell he meant it in a figurative sense as in living out the negative consequences of bad choices we make here on Earth. End quote. I was devastated to learn that he was secretly being reasonable. It's dogs and fetuses

in a lake of fire. Am I crazy? Is nobody hearing this? This is a ridiculous agnostic class. Fuck you. I'm gonna go to my one million moms meeting.

Yeah. And last, but but not least the final core belief of progressive christianity that again i just need to remind you elisa wants to reject is quote a focus on social justice yeah those motherfuckers so we're back to our anagram now it's time to oh offer discernment and elisa's gonna throw us a bone here she she admits that yeah i mean technically all the christianity that doesn't burn which is at the stake is progressive but like every other chapter of this book that we read the problem isn't the progress people have wanted it's the progress people have wanted. It's the progress people have wanted the second the various authors of this book decided everyone had all the rights they would ever need. There we go.

Yeah, look, it's not actually that we think the Bible should be taken literally so much as that we're not allowed to use anti-gay slurs anymore, but Amazon will sell an apologetics book. She even points out that christians sucking super hard is part of the cause of progression of christianity the problem according to elisa at least is that people try to reform the religion not the people or as she puts it doctrine doesn't abuse people people abuse people yeah maybe your lives matter if you stop resisting a little bit which means it's time to a argue for a healthier approach and elisa admits that it could be pretty

tricky to figure out what the right kind of christianity is oh so for a second i thought you were gonna say that she admitted it was tricky to argue for a better approach than social justice. But upon reflection, I have no fucking clue why I thought that. Yeah, well, luckily for us, there is a good way to pick the right flavor of Christianity. And it's the Bible. Or as she puts it, quote, this is why we have the word of God. It's vital that we adhere to the doctrine of biblical authority that the bible has final say when it comes to issues relating to our faith if we want to have a healthy christian life believing in scripture's authority is the only way to assure that your

worldview is in line with reality yeah it's about the intent of the founding father and the fucking supreme court agrees fantastic yeah it does and finally we're going to our reinforced by discussion discipleship and prayer nailed it and i love that she uses this last section to plug her talk here at the beginning of her talk this is her little technique here she puts up a picture of her daughter and talks about how cute she is then at the end of the talk she puts up a picture of another little girl who looks like her daughter and when the audience presumably goes like oh she's so cute she goes that's not my daughter idiots but you didn't know that because you don't know my daughter her point being quote the best way to spot counterfeit christianity in any form is to

know the real thing end quote okay not that i don't appreciate the fact that she figured out a clever thing to do about that once couldn't think of a way to put it into the book so just talked about what it's like when she does it in her talk um you gotta be careful giving talks at churches that could be interpreted as you should get to know my kid lady i just good advice yeah yeah and she concludes this section with such a perfect quote we should sell it on a t-shirt and donate the money to plan parenthood in her name christianity is not progressive it's eternal we're not evil we are infinity yeah well except they went with the opposite of evil but yeah yeah exactly we're not the opposite of evil all right so now it's time for the last set of discussion questions gentlemen are you ready sure why not number one icebreaker

when you were a kid did you ever create a soda concoction like the one Elisa described? Why did you like it? Was it the taste or the freedom? Yeah, I did. It was diet Pepsi and tonic. I'm not sure how to answer the question. That's what we had in the house. We had diet Pepsi and tonic.

See, yes, I loved it. And yes, it was because I hated God. I knew it. I knew it. Oh, yeah. Number two, main theme. People are changing historic Christian doctrines to accommodate the times. Do you think the Bible is out of step with society?

Do you think adherence to societal norms is the test of truth? Why or why not? I think Donald Trump's reelection is the test of truth and God. So I'm a Christian now or not, depending on what happens. Refresh. Refresh. All right. But not to be repetitive, but their argument here is we shouldn't change Christian doctrines

to accommodate modern times. We should change them to accommodate the time when the black people knew their place. Yes, exactly. All right. Number three, self-evaluation. Do you find yourself drawn to progressive Christianity or repulsed by it? Yes. How strong is your reaction? Infinity.

Evil. Why do you think you react the way you do? Ibbid. In what ways can you be discerning about what you read and listen to? Oh, I joined the Antifa Navy. Oh, nice. You can get into it. Try to have a boat rally. Try.

See what happens. Alright, so I find myself repulsed because diet bullshit is still bullshit and I can be more discerning about what I read by letting Eli read the entire book on one of these for a while. Number four, brainstorm. Where have you seen these ideas in books, conferences, or devotionals?

Hold on. Should I put a line on a piece of paper? No, not yet. Sad. I brought a piece of paper. I got a line piece of paper ready to fucking go. Crumple it. Great, asshole.

Why do you think the message of progressive Christianity is so attractive? Oh, that was a hoax at the Democratic National Convention. What? Can you think of specific examples of progressive Christian thinking that you've read or heard? I heard about an apologetics book where women teach. And finally, release the bear. If you find yourself conversing with a person or your kids who've been influenced by progressive Christian thinking, ask him or her, how did you come to your conclusions?

Keep in mind all the isms you've learned do they believe truth is relative post-modernism is he or she skeptical of miracles naturalism does he or she say that the truths in the bible are too harsh emotionalism oh i wasn't listening to their answer i started walking away i was i was refreshing and that is the book. So, guys, one last question. What do you think we learned from Mama Bear Apologetics? Oh. Ah.

Refresh. Maybe I can help. What are you doing here, Hillary Morgan Farrow? Maybe I can help. What are you doing here, Hilary Morgan Farrah? Oh, Noah, I'm here to tell you what you learned from my book, silly. Um, okay, I guess. Back in the good old days, we were setting our ways and the Bible was true.

Derrida came along, everything went wrong, and now we're run by the Jews. Kids today have thrown away truth, and by truth I mean God, that's what truth means to me. Everyone's postmodern but me. I don't know, Hilary Morgan Fair, that sounds like a vast oversimplification of hundreds of years of... Won't someone tell me please why nobody sees the lies that they tell? Self-help hugs you and cries while it sends all you guys straight to hell. Now I've laid it out in my book, if you just take a look, it's easy to see. Everyone's post-modern but me. But you understand that literally

everyone except you is post-modern. Look, I know it's not easy to face. Your kids might think you're a drag. But if you don't do it now, they'll turn your kids into homosexuals,

danger, baby bears face. If mama bears only knew. So buy my book and read my blog and check my podcast too. Everyone's post-, but me! I mean, can you at least admit that maybe... I'm singing! Everyone is wrong as could be, oh if only they'd see, I could show them the way.

Books full of postmodern lies, all a compromise so that you can be gay. Modern lies, all a compromise So that you can be gay Rich people have to be bad Feminists going mad Wanting college for free Everyone's post-modern but me Really? Everyone in the world? Yep! Everyone's post-modern but me

In the whole wide world. Everyone and everything from Star Wars to Lord of the Rings. Everyone's postmodern but me. You sound like a sexy baby. Before we get back to refreshing tonight, I want to offer a quick update on Vulgarity for Charity. That's the annual fundraiser we do where we trade insults for charitable donations normally we start that in november but a combination of a very high number of our listeners being out of work and the fact that we still have a ton of insults that we have to do from the last year's fundraiser still is going to force us to postpone it this time around so apologies if you've been looking forward to this and you've been wanting to get your insult

in i still encourage you to donate to our favorite charity, Modest Needs, which you'll find linked in the show notes. But we don't feel right putting any pressure on anybody to donate given the current state of the economy. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday. An even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godolphin movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday, an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godolph and Louise, 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 cheating you out of the outro content if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for helping keep me sane with all his sick math skills. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for not making cupcakes this year. I also want to thank the quite lovely and quite talented Eli Bosnick for eventually agreeing to

be talked back from the ledge on Tuesday night. I also want to thank the quite lovely and quite talented Eli Bosnick for eventually agreeing to be talked back from the ledge on Tuesday night. I also want to thank Mike Wiseman from the Bible Says What podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Incidentally, if you'd like that question answered, you'll find a link to his show on the show notes. But most all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people. And I'll do it by name, I promise, but I have to do that next week because it's been a really long couple of days. I have not slept much at all, but I will compliment the shit out of your genitals. I will make it worth your wait. Anyway, if you want to give us money,

you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingadius, 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 scathingadius.com.

And if you'd like to help, but not in a money-type way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following at PIAtPot on Twitter. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robinson, handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark.

We'll also roll 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 ScalingAlias.com. All right. here we go. Should I just refresh it one more time? Yeah, refresh it one more time. A little bit more Pennsylvania coming in. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle & Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2020. All rights reserved.