The Scathing Atheist - 420: Higher Power Edition

Episode Date: March 4, 2021

In this week’s episode, we’ll learn that religion isn’t done ruining our global pandemic, congress will half way do something fully overdue, and Noah will point out that even Ken Ham agrees that he’s way younger than the Earth. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Check out the Glass Box Podcast here: https://glassboxpodcast.libsyn.com/ --- Headlines: Catholic church scaring people off of Johnson&Johnson vaccine with religious bullshit: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/03/02/irrational-catholic-archdiocese-urges-people-to-avoid-johnson-johnson-vaccine/ The Southern Baptist Convention Expelled Two Churches for Being LGBTQ-Friendly: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/02/24/the-southern-baptist-convention-expelled-two-churches-for-being-lgbtq-friendly/ Republicans Are Twisting a Congressman’s Defense of Church/State Separation: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/02/27/republicans-are-twisting-a-congressmans-defense-of-church-state-separation/ Appeals Court: Is It Legal to Nix a Juror Who Relies on God Over Evidence?: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/02/23/appeals-court-is-it-legal-to-nix-a-juror-who-relies-on-god-over-evidence/ One Million Moms are coming for Blue’s Clues now, apparently: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/02/26/christian-mom-blues-clues-is-indoctrinating-kids-with-the-alphabet-song/ Right-Wing Atheists Are Oddly Excited About CPAC Embracing Secular Conspiracies: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/03/01/right-wing-atheists-are-oddly-excited-about-cpac-embracing-secular-conspiracies/

Warning, this podcast contains language that some people may find offensive, and those people can go fuck themselves. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by MySheetsRock, Stamps.com, and by Puzzle and a Thunderstorm brand plastic potato dicks. Is your favorite potato-based toy getting a little too woke? Well then let the world know which genitals your plastic spud has with Puzzle and a Thunderstorm brand plastic potato dicks, because nothing screams secure in my gender identity like feeling threatened by gender-neutral tubers. And now, the Scathing Atheist.

Hi, this is Shannon Grover from the Glass Box podcast with Bryce Blankenagle and Brayden Hamm. from the Glass Box podcast with Bryce Blankenagle and Brayden Hamm. And as the general authority of that podcast, I am here to tell you with all the general authority-ness I possess that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men and women. It's Thursday. It's March 4th. And it's episode 420, baby. Light it up like the inside of Jesus' tomb. I'm no

illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from legalized New Jersey, Cincinnati Red State, and Redtown Blue State, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, we hit the dope doobie dab, Mary Jane. What? Eli's gonna be the old man in the

weed store that people say no thank you to when he starts talking. And Noah will finally do a diatribe high. For the 420th. But first, the diatribe. You guys like fish? Huh? Fish? No, no thank you.

No, thank you. Fish concert. Please, please stop. Got tickets. Nope. Well, it's episode 420, and you know what that means. Kind of. Probably.

I mean, it vaguely means weed, right? But beyond that, I'm pretty sure most people would be hard-pressed to say anymore. Now, the real story of how 420 comes to mean weed is boring as hell because it's reality, and reality is boring as hell most of the time. It was just the time a group of friends in California got together after school to get high because that's like when tennis practice was over or whatever. One of them ended up being a roadie for the Grateful Dead's bassist. It passed from him to them to the Deadheads to weed smokers in general to pop culture but when i was first introduced to the term that wasn't the story i was told i was told that it was

a police code for marijuana smoking in progress and that's why we got high at 20 minutes after four and i was told that by a very authoritative white guy with dreadlocks. So I assumed it would be true. And if I had any doubts about that whatsoever, they would have been alleviated a few years later when I heard the very same origin story from a different white guy with dreadlocks in a totally different state. They couldn't have been talking to each other. And so confident that the guys who were pretty sure patchouli oil was a valid alternative to bathing wouldn't steer me wrong. I dutifully passed on that bogus origin every chance I got. Now, as I recall, I was first introduced to the term circa 1995, 96.

So fast forward half a dozen years or so, and I'm living in yet another state, getting high with a few friends at 20 minutes after four. And somebody inquires as to the minute's significance but before i could blurt out my bullshit somebody else preempted it with their bullshit and this dude had heard a different erroneous origin story about a highway 420 in california that ran along a bunch of legendary weed fields apparently and that's the story he told and at the time i was even more of a dick than i am now so i didn't counter with something like really that's not the story that i've heard instead i counter with that's fucking stupid i pointed out that there is no highway 420 in california a fact that i had totally guessed on but i happened to guess correctly and i pointed out that growing

weed is illegal so like if people put their fields on the highway famous for weed growing they'd be making the dea's job real easy. Right. And then we argued about it. It was one of those dumb, passionate, meaningless, holistically uninformed debates that the world has lost so much of in the age of the Internet. I mean, don't get me wrong. There are meaningless, uninformed, dumb debates now. And there was an Internet then. We're talking about the early 2000s after all.

So we had it, but it was mostly dial up and nobody could get it on their phone and it wasn't ubiquitous enough that you'd expect the group of potheads to have ready access to it and even if we had the internet itself wasn't mature enough for somebody to easily verify a fact like 420's origins right we could have found his story and my story if we knew where to look, I'm sure. And I got to imagine that that's some hard shit for y'all youngins to understand. But in the pre-Wikipedia, pre-Google, pre-smartphone days, we would often get into angry, stupid arguments about the dumbest imaginable shit. I'm talking to the old folks here, but you remember when people used to get into arguments about whose watch had the better time? Of course now i don't know how inclusive i should be with that we right i'm sure there are plenty of people my age and older that never got into

a screamy fight with their friends about whether goonies came out before temple of doom sorry gene you were right it was temple of doom that came first but it wasn't all that uncommon you know something would come up in the natural course of conversation two people would disagree about some minor detail and suddenly something that couldn't possibly matter if you gave it a head start became the subject of an impassioned conflict. Both parties parted company with a vow to look it up and see how wrong that other motherfucker was when they got home. And then both parties would get home and realize it's not like they have a list of every movie that ever came out and when at home or anything. And then they forget about it, but still kind of be mad. Right.

But like so many cultural ticks, the Internet largely killed the one I'm talking about. I even remember when it ended. I worked with kids at the time and mostly rich kids at that. So naturally, those motherfuckers got there first. So when I first realized that the age of confidently passing along shit you heard without getting called out for it was in an end. It was because 12 year olds were telling me I was full of shit. And as embarrassing as it was when that did happen, it had to happen several times before I learned to start couching my undeserved confidence with phrases like I remember reading one time that or, you know, if I recall correctly. In other words, I had a modicum of intellectual humility beaten into me eventually now i i don't like to put too fine a point on this because you know in the course of 419

diatribes i probably labeled 20 different things as that's the thing that brought me to atheist activism but that was certainly one of the big turning points for me you know the ubiquity of the internet allowed me or more like forced me to learn how many things I was wrong about, how many things I thought I knew that I didn't know. It made me re-examine how I was taking in and assessing information in the first place. It led me towards skepticism, towards rationalism, and thus inevitably towards atheism. Of course, not everybody had the same reaction to that transition all i had invested in the origin of 420 was my pride in that moment some people had their ticket

to eternity in the balance of their information right some people had their whole identity caught up in their bullshit so a lot of those people chose to reject the knowledge rather than the misconception a lot of, and probably most people. But at the time when we're increasingly aware of all the dangerous ways that the internet misleads us and all the new subcategories of stupid that it's helped to create, I think it's important to remember all the shit that's on the other side of the ledger too. And that's hard to do if you can't conjure up a vivid memory of a screaming argument about what the actual rules of Monopoly say about free parking. They're talking about you, Jesus.

We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the Indica and Sativa to my hybrid Heathenwright and Eli Bosnick fellas. Are you ready to fire it up? I'm actually making pot roast to celebrate 420. I'm still young. That counts. The pot word is in it. You roast it. And I appreciate the metaphor,

Noah, but I think we all know that you're sativa, Heath is indica, and I'm a bag of basil. You smoke anyway because you don't want to admit you got ripped off. All right. Well, clearly Heath needs a nap then, so we're going to pause for a quick word from our first sponsor this week. My sheets rock.

OK, you show me you show me in the Starbucks laws, the laws show me in the laws that you have where it says you can't do that. Hey, no, I got your text. What's up? Oh, Starbucks won't make Heath a duo, the couple shot. And they're trying to call the cops no no no i don't want to talk to another manager i want you to defend your argument uh kevin if that's your real name kevin sorry a duo it's 12 12 shots wow 12 shots i mean he'll never sleep again well that's the point actually see he's a hot sleeper and so this is is his solution. Okay, stop offering me muffins. Defend your argument. I see.

Why doesn't he just try MySheetsRock? Excuse me. Excuse me. What's MySheetsRock? MySheetsRock created the regulator sheets, which are designed specifically to keep hot sleepers cool and cold sleepers comfortable. They regulate temperature, wick moisture, stay breathable, and are so soft you'll sleep comfortable every night. Well, that's because these sheets are made from best-in-class bamboo rayon, the holy grail of sheeting. This miracle material transfers body heat two times

more effectively than regular sheets and reduces humidity by 50% so you can experience your best night's sleep yet. So I won't need a venti cup of coffee filled with espresso? No, you will not. Yeah, MySheetsRock sent us a set to try and they are legitimately my favorite sheets now. Yeah, mine too. I don't know, guys. I've been lied to an awful lot today. Kevin. Well, if you don't believe me,

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scathing. Code scathing. Alright, guys. I'm in. Did you hear that, Kevin? I'll be taking my business elsewhere. Kevin. Kevin. I'm leaving, Kevin. I think his name is really Kevin. That's what he wants you to believe. Okay.

And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, religion is not done ruining our global pandemic just yet. And no, this is not a story about the Supreme Court issuing an unsigned opinion allowing five California churches to hold indoor singing events despite local ordinances. To the contrary, not like that isn't a thing that happened in the past week. But, you know, SCOTUS sides with religion over common sense is too common for us to devote a whole fucking story to it every time it happens anymore. this week to a small offshoot of christianity called catholicism and their effort to demonize the latest vaccine because abortion bullshit yep that's right everyone catholicism is standing on the sinking titanic burning all the lifesavers because the o looks too much like a butthole

yes jesus okay so yeah i guess they figured out that even the shit job we're doing rolling out the vaccine could be worse so they decided to anti-help so they're urging their followers to decline the johnson and johnson vaccine arguing that it was derived from a 50 year old abortion from the archdiocese of new or official statement here, quote, the latest vaccine from Janssen, Johnson and Johnson is morally compromised as it uses the abortion derived cell line and development and production of the vaccine as well as the testing, end quote. I'm going to push back on that by pointing out that if we literally had to abort one fucking fetus for every dose of the vaccine that we made, that would still be a net moral positive by something like, you know, some or another to zero would be such a good deal. Yeah. The fact that it derived from an abortion that happened in the fucking 70s is like, you know, I don't know, a division of that zero. is like, you know, I don't know, a division of that zero. Yeah, and if the Catholic Church is going to reject everything good

that comes from an abortion, they're going to have to start with like a bunch of educated and successful women. They do. You know what? Fair enough. Withdrawn. Also, let's not forget that Donald Trump might not even be alive

if we hadn't injected him with the eternal soul of that dutch baby that's your candidate for 2024 i heard your welcome everybody you're welcome catholic republicans fuck you and look and it's worth emphasizing that the johnson and johnson vaccine unlike the moderna and pfizer ones is that's the one shot deal right that means it's going to be way easier, generally speaking, for us to get that vaccine to low income areas. Not having to schedule a follow up is super useful if you've got an inflexible work schedule,

but it's pretty much vital if you don't have a permanent address or something like that. Now, you know, that fact has its own problems. It exacerbates the already two tiered system we have between wealthy and poor people when it comes to vaccine access but complicating all of that with an additional layer of pure bullshit is downright malicious and deadly levels of it at that generally speaking people don't get to pick their fucking vaccine off of a menu right so what this archdiocese is effectively doing isn't telling people to opt for a different vaccine it's to opt out of

vaccination and that will have a fucking death toll yeah this isn't the fucking mcrib and then you just order something else it's not like waiting for the barber you like when the bad barber pops up and it's your turn like no your hair is literally a chemical weapon right now in that weird analogy every minute without a haircut can kill people. Get a haircut. Right. And let's not forget that the crossover between people who listen to the Catholic Church

and people in a position to need the Johnson & Johnson is not nothing. Yeah. Right? Especially once vaccination efforts reach South America, which I don't know

if you've been reading the news lately, but they better fucking soon. Yeah. Now, for whatever it's worth i should add that the vatican's official position on this is that people should get whatever vaccine is available to them regardless apparently the pope's got it on good authority that god will forgive you for the 50 year old dead pre-baby if it means fewer dead now people i was gonna say

broken clock but no they didn't really get it right. No, not really. Yeah, I got it right. Wrong. But look, you'd think when there was a theological disagreement, the infallible guy would win by default. But, you know, even if it falls short of official religious dictum, scaring people off the vaccine is deadly amounts of stupid. And in this instance, it doesn't even fall short of official religious dignity. Nope, it does not.

Well, you know, they can't go all out like they would if, checks notes, someone got married. Right. And in too big a to fail news, spring is just about to be sprung.

Love is in the air. And you know what that means. It's time for the Southern Baptist Convention. Oh, I thought it meant that spring liked big butts, but I'm old. Yes, this meeting of the largest Baptist and Protestant denomination in the world and the second largest Christian denomination in the United States takes place every year so that they can tackle the important issues facing them as a

religious group like denying racism exists or in the case of this year, kicking out churches for being too nice to gay people. Yeah, cancel culture is spiraling out of control. Have they learned nothing from CPAC? Unbelievable. Yes, the Southern Baptist Convention's executive committee decided to expel four churches this year, two because their pastors were literally child rapists. But the other two, Town View Baptist Church in Kenesaw, Georgia, and St. Matthew's Baptist Church in Louisville, Kentucky, were kicked out for letting a gay couple into their congregation and donating to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which had recently lifted a ban on hiring LGBTQ employees, respectively.

So, yeah, pedophilia, letting gay people exist in the building, and giving money to a religious organization that no longer actively discriminates are equal in the SBC's mind. Actually, equal might be giving them too much credit. They might have been given the pedophile churches an extra little slap on the wrist on a technicality by lumping them in with the real heathens who supported the overly mild bigotry now

that used to be a little bit less mild. Like a mandatory minimum for a grammar crack that might have been what's happening there yeah if this story hasn't pissed you off enough i should remind you the sbc represents at last count 47 530 congregations okay of those two were pro-lgbtq enough to donate money to groups that don't actively discriminate against gay people anymore. That is 0.0042%. They did the math. Yeah. So next time you see religion being passed off as on the right side of history or bigotry being painted as only a white Christian problem, let me remind you it's a religious problem.

Full stop. Oh, full stop? Where you put a period and then a comma? You did. Yes. It's universal and it's spending the money you donate on shit like this. And when it doesn't, they're ousted along with the pastor who stands in the corner

of the playground with his hand in his pocket. Yeah. Next up in headlines. We actually have a story about something positive. Get excited. I mean, it pretty much immediately devolves into a story about ignorant bigots. But we're taking the win for the first part. I'm talking about the House of Representatives passing the Equality Act.

Ooh. Which would officially make, yeah, ooh, ooh, indeed. That would officially make the Civil Rights Act of 1964 include protection against discrimination on the basis

of sexual orientation and gender identity. Which is great for all the people it protects, blah, blah, blah, boo. But most importantly, we are persecuting

Christian people. So, hell yeah. Victory lap. So, victory lap. Yeah, 2021, taking the wins where we can get them. Yeah, 2021, finally taking half of an action that uninformed but decent people think we already did decades ago. So, you might be thinking, didn't the Supreme Court already rule last year in Bostock versus Clayton County that it would be literally impossible to discriminate against a person for sexual orientation or gender identity without discriminating based on sex and therefore violating the existing law from 1964? Well, yes, they did. But that branch of government can absolutely not be trusted right now. And their ruling only applied to discrimination

in employment exactly so the new law if it passes through the senate would apply to employment housing public accommodations public education federal funding credit and the jury system seems like they'd also include i don't know medical care just in case that's not covered by one of the things i already said and also something like, plus all the other stuff we're not listing here that would obviously be evil to allow discrimination in. But I guess that would leave a legal gray area and we might end up with not enough legal bigotry. Yeah. And people, by the way, are reacting to this as, so what? I just have to be a doctor for black people now?

Political correctness is out of control yes yeah so fucking shame that they have so few lawyers in congress right i feel like one of them could button down that language yeah a couple yeah and that's the end of the good news for uh for now at least until maybe the victory in the senate so welcome to the ignorant bigot portion of the program. It's kind of our thing. Reporting on the reporting. Yeah, thank you. I'll start by pointing out that exactly three Republicans in the House voted for the Equality Act. There are 211 Republicans in the House. 208 voted to continue having legalized bigotry. One of those 208 was GOP Congressman Greg Stube of Florida, who argued against the Equality Act by saying, the gender confusion that exists in our culture today

is a clear rejection of God's good design. At which point, Democrat Jerry Nath responded, what any religious tradition describes as god's will is no concern of this congress read a fucking amendment well i well i do agree with uh stube that we have to do something about the gender confusion in this country there are a shocking number of people in this country who think that there are lady potatoes yeah they're very upset about it. I just like how Congress has become this beautiful microcosm of America, right?

We have like Harvard educated lawyers driving forward progressive policy and then dudes from Florida who stand up and yell, Jesus wants me to stand while I pee. And they're equal. They're equal. We have those things. They have the same amount of power. Yep. while I pee. And they're equal. They're equal. We have those things. They each get a vote.

They have the same amount of power. Yep. Yep. So in response to Nadler's very simple reminder about the very first phrase in the very first amendment, the entire Christian right community

had a meltdown and started screaming lies. Normally, we'd cut to Anna here, but fuck your face. You don't get a jingle. You don't even get to hear. You don't get to be adjacent to a jingle. I'll just give one

example of the screaming liars. Pastor Greg Locke. Always a great example of a screaming liar. Yeah, he works for that every time. Just a reminder, his order at Dunkin' Donuts every single day is 56 ounces of coffee with 28

creams and 20 sugars. And he has 96,000 followers on Twitter and a blue check mark next to his name. And here's what Locke had to say. Quote, sadly, Jerry Nadler will regret his the will of God is of no concern to this Congress statement. What an arrogant fool. God will not be mocked.

End quote. I hate to disagree with you, Craig, but we have 420 episodes that prove otherwise. Well, 419 and a half. He can still smite us now. Craig Luck, your existence is a mockery of God. Okay. More so than anything we've managed in the last eight years.

Yeah. Damn it if we the last eight years. Yeah. But damn it if we won't keep trying. Yeah, we'll keep mentioning you. I mean, you make it easy when we just have to like say what you did without really any commentary.

So again, lots of bigots everywhere, but great news if we can make the Equality Act a law. But here's what this is really about. Here's the big takeaway.

It's about Greg Locke having a blue checkmark on Twitter and me not having one. That is outrageous. Thank you. So here's the big takeaway it's about greg lock having a blue check mark on twitter and me not having one that is outrageous thank you so here's what i want from everyone this is serious get me that goddamn check mark that's right jack talk to your friend at twitter hq occupy wall street whatever you gotta do make this happen my dad just died and i need this i'm calling it in i'm calling in the dead dad card. Fucking do it. And just to be clear, this isn't like some kind of vanity project.

This is very literally exactly a vanity project. I want that goddamn checkmark. Hashtag blue check for Heath Enright. Make it happen. Make it big on Twitter. I will not live in a world where Greg fucking Locke has anything of value that I want. That's unacceptable. Yeah.

Yeah. And while you're at it, people, Eli and I should get check marks, too, for having 2,000 and 4,400 more followers than Heath, respectively, as well. I mean, look, I love hurting Heath, but I think we can all agree I should get whatever the opposite of a blue check mark is. Some kind of warning label. Maybe like they did with Trump's tweets. Yeah, exactly. You guys can ride in on my

vanity project on the coattails of it. That's fine. That's fine. Also, why are like 2,400, you know, whatever. It's fine. It's fine. I want that checkmark. And in a few God-men news. This week, the entire 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will decide whether or not

it's in the First Amendment that you have the right to sit on a jury if the lawyer for the defense is the voices in your head. Because this is America and that's how it works now. I don't think we can handle the truth. I don't think we can. No, we cannot. So here's the story. Back in 2017, Florida Congressman Corinne Brown was on trial for filing false tax returns and committing mail and wire fraud because she did those crimes. Yeah. So luckily for Miss Brown, God had other plans before the deliberation had even started. One of the jurors in her trial told the other jurors, quote, a higher being told me Corinne Brown was not guilty on all charges, adding that he, quote, trusted the Holy Spirit.

OK, OK, let's be fair. That person shouldn't be banned from jury duty altogether. In my opinion, they can be a peer when a ghost is being tried for tax. ghost is being tried for tax fraud. That's valid. Well, and look, if Corinne Brown is going to truly be tried by a jury of her peers, you're going to need to accept some high levels of bat shittery, right?

Yeah, so luckily, another juror told the judge, and the judge dismissed the juror with the direct line in his head to the creator of the universe, and Ms. Brown was convicted. Side note, God was wrong then, by the way. Just throwing that out there. And Miss

Brown's attorney appealed the decision to expel that juror to a three-judge panel last year who affirmed the court's decision, saying, quote, come on, man. Come on. Alright, and judge number two, also, come on, man. Okay,. All right. And judge number two, also,

come on, man. Okay. And number three, uh, yeah. Pro hoc stare decisis. Come on,

man. Okay. We got it. We got it. Come on, man. Fuck yourself. So,

okay. Wait. So on appeal, aren't they essentially arguing in a court of law that Corinne Brown is not guilty because the Holy Spirit done said so? At least they are arguing that she should have gotten the chance for the Holy Spirit to tell his side of the story. Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

So this week, Ms. Brown's lawyer appealed that three-judge panel decision. So now the entire 11th Circuit will rule on the earlier decision. And bad news. The answer is not a sure thing. In case you forgot, Donald Trump spent the last four years filling the courts at every conceivable level with lifelong appointees who take their legal opinions from God. So actually,

yeah, fingers crossed. This one works out for us, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. Fingers crossed this one works out for us, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. And with the firm hope that we affirm common sense and get a quick way out of jury duty should the need arise,

we're going to take a quick break for a word from our other sponsor this week, Stamps.com. Another thing, why is Thomas even... Why does he, though? Hey, guys. What's going on? Oh, hey, Noah. Heath and I are just sending out Patreon rewards.

And let me tell you, these books are hard to fit into a bottle. You got to push it. I say you got to push it. I am pushing. Wait, you're trying to send our Patreon rewards like messages in a bottle? Yeah. I sure hope our patrons live on a beach. Push it.

Guys, if you want to get stuff sent easily and fast, why don't you just try stamps.com? What? What's Casper Mattress? Nope. Keith? I mean, it was stamps.com. What's stamps.com?

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of the cost of those expensive postage meters. Okay, Noah, where do we sign up? Well, stop wasting time going to the post office now and go to stamps.com instead. There's no risk. And with our promo code scathing, you get a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus free postage in a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage,

and type in scathing. That's stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in scathing. That's stamps.com, promo code scathing. Stamps.com. Never go to the post office again. Sounds good, Noah. We're in. All right, well, sorry that Heath had to drink all of those bottles. Oh, he was going to drink those anyways.

I think I love Thomas Smith. Not now, Heath. I do, though. We all do. And in LGBT clue news tonight, Christian Watchdog Group, an order of magnitude challenged organization, One Million

Moms, sure does keep busy. Heck yeah. Just since this pandemic started, we've covered stories about One Million Moms freaking out about Mash.com's love affair with Satan, Frank's red hot alluding to the word shit burger king outright saying the word damn disney not censoring hamilton the hallmark channel not being anti-gay enough and kit kat implying a penis and no that is not an exhaustive list it just kept going i looked it up and it just kept going and going like the joke will be stale

by the time i get through all this of course since there's only 4 000 of them and they want to call themselves 1 million moms i suppose each of them is on the hook to be pissed off about 250 things at a time or so that being said i think they may have outdone themselves with their latest target and that would be the gay ass alphabet song on blues clues okay yes a is for anal in that song but that's the anal's a hetero thing too they're being ridiculous yes yeah if anything they should be mad that b is for butt stuff because it's repetitive right that's just you know i'm being more creative c all right so for those of you who aren't familiar, Blue's Clues is something you're familiar with.

Don't fucking lie. It's the kid show with the little dog and the spectacularly unobservant dude. And according to One Million Moms, it's also a program intent on, quote, indoctrinating children by exposing them to the LGBTQ lifestyle and presenting it as normal. End quote.

But the 750 podcasters on this show agree that that is bullshit the video they point towards is just a fucking alphabet song and i waited the whole time for some gay sex to break out and it never did instead all we got was the letter p which stood for pride and as if that's not bad enough, was colored like a rainbow. Oh. Looking forward to the Alphabet song by One Million Moms in response, you know, P is for pride, like a proud boy has pride.

He's right. Yeah, exactly. Also, Noah, if you're looking for gay stuff to show up on Blue's Clues, I have a website for you. We'll talk on there. We'll talk on there.

It's out there. Yeah, right. Exactly. All right. So first of all, kudos to Blue's Clues. The imagery is very clearly a message of solidarity with the LGBTQ community. In addition to the rainbow coloring, the P is actually surrounded by a number of pride flags, including

the bisexual pride flag, the trans pride flag, the lesbian pride flag, the gender fluid pride flag, and more. And the image, by the way, also marked the last time that I could say I'd ever learned anything from Blue's Clues, too, because Spockedify knew that there were more than a dozen different pride flags. Interesting. Cool. But importantly, the only message this sends is that people should be proud of themselves, right? Well, it's more since my guess is most Blue's Clues viewers don't know the intersex pride flag at a glance.

It's really just sending a message to parents that their show isn't cool with bigotry and that is the message that one million moms is objecting to. Yep. Okay, well, if they're looking for a cartoon alphabet that promotes gay sex, I'm sure Angelo

Madrid can come up with something for them to tweet about. Angelo, listen to us. Get it going. We will publish that children's book, no matter how many publishers turn us down, buddy. It'll be the... I was thinking not children's book.

It'll be the last thing that you publish, of course. You're a coward. It'll be a good note to go out on. And finally tonight, CPAC happened. It did. And it was exactly the shit show we've come to expect even more of a shit show than we've come to expect honestly the stage this year was shaped like a literal

nazi rune yep donald trump proclaimed himself the presumptive republican nominee for 2024 bold the intergalactic chancellor of happy science was there. We got a speech from a Nazi date rapist. And it seems like I already mentioned him, but David Silverman was there too. And thanks to Silverman and the other conservative non-believers at Atheists for Liberty, like Michael Shermer,

who I also haven't mentioned yet, despite how it might've sounded, and Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay, thanks to all their amazing work, CPAC was actually a good thing because preventing bodily autonomy for pregnant people was not the biggest priority for the conservatives of America.

So they fixed it. Atheists for Liberty fixed it. Who moved the party towards more secular forms of bat shittery you did that's who did not really though and by the way what it's worth i don't think i've ever formally apologized for platforming david silverman on this show um i'm sorry i did that i i should have known better just based on the way he acted because he did all that like frat boy social dominant shit every single time i interacted

with him and when i interviewed him my first question should have been hey man why the fuck would you do all that frat boy social dominance shit if you weren't a molesty republican douche nozzle and it wasn't that wasn't my first question and for that i apologize yeah so this is great news, by the way. The log cabin humanists fixed conservative America. Great stuff. Finally. No longer a problem. Conservative America. They're gone.

And they all started celebrating after seeing the results of a CPAC straw poll that asked conference goers about their most important political issues. The most popular were election integrity, obviously. Sure. Constitutional rights and immigration. important political issues. The most popular were election integrity, obviously, constitutional rights, and immigration. And in last place, out of the eight options they offered in the poll, was pro-life. It was actually dignity slash pro-life,

but it was pro-life. So we learned two important lessons. First of all, that's where they hide their dignity. Good to know. And we also learned that atheists for liberty honed the Christian right with facts and logic until they were barely Christian anymore. They're like the henchmen who convinced Dr. Doom to recycle. They're just wandering around.

Did you see the bins? Also, their top three priorities are buzzword for eliminating democracy, buzzword for Christianity being above the law, buzzword for hating brown people. Right.

Right. So it's more like the henchman who saved Johnny Storm by convincing Dr. Doom to kill the other three first. So in response to the straw poll, we got a big announcement of self-congratulations from david silverman in case anyone's not familiar he's the former president of american atheists who was fired in 2018 and had to leave in disgrace this was not because of the multiple

accusations of sexual misconduct that happened right around the same time. That was unrelated. Unrelated. Saved it. And here's the big announcement from Silverman. Quote, for those who shit on my efforts to secularize the right. That's us. You can apologize anytime. Oh, you hold your breath, man.

You hold your breath. We'll be right there. Yeah. He continues. How would you like a choice of secular parties to vote for? Coming soon. Thanks to AFL. Atheists for Liberty.

End quote. Oh, goody. Who should I choose? The party that doesn't want to actively install a theocracy or the party that believes their political opponents are lizards from space who eat babies secularly. What a buffet. Dave, not all of us need atheist parties that are super forgiving of getting kicked out of multiple leadership roles for sexual misconduct issue.

That's not what we're all looking for. Yeah, so David, I know you're listening. I personally never shat on your efforts to secularize the right, mostly because my shit is very valuable, and I don't care who you are or what you do for the most part,

except for the terrible stuff. But I thought about it, and I'll happily shit on you now. Assuming it's consensual, of course. That's important to me. Come down to Cincinnati, where I'll definitely apologize in person right after that shitting. I will to Cincinnati where I'll definitely apologize in person right after that shitting. I will totally.

I'll do it in person and I'll definitely register to vote for the secular Republican Party that exists now. Sounds great. So just fill out that paperwork for me and I'm in. I definitely won't use that paperwork

to wipe my ass. I'll totally do all the stuff I just said. He'll use it to wipe my ass, David. All all the stuff i just said yeah he'll use it to wipe my ass david all right so while we explain to eli once again that heath wiping his ass doesn't send the message he thinks it sends we're gonna close out the headlines for the night he eli thanks as always and when we come back we're gonna talk about something way older than me for a bit. Eh? You know, a lot of people have been giving us shit because we're still working through the 2019 Vulgarity for Charity roasts in 2021, and that's good,

right? Because the more focused that you guys are on how long it's taken us to mow through those 2,000 some odd roasts, the less likely you are to notice that we started the how bullshit is it segment back in 2014. And we still haven't even made it to the whole goddamn alphabet yet, which brings us to this year's installment of how bullshit is it?

So tell us Heath, what load of shit are we going to be talking about today? Well, we're almost to the alphabetical finish line. If you ignore the fact that we never did K, L, or Q. So this week, we'll be talking about young earth creationism. Oh, awesome. Dumb before creationism. That's right. All right. So what is young earth creationism? Well, you know how most Christians have enough sense to ignore the Bible's contradictions and not try to get all of its stories to do stuff like line up and make sense? Yeah, they're like WandaVision fans.

They have one more. I'm sure they're going to get it to all add up in one. It's going to be great. Oh, it's going to be so good. I'm sure there's a very good reason the director's coming out trying to lower people's expectations. and the director's coming out trying to lower people's expectations. Okay, yes. No, but yes, Heath, I agree. You have uttered the single sentence that I will agree with that starts with, you know how most Christians have enough sense.

So well done. Right. So young earth creationists are the opposite of that. So all Christians are creationists. To be Christian is to believe that Christian God created the earth as well as the rest of the universe. But young earth creationism holds that those were two distinct events because young earth creationists are biblical literalists. And that means they think that the universe was crafted in seven days in precisely the order laid out in Genesis. Just a quick refresher.

Order laid out in Genesis. Just a quick refresher. That order would be light, the sky, the earth and plants, then all the light sources. Okay. Sea and air creatures, land creatures, including humans, and finally, days off. Yeah, weekends. Yeah. And real quick, before you jump on Twitter to tell us that actually some Christians believe in evolution and the Big Bang, maybe instead tweet at them and ask them where the fuck their God fits in. Right.

Watching from the corner like Jerry Falwell Jr. What is happening? What would you say you do here then? I take the paperwork down to the scientists. I'm a people person. Yeah. I just got fired by the Bible. I guide the paperwork down to the scientists. I'm a people person. Yeah, I just got fired by the Bible. I guide the evolution.

Okay, so the Bible offers up a more or less continuous account of the world's history up to and including actual historical events that we know the dates of. And while it doesn't always have those events in the correct order or in the correct century, the Bible does half-assedly link up to the actual historical record that it's trying to cover. And that means if you were so inclined, you could count the years backwards using the Bible's genealogies and determine an exact year when the book began.

And Christians have been so inclined for quite a while now. Okay, by the way, if you ever want to take like a deep dive into Christian crazy, follow the ongoing historical conversation about how the book makes the measurements in question. Spoiler alert, there is a century of guys fighting about how long a tree lives and they are all wrong. Everyone involved is wrong. So, likely the most famous and, to the time, the most rigorous attempt to coax the Earth's

age out of the Bible comes from an Irish bishop named James Usher. Back in the 17th century, he totaled up all the begats and came up with not just a year but a date. The Earth began on October 23rd, 4004 B.C.

And as silly as this exercise seems to us, I should point out that he wasn't the only intellectual pissing away his time with it back then. Johannes Kepler did the same thing

and determined that light was first let to be in 3993 BC. And though it's disputed, there's evidence that Isaac Newton did the same and came up with a similar year. Yeah, though it's disputed, there's evidence that Isaac Newton did the same and came up with a similar year. Yeah, and Newton did his instead of fucking.

So you know he meant it. Exactly. But, okay, so wait a minute. I've read the Bible almost twice now. I get that there are plenty of begats and shit, but it doesn't always say how old everybody was when they begat. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't.

And since the Bible is chock full of like 900-year-old people, I don't see how you do that math. Oh, you lie is what you do. You lie. Okay, all right. See, that 6,000-years-old number was already the accepted age of the earth, give or take, at the time of these people trying to figure this out. And since that actually was about the time that writing first appeared,

you can see how they got there. The historical record goes back this far and no farther. So instead of looking to the Bible to try to determine the age of the planet, Usher et al. were actually looking through the Bible, trying to find the number 6,000. They were trying to retrofit the current understanding of the world into the Bible. Well, that's going to be ironic eventually.

Sure the fuck is. Yeah. But that remained the accepted age of the earth in Christian circles for centuries until the mid-19th century and the rise of

uniformitarianism, which was a then controversial idea that the laws of nature weren't just wildly different a few thousand years ago and this arose when academics in several disciplines all started to realize they were seeing shit that would have taken way more than 6 000 years to happen most notably geologists so at this point christianity split into two camps people who defended the usher

chronology and people who started believing that the bible was selectively literal and there was just a coincidence that all the literal parts were also the parts we couldn't test scientifically uh-huh okay well i i mean i can see how that works for some people but there are a significant percentage of people who can't even enjoy a fucking batman movie if it doesn't line up with canon and that's why we have young earth creationists got it they're they're the uh but but raz al ghul never taught batman to be a ninja wing of christianity that's that yeah they're boring and wrong in two universes they are and they insist that every word of it is absolutely true which means that while you can

quibble with usher's numbers a bit you absolutely cannot concede that the earth is four and a half billion years old thus young earth creationism i bet whoever decided that under four and a half billion years should be called young was about to celebrate their 45th birthday. Okay. All right, Eli. So when does young earth creationism start? Okay. For that, we have Henry Morris to thank. H. Moe?

H. Moe, indeed. He was a professor of civil engineering with a PhD in hydraulics. So he figured he knew a little something about cutting edge science. and hydraulics. So he figured he knew a little something about cutting edge science. And he set out to write a book refuting biology, genetics,

geology, and cosmology. His 1961 book, The Genesis Flood, solid title, good start. It's been called the founding document of the young earth creationist movement. Though I think it's only fair

to give the Bible at least co-credit there you go yeah okay but but but doesn't this just make the argument harder for them i mean look by then there were already interpretations like the day age hypothesis by the 1960s and of course that's the hypothesis that says in genesis every day represented some indeterminate age. There was plenty of hocus pocus scholarship, in other words, that pounded the square Bible into the round earth. And I mean, obviously, none of it's convincing, but it's less hokey than the pseudo geology that young earth creationism demands. So why even bother backing yourself into that corner?

creationism demands so why even bother backing yourself into that corner two words for you noah evil lucian as any intellectually honest person has to admit evolution by natural selection disproves the biblical narrative of creation it doesn't just conflict with it it directly refutes it but we can't be created in the image of god and evolved through natural processes we can't be created in the image of God and evolved through natural processes. We can't simultaneously be the children of God and the children of apes. And for evolution to take place, you need millions of years worth of earth. Let me give it to you in Morris's own words from the conclusion of the Genesis flood. Quote, the last refuge of the case for evolution immediately vanishes away, and the record of the rocks become a tremendous witness to the holiness and justice and power of the living God of creation. Exclamation point, end quote.

Okay, so what was the reception like? Well, naturally, his views have been entirely rejected in academia. Naturally, his views have been entirely rejected in academia. I saw one estimate from 1987 that suggested 700 scientists in all of America at the time gave credence to so-called creation science. That's out of a total of about 480,000. Wow. And a study from 1985 found that out of 135,000 submissions to scientific journals in the previous year, 18 advocated for creationism. Wow. And that's fucking submissions.

Yeah, right. I literally submitted to a scientific journal as a prank war, people. Get on it. And it's worth noting that academia often goes out of its way to reject creationism. We've talked about it on the show before, but I love it too much to pass up another opportunity. Project Steve is the best. It's an amazing rebuttal to the lists creationists occasionally circulate, and they put in some kind of impressive sounding number of real scientists who doubt evolution. Project Steve is a list put together

by the National Center for Science Education who affirm that those scientists are just stupid people who use the word scientist. And the list from Project Steve dwarfs all the creationist lists, even though it's restricted to just people named Steven. Wow. As of November of last year,

it had 1,459 signatories. More if you count all the Stephanies that they allowed after somebody pointed out that the National Center for Science Education probably shouldn't sponsor lists that necessarily exclude women. Even if they're done for parody purposes. Yeah, that makes sense.

So they added Stephanies. Alright, well if there's one thing I know about the American people, it's that they're going to reject a bad argument if it's been disavowed by experts, even more so if if those ideas affirm their religious beliefs. So I guess this Morris shit was laughed off pretty quickly by the populace. Well, 40 plus percent of American adults accept his young earth creationism ideas to this day. And they have they have a dedicated theme park now right yeah democracy is so obviously a mistake everybody why would you want those people to have the same control over the government as you think think with your heads everybody

it's yeah they'd have all of it otherwise. And just for the record, the arguments presented by Morris in 1961 remain unchanged in the young earth creationism literature of today, which is not surprising, I guess. If a theory shows up pre-disproven, new additional disproof doesn't generally dislodge it for religious people. Now, they do periodically update their examples, though, especially when there's a new scientific discovery that sounds confusing to them. Like surfing monkeys. Surfing monkeys, exactly. Gotcha, okay.

But basically, every young Earth creationist argument follows this general format. Premise A, this recent scientific discovery sure doesn't seem to slot in with an overly simplistic view of evolution very well, does it? Premise B. Smoke bomb! Conclusion. I should be able to

teach this in public schools. Well, technically I still go to public school, so instead I'm going to yell at my teacher in this snowy field. I'm that pal. I'm that pal. I live on a bunk bed. All right.

So they haven't updated their ideas since 1961. Some would say they haven't updated their ideas since 1661. But yeah, there have been a few minor changes.

For example, some creationists have nudged the Earth's birthday back a little bit. And now they argue that the planet is 10,000 years old.

Oh, ooh la la. Which very conveniently keeps the earliest known boat within the confines of the existence of world history. Still not the oldest known pottery, for example. Okay.

So I know we have to get to him eventually, so I guess I'll bring him up. Where does Ken Ham fit in? Well, like any scientifically rigorous theory that's based on sound research and not personal bias, creationism needs several dedicated organizations working full time to even make an attempt at legitimizing it. And that's where you get groups like Henry Morris' Institute for Creation Research and, of course, Ken Ham's Answers in Genesis. These are groups that reject

allegorical readings of the Bible and invest actual scientifically trained people and actual scientific equipment and a bunch of money to make creationism sound more plausible instead of using all those resources to like cure a disease or something or anything useful well let's be fair i mean anyone who was going to sign on to answers in genesis wasn't going to cure shit right and don't francis collins

me that dude keeps his religion right where it belongs in a-spouted waterfall he saw as a teenager. Now, for whatever it's worth, you have to credit the creationists with at least being more intellectually consistent than the other Christians. You do have to give them that. If you interpret Genesis allegorically, at best, the stories don't make any sense, and at worst, the religion completely

falls apart. If Eve eating the apple is an allegory, what's that an allegory of? Right, yeah. And if it's so important that all of humanity was cursed by that, why would God be coy about it? And if it's not literal, then what purpose was Jesus even serving? What was he redeeming? It really falls apart for them.

Yeah, and if your religion boils down to Jesus was a nice man who gave good advice, first of all, no, he didn't. Second of all, no, he wasn't. No. But third of all, may I recommend someone who never freaked out at a gift shop? Carl Sagan, the shake and bake guy, James Baldwin. Of course, at the same time, in order to be intellectually consistent about the Bible, they have to be intellectually inconsistent about pretty much everything else.

If some archaeologist makes a discovery tomorrow that doesn't fit with our present understanding of evolution, creationists are going to seize on it as further evidence that they're right. But if that very same archaeologist made a discovery the next day that definitively disproved creationism, which is something that archaeologists do all the time, actually. If that second thing happened, creationists would reject not just the finding,

but the entire science of archaeology at that point. They're citing scientific evidence that scientific evidence can't be trusted. That's their actual business model. Wow, yeah. Alright, but this has such a tangled web feel to it. I mean, yes, shrinking down the age of the earth helps

if you want to argue against evolution, but interpreting the Bible literally seems like a really hard way to get there. Setting aside the flood myth, that means you have to explain away shit like races of giants, 900-year-old people, the pausing sun.

How could this possibly... Seriously, though, how couldn't this solve more problems than it creates? Oh, it doesn't, and it can't. But the infinite amount of problems it creates definitely keep the people at Answers in Genesis flush with shit to

justify their existence to their donors so basically every single academic field has to be countered with an anti-version with an evil goatee biology shows unmistakable signs of evolution over billions of years so they need an anti-biology rock formations show the earth is 4.5 billion years old, approximately. So they need anti-geology. Dinosaurs were a thing. So they need anti-paleontology. We can keep going with this as long as you can keep naming words that end in ology, pretty much. Oh, oh, cryptozoology.

Leviathan. Entomology. Number of legs on a grasshopper. Meteorology. Number of legs on a grasshopper. Meteorology. Their whole thing is based on a 40-day rainstorm that flooded the earth. Okay. And they think the firmament was a real thing, a real antediluvian phenomenon that somehow held all that water. Okay, no, withdrawn, withdrawn.

Yeah. Oh, terminology. Ooh. Yeah. Oh, terminology. Ooh. Okay. Well, they call the blueprints for humans intelligent design. Okay. All right. Wow.

All right. Well done. All right. So I guess the only question left to ask then is, how bullshit is it? Well, it's both built upon bullshit and the foundation of bullshit. It's the bullshit cream in a bullshit Oreo. Vivint. Vivint.

Yeah, no, that's going to be the image for this week's episode. Okay, so I guess that leaves us with just one letter, assuming you don't count all the other ones that we didn't do. So at the rate we're going, that means we're going to get through the alphabet by 2013 or so. Heath, Eli, thanks again. Do magic. Eli's baby has these gigantic rosy cheeks and he looks like he's made out of little bubbles. So get everybody you know vaccinated even if you knock him out with a fucking bat.

I need to pinch those fucking cheeks before he grows out of them. 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's hot friend, God of Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday

and an even new episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this show wouldn't feel right in your ears if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for both show-related stuff and the Bacon of the Month Club that he signed me up for for my birthday. I need to thank Eli for show-related stuff and for getting me a few coins that are old enough

to make me look young in comparison for my birthday. I also want to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions, but just for show stuff right now, she's actually waiting until my real birthday to give me stuff. I also want to thank Shannon from the Glass Box Podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. If you ever want to know just how fucked up Mormonism is, be sure to check out the show notes. There's still a link for their show.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people. Douglas, Julie, Jan, Cheryl, Callan, Larry, Roy, Barry, Rob, Phantom X, Janine, Alex, and Catherine. Douglas, Julie, Jan, Cheryl, and Callan, who are hotter than my episode 420 celebration bowl. Larry, Roy, Barry, and Rob, who are smoking even when they're not smoking. And Phantom X, Janine, Alex, and Catherine, whose IQs are what our episode numbers have been counting up to this whole time. Together, these 13 thoughtful thorns and the thumbs of theism help thrust thoughts into Thursdays this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, 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 scathingadeus.com. And if you'd like to help, but you're not gonna, I'm fine with that. I'm sure you have your reasons. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robertson handles our social media, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or doubts, you can find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingads.com.

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