The Scathing Atheist - 427: Red Carpet Edition

Episode Date: April 22, 2021

In this week’s episode, the government finally takes notice of what a pastor does with his PP, Jerry Falwell Junior is a train wreck and I can't look away, and we’ll polish off some very dusty awards. --- 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/ --- Headlines: Even Pat Robertson can't believe a cop could confuse a taser and a gun: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/04/15/even-pat-robertson-cant-believe-a-cop-could-confuse-a-taser-and-a-gun/ DC pastor charged with 3.5 Million dollar PPP loan fraud: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/04/18/d-c-pastor-charged-with-3-5-million-ppp-loan-fraud/ Liberty University sues Jerry Falwell Junior for $10 million: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/04/16/liberty-university-just-sued-jerry-falwell-jr-for-10-million/ Alex Jones has proof that COVID is a government conspiracy to brain damage your children: https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/alex-jones-launches-plandemic-style-conspiracy-theory-discourage-covid-19 MIke Lindell’s “free speech” website is gloriously stupid: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/04/14/mypillow-guy-my-new-free-speech-app-wont-let-users-take-gods-name-in-vain/ and https://www.businessinsider.com/mike-lindell-social-media-site-frank-launch-day-errors-issues-2021-4

Warning, this podcast contains words that rhyme with sass, stitch, spit, and smotherfucker. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Adam and Eve, ZipRecruiter, and by opiates. Opiates, because otherwise Heath and Eli would rank the races. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hey y'all, this is Avedon, and I don't have a podcast to plug or a blog for you to read. And now, The Scathing Atheist. It's Thursday. It's April 22nd. And it's In God We Trust Day. And no, we fucking don't.

Yeah, not even religious people do that. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Jared Kushner's New Jersey. How dare you? Cincinnati Red State and Redtown Blue State. This is the Scathing Atheist.

Oh! This week's episode, the government finally takes notice of what a pastor does with his pee-pee. Jerry Falwell Jr. is a train wreck and I cannot look away. And we'll polish off some very dusty awards. But first, the diatribe. So if your grandpa went out and smeared his shit all over the slurping machine,

you'd feel like you owed the staff at that 7-Eleven an apology, even if you weren't like his primary caregiver or anything. It isn't your shit. Wasn't you that applied it. Wasn't your fault that he did it. But in some weird way, he kind of represents your family. So you feel some weird tangential responsibility anyway. your family so you feel some weird tangential responsibility anyway and that's how i feel about richard dawkins latest twitter meltdown now for those of you who don't know richard dawkins author

of the best-selling book that promotes atheism of all time unless you count the bible and the quran and probably still the best known atheist in the world fired off a tweet last week that compared being transgendered to being rachel dolezal the white lady who pretended to be black and got accused of virtually every kind of fraud known to man so here's the tweet quote in 2015 rachel dolezal a white chapter president of naacp was vilified for identifying as black some men choose to identify as women and some women choose to identify as men you will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as women and some women choose to identify as men you will be vilified if you deny that they literally are what they identify as discuss and look he's 102 so there might be a

part of you that wants to talk him down gently and just explain the error in his perceptions and and that'd be fine if this wasn't the 800th time he had done something like this. Right. In 2013, he sent out a tweet about how few Nobel Prizes Muslims had as though racism and the echoes of colonialism had nothing to do with that. And it was cultural superiority that explained it all. In 2015, he tweeted out something about how trans men are chromosomally women, but it's just semantics anyway. Hell, he sent out a tweet in 2014 where he ranked the rapes. and he's been on a tear lately with turfy bullshit which is a weird position after dismissing feminism for years

because sexism in the west isn't as bad as it is in saudi arabia he's way beyond benefit of the doubt territory of course that hasn't stopped several of his most ardent fans from trying to excuse him with that same like the fucking he was just asking questions bullshit, a.k.a. the Joe Rogan defense. I mean, that's a weak ass defense, even when the person asked a question, which, to be clear, Dawkins didn't in that tweet. But regardless, when your question is whether somebody's identity is a fucking fraud, keep to yourself or better yet ask it in an appropriate forum right get your answer ask google i'm sure there are any number of websites that would be happy to explain to the goddamn biologist how biology works hell i know several trans people that would patiently walk him through it if he was genuinely asking a fucking question but you don't go to twitter to genuinely ask a question like that you go there to lob a fucking grenade now we did try to unlob it with a weak ass apology

where he said he didn't mean to disparage trans people but it takes a lot of willful ignorance to pretend he didn't know what he was doing when he compared him to a woman who lied about her race because it was advantageous to her career and the fact that he's already been embroiled in some low-level transphobia on Twitter leading up to this makes it pretty much impossible. His Twitter outbursts have already cost him plenty of respect in the atheist community. They've cost him plenty of speaking gigs, plenty of conference appearances, and this latest one also cost him an award for humanism. I guess the American Humanist Association started thinking it looked pretty bad

for their highest honor to still be held by a person so readily willing to question the humanity of other people, kind of the cardinal sin of humanism in so much as there is one. And in their statement, they specifically noted that pattern of behavior. I thought this quote summed it up perfectly. Quote, regrettably, Richard Dawkins has, over the past several years, accumulated a history of making statements that use the guise of scientific discourse to demean marginalized groups an approach antithetical to humanist values you know and that strikes right at the heart of the issue some people want to give him a pass because he's been a great advocate for science

in the past but that's all the more reason to hold him to the highest possible standard. A lot of people still look to Dawkins to learn the science of an issue. And even if you're not outraged by this latest tweet, even if you want to give him the benefit of the doubt, you have to at least acknowledge that it smacks a gross ignorance of the science regarding transgenderism. And it also makes it all the more important for people in a position like mine to say something when they get the science so horribly wrong. So what's the lesson other than fuck Richard Dawkins transphobic bullshit? Well, one lesson is that ours needs to be a movement of ideas, not leaders. Dawkins rose to prominence in the movement by being right, and the less often he does that, the less clout he's afforded in our movement.

Now, it's not a one-to-one correlation, unfortunately. I'm sure we're going to lose some patrons over even the lightest and most deserving condemnation of the guy, but it's at least what most of us strive for. We want to be a movement of guiding principles, not guiding lights. And the quality of our leaders will be commensurate with our ability to do exactly that.

Let the other guys do divinity and infallibility. We don't have room for it here. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the Tin Man and Scarecrow to my cowardly lie and Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick-Bellis. Are you ready to look behind the curtain? I mean, I feel like if I was the scarecrow, you would have let me start pushing brain pills by now, so...

Yeah, and I'm not trying to find a heart. That's illogical. Well, if I had the guts to insist otherwise, I'd fuck up the bit. So instead, we're just going to throw things over to our first sponsor this week, Adam and Eve. No, I went first last week. Fine, fine.

Okay, so here's what we're going to... so hey guys oh what are you doing hey no oh hey no heath and i were just meeting for our weekly free stuff club you have a free stuff club yep every week we see how much free stuff we can get and do sort of a show and tell at our meetings oh well that actually sounds kind of cool can i play i play? I got these free dinner mints the other day. Dinner mints? Nice. Heath? Well, there was a new guy at the Lost and Found at the park, so... Ta-da!

Wow! Shoes! Nice! Right? Okay, I feel like those are just some other dude's shoes. Not anymore. They're not. Yeah.

What about you, Eli? What'd you get? Oh, I got free fuck stuff from adamandeve.com. Wait, what? How'd you get free fuck stuff from adamandeve.com? So, you know how when you use the code SCATHING at checkout on adamandeve.com, you can get almost any one item for 50% off? Of course.

Well, when you do that, right now, Adam and Eve loads on the free stuff. You get a vibrator, a cock ring, and a lube sample, plus six free porn movies. Free porn and fuck stuff? Dude, that is so much better than these mints. It is. Once again, that's scathing, S-C-A-T-H-I-N-G, offer code scathing at checkout, adamandeve.com, to get 50% off almost any one item and 10 free gifts. I mean, you could put these shoes up your butt if you wanted.

You could. Come on, man. What you could. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, we're going to do a little thought experiment. So if I yell super soaker, super soaker, and then shoot Eli in the face with a real gun and he dies. I'm guilty of killing Eli with a real gun. Yes, you are.

Okay, I guess that's a pretty simple concept. Probably didn't need the thought experiment, but there it was. Seems like that would apply if I was a cop too. Even if Eli was very aggressively sitting in a car menacing me. Well, apparently it's not quite that simple because Eli's white. Right. Of course, this is all leading up to the tragic story of Dante Wright, who was shot and killed by police officer Kim Potter in Minnesota last week. Guess what race they each are.

Yep. You nailed it. You got it just right. And the excuse we got from this white police officer was that she got confused between her taser and her gun. Okay, I see that. That's a pretty easy mistake to make. Sorry, I just need a sip of my water here. Oh, dang, that's my microphone.

Easy mistake. Tried to sip out of my microphone. Left side, right side. To hurt yourself. Couldn't make it. Yeah. So dry. make it. Yeah. So dry. So Potter was arrested.

She's no longer a police officer and she got charged with manslaughter. That being said, there's still a big swath of the country that feels like maybe her excuse is worth considering in some sense. And they don't mean, yes, this might be an accident but regardless cops at traffic stops don't need to have deadly weapons they mean whoops cost of doing business we need cops that's gonna happen and pretty much everyone in that swath is a white christian guy but not pat robertson pat robertson stumbled his way into a semi-useful take on this and semi was very generous pay close attention he descends right back into stupid real fast you could easily miss

it according to robertson quote there's just no comparison between a taser and a gun how potter made the difference by saying i thought it was my taser apparently that was the end of the sentence i think it ended with a tacit is beyond me perhaps probably which you know what that's probably a safe assumption as the closer to most thoughts from pat robertson yeah that's fair and that could have been the end of the point but he continued he should not have but he continued i'm pro-police folks we need their service and they do a good job but why don't they open their eyes to what the public relations are they've got to stop this stuff end quote so so he's worried about the murder of innocent people

of color because it's a pr nightmare? Because it's hard to spin that. At least he's easing himself into right. You don't want to shock yourself by changing all the way. At his age? Yeah. Like going on a roller coaster. So the video of this moment was ridiculous. Robertson actually had a gun and a taser on the set so he could hold him and demonstrate just how

ridiculous it would be to confuse these two things and yes that would be ridiculous but it's pat robertson so he actually does get he totally does yes he's about to make the point that they're so clearly different and then he crosses his hands like he's in a bad action movie. And he says, okay, I know, you know, cross and all that. Left becomes right. So it's hard to keep track. And then he gets help from his co-host. He's like, hey, Terry, I just got confused very clearly just now on camera.

Will you pick these up? Don't cross them. Because that's how I got confused. You just pick pick these up. Don't cross them. Cause that, that's how I got confused. You just pick them up regular. Don't cross them. And like a fucking Sesame street episode about manslaughter. She picks up each one and she holds up the taser and says, this one is lighter.

And look, I get human psychology. Look in a state of panic, people mistake gas pedal and brakes to death. Right. Even if they've been driving for decades, that happens all the time. But either police are allowed to panic or they're allowed to carry guns. Yep. That has to be a one or the other kind of thing.

Yeah. You get one. Yep. That's why we don't let me podcast with a gun. And in checking out the pastor's pee pee news same same joke as the intro i am very proud of it very proud of it not everyone maybe someone missed it anyone's wanted everyone to get my pee pee joke hey podcast listener do you remember the paycheck protection program loans it was that program that was supposed to loan small businesses money so they didn't have to furlough or fire their staff.

But then churches took literally billions of dollars of it, even though they don't do anything or pay taxes. And giving money to a church is literally the definition of an establishment clause violation. Yeah, I don't remember that either. Well, it turns out that there is too much you can steal from the government as a church. Really? It's just when you do it for your secular car sales business. Oh, yeah. See, that's when laws count.

It's a rookie mistake. You don't do secular businesses. Well, especially if you're not white. And this dude isn't white. So, yeah. No, he is not. Laws double count now. Yeah.

And this dude isn't white, so yeah. No, he is not. Law is double count now. Yeah. So last month, federal investigators filed charges of wire fraud against D.C. pastor Rudolph Brooks Jr., who allegedly filed a PPP loan on behalf of his defunct used car sales business for one and a half million dollars. What? What's happening in a used car sale business?

What kind of car? Oh, this is the batmobile this is this car we have right here yeah an investigator seized over 2.2 million dollars from his various bank accounts as well as his personal tesla model 3 okay he took his model 3 that's a fun repo like once you get the key card you just tell it to drive away on its own. Like a sad repo moment. You can have it play itself out of the driveway with like Michigan J. Frog music. You can have it keep coming back, circling back to the house every so often, playing I fought the law.

Like there's just so much fun you can have with that. So many possibilities. Yeah. So as of this recording, Brooks' church has yet to acknowledge that their pastor cheated the government out of a couple million dollars and is facing 20 years in prison. from the Tesla fan site, Teslarati, that said, quote, while accelerating the transition to sustainable energy is undoubtedly the main interest of Tesla, buying an all-electric car

through a fraudulent manner of actions is not ideal for helping the environment. Well, there's that. There's that. And in rise and fall well news. Fantastic. The rise and fall

of Jerry Falwell Jr. has been an absolute delight. I mean, really just the fall. Well, yeah. The rise was big enough to make the fall like just keep going so much forever. Look, I know you're not supposed to enjoy watching the misfortune of others, but that's a stupid rule. Right?

Bad things happening to bad people it's one of the few sources of pure joy in this world you're not taking that away from me raindrops roses and schadenfreude it's in the song and the latest example with falwell came last week when liberty university decided to sue him for10 million, which is pretty much exactly the amount of money they still have not paid him in severance that he's supposed to get. Awesome. Yeah, because when you subtract the one from the other, you have his worth. So that sounds fair. Yeah, that makes sense. So let's take a stroll down memory lane and remember some of that fall. Oh, yeah. That includes Jerry's forced resignation

from the university last year after he posted a picture of himself standing next to not his wife, both with their pants unzipped and Falwell holding a glass of wine. But according to him, he was actually holding a glass of water with wine-tinted food coloring

that he bought as a prop for his Instagram photo session that we were looking at. That was his version of the story. He lives in such a ridiculous universe that he thought fake wine alibi would put him in the clear for that. And look,

I know we talk about it every time we add new deliciousness to this saga, but I can't believe that this is what brought him down. This is the guy who instituted the policy of kicking kids out of his school for being sexually assaulted, and he went down for not top buttoning in the first degree. I'm sorry, it's just... All right, a little further down memory lane,

another part of his epic fall from grace was Jerry literally falling down the stairs after drinking too much burgundy food. Again, maybe I'm not supposed to enjoy that. It might be an alcohol addiction. I get it. Believe me, I get that part. But when a bigot falls down the stairs of his mansion

that was paid for with legalized bigot money from a legalized bigot university i fucking smile that happened that's my lived experience i'm speaking my truth i smile that's fun for sure like just when you thought the story couldn't be more ironic, the man fell poorly. Are you kidding? That really, really happened. Also, it came out that Falwell's wife, Becky, was fucking a pool boy for years while Jerry watched from the corner of the room. Which, okay, that's great for them if they're all into it. Fantastic. Enjoy.

Neighborly. But most importantly, Becky spells her name with an I. So fuck your face. Fuck your face. Kind of like she made a Liberty University student do after crawling into bed with him unexpectedly. That also happened with Becky. Oh, by the way, they're all bigots. Did I mention that?

Everybody's a bigot in the story. Jerry, Becky, the university, everybody's a bigot. And now we have a bad guy fight the university is suing jerry for breach of contract misleading the school board while setting up that contract and lying about his alcohol problem apparently the entire negotiation was fall well lying his way into a better severance package that he knew he was going to need i mean look i don't want to take jerry fall will side but lying's part of the job requirement, okay? Liberty University

teaches that cavemen rode dinosaurs. Lying's in there. Yeah, you put that on your resume as a skill or something, yeah. But it turns out Falwell was absolutely right. He's going to need pretty much exactly that severance package to pay for the lawsuit about

how he lied in order to get that severance package. And let's just remember the context here. Jerry Falwell Jr. made it possible for the protagonist in the story to be Liberty University. I mean, just barely the

protagonist, but I think the protagonist here for this part. I'm rooting for everybody to lose somehow yeah i don't know how that works that needs to be a thing that judges can do they're just like no you know what you all owe me 10 million dollars the state will be collecting 10 million dollars from each of you all right and on that note we're going to pause for a quick break from word from our second sponsor this week zip Zip Recruiter. Hi, welcome to Typical Hiring Agency. How can I help you today? Yeah, I'm looking for some qualified candidates for a position I'm trying to fill.

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Sure. Okay. Okay, you tore the phone book in half. Yes, I did. That'll be $1,600. Okay. And in wonkity paul news conspiracy theorist radio host and c-minus child trafficking stopper alex jones has a new theory about the origins of covid that's been making its way around the

internet this week turns out covid is all a ploy to give your children a vaccine that will damage their brains. Okay, but why would he be against growing his listener base? That doesn't even make any sense. And why would we be for it? Yeah, it's fair. It's fair. Anyway, here's the story. So Bill Hicks gets super into conspiracy theories in the late 90s, right? But he's too

famous for people to take him seriously because he's a comedian. So he fakes his death. Eli, why won't you stick to the parts you can prove? Fine. So this week, Alex Jones' bombshell reporting is about a report out of Johns Hopkins from 2017

that posits a hypothetical scenario in which a fictional disease called spars causes a global pandemic that lasts three years, which is is of course stone cold proof that the evil folks running the world over at the ninth ranked university in the united states published their evil plan three years before enacting it it's a perfect crime what definitely conspiracy theorists are so weirdly sure that we're gonna hide clues in public places like our logos and our published papers why would we do that yeah so for the record

for those of you wondering the actual purpose of this report was to equip public health communicators in case of a pandemic something which i think we can all agree we probably needed a little bit more practice maybe a section where you don't let the president say the virus will be gone by fall I think we can all agree we probably needed a little bit more practice. Maybe a section where you don't let the president say the virus will be gone by fall. I'm spitballing people. I'm spitballing. Okay. But in fairness, writing a pandemic response plan that would deal with the problem of Donald Trump somehow would make you look like a fucking crazy person, right?

All right. Sorry. I'm listening to all these things chapter 33 is next what to do when the president of the united states proposes sunshine and bleach inside the body to help with covid yep fair enough fair anyways jones sees through that weak defense and has taken notice that especially one of the hypothetical scenarios proposed in this report is that a group of parents come forward to say that the vaccine gave their kids brain damage because it caused encephalitis in early stage trials in cows

and alex jones read that hypothetical and he was like that's right their plan is to give babies encephalitis with the covid vaccine cow encephalitis it's weird again as noah pointed out that they wrote it down and that it's still on their website but i caught him i caught him i'm bill hicks okay all right the kids are having seizures from the encephalitis and now we wait let's just hope alex jones doesn't damn it okay why did we put it on the website and what does he think johns hopkins is gonna do with all these brain damaged kids once they have them like what i feel like at the end of every one of his things he has to explain the end game, right? That would make it worth watching. I think it's just wait. Oh, okay. And finally tonight

in Frank's Red Mild News. Fantastic. Thank you. Thank you. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, and Tim YouTube are frantically exploiting their last few moments at the top of the food chain quick before they're supplanted by the rise of Mike Lindell's ambitious

social media startup, Vocal. Okay, no. No? Okay, Vocal. Oh, no. Sorry, that was taken to shit. Okay. Frank.

Fucking Dave. Yeah, the name they ultimately landed on for the fucking MyPillowGuys free speech centric conspiracy theory accepting right wing embracing Twitter alternative ended up being Frank because everybody else's idea was taken and Frank refused to offer up any other useful suggestions. So I guess they go with FrankSpeech.com. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's what they will be going with whenever they get the fucking thing working checking checking still down still down with a missing image on his face page it's down there's a static thinglive Z video inside a file

playing with a caption that says it's live, which is impressive. Yes. So yeah, so Lindell's site was scheduled to go live at 8 a.m. Central Time this past Monday, and if a 502 error can be considered live, then it met that goal. But Lindell's tech team sprung into action

and within eight minutes, they had corrected that problem so people could sign in and get a different error, this time a 500 internal server error. Oh, all right. They're trending in the right direction. Eventually, it's a zero error. Yeah.

It's going to knock two down. But a brief eight minutes after that, though, they were able to get it under control so that eager conspiracy theorists could at least enter their sign up information and then be presented with an error screen. Yeah. I feel like their target audience is terrified of signing up for stuff. Right. Like that's got to be a glitch there. And unless you think it was a simple incompetence type thing that led to this series of internal server errors,

Mike wants you to know that it was actually an attack from outside. A cyber one. And while he offered no details on who the culprit was or how he knew it was a cyber attack or why it wasn't manifesting in any way that previously known cyber attacks have ever manifested. It happened cyberly, Noah. It happened cyberly.

But he did assure us that the attack was, quote, probably the biggest ever, end quote, adding, quote, I don't know if it was bots or what, end quote. It was what, buddy? To be fair, he does not know if it was bots or what. Okay. It was what? Mike, take it from us the only way robots are attacking your website is if the singularity is achieved and the mecha consciousness is embarrassed

by your website's existence yeah but if all the data in the world is silencing you right now check out frankspeech.com so yeah so as soon as they can figure out a few minor details like you know how to keep a website online for consecutive minutes and why all the words keep printing over the top of each other they're going to come for twitter with a website that isn't afraid to let people say what they think even if what they think offends a few snowflake liberal cucks so long as it doesn't also offend snowflake conservative kooks. You see, during an interview with Eric Metaxas, Lindell explained that his new free speech

themed social media platform would have far more restrictions on free speech than, I don't know, any social media platform you could name. Interesting. Quote, people ask me, me you're gonna let everything go porn swearing everything and i said absolutely not we have a thing we found in the constitution and our founding fathers that defined what free speech is he adds quote you're not going to be able to swear there will be four words for sure you can't say you can't say the c word the n word the f word and you can't use god's name in vain end quote okay but here's what's crazy you can't say the

n word probably lost him a significant percentage of the people who were going to sign up yeah actually that was the brand of this thing basically it was like oh they're not letting you say the n-word on twitter come on over frankspeech.com wow he also and this was an interesting one he also added that his site would prohibit defamation really you know after all bearing false witness is a violation of the ninth commandment so you couldn't go on his website and accuse joe biden of having won a fair election, for example. That could be removed. Okay.

So what we have now is a website that's basically a fun quiz about Mike Lindell's worldview. Right? You can be on and be like, okay, can I type trees exist? Okay. Yes, I can. What about fossils? No. See, I just started the word fossils.

All right. Interesting. That was the F word he meant. So, yeah, Mike Lindell went and made his own Twitter with a prohibition on beer and hookers, and it'll no doubt take its place atop the social media hierarchy just as soon as their moral advisory board comes to a conclusion on the ethical status of OMG. And they figure out how to let multiple people sign up at the same time.

They're going to get there. You're down to 500 errors, man. He says, TikTok. They said it's a WordPress plug-in, but I don't know where I'm supposed to plug it in. Alright, so while they sort that out, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. You can't say fossil.

And when we come back, the red carpet reporters are going to regret asking Eli who he's wearing. Sean. Well, it's award show season once again, and it's never mattered less than it matters right now. In a year when virtually no movies came out, Broadway was shut down, and nobody went anywhere recreationally without being an asshole. There's not much art to bestow awards on. But if you happen to bestow awards on assholery, it's been a bumper fucking crop. So it's time for a long overdue return of the pentagrammy you hear that movies some of us saw boom this year boom yeah 2020 was the 82

lafitte rothstein all right so the pentagrammies are an annual award that we started giving out way back in 2014 and then kind of forgot about and then we remembered it again so we're doing it again fellas are you ready to do this shit or is one of you guys gonna go all warren baity on me i mean if by that you mean star in the deeply unappreciated 1991 film bugsy then yes yeah and yes and if you mean try to snub the black community and the lgbt community same time, then yes, I'm ready for the best of 2020 religion. Yeah. Well done. Alright, so for those of you guys

who don't remember, we just list nominees in this thing since actually winning awards that's been meaningless ever since they gave Forrest Gump Best Picture in 94. Thank you. That was ridiculous. It wasn't even second place. No, it wasn't even fourth. Yeah. But anyway, we're going to open up with a damn

competitive category from 2020 best religious news item. Alright. Excellent. So, against all odds, I'm going with a Supreme Court ruling from 2020. Really? Bostock v. Clayton County. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Despite the hijacking of our nation's highest court by the Christian right, and it's going to last for decades, should have voted for Hillary Clinton, we actually got one little shred of reason from this one. The court ruled that

employment discrimination based on sexual orientation is illegal. But not because, you know, fucking obviously or basic ethics, that would have been nice. Instead, it happened when conservative justices

got trapped by basic logic. The majority opinion actually came from Neil Gorsuch, who was forced to admit that it's literally impossible to discriminate based on sexual orientation without discriminating based on gender at the same time. And we do have rules about gender discrimination. Yeah. And if you, like me, are amazed that they didn't just overturn gender discrimination laws, you remember how much dick 2020 sucked.

Yeah. Also worth noting, that was a 6-3 ruling from June. That was in June, which was back before Notorious RBG got replaced by a Margaret Atwood villain. So even now, we still have five justices out of nine who agree that you technically have to let words have meanings sometimes. I wouldn't go that far, Heath. Yeah, you have to let those words have that meaning okay yeah but just like any piece of good news from 2020 you guys basically predicted it already you know calm the fuck down it was also bad news the end of that decision said also p.s religion gets a timeout on laws if they want. So, any employer that decides they're a Christian widget company

can be legal bigots as much as they want. I hate to bring down the mood, but this is best of 2020. We're going to take what we can get. Yeah. No, sorry. I overstated it. They agreed to let those words have that meaning selectively. Yeah.

Sometimes, maybe. Oh, and for my nomination,'m gonna go with donald trump losing the presidential election say this words again but slower losing the presidential election oh can we do a quick asmr bit where you whisper and i know what you're thinking podcast listener hey eli that's, that's cheating. That's not a religious news item. Well, thanks to a cavalcade of assholes that we cover on this program. Yes, the fuck it was. From Jerry Falwell to Franklin Graham, dozens of self-proclaimed prophets had to explain to an audience of millions that their internet during their zoom call with the god of the

universe must have gotten a little shaky okay but that's actually a much better excuse than the one most of them went with which was i'm pretty sure the god of the universe got foiled by hugo chavez and his invisible code well and even that's better than what a lot of them went with which was no no he did win he is president la la la i can't hear you march 4th april 17th june 23rd yes whether it was cat care explaining that by win in a landslide she meant sometimes during landslides things move or that time that paula white jerked off god so vociferously that it merited several techno remixes the spokesman and women for god had to back up faster than tony spell when he sees a counter protester in his rearview mirror and that my friends is why donald trump losing the election is the best religious news item of 2020 all right

well i'm to go with something that already got a bit of a mention on this episode. My nominee for best religious news item is the rejected telenovela plotline that wound up with Jerry Falwell Jr. drunkenly stumbling his way out of his inheritance with his pants down and a profusely bleeding open head wound.

Right? So, like, we've seen a lot of religious leaders fall from grace, but I think this is the so like we've seen a lot of religious leaders fall from grace but i think this is the first time we've seen one take like a literal and metaphorical head down a flight of stairs along the way yeah honestly if i stumble upon a box of 10 used up monkey paws in my basement later today these past few months are going to make a ton more sense and those two and a half footless monkeys you'll have i mean they're not happy about the feet but i think they get it yeah right so just a quick reminder right around the same time that several ex-employees of liberty

university were publicly wondering whether they were running a college or some kind of real estate con rumors started emerging that jerry fallow was paying a sexy pool boy to fuck his wife or rather confirmation started emerging of those rumors. And that's when we decided to go out on his own terms, I guess. So he tweeted out the least risque picture to ever get somebody fired and that got him fired or rather he got bought out in an obscene payoff for his incompetence, which is, of course, now under question and as much as that seems like better than he deserves he sure as hell didn't feel that way

himself which is why we got stories a week or so later about him locking his wife out of the house and then falling down the stairs and just laying there all drunk and bloody because the door was locked and she couldn't get in until she had to call the cops and have them break in. Like our job will never be that easy again. And it never should be. No, no. And now he's getting sued. Yeah.

Oh, no. It gets even better. I know. Like, I know we're talking about this again, but let's just this is worth repeating like Trump losing. Like, oh, my God. It's so good what's happening to him. Also, one other thing about that fall, as we reported at the time, when his wife called 911

to get him medical help, the lady on the phone was like, has your husband been drinking? And Falwell's wife got all indignant. Yep. She's like, can I speak to your manager? I don't see how that's relevant. It's the bottom of the stairs

and we need an ambulance. That's all you need to know and on that note we're gonna move on to our second category this one goes to the religious figure who did the most to promote atheism in 2020 previous nominees include antonin scalia ken ham and kurt cameron so who's going to join that pantheon this year guys oh all right i'll start us off with an easy one i'm going to nominate kenneth copeland nice that's yes whether it was giving an interview to inside edition that makes charlie sheen look like a master of public relations or doubling down on that interview by calling public airplanes a tube full of demons kenneth copeland is god's worst press agent oh i

feel like we should just add also looks like Kenneth Copeland to that list, right? Yep. That is a major factor. Yes. But I would argue that he took his insanity to new levels in 2020, attempting and failing to cure COVID no less than five times on his television show. He also continued looking like Kenneth Copeland. Yeah, that too. on his television show. He also continued looking like Kenneth Copeland.

Oh, yeah, that too. First, he tried to fix the problem with a hand so oily it could cure Copeland's followers through a television screen. Then he tried blowing it away. And more recently, he's just declared his congregation

to be totally free of symptoms. Yep. And let's not forget his reaction to Eli's best news item of the year. Copeland said, they're declaring joe biden president and then he said ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha until he ran out of permutations and combinations of that one syllable and had to stop 20 minutes later you know how we have stings on this show

for like, a man wrote the Bible, the horse was smart, that stuff. We need the clip of him going, ha ha ha ha, every time we report on Jerry Falwell's fall from grace. That needs to be our new Jerry Falwell report. It's too long. It won't work. It's in my heart. That's what we need.

So yeah, I'm going to toss my nomination out to Kenny Copes for spending the entire year explaining to this Denny's that God knows karate and he'll happily take it outside with all of you. Oh, I just want to see a cut to Copeland after all those ha's happened and it just fizzled out. He's in a room by himself. He's like, ha, ha, ha. All right. So I'm going to go with Donald trump because technically they have to count him yeah look right i don't believe for a fucking second that donald trump is religious i've said

it before he is an atheist to whatever degree he's able to admit that he himself is not a god but that doesn't matter we didn't get obama so we're not stuck with trump he claims christianity so christians have to take him. Yeah, I'm claiming Obama, by the way. I saw that Marc Maron thing. Absolutely. He's atheist. This is the religious equivalent of fighting over the chance to pick me first for dodgeball.

This is like, why, yes, I did have an asthma attack on the way out here. Oh, this in my pocket? Just a doctor's note from my mother that says I'm susceptible to colds and therefore aren't allowed to swim. Tee hee! Were you like a southern bell person in high school? I was. I was Blanche Dubois just now.

So now, of course, one could argue the person whose religiosity is so clearly transactional and insincere can't really make religion look bad, right? After all, whatever he does just reflects what a person who only pretends to their religion is. So if anything, the faults of a crino only reinforce the narrative that like religion makes you better. Yeah. The army of fake Scotsman Christian Nazis throughout history is on their side. Exactly. But so that part of an argument can be fanned away by all the survey stories and studies that show how readily Christians embrace this motherfucker regardless.

Right. So, in other words, his exposure of their hypocrisy shows that their morality was every bit as transactional as his religiosity. And eight years of podcast and have nothing on that shit i mean not nothing trump doesn't have carl pogapega core okay no that's true that's true yeah it's melania voice characters okay so normally the religion person who makes atheism look the best is going to be a cishet white guy from the American Christian right. That's true. They're the Meryl Streep of making us look good. But I'm going to drop in a curveball here and go with Ben Shapiro, a cishet white guy from the American Judeo-Christian right.

See? See? Diversity, the Oscars. It's not that hard. We're already way more diverse than the Oscars just now, yes. we're already way more diverse than the oscars just now yes so ben shapiro is jewish but he is a model conservative christian in practice yeah and you might remember him from producing a pro-gun movie about a school shooting in 2020 called run hide fight you might also remember him from his famous quote from last year there's some whores in this house there's some whores in this house there's some whores in this house that was when he spent an entire episode of his show being outraged about cardi b and megan the stallion's big 2020 release

wop or wet ass pussy we got to hear ben shapiro perform that song which was a fantastic free ad for not being religious he did it telly sabala style it was amazing you hear that kids give up your atheism and you too can end up reading rap lyrics in your serious big boy voice for millions of people and then his wife told him that a wet vagina is a disease. I knew you would get it in there. I knew you would get it in there. Proudly tweeted that. He tweeted that piece of information. My wife's

a doctor and according to the doctor, she's a doctor of medicine. A wet vagina is a disease actually, technically. Moral of the story, if your team is fighting against team dry vagina you're winning

on a very important level we're winning on a very very important level because of vaginal level alright so we're more than halfway through and that's going to bring us to our widest category biggest asshole it is the only category with a two-time nominee that would

be muslim god and he's joined by such scathing atheist mainstays as pat robertson and gordon klingenschmidt so heath who's joining their ranks this year christian pillow magnate mike lindell great call he's done so much extra stuff in 2021 he might might get this again, but he gets the nomination without any of that. Just his 2020 stuff. First, he sponsored and appeared in the Eric Metaxas Christmas in New York special. Lindell had a cameo in the form of an infomercial. He came out on stage and told everyone about a brand new towel technology that it just removes moisture that they invented at MyPillow. And then he gave a promo code for Christian pillows and towels as part of, again, an infomercial during a live theater performance.

Yeah. On Broadway. I know you guys didn't like that, but I think more live theater needs to start doing that, right? Just like, I'm not giving up my shot glasses made by Moiby's Fine Glass and Kitchenware. Moiby's, it's what America means to me. And Lindell also helped out with the pandemic. Back in August of 2020,

Lindell brokered a meeting between Donald Trump and a, quote, pharmaceutical company in order to make sure everyone took full advantage of a new cure for COVID called oleandrin. That was a botanical extract from a literal bush of poison called oleandrin. It did not cure COVID, by the way. No, you're just not taking enough. You take enough poison and it does cure COVID. It does cure COVID, by the way. No, you're just not taking enough. You take enough poison and it does cure COVID. It does cure COVID. COVID will die.

And of course, Lindell spent most of the latter part of 2020 campaigning for Donald Trump's reelection and then campaigning against Donald Trump's de-election at the very end of the year. That includes the production of a movie called absolute proof that we had to watch about votes being stolen by hugo chavez and then sent to the germany internet for tampering and then sent back to the america internet on i i think internet airplanes taking a great circle route right yeah and the the new doctored digital ballots had trump's name scratched out and

biden's name written in the margin did cyberly he also had a covert meeting with trump that somehow involved lindell doing his best spy walk into the white house and calling trump on two phones at the same time because he wanted to be spy-ish he is he is already hard at work trying to earn a twofer and tie a la yeah okay so now i wrote a whole goddamn book full of worthy nominees for this one last year but but the one that really stands out to me here is jim baker okay look virtually every living religious leader that the average american could name has blood on his hands in the wake of the pandemic. Yep.

You know, on the paper cut that might need a bandaid end of the scale, you got the Pope blaming COVID on God being mad at us over global warming. But on the gushing Jerry Falwell on a bender geyser end of the scale, you have Jim Baker. Yeah, turns out the crime he is good at getting away with is murder yeah everybody is a manslaughter i guess yeah so first of all i should point out what he did right unlike a lot of religious leaders baker did not try to pretend that the pandemic didn't exist or that loving jesus would be sufficient protection against it and that honestly put him ahead of a lot of people in this line of work right he wasn't above pretending it was a chinese invention intentionally unleashed upon america to fuck up trump's second term but at least he admitted that there was a deadly pandemic on

of course he did not do this from a concern for the health and safety of his audience so much as the exact opposite of that see if there was no deadly pandemic he couldn't sell you his colloidal silver COVID curing panacea. A move so startlingly evil that even the U.S. government did something about it, people. And he looks like a sales rep for Iocane powder, which I guess is true. Yeah. So just a quick reminder. Early on in the pandemic, Baker was hit with at least two different cease and desist orders from at least two different attorneys general ordering him to stop telling people that his snake oidel would cure covid so so in response he started selling seeds that he

said you could use to grow your own panacea that would cure covid or like he said it like as close to that as his lawyers thought he could get away with anyway this is a silver bulb you just put it in the ground tell me where you buried it yeah so i teased him just a bit in one of my previous mentions but for my nominee i'm gonna go with pastor tony spell good one dude good one yes my friends way back in the halcyon days of tiger king and stay-at-home orders pastor tony spell was the first major public figure to draw the line at doing literally anything to stop people from dying yeah first despite being in theocracy friendly louisiana spell behaved in a manner so publicly dangerous that even baton rouge pd had to come arrest him charges were swiftly drops for reasons and spell returned back to his killing spree in a manner that would have made the sun that even Baton Rouge PD had to come arrest him. Charges were swiftly dropped for reasons,

and Spell returned back to his killing spree in a manner that would have made the son of Sam ask him to tone it down a bit. The motherfucker didn't even have the decency to lie about, like, sneeze-killing drones like that asshole in Tampa. Yup. Now, it was around this time

that he managed to get himself into actual trouble by trying to back a bus full of plague spreaders into a counter protester outside of his church. A fit of pique that he is still dealing with the legal fallout from. hashtag pastor tony spell stimulus challenge which i'm proud to say our very own heathen right and of course our podcast listeners filled with gay porn and the challenge was quickly abandoned okay i thought my posts were both stimulating and challenging i thought they were perfect for that no reason to abandon tony felt the same way all right and finally we're going to turn to the category that's a little more serious or at least

theoretically could be. One third of us did the assignment. Yeah, exactly. And that would be Atheist of the Year. Past nominees include Oof. Lots of people who turned out to be assholes upon further inspections.

But also Hammett Mehta. Yeah, Hammett Mehta. Yeah. Yeah. Hammett got even more awesome in the intervening seven years somehow. He published a New York Times crossword. He went on Jeopardy. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

No, kicked ass. But Eli, your past nominees are literally Sam Harris and Peter Boghossian. Yikes. Yeah. Yeah. That was 2013 and 2014 respectively so who's gonna join that story okay well now i gotta keep the tradition alive so based on my past nominees i'm gonna go with atheist thought leader dr james l He's a doctor of something?

Math. Math? Who's that, you ask, podcast listener? Yes, you must be there when he's testifying about a law for no reason. Is it a law about math or a law? It is not a law about math, no. Okay. He went from guy who was kind of good at math to COVID conspiracy theorist whose company is owned by a Christian dominionist and got retweeted by Donald Trump.

But, but my friends, in honor of passing 200,000 Twitter followers, he posted a video of himself fighting invisible ninjas with axes. Invisible ninjas with axes. And I challenge anyone to tell me an atheist who has made me anywhere close to as happy as that video makes me in 2020, the year of our Lord. Did you have a kid that year? Still. Still, Ethan, right? All right. So, okay, wait, this is fucking weird.

I had a totally different thing in my notes, but that's been replaced by the words Michael Marshall, damn it, along with a compromising photograph of me and two-time world bowling champion Bill O'Neill with he has a family and letters cut out from different magazines. So I guess I'm nominating Marsh. But okay, so to be fair, though,

he's the right atheist to nominate because never in our collective lifetimes has skepticism mattered more than it did in 2020. And we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the people who have helped us to develop the proper tools to confront all the vaccine hesitancy, the woo peddling and the gross misunderstandings of the scientific method that have plagued us throughout this entire plague. And here we are recording this two days after my reluctant Trump loving fucking reality denying father-in-law got his second dose of the Moderna vaccine. And I'm thinking the most valuable lessons I've learned from any skeptic is the patience it took to make it through all the repeated arguments and insane rebuttals. It took him to do this. And and this is for realsies

the whole time every time i was about ready to go all diatribe on his ass i would ask myself what would marsh do seriously at this point he should be allowed to call follow-up seasons of be reasonable okay if you can't be reasonable will you at least be quiet long enough for me to explain what you're wrong no you won't okay can you be unreasonable in this plague yurt biodome yeah there you go right over there right great right and look it would be too much to say that those lessons and skepticism saved my father-in-law's life you know who the hell knows how this otherwise would have played out but they saved someone's life right somebody somebodies are alive right now who wouldn't have been if their

son-in-law or daughter-in-law or cousin or niece or whatever hadn't had the patience and the skeptical toolkit that they needed to calm their nerves and get them to take this shit seriously. And the skeptical movement only exists because there are so many people out there willing to give of themselves. So to a guy that's already doing two podcasts an annual convention monthly skeptic meetups running a major skeptic group and had a full-time job in skepticism who then took on the unpaid mantle of editor of skeptics.uk he seems like exactly the right personification of that trait for 2020 hell Hell yeah. All right. So Atheist of the Year, I'm going with the guy who answered the phone at Four Seasons Total.

Oh my God. This guy's a hero. Just a reminder about what was happening that day. We were still counting the votes for the election at that point. And Donald Trump's legal team wanted to do a big press conference

about how they were going to win the election in court. Just like George W. Bush, how democracy is supposed to happen. So they Googled Four Seasons Philadelphia. They navigated to page two of the search results. They found the website Four Seasons Total Landscaping that has tractors and snow plows on the landing page and they called that number and they asked hey can you host our big press conference at your fancy hotel and the guy on the other end said yup we sure the fuck absolutely we'd be fucking honored we're right next to the adult bookstore and the cremation center by the way. We don't know for sure that this guy is an atheist, but he did kill God. So fair nomination.

Fair nomination. Yeah. And thanks to the Atheist of the Year and American of the Year Lifetime Achievement Award winner. This guy's amazing. Thanks to him. amazing thanks to him we got to watch rudolph giuliani learn about donald trump officially losing the election in the middle of his speech and go insane it was a glorious glorious moment i honestly wasn't sure we weren't inside some kind of farce until the like the universe didn't end right there because that's obviously where it ended. If the credits had rolled on our eyeballs.

Exactly. That's what I was expecting. All right. Well, with something akin to congratulations to all of this year's nominees and an actual congratulations to Marsha, I guess we're going to wrap up everybody's favorite septennial awards ceremony.

And here's hoping to remember to do it next time. And genuinely, although the anniversary of the first lockdown is over and it's a weird time to be doing anything that amounts to a 2020 wrap up. As we all slowly emerged from this national nightmare, I want to thank all the listeners who helped keep us focused and sane. And I really want to thank the two gentlemen on this record with me without whom I can't imagine how I would have made it through this thing. Heath, Eli, great pandemic, guys. I also want to thank.

Oh, shit. Oh, shit. OK, so I want to thank the lovely and talented Lucid Illusions for all our help. I need to thank Andrew Torres. He provides the legal services. Great pandemic, guys. I also want to thank... Oh, shit. I want to thank the lovely and talented Lucid Illusions for all their help. I need to thank Andrew Torres. He provides the legal services. Great job, man. Morgan Clark for the audio engineering and all the music, and most of all, all the patrons. You're the ones that we do it for. Okay, good night.

I don't think I'm in the top 100 anything. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.