The Scathing Atheist - 448: Plesiosaur Loser Edition

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

In this week’s episode, the past and the present will smash together like some kind of temporal orgy, we’ll bring up stuff in the headlines that you almost forgot you were pissed about, and Lucinda’s quest for a pet dinosaur will come up wanting yet again. --- 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/ ---

Warning, this podcast is basically one big profanity. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by ZipRecruiter, Stamps.com, and by the new Crucifix Shape Suppository for Christian Migraines, the Analjesus Analjesix. Analjesus Analjesix, because 448 episodes in, you have to start grasping for shit. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, my name is Gavin, and in case it isn't obvious, I'm Australian. Now, we may have snakes, sharks, spiders, box jellyfish, and crocodiles, but thank fuck we don't have any species as dangerous as an American evangelical.

However, I have visited America and seen such primitive life forms in their natural habitat so i can assure you we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey people It's Thursday, it's September 16th, and I suck at taking vacations. I'm Noah Lusions, and from Redtown, Blue State, and the past, this is the Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, the past and the present will smash together like some kind of temporal orgy, we'll bring up stuff in the headlines that you almost forgot you were pissed about, and Lucinda's quest for a pet dinosaur will come up wanting yet again. But first, the diatribe. you're going undercover as a christian you have no time to prepare you're about to walk into a church meeting or prayer group or whatever Christians congregate at.

So your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to make conversation with this group of people for an entire evening and be welcomed into their fold. You know nothing about them except that they're Christian, they're white, and they're American. So my question for you is, what do you talk about? question for you is, what do you talk about? I mean, obviously you can nod along to a certain degree, but when it's your turn to bring up a subject, what subject do you bring up? What subject do you avoid? What political opinions do you pretend to have? And what do any of those things have to do with Christianity? See, I want to guess that the first things that popped into your mind for your undercover alter ego were things like criminalizing abortion, loving guns, pulling on bootstraps, and hating immigrants. In other words, you'd bring up shit that Jesus never talked about and avoid all the stuff he did talk about.

I mean, look, I'm hardly the first person to point out the disparity between the Christian rights agenda and the teachings of Jesus. There's no doubt that the Jesus character, given the choice, would vote for the Democrat. But it's the kind of thing we have to bring up over and over again, especially as we cede ever more political autonomy to this ill-defined, ever-shifting concept of sincerely held religious beliefs. Because if these beliefs aren't grounded in your scripture, and they're not grounded in your history, and they're not grounded in your traditions,

where the hell are the limits? Look, of course, there's some shred of defense for most of their positions, but then again, there's a shred of defense for basically everything if your source is the Bible. I can justify rape, slavery, and genocide if I'm using the Bible, and I'd hardly be the first to do so in any of those cases. But these tenuous connections, rather than serving to justify their legal exemptions, just highlight the importance of abolishing them. When holy scripture comes into conflict with the law, it's not the fucking law that should bend. But even if you're not inclined to see it that way, which unfortunately is true

of the majority of Americans, the overwhelming majority of Congress, and I think all of the fucking Supreme Court at this point, you have to see the cliff that we're barreling towards. This whole concept of exempting people from laws over sincerely held beliefs grows out of a Christian opposition to gay existence. Sorry, I know we're supposed to say it's opposition to gay marriage or whatever the most recent line in the sand is, but I'm inclined towards honesty in this instance. So yeah, it's just common knowledge at this point

that hating LGBTQ people is a sincerely held religious belief, but it gets less ink in the Bible than the prohibition against eating fucking shellfish. Regardless, that was the initial justification, and on that one you can say, hey, at least their belief is grounded in their book. Okay, what about abortion? Right, there's nothing in the Bible in opposition to that. The Bible specifically says that the soul enters the body on its first breath and actually prescribes a magical abortion spell in Leviticus and tells you when you're biblically obligated to use it. And those same apologists scratch their heads on this one a bit, but eventually they fall onto a justification from tradition.

After all, Christians have vocally opposed abortion for half a century, even more if you're Catholic. Plus, you can bend a few of their moral precepts and redefine what constitutes a living being a little bit, and suddenly the Bible's a little less clear on the issue. And look, we don't actually have to delve further into this example. I'm going to, but let's be clear at this point that we've already crossed over into insanity. If the only thing we need to justify an exemption to law is the fact that the Bible isn't super clear on it when we use atypical definitions, we've already given up on the whole concept of equality.

And that's where we already are. But it gets even worse. Consider that they're now deploying the very same arguments against vaccination. That has no biblical justification, no history in the teachings of the church, no long tradition of political activism. It's just a case of we don't want to and we're Christian at the same time. The difference between the political and religious belief of the evangelical is simply semantic at this point. Everything they want an exemption to immediately falls under the umbrella of sincerely held religious belief, because why the fuck wouldn't it? These justifications, as nonsensical as they are, already exempt them from taking pictures at gay weddings, filling trans people's prescriptions, and providing comprehensive health care to their employees.

You know, protecting their right to side with a virus over humanity only differs in scale and scope. They've sincerely believed in harming others for the sake of their religiously inspired prejudices for centuries. I mean, sorry to depress you like this two weeks in a row, but it's not just the wall between church and state that's crumbling. We're also losing the wall between religion and politics. It's not the same thing.

The former is the part where we make special laws that make all the non-Christians lesser citizens and then give their tax dollars to the church. The latter is the part where we just wrap the name Christianity around the platform of whichever party has the most Christians at the moment. And I can't honestly say which is more dangerous to lose, but losing them together is a worst case scenario. Joining me for headlines tonight is the past. Again, we're all still on vacation at the moment, but there are plenty more unused headlines from a couple months ago,

which we'll join already in progress. And in blasphemy, blast for you, blast for everybody news. You get a blast and you get a blast. I long to return to Scotland for so many reasons I want to marvel again at Edinburgh's beauty I want to browse the racist statue shops of Glasgow I want to once again explain to a live audience that Heath did not just say a racial slur

and that corner shops in upstate New York are called packing stores but mostly I want to go back because as of this week, everything I have to say about religion in Scotland is legal again. Yes. In a story that dates back to a simpler time when the idea of Donald Trump being president was still funny. We are happy to say that Scotland has finally gotten rid of its centuries old blasphemy law as part of a larger hate crimes bill that had its final vote this week in parliament yeah i mean this is good but i kind of like the thrill of breaking the law yeah now to be fair to england's cleveland okay all right now that's blasphemy

nobody has been prosecuted under their blasphemy law since 1843 but having them on the books was still a pretty bad look considering how much god there isn't yeah right i've never been a big fan of the yeah but it's not like we're enforcing the law that makes your existence illegal defense right yeah one other thing a tremendous amount of thanks goes out to the humanist society of scotland and humanist international who have been working tirelessly on this for five years now excellent work all of them one down and 13 countries that still punish apostasy or blasphemy with the death penalty left to go so 13 yep 13 so gentlemen to celebrate do you have any particularly scottish blasphemy you'd like to put out there? Oh, yeah. So Timothy Dalton was the best James Bond.

Bar none. The body of Christ tastes like iron brew, which definitely would have put me in jail two weeks ago. Okay, and you know what? Honestly, after that Cleveland remark, I feel like the Scottish have had enough. I'm not. And in missed his cue news tonight,

anybody who thought that anybody who thought that Trump losing the election was going to lead to Christians realizing they were wrong when they prophesied his victory obviously hadn't seen what a bang up job they've been doing, ignoring the fact that there's no God. And while the stories about Christian leaders insisting that Trump actually is president or will be any second have become a little less frequent on this show over the last four months that's because we're avoiding repetition not because they're figuring it out

they're still doing that yep so as a quick reminder that they're still not over this shit i brought not one but three christians still trying to come to grips with it this week. This is so delightful. It's just a bunch of Christians yelling at God, all angry, being like, I was told we were promised in our contract, in our contract of law, that the United States was in capital letters. This is maritime law. It's serious. It's the law.

Just tearfully presenting God with an expired coupon for one theocracy. They said that. You're going to have to go to the department of coupons. It's not here. It's a really long line over there. We're going to start with Pastor Johnny Enloe who looks like a grown-ass man that still expects people to call him Johnny

despite being neither a time-traveling greaser nor a robot granted sentience by a lightning strike. Crane kick's not even legal. He's certain that not only did Trump win the election, but quote, he won over 70% of the vote and 49 of the 50 states, end

quote. I want to know which one he thinks he lost. I didn't look that deeply into it. And while Trump might not look like the president, what with him being not president, Enloe ensures us that in heaven, Trump is the president. Cool. I'm fine with that. Sure.

Yeah, exactly. In the imaginary land. And despite being the least influential president in all of american history two months out from his departure and yes i'm counting all the died in office ones when i say that enzo is pretty sure that trump's still pulling the strings from behind the scenes yeah here's the thing though it turns out the population of heaven didn't get any electoral votes this is weird it's just the formula it's crazy did you hear that thoughnie? You're the president in heaven. So why don't you, you know, scoot up there and take your office, big guy.

They have a Diet Coke button up there. No, they don't. All right. He's a listener. So televangelist Robin Bullock is a bit more realistic in his assessment and he's a guy that blamed the pandemic on people who voted for hillary clinton and claimed that president joe biden doesn't exist yeah i have a towel wrapped around my eyes yeah exactly and he's a little more realistic so bullock insists that trump is still president but christians need to wish him back

into the oval office a la tinkerbell's recovery quote no matter what happens donald j trump is the president and he's supposed to walk back in that office so call him back call him back call him should we call him back once he knows that the prophets are calling he'll come and quote and i'm sure if nothing else it's a relief to stormy daniels to know that other people were even more desperate for that motherfucker to come already than she was and for those of you listening who can't believe anybody is falling for this let me remind you that this is the church that supported itself on jesus will be back in our lifetime for just

over 2 000 years now that's the Exactly. But not every batshit crazy Christian prophet has to lie to themselves about whether Trump lost the election. Some just lie to themselves about why. Take self-anointed prophetess Amanda Grace, who was recently interviewed on sapient pimple Steve Schultz's YouTube channel, where she explained that Trump did lose,

but mostly it was because God wanted more alone time with him. What? Yeah. When asked why he was hiding in Mar-a-Lago like a skittish cur, she explained, quote, Trump is in a way being afforded the private time to deal with this with the Lord and for the Lord to really reveal himself to President Trump, where he's not being in a way perhaps so distracted and pulled in a million directions end quote okay now god can finally get penciled in for an appointment with donald trump really you got to go through

jared yeah right no all that executive time that was busy time so yeah jared there you have it trump wanted to go to his room anyway it's not even really a punishment if you think about it. And in Omerta news. Fantastic. Alabama wants to make a code of Hindu silence for kids doing yoga because they hate freedom. They hate freedom of speech. They hate freedom. They hate freedom of religion so after years of debating the exact amount of hindu

evil contained in stretching and breathing alabama lawmakers have agreed to allow yoga in public school gym class but it has to be white yoga yeah seriously a new bill just passed in the alabama house 73 to 25 was the vote that bill does allow yoga but you can't say any words that are not english wait i gotta say this policy is about to make spanish class easy as fuck and yeah you just start savasning during the quiz fine fill out this page from a workbook damn you billy yeah so i can't stress this enough this is real this is really i'm not exaggerating anything this is really what happened the people in charge of government in the state of alabama think that yoga might contain evil magic words i believe you i believe and they think they think that Christianity might get persecuted by those magic words.

The bill says, quote, all poses, exercises, and stretching techniques shall have exclusively English descriptive names. What? Chanting, mantras, mudras, use of mandalas, and namaste greetings shall be expressly prohibited. Okay. End quote. of mandalas and namaste greetings shall be expressly prohibited okay end quote i would give all the money i have and more to hear any of these alabama lawmakers define a mudra also quick side note alabama is one of many idiot red states that have recently tried to make laws about allowing specifically christian stuff in science class. Yep.

And of course, they tried similar things about praying in school and the pledge and all that shit. So maybe the new yoga bill is going to set a precedent and science class will be conducted in like scientific Latin only. Just entirely in spoken binary. That's the new rule. I don't know. Something. Well, that's what they're doing with computer class yeah i was gonna say so okay potentially controversial opinion here but yoga absolutely shouldn't be in fucking schools okay a lot of bullshit spiritual practices sneak

into schools under the guise of yoga yoga is a spiritual practice not a fucking exercise routine what's more even the stretching parts aren't universally healthy. Yoga instructors generally encourage people to hold stretchers longer than it's healthy to hold them. And some of the really common poses have zero health benefit and can be actually really dangerous. So it moves like the plow and shit like that. Plus, phys ed teachers are already doing stretching. So there is literally no reason for yoga in schools except to sneak bullshit spiritual practices into said school. That said, the solution isn't okay, but only if you culturally appropriate it more.

The solution is to keep religion out of fucking schools. Yeah, if you want to indoctrinate kids, just tell them parachute day is only for the kids who love, you know, Brahma. You'll get 100% conversion rate, motherfucker. Okay, so here's what I'm hoping for. Parachute day. And if we have any listeners in Alabama with kids in public school, you can be our field operatives on this. You can report back to us. Okay, so Heath can say that, but when I do...

No, you can't. Well, it's different. We might say different things next is the difference. Okay, that's the big... We might say different things next is the difference. So I want to hear about kids in gym class doing everything they can to terrify the evangelical gym teachers who are going to be enforcing this rule if it becomes a law. Because they're already terrified, obviously. I mean, maybe start slow instead of like, oh, as the mantra just chant, like secular focus, secular focus, atheist focus. But then ramp it up a little and here's the secret hindu magic still works exactly as well if you do it silently that's just a true fact so do your yoga and then right at the end of class just stare at your teacher and start evil villain laughing like

you just finished a magic spell on them let us know how it goes i think it's gonna be fun we're gonna get to see a gym teacher tackle a kid out of downward dog because of the spell they think is happening i'm looking forward to it and since we want to see children tackled is exactly the kind of segues our advertisers have come to expect from us we're going to pause right there for a word from this week's first sponsor zip recruiter hey there karen for sponsor, ZipRecruiter. Hey there, Karen from HR. Why the long face? Oh, you know, folks just don't want to work no more. I really don't think that's what it is.

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And in Porn again news tonight the treasurer of the saint paul lutheran church in latrobe pennsylvania was arrested this week after spending more than four years trying to start a fire with his penis all the while using church funds as tinder that's a what mass it's a masturbation reference in case that wasn't and by tinder i mean like the dry flammable material used to light a fire not not the app yeah uh side note if you're into sexual fire hazards check out ben shapiro's dating app tinderbox fun place to go anyway no you were talking about penis fires i think but you know what let's not let's not segue back to that whole sentence completely got away from me but we'd like once i typed out trying to start a fire with his penis,

I'm physically incapable of deleting that. Sure. But what I'm trying to say is the dude stole $150,000 from his church to pay for porn. How much? That's so much money. Was he trying to get his name on the wall somewhere, like a restaurant challenge?

What the fuck? Is Goop offering solid gold porn now it's gold-plated it's gold i mean everything is porn if you jerk off to it he they have to let you they don't they really don't so so yeah glenn e yathers was arrested this week on multiple charges of theft he apparently had been serving as a treasurer for the church for half a dozen years or so before he thought to himself it's strange that i'm not whacking off with some of this money so starting in 2015 he allegedly started reappropriating some of the money to his porn habit which was running at this point in excess of 30 grand a year what the fuck is happening dude buy some cocaine go limp for a

year and save some money yeah it's a way better habit look i am the fan they're talking about and only fans but even even to me 30k seems like a lot right i don't know how one physically spends that much right that's insane yeah so okay so after a few years of this a couple of members of the church council approached him about all the past due notices and whatnot, and after a few hand-wavy excuses, they got the cops involved. Now, at first, he admitted that he had reappropriated the money, but he said he was

still using it to help out needy people in keeping with the church's mission. But then the cops asked if he was helping those needy people by paying them to put things into their assholes on free-to-flirt.com, and he was like, yeah, you guys saw through my rouge listen it has to be a Rolex if they put like a Casio in there

it's not the same no fuck you it has to be Rolex officer you don't understand there are single moms near me and I am this close they want to fuck they do now the good news is that that money was originally intended to pay for catholic church

shit right so like paying online sex workers is probably the least immoral thing that money donated to a catholic church ever paid for it all of all right it's a neighborly but that being said it's still illegal not to mention hypocritical from a motherfucker that belongs to an anti-porn anti-sex worker church right but if you'd like to give your money to a business that we can guarantee will give back to the porn community, you can sign up for our Patreon

for as little as a dollar a show. You can also get a year membership for 30 grand if you want. Oh, I'm putting that on our Patreon just so someone does it. $30,000. Oh, does not putting that on our Patreon just so someone does it. $30,000. Oh, does not like that number. No.

All right. Next up in headlines. Former GOP Congresswoman and ongoing all the time pop scare Michelle Bachman. That's fantastic. Took some time away from crawling out of TV screens to host the election integrity conference that took place this week. Apparently this was a follow-up to Bachman's election night appearance on Kenneth Copeland's victory channel when she told everyone that God has sealed this election in the heavenlies. So this was, wait, wait, wait, let me explain the conference. Yep, pretty much.

And the general theme was the Christian right discussing more effective means of voter suppression, especially of Satan, the globalists, and the... Yeah, right. The God would have won if they hadn't cheated the conference that's the best day the best that they can manage now is like the holy ghost was in his eyes yeah wow really okay does joe biden have a chariot of iron he does see there's your problem that is tricky for our can we get gutter guards in the next election sure man sure whatever you want so in the lead-up to the conference bachman explained that she chose the list of speakers very carefully and quote didn't

want any fringe people what people that would be considered nuts i uninvited myself that was her promotional message. My conference is not crazy. That was her promotional message. Okay. And she described the docket as, quote, A-list speakers. And that included Eric Metaxas. Yes. Jay Ashcroft. Yes.

The John Ashcroft son. Who's daddy my friend of, and Ben Carson, an A-list expert in the brain surgery component of election. Yeah, sure. And the rest of the list was people you can't find on the internet until Mike Lindell sets up vocal.biz or whatever he's doing. Just for the record, they could not get Mike Lindell. No. So I'm pretty sure that pretty much all venues require a $1.3 billion deposit to have Lindell at this point.

We have the same insurance policy for live shows where I wear a costume. Exactly. So after a few hours of okay, did you guys pray super hard in November? Did you guys pray super hard? November? Did you guys pray super? Okay, fuck. We all prayed super hard.

We all did the magic. Fuck. Anyway, from there, a whole bunch of that. Then they moved on to stopping HR1. This is the extra tragic part. And that, if you don't know what HR1 is, it's the hugely important bill that passed in the House, which would prevent a whole bunch of voter suppression. Yeah. And that's anti-Christian persecution.

Yep. Yeah, sure the fuck is. Exactly. Yes, it is. We're going to persecute them right into equality. All that being said, I think Michelle Bachman deserves a bit of credit. As far as I can tell, the conference did not include a giant golden calf. That was good.

No significant raining of sulfur. Nobody accidentally stood their ground on Ben Carson. I'm genuinely impressed by that. And the stage was not a literal genocide ruin. And there's a win for the Christian right of 2021. So chalk it up. Good job. Upswing. And in

Don't Mask, Don't Tell news tonight. That's really good. Of all the parts of our global pandemic religion is ruined it turns out that the one that pisses me off is the end because they're still out there killing motherfuckers with their stupid even as we stand on the cusp of relative normalcy in fact many of them are acting like they've got a body count quota and they're running out of time to fill it case in point the canyon ferry road baptist church in east helena montana which is apparently recruiting a militia to end mask requirements a militia and while they're all dressed up and everything anyway to end the quote communist occupation of the country. What? No, I remember that from the Communist Manifesto.

Step one, basic human decency. Oh, right. Yeah, that was totally in the manifesto that they all read. Yep. And that's why Red Dawn slowed way down for Act Two. There's all those OSHA regulations. It's a really boring act to that movie. So much hand washing. So apparently,

the church is associated with a Texas-based group with the perfectly red neckian moniker tactical civics fuck you that's not absolute that that terrorism the word we already have a term yeah no they describe the problem thusly quote this republic of sovereign states founded in the name of jesus christ and blessed for centuries okay i gotta stop you i'm sorry noah that is just such an impressive amount of wrong for half a cent right yes exactly we have they might as well take a derivative wrong in the middle of the clause what anyway all of that

bullshit is now under communist occupation by dc beijing and many state palaces they didn't what they didn't want to leave any conspiracies out here continuing quote couldn't agree this is not an exhaustive list of where the foreign governments and perpetuity throughout the universe all right so continuing the massive fraud of the 2020 election combined with the criminal19 hoax, where the work of criminals in, man, you want to talk about not being able to decide, the deep state, DNC, communist county machines and governors, Black Lives Matter, Antifa,

Communist China, Google, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, MSNBC, CNN, Fox, ABC, CBS. Okay, you're just naming the channels now, guys. We know you're naming the channels. Fox is in your name in the channel fox is in on this yeah oh yeah yeah fox no fox and black lives matter same thing basically yeah all of those destroying our economy and keeping americans in concentration camps with no communication between

us end quote oh they compared themselves to concentration camps. Now they only get to make movies with Ben Shapiro. Also, it sounds like they're cool with concentration camps as long as we give them walkie talkies. You heard that, right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. For that. And they're also they're good with concentration camps that don't have Americans in them.

And that one's not a new revelation. Now, their solution to the problem is as obvious as it is simple. They're going to deputize random white people to enforce the laws that they think are being broken right because who better to enforce laws than people who think they can be negated with all caps anyway there's not much more to report at the moment since the church took down their website at the first whiff of national attention but i'm sure we'll have an update when these tax-exempted wackaloons kill some fucking body refreshing check on spotify see if they're right yeah they might still be there their crimes there and in voice from the deep being up with the kardashians news terrible christian podcast host absolutely terrible youtuber and person so crazy it is amazing to me that she can work a microphone

sheila zelinski did it again this week and enlightened us into her new theory about the kardashians popularity and spoiler alert it's illuminati black magic huh look until science presents a plausible theory i don't know that we can rule anything out. So I reserve judgment. I'm on board with that for now. So the video begins with Sheila, like many of us, wondering how the hell the Kardashians got so popular. There was a sex tape. Caitlyn Jenner hit someone with her car. And then one of them was a billionaire.

I don't get it. But Sheila has the answer. I don't get it. But Sheila has the answer. And it's an infomercial that Kris Jenner did for magic scented candles created by psychic healer Linda Salvin back in the day. So we watched the entire infomercial without commentary in this YouTube video slash podcast. And can I just say it's weird to watch something Sheila Zielinski put together and think, you know, you got a point, Sheila.

Candles that claim to cure your cancer are pretty evil. But luckily, that's not her point. Oh, OK. Her point is that the candles worked for the Jenners. Worked? She follows this up with a series of pictures of the Kardashians holding, owning, or just generally being near rocks that people pretend are magic. Just Kanye locked in a bathroom in their mansion somewhere, panic whispering into his phone,

Sheila, Sheila, they're firebending again. You don't come get me. They're earthbending too. Bring adult shoes. Literally. But don't worry, it gets way dumber. Her next piece of evidence? Kris Jenner said on Twitter,

I need these socks that say witch please on them. Why? Because she's a manipulator of dark forces. Thanks to the blood plaque she made with Satan. And she needs novelty socks to represent that. Witches have witch socks, Eli. It's not complicated. Okay.

I guess so. Yeah. And you know what else? You know what else? The YouTube video goes on to say? Sometimes they wear stuff with pictures of butterflies. Why? I feel like Al Roker is going to have something to do with it.

This has all the earmarks of an Al Roker thing. Is that what it is? Yes. They are part of the MKUltra subdivision program that turns women into sex slaves and has also been used on Al Roker. Yes. Got it. Wait, wait, did she just accuse Al Roker of being a sex slave or a butterfly?

I cannot emphasize this enough. It is unclear. It is very unclear. I hope it's both. So then she spent some time on their halloween decorations she mentions that they get what's known as a vampire facial which is i guess a real thing it's a facial you get with human blood what that's not that is not a real that's a real thing it is absolutely a real thing and and hey where do they get human blood for what humans and hey

credit where credit's due to sheila zalinski satan magic isn't real but it's fucking hard to prove that when people are out there getting blood facials yeah oh right right let's look at the illuminati accusations keep getting bumped down the weirdest thing about this story as we go one last thing at one point in the video she she's talking about, you know, Illuminati eyes, MK Ultra, whatever. And she says, quote, and oh, how they love their black men, don't they? That could be a whole nother video, end quote. And then she goes right back to look at how her dress is shaped like a triangle. She never acknowledges that sentence again in the podcast. So, yeah, it's obvious thatila has blown this thing wide open and just

as soon as i report back on her three-part video series about how al roker is a brainwashed to be a sex slave butterfly or get a turn to fuck al roker i will let you podcast listener now okay does she think the weatherman controls the weather? Because that's what it sounds like. That's what's happening. Unclear. All right, well, I can't be the only one who needs a minute with that mental image of Eli fucking Al Roker. So we're going to pause for a word from our other sponsor this week, Stamps.com.

Hey, podcast listener. Lucinda cutting in to tell you about our second sponsor this week, Stamps.com. And I'm pretty qualified to tell you about it because before we started the podcast, a big part of my job was mailing out products. I'd estimate that I spent something like 15% of my life at the post office between 2007 and 2013. It was such a hassle. Finding parking, waiting in line, going back and finding out your car has been towed because you were eight seconds over the maximum parking time. True story. But now I do it all with ease using stamps.com. See, I still mail out products on a regular basis. But when we send out Patreon rewards, I do it all for my desk. And that's because stamps.com brings all the services of the US Postal Service and UPS

right to your computer. It's a must have for any business, whether you're a small business sending out invoices, a podcast sending out signed books and bingo cards, or just navigating this hybrid work life. Stamps.com can handle it all with ease. No wonder over 1 million businesses choose Stamps.com for their mailing and shipping. It's so easy to use. Just wait for Eli to send over the info, then text him and remind him that you're still waiting, then text Anna and tell her to tell him to check his text, then call Eli and remind him that Anna told him to check his text. After that, you can simply use your computer to print official U.S. postage 24-7 for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send. Once your mail is ready, you just schedule

a pickup or drop it off. It's that simple. Plus, it saves you money. With stamps.com, you get discounts up to 40% off postage rates and up to 66% off UPS shipping rates. Not to mention that stamps.com is a fraction of the cost of those expensive postage meters. So stop wasting time going to the post office 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 and a digital scale. No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the home page and type in scathing. That's stamps.com promo code scathing. Stamps.com. Never go to the post office again. Next up in headlines. Despite the conventional wisdom, bigotry definitely has a place in our society.

Let me finish. Let me finish. Stay with me. Don't stop the podcast. Let me continue. Bigotry toward bigots is exactly the type of thing we need more of and this very simple concept was mentioned recently by hamal javeri in her article for usa today about the oral roberts university basketball team who got some attention during their run

in the ncaa tournament last week for anyone who's not familiar oral roberts is an evangelical christian school that has a whole bunch of horrible policies, including a strict ban against any same-sex relationship. And Javeri's article explained that the NCAA doesn't have to keep letting the bigots play in their thing.

Right. Very simple. Right, yeah. I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job, Heath, but if you're ever at a loss for a way to start an article that doesn't cold open on the bigotry defense I'm happy to help yeah I like to say you know that's a fun one you know because they do

yeah you can just everything comes out chummy people like it so Oral Roberts made headlines when God helped them get two unlikely wins in the tournament. And then they lost to God's preferred team, I guess, Arkansas. And then Arkansas lost.

And so did Liberty and Abilene Christian. God's not the best with brackets. Regardless, Oral Roberts was able to get their name in the national news and probably use that to get more donations. And that was made possible by two things first of all they get free labor from student athletes that's worth way more than the education at definitely oral roberts yeah that's a whole other problem but also oru is being gifted a giant valuable platform by the NCAA, even though the school's bigot rules are in direct violation of the NCAA's very own stated values about LGBTQ inclusion. Right.

Isn't it enough that we let them use the fucking U? That's a gift. And oral. Those words are safe, people. So in response to the article, Fox News decided to do a segment about it with their in-house persecution analyst pastor robert jeffress yeah you might remember jeffress from saying a homophobic slur on national television about once a week for the last decade and from elfin Cuckporn. Thank you. That's what drives me nuts.

He's also in love with that. So here's what Jeffress had to say. Quote, It proves the adage that those who cry loudest for tolerance are the most intolerant people when it comes to ideas they disagree with. Is that an adage?

Yeah. I think it's time for this irrational intolerance of people of faith by the left it's time for that to end and it needs to end now end quote ah yes the old adage that we've all heard and use all the time no you're a bigot you You are. You. Yep. They did a you are segment with their expert analyst. So yeah, I'm pretty sure Robert Jeffress is, he's demanding an end to bigotry, bigotry. Yes, he is. And no, no.

You know why no? Because that's bigotry, bigotry, bigotry. And that's bigotry. Also, the NCAA can go fuck itself, especially after the women's weight room was a goddamn pile of loose nickels in a bag or whatever they gave you. Right, yeah.

Fuck you. But yeah, but Jeffress, by your own rules, you now have a moral obligation to be more tolerant of our intolerance of their intolerance. Either way, you've got nothing to bitch about. Yeah, it's like the age-old adage fuck robert jeffrey yeah that one and in king of pop of kings news in the year 2021 society has to sit back and ask itself some tough questions

how can we fight back against the violence towards vulnerable communities how did we get here with covid and how do we make sure we don't end up here again is michael jackson in heaven or hell well this week we got an answer to one of those questions thanks to christian prophet manuel johnson of mega praise ministries and the good news is that god apparently cares as much about kid fucking as his servants down on earth do. Huh? Well, it's okay. I know. I get that you're trying to set up a joke and everything. But to be clear, the answer to your question is fewer Republicans, fewer Republicans.

And no. Quit sitting back and get back to work. That's fair. Also, mega praise ministries. Yeah. Mm hmm. It was like a super praise. And they were like, fuck those guys.

Sam, you got to buy a membership to praise in there. Is this your name? Mm-hmm. There was like a super praise and they were like, fuck those guys. Those guys. Mega praise. Sam, you got to buy a membership to praise in there. Fucking ultra praise ministries. God damn it. Son of a bitch. Infinity times infinity ministries. Fuck.

So, while appearing on Steve Schultz's YouTube program last week, Mr. Johnson had this to say about his inside scoop on Michael Jackson's post-life status. Quote, God has given me an assignment

as an attorney and he took me to heaven. He says, take your position. And there was an office in heaven with my name on it as an attorney to intercede for very well-known people

on earth before they died. I had a placard. God gave me the little placard thing. I got a little thing. Yeah. Because something was going to happen and they were going to be weighed out in the balance and I needed to intercede. I'm going to tell you something.

Michael Jackson went to heaven before he died. God had visited him. There were prayers that went up for him that people would intercede and michael jackson accepted the lord jesus as his savior yeah no i guess i get how the omnipotent guy needed your help so and also heaven is all about some child rapists these days so sure yeah and they hired a public defender for that group of people yeah there's a lot of technicalities they need they need to be represented, to be fair. Okay.

Really? Well, here's the thing. Before you guys think that this was some easy case, he added, quote, the enemy wanted him. Oh, boy. The enemy wanted him. And the enemy had set up witches to try to take him. What? And then these witches and warlocks made these crazy YouTubes that he was in.

Yeah. Made these YouTubes. Demonic warlock doing an ASMR to crime makeup tutorial about Michael Jackson's afterlife trial. He's like, see, see, this is what I'm talking about right here. All right. Well, I'm going to wait for the opening arguments about this i want to hear andrew represent the argument for satan's da before i decide if a pedophile belongs in heaven or hell he concludes this is not true saints this is false broken clock twice a day. Michael Jackson is in heaven. Same clock a minute later.

Yeah. Right after. And you know what he does? He dances and he sings for the Lord. Oh, Jesus fucking Christ. He's the jester. Michael Jackson is the court jester for God in heaven. Okay.

I just want to be clear about what's being said there. Go ahead. Come on. That's a pretty fun heaven. You get up there and God's like, you want him to dance for you? Do that moonwalk thing. Do that moonwalk. I always have to do the moonwalk.

He continued, I had a small trance. God put me in a trance. And I had a chance to see Michael's last year during the time of epidemic and sickness. And God allowed Michael to dance. He says, tell the people on earth, this is Michael. Tell the people on earth to dance before the Lord to celebrate. Good things are coming to celebrate. Good things are coming.

And he's dancing and he's singing. He's a songwriter in heaven. Glory to God. Jerry almost slipped in to celebrate good times there. And he was like, no, stop it. Back out. Back out. Can I do the free willy theme?

No. Quick. Can I do the freewheely theme? No? Okay. And then dipping your phalanges in the Ganges news tonight. Fantastic. Thank you. You found a rhyme for that. Yeah, right. I'm pretty sure that's the only one.

Shoulder to shoulder, masses of people all bathing in the same river was already a public health nightmare before there was a pandemic. But that hasn't stopped Hindus inia from gathering by the tens of thousands at a time to celebrate the kumbh mela a sacred pilgrimage that begins in the northern city of haradwar and ends on the fucking icu on a respirator because this is all going on despite the fact that india leads the world in new covid 19 cases and has fully vaccinated less than one and a half percent of its population. Yeah. I mean, who knew there were so many devout Hindus in Michigan?

Am I right? That's crazy. Well, as long as there's not a large, dense population in that area, I think it's going to be fine, right? Yeah. Plus, they have plenty of ventilators in India. Yeah. So to really understand the magnitude of this problem,

you have to understand the magnitude of this celebration. Okay, I've seen them described as the largest peaceful gatherings in world history. In the past, some of them have attracted upwards of 30 million people. And while this year's event hasn't seen anywhere near those numbers, the crowds were still distressingly enormous. And that would have been the case even if they weren't in a fucking warm river together. And it's worth emphasizing that this is a fucking pilgrimage. Any event with thousands,

let alone tens of thousands of people gathering shoulder to shoulder would be dangerous as all hell, but it's all the worse in an instance where people are gathering from every small town in the fucking country to do it. I can't think of a better strategy to spread a disease that's like the perfect one it's like sturgis bike week but without all the respect for science of american

bikers yes and and of course as america has amply demonstrated throughout the past year there's only so much you could do to stop religious idiots from gathering for their religious idiocy right even basic common sense measures are impossible to enforce universally. But in India, the government isn't lifting a fucking finger to mitigate the issue. And that's because India's prime minister, Narendra Modi, is every bit as beholden to that country's religious zealots as Donald Trump was to ours. He's literally afraid that he'll face more dire political consequences by pissing off Hindu fundies than by continuing to let people die to the tune of 2000 plus a day and most frightening of all he's right

yep he is all right well on that depressing moment from the past that could just as easily be a moment from the present we're going to close the headlines for the night pre-recorded heath pre-recorded eli thanks as always and when we come, Lucinda will be here to wonder what that smell is. One of the unexpected benefits of reading the Bible, the Koran, and the Book of Mormon is a certain learned tolerance to the most malodorous of nonsense. And since we've already built up a tolerance, we figured we might as well use it with a quick edition of How Bullshit Is It? Of course, Heath is in Europe at the moment, so guiding us on this trip down Lunacy Lane

will be my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, thanks for joining me. My pleasure, Noah. So tell us, which barrel of bullshit will we be digging into today? How about the one where you claim you're going on vacation? That's not really in keeping with the theme of this segment maybe something do you have something like pseudosciencey well i figured since i was stepping in for this one we'd go with my all-time favorite cryptid and the conspiracy theory i was most reluctant to give up when i became a skeptic

the loch ness monster huh really okay it was actually the one about the brown note, but Nessie was a close second. That's fair, that's fair. Okay, so what is the Loch Ness Monster? Does that count for the spreadsheet? Oh, I don't know. I'll have to ask Andrew. Anyway, the Loch Ness Monster, or Nessie, is nothing. It doesn't exist. And we can say that about as definitively as we can say anything doesn't exist. And we can say that about as definitively as we can say anything doesn't exist. Because unlike pretty much all of the other cryptids, the Loch Ness Monster must, by definition, be in this one lake. And it isn't. Okay, I think we've gotten a bit ahead of ourselves here. So let's back up a bit. When does the story of the Loch Ness Monster begin?

Well, some say the story goes all the way back to the 6th century when the Irish monk St. Columba chronicled the claims of the local Picts. Okay, but that's fucking nonsense and those people are fucking lying. True. There have actually been several efforts to grasp an antiquity by presenting entirely normal stories from the area and pretending that they were about the plesiosaur. The St. Columba one is indeed a story about a sea monster near the River Ness, but pretty much all the stories about the saints had the odd sea monster in them, so either the world was just teeming with mythical sea creatures back in the 500s, or that one can easily be dismissed. There are a couple of other stories from the late 1800s that have been retrofitted onto the legend as well. One from 1871 that amounts to a guy saw a weird log and kept it to himself

for 60 years, and another from 1888 that can be summed up as person sees animal. But the real story doesn't start until 1933 with the Aldi McKay sighting. Okay, before we get to that, what's the point of disguising the true origin of the story? Well, the whole myth rests on the idea that a breeding population of plesiosaurs, the whole myth rests on the idea that a breeding population of plesiosaurs, or if you want to go all the way into Crazy Town, one immortal plesiosaur, has lived in that lake for 66 million years. So either you retrofit some unrelated stories into it, or you admit that nobody noticed that shift until 1933. Okay, yeah, I get it. All right, so you were saying something about the Aldi-McKay

sighting? Yeah, so to be clear, there was already an established myth by 1933 that suggested that there was a giant monster that lived in Loch Ness, but that's true of maybe one out of every four bodies of water on Earth. But the Aldi-McKay sighting is the first time this story gets put down on ink, specifically the Ivernus Courier, where an article by one Alex Campbell kicks off the century-long delusion. In it, Campbell tells the story of Aldi McKay and her unnamed husband who were driving by the lake on the night of April 15, 1933, when Aldi saw something fishy in the lake. According to a later recollection, she yelled, stop, the beast! And then she and her husband watched Nessie roll around in the water for a full minute

before sinking below the surface. Okay, so what did they describe? Not much. The article just says that its body was the size of a whale, and then it left water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron. Huh. Usually cauldrons aren't employed for a simmer. Right?

A boil. Yeah, I don't know. But Audi said she knew that, quoting directly from Campbell's article here, there was no ordinary denizen of the depths because apart from its enormous size, the beast, in taking the final plunge, sent out waves that were big enough to have been caused by a passing steamer. Okay, how is that apart from its enormous size? No idea.

Seems like a necessary consequence of that, right? Yeah. But regardless, that story was the spark that would ultimately set the world aflame with Nessie Fever. There were a couple more sightings that year. One from a couple that says that they saw Nessie crossing the road in front of their car. Really? Like they had to stop and wait like it was a school crossing, apparently. Oh, okay.

And the other from a guy out walking his dog that guy hugh gray is the first to snap nessie's photo which if you think about it is crazy weird this is 1933 it's not like he had a camera on his phone or anything right anyway the original negative of the photo was lost and the picture is super blurry but from what we know now it was almost certainly a picture of an otter. Okay. Well, okay, but that's not the famous photo that everybody thinks of when they think of Nessie, right? Nope.

That one, the surgeon's photograph, comes from a year later. It was first published in April 1934 in that bastion of journalistic credibility, the Daily Mail. And it was so steeped in legitimacy that the guy who took the picture didn't want his name associated with it. Yeah, that's a good start. Yeah. So if you've ever seen or read anything about the Loch Ness Monster, you've seen this photo.

It shows a decidedly plesiosaur-shaped head and neck poking out of the water with huge waves flowing to either side of it like it was leaving a huge wake. Or at least that's what you usually see. But that's because the photo has been cropped. In the uncropped photo, you can see that it's actually tiny. It's estimated that the whole object is some two or three feet long, and that those huge waves on either side of it are actually just normal sized lake ripples. So what was it? Was it like a like a big swan or something? Even worse, it was a deliberate hoax. Apparently, some dude found some fake Nessie footprints and got made fun of for believing that they were real.

So he concocted this whole photograph as revenge. This was all exposed way the hell back in 1975, apparently. But all the cryptozoologists that want to sell books about sea monsters conveniently leave that part out. Well, okay, but there are other sightings and photos and stuff, though. So just because this one photo is a hoax doesn't mean that Nessie doesn't exist. Yeah, like maybe the one taken in May of 1977 by Anthony Doc Shields. And you can tell how trustworthy he is because his nickname is Doc and he isn't a doctor. He's actually a magician and a psychic. No, he isn't.

No, he isn't. He also didn't take pictures of the loch ness monster either but that didn't stop him from claiming that he did and presenting them to the public unlike the typical plesiosaur image we get shields described nessie as an elephant squid and said the long neck you see in the surgeon's photograph is actually the squid's trunk and no squids don't have trunks so fucked if i know what he meant there um suffice it to say though that his picture is so rubbery and ridiculous it's often referred to as the loch ness muppet nice okay so and and let me guess the number of sightings of nessie has gone down

precisely as the prevalence of cameras has gone up haven't they they sure have but modern technology fucks this myth even harder than that because sonar has gotten really good in the intervening eight decades plus. So despite its truly monumental depth, we can basically look all the way down into the lock and see what's there. And what do we see? Fishes and shit. Look, back in the early 2000s, the BBC used satellite navigation technology to aim 600 separate sonar beams through the lake. light navigation technology to aim 600 separate sonar beams through the lake. In the words of the researchers, quote, we went from shoreline to shoreline, top to bottom on this one. We have covered everything in this lock and we saw no signs of any large living animal in the lock,

end quote. So unlike stuff like Bigfoot and Chupacabra that could always technically be in a part of the forest you haven't looked at yet, we can definitively say that the Loch Ness Monster does not exist. So I guess with the hoaxes so well documented, the complete lack of physical evidence after 87 years, and the definitive sonar evidence disproving the theory, there's probably not much interest in Nessie anymore, huh? Cryptid-based tourism accounts for over $50 million a year in tourist revenues and the lock was seeing upwards of 2 million visitors a year in the pre-covid times okay but at least some of those people were just there to see a pretty lake though right

maybe but there are 29 999 other locks in scotland and none of them are within two orders of magnitude of loch ness's visitors uh okay so with the theory so thoroughly debunked, why do people still go? Because this shit is worth over 50 million bucks a year. Look, Scotland is kind of like Canada. All the shit worth seeing is way south. Sure, maybe you take a drive north of Edinburgh, but what the hell is the point? Northern Scotland needs this shit. So despite the fact that it's a fairy tale that can be entirely dismissed by logical people, they still pump literally millions of pounds into

ad campaigns of the but-you-never-know variety. Okay. Well, I guess the only question left to ask is, how bullshit is it? It's Scottish bullshit, Noah. So, incomprehensible? Exactly.

All right. Well, I'm sure there's more bullshit yet to poke our way through, but there's one more entry that we can cross off the list. Lucinda, thanks so much for your help. Jumanji, Noah. Before we kick our feet up tonight, I want to remind you that you're a much better person than you give yourself credit for. To be continued... of our Half-Sister Show Citation debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this episode would have a weird empty echo in it if I neglected to thank Keith Enright for letting me travel Europe vicariously through him.

I need to thank Eli Bosney for letting me travel any way I want through him for 50 bucks as a standing offer. I want to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for helping out even more than usual over the last few weeks. I also want to thank Gavin for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

He said he didn't have anything to promote but humanism, equality, and beer, though not necessarily in that order. So, you know, crack a beer, share an equal amount with a human, and tell them Gavin sent you. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Jason, Michael, Matt, Mickey, Mark from Connecticut, Stephanie, Darren, Dennis, Zach0118, and Kay DeZern.

Jason, Michael, and Matt, whose ejaculations are measured on the enhanced Fujita scale, Mickey, Mark from Connecticut, and Stephanie, whose IQs are so high mountaineers try to scale them, Darren, Dennis, and Zach, who are so bright you have to put on sunglasses to read their emails, and Kay Dizern, who has Dizern-ing taste in podcast patronage. Sorry, you're probably sick of that joke, but it's new to me.

This is the first time I've made it. Anyway, together, these ten delightfully doting disbelievers deign to deliver a donation to our degradation of doctrine this week by giving us money. Not all your money belongs with us, but some of it does. If you agree, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free does. If you agree, 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 scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but not in a monetary way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, or following at P-I-A-T-P-O-D on Twitter. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robinson handles our social media, and our audio engineer

is Morgan Clark. We'll also read all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScalingA it is. Sorry. No problem. I'm going to start it again from the beginning. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.