The Scathing Atheist - 450: Sesquiquadricentennial Edition

Episode Date: September 30, 2021

In this week’s episode, we’ll finish off the headlines from the past, you’ll miss the headlines from the present, and we’ll look forward to the headlines from the future. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Check out Teresa English’s website here: https://www.voteteresaenglish.org/

Warning, the following podcast contains obscene language, even British stuff like clunge and bugger. Now that I said clunge and bugger. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Satellites and Wires and Shit. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, my name is Teresa English. I'm running for state representative in Massachusetts because someone has to fix this shit. representative in Massachusetts because someone has to fix this shit. The incumbent is proof that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday! It's September 30th, and that's still just enough September for me to be all by myself again. I'm Noah Lusions, and from Anabosnix, New Jersey, Cincinnati Red State, and Redtown Blue State, this is The Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, Kenneth Copeland will admit that he was just lying for the money the whole time, Cecil and Eli will finally consummate their relationship, and I'll just start making shit up for the introductory bullet points. But first, the diatribe. In my experience, the most underappreciated field of study in all the world is ethical philosophy. I've read whole books, bestsellers, that would have been obviated if the author had so much as taken a weekend fucking seminar in ethics. And I honestly think that one of the reasons ignorance of that subject is so ubiquitous is that we've all been playing along with this fantasy that religion teaches ethics for so long that we've forgotten what ethics even is. Consider this. Imagine you walk into your first class of ethics, right? Ethical philosophy 101 or whatever. And the professor starts off going like, okay, murder, bad. Stealing, bad. Giving

to charity, good. And yet that's about the extent of the ethical tutelage you can expect from a church. Their version of the trolley problem has one empty track on it. It shouldn't be like that. They go to church every fucking week. Some of them go two or three times a week, and I get that morality isn't the only thing that they talk about, but it's like one of the main three or four things, isn't it? You'd think by the time these motherfuckers reached adulthood, they'd all but have the equivalent of a PhD in moral philosophy, but if anything, they've been ethically handicapped by deontological bullshit through their formative years

without ever being taught what fucking deontology means. I mean, sure, at its most basic level, being a moral person is about behaving morally. You know, most of our moral lapses come when we know good and damn well that we're doing something wrong. But we also understand the right thing intuitively most of the time. You know, yeah, you got to tell a three-year-old not to bite people or whatever, but as soon as we've got a solid handle on theory of mind, we also work out all the do-on-to-others-level ethics stuff.

on theory of mind, we also work out all the do-on-to-others-level ethics stuff. This is some a priori shit, and yet it's essentially the full extent of Christian moral teachings. Of course, if you really want to learn about ethics, you don't focus on shit like, you know, thou shouts. Instead, you drill down on real moral dilemmas, right? If there's a fire in a museum, are you justified in saving a priceless work of art instead of a person? Why or why not? How do you make that decision in real time? And by doing that, you actually prepare yourself for novel circumstances where the ethical decision might actually be tricky or might not be clear. Now, admittedly, some churches do some stuff like that some of the time, but they have to dip their toes into it very carefully because their whole system is based on deontology.

Their path to morality is to listen to God, obey the Bible, and follow the example of Christ. Anytime they present you with a problem that can't be solved with that formula, they're underscoring the fact that their whole ethical system is essentially useless. Even if it somehow worked, its weakness has become pretty glaring as soon as you imagine some dude in a flaming museum flipping through the Old Testament to see if there's anything relevant in there and look as bad as arming people with a nearly useless moral code and then sending them out into the world with the belief that they're experts in the subject this it actually manages to get worse because if your morality is based on authoritarian dictates it's way easier to manipulate than one based on say the consequences

of your actions i I'm not saying consequentialism can't be manipulated. Plenty of 21st century genocides would be quick to point out my error if I did, but it's way harder than manipulating a moral code that basically boils down to because I said so, or because the invisible guy I speak for said so. A bit of a distinction without a difference. And sure, this causes plenty of problems on the individual level, but that's nothing compared to the problems it creates culturally. Consider the pandemic, right? Here we are facing a moral dilemma that, while not exactly novel, is something nobody alive remembers having to deal with before. And the ones who are getting the ethics wrong most consistently are precisely the group that prides itself on its ethical superiority. These are people who all but worship the idea of self-sacrifice. Their Messiah,

in their minds anyway, is the very embodiment of that concept. But that doesn't matter because theirs is a rules-based morality and there's no rule in the Bible that says thou shalt wear a fucking mask and get your fucking shot. Of course, I'm sure you could go through the Bible and find plenty of passages that clearly indicate that getting vaccinated and masking up is the moral thing to do, but to do so would be to miss the point. The problem isn't the specific moral precept that we're working with, but rather the very framework that they're putting it on. A thing is made moral by a moral authority proclaiming it. In this instance, the preponderance of those moral authorities, in their minds anyway, said that the moral thing to do was to stand up for

your rights, refuse the shot, and aggressively breathe on as many people as possible. Now, there were some moral authorities for all of them saying the opposite, yes. And for some of those folks, that might have been a pretty even mix. Maybe even the majority were saying to do the right thing, but that doesn't matter because at the same time that they're being told that morality is based on following a set of fucking rules, they're also being told that a ghost will whisper the right answer to them if the problem is ever too tough. So when they encounter conflicting moral dictates, their ethical system literally tells them that the moral choice is whatever the fuck they feel like. This is at least part of the reason why reforming the faith can't work. Yes, progressive Christianity

is better than regressive Christianity, but so is almost everything. The root of the problems, though, are so deeply woven into the fabric of the faith that you can't tease them out without the whole damn thing unraveling. And that's not a bad thing. The whole thing unraveling, as we've demonstrated over and over again, is the most moral outcome possible. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the ghosts of Heath and Eli. We're off for one more week and it turns out we actually recorded way more headlines than we needed so rather than letting them go to waste we're going to forego the normal

c segment this week and join a marathon of headlines from the past already in progress and in 12 angry son of men news oh this story we have a follow-up on a story from a couple months ago don't want about whether a jury is allowed to ignore the evidence if a ghost told them to apparently that was an open question in our court system and if that sounds fucking stupid that's because it is but it turns out the ghost in question was super credible this time. It was Christian God. After a member of the jury told the rest of the panel that God said not guilty and the judge heard about it, that juror was thrown out. And the new jury found the defendant guilty. But that got appealed all the way up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

all the way up to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. And they decided in a 7-4 ruling last week What? that you have to let members of the jury ignore evidence and decide based on sincerely held ghost talking. For real, this happened. What? So the whole trial got nullified, and it's an official do-over because of that 7-4 decision.

Jesus, okay. This is baffling. Think about how many adults who genuinely in no uncertain terms are aware that there is no god had to pretend that there is judges federal they still get to use the word judge after this oh what do you do i'm a judge they still do our justice system is so fucked that at this point the judges are pleading insanity so the original trial found former congresswoman corinne brown guilty on multiple counts of filing false tax returns mail fraud and wire fraud mostly because of the very obvious digital trail and

paper trail of definitely doing all that stuff but right before deliberation was about to start juror number 13 said all right guys put away all your nerd evidence boo nerd a higher being told me not guilty on all charges i trust the holy ghost and that's when juror number eight told the judge who then had to go through a ridiculous process to disqualify the crazy person and by ridiculous i mean any process beyond the ghost talkers out gavel we're right here with that guy the judge met with both attorneys and let him argue it out as if there was an argument here the defense attorney claimed that religious people they do stupid shit like that all the time. The judge is like, oh, you're done.

That was your argument. OK, let's hear from the prosecution. And the prosecution explained that it would be literally impossible for any piece of real reality evidence to be more important than a conversation between a crazy person and the god of the universe hey defense guy what if god had told him that she was guilty what precedent could this possibly set that you want to have set well even even better make it black or in this case make it white right so like what if the juror said don't worry guys i talked to the ghost of george wallace and he assured me the defendant is too white to be a criminal because that's exactly what we're talking about. Yep.

Right. We're talking about a Christian deciding on their own that a fellow Christian couldn't be guilty and assigning that opinion to God and a court protecting that. Yep. That's the law. That's what really, really happened. Wow. Protecting that. Yep.

That's the law. That's what really, really happened. Wow. So after hearing that absurd argument, the judge checked with juror 13, who said, yep, I literally spoke to literal God directly, not guilty. Literally what I'm saying. Yes, I said that. So that juror got dismissed.

And apparently that was not a valid dismissal. Here's the reasoning from the 11th Circuit. Writing for the majority was Judge William Pryor, appointed by George W., not surprising. And Pryor argued that this could lead to all religious people getting banned from juries. What? Apparently that would be a problem. Yeah. I guess that would be a problem.

Also, know the fuck it would. It would not lead to that. Most religious people, first of all, are liars or they don't mention their hallucinations out loud. So it wouldn't happen that way. But also we just wouldn't do that. But according to Pryor, quote, members of some religious groups are more likely than others to report two-way communication with God. That's what communication means. Courts may not conclude that their vernacular alone disqualifies them from jury service. And the dissenting opinion was amazing.

It was like, yeah, we weren't. We were really focused on the vernacular. That was a weird thing for you to say. Regardless of the ghost-talking patois, it was more about the entire concept of the legal system getting thrown out the window by the majority just now. Okay, but even in his own opinion, he gives away the game, right? Because what Pryor means is, oh, they just say they talk to God.

They don't actually talk to God, but you got to let them say it. Why? Why would you have to do that is there anyone else involved in the legal process you would allow to incorporate linguistic omniscience read that back to me no need your honor baphomet will whisper it into my ear we're gonna find out that corporations are demons too and you get the rights of dean i don't know something's gonna happen yeah so again i just this was real this really happened we talked about this story a couple months ago and i believe eli ended the story with like okay but you know that's it's

gonna they're they're appealing it but that's not gonna work it worked it worked it worked yeah so that was fun i'm gonna talk about this all the time. I'm never going to be able to stop talking about this. Ridiculous. A federal court just ruled that religion gets an evidence exemption on a jury, an evidence exemption in court. That happened. Even after my extremely relevant amicus brief that explained how I checked with God,

and he said he never met Jern number 13. I'm pretty sure I just got persecuted too. Yeah, you can appeal now to the 11th Circuit. I'm not sure. And in turn, the other cheek book news. You know, as dark as the last year has been,

even grumps like us here at the Scathing Atheist have to admit that more and more light seems to be peeking its way through the trees. Vaccination numbers in the U.S. are going up, families are seeing each other again, and it's possible to make it entire weeks

without seeing something Donald Trump has said or did. Thanks, in large part, to his complete and total ban from all social media platforms. Well, not all. He still managed to go on, I guess, frankspeech.com or whatever to explain that the winning horse at the Kentucky Derby is, quote, a junkie. a horse is addicted as if to heroin to an anti-inflammatory corticosteroid which which is just like america stealing the election that's a real thing he said guys he's such a loser at

this point that he like just inherently sympathizes with all other losers even if they're horses i i'm almost as delighted by that as i am by the fact that he hasn't realized that yet. Yes. Well, this week, Trump's ban on Facebook was upheld by their oversight committee. And as you can imagine, this was a chance for Christians to lose their minds about this all over again. And nobody managed it better this week than Shaneane vaughn of mississippi's first harvest ministries who regular listeners will remember for trying to give credit to donald trump for

the latest covid relief bill and for looking like he got fired from his job as an extra on the sopranos for doing fuck stuff to crafty okay i look this guy up I have never been more certain that a person calls a bagel Jew bread. Absolutely. Probably while he's putting his dick in the hole at crafty as an extra extra spread. I was like, yeah, I said, I'm going to go ahead and say it. It's weird that you have a scale like that for him to top, but it's useful. Anyway, here's what Shane had to say about trump's extended facebook ban quote and this is how he talks so bear with me hey they made the same mistake that satan made when he killed jesus

christ by killing that one man and killing his voice he created a world full of little christians that echo the message of christ see stupid on the devil's part wow that's dumb who can forget christ's final words as he hung there brutalized to the cusp of death upon the cross ha gotcha dumbass face i'm dead he continues hey the bible says that had satan known what was going to happen he would never have crucified jesus christ because what he did was he started a harvest of christians that echo the message he had only one man to deal with now he's got a whole population full of us same thing we're doing with trump let them crucify him seconded but now we're the echo and we're gonna put it on every page every twitter account everything we got because the oversight board didn't rule that we couldn't share trump content it's allowed on facebook for now anyway so take advantage of it

while we can but but it's not though right like to say the fact that he was saying the shit that you weren't allowed to say is why he got banned but no shane run with that run with that man yeah and shane obviously having a normal sane reaction to trump not being on facebook anymore that said shane if your metaphor holds buddy you're about to be psyched when you find out what the da of the southern district of new york is up to man you're gonna fucking love it also shane if you really want to pwn us maybe just crucify yourself right in our face. You won't let me crucify you. Everybody would follow you.

We're in the same state, Shane. You'd harvest more people like yourself. No, he's not. We're not. He's in Mississippi. I just gave him that voice. He does look like that voice. He does look like that voice.

We should be in the same state. Sorry, dumb guy with a southern accent is overdone. Thank you. state that's all right dumb guy with a southern accent is overdone thank you and in filthy monkey women news jane goodall fantastic winner of this year's templeton prize for being an outstanding scientist who's willing to pretend religion kind of matters a little bit or in their words she harnesses the power of science to questions about the universe and humanity's purpose so obviously especially if you know about the templeton foundation obviously their prize is fucking stupid yeah but it went to a real scientist so that's good i guess and here's

the best part christian fundamentalists are freaking out because good all only medium pretends they matter and they need her to pretend way fucking harder with very specific christian words right yeah you'd think with all the screeching and beating of chests she'd know how to handle herself better in this situation right right so i just i gotta be clear on this jane goddall just barely qualifies as a scientist and she's only famous because like the media loved how unscientific she was about her science she anthropomorphized her subjects she interfered with them as she observed them and one of her books was pulled before publication because it was found to have blatantly plagiarized a dozen plus sources including wikipedia and a shitty astrology blog astrology yeah problematic as all fuck.

She also made up a bunch of shit that the monkeys didn't do. Every reason to believe that as well. Maybe she does belong in the Temple Foundation prize list. More than you might have thought, yeah. Everybody after her was like, I've never seen

the monkeys do that. And she was like, well, they did it for me, okay? They fucking did it for me okay they fucking did it for me you know when you guys aren't around he gets up and he sings he's hello my baby hello my honey it's just the whole thing he does a dance okay she's got not the

best backstory I just learned I thought she was cool super cool until just now anyway it's okay Noah ruined Coco for me yeah right right so in case anyone is not familiar with the Templeton Foundation, their stated goal is to fund research into the intersection of religion and science. So nothing. Their stated goal is to do something that does not exist.

If those things ever intersect, it's because religion guessed something right. And if that ever happens, science will fucking let us know. And they'll use science to find that out. But the Templeton people are so desperate to find something, they pay for all these big studies. And they keep failing just so many times. So many times.

My favorite example is when they funded a three-year-long study on the therapeutic effects of praying for people getting heart surgery. And the study found that for patients who didn't know about the praying, it helped exactly zero. No help. But the patients who did know about the praying were not quite so lucky as getting zero help for the people who knew about the praying it actually led to a spike in the rate of post-surgical arrhythmia it cost about 2.4 million dollars to figure that out if you want to pray for people just make sure you shut the fuck up about it or they might get arrhythmia. Yeah.

Ooh, now that's a t-shirt I would buy. Yeah, right. See, I would buy that. So apparently Goodall was raised Christian, but now she describes herself as spiritual instead of religious. Yuck, boo. The Templeton Foundation, they can't buy a bucket. So they were like, mine, ours, that's science, plus our thing, discounts, we're taking Jane Goodall. But the intelligent designers at the Discovery Institute are not having it.

In a recent article on their site called, go fuck yourself, it's called Evolution News, they explain that Goodall talks about a life force that imbues the world with energy. But vague magic is for hippies and Methodists, and they were pissed. And this is apparently their argument. Quote, Goodall dismisses her simplistic childhood view that our species is elevated onto a pinnacle separate from all the others. Okay, quick pause here.

It's very confusing. But yes, they are arguing in favor of a simplistic childhood view okay that's what i heard yeah thanks for the clarification i i looked at this for a while that's the only thing i can think of i'm pretty sure they were like no it's simplistic and childish you assholes yes it is continuing it can easily be shown how this life force theory pales in comparison with the explanatory power of traditional theism well that's the opposite of the vaguer you are about your sky wizard the less wrong you are well right so but okay but he didn't say anything about right like their view does have more explanatory power, right?

Oh, you know what? That's true. It's like if you're trying to decide if you should build your house out of jello molds or bricks of C4. Yeah. So, yeah, you got to love a good idiot fight. The intelligent design people are mad at the prayer-based cardiology people because Jane Goodall doesn't specifically say that humans are magically special meat puppets for Jesus only, just Jesus. Fuck you. And in Survey Says News, more Christians should listen to this podcast. And I'm not just saying that because iTunes recently got rid of the other category in the religious section where we were consistently in the top five.

Higher if you didn't count Oh No with Ross and Carrie because they don't even go here. Eli. What? Oh, we talked to a cult. Tell me there's no God. Cowards. Cowards. For the record, Ross and Carrie seem like lovely people and they have a lovely show.

Please ignore my co-host. Yes. Whatever. Thank you. Fine. Two votes what Noah said. Cowards. Christians should listen to our podcast because if they did, they'd

hear just how great it's going for them. Right? They get extra rights. There's less rights for other people. And apparently, they need to hear that because according to an informal survey done by D. James Kennedy Ministries last week, they are very sure that they are very very persecuted

okay but i just did two informal surveys that say no they're not are we done we're actually participated in two informal surveys that seem to suggest the same thing boom three more it's five to one outvoted yeah so they surveyed around 1900 christians and the results like the respondents were fucking crazy beautiful i could go through this whole thing okay in response to the question quote are you concerned about americans who have been taken to court or charged with hate crimes because of their conscientious objections to homosexual marriage, in scare quotes, 99% said yes.

Oh my God, fuck your faces. One said no, and 1% were undecided or didn't answer. 99 said yes, one said no, one undecided. I guess that's the advantage

of an informal survey. You get to have more percents than anyone else. That's key. That's key. Wait, so 99% of informal Christians are scared of a thing that doesn't exist. Okay. You know what? That seems low. Now that I say it out loud, that seems low. Well, hey, speaking of things that don't exist, in response to the question, should students have the right to pray in public school classrooms at sporting events and graduation ceremonies 97 said yes one percent said no what and two percent were undecided and or didn't answer 100 of people were able to pray anywhere the fuck they want because obviously you can do that wherever the fuck you want that one percent who said no is a baffling group of human beings they're blocking thoughts what does that even mean hey look i'm christian but i don't know about all this

praying bullshit stop it just side tackling people stop praying but it gets better. In response to the question, have you experienced verbal or physical abuse or bias because of your faith in Jesus Christ or for your conservative Christian views? 96% said yes. All right. Well, so maybe they're already listening to this show. We don't know. Okay. I'm fine with the verbal and bias part for sure. Yeah.

Okay. The whole survey is such an amazing box of crazy. They had a check the box, which of these pose a serious threat to the United States question on the survey. 87% said China. Sure. 42% said Russia. 73% said the united nations and 81 said socialism oh worse even than the un sorry the united nations the united nations is the kid feebly shouting guys wait up of organizations that's them they're

nothing 31 percent more dangerous than russia i wish they had power they do not yeah right okay one last thing on that socialism thing seriously i could go through this entire survey so many times but when asked quote should schools be required to teach students the truth about the history of socialism and its damaging impact on the world 100 percent of respondents said yes so honestly the funniest part of this story we'll link to it in the show notes is the press release that breathlessly reports this as though asking Larry his cousins and their wives was an actual survey that's like this is up 31%

from last year hey I just did an informal survey 0% of those people could define socialism just for the record and in putting the lock back in caps lock news tonight it's always interesting when one of our scathing regulars seeps out into the larger world and the average American comes face to face with the festering insanity that is modern evangelical Christianity.

And this is our lives. You have to participate. Exactly. Well, that happened again when CNN ran a piece about the fucking sapient hate crime that is Greg Locke and the death toll from his COVID denialism on last Friday's Anderson Cooper 360. Specifically, reporter Al Reeve interviewed family members of a member of his church who died of COVID after accepting Locke's bullshit conspiracy theories. Yeah, I mean, look, anytime more people in the world hate Greg Locke, I'm for it. But I also kind of feel possessive, it's like yeah i was here first

does el reeve even know his crazy two medium coffees with a million sugars coffee you don't even go here all right so now the victim here is a guy named uh coburn kennedy coburn kennedy so i like i shouldn't be making jokes, but come on. OK, so I'm assuming it was Colonel Mustard with the revolver in the billiard room with a name like that. If your name is Coburn Kennedy, you can't go into billiard rooms if there's a colonel there. Exactly. So now he was a member of Locke's church that bought into Locke's repeated claims that the virus wasn't dangerous, that the pandemic wasn't a pandemic, and that the vaccine was somehow both sugar water and contained aborted fetuses. Ah, so that makes it a fetus smoothie.

Well, actually, yeah, right, right. That is a complex syrup. Now, one of his nephews showed a family group chat where Kennedy parroted Locke's claims that the vaccines were both immoral and unnecessary. So needless to say, when the extremely at-risk elderly man got COVID, chat where Kennedy parroted Locke's claims that the vaccines were both immoral and unnecessary. So needless to say, when the extremely at risk elderly man got COVID, he didn't bother seeing a doctor about it until it was so advanced there was little that could be done for him. He died shortly thereafter. Several members of his family rightly blame Locke and more urgently,

several members of his family still don't and still to go to the fucking church of negligent manslaughter yeah and that's a generous deal for the name of that church by the way they had to plea that down well you know the supreme court ruled last week that they're allowed to use loaded shotguns as communion wafers so what are you gonna do right when there's nothing yeah now so lock of course has been in damage control mode since several days before the piece aired actually apparently he was scheduled to do an interview with the cnn reporter but he canceled at the last second because you know either jesus's ghost warned him that cnn was trying to set him up by broadcasting the answers that he was going to give to their

questions or the things he said yeah. Or somebody in his circle realized that the focus of the story was going to be on one of the people that he killed with his stupid. But since video of Greg Locke being homicidally stupid isn't exactly hard to come by, they just used clips they already had, like the one of him getting

all the way flummoxed by questions like, okay, then what is a pandemic? Okay. Noah's not exaggerating there. Just a reminder, that's a real question that stumped Greg Locke. His answer was, I'm 44 years old. Yes, it was. It was a pandemic.

That was the explanatory part. Right. And then his manager side-tackled the reporter and was like, you didn't say there would be questions. Right. Yeah. Do you think they go to someone like Hemet when they're doing research for this story? He's just like, what video do you want first? I got so much.

I've never gotten a call and I'm offended. So, OK, so look, the story is tragic. Of course, he interviews a couple of members of the family that are obviously none too bright and buying into everything that Locke is selling about the dangers of the vaccine and the safety of COVID, even after watching their relative die from it. But there are some silver linings to tease out of this one. Those people will be dead soon, too. Okay, I wasn't going to mention that one. The first is that the mainstream media is ramping up their coverage of the continued existential threat that evangelicals pose during this pandemic. And the second is that they've scared Locke into hiding.

So not only did he cancel the interview, but he hasn't publicly reacted to the now five-day-old segment at all. And that may indicate that Greg Locke is starting to realize that everything he says is dumber than the last thing, and most people can tell. that everything he says is dumber than the last thing, and most people can tell. But look, whether it's motivated by self-preservation or genuine remorse, anything that shuts up Greg Locke is worth celebrating. What's up, bunker boy? Nothing to say now?

You scared? Still invited on the show, Greg. No, you're not. You got somebody going to Duncan for you? It's going to be a very legitimate debate. Greg. And in the Rod to perdition news, regular listeners to our show might remember a few months ago when Heath introduced us

to an exciting new machine gun wielding MAGA loving cult known as the Rod of Iron Ministries. And it sounds like we're going to be hearing from them quite a bit more because we learned from

Vice News this week that they have purchased themselves a $1 million compound in Texas for their, quote, coming war with the deep state. Oh, what could go wrong? Yeah, that's every real estate person in Texas now dealing with this being like, yeah, so Kitchen Island island a cute little breakfast nook right there a great turrets for the war with the deep state of course everybody in texas okay i just want to point out that for really regular listeners you might also remember these broad of iron ministry guys from as far back as episode 263 but like this is not the first time i've come to suspect eli's not listening when i talk but that's fine that's fine. That's fine. You said it, Heath. You said it. So, the leader of the group,

Hyungjin Sean Moon, is the son of Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the right-wing Unification Church and creator of the right-wing Washington Times newspaper. He's become increasingly violent in his sermons, saying in a recent one,

quote, the internationalist Marxist globalists are trying to start a civil war here. Yeah, we need more nationalist globalists. What the fuck does that mean? Internationalist globalists? They want to bring in the UN troops and the Chai Kam Chinese military to come in and destroy and kill all gun owners, Christians and any opposition, i.e. Trump supporters. And quote, and only Mike Norris can stop him. Sorry, are we not in a movie trailer? Right.

I thought you were doing a movie trailer. OK, but for realsies, if the plan is to kill all the gun owners and your plan is to tell people to get guns, aren't you an accomplice now? Like, yeah, double agent. I like it later on he said quote it's obviously better if we can use our rights to freedom of speech assembly to seek redress of grievance otherwise we'll have to fight physically with many dying end quote no no i feel like you guys could take the u.s military augmented by the u.n troops in the chinese army though no it's a good threat you yeah you got her you got those turrets you got the breakfast it's all about risk and island you got to get in their guard it's like a bear

it's also worth noting that this past october sean created his own constitution and declared himself king of the kingship of the kingdom of god what okay sean ill gook kingpin king fisher that's bird just the first three king and kingship oh so yeah that group they now have a one million dollar compound uh coincidentally 40 miles from Waco. Is that a coincidence? Where they're planning for a war with Santa Claus. Sorry, the deep state. The war was deep. In an Instagram live video posted last week, wearing a crown of bullets

and sitting behind a gold-plated machine gun, Sean said, Sorry, just, you're wearing a crown of bullets and you're going to say something out loud? Everybody just needs to remember that context. Everything you say now, that's the context. Need to picture it. Really, check the link in the show notes because it's a lot.

Oh, I feel like this story is just not going to age well. Us laughing it up about this shit. You have to start every quote if you're wearing a bullet crown with I'm wearing a bullet crown. And now I have something to say. And you have to end it with it. Yeah, absolutely. Quote, America. I'm wearing a bullet crown.

Yeah, I'm wearing a bullet crown. Quote, America is existentially at a crisis right now. We have left God. We've become part of this licentious, decrepit, degraded moral culture. We have strayed from God's principles. That will bring a country to destruction and god will allow it to be judged just like he did with the israelites i'm wearing a crown of bullets and quote and you know it's worth remembering that armed militants with

imaginary enemies usually end up finding real people to kill anyway so yeah sure do they do people to kill anyway. Yeah, sure do. They do. So yeah, that seems like it's going to turn out awesome. Right. We'll let you know with further updates as they arrive and hopefully without a body count. God, where's Janet Reno

when you need her? Next up in headlines. In a shocking turn of events, we have some delightful news about a prayer group. Huh? Yeah. And it all started on January 6th. we have some delightful news about a prayer group. Huh. Yeah. And it all started on January 6th. Actually, that's not quite right.

It all started when America turned into political hot garbage. Sure. So that was like 1776. Right. Yeah. And then it festered. And then Christianity merged with the far right around 1980, just like the atheist community did recently.

Same thing. That's exactly the same. And then Trump lost to Biden. And then we got the Capitol riot. That included a man named Glenn Allen Brooks of Huntington Beach, California, who managed to avoid prosecution until now. who managed to avoid prosecution until now. And that's because he got on the text thread with his prayer group and bragged about the sweet, sweet riot he was part of on that thread. Jesus Christ. And, you know, that's terrorism.

So somebody told the FBI. Yeah. I mean, yeah, not to throw cold water on the feel-good story, but it took the FBI seven months to find a guy dumb enough to brag about his terrorism on the prayer group text thread. So there's also that. Awful judging for a man who's in several Facebook

threads with me, no illusion. Withdrawn. Delete some stuff. So this might have been a bit more difficult for the FBI if Glenn Brooks wasn't just way too stupid to be alive yes it would be way harder yeah he admitted to a federal crime on the digital record but i'm assuming he

was using his clandroid freedom phone which is unhackable but here's the thing lots of people don't realize about phones phone communication it usually involves one or more other people with phones. It's tricky. Also, he included photographs, some of which showed a bunch of other people at the riot, and those people are also being investigated now. And he included

a literal selfie smiling like an idiot with a room of very clearly the Capitol building in the background. Jesus Christ. And for the talent portion of my confession, what the hell is wrong with you? Yeah. I mean, look, say what you will about the 9-11 hijackers, but at least we didn't have to introduce their selfies into evidence. You know what I'm saying? And here's my favorite part. This guy probably never gets caught without directly providing

the evidence himself and that's because he looks like an angry carpenter gnome with a goatee and at the capital riot that's a it's like a where's waldo situation yeah no waldo that's everyone at the capital riots a bunch of angry carpenter gnomes even in his selfie he almost disappears because right behind him there's like 50 other angry carpenter gnomes with goatees and maga hats literally also taking proud selfies to document their felony terrorism so bottom line the fbi needs to start making prayer groups. These people are super dumb. Yeah. Easy to catch.

And in who you're going to call? An ambulance news. Yep. Ghost hunting. Oh, God. A multi-million dollar industry based on walking around places looking for nothing. It's often illegal and irresponsible way to deal with both grief and mental health,

and sometimes it's just plain dangerous, as turned out to be the case this week when an amateur ghost hunter plunged 20 feet through the roof of Buffalo, New York's

abandoned central terminal to the concrete below. Jesus. Womp womp. But it doesn't even make sense. Why would a ghost want to haunt an empty, abandoned building? That's just boring.

Right? I don't understand why you'd even look there. And no fair dying and leaving your ghost there, lady. That doesn't count. That's like a fucking Sasquatch hunter making their own tracks. Yes, exactly. Illegitimate. Podcast listener, before you worry that you're not allowed to laugh at this story,

every news outlet I read assures me that this person is alive and well and therefore wide open for our mockery because people if we can't make fun of those who essentially fall down a manhole looking for bigfoot there is no comedy left we're out of comedy i appreciate what you're doing there, but how badly injured would this person need to be for me to not make fun of this? There's no answer in my head. I don't have a line. Am I a bad person because I don't have a line for that? Don't look at me. I think it was funnier if she was dead.

There's a lot of bits. I feel like the only way to know the right answer here is for more ghost hunters to injure themselves in increasingly gruesome ways. That's a great, we need big data on that. Right, exactly. Call to action. Yeah. So, I bring up this story for a couple of reasons. First of all, I wanted to make fun of this person

because they fell through a roof while ghost hunting. Come on, people, this is gold. But also because a lot of the time when skeptics talk about bullshit like ghost hunting. I bet she felt funny. She felt funny. And you know that when she started to fall, she was like, a ghost!

It's happening! Whap! Nope. Nope, just fell. Ow. Call real doctors. Call all the grown-ups our pretend thing hurted me. But again,

so that's hilarious. We need to talk about that. But also, whenever skeptics talk about bullshit like ghost hunting, we get treated like grumpy

spoil sports. Yes. And it's worth pointing out that like taking advantage of the grieving and the mentally ill aside, and we really shouldn't put those things aside. This shit's fucking dangerous, right?

Ghost hunting by its very nature often involves sneaking around abandoned buildings in the fucking dark with people preselected for stupidity. Right. Once again, just a reminder in what possibly encapsulates the theme of our podcast. The answer to where's the harm is everywhere. Yep. All the time, everywhere. Yeah. Blank hunting.

It's almost always bad. Always bad. It's like, you know, metaphorical ways. Ghost hunter hunting, as we just recommended, good. Truffles? I don't know. Yeah, no, there you go. And in parole with the punches news tonight you wouldn't think the first amendment is still allowed to count would be the kind of thing we

needed a court to adjudicate let alone an appellate court but holy shit if that didn't have to happen last week because apparently that much wasn't clear to a lower court task with deciding whether a parolee can be legally required to attend religious services. Like as a condition of their parole. And they didn't get this wrong in a decided the case incorrectly kind of way, but rather in a dismiss the case because they didn't think being literally sent to jail for failing to attend Bible study was the kind of thing you could sue over way. Okay, I got it. New Patreon goal. We start some atheist-only jails where

we teach atheists. And the First Amendment's back. Weird. So crazy. Oh, I'm glad because Atheist Jail actually already exists. It's called Quillette Magazine. Cruel and unusual. So this is the story of one Mark Janney, a Colorado man who was released from jail in 2015 on the condition that he lived at a christian homeless shelter in fort collins

colorado now to be clear jenny did have a place to stay he had family friends willing to put him up so he was not homeless also he was not christian jenny made it clear to his parole officer that he was an atheist but despite that he was ordered to both live at the Christian mission and attend religious services. Well, he did. Oh, that's illegal. Well, you think? Yeah. So he moved into the shelter, but he refused to participate in religious activities.

And because of that, his parole was revoked and he spent another five months in jail. That is terrible. And hey, I definitely admire Mark's commitment, but for the record, everybody, you have permission to fake it. You don't have to. Five months seems like a long time for ideas. But here's the thing.

I would do a lot more than five months in jail for what I would do if I was made to sit through a Bible study. Right? So like, this is the lesser of two sentences you could have changed their minds you know what mark we don't want you exactly now needless to say janny sued but in 2015 his case was dismissed by a district court now in the court's defense janny elected to represent himself in this instance so no doubt there were

reasons for the dismissal beyond nah you should have gone to bible study but still the motherfucker was literally in jail for refusing to praise jesus right so short of taking a shit on the judge's bench and calling it exhibit a i don't feel like you could have fucked up bad enough to earn a dismissal and six years later and now that the aclu and americans united for separation of church and state are involved the 10th circuit court of appeals has affirmed my hunch and kind of smacked down the weak-ass excuses the lower court gave for their dismissal in the first place. Also, just for the record, this was a two-to-one ruling. And the dissent from Judge Carson accidentally explained exactly how stupid it was for the lower court and himself to get this wrong.

Carson said the majority makes it so religious non-profits now have two options one they can stop requiring religious programming or two there doesn't need to be two or two they can stop accepting parolees and yes yeah the answer is one it was one we all knew it was one they can help people without a religion bribe involved right or stop helping people with a religion threat this isn't tricky no or if they're unwilling to do that too right they could just stop having people sentenced to be part of their fucking thing yeah both of those are good options either is fine yeah now to be clear this is a win in the ever so slightest sense of the word right like it was a fair like they barely got this goddamn decision all we've established is that

jenny is allowed to sue he still hasn't won and even if he does the dude already spent five months in jail over this shit the court can't give him five months of extra life after he dies and beyond all that the very fact that any court could say anything but guilty in a lawsuit where a dude was literally forced to be christian as a condition of his parole is a big enough loss to cancel this shit out but still you should just be left to be like shibboleth am i out good right but still we may yet be found to technically have rights in the u.s judicial system and after the last four years we're going to technically have rights in the U.S. judicial system. And after the last four years, we're going to chalk that up in the win column, apparently.

Oh, that's a sadly big win. Yeah. They should have to weekend at Bernie's him for five months after he's dead. Walk him around. And into bleach his own news tonight. Mark Brennan just cannot stop himself from beating people industrial bleach. His job. Yep.

Regular listeners will recognize the name. Grennan is the archbishop of the Genesis 2 Church of fucking bleach and bullshit. It's, by Grennan's own admission, a designation to avoid government oversight. And that's it and he's made it into this segment and our latest book by repeatedly selling bleach as a magical cure-all when his church was raided and all his products were destroyed he kept selling medicinal bleach when two of his sons were arrested and he had to flee to south america he kept selling medicinal bleach and now as he sits in a jail cell in Bogota, Colombia, awaiting extradition to the U.S. for selling medicinal bleach,

he's still selling medicinal bleach. What the fuck is happening? I gotta say, though, if there's anyone who can get those whites whiter, it's Mark Grennan, right? Yeah, if you're ever having a hard time explaining how the idea of religious freedom

has dangerous overreach in the United States to someone, Mark Grannon is a great place to start, people. There you go. Great example. So, yeah, we learned this from The Guardian last week. In a phone call overheard by their reporters, he admitted that he was distributing his medicinal bleach to at least 75 of his fellow prisoners for ailments ranging from gastritis to diabetes. of his fellow prisoners for ailments ranging from gastritis to diabetes. In the same call, he says he's obtaining the necessary chemicals

through secret channels within the jail, adding, quote, you can't get it on the outside, but we got it on the inside. He's got a bleach guy? Yep. Yeah, and apparently he's using the same clandestine phone he used

to make that call to post all kinds of pro-bleach drinking bullshit on social media, along with videos urging people not to get vaccinated. Okay, just for the record, the mules that he's apparently paying to smuggle ass bleach into that jail are doing something way safer than his actual recommended use of putting his product in your ass to bleach away COVID and autism. Yeah. Balloon

pops and all of a sudden someone's just not COVID anymore. Damn it all! Right, but the balloon doesn't always pop. It's safer. Just some guy walks up to him. What are you in for? Murder. How about you? Oh, I started a church so I could legally tell people to drink bleach.

Get this monster away from me. Yeah, right. And look, I'd love to think that don't drink bleach would be an easy message to sell, but the FDA has had to issue several increasingly stern warnings against Grenin's panacea. Their most recent one describes the product as, quote, powerful bleach typically used for industrial water treatment or bleaching textiles, pulp and paper, end quote. And in case it wasn't clear from that description, it's also potentially deadly if ingested. But none of that stops Grennan from telling the parents of a six year old, for example, quote,

children do pretty good. Give the child two or three drops every couple of hours, end quote. Two or three drops every couple of hours. End quote. You know, this whole problem would work itself out if we could just get the guy on camera and ask him to take some of the medicine he sells to other people. I'm just saying if he actually took it. That would do it. Yeah.

Solved itself. Of course, I'm not sure what outcome to root for here since the motherfucker's already in jail and he's still doing this shit. I'm not sure if that underwater prison from captain america 3 is based on a real thing but if not we might want to get to work on it is all i'm saying step ahead of you no bleach in the supply closets people this is how it happens you got an underwater prison guy right i do have an underwater prison guy it's true perfect and in lock him up news greg lock anna that's right greg lock said words in particular he is not happy with all these

liberal politicians like t Republican Governor Bill Lee. Right. So Greg Locke went all the way off the rails during a sermon last week after Governor Lee signed an executive order to have the National Guard round up all the unvaccinated people and lock them in prison camps. Also, Greg Locke cannot read. He's not a reader. So none of that actually happened

but we did get a freak out oh greg lock is a christian freak out right like anna's jingle might as well be his alarm clock tone i'm just weirded out that greg lock and i had the same fantasy this week we should do that it's fun yeah so just be clear, the new executive order from Governor Lee, it's just some basic preparation in case the people of Tennessee are idiots who won't get a vaccine and it leads to another overwhelming spike in covid cases. And by just in case, I mean that is happening. It's happening right now. We're all watching it. So Governor Lee is setting up a system to quickly build temporary medical facilities if needed. That bastard.

Yeah. Again, for people who read, that was clear from the words in the order by reading them with your face. But that's not Greg Locke. Here's the response. And just for us, he started his freak out with a string of panicky white guy from tennessee isms quote do you see this nonsense our governor signed i don't care how much he talks about jesus bill lee is a coward you tell him i said so he's a noodle he's a waffler we's willy nilly nonsense and then maybe i don't know it probably like rick black new new syllables i haven't heard

of but that was what they wrote fratson in there so yeah motherfucker has no caption guy didn't know what to do after that about lying people to death but he can't say motherfucker because that's immoral jeez what the hell is wrong guys these guys i bet with the right fake twitter account and a couple of phone calls we could could convince Greg Locke he's going to fight Bill Lee outside the statehouse by Friday. We could do that by Friday. Come on, pussies. Locke also pointed out that all the overflowing hospitals are actually a hoax. Either they're full of crisis actors on fake ventilators, I guess,

or all those hospitals are secretly empty. At one point, he said, why don't you carry camera sick in one of these hospitals that are supposed to be overflowing and show me how empty they are? And I mean, so many good answers. Yeah, right. I guess he was just asking himself and he had no answer and he had to just move on. But I guess he was just asking himself and he had no answer and he had to just move on. Continuing, they authorized the Tennessee Department of FEMA to build quarantine camps.

I ain't talking about East Germany. I'm talking about Tennessee quarantine camps for the uninformed people that are still in refusal to be vaccinated. I mean, quote, with a weird kind of admission there with the word. Yeah, right. Yep. There's your answer. Yep. The only thing he got wrong after the bucket, a hidden camera challenge was failing to start his little tirade with the words.

I'm so stupid that. Okay. Okay. Hear me out. Maybe Greg has become self-aware and he just doesn't know how to shift gears, right? He's just, i've made a terrible mistake i don't know my way out of this maze that i have built around myself you're walking backwards buddy that's nothing that's not literally walking backwards are you

talking backwards now tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant tenant and uh yeah so that quote i just gave you before that was the end of the calm rational portion of the sermon from there he started literally screaming yes and it very quickly devolved into greg lock just listing his enemies at the top of his lungs we learned that he doesn't care what Bill Lee has to say or what Joe Biden has to say or what Nancy Pelosi's insurrectionist nonsense, exact quote, I guess that thing as a sentient speaking entity has to say, her speaking insurrectionist nonsense. And he closed it out by vowing to fight and die to stop this, quote, deep state progressive communism.

Again, just to be clear, he means emergency hospitals. Yes. Like, you know, in the Holocaust. Like in East Germany. You guys ever notice that everything is the Holocaust to right wing nutbags, except the Holocaust. That's when they get all skeptical. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, they get skeptical at A equals A,

but all the other stuff, no. Yeah. And on that note, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli. Thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, I'll already be doing the outro. Sorry.

Before we let the dust settle tonight, I want to thank you one last time for bearing with us while we recharge for a bit. I also want to thank all of you for the great birthday gift suggestions that you sent along for Eli and Lucinda. I didn't use any of them,

and most of them were illegal anyway, but it's the thought that counts. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend Godolphin Boots, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed,

debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, the musical refused to queue if I neglected to thank Keith Enright and Eli Bosnick for being the kind of guys that make you look forward to your vacation ending. I need to thank Lucinda Lusions for being the kind of wife that makes you dread your vacation ending. I also want to thank Teresa English for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, yes, but mostly for throwing her hat into the ring to help fix this fucking country.

Also, for making history by being the first candidate to ever announce their candidacy via Farnsworth quote. Be sure to check the show notes for a link to her website or just go to VoteTeresaEnglish.com. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Austin, Sarah, Jessica Adams, Lisa sit down and work on her book, Blue Oak, Kiernan, Lauren, and Alec. Austin, Sarah, and Jessica's unfinished book, whose IQs have so many digits they've been named honorary polydactyls, and Blue Oak, Kiernan, Lauren, and Alec who are so rational they make three sevens look like the square root of two over pi.

I don't actually get that joke. A math guy suggested it. I'm pretty sure it's funny, but I don't get it. Together, these seven people, harangues, and drought-resistant trees came together to help make tomorrow possible by giving us money. Not everybody has the beauty and grandeur it takes to give us money, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingadeus, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode,

or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingadeus.com. And if you'd like to help, but your money doesn't belong to you you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review telling a friend about the show and following at biatpod on twitter legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of p andrew torres tim robertson handles our social media and our audio engineer is morgan clark who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode which was used with permission if you have questions comments or death threats you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingads.com

all right before we go on vacation again though we have to get together and fuck a bunch of and the contact page at ScalingAtheist.com. All right, before we go on vacation again, though, we have to get together and fuck a bunch of shit up in advance. Otherwise, I have to record extra outtakes. And that's just weird. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.