The Scathing Atheist - 461: Maine Squeeze Edition

Episode Date: December 16, 2021

In this week’s episode, Fox news finds a flash of persecution on their Christmas tree, the Christian Right is so inept they can't even hate Dr. Oz correctly, and Andrew Torrez will be here to talk about the terrifying religious people in robes that aren’t clergy. --- 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: Hear more from Andrew Torrez on the Opening Arguments podcast: https://openargs.com/ Check out the Not Your Grandmother’s Book Club podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NPkwUfUnoFqTrVncNIisw?si=FdM4AahrRqmI0GuRKbXB4w&dl_branch=1 --- Headlines: Survey: Record Number of Americans Have No Religion: https://www.pewforum.org/2021/12/14/about-three-in-ten-u-s-adults-are-now-religiously-unaffiliated/ Canada’s Government Finally Passes Bill Banning Anti-LGBTQ Conversion Torture: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/12/08/canadas-government-finally-passes-bill-banning-anti-lgbtq-conversion-torture/ Christian mom whines after library includes bible in banned books display: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/12/11/christian-mom-whines-after-library-includes-bible-in-banned-books-display/ Fox News freaks the fuck out about their damn tree getting set on fire: https://www.washingtonpost.com/media/2021/12/09/fox-christmas-tree-coverage/ Christian Website Warns Readers to Be “Leery” of Dr. Oz: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/12/08/christian-website-warns-readers-to-be-leery-of-dr-oz-because-hes-muslim-born/ Catholic diocese in Sicily apologizes after bishop tells kids Santa isn't real: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/12/13/catholic-diocese-in-sicily-apologizes-after-bishop-tells-kids-santa-isnt-real/

Warning, there are offensive words in this podcast. Also, defensive words. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by movement and by sitting still. We kind of get on both ends of the spectrum this week. And now, The Scathing Atheist. This is Kevin from the Not Your Grandmother's Book Club podcast. And having now read books by Dinesh D'Souza, Donald Trump Jr., Ben Shapiro, and the incomparable Glenn Beck, I can assure you that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's December 16th. And it's National Chocolate-Covered Anything Day.

All right. I feel like you're going to make him regret that title. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I feel like you're going to make him regret that title. No illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Jared Kushner's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Fox News finds a flash of persecution on their Christmas tree.

The Christian right is so goddamn inept, they can't even hate Dr. Oz correctly. And Eli will send a picture of his chocolate covered butthole to a stranger for a different reason than last week. But first, the diatribe. Imagine having the audacity to think that you could gatekeep joy.

I mean, there is a war on Christmas, right? There is an organized effort to suck all the fun out of it, undermine its meaning, and winnow down its cultural importance until it's a non-event. But the side doing all that shit is the Christian side. I mean, we talk a lot about the pagan origins of Christmas, and rightly we should. The trees, the lights, the mistletoe, the gift giving the emphasis on joy and altruism all that shit predates the hostile christian takeover but there's also a huge chunk of shit on the other side that they want to nab the credit for too like for example the fact that it's popular i mean they bitch and moan every chance they get about how corporations have commercialized christmas and turned it into

nothing but a marketing opportunity but But so the fuck what? That's what makes it awesome. The marketeers have done such a good job with your holiday that Jews had to bring a holiday up from the minor leagues just to satiate their kids. You motherfuckers should be thanking them, not condemning them. Consider what Christmas really is. And I don't just mean the modern American version. I mean the celebration itself throughout all time and across all nations. Right.

Even if you set aside the pagan holidays that predated it, that that means that along with the mall Santas and Whamageddon, we have to add Krampus and Icelandic murder cats and the candy pooping sacrificial log from Spain. But on top of all of that, you have to tack on puritanical regimes that forbade Christmas celebrations and the centuries upon centuries where it was just a public feast and a convenient theme for that week's sermon. And when you do that, what are you left with? What is the universal thing about Christmas? Presents? Obviously not. Those are, if anything, an on-again, off-again extravagance, historically speaking. Is it celebrating Jesus? Well, the fact that I've got a fucking tree full of presents downstairs disproves that assertion. Well, surely the date is universal, right? Well, unless, of course, you're Eastern Orthodox,

in which case you celebrate it on January 7th. Hell, even the name falls short of universality since, you know, not everybody speaks English. So in reality, Christmas is a category rather than an individual thing. This wasn't always the case. I mean, I guess it was to some degree, but there was a time when the Catholic Church had a damn near iron grip on this holiday for most of the Christian world. And back then it was a more or less uniform celebration, or at least far more so than it is now.

And also, and for the same reason, a much more boring holiday. And then in the relatively recent past, and we're talking really the last hundred years, marketers got a hold of it. And then a relatively boring feast day with better than average iconography became the holiday that every other celebration was measured by. Commercialization turned it into a holiday other Other religions were literally jealous of it. Didn't get there through nativity scenes and candles. That shit was already there.

Didn't get there through joy or happiness. Every holiday has that shit. It got there through a relentless, shameless, rapacious focus on consumerism. I mean, knock the free market all you want, but it makes for better holidays that religion does. You know, the parts that people responded to became ever more important, and the parts they don't like get pushed to the back of the line. And the parts people don't like are all the religious bullshit. Now, Christians can blame profiteering for taking the Christ out of Christmas all they want, but you can't have

the one without the other. If it weren't for all the commercialization, there'd be nothing to fight over. Nobody puts out banners for lent reminding people that penitence is the reason for the season or screams about how we got to keep john the baptist in epiphany left to their own devices religion's a big boring ass holidays completely lacking in any meaningful tradition and any cartoon mascots but you give madison avenue a month and they'll make the fucking feast of St. Francis of Assisi into some kids cross days off a calendars over. If you give it any real thought, you realize that Christianity should be sucking marketing's dick for what they did for Christmas. Taking the Christ out of it was the best thing that ever happened to the damn day.

But of course, Christians can't acknowledge any of that while still taking credit for all the good parts of the holiday. So the marketers get quite the opposite of thanks. Look, a sign that says Jesus is the reason for the season is an admission of guilt. Even if it was true, which it quite demonstrably is not. It's a little like a director going to the theater to watch his own movie, then standing up in the middle of it and demanding that everybody acknowledge that they'd never get to watch that movie if it wasn't for him so fucking what who fucking cares if dave smith right was the reason for the season i feel like he'd be humble enough not to have to make any signs declaring it but the fucking king of kings the prince of peace is too fragile to just let a motherfucker enjoy the party so yeah i guess

technically there is a war on christmas but the dreaded secular humanists have nothing to do with it it's a war christians are losing to themselves they're talking about you jesus joining me for headlines tonight are the new york and new jersey to mike connecticut heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to give the headlines a try fantastic state area at all i let you be the new york damn it in our lead story tonight we're gonna have andrew on a little later to talk about yet another step in the christian nationalists mad scramble for legal dispensation but i think it's important to contextualize that up front by reminding everybody what a precipitous drop religiosity in America has been taking over the last few decades. After all,

Christians aren't seizing ever more power despite the nation's decreasing religiosity, but because of it. They see the writing on the wall, and they know that a previously impenetrable privilege is starting to show somewhere. So they're basically doing the judicial equivalent of stealing everything that isn't nailed down before they're evicted. And to emphasize that,

I have a little more of the aforementioned wall writing in the form of a new report from the Pew Research Center that shows the demographic free fall of Christianity is showing no signs of abating with a record 29% of Americans reporting no religious affiliation. Yeah. And now the Christian right is in a panic and everything they couldn't steal because it was nailed down. Like you said, they're peeing on it now and licking it. Yes. In that order. And as much as I enjoy the image of, you know, Brett Kavanaugh being peed on, I have a tab for that.

But this is overall bad, despite that great image. Yeah, and let's keep in mind that that number is just the honest people. Right. That doesn't count the people who check the box marked whatever I was born, like dead grandma's going to check their work. Well, yes, exactly. We'll get a little more to that later. But so, yeah, the opening sentence of the report is, quote, the secularizing shifts evident in American society so far in the 21st century

show no signs of slowing, end quote. For context here, keep in mind that when we started this show, we were celebrating the fact that the percentage of nonreligious Americans had skyrocketed all the way up to almost 23%. So this is an increase of some 14 million non-religious Americans. All right. Well, that's math. And it's all thanks to podcasting.

You're all welcome. Okay. It just with those numbers, it really feels like we should get our own tax-free buildings. Guys, are we sure we don't want to start a church of scapeism and abuse the system just a weensy bit? Yes. Just a weensy? No. You're not sure. No, I think we should do that.

I think we should do that. So that's not the only good news we got though. At the same time that fewer and fewer people are identifying as Christians, the ones who are wearing that label are taking it ever less seriously. So the number of people who say that they pray daily has also been declining

and is now all the hell way down to 45%. So it's like a significant number there. Almost 20% of Americans believe there's an omnipotent being that loves them and could do them favors anytime they call upon them they just just don't they don't do that yeah seems legit it's bootstraps gumption america they're doing it themselves that's right yeah job creators you're right back to blue also the survey asked people how important religion is to them and only 41 percent

answer to vary that's down from like well over 50 as recently as 2015 the number in the not very not at all category which was presented together in this report is all the hell way up to 33 percent okay then like why are they doing it are they fans of losing their sunday mornings well let's let's not mistake Christian for churchgoer, right? For the first time ever, we saw a survey a couple of weeks ago that said that church membership is down below half in the country. Of course, just like the last 23 of these surveys that we've talked about on the show, I should emphasize that this does not equal a rise in self-identified atheists. Cowards. Even if it does mean a rise in de facto

atheists at least so atheists make up about four percent of the population and agnostics are another five percent those numbers have been more or less steady for like five years now now in a sense that's pretty good considering that i've read about 600 obituaries for atheism in that time and it's a huge fucking number when you consider all the non-christian religions combined also only account for like six percent of the population but we're still working hard to shift a few more of those nuns into identifying as atheists unfortunately a lot of prominent atheists seem to be working equally hard in the opposite direction so yeah which is why from now on we here at scathing atheist would appreciate it if you all would start referring to us as the new atheist leadership.

No, you got kicked out of a safe way today for putting grapes down your pants. Today. Yes, but I did it non-transphobically. Atheist leadership. All right, that's better. You are qualified. Thank you. Atheist leadership.

And in Canadian gay-ken news. Jesus Christ. Thank you. Gay-ken. Yikes. Just do your story. There you go. Sometimes when I'm scrolling through the story choices week to week i think about the parallel

universe where our podcast is based in canada i own plaid shirts and a wood chopping axe lucinda has a french accent instead of a southern one and way more often than in this universe we get to report on good news which is the case once again this week as we're pleased to announce that canadian government has finally passed a bill banning conversion therapy so okay so first of all that that accent is not french it's french canadian totally different thing but secondly how sad is it that the closest we get to good news in our line of work is like bad news not happening anymore right that is what it is i guess yeah also i don't think you should have an axe. I think that's a mistake.

I think there's a lot of comedy in that parallel universe. If you're listening, parallel universe, take that axe away real quick. Maybe a cricket bat? What? We'll talk about it. For those of you unfamiliar, anti-gay conversion therapy, sometimes called affirming therapy, Christian counseling

and ex-gay ministry is torturing people till they pretend that they're straight yep now sometimes it's just psychological torture and lying but those are the good examples yeah yeah it also used to include like electroshock therapy and physical torture when it was more mainstream and accepted and i don't think we have to say this but it doesn't fucking work because you can't choose your sexuality right because if you could he would be gay oh god that'd be awesome right just broing out with my dudes fucking broing out some more the best right i mean you'd still bro out with your dudes then fuck then bro out i mean like that

like broing out with your dudes is literally your job. We don't fuck, though. No. We don't fuck. I bring that up every meeting. So do I. Exactly. So while there have been strides against this practice in the U.S. in the recent past, almost all of them have religious exemptions, which kind of defeats the point.

Yeah. And it's worth pointing out that that's not the case with Bill CB4. Quote, Bill CB4 proposes to outright prohibit both adults and children from being subjected to harmful conversion therapy practices through four new criminal code offenses, including making it a crime punishable by up to five years in prison to cause another person to undergo conversion therapy. Oh, wow. End quote. Wow.

Yeah. Well, that's another way it's superior to anything that we've done here, though. Pretty much universally, our bans are restricted to kids, right? Like American adults apparently have an unalienable right to voluntarily subject themselves to torture, like even if they're psychologically tortured into doing it.

Yeah, no, that's important. It wouldn't really be the volunteer. George Washington really cared about that. And of course, as a result of all this not being able to yell gay kids straight, the Christian Post has dubbed Canada an anti-Christian nation for this. Jesus. I mean, yeah. For this.

And then the other piece of evidence they added was their pandemic restrictions. So you're saying we can't torture and we can't kill people. What can we do? What are we allowed to do as a Christian? What's the point of even having a religion? Yeah.

So obviously, great news for Canadians and of course for Heath who is still really hoping that Canadian fiance he made up turns out to be real. It's not made up.

It's a real thing. Check the You see all the people on Facebook congratulating you after you made that joke? I did. They were

they were ready. Should have made a registry. It's Canadian. Those jokes spiral out of control. You have to deep fake a toddler. Trust me, I've been there. I get it. And in Christmas treason news,

I'm not saying arson is okay. In fact, Interesting start. It kind of can't be okay. No, no. I'm tired of this lecture, Heath. I get it all the time. Here's the thing, though. If it was good, it would just be

setting shit on fire. It can't rise to the level of arson unless it's not okay. But... It's way closer to okay than it would normally be if the object of your arson happens to be a garish 50 foot tall

treeless bramble cone outside of fox news headquarters in new york city which was the case right before we started recording last week's show and we know about it because over the next 36 hours fox news devoted approximately as much coverage to it as they would for the first 36 hours of a foreign invasion tucker carlson started a show rising up out of a swamp talking about red dunn he starts doing colonel kurtz's monologue a lot of ethnic slurs in that by the way in his version yeah well so like a normal show but with the christmas tree right yeah then he started talking about christmas what i love so much about this is that this was their code red right like they've been faking persecution for so long you can see them not knowing how to react when someone actually did a thing to them right we don't even have to make up a fake graphic right you can't add for realsies

this time to your news reporting right so to be to be clear, this is very much a local, like what was up with the traffic in Midtown today kind of news item. Nobody was hurt. And a 49-year-old homeless guy was arrested pretty much immediately after. As far as we know right now, the motive seems to be mental illness. So clearly not worthy of national attention. But the literal hours of live coverage that Fox News devoted to it kind of is worthy of that attention. Various hosts throughout the day used it as an example of the lawless chaos on American streets and the inevitable outcome of defunding police departments, which, to be clear, New York City has not done.

No, no. It's like the seventh largest military in the world. Right. Yeah, I know. has not done no no it's like the seventh largest military in the world right yeah no and it was also offered of course as an example of christian persecution and the seething hatred that liberals have for christmas okay i see right through this fox news this is a typical crisis actor thing it's crisis actors doing a false flag operation they just want to take away our basic arson freedoms i know what you're doing exactly yeah if you really support freedom marjorie taylor green and madison cawthorne will light themselves on fire it's the only way

exactly now if you've seen the video your first question should be like how the fuck were they allowed to put that fucking fire hazard in the middle of manhattan the motherfuckers billowing up a pyroclastic cloud but instead of addressing that all the commentary was this comically over the top woe is me is to defiance todd bureau called it quote what happens when you have a lawless city? Brian Kilmeade wondered aloud, quote, how soon till this psycho is out again to burn someone else's tree down? End quote. What?

Yeah, but my favorite quote was from Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earnhardt, who said, and I'm not sure if I can even sarcastically quote this without a chorus of strings rising up in the background, but I'll try. Quote, so so sad no more music no more tree it's a tree that unites us that brings us together it's about the christmas spirit it's about the holiday season it's about jesus it's about hanukkah okay it's about really everything we stand for as a country. Trail to a Jewish thing.

Glory to the newborn king. Also Jews, I guess. Okay. Okay, wait. I hate to agree with Ainsley Earhart, but the Fox News Christmas tree engulfed in flames does really accurately represent what I stand for. I don't know. I mean, Tucker Carlson wasn't tied to it at the time, but that's a nine out of ten for what Eli stands for.

I think you're allowed to do that arson by RFRA. Like you, Eli Bosnick, would have been allowed to do that. That's true. That's true. Yeah. So much more sincere than anything else going on in that building. I hold that same belief. Like you, Eli Bosnick, would have been allowed to do that. Oh, that's true. So much more sincere than anything else going on in that building. I hold that same belief. Thank you. So, yes,

the war on Christmas has reached your doorstep, Fox News, and not your nativity scene nor your mistletoe should be spared from our unholy wrath, yada, yada, yada. But I have to add this one last detail because it's so fucking delicious. In the midst of this, again, 36-hour blitzkrieg of alarmist nonsense over a mentally ill homeless guy with fucking matches

they repeatedly used a background graphic that read and i quote the left wants you to be afraid we do i want them to be afraid well that's true. I want them to be afraid that this is actually a homeless guy that we hired, but he's not really, but he's an operative. That's what I want them to think. Yeah. That is what they think. There you go. Nailed it. Mission accomplished.

And in Lizard of Oz news. If you were trying to think of human beings who have done the most harm to public health and safety over the past decade, Dr. Mehmet Oz is almost certainly in your top five. Yeah. This pseudoscience pushing astrology endorsing quack has pushed out more misinformation than a Trump era press secretary. And now because he's going for some kind of evil triple crown, I guess he's running for the GOP nomination for senator in Pennsylvania. But Christians aren't sold not because of that pseudoscience lying bat shittery it's because he's kind of muslimy

kind of muslimy yep no okay i get what you're saying but pseudoscience lying bat shittery that's a pretty solid tldr for the quran and the bible and just about every holy book i'm aware of being genuinely religious is definitely suspect when i'm evaluating a candidate for office for sure fair counterpoint we get a few muslims working in the capitol building that's all the more often marjorie taylor green preemptively dives under her desk. So pros and cons. She's not there under my system either. But yeah, that's true. So the source of this suspicion comes from an article on Charisma News titled

Why Christians Should Be Leery of This Celebrity 2022 Senatorial Candidate. They make no mention of his pseudo-scientific pursuits except they do mention that he supported hydroxychloroquine as a cure for covid did he but i'm pretty sure they mean that as a good thing no instead they spend the entire article mentioning that he was raised muslim three times in 425 words oh j, Jesus Christ. So how fucked up is it that we've even reached a point where celebrity candidate isn't considered sufficient reason to be leery of them? Yeah. Right? Yeah.

It's terrifying. While the Charisma article does begrudgingly admit that he's a Christian now because of his wife, that doesn't stop them from shitting on his church for being all hippy dippy and welcoming quote the church's website says it's an open-minded forward-looking christian church drawing its faith from the bible as illuminated by the teachings of emmanuel swedenberg 1688 to 1772 if you have serious questions about traditional christian theology yet wish to explore the deeper aspects of the bible and the Christian faith, we may be what you're looking for. Hold on. The accidental use of yet there

is so very telling. If you have serious questions about Christian theology, yet you still want to be Christian. It's way too honest by accident. I love that. Yeah. Continuing the quote,

we worship a God of unconditional love whose warmth and light can deepen your inner life and give direction to your spiritual journey. End quote. And you can just tell by putting that quote in the article, the authors at Charisma want the Raiders to be like, well, that doesn't sound like no Christianity to me. Right. Yes, exactly.

I love, though, that they're claiming to be a forward-looking church this based on a 250 year old theological interpretation jumbo shrimp has nothing on religion i don't even know why we use that as an exemplar yeah they literally have the years 1688 to 1772 written down and then they're like we're the future we are the future very modern we're the bleeding edge one other thing they also warn readers that he practices transcendental meditation and reiki which are you know not from the united states adding almost quote also his dad was a muslim a muslimy Muslim. So yeah, I think we all know what we need to do.

Convince a bunch of Americans that Trump is a Muslim by 2024. We know how easily they fall for Photoshop. Get on it, people. We can do this. It's just a Sharpie. So easy. And finally tonight,

a Catholic diocese in Italy is dealing with a severe irony crisis this week after Bishop Antonio Stagliano went to a holiday festival and told an audience full of kids that Santa Claus is not real. So now the diocese is doing its best to explain that it's super mean to point out the fakeness of the fake thing that people believe in except you have to eventually tell them because otherwise that that's crazy you have to tell them about the fake thing but if you do it too early and the people are extremely childish you might make them cry and then fuck you i did hear it yes i did okay i'm just saying a man in a golden hat

should never try to disabuse anybody of anything those jenga blocks are right underneath you my dude yeah right underneath yeah but okay but for real though of all the reasons that italian bishops have ever made a bunch of kids cry. This is the best one, right? We shouldn't lose track of that. Yep. This is good news. Yes, it is. So here's what the bishop said at the festival last week.

He's got a big hall full of kids and he's supposed to be given just like a basic talk about beautiful traditions of Christmas or whatever. traditions of christmas or whatever but he clearly got all worked up about how all these bullshit kids aren't taking it fucking seriously and how it's getting too commercialized and starbucks and their slur word jew cups so he went rogue and he launched into a crazy angry speech about how they stole the christ from christmas and then right before one of his wranglers was able to tackle him away from the podium the bishop snuck this out at the last second quote no santa claus does not exist in fact i would add that the red of the sooty wares was chosen by coca-cola exclusively for advertising purposes tackle an inaccuracy that's not just the first result when you google it yeah but that result is on coca-cola's website they're like no guys we didn't give that's not we would be good for us we would

probably want that jesus christ i i i get it bishop stallion oh i i really do i've been there but seriously just just relax your eyes that was a narrow, mostly that was a joke for Heath. Everyone can have it. You know what? There's no Easter Bunny. Yeah, just a guy in a suit. So in response to all that, all of Italy was like, dude, what the fuck is wrong with you? What are you doing, man?

so the diocese had him do an interview with la republica to explain himself and apologize to all of italy and all the kids and the interview started with the question dude what the fuck is wrong with you man what are you doing and bishop stalliano answered i did not tell the kids that santa claus doesn't exist yes you literally did you i just read the quote you literally said those exact words. And then he looked directly at me, Heath Enright, and added, but we talked about the need to distinguish what is real

from what is not. Oh! I have follow-up questions, man in a dress and a hat of gold. So, the interview thing obviously didn't work out and the church had to issue an apology that explained how bishop stalliano isn't physically capable of delivering the apology that he definitely has in his heart but he just he just can't do it but that didn't

really work either some extra crazy catholic people actually did applaud the bishop for putting the christ back in christmas which is more important than not making hundreds of little kids start crying and ruining the holiday but pretty much all the other catholic people went on big rants that further exposed the insane hypocrisy of their whole thing it was mostly parents being like you guys are killing us over here. The pandemic sucks. Our kids are all depressed. We can't get a vaccine because you said it's made of like a Dutch baby from 1972. I don't even know what that means,

but we can't get a vaccine now. And now some creepy celibate guy with no family is telling my kid there's no Santa. Why do we have creepy celibate guys in charge of stuff for the first? Fuck! What's going on? So that was like the general response from Italian Catholic catholicism i mean maybe it's good yeah maybe maybe they'll hear it but yeah probably not i don't know either way i'm stealing christmas and i'm having an ice cold

can of coke right now in celebration yeah secular santa christmas check there you go all right well heath is back on the coke. That means it's probably time to close the headlines down. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. You guys want to get some more coke? And when we come back, Andrew Torres will be here to talk about a different group of terrifying religious people in robes. Holy shit, it's almost the holidays.

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okay to swear in the copy. Their watches really are lovely. Yeah, they're generally nice watches. Mung. You know, when you're drowning, it's easy to overlook the fact that you're bleeding to death. And the fact that that's the best analogy I can come up with for a segment about the Supreme Court tells you a lot about where we are these days. tells you a lot about where we are these days. See, as focused as we've been on the upcoming dismemberment of abortion rights, it's easy to overlook the ongoing evisceration of the Establishment Clause,

but it looks like the High Court is about to take another significant step towards theocracy in the case of Carson v. Macon. And to help us get our heads around that one, I'm excited to welcome back co-host of the Opening Arguments podcast and cleanup on Aisle 45, Andrew Torres. Andrew, welcome back.

Thanks for that intro, Noah. You know, someday I'm going to have you on because the Supreme Court did something right, I swear. Right. I promise. We call that 2015. But, you know, always, always a pleasure to be on, even if the reasons, therefore, are less than desirable. How are you doing today? I'm doing good, all things considered.

So let's take a look at this one. The question at the heart of this case that giving tax dollars to religious schools was just like already unconstitutional all by itself. But but that's not the case, correct? Yeah. So that position, although it is the position, if you care, that was subscribed to by a super majority of the founding fathers, bright line as to how governments may assist churches and religious institutions without running afoul of the First Amendment would be totally okay for, you know, the fire department to put out a fire at your local church. Totally not okay to take your tax dollars, put them in a bag, then reach into the bag and grab that money and hand it over to the church. This was such a non-controversial opinion that 37 states amended their constitution in the 19th century to make that explicitly clear that that also violated the policy at the state level. This used to not be a difficult

position to argue. It has, as I said, zero votes on the Supreme Court right now. Wow. There is a proposition that has, as far as I can tell, one vote on the Supreme Court. That's one I have explained on the show before, and that is called the Lemon Test. And the Lemon Test comes from a Supreme Court case called Lemon v. Kurtzman. And the idea is that it set forth a three-pronged test to determine if a particular policy violates the Establishment Clause. And a policy must meet all three of these prongs in order to be constitutional. So number one, it must not have the primary purpose of advancing or inhibiting religion.

It can't be intended to be a thumb on the scale for religion. Number two, it must not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion. And number three, it must not excessively entangle the government with religion. As I've said, that vote has, as far as I can tell, one vote on the Supreme Court right now. It is more expansive, right? It would allow government to give some money to churches, but not enough that it kind of made a difference. to churches, but not enough that it kind of made a difference. In 2002, the Supreme Court took on a case called Zellman versus Simmons-Harris, which involved Cleveland's school

vouchers program, which is a direct effort to take money out of state and local tax dollars and give it away to churches. And inexplicably, the Supreme Court said, yeah, that's totally fine. That was a school vouchers program. And how that was squared with the Lemon Test is, don't ask, don't tell, don't look too closely. That position, I think, has three votes on the Supreme Court right now, right? And when I'm counting up the votes, I want you to understand the one vote that we know that we have for the lemon test, right? Not even historical separation of church and state is Justice Sotomayor, right? She was in the dissent in the Trinity Lutheran

case, which we're about to discuss. And people forget that that was a 7-2 case. The other justice in dissent was Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who is no longer on the court. Kagan and Breyer joined with the Howler monkeys in that. So we have, you know, it's sort of easy to say, you know, a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court. But on religious freedom issues, it's 8-1. And that's really, really a terrible starting point. And then I just alluded to to the trinity lutheran decision that was we've talked about this at length on my show on your show in the atheist community but that was for some reason it was unconstitutional discrimination

it violated the free exercise clause yeah for the state of missouri to say that a program for repaving children's playgrounds could not exclude exclusively Christian schools. That was a case that I was really confident would go the other way because the facts were so bad. And I was wrong for not the first and not the last time. Okay, so let me just offer sort of the layman's understanding on both of those. So as I understand it, the justification, such as it is in the Zellman v. Simmons-Harris case, was all about how every dollar is voluntary all along every step of the way.

That was sort of the fig leaf that they put over that. And the fig leaf over Trinity Lutheran was the idea that the money wasn't going to the religious parts of this church, but rather the secular parts, right? Is that accurate? You have correctly stated the arguments for the other side, yes. Okay, so we're tearing away those fig leaves is the arguments for the other side. Yes. Okay. So we're tearing away those fig leaves is the key here, I think. And I realize what a bizarrely eclectic panoply of expertise I expect of you.

So apologies in advance for this one. But what can you tell me about rural schooling in Maine? Weirdly, I can tell you an awful lot, and I should not be able to do this. The reason that folks like me are delving into what the structure of Maine's public schooling is like is because, as a spoiler, the very best that I think we can hope for as an outcome in this case, right, Carson versus Macon is an incredibly narrow ruling that is tailored to the specific idiosyncrasies of what life is like in Maine. So what's life like in Maine?

This is kind of weird to think about because you sort of chalk up Maine's electoral votes for the Democrats. A, not true, right? That there's a congressional district that's gone for Trump in the past two elections. They occasionally elect lunatic governors. Maine is a very, very small state in terms of population, but a relatively large state in terms of geography, right?

So there are no cities in Maine. And don't send us hate mail, right? All right, Bangor, we love love you, but look, there are towns, but yeah, right. There are towns in Maine. Maine is, as they describe themselves in their brief to the Supreme Court, a lightly populated, predominantly rural state. What that means is there are less than 180,000 kids in public school in the entirety of the state of Maine. Okay.

That's not a lot of kids, right? They are governed by 260 different school districts, which for reasons that none of us could possibly care about are called SAUs, right? And here's the unique fact, right? And here's the unique fact, and that is that roughly half of those SAUs, those school districts, do not have the population or the tax revenues to support operating a public high school in that school district. Gotcha. So, and this is the, if you take only one thing away from this entire interview this is the one that i want you to bold underline in a policy that has been in existence since 1980 right a policy that predates pac-man and the commodore 64 right the state legislature of maine looked at the problem and said well we can't have like half of our kids not graduate from high school.

So here's what we're going to do. We're going to have a tax subsidy program that says if you live in a school district that does not operate a high school. And only if you live in one of those school districts, then we will give you tax credits to attend a private school in that school district. Right. But again, only if you're in one that doesn't have a public school, because in that case, the private school is essentially taking the place of having, you know, of having us have to build things we can't afford, which include a separate public high school in that particular district. And because, of course, in order to qualify, that public school has to be a non-sectarian, right? Religiously neutral, does not teach creationism, does not teach that the earth

is 6,000 years old, right? It's got to be a replacement for the public school system. And that system in Maine has worked for 40 years. But just like, you know, drumming up conservative activists to go in to challenge the handgun ban in the District of Columbia, which had been in place for about 40 years at that time when they, you know, dug up the guy in D.C. versus Heller. Heller, I believe, was his name. Conservative activists have looked at Maine and gone,

okay, well, you know, now, the only thing that's different, right, like the reliance interests are the same. The state of Maine seems to be super happy with this outcome, right? But what's different is we got a whole bunch of conservative activists on the Supreme Court. So now, 41 years later, we're going to challenge that policy as discriminating against parents who live in one of those school districts but want to send their kid to the creationist school instead of to the local private but non-sectarian school. So that's this case.

And by the way, every court that has heard this has been like, get out of here. Right. That's my legal opinion. Yeah. So, yeah, right. Basically, every lower court understands constitutionality better than the Supreme Court at this point, more or less. Yeah, go figure. So for the listeners that don't follow the court as closely as me and certainly don't follow it as closely as you, where are we in terms of the process on this case?

Yeah, so this is a super easy case. It was brought at the trial court level, and the trial court said, there is very, very clear governing precedent here from the Supreme Court. And that case is a case called Locke versus Davey from 2004. And you, I'm sure, will remember this, but some of our listeners may also remember this. Locke versus Davey was the reason I was confident Trinity Lutheran was going to go the other way, right? This was a 7-2 decision from 2004. It's a Rehnquist decision, right? Like, again, not a crazy liberal nut job, right? Like, this was the Supreme Court saying that a Washington program that publicly funded scholarships for kids to go to college could

reasonably exclude those who would use their scholarship on pastoral ministries, right? So that was the issue in Locke versus Davey. And the state of Washington was like, look, we only have so much money to go around. We want to foster public education. We certainly do not want to discriminate in favor of religion. So what we're going to say is you can use our Washington State public scholarships on anything you want so long as you don't use it on worshipful theology and pastoral ministries. By the way, actual language from that decision, right? Like, it was, don't take public tax dollars and use them in a way that is narrow sectarian, right?

And sectarian is the religious equivalent of partisan, right? Like, it is not just religious, but like only a specific subset of that. Right, right, yeah. It's not like studying the history of religion was excluded. Yeah, or philosophy of religion. Right. religion that would have been all of those would have been perfectly fine and and again that principle it's it i i struggle for words for this because these are free exercise cases right like we began kind of with, in making reference to the Lemon Test, where we

should be on this, which is, is it permissible, right? Like, if the Washington State Scholarship had gone the other way, is it permissible for the state of Washington to take your tax dollars and give it to a kid who's going to give it to a theology, you know, to a seminary for a degree in worshipful theology? And the answer to that should be no. The answer to that at our current Supreme Court level is not only yes, that's fine, right? Zellman versus Simmons-Harris. Is it permissible to take public tax dollars and give it to a school that teaches creationism according to Zellman versus Simmonsman versus Simmons Harris? The answer to that is yes. That's ridiculous. We should be fighting on that turf. We're not. We've got to give up that battleground for now. Now they're asking the opposite, which is, is it permissible for a state,

for the people in a state to get together and go, come on, please don't take our tax dollars and give it over to the Institute for Creation Research. And there are, as far as I can tell, six votes on the Supreme Court, maybe as many as eight for no, that you're being unfair to religious people if you draw that line. And yeah, your muttered exclamation of the breath is uh the minimum response that's appropriate well so and and let's be super clear about what we're talking about because we're not talking about a school that just you know has a religion class in addition to all the other like we're talking about schools that like in this in this case in maine in this this particular case some of the schools that are suing are schools that teach that homosexuality is evil, that they wouldn't hire gay teachers.

They teach creationism. That's what they're talking about giving state tax dollars to. Yeah, the two schools. And again, I'm going to read directly from the Supreme Court briefs here. So the two schools at issue are Bangor Christian Schools, right? Among BCS's educational objectives are to, one, lead each unsaved student to trust Christ as his or her personal savior and then follow Christ as lord of his or her life. Two, develop within each student a Christian worldview and Christian philosophy of life. Three, prepare each student for the important position in life of spiritual leadership in the school, home, church, community, state, nation, and the world. God, math didn't even make the fucking list, huh? No, no. Yeah, you might think, but no.

To be a teacher at Bangor Christian Schools, one must affirm that he or she is a born-again Christian who knows the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior. Every employee must be born again and must be an active tithing member. I like that they audit you, right? Of a Bible-believing church, BCS will not hire teachers who identify as a gender other than on their original birth certificates, nor will it hire homosexual teachers. Now, again, that comes directly from the briefs. I would have put that a little differently, but that is undisputed what BCS, Bangor Christian Schools, stands for. Temple Academy is an integral ministry and an extension

of the Centerpoint Community Church. Its governing body is Centerpoint's Board of Deacons. TA will not admit a child who lives in a two-father or two-mother family. Jesus Christ. TA will not admit a student who is homosexual, though there are students presently enrolled who, quote, struggle with homosexuality. A child who identifies with a gender that is different than what is listed on the child's original birth certificate would not be eligible for admission. I could go through, but yeah, these are disciples of Ken Ham. These are young earth creationist, hardcore fundamentalist, anti-LGBTQ nightmare schools. And the question is not, can your tax dollars be given to them?

The answer to that is already yes, right? And talk about what you can do about that. The answer is, must your tax dollars be given to them? And this Supreme Court is on a collision course with, yes, you must fund these schools with your tax dollars. And if you would ask, hey, how might Alexander Hamilton feel about that? Go fuck yourself.

So, all right. So maybe this is just stupidly, naively hopeful in the assumption that a rule might apply to a fucking religious institution. But couldn't the legislators in Maine just craft a new law that says, okay, it can be religious, but you have to hire gay people? By giving them this state grant money, could that force these religious schools to abide by all of the if you receive state tax money, you must X type of regulations?

Yeah, so A, that would almost certainly run afoul of RFRA. And B, this Supreme Court is doing its best to roll back Employment Division v. Smith and read RFRA back into the Constitution as currently understood. So, yeah, I mean, what would happen is if the Supreme Court says, sorry, you've got to include crazy creationist Academy number seven on your list of approved schools, the main legislature meets and says, all right, any school receiving tax dollars must abide by the main human rights law, which, among other things, prevents discrimination in hiring, firing on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, right? They could pass that law. And then Crazy Creationist Academy No. 7 would just petition for a reasonable accommodation

to the law to comport with its sincerely held belief that, you know, gay people are icky. Wow. All right. with its sincerely held belief that gay people are icky. Wow. All right, so I guess the real question here, because as I said before the record, I think a lot of this, and the reason why I wanted to really highlight this case is because there's a death by a thousand cuts thing happening to the separation of church and state.

And I think the most important question now is where on the slippery slope are we? Granted, we're going to fall into nicely mulched tires at the bottom. But but assuming that the court overturns this law, like and reverse its decision in Employment Division v. Smith, that notoriously leftist Antonin Scalia opinion. facto incorporation of RFRA into the First Amendment as a constitutional right. And then the next step from there is a direct endorsement of the principle that, by the way, as far as I can tell, has a majority of votes already on the Supreme Court. And that is the accommodationist viewpoint of the separation of church and state. And that view is that what separation of church and state means is that government may not prefer one particular sect or branch of Christianity to

another. It may nevertheless generally prefer religion to irreligion as a neutral matter. prefer religion to irreligion as a neutral matter. At the risk of setting you up with an answerless question here, other than talking Supreme Court justices into taking up dangerous hobbies like

bungee jumping, what can we as activists do to mitigate this trend? Well, at the risk of losing both of us some patrons, let me monologue and soapbox for about 30 seconds here, right? This is a binary existential question, right? Lots of Democrats are not great on church-state separation, right? Stephen Breyer, not great on the separation of church and state. Nevertheless, every single Republican is aligned with, if not personally, a theocrat. And so,

what you can do is get out and vote for Democrats, even when they disappoint you, even when they don't live up to abolishing all student loans or whatever else is on your pet list of things that you and I would like Joe Biden to do. But here's the reality of the situation. We are at the precipice, right? If the numbers that are where they are now continue into 2022, we will lose the Senate. continue into 2022, we will lose the Senate. Mitch McConnell has then said that he will hold no more judicial hearings from 2022 to 2024. And that means that they will steal Stephen Breyer's Supreme Court seat if he has an actuarially approved incident over the next two and a half years. It means that we will do nothing to fill the seats that are open,

thus magnifying the likelihood that you get a Trump-appointed judge at any level of the federal court. And if that isn't an existential enough risk for you to get out and vote for the worst, the most terrible, the most hidebound conservative Democrat. I really don't know what to tell you, right? Like it is, the Republicans have figured this out and we haven't, our, you know, Joe Biden's approval rating is 43% right now. And so if you're asking yourself like, well, I would just do this if only Joe Manchin would blow up the filibuster, like, you know,

as political scientists, if you're surveying the landscape, there is not a huge groundswell consensus to give Democrats more power to do the stuff they're doing. Right. It's the opposite of that. Yeah, it's a 43 percent approval rating the democrats who have hung together are you know risking electoral backlash and you know to to expect sort of more profiles and courage out of them i think is um not consonant with electoral reality so uh yeah 2022 is going to be real bad and you're gonna have to suck it up and vote blue anyway. And if you don't, this situation, I kind of, have you seen the new Foundation series on Apple TV?

Oh, you should. Anyway, but I know you've read the original, right? Mm-hmm. grand conceit was to take what would be 30,000 years of chaos, barbarian wandering in the wilderness and shrink it down to a mere thousand years until you could reimpose civilization. That's kind of where I am with the Supreme Court right now, right? Like it's going to be really, really terrible for a long, long time. And the question is, can we shrink it down to a manageable number of years or are we going to expand it and make it worse? And I know you don't want to hear that, but, you know, that's you have me on to tell the hard truth.

So there you go. Well, and I thank you for telling us the truth, regardless of how hard it is. And of course, if you'd like Andrew's help sorting out the other crazy shit going on with the courts, be sure to check out Opening Arguments, which we'll have linked on the show notes. And believe it or not, not all of it is depressing as all fuck. Sometimes they talk about Transformers and 80s cartoons and shit. If you haven't checked it out already, be sure

to check it out. And Andrew, thank you again so much. Oh, no. Thank you so much for having me on. I love coming on the show. I'm sorry that I have to come on under these circumstances. Before we put the lid back on this week, I wanted to let you know that if you just can't get enough of me in your life, you can hear me opine on all things Legend of Zelda this week on the Chat of the Wild podcast, which you'll find linked on the show notes. Had a ton of fun with those guys,

and we ended up covering a broad range of topics, but mostly Zelda-related stuff. Anyway, that's fun with those guys and we ended up covering a broad range of topics but mostly Zelda related stuff. Anyway, that's all the Blast Movie we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday. An even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, Godawful Movies, 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, this episode wouldn't be worthy of a title if I neglected to thank Keith Enright for being my beau, Eli Bosnick for all his great ribbon. I want to thank Andrew Torres for being so gifted. I also want to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda illusions who will be back next week and misses you terribly. Also want to thank Kevin from the not your grandmother's book club podcast

for writing this week's Farnsworth quote. Haven't checked it out, but it sounds a lot like God awful movies for books. That sounds good. You'll find it linked in the show notes. If you're entertained by other people's masochism, you should check it out. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most marvelous mammals, Keith, Alex, Genji, Leo, Ruth, other Alex, Todd, and Matthew.

Keith, Alex, and Genji, who are so smart Siri asks them shit. Leo, Ruth, and other Alex, who are so sexy their driver's license are rated R. And Todd and Matthew, who can't jack off onto anything because their jizz always burns up in reentry. Together, these eight amiable atheists stated our aims to alienate Abrahamic a-holary this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, especially this time of year, but if you want to make our holidays merry and bright, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free

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