The Scathing Atheist - 462: Half-Roasted Edition

Episode Date: December 23, 2021

In this week’s episode, our podcast gets a billionaire sugar daddy for Christmas, a 3rd grade teacher considers doing "Wintertime For Hitler" unironically at the holiday concert, and Tom and Cecil will be here to shit in a few stockings. --- 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 Tom and Cecil on Cognitive Dissonance: https://dissonancepod.com/ --- Headlines: SCOTUS Rejects Religious Challenges to NY’s Vax Mandate for Healthcare Workers: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/12/14/scotus-rejects-religious-challenges-to-nys-vax-mandate-for-healthcare-workers/ Richest man in Utah officially quits the Mormon church: https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/utah-billionaire-leaves-mormon-church-donates-600k-lgbtq-group-rcna9523 Trump bandies about anti-Semitic tropes in interview with Israeli reporter: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-bandies-about-anti-semitic-tropes-in-interview-with-israeli-reporter_n_61bcf236e4b0c7d8b88fae7c Christian jewlery store sues marines to use their symbol: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/a-christian-jewelry-store-has-sued TN Pastor Announces AR-15 Giveaway During Upcoming Christmas Services: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/12/14/tn-pastor-announces-ar-15-giveaway-during-upcoming-christmas-services/ Greg Locke thinks UN statue is the beast of the antichrist: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/these-christians-think-a-statue-outside D.C. third graders were made to reenact episodes from the Holocaust: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/12/19/holocaust-reenactment-watkins-school-dc/ --- This Week in Misogyny: Nigeria rejects gender equality law yet again: https://apnews.com/article/africa-religion-nigeria-islam-585a7ad7ca68d8a626c53903be4fe86f Lori Alexander comes out against lady preachers: https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2021/11/28/christian-mommy-female-preachers-are-heretics-who-were-abused-in-their-lives/

Changing a light bulb should be simple. Whoa, whoa, whoa! Uh-oh, that's not supposed to happen. Quickly submitting and tracking a claim on the Bel Air Direct app actually is simple. Bel Air Direct. Insurance simplified. Warning, the following episode is not cheery and bright. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new brand of greeting cards for people you can do without,

Brawlmark Cards. Brawlmark Cards, because Aunt Kathy can go fuck herself and we're sick of pretending otherwise. And now, The Skathing Atheist. Hey, salut, c'est Pat à Montréal. Et puis, en effet, on évolue d'hommes ou de femmes singes dégueulasses. And for those of you who don't speak French Canadian, well, it's true, we did indeed evolve from filthy monkey men or women. It's Thursday. It's December 23rd. And it's Festivus.

That's right. Well, some of us air our grievances every week. But for everybody else, there's Festivus. Some of us make a whole career out of it. I'm Nell Illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Carl the Pug-a-Pag-a-Corn Snootgers, Hell yeah.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, our podcast gets a billionaire sugar daddy for Christmas. Oh yeah. A third grade teacher considers doing wintertime for Hitler unironically at a holiday concert. And Tom and Cecil will be here to shit in a few stockings.

But first, the diatribe. Okay, I'm sorry to do two diatribes about such a similar subject in a row like this, but I couldn't fit all my bitching into one segment. See, last week we talked about how silly it was for Christians to be pissed about the commercialization of Christmas, given that the commercialization is the only reason anybody gives a shit about Christmas. But this week I want to talk about how the commercialization is the only reason anybody gives a shit about Christmas. But this week, I want to talk about how the commercialization is the only reason anybody gives a shit about Jesus. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's possible that Christianity could have perpetuated itself 20 centuries without a government

sponsor. I mean, by the time the Roman Empire started warming up to it, it had already been around for at least a century and a half, and any religion that makes it that long has at least a chance of embedding itself long term. But even if it had already been around for at least a century and a half and any religion that makes it that long has at least a chance of embedding itself long term but even if it had managed to survive this long there's no way in hell it would be the world's largest religion it would be a weird oddity in the eastern mediterranean that was noteworthy mostly for being way more into symbolic cannibalism than you like in a religion of Of course, that ain't our timeline. In our timeline, in the early fourth century, the Roman Empire realized that having a uniform religion would be swell. And of all the popular ones available at the time, Christianity had the strongest

emphasis on docility. It taught the poor to be satisfied. It taught the victim to turn the other cheek. And it taught the parishioner to render unto Caesar whatever the fuck he asked for. Exactly the kind of religion you need if you want to grease the gears of commerce. Now, there were some problematic elements, right? Early Christians were a little too obsessed with not accumulating wealth, and their martyrdom fetish swelled to the point of an existential threat from time to time. But it was nothing that the ruling authority couldn't buff out after a few generations. So even if you buy into the origin story whereity started off as this well-intentioned effort to

help the poor and see the humanity and everyone you have to admit that for at least the last 1700 years or so it's been honed into a tool of oppression for the working class it's a cultural tranquilizer that gives the masses something to think about other than how fucked up it is that their landlord gets to keep so much of their crop. And even if the religion actually started with the ministry of Jesus, and Jesus is the same peacenik hippie that he's portrayed as today, it's been a tool of commerce for five and a half times as long as it was whatever the fuck they think it was back then. And it's not like Christians don't notice this shit. Hell, they accidentally boast of it. They'll point out how much comfort slaves found in the Bible or how popular it is for

the people in the poorest parts of the world. Of course, they think that's a symbol of how empowering their religion is to everybody. But in truth, it's the exact opposite. Christianity is popular among oppressed people because it was specifically crafted to appeal to oppressed people for centuries. And the effectiveness of that process exploded after the Reformation, when decentralization ushered natural selection into the picture. The end result was, and inevitably was, a religion that excelled at subduing the masses to the yoke of commerce. Of course, it's pretty easy to find counter examples to challenge that assertion,

especially as the stock markets adjust to the latest variant that the anti-vax religious assholes have unleashed on the world. But that's just how natural selection works. This was never an entirely conscious process, so there are bound to be vestigial organs and junk DNA that outlived their usefulness or else never had any usefulness at all. I mean, all the religious ideas that sufficiently hinder the needs of the society die out. Not all of them as quickly as the ones that actively kill their adherents. But one way or the other, they all die out. Anything shy of that, though, can linger on for centuries and plague the future with the

bigotries of the past. But in the end, the purpose, whether intentional or not, is to sedate the masses. And so the result is to sedate the masses. Long story short, even if Jesus was the reason for the season, and he's not, but even if he was,

that's no argument against commercialism since commercialism is the reason for the Jesus in the first place joining me for headlines tonight are the joyful and triumphant to my faithful heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to come okay just give me a few more minutes no i'm 40 years old i'm 40 years old that's how it works just want a medium come one time no it gets better though it gets better i'm kidding it doesn't in our lead story tonight i have good news about the supreme court i know i'm just as surprised as you are but this week the supreme court Court allowed the state of New York to maintain its COVID vaccine mandate for healthcare workers,

even though it doesn't allow religious exemptions. Because even Brett Kavanaugh has to occasionally admit that magic isn't real if you're a nurse in a fucking emergency room. Jesus. It's bad enough that, like, Supreme Court doesn't overturn decades of precedent to grant dangerous new unconstitutional rights to Christians as news at all, let alone what passes for good news these days. That's good. Honestly, good news is anything short of Supreme Court owns every uterus now in the entire realm. Like, the queen owns every swan. It's not that. That's good Supreme Court news at this point yep

yeah now before we get too cheery i want to point out that this was by no means a done deal so justices gorsuch alito and of course clarence thomas all indicated that they wanted to hear the case and gorsuch wrote a lengthy dissent arguing that the exemptions mandate was motivated not by scientific evidence, but by hostility to, quote, unpopular religious beliefs, by which he means the even wronger than usual religious belief that the vaccine is made up of ground up fetal cells. What a bad shit fucking argument from a Supreme Court justice, no less. If it wasn't for the unpopular religious beliefs, there would be no exemption to not have. That's actually the argument.

The fact that I can't even explain the stupidity of the argument without a triple negative should tell you how fucking nuts it is. Okay. Also, why is this hostility argument even a thing if a public safety law is hostile to your belief system that's an argument for our team that's what we say you're in a public danger death cult of fucking terrorism we're saying that that's our point exactly and i just want to point out one of the the heart-tugging cases Gorsuch hopes we are really going to feel for is an OBGYN he calls Dr. J, about whom he says, quote, Sometimes, in emergencies, she has to rush into a delivery room without knowing whether a delivering mother is infected with the disease end quote but so what so it's only fair the delivering mother should have to do the same

also uh just curious how many fetuses are we killing in the name of christian freedom are we doing a bunch before what are the founding fathers yeah i guess that's that's the most important thing yeah so bullet dodged and from the handmaid's tale cosplayers no less but hey as a comfort to those religious folks out there thanks to you creating omicron vaccines don't matter anyway so you lost your jobs for nothing and you're gonna die you just won't get infected while delivering mothers and their babies while you do it so you know it's up and down there you you go. And in great resignation news, I'm not a big fan of billionaires

like as a concept. Consider this. Imagine that you were immortal and you could go back to the time that the Great Pyramids of Giza were being built and you earned 100 pounds of gold every year. And then imagine that you took that gold

and you put it in a bag and then you whacked billionaires in the fucking face with it for hoarding money Scrooge McDuck style while diabetics die rationing their insulin. Because seriously, fuck that shit. All that being said, if you're going to have billionaires and apparently we are, let's hope they can at least use some of their money and clout to tell the Mormon church how hard it can go fuck itself, which is what the richest man in Utah just hope they can at least use some of their money and clout to tell the mormon church how hard it can go

fuck itself which is what the richest man in utah just did in his formal letter of resignation to the church oh so he's uh not a mormon anymore um uh jeff i don't know if you're listening but if you are did you know that our politics here at the Scathing Atheist match up identically with yours? It's true. It's true. Also, also, would the Mormon church let you pick a hole? Because we'll let you pick a hole, Jeff. You know what, Jeff?

I will not make you pick. I'm not going to make you pick. You can do whatever you want. It is a buffet of holes. All of the above. I'm tired of saying it's a buffet of holes. I'm tired of you saying that too. Every episode.

So in his letter, Green admonishes the church both for what they fail to do and what they do instead. He accused the church of, quote, actively and currently doing harm in the world, end quote, which I guess that's just an established fact. I'm not sure why I said accused, right? He could have gone with pointed out he also pointed out the rank duplicity of the church in terms of its history its finances and its advocacy adding quote i believe the mormon church has hindered global progress in women's rights civil rights and racial equality and lgbtq plus rights end quote which again isn't really an i believe kind of thing so much as just an

is kind of thing but it's still a pretty damn big deal when there's a prominent a voice in utah is saying it and when the state's biggest newspaper is printing it yeah nothing says you're out of touch like when a literal utility monster says you suck and he's right yeah right yeah you guys really suck so i'm going to go hunt an orphan in my hedge maze with a flamethrower. But then we're going to talk about your ethics. We're going to I might do a strongly worded letter. There you go. Perhaps.

I don't know. Well, yeah. So for those of you who are wondering if Green is putting his money where his mouth is, I should add that at the same time, he also pledged in his resignation to donate $600,000 or 0.012% of his fortune to an LGBTQ advocacy group called Equality Utah. Oh, cool. That's almost as much as we raised in vulgarity for charity as not billionaires. Good for you, buddy.

Yeah, exactly, with a bunch of not billionaire listeners. Now, to be clear, green is worth $5 billion, and that's way more money than any one human should ever be able to acquire in the world. worth five billion dollars and that's you know that's way more money than any one human should ever be able to acquire in the world but it's still a pittance compared to the 12 figure fortune that the mormon church controls and as unimpressed as i am with billionaire philanthropy between the two of them only one has pledged to spend 90 of their fortune on charitable causes while they're alive and it's not the one that gained its fortune by promising to spend it on charitable causes.

So there's that. Yeah. And next up in headlines, Axios journalist, Barack Ravid decided to get an early start on locking down the American Jewish vote for the blue team in the next presidential election. And with Donald Trump as the current front runnerner for the GOP nomination, it seemed like the best strategy would be having Donald Trump say things out loud into a recording device.

So that's what happened. During a recent episode of his podcast called Unholy, Two Jews on the News, Ravid interviewed Trump about American foreign policy regarding Israel. And it went approximately slur word. Trump said, I'm sure he was talking about foreign policy, but in actual reality, it's just a long series of, you know, grammatically stilted Trumpian anti-Semitic jokes from the school bus when you were 10 in the form of an interview, sort of. Yeah. I'm not saying it's ever fun to talk about Trump, but it's nice that he's just like a guy who used to be in charge when we talk about it now. Yeah. Yeah. We should make sure to enjoy that while it lasts.

TikTok. Yep. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. So Ravid asked questions during the interview, obviously, but he didn't have to. It could have just been like, hello, Donaldrael jewish people you talk now see where this goes we would have got the same content either way sure what a for example here's the first thing from trump as if he just walked on stage at a nazi open mic and said speaking of jewish people trump started by saying this is real my father fred was actually very close with the jewish people

because of course he worked in the real estate business in New York City. That's how he started. I happen to be a tremendous fan of gold. Just so you know. Love it. My dad had a lot of Jewish friends. You know, they'd know how to take the curse off if it ever came to that. Those would have been probably better than what he actually did and from there donald launched

into a rant about how american jewish people used to love israel but now the american christians are actually better at being jewish than the jewish people seriously this that's what donald said next he goisplained to an israeli how that works. According to Trump, quote, it's a very dangerous thing that's happening. People in this country that are Jewish no longer love Israel. The evangelical Christians love Israel more than the Jews. End quote. So partially thanks to Trump,

evangelical Christians are way more into shooting people who get too close to the fence than Jewish people are. Yeah. Also, just quick reminder evangelicals love israel because when israel is attacked they get to get zooped up to heaven because the apocalypse is starting yes so it's kind of like saying david ike loves the moon the most because he knows that's where the reptilian base is hiding. Very similar. Yep. So just in case you didn't quite have anti-Semitic trope bingo yet, Trump decided he should also go explain to the New York Times about how to properly control the media

with Zionist mind control. So obviously you want to use plenty of 5G, but it's also about loving Israel in your newspaper. Trump closed it out by chastising the self-hating Jewish people in the Salzburger family who own the New York Times. Apparently the Times hates Israel too. Well, I mean, maybe it's the apartheid. I'm just spitballing. It seems like you can be anti-apartheid as carried out by Israel without being anti-Semitic.

I don't know. I just. Oh, that might be the explanation there. I don't know, Heath. I'm guessing your inbox is different. Yeah. Yeah. No. Explain that to me with an email about that. Explain how that's what I said was wrong. Good luck. And in every Christ begins with K news. I hope you're ready for a hashtag throwback Thursday because the story from way back in 2019 is back in the news this week. So put on some Adele, nervously check

CNN and rub your uncovered face on someone else's uncovered face to celebrate. Don't. Please don't do those things. I mean, you can put on some Adele. That's fine. There you go. Alright. So the year was 2019. Keith had a full head of hair. I had a couple running jokes

that don't hold up great in hindsight. And the online Christian jewelry store, Shields of Strength, had to be written a cease and desist letter by the U.S. Marines

to stop making ugly-ass fake dog tags with the official Marine symbol on them that talked about Jesus. Now, to be clear, that's because nobody's allowed to use official military logos for anything. And Shields of Strength, the jewelry company, is actually a great example of why that is, right? If anybody is allowed to use official military logos,

then it might be confusing when people see what looks like a dog tag that says, boy, we sure are christian here in the marines and that was supposed to be that back in 2019 that is till this week when shields of strength showed their patriotism by suing the department of defense and the individual branches of the military for you guessed it religious persecution well right no gorsuch was super clear about this the fact that they're not exempted from that law proves it's hostile to them what is happening the crime they did proves the law is hostile to them again we are saying that that's our argument why is neil gorsuch so confused he seems very confused by the antagonistic relationship

between laws and criminals why is that weird to him just slowly filling up a robber sack with stuff in his house are you mad because if you're mad you're persecuting me yeah so the lawsuit which i gotta say reads like a shitty ex trying to get you back explains thatains that, oh, Shields of Strength had such a great relationship with the Marines when they were stealing their logo and they didn't know about it. And it wasn't until the mean old atheists like the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and the Friendly Atheist blog. Yes, they literally blame Hammett Meta. That their awesome relationship was ruined.

So now they're suing those branches of the military. You didn't even care about my crime until you knew about it. Guys, think about how close we came to getting Andrew a lawsuit for Christmas. Oh, right. Like imagine how much he would have loved to find that lawsuit in his stock. I know I'm trying to get him lawsuits all the time,

but he gets all nervous and tumsy-chewy. We're going to put a Cristiano brother toe in his stocking when we finally do it. Spoilers. Now, needless to say, this lawsuit is bullshit and without merit, but I also said that about Masterpiece Cake Shop,

so let's hope that this continues to be a throwback Thursday in that religion still has to follow some laws, just like it did kind of, sort of in the halcyon days of 2019. Woof. And just to make sure none of us add something like, at least it couldn't get any worse, we're going to take a quick break and toss things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. A man wrote the Bible? A whore is what she was. If it's a legitimate race. It's a slut, right?

Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This week in Misogyny. Okay, so we all know that the whole a virgin birth thing was the result of a mistranslation, right? Like the Hebrew prophecy actually said young woman. The Greek translator read it as virgin, and to make Jesus match prophecy, they had to say his mom was a virgin.

And I'm wondering if there's any mistranslation anywhere ever that has caused more suffering for more people. I mean, the cultural obsession with chastity obviously doesn't start there. The very fact that a pure Messiah could only come from a virginal vagina shows you that. But holy hell, encoding it in the top line of your religion like that has been a curse on women for a hundred generations and counting. Anyway, that's my way of saying season's greetings, and now it's on to some more topical misogyny. And we'll start off in Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria, where for the third time in five years,

the national legislature has rejected a measure that would promote gender equality. And as fucked up as it was, I have to give them points for honesty. The senators voting down the bill actually cited as their reasons, quote, socio-cultural and Islamic concerns, end

quote. In other words, our society and religion are too backwards for that shit. And sorry to describe an African culture as backwards. I know it comes off as un-PC as fuck, but there's really no other way to describe Nigeria's record on gender equality. Like, America is bad enough with only about one-fourth of our legislature made up of women. In Nigeria, it's less than one-fourteenth. But among that super minority of female senators is one Bayodun Ulujimi,

and apologies if I get that pronunciation wrong, who has been working for years to pass this bill. And I should point out that it's not just about giving women equal rights. Nigeria has a terrible problem with gender-based violence, and the bill seeks to redress that as well. And again, can't emphasize this enough, the justifications for opposing the bill and thus siding with gender-based violence was almost entirely religious. A senator named Yusuf Yusuf summed it up perfectly for the AP, quote, equating opportunities actually infringes on the provisions of the Quran and also the Bible. End quote.

And while I'd submit Senator Youssef got the conclusion as asked backwards as he could get it, that statement isn't wrong. Anyway, given the tenacity of Nigeria's female senators, we're hoping this isn't the last we hear of this bill. Oh, and I guess since we've been gone for a few weeks, you guys are probably wondering if my arch nemesis Lori Alexander has turned over a new leaf and stopped being a willing spokesperson for the patriarchy. Well, it turns out, nope. Last I heard from her, she was in the middle of defending the family

dynamics of the Duggars and bitching about lady preachers. Seriously, somebody wrote in to say something about how surely she can agree that Josh Duggar's wife should have divorced his ass, right? Well, Lori did not agree. Instead, she accused the concerned viewer of both feminism and humanism for shame. And then she pointed out that Josh Duggar only mildly molested his sisters. Her actual words. Then she followed that up a couple days later with a screed about how female preachers are heretics

who, quote, were somehow abused in their lives. End of quote. So yeah, maybe she's waiting for the new year to turn over that new leaf, but I'll keep an eye out just in case. And on that note, I'll hand things back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda.

Next up in headlines in Ogun, all ye faithful news. Uh-huh. Yep. Go ahead. It didn't rhyme. Not a lot to this story. So if you wanted to appreciate anything right now. Great pun, Eli.

Thank you. All right. If one were to look over the legal landscape of America in the year of our not Lord 2021, you might be convinced that we were a nation of extremely devout Bible-believing Christians who, until recently, were kept in some kind of work camp with only a Charlie Brown-esque Christmas tree to comfort them. The reality, of course, is that our nation is barely majority Christian in the most generous terms, and the definition of that word becomes ever more meaningless,

as exemplified by the River of Tri-Cities Church in Johnson City, Tennessee, who will be celebrating the birth of their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, by giving away two AR-15s. One at the morning service and one at the evening one. Ooh. No, it's not their fault. Everybody's just been spelling Prince of Peace wrong the whole time. It's just that it's different. Yes. Pastor Todd Holmes announced the giveaway on Twitter while wearing a shirt.

I can't make this up. Whose front is a bunch of weapons that spell out the word love. Oh, sure. Might as well just say, dear Noah, Heath and Eli, don't forget to add jokes about me inserting these guns into my rectum for the purposes of sexual stimulation. Jesus. P.S. These are lady guns. I'm not gay.

These are lady guns on my shirt. This is a weird shirt that I'm still reading. Apparently, this shirt is done now. Meta shirt. not getting these guns on my shirt this is a weird shirt that i'm still reading apparently this shirt is done now meta shirt and look i point this out because well because i wanted to do the gun all the faithful pun but it's important to keep in mind that these same people giving away guns to celebrate the birth of the prince of peace lose their fucking mind every time a cup is red these people have waged a war on the sentence happy holidays since time immemorial so next time your shitty uncle tells you there's a war on christmas maybe tell him to start at the churches

giving away weapons of war and in lock and lotus shit news tonight god i love this story so much i was so happy with this evangelical pastor and planned parenthood's top involuntary donor greg lock took time off from melting down duncan donut sugar crystals in a spoon this week to declare a mexican statue as a harbinger of the end times. The chimerical statue is on display outside the UN building in New York City, and Greg Lott couldn't help but notice that it looked an awful

lot like the legendary Beast of Revelation. Except for the two horns of a lamb and the feet of a bear. Sure. But it also only has one head. Okay. And it's the head of a jaguar instead of a it's a lion losing it also it has eagle wings which aren't mentioned in revelation only daniel but other than every single detail mentioned in the bible it looks exactly like the beast from the

earth nailed it yeah greg do you think he workshopped that at home first he was like uh can't help but notice those leopards in front of the new york public library now you know what i'm gonna go with the un that's that's stretching too far hey greg there was a literal wave of scorpions last month right you want a harbinger of the apocalypse maybe the time when a city got attacked by a wave of fat-tailed scorpions whose Greek name means man-killer after God created a giant storm. How are you not using it? You're so bad at your evil job. That's so easy.

So the statue in question is a type of Mexican art called an alabrije, which is a colorful, chimerical creature that dates back to the 1930s. Super popular in mexico and for good reason they're they're fucking awesome they have a big ass parade in mexico city filled with them and this one was apparently presented as a symbol of mexico as a guardian of world peace which is a tad overblown sure but it's a long ways from demonic but that's not how greg lock saw it greg greg give me a call i have a way of pronouncing that statue that will tear a podcast audience apart buddy look me up wow it's a pretty deep cut there that's so deep when you recorded that your mic was still pointed at your desk

it was and then you gave me a third of your company it was a really weird decision on our part now granted the way that Greg Locke first saw this statue was almost certainly underneath a headline on CBN's website that said, quote, UN sculpture looks a lot like the End Times beast referred to in Daniel 7 and Revelation

13, end quote, which is fucking wrong. It looks like neither of those things at all. And neither of those things look all and neither of those things look like one another either by the way the only common threads are chimera and feline but if greg lock let facts get in the way of his sermons he couldn't exactly have sermons now could he so during a sermon he did last sunday he paranoia to quote did you see that statue they put in the UN in New York? That is predictably prophetic. Okay, man.

All prophecies are predictable, Greg. That's the whole thing with those words. Yeah. Or do you think the UN has like a high batting average of predicting the future with statues? Is that what you were saying? He might. He goes on. It's right there now.

Face of a leopard, wings of an eagle, paws of a bear. It's there right at the U.N. Again, to be clear, he just described both the beast of Revelation and the statue wrong. Revelation says face of a lion. Statue doesn't have a paws of a bear. He continues, quote, read your book. God damn it. Quote, I'm about to buy me some plane tickets to New York because I'm going to the statue and I'm going to get me a live Facebook video. You got the wrong one saying I won't. I'm going to do it.

God done told me I'm going to do it. I'm going to go to New York City, USA. Wow. OK, we murder everyone who says I'm going to go to New York City, USA, right before they come to new york city usa you get murdered in new york city when you say that like i'm not trying to be predictably prophetic but yes i am that's what happens yeah he concludes quote i don't care what that masked up demon possessed governor has to say about it i'm gonna climb up on that leopard head and i'm gonna preach this nation that if we don't turn and we don't repent god is about to level the whole thing ladies and gentlemen

end quote please come to the covet epicenter of the united states there you have it uh look for a video coming soon a greg lock yee-haw on his way through a sermon atop a mexican leopard statue regardless of what the voices in his head might have to say to the contrary. Further bulletins as events warrant. Okay, okay. But guys, guys, not just Omicron, but that also means that I could feasibly costume up and hang out with Greg Locke. I'm just saying it's been a while since I've tasted Christian eyeball and I got the hunger. So what you need to do is dress up like a leopard with eagle wings and the paws of a bear.

Seriously, I will do that. I will show up. If he announces a date, please tweet that at me. Me and Anna will make a costume and I'll show up and just look hurt in the background of his sermon. Rachel could help with that. She could probably do that. Absolutely. We'll get the whole team.

This is a red alert. And finally tonight in who started all the wars on Christmas news. Jesus, this story. It turns out there might be some anti-Semitism still going around in the United States. anti-Semitism still going around in the United States. Even after Donald Trump explained to all the American Jewish people how they can be way cooler and avoid all that bigotry, it's still happening apparently. And last week, we got possibly the most shocking version of anti-Semitic insanity I can imagine. Like, okay, seriously, try to think of the craziest possible example.

You're not even close. You're not even close. Here's what actually happened. An instructor at a public elementary school in Washington, D.C. had a third grade class do a reenactment of the Holocaust to learn about the true meaning of Christmas. Every single word of that sentence is as impossible to predict as the last. Is that correct? Right? Yeah. Now, but to be fair,

the most shocking version of anti-Semitism that I imagined was the thing those third graders were reenacting. So I feel like I won. I don't know if won is the right word. We all win. That's tricky. Yeah, so I can't stress this enough.

This is all real. This really happened in the year of our Lord 2021. A class of third graders, that is eight year olds. Usually it was led through a LARPing campaign about the Holocaust. They were told to act out firing squads and the digging of mass graves. Some of the students were cast as victims of gas chambers, and they were told to act out that type of death with physical space work. This all happened.

I'm a bacon. I'm a bacon. Okay. I mean, these are third graders, so you know one of them was like, no, no, I have super lungs so I blow away all the gas and you're dead now. I'm just trying to picture I feel like Holocaust

reenactments shouldn't have giggling or people saying no giggling, right? Both of those things. We've gone wrong either way. Yep. That should be a rule. Okay, so you're probably wondering if an eight-year-old child was specifically cast as adolf hitler for the reenactment yes yes that happened oh was that student a jewish person yes

he was oh jesus christ did the school's principal have to write the craziest mass apology letter of their career yeah also yes yeah and most importantly you're probably wondering about the true meaning of christmas and how that lesson came through in the reenactment so were the kids they were wondering the same thing at the end of the class the kids wanted to know why the nazis would do all those terrible things and the instructor said quote real quote this is real this is so unbelievable that i messaged heath last night before recording i was like hey is that a real quote or is that a joke that you don't and i almost followed up by saying it can't possibly be a real quote nope this is what

really happened the kids asked why would nazis do all those terrible things? The instructor replied, quote, because the Jews ruined Christmas. And then the instructor added, don't tell anybody about our fun little class today. Right. Just between us. This reenactment of genocide will be our little secret. Okay. So there's lots of debate these days about what type of curriculum is appropriate for public schools that's a big thing one side is worried about critical race theory because

america has become way too politically correct and woke and oversensitive about bigotry the other side is worried about christian neo-nazis reenacting the literal holocaust with eight-year-olds in order to teach the very important message that the jews ruined christmas yep so yeah both sides and all that it's tricky to parse it all out um just keep in mind that the one side if you're having trouble parsing out the sides the one side has a teacher saying the holocaust was a reasonable pushback against the war on christmas that's what one side has on their team. Jesus. And while we all reflect on the fact that Nazi reenactment was literally taught to more elementary school kids this year than critical race theory, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

And when we come back, Cecil will join us for some lighthearted insults, and Tom will explore the darkest parts of our inner selves with painfully honest descriptions of the human condition. It's this thing. It's this thing. It's that time of year again, the time we fill with joy, goodwill, and verbal eviscerations of our enemies.

That's right. We've still got a few more vulgarity for Charity Roast to knock out, which means it's time to bring back the posh and ginger to our scary baby and sporty tom and cecil of the cognitive dissonance podcast gents welcome back i would argue none of us qualify as sporty i just want to say that it's just out loud i just can i call posh i'm well i have no soul so i'm ginger too all right those are souls aren't real anyway. You're good. No, there's look, scary baby and sporty. It's so obvious which is which on our team of those guys.

Keith is absolutely going to be sporty. That's fine. It's the reach. I play sports. It's not all tall. It's reach. It's reach advantage. That's what it is. He's a good goalie. That's reach. Probably's reach advantage. That's what it is. He's a good goalie. That's fine. That's reach.

But yeah. All right. Probably the best basketball player here. I was on the college volleyball. Okay. I hear it. Volleyball is high. It's tall.

It's tallness. I've done a few. Yeah. I was a jockey for a minute. On a miniature horse. It's very small. See, well, damn it. Now, so I had this whole before we get going thing,

but we were already roasting Heath, obviously. So it's going to be after we get going. Positive. But before we get any more roasts in, we need to thank the people who contributed to the fundraiser without asking us to do additional work, starting with Dylan W., Sarah B., Kelly D., Kate A., Hannah and Zach and Anne.

And thanks plus a free small ramekin of free thanks to Sarah D, Daniel C, Michael A, Danny, Michael W, Mike S and Sally F. And a whole rotisserie chicken of thanks to Faith, Sarah M, Jennifer, Jalyn, Gail and Christopher, Teresa, Jim B and an atheist in a foxhole. Lynn, Gail and Christopher, Teresa, Jim B, and an atheist in a foxhole. And of course, we had a couple of folks from the award-winning Are You Sure? category. Tony and Jim M, who both gave us a thousand bucks for

nothing. Are you sure? Are you sure you want to do that? And our most Are You Sure? donation, Elvis. Elvis is a guy who's written stuff for our show before, music for our show before. Elvis and Sharon, who kicked in a whopping $2,215.

Holy shit. For nothing. For nothing. Eli, we're going to start with you. Marjorie would like a roast of Midwest Nice. Excellent pick. Oh. Hey, Midwest.

I'm sorry is the fact that you appear to have duct taped a smile to your dead lifeless eyes nice to you i didn't realize that the fucking stepford wise was more of an aspirational goal for you fly over states i mean look sure in marjorie and my home state of new jersey we'll tell you fuck yourself, but we'll do it with our mouths and for the length of a sentence, not with our cold, lifeless expressions for the rest of our mutual lives. Fuck. Yeah, Midwesterners, I'm from there. We're not fooling anybody anymore, okay? Tom is from there. Is Michigan doing that, too?

Am I in that now? You are in that now is that why people are smiling deeply in that god damn it all right so heath fuck you thank you good there you go all right now that you're all warmed up nikki would like a roast of potatoes okay and i can't think of a better man for the job cool yeah yeah it's it's racist but that's fine. So, Nikki's email ranked us, the five of us, in order of physical attractiveness. Ooh, what? So, Noah won and the rest of us lost.

Super fun. It was a fun start to that email. I want to know the order. I demand the order. Eli, you know the order. Come on, man. Yikes. If I won, then we do not know the order, okay? Noah first, the rest of us lost it's fine so uh also in that email we are told that the genius very extremely amazing inspired idea for roasting the potato was from nikki's husband and we were told that her husband does not enjoy puns. And, you know, I totally agree, Nikki's husband.

I am not a fan of puns either. I tuber now on Wordplay. I burn out on Wordplay. He did it. You can't just build a desire bit around pums and pums and workplace would I would I just keep doing that

for this whole time gnocchi in mind just how important you are to me for who you are you're important to me keep that in mind it's grot gotten to the point where trust it gets to a

better joke and I'm not just spending this whole time giving you the fingerlings. Just believe that I'll get to that next year. I'm standing and applauding right now. Maybe you should have reconsidered your order of attractiveness. I don't want to go next now.

This is Suarez. Fuck you. All right. I got one for you here, Noah. Nathaniel would like a roast of the Alaskan congressional delegation. Oh, just tee me right up. Why don't you? Yeah, that's going to be a Lisa.

No, I have a real conscious. You just don't know it. It lives in Canada. Murkowski. The senator smart enough to know better but dumb enough to let us know that she still knows better of course there's also dan i'm smelling with my human facelift sullivan whose past accomplishments included leadership positions in the national economic council and the national security council and the administration

of one george w, famous for his stellar handling of economics and national security. And of course, Alaska's sole House member, 25 term congressman Don Young. Term? Not year? Yes. Term. Yes.

What the fuck? Yeah. Yikes. We definitely don't need limits on that. We don't need limits. It's called elections, no no it's called elections tom it's called election you guys are ridiculous no so he's an ex never trumper that's an interesting position to be in never never works never works different than that he also he once blamed alaska's

national disgrace of a suicide rate on government handouts. What? Because you know how having the ability to make ends meet is so highly correlated with suicide? It's like that. That's math. Also, Don Young, he looks like if Santa decided to start an MLM instead of doing the toy thing. Oh, he does. All right.

I got one right back for you, Cecil. Sarah would like a roast of the people who are responsible for Glenn Youngkin's election. So, Sarah, you ever watch a sporting event and it looks like the refs really want one team to win over the other? That's America. The refs all across the country have been penalizing one side. Illegal voting. Perfectly illegal voting. Illegal voting.

15 yards. We closed down all these polling centers in black neighborhoods roughing the ballot box no more votes i'm mailing you about 15 minute vote window on tuesday afternoon sorry 15 minutes so it's easy to look around and think that the deck is stacked against you and then in your state the halftime show was the fox News marching band featuring the critical race theory dancers. And the promotional giveaway was racist dog whistles. Sure was. Add all that up. All right.

And Tom, Dan gave you a bit of a choice here. He would like a roast of Joseph Merkla, Jenny McCarthy, or Robert Kennedy Jr. Your choice. Oh, all right. You know, it was hard to pick between these three at first. And then I thought about it. I realized I absolutely had to pick

Jenny McCarthy. Clearly, all three of these assholes have time and again poisoned the well of the most valuable category of disease avoidance we have ever created. But Jenny McCarthy used the mom card to subvert and undermine the credibility of vaccination. And that's what makes everything she has done so much worse. Moms get an enormous amount of responsibility and even more shit. That's to be sure. But they also have an immense amount of social capital. Moms are the ones we trust instinctually not to go out for a pack of smokes never to return.

So when they look right at the camera and tug at our heartstrings with fiercely protective stories of their journey to protect their children, we are primed to believe them. But even though we are primed to believe it, it doesn't make it true. And Jenny McCarthy has made an entire cottage industry out of leveraging the social power of motherhood to convince other moms to play viral Russian roulette with their kids. If there's anything more crass and cynical than using your own children to harm and kill other kids, kids who almost certainly have less opportunity and privilege and resources than your own, I cannot imagine what that could possibly be. Jenny McCarthy should have faded from the public spotlight like every other smiling, irrelevant pair of tits the world has gotten tired of looking at. The best thing we can hope for is a road to Damascus style conversion that takes place right after one of her precious little vectors gasps their last.

That Jenny can hold the still, breathless, and cold result of her own actions in her trembling arms as she slowly and permanently comes to the perfect realization that she is absolutely responsible for the silence that fills her home. And that that silence is only ever drowned out by the unending screams of her own broken heart. Good Lord. Oh, God. Okay, but fuck Robert Kennedy Jr. too. the unending screams of her own broken heart. Good lord. Oh god. Okay, but fuck Robert Kennedy Jr. too. Oh yeah, to be fair. Yeah, they're all pretty bad guys. Alright, so this next one is a twofer. Both Mark

and Paul would like you to roast Congressman Jim Hedgorn? I don't even know who the fuck this is. But Cecil Heath, why don't you guys take this one? I don't know, but I'm going to pronounce his name wrong a few times to whatever it is. Sure. For sure.

Jim looks like someone hastily made a sculpture of Michael Caine on unused pig parts. He looks like a seat cushion at Ed Gein's house, man. He looks like the kind of guy that could get chased out of his workplace by violent revolutionaries and then vote to decertify the presidential vote. Yes. Because that's what he fucking did, man.

That happened. Jim Hadescorn. Yeah. He looks like Don Rickles roasted himself for decades and that actually changed his physical appearance. For the negative, to be clear. He looks worse than what you think of when you think of Don Rickles. Like, Don Rickles did the picture of Dorian Gray thing,

but, you know, when he sold his soul to the devil, he used Jim Hades corn instead of a painting. And Satan was like, oh, you're going to use a Republican congressman? Nice. Yeah, that's great. That's better than me. I'm going to start offering that from now on, actually. It's part of my menu. That's awesome. Well done, sir. I have another two for here. This is an interesting one.

Michael C. would like a signature Tom roast and an Eli impersonation, both of Jesse Lee Peterson. All right. Yeah, this is going to be fun. So, Tom, I'd like you to roast JLP, and Eli, I'd like you to receive said roast as JLP. Oh, all right.

Okay. Jesse Lee Peterson. Hello. Absolutely has got to wake up just completely exhausted, keeping up the insane charade that is everything about himself. I've never seen that musical. Now, here is a guy who appears to be single-mindedly obsessed with very waspy, toxic notions of masculinity while in no way having access to any of the advantages

enforcement of those stereotypes confers. Right. I understood like four of those words. This is a guy who looks like he's made entirely out of a pile of defrosted chicken livers hastily stuffed into a rag doll and this mopey droopy sack of shit is gonna lecture us with his half-formed dim-witted blandishments on the virtues of male toughness i have a medical condition if anyone has ever protested too much it is jesse lee peterson a man whose constant haranguing and harassment of the black community is such a self-evident pandering to the whole white wing

power establishment he may as well be asking for permission to do his work in the house rather than outside. Please and thank you. I don't understand that reference. Does he have a list? Yeah. Simultaneously ableist and racist. Thank you.

One of the worst things that I've ever let get through the edit. So nailed him. Got him. Roasted. All right. So Amanda would like a roast of eli in the form of whoever has the craziest story about him that would be legal to tell on the air okay i have one that's it seems like it's not gonna be but it is i think it's legal so for vulgarity for charity actually

three years ago we got an email Somebody wanted a roast of their wife. I think a husband and a wife wrote to us being like, uh, we want, we've decided to have this person roasted and they sent pictures of the wife who wanted to be self. She wanted herself roasted, but they were like boudoir style pictures.

What? Yeah. Yeah. So not like all the way porn, but like, but like boudoir style. I know the story. And the email didn't

specifically enough in our opinion say like also just so you know both of us have decided this is exactly what we want this has been consented to by both people especially obviously the person who these pictures are of but so absent that very explicit thing that we would have loved to see in the email eli was like all right you know what we're gonna we're gonna have to obviously email this person back these people back i'm gonna check with andrew how to word that email just to be like super super thorough about it so he calls up andrew and he explains what's happening and andrew's like oh good you know what it's great that you contacted me about this i'm sure it's gonna be fine. But like, yes, you should make sure you, you know, both people very specifically say, yes, I'm choosing this.

And so Eli lets him go through this whole explanation. Like, Eli, what, like a couple of minutes of like legal bullshit, right? So a couple of minutes of like covering all the legal bases. And then finally Eli's like, oh, Andrew, just one of the things I feel like I should have said this at the beginning, this person is 12 years old to be clear at which point Andrew's like you start snorting tongues

it's different, then I have to check, hold on hold on Harvard is going to be, I don't know what i do right now and so then finally let's him do all that for like sputtering for another two minutes and he's like nah man i'm just fucking with you i'm just fucking with you and i think if i remember correctly the best part of this was that andrew had one of the watches that like kept your heart rate and it called 911 for us on the phone hearing the thing going off

being like you are having a heart attack literally right now you have to deal with it that's amazing so the uh but moral of the story not that was a joke he made that up yes exactly an adult and yes it was it turns out we learned 100 cons. Yes. Who sent boudoir pictures of, this is the best script, they sent boudoir pictures of him this year. Oh, really? They were like, hey, yo, sorry we scared Andrew.

Nice. Here's my husband's wang. All right, I feel like Amanda got her money's worth on that one. I got another special request for you, Eli. A Seattle Exmo would like you to roast Brigham Young as Brigham Young in your Donald Trump impersonation.

Alright, I think this calls for a doodly-doo. In doodly-dee it does. Orson, Orson, get in here. Yes, Mr. Young. There he is, the big man, good old Orson Pratt, my loyal friend and servant who will never betray me and die for it. How's that wife of yours?

She hates your fucking guts. Classic, always joking that one, love her. Anyway, I don't know if you heard about that Martin Willink handcart company, but we got to help those guys out. Because they're fellow Mormons? Oh, no, because they have my shit uh there's a still in there plus they got some of my child brides so get on that chop chop boy oh oh speaking of chop chop how's the genocide going i mean good i mean it's bad because it's

genocide but like i mean it's it the it's going according to plan that's what i love to hear i love to hear it and hey hey make sure you send the US the bill for that, okay? You want me to send a bill to the United States for a genocide that you committed even though we're actively at war with the US government right now?

Yeah. I'm going to try to kill you. I said I'll see what I can do. That's my boy. All right. Noah and Cecil, you guys are up next. We need you to team up for this one. Zachary wants a roast of his cat, Lynx.

Oh, my God. He said the saddest Stockholm syndrome email about this cat. He's talking about, Oh, the cat cries until I pick her up and it won't let me use my keyboard or my video game controller. It makes me put the lotion in the basket, whatever it is.

And then he adds it. Then he's like, but, but I wouldn't have it any other way. But why not Zachary? Why wouldn't you just, I mean, I'm not saying you can't have a healthy relationship

with this cat. I'm saying you don't. Dude, stand up for yourself. Zachary, I'm sorry. If your cat eats an entire loaf of bread and then throws up, you have the Eli Bosnick of cats. It's fair. If your cat screams, thrives on attention,

demands you watch it eat and constantly wants to be held like a baby ibid that's all I'm saying alright and to close off our round a special request Tom Ray gave us

five thousand freaking dollars a price for which Eli would that's a lot have apparently murdered two and one third people for a roast of his co-worker jeff he hates jeff man wow god jeff is the same fucking cookie cutter set of community college ideas about the

world that got old as soon as you heard them and had to say them back to someone else out loud like he is the kind of guy who claims to be a fiscal conservative, but who, and I absolutely guarantee that this is the case, cannot possibly give a three sentence description of exactly what that means. He cannot describe what the national debt is or how basic monetary policy operates. What he means by he is fiscally conservative is what everyone who says this means, that he doesn't like paying his taxes. Hey there, fucko. Here's something that might shock you. Literally nobody likes to pay taxes. The difference though, is that some of us understand that by paying taxes, I enrich the society that I literally count on every day for every part of my fucking existence. And that in turn enriches me back. Some of us

understand that while we might not need help now, we may need help later, or that we needed help in the past, or that somebody we've loved may need help, and that having a robust social safety net helps people get back on their feet more quickly and with less social and financial costs than letting them just suffer. There's actually no such thing as being fiscally conservative. Ask anyone who says they believe this nonsense to explain what they mean and all of them will fail in minutes because this is not a meaningful thing to fucking say. And every single

one of these fucking liars is more than happy to take their Social Security and their Medicare when it's their turn or to cash in some VA benefits or apply for disability if they're the ones that get hurt, right? What guys like Jeff mean is that they are the exception but there's nothing exceptional about jeff and there never has been jeff is so

run-of-the-mill you could put him in a lineup with only himself in the room and he still wouldn't get picked he is the same as the same as the same and every time you meet Jeff you have met a thousand fucking Jeffs he wears his sunglasses on his hat I guarantee it that's something that he is about he is about that off the top of my fucking head I could give this guy's speech at a wedding or eulogize him

at his funeral and make a fucking grocery list in my head while I do it you know those sunglasses are going upside down on the hat. Absolutely. For no reason. They don't even fit better that way. It's dumb. Truly the most exceptional thing about the dude is that somebody gave Tom $5,000 to roast him.

Yeah. This is the best thing he'll ever do. It's the only time he's ever been worth $5,000. Right. Yeah. No shit. And this is Noah cutting in mid-segment to apologize. We couldn't fit all the remaining roasts into one episode, so we had to split

this segment up, but Tom and Cecil will be back to wrap up Bulgari for Charity 2021 and there'll even be an Anna song, but for all of that, you have to wait until next week. Before we settle in for a long winter's nap tonight, I want to wish all of you a happy holidays and a very merry

plain red cup. But seriously, be safe and push your Republican relatives away with a poll even if they say they're vaccinated. Don't trust those motherfuckers. They say all kinds of shit. 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, 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, I can't put the bow on this thing until I thank Heath Enright for being merry, Eli Bosney for being jolly, and Lucinda Lusions for being bright. I need to thank Tom and Cecil for all the work they put in and are still putting in to make Vulgarity for Charity so successful this year. I also want to thank Pat in Montreal for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, but most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's heaviest helpers, Henry, Jared, Mitch, Tara, and Renee, Dan, Arthur, Kievar, Melissa, slightly sarcastic teacher, Royce, Daniel, other Daniel, NCM, Fidel,

Pierce, Freak, Jasper, Veronica, and Z, who are so naughty it's nice. Together, these 18 lean, mean, blaspheming machines inched us ever closer to our crazy billionaire dreams by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, but if you do, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn access to an extended app-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but you've got enough shit to worry about, I get it.

Take care of you. It's that time of year. Legal services for this podcast are provided by the Law Offices of B. Andrew Torres, Tim Robinson 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. We're the Beatles. I see.

I've often said that. I've heard you say it. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2021. All rights reserved.