The Scathing Atheist - 499: Video Ark Aid Edition

Episode Date: September 8, 2022

In this week’s episode, Canada hasn’t learned its lesson about entrusting kids to religious authorities, Texas lawmakers throw Chaz Stevens into the briar patch this time for realsies, and Eric Hovind will show us all the conviction we’ve come to expect from his convict-ass family. --- If you might have a kidney for Richard, click here: http://uchealth.donorscreen.org/ To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Headlines: Christians prefers bigotry to … almost all things: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/st-louis-archdiocese-chooses-anti-lgbtq-bigotry-over-free-school-lunch/ And https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/maines-religious-schools-are-choosing-bigotry-over-taxpayer-dollars/ and https://religionnews.com/2022/09/01/government-says-religious-schools-that-use-meal-program-exempt-from-nondiscrimination-rules/ A Christian school baptized 100 kids without telling their parents https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/a-christian-school-baptized-100-kids-without-telling-their-parents/ Canadian camp under investigation after exorcism that bordered on assault: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/exorcism-bible-camp-could-be-criminal-say-experts-1.6570461 Caribbean court strikes down ban on “abominable crime of buggery” https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/08/caribbean-court-strikes-ban-abominable-crime-buggery/ Liberty Counsel’s donor records revealed in data breach: https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/liberty-counsel-data-breach/ Texas lawmaker: Those Arabic ‘In God We Trust’ posters don’t count! https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/texas-lawmaker-those-arabic-in-god-we-trust-posters-dont-count/ --- This Week in Misogyny: Florida court rules 16 year old “not mature enough” for abortion: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2022/08/17/florida-teen-abortion-denied-mature/ Lutheran school honors teacher after he is credibly accused of sexual assaulting a student: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/she-told-sheboygan-lutheran-high-115638552.html Jason Graber preaches against women voting, or being outside in general: https://twitter.com/hemantmehta/status/1566622726168739843

Warning, people who are offended by profanity need to fuck off. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the internet. The internet, probably not worth it in the long run. And now, The Scathing Atheist. This is Anne. And this is Richard in Louisville, Kentucky. Apparently, a small number of our ancestors had bad kidneys. We're pretty sure this situation developed through the millennia due to natural selection.

It does seem unnatural that people would select bad kidney people, but Ann seems to have selected Richard nonetheless. Richard needs a kidney. Please go to uchealth.donorscreen.org to see if you could be a living donor. And yes, we did evolve from filthy monkey people. It's Thursday. It's September 8th. And it's Britney, bitch. Britney Spears said she's an atheist. Yeah, no, she's probably listening, honestly, if you think about it. Big fan.

I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick, and from Bada-Bing, New Jersey, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Canada hasn't learned its lesson about entrusting kids to religious authorities yet. Texas lawmakers throw Chaz Stevens into the briar patch, but this time for realsies. And Eric Hovind will show us all the conviction that we've come to expect from his convict-ass family. But first, the diatribe.

So yeah, you, me, and Britney Spears. I mean, Eli already spilled the beans a bit in the intro, and you probably already heard, but as of a now-deleted Instagram post on Monday, Britney has joined our ranks, immediately becoming the most high-profile atheist this side of China. And look, we don't generally spend a lot of time on this show talking about celebrity gossip. Generally speaking, it doesn't really matter which celebrities are atheists and which are Christian unless the Christian ones belong to homophobic churches and then get cast as the voice of fucking Mario, despite not sounding anything like Mario for some stupid fucking

reason. But in Britney's case, I feel like it does matter. And for a couple of reasons, right? The first is simply her visibility. In her prime, she was probably one of the most beloved celebrities in the fucking world. Her fan base, or at least her former fan base, spans the political and economic spectrum. Hearing her use the word atheist stands to have a real impact on a lot of those people. But there's another aspect of this that makes it worth talking about in the diatribe.

And that's been the response within the atheist movement. See, the context around this matters. Now, I'm not going to go into the whole backstory of all Britney Spears shit because odds are overwhelmingly in favor of you knowing more about it than me going into this. But suffice to say, she's been through a lot of fucked up shit with some next level family drama stuff. And in the Instagram story, she was responding to interviews with her estranged family about that stuff when she said, quote, God would not allow that to happen to me if a God existed. I don't believe in God anymore because of the way my children and my family have treated me. There is nothing to believe anymore. I'm an atheist, y'all.

Now, I would imagine that many of you hear that and your first reaction is to is to wince a little bit right i mean it does kind of reek of the cancer mom origin story we so often see in christian movies and tv shows and it plays right into that stereotype that christians have about us that says we're only professing our atheism because we're mad at god because some terrible thing happened in our past and if we could just be made to understand why god would put us through that we would rush back into the arms of mother church. And if that wince was your first response, rest assured that you weren't alone. Okay, a lot of prominent atheist voices chimed in with exactly that message on Twitter and Instagram and their blogs, etc. A lot of people felt the need to clarify that while they're very sorry for all the terrible shit that Britney's been through with her family, presenting atheism as though

it were a trauma response undermines the logical underpinnings behind the non-believer's worldview. Most atheists, according to these responses, shed their God belief not for emotional reasons, but for intellectual ones. And while I am sympathetic to the instinct that leads to this response, I think it's worth pointing out that this response also plays into a problematic stereotype about atheists.

And not the one that we're called illogical, but rather the one that says that we're incapable of recognizing the emotional impetus behind our actions. I mean, I think that we all know that most religious people would also tell you that they arrived at their beliefs through a logical consideration of the facts. They're wrong in this instance, but they're no wronger than we are when we pretend that emotional trauma and anger at the circumstances doesn't drive people to atheism. I mean, if you think about it, most people who leave religion, like the logical rejection comes way before the admission of atheism. The whole concept of a crisis of faith is born out of this need to deal with the ubiquity of believers finding themselves unable to pound the round peg into the square hole anymore, right? Whole industries exist to deal with the rampant

logical inconsistencies that religious people have to reconcile themselves to. And apologists for Christianity are rife with get-out-of-jail-free phrases like, I guess you're going to have to talk to God about that, or the Lord works in mysterious ways, all that kind of shit. All it takes is one glance around a creationist museum,

or preferably save your money and you know just look around the website of one to see that illogic isn't the universal tipping point we all so often pretend it to be on this subject right so so yeah a lot of people come to atheism by way of anger by way of betrayal many of you listening even some of you who would say you know that you got here through a purely logical and dispassionate review of the evidence we're only driven to look at that evidence with an open mind in the first place because of some traumatic event that a loving god would never have put you through as a species we tend to be terrible at parsing out which parts of our conclusions come from emotion and which come

from logic and if you don't believe me by the way try arguing with virtually any man about virtually any topic right but we're emotional beings i mean me personally like i cry at three out of four christmas commercials and i scream at misleading street signs so i i know this is no great revelation about me but it may be something that you or an atheist you know needs to be reminded of. When we pretend that our decisions were made in some intellectual vacuum, some nether realm, the void of emotion, we're lying to ourselves and the people around us. It's literally impossible for that to be true. That's not how brains work. Claiming otherwise gives the religious people another reason to dismiss our claims.

But if we admit that we first started questioning God's existence because of what he did to our dog or to our grandma or to our relationship or whatever, sure, maybe we're opening ourselves up to some really annoying apologetics, but we're also being honest with the apologist. We're giving them more reason to connect with our journey and more likelihood of seeing a reflection of their own journey somewhere along the way. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is the Statler to my Waldorf, Eli Bosnick. Eli, are you ready to heckle?

If you're implying that I'm a gay icon, then yes, I am. And yes, we are. There you go. In our lead story tonight, Christianity prioritizes bigotry over practically everything. And just in case that sounds a bit excessive to you, like I'm being hyperbolic, I have two documented headlines about them choosing it over food and money this week. Now, of course, to be fair, it's both better and worse than I'm making it sound because ultimately these Christian leaders weren't choosing between bigotry and their food and money,

but rather that of the children in their care. Yeah, to be clear, these stories are about Christians choosing bigotry, the thing they pretend their religion isn't about, overfeeding the poor and hungry, the thing they do pretend their religion is about. It's a doozy for us here at The Scathing Atheist, let me tell you.

And it's a twofer. So, okay, we're going to start in Maine, where the recent scotus abomination and carson v macon threatens to force maine's taxpayers to fund religious schools as you recall this was the case where christian schools sued the state for excluding them from tuition reimbursement programs now ultimately the supreme court said it was unconstitutional to reject them based solely on their religious nature that prompted sonia sotomayor to point out in her dissent

that the court literally just said separation of church and state was a constitutional violation. But since faith-based is just a synonym for bigoted, main lawmakers swapped out those phrases in the law and effectively reversed the court's decision. So instead of forbidding religious schools for being religious, they just forbade any school that discriminated in hiring based on gender identity and sexual orientation and holy shit

if it didn't have the same damn result jesus hey if you could be excluded based on your own exclusion good yes nailed it everybody right so yeah so when the state said hey stop being bigots and we'll give you that money only one religious school in the entire fucking state of Maine took them up on it. And honestly, that school is still in the review process. Right. It might turn out that they don't qualify either. The other ones just weren't even willing to submit a fucking form. But the end result of the Maine legislature's game of bigot chicken was Christianity crashing and burning. Now, that being said, the Macon decision didn't only affect Maine,

and more than half of U.S. states have no laws at all against LGBTQ discrimination in hiring. So while this might have worked out okay in Maine, that doesn't mean it worked out okay. Yeah, to be clear, as we learn every election cycle, more than half this country would go back to the fucking Jim Crow laws if it would upset an imaginary lesbian dance class. Right, Yes. But their own funding isn't the only thing they'll sacrifice on the altar of their prejudice.

We learned last week that the Archdiocese of St. Louis ordered all of their private schools to stop participating in the federal government's national school lunch program, lest they be forced to stop discriminating against LGBTQ students. So, when faced with the option

of updating their worldview to one from this century or allowing literally thousands of children to go hungry they opted for the latter yeah and quick clarification because some of you might be thinking oh they're gonna fund those lunches themselves or they're replacing the programs no nope they were just, we choose child famine. Right. Right. Hunger strike doesn't have the same ring when it's a different person

that you're doing it to. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Now, as it turns out, the archdiocese's fear turned out to be unjustified in this case. This all stems from the Biden administration's move to shift the interpretation of Title IX

back to the one that we used under the Obama administration. So that's the provision that bans gender discrimination in schools and under obama that was rightly expanded to include gender identity it was reversed under trump and then reverse reversed it's versed i guess i don't know under under joe biden slide to the left yeah but the usda clarified that this would not affect the school lunch program because even though the moral paragons of the catholic church are willing to sacrifice the health and nutrition of innocent children over this the biden administration isn't and what's more by the way they clarified this well before the archdiocese made this change like there was a lawsuit about

it and in the lawsuit they said we already clarified that this isn't a fucking thing. And that was before this. So apparently, the St. Louis Archdiocese is too damn ignorant to ignorant correctly. And I guess that'll come as a surprise to nobody.

Never mind. I'm being redundant. They declare apropos. We will starve these children. You know, you didn't have to announce that. We will starve these children. You know you didn't have to announce that. We will starve these children. And in baptismal font of knowledge news,

parents of over 100 students at Northwood Temple Academy, a Christian school in Fayetteville, North Carolina, received some rather unpleasant news this week. And no, it's not that their kids are getting an education, optional education, by going to a Christian school. It's that, without their permission or foreknowledge, the school had baptized

over 100 students without their families in attendance. Huh. So, well, you know, if the Reformation taught us anything, it's that Christians all agree on the proper method and timing of baptism. It's never controversial.

I'm sure this will be fine. Yeah. Yeah. So for those of you who are unfamiliar with the process of baptism, either because you escaped a sane religion or you were never part of a dunk cult, whatever it is, baptism actually a pretty big deal for a lot of Christian denominations. baptism actually a pretty big deal for a lot of christian denominations it's a ceremony that often includes someone's full family takes place in the family church and importantly worth noting signifies that that person isn't going to burn in hell if they die anymore in short this is like hearing that school went ahead and threw your kid their bar mitzvah in between third and fourth period without telling you. Right.

Oh, he knew he had a first communion and after gym. Yeah. It's kind of fucked up, though, that the chief complaint about a farcical aquatic ceremony that binds children to a religion they can't possibly understand is that they couldn't be there to join in on the fun. Right. I missed it. Yeah. I missed it.

Yeah. So as you may have guessed, the parents are none too pleased at this turn of events. But don't worry. The principal of the school has a not at all terrifying explanation. You see, she was swept up in the Holy Spirit. Quote, several students had given their lives to the Lord during spiritual emphasis week, and they were scheduled to be baptized this morning. But the spirit of the Lord moved and the invitation to accept the Lord and be baptized

was given. And the students just began to respond to the presence of the Lord. I do understand that parents would desire to be a part of something so wonderful happening in the lives of their children. And so I apologize that we did not take that into consideration at that moment. I pray that at the end of the day, we will all rejoice because God truly did a work in the lives of our students. End quote. Jesus. Sorry that I did something any reasonable person would recognize to be inappropriate,

but the voices in my head kept just urging me on, she said, and then wasn't locked away for her safety and ours was still allowed to vote at the end of that sentence and look i gotta admit all things considered this is a relatively minor story when it comes to the christian bat shittery we report on this show but i never miss a chance at a good prank war which is why i'm calling on you show but i never miss a chance at a good prank war which is why i'm calling on you podcast listener to somehow sneak into this school and start doing muslim conversion ceremonies on these students without parental permission look look i know they may be upset at first but i think we can all agree at the end of the day we will all rejoice because god truly did a work in the lives of the students

well right no so if the spirit of allah moving you, obviously they kind of have to, they have established that that's a reasonable excuse. And speaking of the major Christian bat shittery we report on, in cease and exeter desist news tonight, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police say that a July exorcism at the Redberry Bible Camp in Saskatchewan didn't quite rise to the level of criminality. But parents and legal experts disagree. According to parents, the kids exposed to the exorcism are still suffering from paranoia and delusions, and several of them are in counseling because of it. But according to the Mountie in charge of the Saskatchewan Major Crimes Unit, quote, practices like the one reported may be concerning to some people but they are not illegal in Canada end quote not adding because they're religion and we have to pretend that's real yep Canada doesn't have a spook factor clause in their child abuse

laws for clarity this is about religion she's right yeah so for days leading up to this exorcism the kids were kept up late at night one night as late as 5 a.m., while a camp counselor named Carlos Dorkson told them about the signs of demonic possession and told them that demons were lurking everywhere. He told them at one point that if they ever thought a girl was cute, it was probably because a demon was possessing them. He told them when lights flicker, it's because demons are walking nearby. And then he told the 12 to 14 year old sheltered christian kids sleeping in the woods far from home good night sleep tight yeah and again i just want to be clear if he were warning them about any other form of mystical creature these parents would be an open and shut legal question right right but because it's the one grandma thinks

is real it becomes a tricky one for the counties to solve. Yeah, right. So inevitably, of course, Dorkson decided one of the kids was exhibiting signs of possession. So he performed an exorcism. And in his own fucking words from a YouTube video where he bragged about this shit, the kids were, quote, absolutely terrified. They were cowering under their blankets, end quote. terrified. They were cowering under their blankets, end quote. The camp's executive director admitted that at one point, the kid getting his demons hoovered out looked like he was having a stroke, and yet no medical care was provided to him during or after the ritual.

During a camp visit a couple of days later, one of the parents said her kid refused to leave the cabin because he was afraid that there were still demons in the woods yeah just driving him home okay i understand we left you alone with adults who essentially traumatized you for life but did you get launched off the blob on the lake that seemed fun do the blob you're crying you didn't you didn't let it ruin your whole weekend did you yeah so i think it's a demon you think and with that reminder that bagged milk isn't the only way canadians torture their kids we're going to take a quick break and hand things over to my lovely wife lucid a man wrote the bible a horse which one if it's a legitimate rate cooking can be fun hey i'm proud of a man this week in misogyny

okay i know i've been away for a couple of weeks, and it obviously hasn't been because there wasn't enough misogyny to fill the segment. But I don't know. At a time when courts are ruling that teenagers aren't mature enough to get abortions, do I really even need to be here to point it out anymore? I mean, isn't pretty much every honest newscast in the fucking country since the Dobbs decision some version of this week of misogyny? All that being said, I'm not going anywhere just yet. Because as much as this country's sexism is in the spotlight at the moment, there's still plenty of it slipping through the cracks. Take, for example, the story out of Wisconsin where the Sheboygan area Lutheran high school, where a teacher was credibly accused of sexual assault only to be honored as the district's teacher of the year a few months later.

The whole story is six levels of fucked up. A few months after she graduated, Marissa Mayer told the school administrators that while she was a student, her music teacher, Matthew Thiel, had groomed her and sexually assaulted her shortly after her graduation. She offered to share screenshots showing a bunch of inappropriate messages he sent to her, including an angry, profane tirade he sent her when he found out that she'd kissed her prom date. But the school did less than nothing. They told her to go to the police, kept Thiel in the classroom, and failed entirely to investigate her claims. Soon after, they named him their teacher of the year,

knowing about these allegations. Now, since then, the police have been notified and investigated. Thiel was at least charged with giving alcohol to a minor, though it looks like he's not facing any more punishment. And surprise, surprise, the homophobic assholes who's been screaming about teachers being groomers for the last six months don't seem to give the slightest shit about the story. What are the odds? Take, for example, Christian hate preacher Jason Graber of the Shure Foundation Baptist Church in Spokane, Washington. He made a bit of a splash in the atheist media a couple months ago when he not only labeled LGBTQ accepting teachers as groomers, but called for them to be shot in the head or decapitated on live television.

Because, you know, you wouldn't want to traumatize the children. So, given how passionately he feels about the subject, you can imagine what he had to say about this during his last sermon, huh? Did you imagine it was not a damn thing? Because if you did, you imagine correctly. Instead, he spent his time railing against the evils of women voting. Now, I'll admit that I didn't hear his whole sermon, but friend of the show, Hemant Mehta, was kind enough to provide a highlight reel that I've linked in the show notes. Suffice it to say that he argues against women voting, and making decisions in general for that matter, and along the way manages to slip in a bit about the good old days when we used to kill people for being gay and to give you an idea of the kind of book learning he brings to the table

he closes his sermon by reflecting on how mad women should be that the notion of womanhood has been allowed to be degraded so much but i suppose i'm not allowed to correct him on account of my penislessness anyway with that assurance that there will always be plenty more misogyny to talk about in this fucking country, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over to Noah and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next up in headlines. If you haven't been to the Caribbean lately, I highly recommend it. The sea, the sun, and as of this this week you could be gay as a court for saint kits and nevis finally

struck down a colonial era law that banned the quote abominable crime of buggery puzzle in a thunderstorm has no comment on whether this coincides with his vacation on purpose at this time so it's a note and to be clear though you can be gay with or without butt sex right like i feel like any time that there's like a with or without butt sex right like i feel like anytime that there's like a with or without butt stuff option you should opt for the one with the butt stuff but i just i don't want to perpetuate the stereotype that you have to well i do we are in a fight yeah so as you may have guessed based on the old-timey expression for butt fucking the offenses against the person act was imported from from England with the colonization of the island nation and criminalized, quote, unnatural offenses, which included both homosexuality and animal fucking in the same sentence, and carried a maximum penalty of 10 years with hard labor.

labor and while it obviously hasn't been enforced in that way for a long long time i think those of us who aren't supreme court justices can all agree that even having a law like that on the books is egregious and we're glad to see it gone yeah well and as america is desperately trying to prove a country can revert to 18th century morality at the drop of a fucking hat so it's better to sort those things out sooner than waiting for later. That's right. Just takes two lazy hippies in Pennsylvania and bam, back to the 15th century. So this is part of a long overdue string of these types of decisions in the area. This same court overturned sodomy laws in Antigua and Barbuda this summer. But former British colonies like Barbados and Dominica and Guyana and Granada and Jamaica and St. Lucia and St. Vincent and the Grenadines still have

laws like these on the books. Yeah. And that said, because all seven of those places are in the top 20 locations for butt stuff worldwide. That's true. Exactly. Exactly. And don't get me wrong. I do admit there's more than a little irony in the fact that we ranked the

best places for butt stuff while Heath was gone. But that's what he gets for going on vacation. Well, that and butt stuff. Well, right. Caribbean butt stuff as well. Yeah, exactly. And in cracker backer hacker tracker news. That actually all makes sense.

Trust me. The tax exempt illegally protected hate group Liberty Council is among the dozens of Christian organizations whose data was exposed by a hacker identifying with the anonymous movement the hacker responsible explained that they exposed the data in response to quote a worrying trend of far-right and anti-abortion activists aligning themselves with the evangelical christian movement hiding their funding sources behind laws that allow church ministries to keep their donations secret end quote adding quote we decided to bring about some much-needed radical transparency end quote yeah not adding but seriously shouldn't your government be doing this like i'm a i'm a cyber criminal i feel like i'm the last person yeah no shit so yeah so liberty council is and if not the main bad guy of american atheism, at least a major boss fight along the way.

For sure. Act break. Yeah, right. They're the one whose amicus brief was cited in the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe despite having damn near David Barton levels of bullshit scholarship. In addition to fighting against bodily autonomy, of course, they're also instrumental in the opposition to vaccine requirements, election denialism, and a fucking course. They were behind the Bremerton decision wherein school employees gained the right to coerce children into prayer.

But because they're registered as an association of churches, despite being no more an association of churches than we are, they're allowed to keep their finances and donors secret. Yeah, I hate to steal Heath's material while he's not around, but if a hate group could disguise itself as your thing for tax purposes, we probably shouldn't have your thing. Right. Or those tax laws. Yeah. Now, unfortunately, this breach was limited only to those donors that use their digital platform and only represents a small percentage of their total donors. But it's still seven years of data encompassing 44,000 people and over $12 million worth of donations. And that's also not all that was exposed from them. The hacked records also show that Liberty encouraged its supporters to vote for Trump, despite the law against 501c3 organizations endorsing political candidates. They also revealed a lot of the COVID and election disinformation that Liberty Council was promoting and then weaponizing in order to bulk up its email donations and rake in money from disgruntled Christian nationalists. Yeah, the hacked information is basically

an explicit list of reasons why Liberty Council shouldn't get to call itself a church group. They might as well have uncovered that everyone involved has to take an oath of atheism and that they refuse to meet up weekly at this point yeah no it's everybody has to sleep in on sundays yeah and yes admittedly it is doubtful that anything you know criminal at least will come from this like it's blatantly illegal for a tax-exempt group to endorse a political candidate but they get away with that shit constantly they brag about how easily they get away with that they have a day dedicated to right yeah a holiday out of it and and i'm sure most of their online donors are bigoted enough not to care that the records of them giving money to a hate group have become public but given the extent to which liberty council is hastening our descent into

christian theocracy i feel like any blow against them that lands is worthy of celebration, even if it doesn't hurt them. And finally, tonight in smooth, smooth Chaz news, we got yet another fantastic follow up to our recent story about Texas's stupid, mandatory, and God we trust posters. Long story short, Chaz Stevens and a few other parents are playing not touching can't get mad with Texas' stupid fucking theocracy, and the idiots who wrote the law are getting so mad as a result.

Yeah, no, it's like, on the one hand, it's kind of sad that this is what our democracy has descended into, but on the other hand, though, they should have called no backsies, and they didn't. Exactly, yeah. They had that opportunity. Yeah, opportunity yeah get your cootie shot yeah so for those of you who aren't in the loop on this story last year texas state senator brian hughes who looks like boris johnson halfway turned into a ted cruz in some kind of where douchebag situation put forward bill sb 797 which said that public schools must display a poster or

framed copy of the words in god we trust quote in a conspicuous place as long as it was donated or purchased by outside groups because you know you'd hate to violate the wall of church state separation right so i'm sorry i don't want to get lost in the analogy, but Boris Johnson and Ted Cruz are both douchebags. Do you think werewolves just turn into different wolves? Maybe. You don't know. That's true.

Anyways, now that is obviously fucking stupid. The law, not my defense of my bad werewolf analogy. So it's just pointed out. No, as I said, whenever there's Christian idiocy, there is a man, a myth, a legend. Chaz Stevens, who, along with Texas based activist Shravana Krishna, donated posters with In God We Trust on them written in both Arabic and rainbow letters. Oh, they're terrified of rainbows well done and since these idiots put a must in their stupid fucking law schools are now legally obligated to accept and display those posters well it's a good thing that they have such firm and well-established

respect for the rule of law right yeah exactly so this week hughes in a desperate attempt to look even more like an idiot decided to clarify his law by fiat i guess in a letter to the state's commissioner of education mike morath hughes clarified that the posters have to say in god we trust in english because that's the language he wrote the law that's really was argument and this is my favorite because the law says that they have to put up a poster that means they only have to put up one of them no not so like it's i i love that the amendment process in the texas state capitol apparently works like the weather forecasting department in trump's white house right it's got a sharpie going no no because that part's crossed out on the law yeah so obviously as we've indicated you don't just get to be like oh shit now that i see how people are using my law

i'd like to change it in a letter to the fucking whoever unless you're a supreme court justice all right and this case is headed to court. But this fight is far from over. As hero and legend Chaz Steven puts it, quote, Hughes can say whatever he wants. He can have all his intentions. Hell, I intend to date Paris Hilton. But in the end, he wrote the law.

Just not a good one. And it came home to bite him in the tush. Bless his heart. We're likely bound for court. Excellent. Game on. End quote. I'm sure I'm not the only one who needs a break to process

the knowledge that somebody actually wants to date Paris Hilton, so I guess we can close the headlines for the night. Eli, thanks as always. I wish to re-date. When we come back, we won't enjoy watching Eric Hovind get hit in the face as much as we expected to.

After so many years of consuming Christian videos, I've learned to spot the good stuff from a mile away. There are certain tells, certain indicators that what you're about to see is the best kind of worst, and perhaps none that fill me with more excitement than those four little words comments are turned off and that was damn near the tagline for this week's god awful mini so tell us eli what will we be breaking down today we watched night at the Art Park. The and another thing to Eric Hovind's didn't have a thing in the first place. That was it. Yeah, this is the sequel to the one that you and Heath watched, the Night in the Creation Museum.

And Eli, how bad was this mini? Well, if you love the monkey debunking scientific stretches of the first film, get ready for the hot yoga splits of this one we're going from scientists don't know everything to we disagree about the existence of water in this film real close what the fuck point was he making in the mars thing we'll get to it so we open up with a montage of insanity, right? Because unless you stay in the bathrooms, there's nothing else to point your camera at in the Ark Park. Yeah, I wrote in my notes. Okay, who had two seconds before there's a full diorama of someone being murdered with a spear?

Right. Anybody? Yeah, no, we get Noah's Ark. A diorama is a guy fighting a dragon in a coliseum. That's from the bible that happens in the very true bible dragons wearing a hat by the way it's fucking awesome also of course dinosaurs right we get dinosaurs right away because you know why the fuck not yeah it's like dude your thing doesn't make sense with the animals that exist. Why would you add extras? Yeah, exactly.

So, okay. Then we cut to our security guard. The character's name is Derek, but this is Eric Hovind playing the part. But he's showing up in his suite and he's like, we're going to get a shot of my fucking charger, right? I got it waxed

for this. Two movies in a row Eric Hovind has felt the need to be like by the way i have a very nice car yeah i drive a dodge yeah but he's a security guard he's showing up to work at the ark encounter he drops his keys on the way out of his car like in some effort to spin him around and look cool and they just keep it yep they sure do. There's no way that was intentional. He's not that good of an actor. No,

there will be several moments throughout this where he very clearly tries to do a quote-unquote cool thing, fails, he looks into the camera and someone behind it just shakes their head no and he continues to do this thing. Yeah. So he gets out of his car, he's walking into work and he's like he's on the phone with

somebody and he's going like i don't know what i'm doing i'm gonna be guarding some kind of whoa because just then he sees the ark and he's super impressed by it yeah it's his son ricky and he's like oh man this is just like a real theme park ricky no i assure you ricky it is who says it's badly made propaganda? Well, Mitha Smitherson doesn't know shit, okay, Ricky? That's why you're a stepson. So yeah, to characterize this guy right off the bat, he's a guy who went to work at the Ark Encounter theme park

and didn't realize there was going to be an Ark there. And then he walks into the gift shop. He is every bit as impressed with the gift shop as he was with the ark itself yeah he kind of gives away the faking it vibe when he's like whoa an ark whoa a series of toys and books you can buy some of which are monographed yeah right and and so he walks into the gift shop and gabby comes up i love gabby to death because clearly they didn't have a part for Gabby and she walked up to him and she says, oh, I can't

wait to hear what part you have for me. And they're like a part for you. For you? Yes. What part we have for you? What part don't we have for you is the real question. He will ask where Jim is and you will tell him. If you think about it, you're the inciting

incident of the movie, Gabby. So he goes off to find Jim. Yeah. Now, Noah, just so you don't think that they have a psychotic break in the middle of this, in the first movie, they made a couple of tall jokes about this guy, which explains why when he walks up, he's like, Hey, Jim, can I call you Gigantor? And Jim's answer is, can I fuck your mom?

Except he can't say that. So his response is, sure can, dumb dumb. And that, ladies and gentlemen, even if there was a God, I don't think I could join the religion. Even if it was true, just because I couldn't settle-dum when it came time to insult someone right yeah i would rather be standing there about to be sent to hell by that god of the universe if he has to be like and you sure do look like a duty head i'd be like you're losing this just i'm gonna burn in fire forever you are still coming out the worst yeah so gigant or jim whatever his name is, he takes Derek on a quick tour of the place. Now, Derek, though, is a little skeptical that a 900 year old man could build something this big all on his own.

Yeah. And his response is, I would say, double down fucking crazy. He's like, don't be silly. He was only 500 years when he built this and he probably hired a construction crew hired a construction crew he well first of all he says well you know he probably had a family that could have helped out and he could have hired a construction crew and i'm like okay so first of all you're you're saying that some of his family helped him build this and then didn't get a spot on the ark right Right? Which is super fucked up. But secondly, the whole

premise of this story is that humans were doing nothing but sinning all the time. Even the babies were thinking of nothing but sin all the time. But they still had construction crews. Oh, where's that doodly-doo? Just, hello. Welcome to Mark

Law's evil construction. Will you be building an altar or a fuck hut? Oh, you want to, you want a big boat? All right. My gosh, I guess we could do a big boat too.

Our guys have to take breaks every 15 minutes to fuck a dog. Is that okay? That's the union rules that my hands are tied. Yes. Literally. Cause I'm doing weird sex stuff. So, and then,

and then it's time for him to show us some of that sweet, sweet geological evidence that they've got. Oh, yeah, baby. So the argument that they're going to make here is that sometimes you see rocks that are curved, right? And that happens because tectonic plates run into each other. It's how we get mountains and shit. But they're saying, like, no, no, no, no rocks can't curve they would break if you did that the only way you can get curved rocks is if the sediment is formed in that curve which you would only get with a massive flood there are so many wrongs in that point that i don't even know like i couldn't even get a hold of a thread before

it started to unravel yeah it's and they're walking you through it like it's a Socratic naturalistic argument that you're supposed to understand intuitively. But it gets side tackled by crazy. It's like, well, rocks don't bend. They. And he literally goes, break. And he goes, so if they were going to be round, they'd need to be deposited all at once by a worldwide flood caused by the firmament collapsing in on itself, which then vanished without a trace. Exactly.

Real intuitive shit. Yeah. So, and this is where Jim leaves, right? Jim's like, all right, well,

I've got to leave for the night, but Hey, whatever you do, don't fall asleep and have a dream sequence. Okay. Yeah. It's really overdone trope. And he's like, oh, don't worry, I won't.

Don't worry, we've got something more overdone for me to actually use in this movie. Right. So, okay, so that night, Derek is night guarding. This is the other moment where he tries to do any cool thing with an object. Oh, God. He's trying to spin his flashlight on his hand or on his finger or anything.

But all he could do is like throw it up and give it a spin. And then he gets kind of nauseous because of the lights. Mm-hmm. Yep. We just watch him for it because he gets it the first time in this shot, right? He throws it up in the air. The flashlight spins once and he catches it. And he's like, fucking sweet.

I'm great at this. And then we watch him miss it twice in a row after that yeah i wrote in my notes flew too close to the sun he tries to do he's got like a little flashlight holster and he's trying to do quick draw but it's so slow that you can't even really tell that that's what he's going for you have to infer it and then of course as he's slinging around his flashlight he accidentally throws it too high hits himself right in the center of the forehead and knocks himself unconscious just like rodney king jr did jesus christ that's the official story no you're right it is two old people in our audience are like oh and all the young people are like rodney all right so it's time for us to cut to the dream sequence right he he comes to within the dream and

outside he can hear a terrible terrible storm now the idea is that he's put the flood is supposed to be happening and he's in the Ark Park, so he's like floating in the Ark. But of course they can't like rock this giant thing back and forth, so they just start tipping the camera left and right and he runs from one side to the other as though

he's being rocked. Yeah, I really wanted it to just turn out to be the time that the Ark got water damaged by bad weather. No, no, it turns out our giant fake boat really can't handle any water at all. But he slips and he falls and suddenly he slides to a rest right at Jim's feet. Right. Jim is back for the purposes of the dream because they're like, actually, this doesn't work without your character.

We need to shoehorn you back in jim's here to explain the logistics of the flood and look here's the thing i've genuinely never understood how did the flood happen the rain came down from the sky god put it there the end we that we believe it in our hearts goodbye the fucking level of intricacy with which these idiots have carved out their worldview to make it less and less realistic at every step. Well, right. Because every time, every question about how this could possibly happen, you have to invent yet another scaffold to hold that part of the story up. No matter how simple the question is. Right.

So, like, for instance, in this, he's like, well, you know, the first thing that happened is the fountains of the deep broke open. And Eric Hovind is like, is there any evidence of fountains? And he's like, shush, shush, shush. So then after the dinosaurs drowned, all the mountains of the world got covered by water. And he's like, come on, man, all the mountains of the world well okay so here's

the thing in order for them to get enough water in their silly ass calculations the highest mountains have to be lower down so he explains that too right so apparently there were no big mountains back then he says that during flood, chunks of the great continents were ripped apart and then crashed back into each other, creating the mountains that we have today, which means that in their world, continents float. Yep. That's just one of the many implications. Again, that's the scaffolding they have to build to create enough water to get over the highest peaks on the Earth. No, I get it. Maybe mountains are like my toddler.

Like, I put him in the bath, he gets really splashy and excited. I understand. The continents are doing that back and forth in the tub thing to make the big waves. There you go. Guys, take this seriously. I'm killing all the dinosaurs. Yeah, and then just he he explains all of that and then apropos of nothing derek's like well hold on a second if there are

millions of species how did noah fit all of them onto one arc and then we get into some real interesting math i loved this part of the movie so much. I went down a rabbit hole. Truly, my work week would have been three hours shorter because I went down such a long rabbit hole based on this one fucking scene, this two-minute scene. I've read entire books about this stupid

ass argument. Oh, I want those books. I want to read them. I just read the page on the Creation Museum's website, and it made me so happy. Oh, it's just unbelievable, right? So, of course, that's one of the biggest problems with the Noah's Ark thing is how could you fit

all of the animals on the Ark? Well, they figured it all out. See, it turns out there aren't millions of species. Well, okay, there are millions of species, but a lot of them are fish and stuff and bacteria. He goes, a lot of them are fish and stuff and bacteria it's he goes a lot of them are fish and obviously fish don't need to be on the ark and it's like okay so all the fish are evil it's fine it's fine no the fish are good it's the land animals that are evil yeah insects right yeah they could survive a flood and i I was like, why? Why can all the insects survive? The overwhelming majority of insects can't even survive in my bathtub.

And he's like, also bacteria don't count. I'm like, don't they count though? I feel like some of them count. But in the end, and then of course, a lot of them, if you think about it, like coyote and dingo, that's just dog. He literally goes coyote, dingo, wolf, animals that are so fucking incredibly different from each other. He goes, those are fucking dogs. And Eric Holbein's like, yeah, absolutely dogs.

But see, Eli, the Bible never talks about species. It talks about kinds. And kind can mean whatever the goddamn fuck they want it to mean. Am I under arrest that I can say kind? And podcast listener, I want you to take a second in your head right now. If you don't know this game already, I want you to guess how many different kinds of animals these idiots think there are. Because it's so much less than you think. It's so much fucking less than you

think. Right now, keep in mind, we're not counting fish and insects and stuff, but of all of the remaining, the birds, the mammals, the lizards, all of that shit, there are in total 1,398 kinds

of animals. There are 5,400 known mammal species alone. And by the way, as they point out here, they're including on their list all the dinosaurs. Mm-hmm. All of them. And mythical creatures like Leviathan. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Unicorns and shit that their Bible says existed back then. But yeah, that's and he's like, we even have a list.

And he's like, oh, I guess we're going to keep way backed off of that. So no one can see what it actually says. He's like, you bet your ass. But it is on their website and lists are on it like truly this podcast could not be an hour i could just go over this list the desperation of this list i was like i wonder where be beavers are like you know beavers are in there with fucking otters and squirrels seals and fucking sharks and those are all fish those are all fish polar bears are also fish and dogs and cats shit it's it is a it feels like i made the list i cannot encourage you more to go through this list as you watch whichever poor intern desperately tries to connect fucking like horse and bee. So then he has to explain

how they got the dinosaurs on, right? Sure. Because Eric Hovind's like, well, you have dinosaurs on this list and they're very big. And he's like, not the baby ones. So we see baby dinosaurs in cages as featured at the Ark Park Museum.

I really wanted Eric Hovind to turn to him and be like, yeah, but you just said that they were on it for years. Shush, shush, they stayed babies. They were forever puppy versions of the dinosaurs. And then, of course, Derek asks for scientific evidence of the global flood, right? This is where we get this weird-ass point about Mars. This is the best. Now, I honestly, like, I kept trying to summarize this point

in a sentence or two, and it feels like I got it wrong or I'm making fun of him, but I swear, this is the point they're making. He shows them pictures of Mars. He says, look, it looks like there used to be water on Mars, and scientists accept that as a fact because they can see the evidence. And now look at Earth. There's a lot of water on it,

but they don't believe that all of it could flood all of the continents. That's because they're biased towards Mars. Yep, they're biased towards Mars. Which, by the way, I'm pretty sure, Bill, I don't think you believe in mars do you i had a moment here where i was like i'm not sure what your view on mars is there buddy because i'm pretty sure your view of mars is like isn't it tucked into the firmament the magic ceiling above the earth also when do you think it had water on it you think earth is 6 000 years old

little backsplash from the flood there you go yeah so now honestly like the listeners you might be thinking to yourself oh noah you have aired you have forgotten to explain how he connected those two things he didn't no that's exactly the argument he makes yes scientists accept that there was water on mars but not a flood they like mars better even though mars is the little brother it's the it's because of their bias against christianity that just the existence of mars in there is just to make this seem scientific right just so they can have a picture that was taken by a satellite anyway so yeah and and then they have to address what a fucking moral monster god is in this story

right yep and of course the point as they as it always has to be here is no no people back then deserved it right right the babies and everything they were constantly butt fucking constant rapist babies rapist baby is a tough pitch also look they're a bunch of fucking prudes and they're terrified of sexuality and they've never been exposed to any art or culture so their version of everyone was evil is just like people lying on hammocks

and playing flutes and I'm like you guys know you did the holocaust right if you're setting a standard for everyone is evil i feel like you shouldn't start at party fun party well and keep in mind that even if you bought into this argument that all the humans were so sinful and everything the wombats weren't though surely the squirrels didn't need to die

no the squirrels were who do you think the babies were raping the squirrels didn't need to die no the squirrels were who do you think the babies were raping the squirrels but you're blaming the victim here elon gay squirrel no the squirrels were tricky it was a consensual non-consent bdsm scene between a baby and a squirrel angelo angelo don't draw that no he's like there's not enough money in the world guys all right so and then of course eric hovine's character his follow-up to this is so fucking insane he's like wait a minute though isn't the world now all a bunch of people sitting in hammocks and eating grapes too like don't we deserve to be divinely murdered again and gigantor is like, hmm, well, that is true. Yes, everyone deserves to die, even the squirrels, yet again. But luckily, God has offered us a way out.

And of course, Derek has never heard of Jesus or Salvatian. But who's going to tell him about Jesus? He needs to go find Gabby. Gabby, the very important character in this movie who we didn't forget to write in right she does nothing in this right he sees like a ghostly image of her walking in a direction at one point but before we can get to that though we have to spend like eight minutes of him wandering around talking to the various mannequins trying to do shtick. He runs over to Ham and he's like, Ham, also a word for a meat now.

Yeah. Well, okay. So when he says that's a funny name, that's okay because it's Ken Ham's arc. Okay, I get it. I'll give you some credit for that, Eric. That was a great little intro. Oh, there you go. But yeah, so he does this bit for like five minutes, but eventually the ghost of

Gabby leads him into the cartoon hallway of chick track bullshit convoluted bible interpretation this this bible interpretation chick track hallway first of all it's the way it's the biggest waste of space i've ever seen in a museum and that's saying a lot because let's be real. Museums are filling up space with whatever the fuck they can get their hands on. It is literally they are walking you through an insane comic book. Yeah. No, it's a comic strip. And it's about all the doors in heaven and how there was a door on Noah's Ark and there

was a door over the they painted blood over the doors in Exodus. And now there was a door over the they painted blood over the doors in exodus and now there was a door on solomon's temple and then jesus said he was a door and you can come through him and they're like what he's like yeah the chain of logic is so convoluted it sounded like somebody on a bad 90s tv show having an idea it really did yeah they were going to defeat the aliens from Independence Day any second now. It is literally. Okay. So there's a door on the theme for God because the Jewish family needed a perfect lamb.

Then the doors of the temple. And then my son is a shepherd. And where do shepherds stand? In the door of the sheep house. in the door of the sheep house like you they built a hallway around this idea without once going hey mitch does this suck is this super fucking stupid and we could just not do it yeah and then derrick goes and he he's gonna yell at himself so that they can show off their sweet split screen cred i don't know what intern right matt powell showed them how to do split screen and they were like this is hollywood they were so proud of this yeah so he's arguing with himself about which is right between all of science and a half-assed tourist attraction in northern Kentucky.

Turns out it's the tourist attraction. It is. It turns out to be the half-assed tourist attraction. It's the world's biggest ball of yarn, actually. He's like, but when you hear only one side of the story, it sounds very convincing. And I'm like, man, even that is overstating the case, to be honest with you. What the fuck was the mars thing all about and then of course he's like oh i need to make a change i i believe this fucking diorama over science and just then he wakes up from his flashlight coma sure does and gabby's back right

yeah she's in there three times really and it's funny because he has like a oh I believe I believe now except he believed at the end of the last movie so he's kind of trying to do it smooth still more also more yeah he wakes up and he runs out to his car and he calls his wife and he's like hey my wife remember all that Jesus stuff you were telling me was true it turns out I agree with you now I know I agreed with you at the end of the last movie

but I double extra agree with you now and that's where the credits roll we find out that this was shot in 12 hours on a cell phone. Yeah, I'm like, wow, it feels like 11 hours more than you really needed.

Yeah, I wrote, what would freak me out is if this was like a three-month shoot with cameras. Right, yeah, exactly. They're bragging about that. But yeah, that's the credits. But that doesn't mean it's over. There's still 11 minutes in this fucking video. Right? So the credits roll and i'm just like what why is there still so many more notes in eli's

thing but then eric hovine shows up to thank us for watching his bullshit he's like thank you for enjoying that video i'm like that's some pretty presumptuous phrasing you've got going there but he's got a little message for us here yes yeah he's like for those of you who are skeptics and he might as well say at this point like and let's face it we know that's just the fucking god awful movies guys watching this but right he sure hopes that the movie opened our eyes as he's saying this by the way literally thumping a bible at us yeah he says i want with my entire soul for this to reach you and i wrote in my notes i want with an honestly embarrassingly

small part of my behind for you to see my side of things so there you go he goes you were created by god which means you have value i'm like i already had value asshole yeah and you need you're implying that I wouldn't with your invisible friend, bud. Right. You okay over there? Is he okay? Is God in the room?

Are you looking at him right now? So, okay. But he explains that we should go to his website and learn how to be saved. And then he ends his little thing by going, and as always, we invite your questions and comments. Again, the comments are turned off. always we invite your questions and comments again the comments are turned off

well not your questions and comments we'd like to think about what things you might say like well you're so handsome and we're like I know alright well with that painful reminder that we're even willing to watch Eric Hovind do shtick for you, we're going to wrap this installment of God Awful Minis.

Before we save and quit tonight, I want to remind you that if you're not getting enough of Eli in your life, you need to check out Dear Old Dads, a secular parenting podcast that he's doing with Thomas from Opening Arguments and Tom from Cognitive Dissonance. You'll find it wherever podcasts live. Anyway, that's all the blessing we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait, the long be in the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern time on Monday. And 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, newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd fall short of your expectations if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for earning the shit out of this vacation. I need to thank Eli Bosnick for making every workday feel like a vacation. I need to thank Lucinda Lusions for occasionally making me take a vacation. I also want to thank Ann and Richard for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

If you've got an extra kidney, and let's face it, you probably do, please check out uchealth.donorscreen.org. You will find that link on the show notes as well. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most mortals, Crystal Yonan, Brian Jarrett, Dave Cease, Megan Zeronian, Entity, Alexander Haddari, Mac Adam, Just Ash, Kenneth, the Norwegian Anaconda, Lawrence Mistletoes, I Aim to Misbehave, Mike, Jessica Adams, Lisa Siddana, work on her book,

Brian, Dan, and Katrina. Crystal Yonan, Brian Jarrett, Dave Cease, and Megan, who are so hot, fevers get them when they're sick. Zeronian, Alexander Haddari, Mac Adam, Brian Jarrett, Dave Cease and Megan, who are so hot fevers get them when they're sick. Zeronian, Alexander Hadarimak, Adam Ash, Kenneth, Norwegian Anaconda and Lawrence, who are so cool chills get them when they're scared. And Missile Misbehavior, Mike, Jessica Adams' book, Brian, Dan and Katrina, who have so much animal magnetism you could probably just stick critters to them. Together, these 22 dutifully doubtful deniers of deities decided to dedicate a dollop of dough to depriving doctrinal dipshits of distensible deference this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give us money, but if you think your bank account is up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but we haven't earned it yet, we promise to try harder next week. Legal services for this

podcast are provided by the Law Office's P. Andrew Torres, Tim Robertson, our social media, and our audio engineer is Martin Clark, who was sold to the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you can find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingadius.com. The whole show's ruined. Really, it is. Let's record tomorrow.

We might as well just give up. We're missing our first episode. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and the Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.