The Scathing Atheist - 501: Rural Flush Edition

Episode Date: September 22, 2022

In this week’s episode, we’ll offer up new options for what to do with all those dead bodies you’ve been collecting, Yeshiva University takes their mutilated balls and goes home, and David Icke will spend 36 pages bitching about his YouTube account getting deactivated. --- 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: Find out more about Opus here: https://opus-codec.org/ --- Headlines: FRC’s “Pray Vote Stand Summit” reminds us of everything that’s wrong with America: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/southern-baptist-albert-mohler-christians-who-dont-vote-republican-are-unfaithful/ and https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/oklahoma-senator-james-lankford-god-abortion-ban-rain/ Yeshiva University shuts down all student clubs to thwart one LGBTQ group https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/yeshiva-university-shuts-down-all-student-clubs-to-thwart-one-lgbtq-group/ UMass schedules Pride Day for game against Liberty U: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/umass-football-team-schedules-pride-day-for-game-against-liberty-u/ and https://www.si.com/college/2022/09/20/oregon-governor-condemns-students-vulgar-chant-byu Voter ID laws could stop nearly 200,000 transgender people from voting in the 2022 midterms https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2022/09/voter-id-laws-stop-nearly-200000-transgender-people-voting-2022-midterms/ Kanye West’s new private Christian school is surrounded by red flags https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/kanye-west-christian-school-donda-academy-surrounded-by-red-flags/ California legalized human composting against Catholic objections: https://religionnews.com/2022/09/20/california-legalizes-human-composting-bill-which-catholic-bishops-oppose/ Lauren Boebert is a dangerous psychopath https://www.businessinsider.com/lauren-boebert-christians-should-rise-up-humanity-in-last-days-2022-9?utm_source=reddit.com --- This Week in Misogyny: Iranian woman killed in police custody after not wearing a hijab: https://www.npr.org/2022/09/21/1124237272/mahsa-amini-iran-women-protest-hijab-morality-police

Warning, the following podcast contains profanity-free sentences, but don't worry, there aren't that many. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by HelloFresh and by GodawfulMoviesLiveChristmasTacular in New York City on December 17th. Tickets are on sale now at GodawfulMoviesLive.com. The GodawfulMoviesLiveChristmasTacular. If it wasn't going to be awesome, there's no way I'd let Eli rope me into using tackular as a suffix. And now, the scathing atheist. As the race who watched the birth of your planet, we can assure you that you did,

in fact, evolve from filthy monkey people. It's Thursday. It's September 22nd. And it's Hobbit Day. Hey, when your wife is Lucinda's size, every day is Hobbit Day. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. And from President Joe Biden's New Jersey and Stacey Abrams' Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, we'll offer up new options for what to do with all of those dead bodies you've been collecting. Yeshiva University takes their mutilated balls and goes home. And David Icke will spend 36 pages bitching about his YouTube account getting deactivated. Won't he, though? But first, the diatribe. A couple of weeks ago, I talked on the diatribe about all the Jesus shit on the license plates here in my home state of Georgia. And it was one of those diatribes that elicited a lot more response than I was expecting. Now, the overwhelming majority of it was people expressing solidarity and sharing stories of similar experiences that they had where their state or local government made them feel singled out for their lack of religion.

But there were a couple of responses sprinkled in there that really test the claim that we always love hearing from our listeners some of the feedback was fucking stupid not much of it but enough that i wanted to do a follow-up diatribe about it see littered in there with all the thoughtful shit were several jackasses who chimed in with some variation on well that's what you get for living down south. And look, these people are our listeners, so I don't want to be overly harsh in my response, but you can shove that shit back up your ass and leave it there. Okay, leave it there like you were cheating at chess with it, because that's where dumb shit like that belongs. I mean, I don't have enough time on this show to point out everything that's wrong with it, but let's start with the glaring privilege that you can barely even see the point through,

right? I'd venture to say that most people in this country can't just up and move wherever the fuck they want to go. People have jobs that tie them down. People have family that they count on to help with childcare or that's counting on them. And a lot of people just don't have the money it takes to move. I mean, fuck, Lucinda and I moved down here to take care of her dying father. Does the point that's what you get for taking care of terminally ill relatives really belong in the conversation? But even if we just lived here because we were a big fan of fucking humidity and giant

cockroaches, it shouldn't matter. One's rights shouldn't be contingent on one's geographic location. And to the extent that you disagree with that statement, you aren't a humanist. You haven't earned that title. Nobody deserves to have their rights abrogated on the whims of a bigoted majority. I mean, as I pointed out before, even in Alabama, America's most Christian state, better than one person in 10 isn't Christian in Georgia that number is damn near one person in five so some of my favorite atheists the people that I see doing the most and working the hardest to advance the cause of secularism are in Louisville Kentucky

and Nashville Tennessee and Tulsa Oklahoma and Salt Lake City Utah look I get why atheists want to live in more secular parts of the country, especially as we turn abortion access over to the governments that are no longer bound by the Voting Rights Act, right? But I couldn't blame anybody for escaping from this hellhole if they had the means and the opportunity to do so. That being said, is that really what we as a movement want? To abandon huge swaths of this country to Christian zealots to give them full control of state and municipal governments to guarantee their continued overrepresentation in Congress? I mean, let's not forget that the Democrats meager Senate majority here is only there because the liberals in Georgia came through in a couple of runoff elections.

Georgia came through in a couple of runoff elections. Whatever shreds of progress we can squeeze through Congress's puckered asshole are entirely because rational, progressive, secular people didn't move out of the South. Of course, there's more to this regionalist bullshit than just the state by state divide. The more nuanced and only slightly less wrong version of this pits the urban areas against the rural ones and that's a far more accurate way to look at the demographics right urban centers in alabama are after all more liberal and less religious than a lot of like rural parts of california so a lot of people wouldn't fault me for living in georgia they'd fault me for living in a small town that's why i've got it coming and while that's more accurate, that doesn't make it any less useless. In fact, to whatever degree it's more informed, it's less

reasonable. See, what you have to remember about rural America is that it sucks. It sucks so bad. It's fucking terrible, especially if you're young and employable and want to do shit, right? For most people in most places, the job market is terrible. The dating pool is anemic and the nightlife is non-existent. There's rarely anything worth doing. And when there is, there's rarely anyone worth doing it with. So quite reasonably, most people with the ability to escape from the rural towns they grow up in do. Hell, even if you kind of prefer the little town that you grew up in, the jobs are in the cities, so most people have to move to them. Now, that's not to say that everyone with the means to leave the rural areas do, but the likelihood of moving away goes up the more employable you are, right? The more you excel

at school, the more talented you are, the more entrepreneurial you are. The end result is that rural areas are consistently denuded of their most successful citizens. I mean, not to reduce human beings to their economic potential, but we're talking about towns that bear the cost of raising and educating these people and then don't get to tax their higher incomes or work at the companies that they start or share in the local benefits of whatever it is that they go on to do. Inevitably, these rural areas wither to some degree and the cities and suburbs prosper to the exact same degree so yes rural areas are generally speaking shittier but not through any fault of their own and

certainly not through the fault of whatever rationalists were left behind in the intellectual exodus those people need our help and sympathy more than anybody and what's more they deserve it those of us who benefit from the rural brain drain owe it to the people left behind to prop them up now that all the people with the means and inclination to do so are so far away. But ultimately, my biggest problem with this regionalistic bullshit is that it's lazy. It's an excuse to wash one's hands of the problems in this country because they're not affecting you and say, ah, fuck it. Those are the red states, right? It's the social justice equivalent of arguing that global warming isn't real because it's cold in the town that you're in right now.

It's short sighted. It's dismissive and it's stupid. It has no place in my inbox, in our movement or in polite discourse. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is the mover to my shaker, Eli Bosnick. Eli, are you ready to make shit happen? I don't know how I feel about stealing Chipotle's catchphrase like that, Noah, but I'm ready to pod.

In our lead story tonight. Rarely has Earth presented a better target for a rogue meteor than it did in Atlanta last week during the Family Research Council's Pray Vote Stand Summit in Atlanta. Speakers included scathing atheist all-stars like David Barton, Tony Perkins, Mike Huckabee, and Ben Carson. Ooh. It even included no fewer than two ladies. Also, no more than that.

And of course, the entire point of the summit was to violate the johnson amendment and urge attendees at this fucking church to vote republican in the upcoming midterms the event took place unsurprisingly in atlanta georgia where incumbent republican governor brian kemp is clinging to a slim lead and pulls against the very embodiment of democratic devilry that is stacy abrams hell kemp was one of the fucking speakers at the event, which again, was hosted by a literal hate group. Yeah, but you know, don't hold that against him, Noah. You know how politics is. You got to kiss a few babies, burn a few crosses.

Yeah, well, when you're running against Stacey Abrams in Georgia, you sure do, apparently. And by the way, just in case the vote red theme wasn't clear from the name and the exclusively republican speaker list president of the southern baptist theological seminary albert moeller made it explicit when he reminded the audience that quote christians need to understand that insofar as they do not vote or they vote wrongly they are unfaithful end quote yeah well and in case that wasn't clear enough, he later clarified on Twitter that, yes, he meant Republicans. Basically, he's declaring that if you don't vote Republican, you're not a Christian, which, among other things, expunges some 90% of African-American Christians from the club. Yeah, but to be fair, when you're attending an event put on by a literal hate group,

that's more of a bonus than anything. Yeah. Like giving away merch. And while Mueller's speech may have been the most blatantly illegal speech of the event,

it definitely wasn't the dumbest. I feel like that honor might just go to Oklahoma Senator and Evil Universe Max Headroom James Lankford.

He really does look like Max Headroom. Doesn't he? So he used his time to flex his fucking aromancy cred by claiming that recent rain in the state is a clear sign that god's super happy about their new tyrannical abortion restrictions quote we've experienced a big drought in oklahoma the week after the week after we passed the law to be able to protect the lives of children, we had the most overwhelming rainstorm that came across this state. And it was such an interesting conversation among people in the church. Like, did that just happen? Did

that occur? End quote. Okay. One, that's not an interesting conversation. And two, if the year-end rainfall totals end up being lower than they were for 2021, does that mean that James now thinks God wants women to have rights again? Like, James, I didn't make up the game. You did, James. You set the rules. Exactly. Now, to be fair, I have no trouble imagining a bunch of Oklahoma Christians standing in a deluge and wondering if it's raining. That part makes sense to me. But I feel like God could have better nailed the timing, right? So first of all, a week after is still six days late, right?

And also, but the whole week after thing, despite his doubling down on it, that's a lie. It was actually a couple weeks after the bill was signed into law. And also, the storm he's talking about flooded major cities and destroyed important crops across the state and also it didn't stop at the oklahoma state line right that would have meant also it rained in other places too that day right so so god is clearly so excited about the abortion laws that he's just splooging precipitation all over the damn place apparently still i guess it's far from the most carried away God has ever gotten with a rain message. So I guess we should be thanking him for his restraint in this instance. The angels are holding him back up in heaven.

No, I want to do it. I want to do it. It's on purpose. Could we blame him? And in Jews news, religious education is an oxymoron. Yep. That's it. That's the headline.

If you want to zone out and think about how fucking amazing Alan Richardson's body is for the next couple of minutes, you can. But we got yet another example of just how true that is as Yeshiva University shut down all of its undergraduate clubs last week so it didn't have to admit that gay people exist yeah all the harder to deny if you're thinking about alan richard's body in my experience though ain't it the truth right so for those of you unfamiliar with this case the group in question is the yeshiva university pride alliance which earlier this year asked the school to recognize it as an official student group slash club with all the perks and benefits that come with it.

And the university said no, explaining that a pride club violated the, quote, Torah values of the university. And let me just take a moment to point out here. The university is correct. Yeah. OK, I've seen a lot of liberal jews around this issue sort of mumble mumble something living document mumble mumble but we we should treat that with the same scorn as we do when like christians tell you that the soil layers are proof of the flood right the torah is unequivocal in its condemnation of gay people it calls for their deaths right and

the answer to that problem is to not use that book as a moral guide anymore. Yes, right. Not herniate a disc bending over backwards to apologize for it. Right, yeah. Again, the problems with your fundamentalists are the problems with your fundamentals. That's true by definition. That's what those words mean. Yeah.

Anyways, a state court ruled that New York's anti-discrimination laws prevented the school from rejecting recognition of the group because, duh. So, last week, they took the case to the Supreme Court, knowing that it's filled with theocratic shitballs who would tell them they could do whatever they want. Now, surprisingly, they actually

weren't instantly handed a victory by the Supreme Court, but don't get your hopes up. As the soon-to-be god kings in magic robes who we let overturn Roe v. Wade explained, it's not that religion doesn't get to do whatever it wants. The school just didn't go through the proper appeals courts first. So they can't officially, legally declare it with their magic wands, you see. Right. Not yet. Yeah.

What's more more they intentionally avoided the proper appeals process because they were so fucking sure that the supreme court's conservative majority would ignore that and side with them anyway and the majority of that majority did right four of six did only roberts and kavanaugh dissented right before going out and bitching about how liberals are undermining the court's legitimacy no doubt yeah no god it's god forbid someone let that decision slip earlier or whatever right so this right little need for appeals this leaves old why you and a little bit of a pickle see until they go through the proper court process they've technically been shut down by the supreme court so as i said at the beginning of the story, they have decided to disband all university

clubs because they're taking their ball and going home. Well, to be fair, the shortest path to equal rights is no rights for anyone, right? Yeah, certainly at Yeshiva University. Yeah. Let me be perfectly clear about what's going to happen here, right? Because this is going to get lost in the mix of news, right? Yeshiva University is going to cross their T the mix of news, right? Yeshiva University is going to cross their T's, dot their I's,

and then the Supreme Court of the United States is going to officially rule that they don't have to let their students be gay. And look, when that happens, we're going to do our best on this podcast to make puns about it or whatever, but that's because it's our

podcast, right? And it just can't be one hour of angry screaming. Well, at least not yet. It can't be. Yeah, let's not be absolute here. We still need a reserve gear to shift into if shit goes wrong in 2024, man. Oh, don't we, though? And in high's man-on-man news tonight,

I guess since I ended my last story with a weather report, I should turn to sports for this one. Granted, we don't spend a lot of time on this show talking about sports. When I made the mistake of talking about fantasy football on an early episode,

the audience reaction was whatever the notch below death threats is. So I've learned to keep my fandoms to myself most of the time. But I think I've got a story here that even the most vehement sports ball derogatory can get behind because the university of massachusetts football team just announced that their team would be celebrating pride day on october 8th the same day they're

scheduled to host liberty university and i'm back in on the sports story. Honestly, between this and becoming a Jaguars fan in solidarity with Noah, I now support two whole sports teams, people. Two. Fuck, yeah. Two. So, yeah, UMass has a pretty shitty football team. Like, apparently, you could make the argument that they actually have the single worst team of any bowl-eligible program. Okay, so my fandom is consistent.

I like that, too. Hey, the Jags are currently leading the worst division in football. But still, Liberty, on the other hand, is just only the worst college that's bowl-eligible. They're consistently ranked amongst the most hostile campuses to LGBTQ students by gay rights groups. And, of course, just in terms of academics, they're amongst the most hostile campuses to lgbtq students by gay rights groups and of course just in terms of academics they're amongst the worst that being said they actually have a pretty good team and will very likely beat the shit out of umass but if the umass players respond to that by just constantly going yeah pound it like that baby every time they get tackled i feel like it should get scored as a win by the fbs either way they're already getting in

their opponent's head by employing their mortal fear of fucking refracted light. So who knows how it'll go? Maybe they get it. Maybe they chalk one up. Yeah. I mean, look, I know that college sports are messed up for a variety of reasons. And I actually think that like sports rivalry is the template which the fracture

of American politics is based on. But fuck all that. I'm in the crowd. I'm sucking a big foam dick the entire time. I've got a beer helmet with specimen jars full of cum on either side. I'm fucking in. Hell yeah.

And while we're on the subject of football, by the way, I should also at least mention the kerfuffle in Oregon last week when the Ducks fans taunted their BYU opponents with a loud and rousing chant of, fuck the Mormons.ons now since the incident the university has released an apology trying to distance itself from the chant and even the governor of oregon has chimed in to call out the fans for religious bigotry and i get it right i i do you know fuck the insert minority religion here chants are problematic.

I'm sure most BYU players are just innocent kids roped into a shitty religion by shitty people and probably don't deserve to be harangued for it in public. But at the same time, fuck the Mormons, right? Like, that's an objectively true fact. I was going to say, that's our professional model. Also, I just got to throw this out there. One can't help but feel that maybe this uh pearl clutching over that particular chant might be a little bit of a red herring from the fact

that several of byu students had to be ejected from a volleyball game last month for yelling racial slurs at an opponent so you know i stye yeah one of these pictures is not like the other so one way or the other though it has led a lot of detractors from America's red estate to suddenly see the utility and safe spaces in college go figure so fucking weird back on the team

and in trans substantiation news tonight I gotta say I use that quite a bit when we're talking about Christian trans issues, but this is the only one where it's a really good pun. Yeah, it really is. No, you nailed it this time. This is a broken clock twice a day situation.

So it's important to remember that every Christian bigotry has a practical result. And don't get me wrong, for most Republicans and Christians, the cruelty is the point, but their leadership almost always has other motives as well. And we got a great example of that this week as new research from the Williams Institute found out that of the 878,300 eligible transgender voters in the United States, as many as 203,700 could be blocked from voting for those of you doing the math at home

that's nearly one-fourth of eligible trans voters or as lgbtq nation pointed out the population of salt lake city i guess i'll be honest with you it seemed like more before they offered up that comparison yeah no that's fair that's fair now you might be wondering to yourself eli how the hell are more than 200 000 people going to be prevented from voting? And the answer to that is voter ID laws are stupid. See, as the Williams Institute points out, 35 states have voter ID laws that require the person voting to provide a valid state ID in order to vote but those ids allow poll workers to turn that person away if they don't match the gender on their id and since 10 states require documentation from a medical provider in order to change a trans person's gender marker and eight states require proof of fucking surgery

court order or an amended birth certificate that's a lot of ids where the gender marker isn't going to match the person and legally poll workers can turn them away jesus christ we're inching ever closer to like the bigoted voter suppression singularity yeah aren't we though one other thing worth pointing out about this story by the way that the williams institute mentions is that these laws are going to disproportionately affect young trans people of color and poor trans people far more, right? Insane as those trans ID laws I just mentioned are, all of them are solved by money, right? Something that younger and browner people are statistically less likely to have access to, which of course brings me to a second truism to remember about christian bigotry

that no matter how bigoted against queer people they promise you something is it's always also racist too all right well now ronda santis's people need a minute to scrub that last little bit out for our flora listeners so we're going to take a quick second for our first sponsor this week us Us. Hey, podcast listener. Do you like God awful movies? Do you like Christmas? You're damn right you do.

Then come on down to New York City on December 17th at the Helen Mills Theater for the God Awful Movies live Christmas-tacular. We'll be breaking down a Kurt Cameron made-for-TV movie about telling kids you've kidnapped their dad so that they'll hang out with your special needs sister. In style. Want front row seats? Why not buy platinum tickets and get... Excuse me, voiceover guy?

Yes, Noah? We're actually sold out of the VIP package tickets. Damn, we are? By the time this airs, oh yeah, almost certainly. Okay, what about just the regular VIP seating? No, that's sold out too. Oh, wow. You guys should have booked a bigger theater.

I know, but it's like, it's 150 seats or 500, man. New York's a weird fucking place yeah no probably better to go with a small one yeah right no that's what we thought anyways get your regular normal seats to the show before they sell out because there's only 51 jesus fuck all right 50 seats so hurry god i hope you're not in the fucking backlog anyways god awful movieslive.com for tickets. They're probably already gone, but just in case they're not, go. You've got mail.

Was that you've got mail? Yeah, I couldn't think of what a sound a website makes. Oh, okay. No, okay. A man wrote the Bible. A horse, which one? If it's a legitimate race. If it's a slut, right?

Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This week in Misogyny. Sometimes the most devastating stories are also the most encouraging, in a darkest before the dawn kind of way. And that's certainly the case out of Iran, where angry protests have spread all over the country in opposition to the nation's theocratically inspired morality police.

Now, I'm sure a lot of you already know the basics here, but for those of you who don't, let me start at the beginning. A 22-year-old Iranian woman named Masa Amini was visiting family in Tehran last Tuesday and made the mistake of taking a ride with her brother while not covering her filthy lady head with an hijab. For this offense, she was arrested by the notorious Guidance Patrols, a special branch of the police tasked with enforcing the nation's regressive religious policies. Shortly after her arrest, she was taken to a hospital where she was treated for multiple blows to the head, according to London-based broadcaster Iran International.

She died from those wounds a couple of days later. Of course, the cop's story is that she actually suffered a heart attack and, I don't know, already had those head wounds when they got her. But the family isn't buying it, and they've got eyewitness reports that support the alternative narrative, wherein the cops beat the shit out of her in their van after the arrest. In the aftermath of the incident, the UN called for a full and impartial investigation. And for their part, the Iranian government has promised exactly that. Whether there's any truth to that remains to be seen, but there's every reason to doubt it. And even if a full investigation finds that the cops beat her up and they go on to convict those cops of murder,

the very fact that she was in their custody in the first place is plenty to be furious about. in their custody in the first place is plenty to be furious about. But don't take my word for it. Just ask the thousands of Iranian women who are taken to the streets and burning hijabs in protest. And when I say taken to the streets, don't picture a bunch of people peacefully marching along and chanting protest slogans. Some of the images the BBC has shared include women with flaming hijabs in hand standing on police cars that are equally inflamed. At least seven people have been killed in the protest.

Some international observers are calling it Iran's George Floyd moment. But I kind of hope it's more than that, because let's face it, we didn't do much to fix the problem in the wake of those protests. And this story is important to talk about for pretty obvious reasons, but I feel like it should resonate with American women all the more right now, given the way we're backsliding towards the theocracy here. Iran was never a bastion of civil liberties, but it was a much more secular place in the pretty recent past,

and living memory for a lot of those people stuck under the thumb of Islamic extremism now. And the travails of its women, its religious minorities, and its LGBTQ population should serve as a pretty potent reminder of how quickly a government can strip away your rights once you let religious people take control. And these images of women screaming from the top of burning police cars should serve as a pretty potent reminder of what it takes to get those rights back. Anyway, hopefully I'll have some good news to follow up on with this in the near future. But until then, I'll hand you back over to Noah and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next up in headlines. I'm not going to lie. Sometimes as we report on the latest gross violation of human rights beyond what I would have imagined mere

years ago, we get a little bummed. I get a little wistful for the early days of this podcast when sanity reigned and our reporting was on Christianity's unsuccessful flailing rather than its victories. And when I feel that way, I thank the non-existent gods for self-described genius Kanye West, who opened a private Christian school last week surrounded by more red flags than the Beijing Olympics. Jesus. And here I was thinking there were no modifiers that would make private christian schools sound even sketchier yeah he found them so first things first the school is unaccredited which means calling it a school in the first place is literally kind of a no-no. Secondly, students and parents are required to sign an NDA to attend. What?

Which I absolutely need to clarify is not what an NDA is for. Okay, look, I get it. Kanye West and idiots everywhere seem to think that NDAs are magic secret-keeping promises that you sign in blood. But that's like saying, oh, if you want to come to my school, you have to form an LLC with me. It's fucking insane. That's right. Like I'm saying, what would an education be for

if you couldn't disclose what you'd learned? Right? Could he sue him for breach of contract every time they got an SAT question right? So the details of the school itself are also fucking insane. As of the debut of the Rolling Stone article of the school itself are also fucking insane as of the debut of the rolling stone article about the school they were still looking to hire teachers by the way that stone article came out like a week ago and their choir teacher slash principal had literally never held

a role as an educator before wow holy well good. Well, good thing they put the word Christian there or there would be rules about this kind of thing. Exactly. Exactly. And look, it's always fun to point and laugh at Kanye West, but it's important to note that the reason he's able to do any of this is because it's a Christian school and because of Christian schools in general, right? Christian education has so weakened our educational standards that crazy rich people can just open schools with no teachers and a mandatory vow of silence. And legally, that's explicitly covered as fine and dandy. And honestly, it's probably not as bad as what some of the catholic schools were not paying attention to or already doing yeah well yeah and according to the supreme court i think we have to

publicly fund this damn thing now too oh yeah look forward to funding their new playground everybody and in compost mortem news the state of california became the latest to legalize human composting last sunday yeah right no yeah the process which was first introduced by a seattle company in 2017 is now legal in five states washington colorado oregon vermont and california and a bill legalizing it in new york awaits only the governor's signature and while this process is being applauded by forward-thinking activists concerned with the waste of space from traditional burial and the waste of energy of cremation it's also being decried by backwards thinking activists read christians who think it's disrespectful to the magical ghost that used to live there okay well i guess as long as we're

not doing it to people against their will yeah nobody should have a problem with it right christian activists you would fucking right yeah it's amazing how many of their rights are to you not doing shit so yeah so christians specifically catholics have been fighting against this thing tooth and nail for years according to kathleen domingo the executive director of the california catholic conference or kkk said that the process quote reduces the human body to simply a disposable commodity end quote but like yeah kathleen when you're talking about how to dispose of corpses it's kind of important that we treat them as disposable the alternative is norman fucking baits i was gonna say what does kathleen think useful for? Also, just want to throw this out there. I'm not saying I'm going to steal Kathleen's body and use it as a coffee table when she dies.

But I'm also not not saying that podcast was there. So the New York State Catholic Conference or NAMBLA admitted that, quote, not everyone shares the same beliefs with regards to the reverent and respectful treatment of human remains, beliefs with regards to the reverent and respectful treatment of human remains but added that they quote believe there are many new yorkers who would be uncomfortable with the proposed composting slash fertilizing method end quote but like so fucking what like a lot of new yorkers were uncomfortable with you raping their kids but that never slowed you down did it no no it did not also oh we'd hate to disrespect the dead says the religion whose official position is that you eat the flesh and drink the blood of your zombie god right yes how about if we eat them is that okay can we eat them can we eat you

spoilers for my coffee table plans by the way and as i look while i feel that anything short of cadaver donation is a waste of good research material i do support these laws for providing semi-rational people in an environmentally friendly option though i have to admit that there are parts of the law that had me scratching my head apparently you still have to treat the soil that used to be a dead person with some amount of reverence and there are restrictions like where you can and can't use it you can't use it on public property for example and and what seems like an advanced concession to christian idiocy the bill does prohibit soil from human remains from being quote commingled with those of another person end quote unless those people are family weird right

yes exactly still any step in the right direction is worth celebrating in modern america i guess those people are family. Weird, weird simulation. Yes, exactly. Still, any step in the right direction is worth celebrating in modern America, I guess. Yeah, and for those who are curious

about what the plan is for our remains here at Scathing Atheist, Noah and Lucinda will be cremated with Heath in a slightly smaller corner of their commingled urn.

As in life, et cetera, et cetera. It's really quite beautiful. Don't. I'm going to donate everything that's useful. But then they have to give us a box. I'm donning mine. They give in a box. Yeah, yeah. No, you still get a box. You get a little box

of wood. There's no you in the wood, by the way, in case anyone's worried. And finally tonight in the Moria Bow News. You know, it's easy when pointing and laughing at christian idiots like kanye west for example to forget how incredibly dangerous they are and we got a refreshing reminder of that this week as congressional representative lauren bobert took to the stage of her local christian nationalist conference to repeat cartoonishly

ridiculous claims that the world is ending and explicitly motivate people to violence yeah yeah i mean she runs an explicitly motivate people to violence themed restaurant so it's easy to grow numb to this shit but it doesn't become less dangerous because of that right yeah so lobo for show show I call her, who regular listeners will remember for, I don't know, saying a mind bogglingly large number of stupid things and being married to a guy who shows his dick to teenage girls was speaking at the Turning Points USA Student Actions Conference, or as it's known in the biz, the best place in the world that a mass shooting could happen. best place in the world that a mass shooting could happen okay okay look i know andrew said i shouldn't linger on that statement and fantasize about it but like the best part of that is that a good guy with a gun situation would probably happen right like that he would pull out his gun but then another good guy with a gun would see him hear the streams and pull out his gun and that would start a chain reaction that ends with one republican going got him at the end in

a room full of dead bodies that would be the funniest room of corpses ever sorry i'm derailing your story lobo was talking about a conference for upcoming nazis no no let's dwell there i look i write that fan fiction for a reason though it de-stresses me yeah so while addressing that crowd she had the following to say quote we know that we are in the last of the last days, but it's not a time to complain about it. It's not a time to get upset about it. It's a time to know that you were called to be a part of the last days. You get to have a role in ushering in the second coming of Jesus, end quote. And just to be clear to the biblically literate, that means bringing about

the end of the world, right? Yeah. Like, I know that you and me, we don't really know that story, but her audience knows that story. And while to lay people in the press, that's just more Jesus is a come and talk to that audience and people who, that is a direct order to get ready for a war against the armies of the Antichrist while being led by the sword-mouthed Jesus who appears on the hill. Right? Assuming you're not booped up into the sky with all the real believers first. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Help God end the world was the message.

From the member of Congress. Mm-hmm. So, yeah, like Noah said, I know it's been normalized to death and one barely bats an eye considering what theocrats are actually empowered to do these days. But it's worth a reminder here at the end of the headlines that much more terrifying is what they're prepared to do and what they're teaching their kids to get ready for. Yeah. And now that you're good and terrified, I feel like their kids to get ready for. Yeah. And now that you're good and terrified, I feel like we can close the headlines for the night.

Eli, thanks as always. Jew magic! Yeah, get it out while you still can. And when we come back, David Icke will insist that some of his best friends are Jewish. Man, still full. Hey, Eli. What's the matter? It's Heath. I'm worried he's not eating. Why is that?

Well, look at his cheese bowl. Still full. I guess I just assumed he'd be coming home for a snack now and then, you know? Don't worry, Eli. Heath has HelloFresh. What's HelloFresh? With HelloFresh, you get farm-fresh, pre-portioned ingredients and seasonal recipes delivered right to your doorstep. Skip trips to the grocery store and count on HelloFresh to make home cooking easy, fun, and affordable. That's why it's America's number one meal kit. Wait a second. Heath can take a meal kit on vacation? He sure can.

And there's no better way to eat well when you're traveling with a weekly selection of 30 plus recipes and 70 plus convenience items all delivered to wherever you want or need it. OK, but isn't that expensive? Quite the opposite, Eli. HelloFresh is a great way to make vacations easier on the wallet. In fact, HelloFresh is 25 percent less expensive than takeout and it's even cheaper than grocery shopping, too. But he's been all over the country for his vacation. Can he really change his shipping address that easily? Yep. HelloFresh works with your schedule.

Plans are flexible and you can change your meal preferences, update your delivery day, and even change your address with just a few taps on the HelloFresh app. And may I say,

HelloFresh sent us a box to try and I found the menus delicious and a breeze to prepare. That's why I, no illusions, personally endorse HelloFresh. Me too. But if only there was some kind of deal for our listeners.

There is. They can go to HelloFresh.com plus Scathing65 and use code Scathing65 for 65% off plus free shipping. Wait, they can go to HelloFresh.com slash Scathing65 and use code Scathing65

for 65% off plus free shipping? That's right. All right. Well, I guess we should put this cheese bowl away, huh? Oh, no, no, no. Leave it out. Really? For who?

Oh, Don Ford's been sleeping under his bed for weeks. Ah, the Trex. I think sometimes in it, too. Sure. Sure. Sure. As many of you know, Heath celebrated a birthday a couple weeks back. And while we exchange our gifts off air, I know that no physical object that I could buy him would mean as much to him as there being one fewer David Icke chapter left when he gets back from vacation. So in belated honor of Heath's smirshmurth birthday,

we're delighted to present another installment of Everything You Need to Know. So Eli, catch the audience up. What have we learned so far in the first eight chapters? Well, it's simple, Noah. You see, David Icke was selected

as the Godhead in a field in peru while an uber driver waited for him to finish by the non-reflected cumulative consciousness to deliver the truth about the interdimensional demon god commonly known as the jew god yahweh who along with his servants the jewards, eat our negative emotions and confusion. Wow, you did. Right? You actually did summarize it. And there's some holograms in there, too. Right.

A lot of inserted clip art. If I could sum up clip art, then I'd really be doing a better job for this. All right. So this time around, we're going to be talking about who controls the media in a chapter called holding the spell oh oh i have a guess about it yeah i bet you nail it yeah but he's going to be bitching

about the media and i just want to say up front because once again that this happens constantly with this book yes media conglomeration is a problem it's a problem that there are seven companies that control all the media it is not an illuminati demon spider problem okay right exactly yeah david ike's just stepping in those super deep new york city winter puddles and being like jew lizards and you're like you had me at the puzzle well and and right as he's like this entire book is him making really easy arguments poorly right because right after he's like this entire book is him making really easy arguments poorly. Right. Because right after he's like, you know, the problem is that we're getting our news from not enough different sources.

Like, for example, did you know that Russia is fine? There's nothing. They just they just you just think that they're bad because what the CIA and the fake news tells us. Yeah. I mean, to be fair to David, I almost never head on over to russia and check things out for myself so that's true he's got me there yeah right no wait so the world's controlling alien cabal with mind control we learned in this chapter has been trying to stoke a war between the u.s and russia that's why we think that they're evil so for 70 years the controlling cabal has been unsuccessfully trying to provoke a war between two countries that really seem to want to go to war with each other.

I don't know that your Illuminati are worth worrying over, Davey. Yeah, they're just sitting there with a bunch of unpopped streamers and an uneaten cake the day after the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were so close. We were so close we were so close you guys so this is the chapter where he outs anderson cooper as well as a cia spy of course sure buddy yeah and then we give away the game a bit with a subtitle that reads provable fact is only a theory okay i'm putting it on the board now if he wants to outdo himself later in the book he's gonna literally have to call a chapter truth is not at this point so he throws

a little red meat to trumpies he's gonna take this away a little bit later in the chapter but he's like you know who are a bunch of conspiracy theorists all those assholes who say that russia interfered in the u.s elections weirdly. Weirdly choosy, David Icke. Can I say weirdly choosy? Yeah. And then he lists all the ways that the CIA discredits conspiracy theorists. Either that or he just quotes the subject line from his nine most recent emails. It's one or the other.

Yeah. And he kind of accidentally gives a pretty decent lesson on skepticism here. Yeah. Right. He's like, oh, you know, they check and see where their funding is sourced from they see if they're selling a product that's a solution to that problem right they check the media sources blah blah so he has to like back it up and be like yeah i mean they do all that stuff and it works because uh most conspiracy theorists are conmen and liars but don't don't do that to me i'm i'm allergic everybody you can't no googling my sources

so and then he starts just listing all the things that the news will never tell you he's like gmo foods mutate your tna vaccines are dangerous fluoridated water makes you docile and i'm like this is like an advertisement for david ike's greatest hits now isn't it yeah okay the older members of our audience will remember tv used to have ads for cds and that ad was usually just like a scrolling track list and the good ones were highlighted in yellow the one that was playing yeah right is that that's this chapter this entire sub chapter yeah now that's what i call conspiracy theory he talks about a reporter he met who got fired just for saying that fluoride was poisoned and global warming is a hoax. Censorship.

They don't care about facts. He says, you never see the media question the official story on global warming. And when they do, and I'm just like, dude, what does the word never mean to you? Yeah. At this point, I just was like, is he in an argument with Clippy as he writes the book? Why does he keep debugging himself in between sentences? It's like the Smeagol version of him took over periodically. Yeah.

He also points out, he's like, okay, smarty pants. If the news is really independent, why are they all reporting the same facts yeah in david's mind a proper newsman is just like i'll be the judge if there's a fire on fifth and main damage right yeah and then he praises the journalistic integrity of russia today that bastion of truth russia today jesus okay i'm confused has everyone full of shit been a russian spy this whole time noah that's a great question i feel like senator fucking mccarthy i'm just like i guess probably a russian spy oh tucker carl is russian spy sean hayne russian spy yeah no but there is a moment though where he's like, you know, Russia today, actually they'll, they'll question the reality,

but then he's got to be like, of course they won't invite me. I'm, I'm not true enough for Russia today. Yeah. Yeah. When you're too crazy for a news network, whose business model is hoping people think your web address is an HTT prefix.

You've really done something, David. You've really made it. Okay. Then he spends an entire subheading telling us about where the real truth can be found. Some rando on the internet. Yeah, I grow more

convinced by the day that David Icke is writing a third of the emails Noah gets with quick correction in the subject lines. Now he thinks that the alternative media is better but most of them still dismiss him as a lunatic so it's only a little better yeah right and by the way let's just take a second to appreciate what a true accomplishment too nutty for joe rogan really is

right yeah well at least when he was writing the book. These days, he might as well be their roaming correspondent. And by the way, not for nothing, but if you're making the both parties are the same argument, you share it with David Icke. Huh? I'm just pointing that out. And to be fair, you only share the first half because for him, the second half is both parties are the same because they're Jew lizards. Right. Because they're controlled by Jew lizards, right?

But then he alienates a significant portion of his readership by asserting that Trump same because they're jew lizards right because they're controlled by jew lizards right but then he alienates a significant portion of his readership by asserting that trump is not in fact a man god who is this book for david yeah who is this book for well it's honestly at a certain point it started to feel like he was just mad at trump for being better at this bullshit than him despite him doing it his whole life yes yes the whole fake news section it's like listening to david eich bitch about how he's been telling way subtler lies since way before trump got yeah really makes you check in with what you've done with your life oh god and by the way if you think we're exaggerating on the whole like jews control the

media thing he actually refers to quote zionist controlled cnn the new york times and the washington post interesting i will i do have to admit i agreed with him when he starts talking about how you know how ironic it was that the pope was decrying fake news that's fair right right but again we end up in puddlevania because he's like pretty ironic for the pope to talk about lying because, you know, he's a giant spider that bursts with his flesh cocoon to feed on the latest Hollywood starlets. And you're like, oh, damn it, David. She's and then he pauses the book, right, to take a stab at a professional rival bullshit tittician I guess named Dimitri. This is the best! He gives the guy's email address

in case you want to tell him how full of shit he was. And it's hilarious because in so doing, he has to admit that fake news is fake, which counters his entire goddamn point. Yeah, hey, David, do those news sources you keep citing to debunk Dimitriri do they say anything

about you that's not the point i'm allergic i told you earlier allergy ah then oh this also like the dimitri thing has a very like back in my day we fake the news like men kind of vibe to it thank you because it really genuinely feels like this pussy's stealing my shit. Yeah, that's right. Eww, lizards. I thought it was. There's got to, now I'm thinking about it. David must have a moment when someone does the reptilian theory where he's like, I made that bullshit up, man.

Fucking. Yeah, right. No citation. So now, but the gist of this subchapter is the fake real media's target isn't the fake fake media but the real fake media you got that got it okay podcast listener i know it sounds like noah's just using a turn of phrase here to point out the absurdity but that sentence is actually a pretty accurate graph of this chapter's argument that's what we're talking about yeah so so then he complains about social media always taking down his shit in a subheading called fake news, fact checkers,

but the fact checkers is in quotes. Cause they're not really fact checkers. This is where he talks about Zionist created and controlled Google and Facebook. Hmm. Interesting. He just, he lists the social media big wigs with the most Jewish names at the

beginning of this subchapter. He might as well put them in scare quotes as well. Rosen, Zuckerberg, anybody? Come on. Right. Lotkastein. And when he's trying to prove that the real media is full of shit, he cites the fact that WAPO once retracted a story after they found out it was wrong. Right.

And I'm just like oh yeah as opposed to the real news which never corrects anything right and also heavily ignores that he david ike is said to change his bullshit more often than a fucking tiktok tarot reader yes right right yeah he changes his bullshit more often than a bull's stall and then he bitches about losing his youtube revenue in a subheading called the monetization conspiracy oh god this is okay podcast listener this is what the chapter is about and it's so fucking wonderful have you ever been having a conversation with someone and it's kind of weird and you can't really connect the dots but they seem really upset and then they'll be like so I got kicked out of my sister's house

and you're like oh okay this is all this is him asking us for 20 bucks for gas alright I see yeah he starts talking about you know he starts talking about how like his and all these other conspiracy theorists YouTube channels were demonetized after

2016 right and the way he has to make this a conspiracy is like, weird how everybody would do it all at once, all at the same time. They were all suddenly concerned about it. And I'm like, yeah, all the companies only got mad about their ads supporting extremist views after they knew about it, David. Coincidence? Yes, those two things coincide.

He tries to describe like the youtube ad revenue program for a second here and it's very clear that david thinks that youtube advertisers i don't know walk along rows of shelves of youtube videos yes pointing to the ones they'd like to run ads on. Yes. Right. Well, and then whether he means to or not, he's expressing solidarity with white supremacy videos on YouTube throughout. Yeah. I mean, spoiler alert for the rest of the chapter, but also he's on Rumble, Noah. He knows he's expressing solidarity.

Yeah. Well, yeah, because the very next thing he does is come out pro-hate speech using those terms right he says that he's pro-hate speech fucking this chapter might as well be titled how i ruined social media by david ike okay it's actually really interesting to see someone arguing for what very well may be the dissolution of society as we knew it yeah so that they could spread their lies a teeny bit easier yeah jesus oh i had to write in my notes here dude you don't get to quote george carlin you asshole i don't have any claim to him but you can't quote him yeah i wrote in my notes look i'm not saying george carlin would be on my side about every issue at this point but i'm confident he wouldn't

be on the same side as David fucking Ike, okay? Right, David Ike manages to bitch about Islamic extremism wrong. Yes! That's so easy to bitch about. But he's like, you know, the US, UK, Saudi created ISIS. I'm just like, shut the fuck up.

But the reason he's bringing that up is to say like, well, you know who else's content gets taken down? Victims of Islamic theocracies. That's right. And I think we can all agree that is the worst thing Islamic theocracies are doing. Taking down YouTube videos. It's certainly my big problem with them. Oh, and then and then, of course, he explains to us that sunlight will disinfect the bad ideas if we just have true freedom of speech.

And I'm like, oh, why didn't I think of that? Yeah, man. I remember that argument a lot sort of pre-2016. And looking back, I guess sunlight really, I don't know, destroyed civilization instead. Yeah, it gave us skin cancer as it turns out. By the way, he says he believes that there is a secret cult of baby raping, child murdering, alien shapeshifters using the news to harvest our joy and enslave us for eternity. Right. So you should want those people censored. Yes.

Right. He says over and over again. And I even support their rights to do that. You shouldn't. That's an admission. You don't really believe this shit. They're interdimensional aliens david that's you you say that yes oh and then right after that he lavishes a bunch of fucking praise on project veritas okay this section is insane because he's

very clearly like liar to liar you got to admire that kid's work it's fucking bull the kid's out there well and also he's like though they shouldn't have punished him because like look if james o'keefe can't surreptitiously film planned parenthood executives and splice the video into misleading narratives later on why is it okay for the grocery store to have me on cctv we all know those are the same that you know how your grocery store often releases the video of you fucking the baked goods so yeah so and then he talks about the whole daily mail hacking wiretapping

thing we learned that Murdoch was framed for all the wiretapping shit he's on team Rupert Murdoch everybody right imagine how twisted your life has to be before you're defending Rupert fucking Murdoch. And in so doing, citing the journalistic integrity of the Daily Mail in defense of your point. I know some of you might be skeptical of the mainstream media and Daily Mail.

Perhaps my friend at the Midnight Star could convince you. Interview with Bat boy in there i look i mean i get why he's so threatened by the war on misinformation but i've honestly i've never seen a better argument in favor of press censorship than ike's effort to decry it yes honestly david ike is a great argument for the censorship he's pretending is a problem yes right. I'm not saying I want to live in the book 1984, but if they put David's head in a cage with rats, I'd

pay-per-view it. I would pay-per-view it. I'd want to change the political structure after they did that to David Icke. I had to point this out too. He cites, he's trying to make this one point and he needs somebody to cite. So he cites like he's trying to make this one point and he's he needs somebody to say so he cites one guy as quote a geopolitical researcher oh yeah he watches me eat some food off the floor culinary adventurous

and he also he points out here he's talking about wikipedia and he's like you know do you ever notice how they ask you for money even though it's one of the most trafficked websites in the world i'm like that in itself doesn't turn a profit right they don't have ads on it right that's that's why the fact that it's so trafficked is you don't need our donations your stupid ass website with like eight fucking people on it your fucking book has ads in it, man. So, all right, well, but so that's the end of chapter nine.

Um, what did we learn? Uh, that fact checking all these liars is the real problem. Yeah. Yeah. And I took away for a cabal of superpowered aliens that already run the world. They're investing a lot of time and plans to eventually run the world.

I think we're good. Alright, so the good news is that we're nearly halfway through this thing. The bad news, of course, is that we're nearly halfway through this thing. Oh my God! So there's still plenty more for the next installment of Everything You Need

To Know. need to know. Before we return to the dimensions from whence we sprang, I want to remind you to check the show notes for links to get your tickets to God of Homeboys live in New York City. Tickets are selling fast. They will sell out. So either get them now or mention how quick they're selling, at least to whoever it is that you're trying to talk you into buying some for Christmas.

Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but 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, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 p.m. Eastern time on Monday, an even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, God of Home Movies, debuting at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this episode wouldn't let her if I neglected to thank Heath Enbright for all the work he does, which is never as obvious as it is when he's on vacation. Incidentally, in case you're missing him as much as we are, I should let you know he'll be back next week.

I also want to thank Eli Bosnick for also being back next week again. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for all the loveliness and the talent. I also want to thank the Grand Reptilian Overlords for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Incidentally, they say that the only thing that they wanted to promote was Opus, a quote, free audio codec that has much better compression quality per bitrate compared to MP3, end quote. I honestly don't know exactly what that means. I feel like I should know what that means. But anyway, if you want to learn more, check, Nikki, the Administrator General of Northern Sweden, Pavanisa, Malocalypse, the Dumber, Matt, and Mike D. Not that Mike D. Yeah, that Mike D.

Who had to turn down the job before England offered it to Charles. Together, these 18 amiable atheists aided our aims to ail Abrahamic anuses this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the dollars, pounds, euros, krona, etc. it takes to give some to us. But if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode. Or you can make a one-time donation patreon.com slash scathing atheist whereby you'll earn 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 home page at scathingadius.com and if you'd like to help but you followed eli's investment advice you can also help a ton by leaving us a five-star review telling a friend about the show and following at piat pod on twitter

legal services for this podcast are provided by the law offices of p andrew torres tim robertson handles our social media and our audio engineer is martin 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 skatingatheist.com Last it's Thursday. I got to make this good. Yep. I'm going to make this good.

I want people, when Heath comes back, to think to themselves, eh, eh. I liked when things were different. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and the Thunderstorm, LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.