The Scathing Atheist - 520: Just the Facts Ma'am Edition

Episode Date: February 2, 2023

In this week’s episode, North Dakota bans Heffalumps AND Woozles, long-winded priests are about to get the hook like Showtime at the Apollo, and we’ll learn that Jehovah’s Witnesses come pre-shunned. --- 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: Diatribe story: https://religionnews.com/2023/01/26/he-gets-us-organizers-hope-to-spend-1-billion-to-promote-jesus-will-anyone-care/ Idiot Bill in Montana would ban everything in science class except “scientific fact”: https://ncse.ngo/draft-antiscience-bill-montana Nebraska Democrat trolls anti-drag bill by filing an amended version to ban church camps: https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2023/01/democrat-files-bill-to-ban-church-youth-camps-as-hotbeds-of-child-abuse-religious-indoctrination/ ND bill aims to ban accommodations for students who identify as trans or 'animal species': https://www.christianpost.com/news/north-dakota-bill-seeks-to-ban-accommodations-for-trans-animal-students.html Mike Lindell will run “election crime unit” for RNC in 2024: https://www.rawstory.com/mike-lindell-election-crime-unit/ Pope says long homilies are terrible and priests need to keep it under 10 minutes: https://www.ncronline.org/vatican/vatican-news/long-homilies-are-disaster-keep-it-under-10-minutes-pope-says

Warning, by the time I finish this sentence, this podcast will already have started using words like fuck. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Stamps.com, Adam and Eve, ZipRecruiter, and by the new skin cream for those whose beliefs chafe against natural selection, Evolotion. Evolotion, because evolution just, it didn't sound right no matter how I pronounced it. And now, The scathing atheist. For all you Trump supporters out there, this is Brandon's business manager. He's not going back to any of you until you finish paying for last time, stop using your rifles as sex toys, and for God's sake, ease up on the Axe body spray.

He also told me that your denial that we evolved from filthy monkey men is almost a definition of irony. It's Thursday. It's February 2nd. And it's the feast of the purification of the virgin meeting of the Lord. What? Jesus fucking Christ. Yeah, because if your holidays don't sound like dark magic spells, how are we going to know how crazy your cult is? I have no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Ms. Marvel's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, North Dakota bans heffalumps and woozles. Long-winded priests are about to get the hook

like Showtime at the Apollo. And we'll learn that Jehovah's witnesses come pre-shot but first the diatribe so okay i know we've talked about the heets Us campaign on this show a couple of times already, but holy fuck, y'all, they're doing Super Bowl commercials. The very definition of extravagant marketing, Budweiser, Pepsi, Toyota, Jesus of Nazareth, circle the one that doesn't belong. Now, don't get me wrong. I kind of appreciate the bold admission that Jesus is just a commodity to be packaged and sold.

I mean, nothing that we ever do on this show is going to dampen the sanctity of Christianity, like wedging it in between an ad for light beer and one for digital bookies. But it's hard not to dwell on the amount of money. Super Bowl advertising is famously expensive. And when Pringles or M m&m spends eight figures on one of these things there's at least the possibility that they're going to recoup the cost with additional sales of potato chips or conservative outrage but they're not going to up the sales of jesus of course of all the ways i've seen christianity spend its millions this is nowhere

near the worst right that prize almost certainly goes to quieting child rape victims with Kevin Sorbo's career coming in a strong second. But it's still a staggering amount of money. A staggering amount of money, by the way, that almost couldn't help but go to something more productive and less damaging if it were entrusted to any random person. person. The campaign, again, is spending $20 million to buy two fucking ads with no more of a message than, Jesus is pretty cool, yo. That's $20 million of the reported billion dollars that they intend to spend altogether over a three-year period. And we've talked about the substance of these dumbass ads already, so I don't want to belabor those points, but I do think it's worth reflecting on this colossal waste of money involved in it. Especially in light of the constant argument we hear about how religion inspires people to give to charity, right? It's one of those apologetics you get from the more educated, said atheist or otherwise, and it does have data

to back it up. Religious people do tend to give more money to charity than their atheist counterparts. Now, there's a lot wrong with this argument, argument right you can dismantle it from a dozen different directions but few are going to be quite as visible as 20 million dollars worth of prime time advertising right because see for every dollar of charity that religion inspires you got to subtract away every dollar it encourages people to spend on absolutely nothing every time it helps trick people into giving their money to a faith-healing charlatan. Every time it encourages people to donate to worse-than-useless schemes like smuggling Bibles into North Korea.

And every time it inspires anonymous donors, to piss away $20 million on two 30-second ads in hope of reaching the what? on two 30-second ads in hope of reaching the what? The fans of American football who haven't heard about this Jesus fella? I mean, think about that amount for a second, $20 million. Just imagine that somebody handed you a check for $20 million and they asked you to do the most possible good that you could with it. How many homeless people would you keep warm? How many hungry mouths would you feed? How many sick people would you provide with care? I mean, it would be a hard decision, no doubt. You'd probably stay up all night wondering where best to invest that money. Should it go to education,

political activism? Should you split it up and donate to a thousand causes or just give a huge shot in the arm to one? And sure, given the enormity of the task you probably wouldn't get the exact right answer but no matter where you landed it almost could not physically be wronger than a tv commercial about how jesus would probably have worn his baseball cap backwards if they'd had baseball caps back then. Look, if Jesus was truly the inspirational figure they're selling him as, he'd have inspired them to spend that money on something less stupid. In other words, if the product worked as advertised, the advertisement wouldn't be there.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the diffusion of facilitated diffusion to my They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the diffusion of facilitated diffusion to my osmosis, Heath Ed Wright and Eli Bostic. Fellas, are you ready to just kind of get there eventually? Okay. I'm just enjoying being the superset. Sweet. Yeah, I don't know if it's a science joke, but if I worked at it, I might. Ptosis.

Oh, God. She's sorry. Well, clearly, I need a minute to come up with better sets of three. So we're going to boss from our first sponsor this week. Stamps dot com. Hey, podcast listener. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Enright.

And I'm Eli Bosnick. You know, if anyone can understand just how quickly your small business can scale, it's us. That's right. One minute you're starting an anonymous blog as a backup for your job in a toy company, and just a blink of an eye later, it's been 10 years and Eli owns a third of your business. Right. And that's why we're here to tell you about not giving

Eli a third of your business. Hey, that's not... Actually, we were here to tell him about Stamps.com. What's Stamps.com? Got him. Okay. See? This is why. For 25 years, St stamps.com what stamps.com got them okay see this is why for 25 years stamps.com has been indispensable for over a million businesses get access to the usps and ups shipping services that you need to run your business right from your computer anytime day or night no lines no traffic no waiting and if you sell products online stamps.com seamlessly connects

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Eli has spent $400 on fake websites. They're deep cuts. People like them. Do they? Sometimes. Also, is $400 a little low? Also, is 400 a little low? Did you make that a little low? 400's way low. I actually, I started to look up the real number

and I was like, that's not funny. Well, that just gets depressing at a certain point. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, Montana Republicans are fucking stupid. I know that's not news, but I stared at a blank screen for like

15 minutes trying to write a sentence that summarized this story and that's where i kept landing montana republicans are fucking stupid for republicans yeah right yeah and for montanans and in a spectacular demonstration of that fact first term republican state senator daniel emmerich has proposed a bill that would require k through 12 science classes in Montana to teach only scientific facts. What? That is no theories, no models, nothing but in the words of the bill, quote, indisputable and repeatable observations of natural phenomenon, end quote. Phenomena. Right, yeah, but you can tell the kids that apples will fall from trees,

but if you tell them why, you'll be answering to Daniel Ambrick, goddammit. Okay, science teacher, what if we're all in the matrix? Science, class, canceled. No more science. Oh, everything's disputable now. Okay, look, i get it this is obviously an attempt at the evolution is just a theory thing but right there are lots of facts that disprove creation guys radiocarbon dating fossils 5 000 year old trees this isn't going to

help you in the way okay but you started to say disprove and it's illegal after that. You're allowed to just say the facts. Yeah. Fossils aren't repeatable. I can't make one for you. Now the bill itself is like a stupidity work of art. It's all a 443 words long, including the where as is and all that shit. So the fact that he's like able to cram so much stupid into it,

very impressive, right? Quite a feat for a rookie. Like the first paragraph, I shit you not, you should go read this thing. Again, it's,

it's, you know, 400 words long. The first paragraph is how important it is that children learn the difference between scientific facts and scientific theories. So they won't like grow up and look like idiots when they get jobs. They won't do this. Right.

The second paragraph proves that by not knowing the difference between scientific facts and scientific theories. For real. This is how the bill defines that difference. Quote, a scientific fact is observable and repeatable. Criteria, it is a scientific theory that is defined as speculation and is for higher education to explore, debate, and test to ultimately reach a scientific conclusion of fact or fiction. We're only doing a priori in the state of Montana. No more a priori. It's illegal.

Also, some of the a prioris canceled too. Well, yeah, right. Also, I don't know what any of the words I just said mean. I am the product of the Montana school system and I'm making it worse now. Fuck.

June 3rd is a theory and if it doesn't fit, I can't see it. I'm writing a law. Calendars are a Ponzi scheme. This is a law now. I'm a lawmaker. Of coursears are a Ponzi scheme. This is a law now. I'm a lawmaker. Of course, as all of our listeners know, I'm sure,

that's not how any of this works. Theories don't fucking graduate to facts when we reach some predetermined level of certainty. Those two words describe different kinds of things. A theory is an explanation of a set of facts. So saying science class can teach only facts and not theories would be like saying that English class can teach only words and not sentences. And of course, the goal of the legislation is to ban the teaching of the theory of evolution, as Eli said, and like the Big Bang theory. is to ban the teaching of the theory of evolution, as Eli said, and like the Big Bang

theory and shit. But the fact that this dude is willing to sacrifice children having knowledge of gravity and relativity to get there tells you an awful lot about the party's intellectual priorities. Yeah. I mean, to be fair, Noah, gravity and relativity

also disprove the biblical narrative of God sailing over the waters right before he made the stars or whatever the fuck it said. Well, yeah. Originally, I wrote plate tectonics and I'm like,

oh, they actually would probably be used to it. No, they're not. They're not. For sure. That fucks up their whole thing. So does everything, though. So it's pretty dumb. Yeah.

And in drag abuse resistance education news nice republican lawmakers in nebraska have proposed a new bill that would make it illegal for any person under 19 years old to attend a drag show so you're probably thinking where yeah totally get it one more time it's called nebraska or nebraska it's a bullshit state somewhere in the middle that shouldn't count for anything. But sadly, some good people are stranded there and they have to deal with insane Christian right bigots all the time. But fortunately, there is a hero for the good team.

State Senator Megan Hunt is fighting back against the bill and that includes a proposed amendment to instead put a ban on religious indoctrination camps because those are actually bad okay so so nebraska gop rule of thumb for you if at any point in the drafting of your legislation you have to seriously ask yourself holy shit did i just outlaw bugs bunny cartoons just throw it away throw away the thing you're working on and do a different thing yeah i'd tell you what that other thing is that you can do but no and heath won't let me so megan hunt megan hunt is clearly she's just doing this to make a point and she made that clear from the

start her amended version has no chance of passing and she knows that but it has generated some attention which is exactly why she did it so here's the Republican version of the bill that she's fighting against. LB 371 would ban all children and all adults who are 18 years old from attending any event in which people quote, sing, lip sync, dance, or otherwise perform before an audience for entertainment and exhibit a gender identity that's different from the one they were assigned at birth using clothing, makeup, or other physical markers. Cut to the bills drafting. Y'all, I'm not writing or a big plastic penis into a damn law.

How about other physical markers? Again, if your bigot law accidentally bans all the high school musicals in your state the law is the problem guy yep right besides being just clearly evil it's also incredibly stupid they just made shakespeare illegal in the bill yes and it's illegal for noah to juggle any objects in the state of nebraska because of his long flowing lady hair. And it's illegal for me to sing a song with my decolletage being shown off with a deep V-neck. But also it's full of loopholes. For example, you can do anything you want as long as you're not entertaining.

So, okay, actually my cleavage singing is probably fine. And of course you can use mental markers for drag instead of physical ones so you can still do an extremely non-entertaining aloof drag show that would be possible and you can still entertain people with drag poetry read aloud and you can say you were assigned male at birth and do a drag show as a female persona as long as you were lying at the beginning. These people are idiots. This drag is for educational purposes only. Yeah. You want to know how loophole laden and stupid this law is?

It wouldn't ban drag queen story hours, which is, I guarantee you, the reason they drafted the damn thing in the first place damn it uh no reading books in a dress naked librarians fuck god oh man yeah so here's the justification for the republican bill from state senator dave merman quote i think the vast majority of nebraskans would agree that you know know what? I'm going to stop you right there. That's a bad thing. Don't start anything with the vast majority of Nebraskans. Therefore, nope, not good. But that's what he did.

The vast majority of Nebraskans would agree that sexualized dancing and enhanced genitals is not appropriate for children to view. Interesting. Enhanced? Enhanced genitals is not appropriate for children to view. Interesting. Enhanced? Enhanced genitals. Is that the way? So does State Senator Dave Merman think drag queens have bionic tits, Heath? Is that what you're telling me here? He definitely does.

Something similar, yeah. Shoot missiles out of them. Yeah. What's funny about this, Bill, is that this bans so many family friendly excellent performers dolly parton but not me not yes right yeah so the level of bigotry is terrifying but i am very happy that this guy dave merman is extremely scared of whatever the fuck enhanced genitals might be and i'm also very happy that we have Megan Hunt.

She made a very important point using a great version of make it black, but with an added twist. And she used Christian instead of black because otherwise that would have been super confusing for Nebraska Republicans. So that was helpful. She basically kept the entire bill the same, except she switched out drag show for religion camp. And then she pointed out how her bill's version, according to overwhelming amounts of data that we have, would prevent a bunch of sexual assault of children, which is a real thing and a problem.

Oh, wow. Yeah. Not adding, but implying, whereas the Republican bill would address the imaginary problem of watching art that Republicans don't like. Also known as art. Also known as watching art. The art, yeah. And speaking of shit that freaks out Nebraska Republicans, it's time for a word from this week's second sponsor, Adam and Eve. Hey, podcast listener.

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Not better A little better Well better, but still not good And in kitty litter news, you know, occasionally folks will ask us why we don't spend more time on the silliness of the left side of the political spectrum. After all, it is there. There's the witch cult hypothesis, tarot cards, sacred telescope stopping mountains. And the answer is, well, we do talk about that stuff. We're just not obsessed with that stuff

like right-wingers are. So it feels You should have voted for Hillary Clinton. like we don't talk about those things in comparison to, you know, Tucker Carlson who can spend an hour of his show freaking out over an Eminem's sexuality. And the reasons for that are numerous, right? One, we were already

jerking off to the green Eminem. Oh, if anything, the flats made her hotter. Thank you, right? One, we were already jerking off to the green M&M. Oh, if anything, the flats made her hotter. Thank you, right? I want her comfortable. Two, often when you encounter silliness on the left, it isn't empowered. As soon as the you have to pretend tarot cards are real bill hits the House of Representatives, yeah, we'll be right there objecting to it along with you. But that stuff isn't empowered.

The rights bullshit, on the other hand, is empowered. They are making laws around the delusions of their followers. And we got a great example of that this week as a bill put forward in North Dakota bans accommodations for students who identify as animals. What? Which, I will remind you, is a made-up conspiracy theory based on a moral panic over a kid

who wore cat ears to school. Actually, it's even dumber than what Eli just said, which is impressive in a way. It was a picture from Facebook of some random lady wearing cat ears, not to school, because she's a grown-up in norway the country of norway but some panicky idiot in the u.s posted the photo and wrote this girl's family petitioned

school board for the right to identify as a cat this is crazy that's the basis of this wow oh there's never a basement yeah so house bill 1522 is an emergency measure oh emergency yeah sponsored by six republican state lawmakers and declares that north dakota schools may not quote adopt a policy establishing or providing a place facility school program or accommodation that caters to a student's perception of being any animal species other than human. End quote. Which again, no school has ever done. Right.

They might as well be passing a bill that Bill Gates can't put a microchip in your vaccine and Facebook can't make all your pictures public at midnight. Okay, well, we'll look out for that. But just a quick reminder, a bill in Texas would literally make it illegal to sell smushed-up aborted fetuses at the supermarket without proper labeling on the jar. That's a real bill. Yep. All I want is video of the moment when the committee of idiots realized they had to add other than human being to that language. Yeah.

Oh, hold on a second. We can't have toilets this way. Hold on. An emotionally difficult 45 minutes for sure. And I know what you're thinking. Eli, if that animal stuff isn't real, why are Republicans going after them? Well, that's because this bill

is a bigot idiot trap as well. See, in addition to banning accommodations for students who think they're animals, the bill also bans accommodations for students who are trans. That's the bigot part. But the trap idiot part is even dumber. See, when they receive pushback against this bill, the Republicans who wrote it are going to be like, so you want to let kids identify as animals as like a gotcha yeah and the sad thing is that gotcha is gonna work on a not insubstantial percentage of north dakotans right yeah no their attempt at being clever possibly successful attempt at being clever is asking when did you stop eating lunch

and beating your wife yeah yeah also i do want to let kids identify as animals. What the fuck difference does it make? How is that preventing anything? Yeah. So this bill is obviously monstrous and stupid, and I hope it doesn't pass. But honestly, who knows? It's structured as a political landmine,

and goodness knows North Dakotan politicians aren't exactly eager to stand up for trans rights even when they're not booby-trapped. But don't worry, podcast listener. I have a solution. I've submitted my own bill titled H.B. Homo Says What, and I think it's going to get a lot more Republicans on our side. Yeah.

Might actually work. And in wearing the green pillow news tonight, if that reference doesn't make sense to you, it's because you're not sophisticated enough for it. Election denialist, fart modulator, and technically professional fluffer, Mike Lindell is back in the news, and that's as much of an excuse to talk about him as I need.

I mean, he's an aggressively Christian person dedicated to installing a federal theocracy, so I feel like his antics are pretty scathing atheist appropriate, like, no matter how you do the math. But regardless of that, I would talk about him anyway because everything he does is hilariously, tragically stupid, and that makes me happy, damn it. And his latest antic was when he tried to get himself elected

as the chair of the Republican National Committee. And after... How'd that go? After weeks of guaranteeing victory and laughing at those who doubted his chances, he got four votes. Right, and he probably flew those in on a computer from Germany.

I have a flight map that probably proves it. Oh, that is a graphic, so... Guys, guys, guys, huddle up. We have to goad him into boxing a world champion boxer. I don't know why or how we'll do it. Just that we could do it. No, we definitely could. And I know why.

Listen, Mike Lindell versus Logan Paul. If we promote that, we will make some money. And then we just burn down the theater. Oh, there was no boxing then. Sorry, we just made the species stronger. Yeah. Now, I should be clear that

the voting pool here is 168 people, right? It's funnier if you imagine this is a national vote with thousands and thousands of voters and he only gets four. But the fact that an absolute joke candidate managed to get any vote at all is too terrifying to undersell, right? This is a select group of leaders within

the party and better than 2% of them were like, yeah, no, let's give our committee over to the man who once used a voice modulator on a fart to protect its identity. But still, losing 111 to 4 is delightfully humiliating for lindell especially when you consider that the loss was to the historically incompetent rana

mcdaniel right last time she was in charge of the rnc she gave us now yeah also just want to mention that she's the niece of mitt romney so at some point mitt romney's brother and his wife were like rana romney nailed it that's the name we're going with and rana's mom is named rana that mom was like i'm rana romney this name is fucking perfect definitely running that back one more time. And after Ronna Jr. shat the bed for the RNC in Joe Biden's first midterm, the party was like, yeah, but Lindell would have shat like other beds too somehow. We're going with Ronna.

Sorry, forgive me the long tail marketing. Do you hear that, Anna? If we had had a girl, you would have had the same naming convention as Ronna Romney. Aren't you glad we had a boy, sweetie? So the whole campaign he ran was hilarious because everybody seemed to know it was a joke except him. And it's not like nobody told him it was a joke, right? was a joke right reporters kept pointing out that he had max six votes but he'd laugh him off and he'd show him this rasmussen poll that showed republicans at large wanted him as their rnc chair or rather it showed that more republicans knew who he was than any of the other name on that pollsters list on a rasmussen poll which is yes right it's not it's like a lie detector. So, Mike, you're saying you won just like Adolf Hitler would have won if he was on that poll

because of name recognition? Congrats. Good job. He's like if Carrie deserved the pig's blood and didn't have powers. Now, of course, if you thought that this defeat was embarrassing enough to leave him in bed for a few days licking his wounds, then you underestimate how lumpy and uncomfortable his pillows really are because he was right back at it the next day.

He promised us additional shenanigans in the near future during an appearance on Steve Bannon's War Room podcast. According to Lindell, the RNC has promised to allow him to run what he's calling an election crime unit to look into the 2020 elections. Nope. Yeah, well, so I honestly, I don't know if that's a thing that they're like funding and staffing or if they just said like, yeah, man, whatever, when he

suggested doing it. And I also don't know which of those would be funnier. But look for further updates soon. And fingers crossed, a capper to the absolute proof trilogy over on God Awful Movies. Oh, yeah.

And in Who's Drinking the Blood of Christ Tonight news, a Pope did something that I enjoyed for the very first time ever last week. Pope Francis decided to roast the fuck out of all the shitty, bloviating priests who take forever when they're giving a sermon. According to Frank the Tank, all these long abstract homilies are quote a disaster and he wants a hard cap at 10 minutes.

Okay. Well, I appreciate that, but what an incredible admission of guilt that is right like okay we all genuinely believe that you're speaking on behalf of god himself and then and we all genuinely believe that the stakes of what you're saying are eternal paradise or endless suffering but but after 10 minutes everybody's gonna check out no you make this a tweet or something?

Also, Heath, Pope's do stuff we like all the time. Ratzenberger died last month. Fucking loved that. Sure. Right. John Paul stayed dead last month. I liked that too. Loved it.

Good job. Rotted. So Frankie made his comments during a training seminar at the Pontifical Institute of Liturgy in Rome. And he explained that, yes, the title of our institute has like pontificate right in there. It basically means pompous institute of religious pontificating the institute. But just don't though, don't, Even though the title says to do that. Here's the exact words from the Pope. Quote, I sometimes hear people say, I went to this parish.

And yes, it was a good philosophy lesson. 40, maybe 45 minutes. No more than 8 to 10 minutes. You do a thought. You do a feeling. You do an image. And you get the fuck off stage. He said everything except the last part

okay all right yeah yeah it's okay but everything else exact words from the pope based on that quote and what i know of catholics though that it could be that he's worried about his parishers knowing that extra 30 or to 35 minutes worth of stuff about philosophy right louder faster funnier rule of threes no beeping a doodly-doo. I'm the Pope. You know, it's got all the... Sure. So, yeah, that was fun. You got to love it

when you hear an 86-year-old man during a pontifical seminar dressed like a magical uncut penis telling everyone to work on their tight 10 because the lack of brevity is making them all look silly. Just great stuff all right so i guess with that knowledge that our homily has gone way over time i suppose we can wrap

up the headlines for the night heath eli thanks as always jumaji and when we come back you'll be that much older lulu coming home stuff coming home stuff is my favorite stuff. Lou, Lou, Lou. Hey, Heath. How was your date tonight? Meh. I mean, it was okay. She was a little bossy, though. Bossy? How so? Oh, you know, like, why do we need an extra table? And what do you mean you're ordering the whole menu? Like that kind of stuff. Oh, I see. Yeah. Too bad there's not some sort of technology that can easily find the right person for you.

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That's ZipRecruiter.com slash scathing. Again, that's ZipRecruiter.com slash scathing. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. To hire normal, regular employees who you do not have sex with. Exactly, yes. I mean, you can still have sex with. Exactly. Yes. I mean, you can still have sex with your employees. Nope. Nope. Nope. You can't.

Is that a rule? It is, in fact, a law. So, don't do that. Oh. You know, it's hard to make friends when you're a kid, and it's even harder when you're part of a weird-ass religion that sees normal childhood interactions as nefarious temptations of the devil meant to lead you astray from the path of Christ, which we're going to

learn all about in this week's God Awful Many. So tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today? We watched Jehovah's Witness lesson number 47, Who Should Be it's the it's the story of how to avoid satan's plot for world domination which is mostly based on potato flashlights and baking soda volcanoes even the night and all that yep yep uh-huh so that's satan in his roundabout plots. And Eli, how bad was this mini? Well, if you loved the overly smooth, uncanny valley of early 2000s Nickelodeon animation, but you wish it was positively bursting with the psychosis of America's most obvious cult, you will love this movie. Second most obvious after Scientology.

But yes. So is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at? Yeah, I'm going to go with best worst trying to figure out the bad guy as I'm going through it. It's really confusing. So it starts the bad guys like

kids who go home in a minivan that get picked up in school but then it's like okay, no, it might be the potato flashlight. That might be the bad guy. Oh, no, the Jews. The Jews are the bad guys? No, science. I think

science is the bad guys. Ultimately, we land on science. Yeah. So, I was going to go with best worst Bible character. A big part of this is like this fanfic about Martha. Martha. Martha's claim to fame is that people mistake her

for Mary Magdalene's sister. Right? Martha, the most noteworthy thing that Martha does in the Bible is warn Jesus that Lazarus probably stinks by now. That's real. Look it up. And we spent like half of this video on her story. Martha, Martha, Martha.

Yeah. Her made up Jehovah's Witness version. Well, right. Yeah, exactly. Her fanfic story. Yes. Were the weird cult offshoots of Christianity doing like a dib situation

and fucking Mormonism and baptism came in hard and fucking Jehovah's Witnesses are just checking under chairs and couch cushions. I got a Martha. We got Hawkman. And I'm going to go with best worst friend. Yeah. That's all

safe for now. All right. Best worst friend. Keep in mind they can animate anybody they want to really of any size of any size just keep that in mind all right so let's get this video going we're going to open up with sophia that's our main character she's a friendless outcast j-dub sitting all by herself at recess while all the other kids have fun yeah right and i think we're panning over like all the other kids have fun. Yeah. Right? And I think we're panning over like all the things that Jehovah's Witnesses aren't allowed to do here.

Yeah. That the other kids are doing. Okay. And keep in mind that you could show the kids like drinking and smoking and fighting. Nope. The Jehovah's Witnesses things that bad children do includes phone games and silly dances. That's why she should shun people. Playing the sport of basketball is one of them.

Yeah, that's one of them. Playing with the devil's pixels. Yeah. Yeah, sure, sure. Okay, question. Here's a confusing one for me. One of those things that I guess they can't do is rap as a duck. Because they spend a while showing us a kid rapping, but as a duck because they spend a while showing us a kid rapping but as a duck like

i don't know what and she looks on like jealous of this kid yes allowed to do that and then they just move right on i wanted to explore that kid's life so much more. Yeah. Yes. The story of the duck child is where all the real fucking interest was. But yeah. So basically we watch her looking at all the kids fucking celebrating birthdays while they vote or whatever. And then she gets on the bus. She's the only one on the bus because apparently, and this takes a while for us to figure out, apparently there's some like after school thing that she's not allowed to go to but everyone

else is going to right I thought they just had like a JW bus that she had to ride no blood transfusions on this bus don't worry kid get on well you know I had all the other kids must be going to a cool blood transfusion party they're just getting

into a different we. We have birthdays. This is so fun. Name your birthday that you have. Go, go. So then we cut to our title screen. It says lesson 47, who should be my friend? And at the bottom, by the way,

it includes Proverbs 13, 20, which reads, he that walketh with wise men shall be wise, but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. Destroyed? A fool was right, yeah, a fool is right fucking there, and they went with destroyed.

So fucking dumb. Okay. So we check back in with Sophia. She's at church listening to a sermon about friends. So that's nifty. It's not a sermon, it's a smooch. So that's nifty. Well, it's not a sermon. It's a smooch smear or whatever. Oh, yeah.

It was a family house quimmer. Yeah. Well, but this is this is in the church, right? This is it. This is a church function of some sort. And she sees that there's another girl. I wrote about her age because we don't see them in comparison to each other yet. Sorry.

Another girl about her age? Is that what we're going to say? Well, that's what I wrote. Okay. Out of nowhere, a 45-year-old woman who's like eight feet tall and has a child voice walks up and is like, I want to be your friend. Those are sweet fucking notes you took during church.

I'm your friend. We're the same age. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the sermon ramps up and they both were taking notes about the sermon with the same like doodle method. Picture style. Do you have to take notes?

I don't know. Do they take notes during church? I don't. I have to ask some of my ex-J-dub friends if they actually have to take notes during their sermons. I went down this rabbit hole. They do. They take notes and then they have to ask some of my ex-J-dub friends if they actually have to take notes during their service. I went down this rabbit hole. They do. They take notes, and then they have to give a talk.

This is what they're referencing. They have to give a talk to the other children about the notes they took in church that they were all at. It's the worst, most, least imaginative cult ever. It's like someone was sitting in normal Christianity, and they were like, not enough homework. More homework. Yeah, because we learned

that this girl, so this is Lydia, the 45-year-old girl that she's going to befriend. Lydia and Sophia have been assigned to do a talk together. And they'll have to work on that at some later scene. I was really hoping we would flash over to whatever youth group this is and Lydia's the the only full-grown adult she's just been held back in jw

chat five times yeah she's like dwight at karate class with a bunch of kids yeah right so okay so now we're in class it's the next day all the other kids come into the class and they greet their friends and are happy to see each other like a bunch of fucking heathens. Right? Yeah. And we watch Sophia be like, look at all these other kids interacting like wanton whores. Yes. I want to be a wanton whore, but I shan't.

And like, that's the conflict here? Yeah. Well, because they're all talking about that fun science camp thing they did the day before, right? Everybody's got to comment about that as they walk by. Okay. Science camp. Science camp was confusing. They didn't say just like, we did science camp.

No. They described something about a safari tree house. Yep. And then some other kid was like, I didn't think your team was going to make it through the safari tree house. What competition of teams? i don't know would happen inside a safari tree house i was thinking about this forever and again they just move on right yeah because because fucking duck rapping kid was there explain stuff if we got in his story we would know yeah so but yeah but we see everybody talking about how much fun they had there.

They're all like, they've all got swag and all the swag has a picture of an atom on it. I guess that represents science to him. At first I was like, wait, are J-dubs against atomic theory? I don't think that they are, but I don't know.

I mean, technically, yes. Right. Yeah. That's fair. The water and the wine thing really falls apart. Yeah.

Those lines of communication break down early and often. Yeah. But apparently the thing that she missed out on was the science club because her religion is anti-science compared to other Christian denominations and she couldn't go. Right. And let's be clear here, right? It would have been so easy for them to be like

the science club where we learn about evolution. Yeah, I can't believe how we killed God in that big pinata, right? Something like that. No, no, no. This is any science.

The J-dubs are just drawing the line at the word science. Yeah, this is potato flashlights how the devil gets you yeah exactly yeah so we see her like wishing that she could be part of this she goes to lunch and all the other kids are like oh you're good at science we wish you would join our science team and help us with our potato flashlight okay that's the plot now. That like she's getting tempted by Satan and his light bulb wiring. Yes. Is that, are they like anti-circuit?

They're anti-nucleus. Right. Maybe circuits too? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know if it was the nucleus or the electrons that they were pissed about. It could have been both. It's tough to tell, yeah.

So yeah, but she helps him with their science project because she's good at science and then we cut to her back at home asking her dad if she can be in science club yeah she's like yeah so it just seems objectively positive for me to join the science club and make friends what do you think dad and dad's like it's not though no right well except dad is actually more like it's not though right he's got this really thick eastern european accent of so i don't i have no idea where this guy's from but yeah it's um it's weird that i can tell that cartoon character hits his wife and kids right like the way that cartoon character holds anger in his body, I know his family's unsafe.

Yeah, it's not from the accent. Eli's not saying that Slavic people abuse their wives. He's just saying that. No, that's also true, and it's okay because they're white. But I'm talking about this cartoon right here. If Eve comes up to me, I'm like, you should leave your kids alone. I feel his rage as his daughter asks

to go to science camp and i fear for them yeah this guy beats up eli at a supermarket for sure yeah 100 sure yeah but yeah but she's like oh you know it'd be great if i could be at science club and i can have friends and the dad though his reaction to this is to be like yes but unfortunately i picked a friendless religion for you so you can't have friends right is is the ethical thing that happened according to this video yeah no he he has this weird moment and hey if you have to caveat leave your religion right he's like yes no god god wants us to have friends but i'm gonna stop you right there i'm gonna stop you right there yeah because the implication of what he says is but not those children god hates those children exactly but not science whores is the rest of that sentence yes yeah right so so and and and she's like huh that doesn't really

make sense he's like well how about we do a bible lesson why don't you go read up on that well-known biblical character of martha okay again martha watched jesus resurrect her brother lazarus that's it how is that helpful no it's not at all no it really isn't and we spend the rest of the video on this martha's sitting there at her agent's office. I was hoping maybe you could get me into the background like the Godfather 3 or something. No. We do have an offer from the Jehovah's Witnesses though. They said they found you some couch

cushions. How'd you like to be proof not to have any friends? Right, yeah. So yeah, but Sophia studies up and then she's going to tell us and the family the biblical the extra biblical story of Martha and we're going to get some animation to go along with that, right? And it's just a tiny moment, but at the very beginning when they're introducing her, she says, Martha liked to cook. It's so obvious the movie trying to be like, see, kids stuff.

We didn't go directly into our deeply nefarious and torturous philosophy we said like to cook first cartoon well they yeah that that part is kid friendly but even before that they're like martha is a jewess yeah and martha introduced her as a jewess really hard to spin that if you're not not Jewish, don't say Jewish like that. God. So, yeah. So, Martha is the sister of Lazarus. She's also got another sister named Mary.

No, not that Mary or that Mary, actually. The fourth most popular Mary of all everybody. Martha, her sister is in our movie. That's who we got. That's who we found under the couch. Yeah. But Martha, she liked to cook and clean for Jesus and his disciples because she's a woman. But some of her friends thought that

Jesus was stupid. So we cut to one of her friends thinking Jesus is stupid. This is Talia. Right? She's going to represent those kids with their damn potato flashlight. Yeah. And I don't know how they captured this, but they somehow managed to give Martha in this

cartoon that flattened, defeated voice that all cult members have. Right? Where you're like, hey, you're standing in front of the thing and they're like, I would like to tell you about Jesus. And you're like, nah, just take a pill. I gotta, I'm going to the... Yeah. You're like halfway

to crying in every sentence. Every sentence. I gotta, I'm going to the. Yeah. You're like halfway to crying in every sentence. Every sentence. I could just, do you want to come with me forever and leave it all behind? Right. But Talia is trying to lead, Talia is her friend supposedly, but she's trying to lead her away from Jesus is what we're watching here. Yeah. So that night we get Jesus showing up in town with

his entourage. Jesus has short hair in this because J-Dub Jesus ain't no fucking hippie. Okay. This is contextual. I'm sorry. But if you watch this whole lesson instead of just the animation, Jesus has the exact same haircut

as the guy giving this lesson in the J-Dub video. So he very clearly was like, no, no, I think he would have a side part, you know, just like, well, base it on whoever you want. Watch the whole thing.

You'll see the guy's side part. It's super funny. It's like the low budget movie that I had to have the same guy be multiple parts, but it's a cartoon. Right. Right. Yeah.

So Jesus shows up and I enjoyed this part. Martha's like, oh, Jesus is here. They brought five unannounced friends to hang out. Cool. Cool. This is awesome. Yep. Great. Yeah. And we watch her waiting on everyone hand and foot. And of course,

this is the one part of the Bible where she actually shows up, right? Like her sister is just listening to Jesus speak while she does all the work. And Jesus is like, why don't you also just listen to me speak and stop doing that? And she's like, oh, okay. And that's her whole story. And now he's going to give a really long speech. I love this. I love what's happening.

This is great. So anyway, so next day by the well,ia is telling them that christianity is way too progressive on the issue of women's rights for her you which is that the women sitting in and listening in on the lesson like the men it's it's weird because their villain is is advocating current jw policy honestly yeah so much so that when I was trying to decide which JW we would do, it was between this cartoon and a different one about how women shouldn't speak up so much

during family prayer. So it's a weird thing to have your villains say in your movie. Right, so this friend Talia is like, hold on, he did word teaching to ladies? Get the fuck out of it. Women are supposed to make food and that's it. And then some guy

out of nowhere, he just pops into the screen and he's like, that's exactly true. Women are servants. Yes, they are. Bye. And that's the end of that point.

I have lunch with Carl the Pug of Peckercorn every week. Motherfucker. So yeah, so then on our way home, Martha sees Lazarus all passed out sick in the road so you know we cut to him on his on his deathbed talia has brought food for him and then talia and

martha have to have another argument about whether jesus is the risen christ or whatever yeah right jesus is a good friend good friends raise each other from the dead, damn it. Right, but Talia's like, no, we all hate that fucking guy. Jesus is the terrible boyfriend that everybody warns you about. And Christian people are like, yeah, but when Dogecoin blows up, I'm just saying.

No, you guys gotta come see Jesus and his band. He's really loud. Right, but of course,arus dies before jesus can get back to to help him and i just we cut back to the little girl telling us this story she shows us her her crayon drawing of jesus raising lazarus they've got lazarus as a little mummy in the picture because i guess either you can lean into how stupid your story is or you can lie about what it says it's one or the other right yeah so dad's talking to the family here and he's like okay so lazarus

died and then what happened and i wanted sophia the kid to be like martha joined the fucking science club i don't know how is this helpful what the fuck are you talking about but yeah and then and then we the moms explains but even though jesus brought lazarus back to life a lot of the other jews weren't convinced that he was the messiah and i'm like yeah it helps if you don't say that part out loud because that's where your story really falls apart though also i love that they can't help but do their stupid the Christ thing. This is just, again, one of the sad Mormonism took all the good shit. JWs are like, his name's not Jesus Christ. His name is Jesus the Christ.

Because the idiots who started Jehovah's Witnesses were like, they don't say what his last name is. It's probably not Christ. We should clarify that and talk like bad GPT generators when we talk about our Lord and Savior. They think they're going to get to heaven, and he's going to be like, hey, guys, thanks, because everyone else was having a really hard time

fighting me in the phone book. They were looking under C for Christ. No, I'm not Jesus the Christ Christ. I can see the confusion. No, I'm not Jesus the Christ Christ. I can see the confusion. No, just that. Also, in Jehovah's Witness-ism, is Jehovah the name of God? Is that what they're using it for? Yeah.

Okay, when they say it, why does it sound crazy every time? Like every J-Dub, it doesn't matter what part of the world they're from. Every J-Db is from minnesota the moment they say jehovah right yeah why is that yeah it's i i guarantee you it's somewhere at a secret meeting that we haven't deserved yet is the like all right everyone get together gather up hova just to really bother everyone else everyone we're doing the stewie

griffin wh sound but for our Lord and Savior. Yeah. So, yeah, but mom explains that people like Talia might seem like your friends, but they actually hate Jesus and would turn him in for the reward money in a fucking heartbeat. Well, and look, I would get that. I would understand that, right? Talia turning over Christ. But no, Talia is just like I don't know and she's like hey hey be my

religion or we can't be friends and Talia is like I'm getting the fuck out of here you seem like a nut bag Martha well right yeah that ends up being the moral of the story how do you know if somebody should be your friend if they share your mom and dad's religion yes that's what the whole fucking

video is that's what so the the flashback to the bible is over and dad's like so what did we learn about friendship and the correct answer from sophia would be like no jews and he'd be like yep correct that is it his exact words are that's my girl yeah jesus that's fucking dark so yeah so she goes upstairs to finish her homework that is her bible reading homework apparently and while she's up there she prays that jehovah will send her a friend okay this is the best her little turtle looks over and he's like what am i fucking chopped liver over here i might not i might not count well no the the turtle doesn't believe in Jesus either. It's so good.

She's praying to God, like, let me get one friend. I'm a child. And nothing happens because, you know, God's not there. And she has to look over this sad kid and be like, turtle, does this count? Is this, I'm a friend. I wanted the turtle then to like put on a yarmulke and pull out a birthday cake.

Shakes his head out. Do a blood transfusion somehow. Yeah, right, right, yeah. But no, the turtle doesn't count. But just then, Lydia, the 45-year-old from church, shows up to help work on her talk. And wouldn't you know it, Lydia's wearing turtle earrings turns out she's a turtle fan too okay i have to talk about how this was shot because i was so deeply confused by the eroticism

huh so noah is right she is wearing turtle earrings but the way the movie shows that to you is she does a slow motion hair toss and i was like this little girl wants to fuck this grown up who came over to her house I didn't see the turtle there so I just thought I thought they were doing like a yep and and then the whole thing ends with Lydia going you know what Sophia I think we're

gonna be friends so hooray Sophia's prayers are answered. I'm seven feet tall and 45 the end. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, whether they intended it to be or not, the moral of this story is very clearly don't be a Jehovah's Witness. And I guess with that important reminder, we'll wrap up this installment of God Awful Minis.

Before we reduce heat and let simmer tonight, I want to thank everybody who's been sending headlines to us at scathingnews at gmail.com. It's making our jobs a lot easier and helping us branch out and touch on stories from more places. So even if you haven't heard one of your suggestions on the show, know that they are appreciated. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new

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