The Scathing Atheist - 539: Data Over Dogma Edition
Episode Date: June 15, 2023In this week’s episode, we’ll speak ill of the dead; the Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate "medium tepid pride month" so as not to persecute Christianity; and we’ll talk to the guys from Data Over D...ogma, because any time you put something over dogma, you’re on the right track. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it here: scathingnews@gmail.com 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: Check out Data Over Dogma here: https://open.spotify.com/show/1KKyNZlSapgVppDT2jrCBl Check Dan out on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@maklelan?lang=en --- Headlines: Pat Robertson is dead: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/what-we-can-learn-from-the-disgraceful Pope Benedict's heirs do NOT want the inheritance money: https://religionnews.com/2023/06/09/pope-benedict-xvis-cousins-stand-to-inherit-his-money-none-of-them-want-it/ The L.A. Dodgers never should've caved when honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/the-la-dodgers-never-shouldve-caved Ohio landlord demands tenants remove Pride flags: https://www.yahoo.com/news/citing-catholic-faith-fairfield-county-100116495.html Fox News host says environmentalism is stupid because the afterlife is real: https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-rachel-campos-duffy-why-save-earth-when-afterlife-is-real --- This Week in Misogyny: Woman in UK jailed for taking abortion pill too late: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-65886472 Southern Baptist Convention moves to oust churches with female pastors: https://apnews.com/article/southern-baptist-convention-women-pastors-church-appeals-7c2d7f248b2156721616387d77528cb5
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Warning, the following podcast contains tears of the kingdom references.
We told you they kept coming earlier.
This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by MySheetsRock, HelloFresh,
and by Piat Brand Inflatable Lawyers.
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And now, The Skating Atheist.
Hello, my name is Bruce Robinson.
I am a third-year law student at Wake Forest University School of Law.
And I can tell you, after listening to my business law professor
defend Henry Ford's connections to Adolf Hitler for a 30-minute class
that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey people. It's Thursday.
It's June 15th.
And it's National Megalodon Day.
Fuck yeah.
What?
Celebrate by asking creationists what happened to the Megalodon and then drink every time they say they died in the flood.
I have no illusions.
I'm Ethan Wright.
And from Ann Arbor, Michigan and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist.
On this week's episode, we'll speak ill of the dead.
We'll enjoy it.
The Los Angeles Dodgers celebrate medium tepid pride month so as not to persecute Christianity.
And we'll talk to the guys from Data Over Dogma because anytime you put something over dogma,
you're on the right track.
But first, the diatribe.
I have this personal policy where if I'm writing a response to a Facebook argument and I have to say to myself and another thing more than twice, I stop and I ask myself, hey man, is this a
diatribe? And in this case, the answer is yes. So first let me summarize the Facebook argument that
I was wading into. The question at hand was whether there's such a thing as a harmless, irrational belief. And I feel like you already know which
side of this debate I'm going to fall on, but there's a person on the thread that identifies
as a deist, and appropriately enough, they're on the side of irrationality. See, by their argument,
a belief doesn't become bad simply by being irrational. The belief has to reliably lead
people to harmful behavior
before you can actually take issue with it. And of course, implicit in the argument is the idea
that being irrational doesn't count as harmful. Now, this assertion gets a bit of pushback from
a person who says flatly that all irrational beliefs are harmful. It's a private group,
so I don't want to attribute the quote, but I'm going to read a piece of the response to that verbatim, the deist response in part, quote, I really don't think all irrational
belief is harmful. The belief that seeing a shooting star brings good luck is absolutely
harmless, for example. If you imply that irrational belief always leads to harmful
thoughts or behaviors, that's a slippery slope argument, end quote. So first of all,
quick correction on the logical fallacy there. That's not what a slippery slope argument, end quote. So first of all, quick correction on the logical fallacy there.
That's not what a slippery slope argument is. A slippery slope argument is A could lead to B and
B is bad, therefore A is bad. But if A will lead to B and B is bad, then you're talking about a
consequence, not a slippery slope. What's more, slippery slope is an informal logical fallacy,
meaning it's not evidence that the person using it is wrong.
Appeal to authority is an informal logical fallacy, but also the correct way of thinking most of the time, right?
But that's a minor point, certainly not worth its own diatribe.
The larger issue is with the example of a benign irrational belief that this person chose.
See, the only reason that one can even make the assertion that believing a shooting star brings good luck isn't bad is because nobody actually believes that.
If you spent a few minutes just contemplating a world where that's not just like a fun little superstition that we all play along with, but an actual belief, like a religious belief, it's terrifying.
I mean, consider this.
Consider what you would have to do if you actually thought that seeing a meteor enter the atmosphere had some material effect on your fortune. I mean, I feel like at the very least, you'd be sleep deprived and have a permanently stiff neck, right?
any noticeable amount, you'd be crazy not to move to a dark sky area, drive around to a clear area every evening, and then spend all night staring up into the sky, no? Hell, assuming shit like
having a healthy kid and mom recovering from her hip surgery are under the purview of your luck,
you'd have a moral obligation to do that. And one way or the other, you'd have a moral obligation
to convince mom and your kid to do it, right? And what of all the various things that you'd be neglecting that actually could improve
your situation in life, right? No belief can exist without sacrifice. And what about the
false confidence you might have after the Leonids? False beliefs necessarily lead to uninformed
actions after all. And even if you could rein in all the potential excesses of
such an unjustified belief, what about all the people more inclined to take it too far that
you'd be encouraging with your endorsement? But none of that touches on the real problem here,
which is that no belief exists in a vacuum. For you to believe that a meteor gives you good luck,
you have to believe in luck. Not just in terms of fortunate happenstance,
but like luck is a quantifiable thing that a person can gain more of. So what is luck physically?
How do meteoroids get it? How do they pass it to you? Where is it stored? How is it cashed in?
Who cashes it in? What other irrational beliefs must we now construct to support this one?
And keep in mind that the only real
way to avoid building this intricate trustwork of irrationality is to cordon off this area to
inquiry, to refuse to allow ourselves to think critically about it at all. And if we do that,
of course, we've lost the ability to even assess whether or not the belief has become harmful.
And of course, we also have to examine how we got there, right? You weren't born
believing that shooting stars were good luck. That's a piece of information that was given to
you along the way. And in this hypothetical, it's one that you accepted. How? What process did you
use to examine this assertion before adopting a belief in it? Now, honestly, I don't know what
that would be, but the one thing I can say about it with certainty is that it's faulty.
You're measuring the veracity of the information around you with a broken gauge.
How can we say with any confidence that nothing more harmful is going to find its way in along that same path?
Now, of course, we're never called upon to debunk shooting star belief, right?
Because that's not a belief that people have.
And debunking that wouldn't be worth a diatribe. But that's not really the irrational belief at
the heart of this debate at all, is it? The irrational belief that we're talking about by
proxy is deism. And in a sense, that's just another example of an argument disproving itself
by existing, right? Sure, deism is amongst the least harmful forms of religious belief,
but that's only because it makes no real claims.
It defines God down to nothing and then emphatically insists that somehow that nothing exists.
But even that non-assertion clearly includes a risk of harm.
It could stifle curiosity, right?
It could fool you into thinking a question had been answered when it wasn't and thereby rob you of an opportunity for discovery.
It could inspire and support another person on their way to a much less justified belief and at the very least it
could leave you feeling the need to defend the concept of having irrational beliefs on facebook
joining me for headlines tonight is the wine to my cheese, Heath Enright.
Heath, are you ready to fight over who gets to be the cheese again?
Daydreaming.
Nope, I guess not.
What?
So while I make Heath some coffee, we're going to take a break for a word from this week's first sponsor, MySheetsRock.
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All right, so you want me to help you get rid
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You're going to make a giant cookie?
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Okay, we're done.
We're done.
And now, back to the headlines.
In our lead story tonight,
history's least pleasant version of the pitch drop experiment
finally ended last week
when former host of the 700 Club,
founder of the Christian
Broadcasting Network
and upside down light bulb
from a house fire,
Pat Robertson,
finally succumbed
to the icy hand of death.
Dust in the wind.
Which was nice.
Yeah, no, but it was
in one final fuck you
to the atheist community, though,
the bastard waited to do it
until the morning
our last episode came out. Unbelievable. And and of course many people think it's inappropriate to celebrate the death
of a human being no matter how repugnant they were in life but luckily that motherfucker stopped
listening to us a while back so what are you doing we brought cheap conical hats and noisemakers to
this motherfucker yes we did just circling back though what are those people celebrating right not the
death of a terrible human being when do you use that verb in your life right exactly no more
appropriate time now the cause of death isn't listed anywhere and i assume that's because a
coroner's boss somewhere saw finished melting and assumed that that must have been an error but whatever the cause was i owe it a beer because that
motherfucker was awful how awful you ask virginia's office of consumer affairs once recommended he be
prosecuted for fraud because they found that he was siphoning money off of a charity for rwandan
refugees to fly diamond mining equipment around Africa for the African resource extraction company
he owned.
And he was so evil that a detail
that blatantly villainous
sort of got lost in the sea
of terrible shit he did for most people.
It's like a collage
of terrible villains from movies there.
I don't know.
He got it all in there.
It's insane.
You know, some terrified family member of his is trying to like quietly sell, you know,
crotch laser with table as is fake address or something.
Meeting people in an alleyway.
So, yeah.
So Marion Gordon Robinson was born on March 22nd of 1762 to Gladys Churchill Robinson and
father fucking time.
He earned a law degree at Yale
because his dad was rich, but he failed the bar
because you can't buy passing the bar.
Then, when it became clear that his
expensive education had been wasted
on somebody too dumb to lawyer, he found
Jesus and became a faith healer.
He did spend
decades trying to underplay his faith healer roots, but in his early career,
he was, as The Guardian puts it, in his obituary, quote, almost a caricature of a snake oil
salesman, end quote.
They wrote that?
Mm-hmm.
Fantastic.
He would then go on to help pioneer the burgeoning world of televangelism and ultimately
become america's second wealthiest pastor amassing a fortune of over a hundred million dollars before
his death okay and let's not forget about the real victim here the snake oil industry like the
anti-determination league for snake oil guilds should have a word with the guardian right that
hell yeah he was of course no stranger to controversy during his 300-year career as a Christian broadcaster.
He called feminism a, quote, socialist anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, and become lesbians, end quote.
And socialist is the dumbest part of that.
How is that an economic thing to you?
You're so dumb.
And socialist is the dumbest part of that.
How is that an economic thing to you?
You're so dumb.
When former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a stroke in 2006,
Robertson said it was God's retribution for him giving land back to the Palestinians.
Yikes.
When a quarter of a million Haitians died in an earthquake in 2010,
he said they had it coming because of a pact their ancestors made with Satan.
Satan, sure.
When 3,000 Americans died on 9-11, he had Jerry Falwell on his show to pin the blame on, quote,
pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union, and people for the American way, end quote.
Marks and angles.
To which Pat just gleefully nodded along.
Sure.
A list of his worst utterances could fill hours so suffice to say his is the kind of life that justifies mortality yeah and he looks like an elmer fudd
parade balloon got deflated let's just not forget that he looks ridiculous he looked like that he
looked and now he's rotting similar like but yeah corpsey like but yeah right right what's the
difference of course that's not to say that there's nothing sad about pat roberts's death Now he's rotting. Similar. But yeah. Corpse-y. Yeah, right. What's the difference?
Of course, that's not to say that there's nothing sad about Pat Roberts' death, as well
as being a rich source of ready material for the entire history of our show.
He was the inspiration for what I still believe is Heath's most brilliant nickname to date,
P-Robes.
Anal P-Robes.
I like Patty Melts, too, because he's really melty.
Patty Melts was pretty fucking good too
yeah exactly so yeah maybe you're one and you're four so when it comes to pat robertson himself i
simply say rest in urine soaked dirt but it is with a heavy heart and a tearful eye that i send
pee robes and patty melts across that rainbow bridge and in splitting hairs news executors are trying to distribute the estate of joseph ratzinger aka
pope benedict the 16th and nobody wants his money because he was hot garbage now he's called dead
garbage and yeah that was a creative selling point by whomever pointed that out. But it still wasn't enough to convince any family members to receive his filthy money.
In addition to the basic morality involved in that decision, the heirs, who all live in Germany, are bound by estate laws that make inheritors responsible for any legal claims against the dead piece of shit you take money from.
And some of those claims might just
happen oh what a great law right oh i want that i want that but also with prison terms for trump
skits sure you don't have the money but uh now you're responsible and a big thanks to scott and
deborah for the link skating news at gmail.com um eli will go ziplining with you oh there you go we'll send you
his phone number you give him a text so on top of joey rats being pure evil and looking like
palpatine giving a ted talk about a timeshare opportunity he's also a post-mortem defendant
in a high-profile case in germany about clerical sexual abuse his role in the giant network of crime that we know of starts in 1980 when he was
Archbishop of Munich. That's when a pedophile priest was transferred from Essen to Munich.
Ratzinger and the upper management were told about that guy's record, but they kept it a secret from
the public and they put the abuser back on the job. And that guy spent the next three decades
doing exactly what you might guess.
Ratzinger completely denied knowing about any of that until January of last year,
when a report on the Munich Archdiocese came out detailing his complicity and explaining that he
very clearly lied to investigators. And then two days later, he released a statement that said, almost exact quote,
oh, that pedophile, Hawaiian Gable.
That was an oversight during the editing of my original statement to investigators.
The second part of that was the exact quote.
Wow.
Adding quote, but come on, look at me.
How did you not know I was evil?
I'm literally Palpatine giving you a timeshare pitch.
Come on. So the inheritance of a timeshare pitch. Come on. Right. So
the inheritance of a pope, it's normally
a simple matter. The pope agrees
to be the magical conduit
between the god of the universe and
a very large pedophile cartel. And in return
he gets a nice big salary,
gets a castle, gets a little white
riding hood costume, and some
mystical items made of Nazi gold.
And Benedict was actually in the Hitler youth, literally.
So that was extra fun for him.
He came full circle.
The other part of that deal
is that the Pope keeps working until he dies
and his estate gets willed to the Holy See.
But Benedict resigned early before he died.
The first Pope to do that in 600 years.
And he ended up with
a will for his personal estate, which includes money from his memoirs about, you know, a little
scalawag in Hitler Youth becoming the Supreme Pontiff of the Vatican. It's a great, rags-to-riches
story. So the executor of the will recently reached out to the heirs. And so far, even without being
told the size of the inheritance they've either
completely ignored any communication out of fear or said absolutely not lose this number no
hopefully that keeps happening and the plaintiffs in that big case take all his fucking money yeah
no shit incidentally what does it say about a motherfucker when membership in the hitler youth
is the least offensive bullet point on your resume right yeah that's just a kid no you're right that is the
least offensive thing in your thing great so bottom line vatican city has billions of dollars
that's owed to countless victims across the world across time every country should be doing sanctions and lawsuits,
a big siege.
Whatever you come up with,
get creative.
Why are we allowing
Vatican City to continue existing?
Amen.
War criminals.
And on that quick reminder,
we're going to pause for a word
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I'm sorry, a what?
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I don't see how that's relevant.
A man wrote the Bible.
A whore is what she wants.
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.
Well, damn it if the misogyny isn't just flying at me from every direction this week.
So we're going to start our international tour of sexism in the UK this week,
where a 44-year-old mother of three was just sentenced to spend over a year in prison for having an abortion.
You see, she was between 32 and 34 weeks pregnant,
and according to UK laws, abortions are only legal up to 24 weeks.
And after 10 weeks, they have to be carried out
in a clinic but during COVID lockdowns a lot of restrictions were relaxed so when Carla Foster
found herself moving back in with an estranged partner while pregnant with another dude's kid
she got an abortion pill via telemedicine but her bodily autonomy had crossed some
arbitrary line so it suddenly belonged to the state and now she's going to jail
see apparently when the uk wants to know how to handle abortion law they look to the same place
the supreme court looks 1861 abortion was legalized there back in the 60s but only to a point
and after that this 160 year old law takes over and means a woman could theoretically be, quoting from the law here,
quote, kept in penal servitude for life, end quote. In Foster's case, she's getting a 14 month
sentence in prison and another 14 in home confinement for deciding not to bring a child
into a volatile situation during an indefinite period of national lockdown. But I need to wrap things up this week
back here in the good old U.S. of A.
With a quick nod to Scott for sending us in this story,
I have to give you the latest update
on the Southern Baptist Convention's
war against the slightest modicum of progress.
See, the SBC met this week to discuss
all the important issues facing their congregations,
like their failure to address charges
of sexual abuse cover-up and their declining and rapidly aging membership.
I'm just kidding.
They spent the whole time complaining about women pastors.
See, starting earlier this year, the SBC started booting churches that allowed female pastors.
Needless to say, that didn't involve a hell of a lot of booting, but it did include the Saddleback Church, a massive and pretty well-known megachurch.
And to be clear, Saddleback's policy, the one deemed too progressive by the SBC, is that it's okay for women to be pastors as long as there is a man in charge of them.
That's actually their policy.
But that's too woke, so Saddleback is out.
And now they're at a stupid convention about stupidity arguing whether or not the ghost magic counts
if there's no penis involved.
So yeah, sad to keep losing fights to people
that spend their time arguing about shit like this
but it's nice to be reminded how publicly
they advertise their weaknesses.
So on that note, I'll wrap things up
and hand you back over to Noah and Heath.
Thank you, Lucinda.
Next up in headlines in Drag Bunt News,
we have a story about baseball and drag activism.
So I did a Drag Bunt thing.
That was pretty good, yeah.
The baseball component is the Los Angeles Dodgers
and the drag activists are the sisters of perpetual indulgence,
a team of activist performers who use drag and religious imagery
to raise money for great causes
and also make fun of bigotry. Like, for example, the stuff that's built into every major religion
in history, definitely Christianity right now. So in recognition of that excellent work,
the Dodgers gave their Community Hero Award to the sisters and invited the group to a pregame
ceremony scheduled for June 16th. But then the bigots had a meltdown of course all over los angeles and all over the country
and the dodgers disinvited the sisters but that was fucking stupid so the dodgers undisinvited
the group and now everyone hates the dodgers which is absolutely fair yeah right no look i get how a
business doesn't want to wade into social issues
where they don't have to.
But once you reach a point
where one side is mad at syrup
and Mr. Potato Head,
you just got to,
you have to chuck that instinct
to the wind, man.
So just to be clear
about the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,
they're amazing
and they absolutely should be celebrated
and given awards.
They've spent the last several decades using their performances to raise money for AIDS patients,
supporting queer causes with grants, officiating same-sex marriages,
and just generally protesting shitty bigots.
Their performances include a public exorcism of Pope John Paul II.
Nice.
And also a public exorcism of Phyllis Schlafly both pre-mortem that was back in the 80s
early on and more recently the sisters did a protest performance in march of this year when
they interrupted kirk cameron during a reading of his transphobic hate crime slash children's book
at a public library nice and that protest actually got referenced by mike pence when he launched his
campaign for president last week who doesn't matter i think he was like it was something
some guy named mike pence he's running they made some bigots all mad and huffy that's the point
and they're great it's so weird how a list of being good people and opposing christians isn't
two different lists isn't it it's so weird that that's just one long list.
It is weird.
And a big thanks to Eric, Gage, Debra, and David for sending us links as this story unfolded.
So here's the timeline.
The Dodgers announced the award and invited the sisters for the ceremony about a month ago.
Anna?
What are the guys talking about?
It's the newest, the greatest Christian freakout.
And of course, that freakout included Bill Donahue of the Catholic League,
who called it an unprovoked assault on Catholics.
Nope, it's very much provoked.
It was provoked.
Absolutely.
And the head of a group called Catholic Vote called the sisters a literal hate group, and
Marco Rubio used the phrase
mocking Christians through
diabolical parodies.
See, now that's what keeps
us down, Heath. Our parodies aren't
diabolical, right? We need to get
on that shit.
By the way, Marco Rubio, he's like a senator
or something. I forget. He's a Republican. Doesn't matter.
So, after a few days of Christian freakouts, the Dodgers decided to appease the fucking
terrorists and disinvited the sisters.
They wrote some bullshit tweet, now deleted, that said they didn't want to distract from
Pride Night.
Oh, really?
Yeah, because a pride group would have distracted from the pride.
So from there, the dodgers organization
spent the next five days learning why they're idiots from you know reasonable people and they
uncaved sort of though they re-invited the sisters but they also announced the relaunch of their
christian faith and family day to help you know ameliorate all the inclusivity. You got to balance that stuff out. Right, yeah, yeah.
That second thing was thanks in part to bigot whining
from super expert ball throwing guy,
but also very much inexpert human being,
Clayton Kershaw.
He's a piece of shit, we learned.
He helped announce the Jesus Day event.
And keep in mind that what this concession says,
for both parties,
both parties agreed on the idea that the opposite of not being a bigot is being a Christian.
Right.
They're both saying that.
Bottom line, big takeaway here.
Fuck the Dodgers because they moved out of Brooklyn.
But OK, also for like caving to the horrible bigotry, whatever.
But they moved out of Brooklyn.
Fuck you.
How long did a New York sports fan hold a grudge?
Well, at least a quarter century longer than they have been alive on the goddamn planet, people.
There you have it.
My dad was born in Brooklyn.
He's in the will that I have to yell about this every time I get a chance.
Fuck Walter O'Malley.
And in always a prides made news.
Christianity once more misinterpreted the First Amendment
so thoroughly they thought it gave them freedom
over other people's speech this week
when a Columbus, Ohio landlord
sent a letter to his tenants demanding they remove
any messaging in support of
Pride Month. Fuck you.
Yes, Catholic landlord and guy who was
clearly named by a fantasy author whose seven book
into a series they've already checked out of, Link Llewellyn, informed all of the businesses renting space from him in writing that, quote, to willingly allow my company's properties to be used for such a thing would be offensive to God, end quote.
All right.
Well, here's what needs to happen from now on.
God, end quote.
All right.
Well, here's what needs to happen.
From now on, Link needs to get nothing but the gayest possible rent checks, physical paper,
rainbows everywhere, graphic doodles in the margins.
Memo says this money had a bunch of gay sex very recently.
Yes.
Just like everything you can come up with.
He probably won't cash them, but you paid.
So, yeah.
So this letter is just as dripping with douchebaggery as you'd imagine it starts by pointing out that in his religion june isn't recognized as pride month
but rather as sacred heart of jesus month what during which we're called on to quote reflect on
and appreciate the love christ has for all human beings without exception and how much he suffered for us because of our sins in rejecting his love,
which has pride at its root.
End quote.
Damn that sentence structure.
Yikes.
They were so close to like getting the point there.
Nope.
Oh no,
not really.
He then goes on to describe pride month as quote,
a sex related observance.
And then he says that other people promoting it would be in direct conflict
with his religious belief, which though true doesn't fucking matter. Cause it's other, observance and then he says that other people promoting it would be in direct conflict with
his religious belief which though true doesn't fucking matter because it's other people
unfortunately other people as a concept christians are woefully ill-equipped to understand apparently
that's confusing you know not you what lost me yeah hey link i gotta gotta break something to you bad news about july and august
too because you know julius and augustus definitely fucking some dudes and loving it
so those are out also wednesday thursday friday saturday all super gay yeah lots of blasphemy
on the signage all over your building if there's like open day signs, anything like that. And finally tonight, in saying the loud part out louder news.
Given the obsession with the rapture and the apocalypse among evangelicals,
we atheists will sometimes refer to Christianity as a doomsday cult.
Now, some people might think of themselves as exaggerating when they say that,
but I am 100% serious.
Well, so are the lunatics
on Fox News, but they think it's a good thing that they're a doomsday cult. During last week's
episode of Fox and Friends Sunday, the topic of the environment came up and the all-Christian
trio of hosts explained how everyone needs to stop worrying because, approximate quote,
we're a doomsday cult. The earth doesn't matter. No, seriously, Heath En approximate quote we're a doomsday cult
the earth doesn't matter no seriously heathen right we are a doomsday cult we are saying that
proudly ah it's funny because like sometimes people look at how bad the news cycle is and
they'll say to us well you know at least that makes your job easier right but like no no it
means it's easier to find relevant stories to talk about. Sure. But our job is to exaggerate.
How the fuck are we supposed to do that when their opening bit is earth doesn't matter
because Jesus.
That's literally what's happening here.
So here's a few of the terrifying highlights.
The conversation started with a mention of GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy,
who made a pledge to be guided by his faith if he wins the election.
None of that matters because he's a not white person in the GOP primary,
and he's polling behind Mike Pence, who doesn't matter.
So they mention Ramaswamy's faith and how Republicans talk about religion more than Democrats.
And that's when co-host Rachel Campos Duffy made the natural segue
to the wonderful benefits
of being an apocalypse cult.
She said, quote,
for them, that's us,
that's us liberal atheists, I guess,
for them, where we live right now,
this place, Earth is it.
So everything's on the line here for them.
They think they can perfect this Earth.
Those of us who have faith
don't believe that. What? I mean, I would love it if for one fucking time, the random musings of a
Fox host weren't also perfectly cogent answers to the question. So what makes you people so dangerous?
Jesus. Always works. Just flip to a random page of Fox News. Absolutely. So here's the follow-up from co-host, white guy number one, Will Kane.
He said, quote, if you believe your personal political opinions are on par with the highest
of the hierarchies, sick, and, you know, equal to faith in religion, then you'll go to some
of the links that we've seen.
Why?
And even worse,
their Fox and Friends weekend co-host,
Will Kane.
Shit, too far, too far.
Even I heard that one.
Damn it.
Yeah, so good point there, Will Kane.
Lesson learned.
Us godless liberals take our opinions way too seriously.
Instead, we need to relax
and have faith in the supreme ghost of the universe
who decides whether we
get tortured for eternity in a lake of fire super chill like that is what we need to be
all right well since that story basically amounts to a couple of christians saying
it's a good thing atheist watchdog media exists back and forth for a minute i suppose our work
here is done heath thanks as always jumanji when we come back, we'll have buy one,
get one free deal on white guys named Dan.
Given the number of competing voices with contradictory claims about what the Bible means
or even says, it's easy to lose track of the fact that it actually does mean stuff,
right? Like when the original authors wrote it, they were actually trying to convey very specific
things, but those things are often obscured by theology, archaic language, mistranslations,
scribes with ulterior motives, and deliberate misinformation to name a few. So much so that
it's hard for a lay person to refute any specific claim about the book's meaning, which is why I was so excited to learn that longtime friend of
the show, Dan Beecher, was teaming up with TikTok's favorite biblical scholar, Dan McClellan,
for a new podcast called Data Over Dogma to tackle this very problem, and they were kind
enough to join us tonight to talk about it. Dan, Dan, welcome back to slash to the show.
Thank you so much for having us. Thank you so much for having
us. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time and the invitation. Yeah, you bet. So, okay. So first
things first, obviously you guys are both named Dan. Yeah. I can't do Dan one and Dan two. I can't
rank you guys. So how are we going to do this? Who's taller? Is there a big Dan, little Dan,
or what are we going to do? Well, I go by McClellan, a phonetic spelling of my last name.
And ever since high school,
people have called me Mac. So if you want to call me Mac, that would be fine.
All right. Awesome. Awesome. And that's good because I don't think I can call Dan
anything else at this point. I've known him for 10 years.
You could call me Uncle Dan. Some people...
Oh, there you go. There you go. Uncle Dan and Mac. I like it. This is getting real personable.
So Uncle Dan, tell me, how did you guys hook up? How did this happen?
Well, it's funny. I went on TikTok because some very young friends told me that I should,
and I was very skeptical of it. But instantly, unlike the experience of several of Republican
legislators and whatnot, I didn't find only young girls dancing and skimp,
you know, skimpily dressed dancing. I actually found a lot of really substantive, awesome content.
And one of the things that popped up on my, on my feed a bunch was this guy who I was pretty sure
was an atheist, but he was doing this really cool biblical scholarship stuff.
But I couldn't tell where his stance was. And when I found out that he was a Mormon living
in the same city that I was living in, I was fascinated. And so I literally reached out to
him. This was before he had half a million followers. And I was like, we have to get to know each other because you're too interesting for me not to know, you know, being in the same city as me.
And foolishly, he agreed to go to lunch with me.
And, you know, we've been friends ever since.
That was a couple of years ago, a year and a half.
I don't know.
I've got no sense of
time. But we stayed friends and I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for him to post
something that I wouldn't like or for me to post something that he wouldn't like. And then we could
both write each other off because we come from such different camps. he being a believer and me being a, you know, filthy atheist.
And it ended up
never happening.
We both,
you know,
this has become a paragon
of inter-belief
meeting of the minds.
Yeah, well,
I will say,
I was super excited
when I learned
that there was going to be
a long-form version
of some of the stuff
that I'd seen on TikTok.
But for those people
who aren't familiar
with Mac's existing work,
so, and Mac, I'll let you take this one. Give me the elevator pitch. What is data over dogma all about? Well, when I started getting on TikTok, primarily it was about confronting
misinformation and data over dogma became kind of a bit of a motto for my channel because I was there to try to cut through a lot of the dogmatism and the identity
politics and the retreating to these battle lines that get drawn up in public discourse.
And I positioned myself to be a little bit more of a referee, somebody calling balls and strikes
and providing the data irrespective of whose side it may or
may not serve or whose interests may or not be centered by the data. And so data over dogma is
about confronting misinformation. It is about putting the data at the front, whether it serves
my interests, whether it goes directly against my interests, that's going to be front and center.
And then it's also an opportunity to try to democratize access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, kind of break down the walls of the ivory tower.
Because so much of the misinformation that is out there is out there and is in widespread circulation because it is what is freely accessible online.
And that's stuff that is in the public domain, which means it's usually stuff that's a century or two old. And so it's wildly outdated stuff. We still got people making arguments based on Fraser's The Golden Bough from the 19th century.
of people don't know where to find up-to-date accurate scholarship. They don't know where to find the stuff that has been vetted by the academy. And so, part of what we're trying to do
as well is help expose people to up-to-date scholarly perspectives on the Bible and what
it is and is not doing and quote-unquote saying. And yeah, along the way, we try to have a little bit of fun as well.
And we'll find a way, we need to find a way to incorporate more responding to claims that are
out there on the podcast. I do a lot of that on TikTok, but I would like to find a way to get
that into the podcast format as well. Okay. So now maybe this is just my personal bias or the
people that I've surrounded myself
with. But generally speaking, the people I know who are most into the Bible, not a lot of overlap
with the people I know who are most into going, huh, turns out I was wrong about this. I'll change
my opinion. So who is this show for exactly? Who's the intended audience for the podcast?
I think the intended audience is
whoever is interested in the data. And yeah, it's going to skew a little bit more toward the
skeptical side, just because these are folks who are going to be a little more open to the data.
And that includes the data that might complicate their assumptions. And there are going to be
people on the other side who are going to be interested in it as well. And there are going to be people on the other side who are going to be interested in it as well.
And there are going to be plenty of people in the middle. So it's, I think it's for whoever
is interested in understanding this and that's people who are on all sides of these questions.
I get comments all the time from people who are, who occupy every corner of the spectrum of belief.
every corner of the spectrum of belief.
Absolutely.
I mean, we're here talking to you.
And so obviously, I think, as an atheist, I think that this show has great appeal to non-religious people who are nevertheless interested in what is undeniably one of the
most, if not the most, influential books that we have.
most, if not the most influential books that we have. But we also have plenty of very devout believers who are nevertheless, who want their belief to be grounded in something more real
than just their own interpretation of what they read. Because I'll tell you something,
one of the reasons I wanted to do this podcast was because when i would go and read that book i had no idea what the fuck
was happening most of the time yeah it was absolutely baffling to me and i would constantly
you know i did stuff i used to do a show called the how-to heretic and i would do it large you
know i would just present large swaths of bible stories. You do that. You do the same thing
on your show, on this show. And I, when I would do all of this research, trying to figure out
what I'm even reading, because it's not remotely clear just in and of itself.
All right. So, so you actually bring me to the, to the next question that I, that I wanted to ask.
When I first started the show, it became obvious that I was going to need to know more about the
Bible. We had people, you know, obviously a lot of our listeners are ex-believers
and wanted to know our opinion on this or that passage. We do a lot of jokes about it. So,
I read the thing. I got me a Bible. I read it cover to cover. And then I thought, well,
that didn't help much. So, Mac, I'll ask you, like, why is the Bible so damn confusing?
There are a lot of reasons.
Probably the most conspicuous one is that we're talking about a large collection of conflicting and often contradicting texts that come from 2,000 to 3,000-ish years ago.
And so, not only are they written in another language, they're written in another time period, they're written in another culture,
And so not only are they written in another language, they're written in another time period, they're written in another culture, they're written for reasons that we don't and sometimes can't possibly understand to audiences that are not around anymore and that we don't really know or understand very well. And so it is in many ways a kind of choose your own adventure.
You're going to construct the meaning of the text in ways that are going to make the
text interesting or useful for you, for many people. So, particularly for people who approach
the Bible devotionally as an inspired text, they are going to believe most of the time that this
text has something to say to me in my specific circumstances. And for that to happen, they've got to negotiate with the text
because a lot of these stories have absolutely no relevance to the 21st century.
And so in order to have the text be meaningful to us, we need to negotiate with it. And because
text does not have inherent meaning, all reading is negotiating to one degree or another.
It's really about trying to
construct the meaning in our heads in a way that we think most closely approximates what the authors
were trying to achieve with their text. And that's easy for someone you grew up with or for someone
who speaks the same language and the same dialect and has the same accent as you and has seen the
same movies as you. But if you go to the UK,
there are going to be misunderstandings. There are going to be things you have to think about
a little harder before you get what they're trying to say. I tell a story from time to time
about my first weekend in Oxford when I stumbled across a KFC and I was like, sweet, and went in
and asked if they had biscuits. And they were like, why would we have biscuits? And I was like, sweet. And went in and asked if they had biscuits. And they were like, why would we
have biscuits? And I was like, oh, that's right. Biscuit means cookie here. And I was like, okay,
so what I'm looking for is, uh, it's brown. And yeah, I was like, it's flaky. It's, and I had
absolutely no clue how to describe this thing that I had always indexed with this word biscuit.
And people are like, oh, you should have said scone. And I was like,
I don't think of a scone. That's not a scone to me. And so I had to go eat at Burger King,
which luckily is right across the street on Corn Market Street, but it's right next to the Saxon
Tower, which is, if you're ever in Oxford,
you got to check out the Saxon Tower.
But because my experiences with the language
were so wildly different
from the experiences of this young man behind the counter,
and we both spoke the same language natively.
And lived at the same time, yeah.
And lived at the same time.
So now if we're going back to a language
that nobody speaks natively,
I mean, the modern Hebrew is related, but it is a distinct language. We go back to biblical Hebrew or Koine
Greek, the Greek used in the New Testament. This is wildly, wildly different from the languages
as we know them. And so we have to construct a lot more carefully the meaning from that.
And scholars are very, very careful about this. They do their best to understand the literary context, the historical context, the rhetorical context.
When was this written? What was going on? What were they trying to achieve? And those become
like the scaffolding to constructing a more careful understanding of what the author was
trying to get at. Many people though, read the Bible and they just want to know what's in it
for me. How is this going to be meaningful or useful to me? Which means it's just going to be their
subconscious, their intuitive cognition constructing that meaning. And then because
it's an authoritative text, it is used in the structuring of power and values and in
boundary maintenance and things like that, which means that's going to play a role in guiding those
intuitions about what it's going to mean. But, you know, the believers are not the only ones who do
that. At the same time, you have non-believers or folks who are antagonistic towards believers
who are going to approach the Bible because they want to use it as a weapon against another group.
Not all of those are going to do that, but I don't know
what kind of people. I've never heard of that happening. That's not, that can't be right.
I'm being a hundred percent honest when I think it happens less frequently,
but it still happens quite a bit. It does. And people who follow my channel, sometimes I get
angry messages from people who are like, I thought you were, you've changed, man. I thought you were
this way or that way or the other way. And I was like, I used to say in intros I do for
my channel, at some point, I am going to infuriate all of you because I am not here to be on anybody's
team. I am here to try to call balls and strikes. And, you know, there are a lot of folks who think
they understand the origins of Easter or of Christmas or what these texts say, Numbers 5 and the Sotah.
I think that's one, Dan, that you and I disagree about.
We don't. Here's the thing.
We don't disagree about it anymore because I actually trust your authority on this.
I had to take the L on that one because I, you know, you have a much richer understanding of it than I do.
Well, I will say my favorite moments, both on your TikTok channel and on your podcast,
are the moments that challenge my assumptions or what I thought.
So apropos of what you were just saying, in your experience,
what is the most common misunderstanding that you find atheists have about the Bible? I think it's kind of a trope. It's rhetoric that I see used a
lot that always frustrates me. But the idea that it is Bronze Age or Iron Age goat herders or
whatever, it's their writings. Almost none of it was written in the Bronze Age, if any at all was
written in the Bronze Age. A little bit was written in the Iron Age, but the majority of it was written by priests, by the intellectual leaders of Israel and Judah in the middle to the end of the first millennium BCE, at least when we're talking about the Hebrew Bible.
And then the New Testament was largely written by educated people later.
New Testament was largely written by educated people later. So, you know, that's not overturning the criticism of the Bible as outdated and unscientific, but it is a misrepresentation
that I think is a foundation for a lot of assumptions about the Bible that I see made by
people who are antagonistic toward believers that I would like to be able to correct.
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, no, I'm sure I've used exactly that phrasing in the past,
but yeah, obviously I've meant it in sort of a hyperbolic way,
but yeah, I see how that really does kind of color your understanding of it.
And Uncle Dan, obviously you've spent a lot of time around atheists,
and you've learned a lot more about the Bible
because of your relationship with Mac here. So do you have an answer to that question as well as a common misunderstanding
that you find atheists making about the Bible? Here's the thing. I will say that it's funny
because we did another interview on a show with a guy who may not be quite as friendly to atheists
as you are, but he asked a similar question. And the answer that i wish i had given was that i think a lot
of atheists actually understand the bible much better than a lot of the equivalent religious
person i think that that's just because atheists tend to be curious in a different way if they if
they have any interest in the bible they tend to have a different sort of mode of interest.
And yet, we all, like I said, I would read the thing and just do my best in understanding it. And as Dan says, it's not like the scholarship, unless you're reading intense scholarship books, which a lot of people do.
I've got some reading
on my shelf
that I'm planning on digging into.
But it's not my go-to reading.
It's not what I'm most interested in.
So all I have is this
surface-level thing of like,
I guess Samson reached into a lion
and pulled honey out.
I don't know if that means something.
But that's what the book says.
So, okay.
And that's it.
Like, that's all I've got.
And so, having more than that is a boon.
It's very appreciated. I would quickly add that according to Pew Research,
atheists tend to know more about the Bible
than most other Christians.
And one of the reasons that researchers think that is because a lot of atheists have found their way out of Christianity because they started reading the Bible intently.
And it was precisely their critical research on the Bible and the history of Christianity and things like that that lead them out.
So, atheists tend to have a history of more critical
reading of the Bible. So, now the obvious flip side of that question, what's the most common
biblical misunderstanding that you see from Christians?
Oh, the most common, the one that, oh, so many Christians have is the idea that the text is
univocal. And that's a word that I have used quite a bit on my channel, which it's a $2
word that means it speaks with one voice. In other words, it has a unified, consistent message,
perspective, voice. It can't disagree with itself. And that's the foundation of so much Christian
hermeneutics. And that is presupposed in almost any argument I've ever been in with a conservative Christian about the Bible.
That one text cannot disagree with another.
And that is just wildly, wildly incorrect.
You can't get three chapters into Genesis without disproving that.
But yeah, you're right.
That remains the general thought.
That's interesting.
Yeah, without even getting into inspiration or inerrancy i would just go straight to univocality because i and once you break that down i think the bible
becomes so much more interesting but it undermines so many dogmas yeah it is a far more interesting
book from this perspective than it ever was from a devotional perspective. It is, it's richer.
It's more like, you know,
I'm not going to go as far as a lot of people
and say it's grand literature,
but it's fascinating.
But only when you're willing to encounter it
as in this way of saying like,
it's not, I'm going to encounter this
not as every inch of it has to mean something inspired by deity,
but rather this is exposing ancient culture.
This is exposing ancient thought and belief systems.
It's exposing,
you know,
beefs between different cultures.
And,
and it's, when you get it to that place,
it becomes really, really interesting.
And hopefully that's what our show is about.
Yeah, that's where I find your show
is absolutely at its best.
When we're looking at, you know,
competing philosophies that are obviously
existing side by side in the Bible,
whether those be competing, you know,
within various factions within the religion
or competing as in like, you know from from different eras where like one
scribe is like well obviously they didn't mean that i mean there's just or whatever really
interesting stuff i and and i if it hasn't come across yet in the interview let me just state
explicitly to the listener that i highly recommend this show i listened to a couple episodes in
preparation for the interview then i listened to like three more because I couldn't stop doing it. And of course, I'm going to be finishing the
backlog in the next couple of days. I just have one last question while we still have you here.
Mac, I believe you are the first Christian that we've ever had on our podcast in 540 episodes.
Can I now tell people that some of my best friends are Christian?
Let me just step in here, Mac, and just point out, I've known Noah for a long time. He doesn't
have that many friends. Yeah, right. No, you're a high percentage wise.
So, yeah. I start from the baseline of treating everybody as a friend.
So absolutely.
Until you give me a reason to think otherwise.
Awesome.
Well, best of luck to you guys with the new show.
I'm absolutely devouring it.
I'm sure our listeners are going to love it too.
If you're listening along, you want to check out the show.
Again, it's Data Over Dogma.
You're going to find it wherever you get your podcasts.
Or just check the show notes for this episode for a handy dandy link.
Dan, Mac, thank you again so much for your time.
Thank you. Appreciate it.
Thanks so much for having us.
Before we reel the line back in this week,
I want to thank everybody who sends stories
to scathingnews at gmail.com,
whether or not we use them.
And yes, Ghost Wolf, we read all of the submissions.
Anyway, that's all the blast we've got for you tonight.
We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.
If you can't wait to look up for a brand new episode of our sister show
The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on
Monday, an even newer episode of our sister show's Hot Friend
Godawful Movies, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday,
and an even newer episode of our half-sister, so citation
needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.
Obviously, I can't cue the music until I thank
Keith Enright for going old school with me this week.
I want to thank Lucinda Lusions for sharing her adventures with me. I also want to
thank Eli Bosnick, who will be back next week and Mrs. U2. I also need to thank the Dans once more
and remind you to check the show notes for a link to Data Over Dogma. It's truly fascinating stuff
there. I also want to thank Bruce for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. And isn't it just
like a law student to cite evidence to back up his filthy monkey claim? Well done, dude.
But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's cutest former babies,
Adrian, David, the Patreon Saint of Podcasts,
Joanne, Logan, Logan is my favorite,
X-File, John, Other John, Katie, Lisa, Michael, Atheist,
Jason Tango of the Robes Cult Circus,
Bungling, Big Game, Hunter Act, Megan, Ryan,
Plaid Hamster, Christy Scott, Mads, Charlie Foxtrot, and Zappel.
Adrian, David, Joanne, Logan, X-File, John, and Other John,
whose IQs have more ones and zeros thanel. Adrian, David, Joe, Ann, Logan, X-File, John, and other John, whose IQs have more ones than zeros
than this MP3. Katie, Lisa, Michael,
Atheist, Jason, Tango, and Megan,
who are hotter than Pat Robertson's appropriate
post-mortem accommodations. And Ryan,
Hamster, Christy, Scott, Maz, Charlie, and
Zappel, who are so sexy the serpent in the garden
that Eden regrets ever turning human beings onto this
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at SkateAndGavius.com. fucking polar vortex and bomb cyclone enter the like you know just average dude lexicon within a
year of each other and they're like, I don't think anything's wrong.
Yeah, it's stuff that like
you would make up when you were seven
and be like,
I attacked you with bomb cyclone.
But now it's like a real thing.
Yes.
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