The Scathing Atheist - 575: Hovering Jesus Rules Edition

Episode Date: February 22, 2024

In this week’s episode, Alabama is coming for your jerk socks...I mean neglected children, a Christian Right television host realizes he needs to reel it in WAY too late, and Christianity will get more and more mere by the page. --- 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: [e-mail] To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Find out more about the Missouri Abortion Fund here: https://mofund.org/ --- Headlines: Alabama Supreme Court rules IVF embryos are protected under Wrongful Death of a Minor Act: https://1819news.com/news/item/alabama-supreme-court-rules-ivf-embryos-are-protected-under-wrongful-death-of-a-minor-act Pastor TV host ponders what 'good guy' Hitler could've done with all that Christian nationalism:  https://www.threads.net/@rightwingwatchdotorg/post/C3YdyKWpF2i https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/right-wing-bonus-tracks-elijahs-mean-tweets/ https://www.wonkette.com/p/conservative-tv-host-ponders-what Saint patrick apologizes and holds cleansing ritual for holding a funeral for a trans person https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/02/17/st-patricks-holds-rare-mass-of-reparation-after-scandalous-behavior-at-service-for-nyc-trans-icon-cecilia-gentili/ Christian Right MI lawmaker Josh Schriver posts about "great replacement": https://www.freep.com/story/opinion/columnists/nancy-kaffer/2024/02/16/michigan-josh-schriver-replacement-theory-state-legislature-mileg/72586010007/ https://www.wonkette.com/p/of-course-the-racist-michigan-rep And his rap videos: https://twitter.com/repjoshschriver/status/1742959025434525703 https://twitter.com/JoshuaSchriver/status/1726684885044367867

Warning, this podcast contains all the offensive language we could think up on the spot. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Babbel, Factor, Stamps.com, and by the new breath freshener for Christian evangelists who want to spout bullshit without smelling like it, New Testaments. New Testaments. Holy shit, that's actually a Christian product. They are too silly to lampoon. And now, The Sk actually a Christian product. They are too silly to lampoon. And now, the skating atheist. Hi, this is Robin from Missouri, and as a constituent of the Christian National Saluting, Fascist-Enabling, Overgrown Hemorrhoid in a Cheap Suit, known as Josh Hawley, who should resign, by the way, I can confirm that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men.

It's Thursday. It's February 22nd. And it's Jewish Disabilities Awareness Acceptance and Inclusion Month. Okay. Didn't know disabilities have a religion. I feel like they meant the patients. I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright.

And from John Bon Jovi's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Alabama is coming for your jerk socks. Sorry, I mean neglected children. A Christian Right television host gets into the nuanced pros and cons of Adolf Hitler.

And Christianity will get more and more mirror by the page. But first, the diatribe. One of the real challenges we face every week on this show is that we want to tell you all the news that's relevant to atheists, right? But we also want to do so in a way that doesn't scare you off. Because let's face it, there's only so much sky is falling a person can take even when the sky is really falling. And so every time I got to start talking about Donald Trump shit again, there's a part of me going like, haven't you had enough? But you haven't. Because for some fucking reason, the media is barely covering the terrifying promises he's making every time someone puts a microphone in front of him.

On the day this episode drops, Trump is going to be speaking in front what we've heard out of him so far on the campaign trail, my guess is that we're going to hear more about the fight against Christian persecution that he claims is so rampant in modern America. In a December speech in Iowa, he promised that upon taking office, he would, quote, create a new federal task force on fighting anti-Christian bias, end quote. Maybe he could call it the sacrilege squad. Now, you might be tempted to dismiss this as akin to the voter fraud task force. Remember that when he promised he was going to set some people to work, find all the fraud that cost him the popular vote, and then they diddled their dicks for a few months

and eventually released a report that said, yeah, there's no voter fraud. Well, you know, surely there's no more Christian persecution in this country than there is voter fraud. So might this new task force wind up in a similarly dick diddling situation? But of course, that is a dangerous fantasy to entertain because it's been a long time since a Christian said Christian persecution and meant the persecuting of Christians. Christian persecution has become code for made me acknowledge the humanity of LGBTQ people. So when this task force goes out in the world looking for Christian persecution, it'll find restaurants being forced to serve gay

people. It'll find pride flags on display. It'll find trans people trying to take a shit in a public restroom and more, right? Because this trick works on all political beliefs. Remember how quick their objections to masking and vaccines became religious in nature. Right. So that task force will also find probably like women exercising their reproductive rights in stores, making contraceptives freely available in schools, teaching about the history of slavery. And all of that will be called Christian persecution. All of that is being called Christian persecution. See, Team Trump and the sycophantic GOP that follows them, they're often faulted for not having a platform, right? How serious can a political party be if they have no platform?

How could you even know what you're voting for? People look at that and they see the very definition of a naked power grab. They just want power for the sake of power. And by failing to establish a platform, they're admitting as much. But it's actually worse than that. The people who say that they're just after power for power's sake, those people are being too kind. They're after power to do evil shit with it. The reason they don't articulate a platform isn't because they don't have one,

it's because writing it down would rob their supporters of any kind of plausible deniability. What they really want is so bigoted and backwards that writing it down would sever any chance they had at appealing to the disengaged centrist. Hell, even most of their

ardent supporters don't want to admit to some of this shit publicly. But some of them do, which is why we can so confidently guess what they're after. Russell Vaught, who was Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget and is widely seen as Trump's most likely chief of staff if he wins a second term, he produced a series of bullet points on what he wants out of the second Trump administration. And one of the bullet points is just the words Christian nationalism. Just those two words. That's a whole bullet point. He also wants to place religious restrictions on immigration, limiting it to people who, quote, accept Israel's God, laws and understanding of history. and understanding of history, end quote.

Trump also talked openly about bringing Michael Flynn back into the government. Last time we saw Mikey, he was touring the country using QAnon conspiracy theories to recruit what he was calling an army of God. William Wolf, another Trump insider that's helping shape the agenda for the next go-round, openly advocates for the outlawing of same-sex marriage, a national ban on abortion, and a strict reduction on access to contraception. See, what happened here is that the white Protestant Christian bigots who enjoyed the top spot in America's caste system for the last fucking forever took a look at the future and they realized that there was no damn way that their views were ever going to regain the majority in their lifetimes. So they took the list of political beliefs they had, they scratched out

the word political at the top, and they wrote in the word religious. So now forcing them to submit to the will of the majority is no longer democracy, it's persecution. Of course, the only way to make that stick is with a government that's willing to wink along with your imaginary plight. And the only way to get that is with Christian nationalism. So sorry for sounding the alarm while your ears are still ringing from the last time we sounded it. And sorry for the fact that I'm just going to keep doing that shit for the next nine months. We're fighting against no less than a theocratic dictatorship. And I will be damned to hell if I'm going to err on the side of too quiet about that shit. Joining me for headlines tonight are the salt and pepper of this table, Heath Enright and Eli Posnick.

Fellas, are you ready to spice things up? Push it real good. Indeed. Yeah. And I do, too, contribute. I bring out the flavors of the podcast um all right well now i need to get that song out of my head so we're gonna pause for a quick word from this week's first sponsor babble timmy timmy come here yes grandpa heath uh please timmy i i mean kind of sort of step grandpa heath that Heath? That's better. That's better. Now, I'm dying, and I want to tell you my greatest regret.

I never learned Italian language. That is my only regret in life. I understand, but why didn't you just use Babbel? Oh, what's Babbel? It's the science-based language learning app that actually works. Don't pay hundreds of dollars for private tutors or waste hours on apps that don't really help you speak the language. But the time, Timmy. I don't have the time. Silly kind of sort of step, Grandpa.

Babbel's quick 10-minute lessons are handcrafted by over 200 language experts to help you start speaking a new language in as little as three weeks. Only I'd known. It's true, Heath. Babbel's convenient courses have helped me learn real-life conversation skills in a different language. It's so easy to learn how to order food, ask for directions, speak to merchants without having to consult language apps while on vacation. That's why I, Eli Bosnick, personally endorse Babbel. Really? I'm old and dying and you're alive? I'm a hologram or something. Better, I guess. And here's the special limited time deal for our listeners. Right now, get 50% off a one-time payment for a lifetime Babbel subscription,

but only for our listeners at babbel.com slash scathing. That's 50% off at babbel.com slash scathing, spelled B-A-B-B-E-L dot com slash scathing. Rules and restrictions may apply. Thank you, Demi. Now I can finally rest. I love you. Yeah, I love hanging out together and how chill we are. Oh, okay.

Demi. Okay. And how chilled we are. Oh, okay. To me. Okay. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight in IVF'd up rulings news.

When one is arguing with anti-choice bigots, as one is wont to do in a world with so many of them, one of the ways to point out the absurdity of their argument is to propose a hypothetical fire where a tray of embryos is in one room and a living baby is in another, and that they would have to choose between saving one of them. Now, if you're talking to an honest person, most of the time they'll admit that yes, they would save the baby. But leave it to the great state of Alabama to bring us the argument. It's so not this week when a court ruled that IVF embryos are protected under the wrongful death of a minor. Yeah, absurd for so many reasons. And now a whole bunch of lovely IVF themed OnlyFans pages are technically child porn now.

It's untenable. Yeah, they've realized the only way out of the reductio ad absurdum argument now is to be as absurd as theoretically possible so nothing can slip in under the cracks. Can't slide down this slope. I'm at the bottom. Yeah, exactly. Right. First of all, big thanks to Howard Friedman from the Religious Clause blog.

If you're unfamiliar with Howard's work, he collects cases about religious freedom from all over the world, and he's done exhaustive research. Plus, he has a great list of resources on his sidebar. So check him out if you want to see more. Yeah, it's like what we do, but with exhaustive research and a great list of sources on the sidebar. Well, he has no dick jokes. None.

He refuses to dick joke no dick jokes. None. No. He refuses to dick joke. Coward. Right. So this case comes to us from the fine city of Mobile, Alabama, LePage V Infirmary Clinic, Inc. And it's actually a pretty sad story.

So three couples stored their embryos at the infirmary clinic in hopes of using IVF to have a baby. At some point, and I am so sorry because I cannot find more details on this, so I'm just going to give you the vague version I could find. A patient at the clinic broke into the storage facility of the embryos, removed three of them. Said patient then burned their hand on those embryos because of their sub-zero temperature and dropped them, which caused them, in legal terms, to go splat. Yeah, also known as a slapstick mass murder, according to the new ruling. If your ruling says a moment from an infomercial about oven mitts

is a mass murder of children, I don't think you're allowed to be a judge anymore. Yeah. Your judgment is not there anymore. And while I assume said aspiring embryo librarian is probably facing their own set of charges, this case is about the couple suing the clinic for not properly securing their embryos under the wrongful death of a minor act. Right. Right.

minor act. Right, right. Which means that we're going to have to go and revise laws to make it legal to keep kids in sub-zero temperature freezers without food for years at a time. There's a high potential risk for abuse here, I think. Yep. Or at least a lot of clarification that needs to be made. Now, as I said, a lower court had already ruled like, hey, that's sad, but it's definitely more minor than we were thinking of.

But as I said, the Alabama Supreme Court has now ruled that those embryos were in fact minors and entitled to the same protections as fucking nurseries and babysitters and shit. Yes, exactly. Or to be more fair to the court,

the court ruled that the law doesn't say the minors have to be born babies or in utero. So embryos count by default? Yeah, the law doesn't say that because it's a law from 1872. And the majority of this court is pretty sure that Alabama lawmakers of 1872 wanted human life to be defined by the geometrical relationship between microscopic sperm and ova. That's right. What they said.

Yeah. The Alabama Supreme Court just resorted to the no shit air bud defense. Yep. At best. Right. There's nothing in the rules that says embryos can't play basketball. That's where we are now. Let them play in the youth leagues. damn it. I'd watch that. And I want to be clear that the consequences for this

are several folds. So first and foremost, it establishes precedent for anti-abortion loons, which they're already using. I mean, it doesn't actually establish precedent for that, but they're going to pretend it does, and they are. But secondly, this is going to make IVF in the state of Alabama fucking impossible. Yep. Because I don't know if you know this podcast listener, but IVF destroys a fuck ton of embryos. I mean, it depends on where you get your numbers, but as much as half of embryos don't survive implantation. And if IVF clinics are going to start being treated like preschools where 50% of the kids

don't make it home, they're going to close down. And according to this logic, a person could have a miscarriage and then get sued for killing a child if the partner was like, I saw you eat a papaya. I read those are bad. You did this. I'm suing you for wrongful death of a child if the partner was like, I saw you eat a papaya. I read those are bad. You did this. I'm suing you for wrongful death of a child. I mean, you're saying that like there's not a woman in Ohio facing almost exactly that charge right now. Yeah, sure is. So yeah, this is terrible for all the reasons. And while we hope this is the end of the case, remember that if this case goes further, it could end up with the United States Supreme Court agreeing with this ruling. And I don't think I need to tell anyone

who's ever heard this show before how that is going to go. And next up in headlines, we have a story about religion and political philosophy. In other words, something's gone terribly wrong. Again, I'll start with the philosophy part. A great philosopher once said, say what you want about the tenets of national socialism, dude. At least it's an ethos. That philosopher is Walter Sobchak, a fictional character in The Big Lebowski. And he's basically saying, yeah, the Nazis had some flaws, but at least they had the conviction about their beliefs. I like that part. Of course, Walter is an absurd character, fictional, absurd character.

And among many other absurd behaviors, he pulls a gun at a bowling alley during an argument about scoring a bowling game. It was a league game, but that's not the point. His character is satire. Well, fast forward to last week and a Christian right pastor and TV host said almost exactly the same thing as Walter Sobchak, but completely unironically. Yep. The entire last decade of American history has just been us revising the standard of what counts as satire. Yep.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like some folks became unwilling prophets thanks to the current political age. All right. And a big thanks to Jacqueline for the link. Scathingnews at gmail.com. So I looked at this headline and it seemed crazy. It says, conservative TV host ponders what good guy Hitler could have done with all that nationalism. And I'm thinking, okay, this has to be like an accidental headline from the onion slipping

through. But I looked around and it wasn't. And then I was like, whoa, I didn't know. If it's not that, it's got to be like a setup or a prank. You're not going to get me on this. I spent a bunch more time double, triple checking. Sadly, no, this is real. And of course, it comes from the Victory Channel. That's the Kenneth Copeland and all the other all-stars from scathing one. Pastor Greg Stevens did an episode of his show, and he wondered longingly about the idea of a good guy Hitler here in 2024 and all the great accomplishments that could happen if good guy Hitler could harness the beautiful Christian nationalism of present day America. Seriously. Okay, but what made Hitler a bad guy was his Hitler-ness, right?

Like wondering about good guy Hitler is like wondering about dry wetness if you're not a fucking Nazi. Right. You're going to need another example. If you're not a Nazi. But what I love, what's so beautiful about this story, right, is that this guy was like, damn, Hitler and I agree super hard about this thing. Maybe he was just a little wrong. Yeah, I should say that on TV.

I should say. I should do a segment for this. Yeah. And just so you don't think I'm editorializing, I'll give you some of the exact words. Pastor Greg started by naming some good reasons for the political ideas and actions of literal Adolf Hitler. He said, quote, yes, Hitler wanted pride in Germany again. They were decimated by the previous war. So naturally, you're going to kill some Jews. What is... Yikes.

We've all been there. We've all been there. Yeah, and the pride and the make Germany great again thing, it was too much. So after mentioning World War I as an excuse for the Holocaust, Pastor Greg does a long pause, like he's made a big important great point and he looks up at his co-host who is out of the frame and that guy that co-host says absolutely nothing which was very intelligent it's the best it's so fun we cannot emphasize how funny it is to watch him look at his long pause ghost does not say a word presumably because the co-host. Long pause. Co-host does not say a word.

Presumably because the co-host is frantically scrawling out a piece of paper that says, Morgan, Morgan, cut the power. Maybe shoot Greg in the fucking face. I don't know. But from there, we get my favorite part of the video. We get to watch that co-host guy be on camera for a second. And he's just another piece of shit Christian nationalist pastor. But even that guy knows that they're mitigating Hitler segment

is going very badly. So the camera pans over and he panics. And you could see this guy trying to hold completely still and somehow also back away at the same time. You could see his body fighting itself. But despite all that, they aired the segment. Sure did. They broadcast a segment that asked the question, for real, what would a

good guy Hitler do in 2024? To be clear, guys, the answer is be Republican, just like you. And that's, I guess, technically better than actually being the literal Hitler. So they're proud of the bar they cleared there. And they did the segment. Yeah, it's better so far anyway. And on that note, we're going to pause for a word from our other sponsor this week, Factor. Oh, man, I'm going to have to edit through dinner again. Well, hey there, Noah.

Eli, Heath, how long were you guys under my desk? A while. a while. We heard you need a quick meal on the go. Have you considered the No Time to Eat Cookbook? That's right. It's got recipes like cereal over the sink, these pretzels, and two more cups of coffee. Well, guys, that sounds terrible.

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than our stuff. Yeah, especially when you include the crying. Exactly. Head to factormeals.com slash scathing50 and use the code scathing50 to get 50% off. That's code scathing50 at factormeals.com slash scathing50 to get 50% off. All right, Noah. Thanks.

So when you guys were under the... Yeah, man. Under the desk, we saw. Mm-hmm. I was doing research. I don't feel like you need to research that stuff. He was like, you already know, right? You know.

You know. And in putting the trick in St. Patrick's news today, we have a new story that forced me to bump a whole new item to the very top of my list of lifelong aspirations. Have a funeral that the Catholic Church needs to officially apologize to God over. And that honor was bestowed last week on trans rights activist Cecilia Gentile, whose life was memorialized at no lesser than St. Patrick's Cathedral and whose funeral was so awesome

that the church's leader felt the need to hold a rare massive reparations to re-consecrate the defiled space and they assure us by the way that that was not because cecilia was trans or at least not just because she was trans they also spent the entire funeral dunking on the church and its homophobic transphobic bullshit and by all accounts it was glorious it sounds like it was pretty glorious. Yeah. And what Noah was talking about, this is the game now, right? Like getting iconic churches to host something like your funeral or whatever, and then doing a bunch of evil magic in that church that they have to do.

Fuck yeah. Counter magic on. Okay. Right. I'm just saying you're getting married soon and your real name might as well be Mally O'Malley Heath. We could do this as a twofer. Okay. I think

we could get St. Patrick's. And seriously consider that. We were like, what kind of prank could we run with this wedding? Just get us a big opportunity. Just to be clear, me and Noah are going to jail for what we do. So you gotta make

a Eli and Noah's plan for the reception. We will be in jail. We gotta get a Catholic history. We gotta like run away jury You got to make a Eli and Noah's plan for the reception. All right. We will be in jail. We got to get a Catholic history. We got to like run away, jury this shit so we can get it to St. Patrick's. So, yeah. So, first of all, thanks to Ryan for sending this one at scathingnews at gmail.com.

But, yeah, according to the New York Archdiocese, the list of scandalous offenses of the funeral's attendees included, the list of scandalous offenses of the funeral's attendees included, but were not limited to wearing mini skirts, halter tops, and fishnet stockings, frequently using profanity from the pulpit, and changing the lyrics of traditional Catholic songs to mock their doctrine. So basically, the funeral was a God awful movie's live show, right? Which is amazing. And to be clear, the whole point was desecrating their sacred space, right?

The funeral's organizers admit that they kept the identity of the deceased under wraps when planning the event, and Gentile's family released a statement afterwards praising the funeral for bringing, quote, precious life and radical joy to the cathedral in historic defiance of the church's hypocrisy and anti-trans hatred, end quote. Adding that

Gentile's, quote, heart and hands reached those the sanctimonious church continued to belittle, oppress, and chastise, and she changed the material condition for countless people, including unhoused and those who needed health care, end quote. Yeah, and apparently that, that good stuff is how you get asses in the seats at a church. Right. At one point, the priest who was presiding over the funeral said, quote, wow, except on Easter Sunday, we don't really have a crowd this well turned out, you know?

Yes. This is a great crowd. It's because you fuck kids, man. Because of the kids you fuck. That actually probably happened, yeah. Richie? Yeah. That guy in the back?

And by the way, the church's official response, of course, was, yeah, none of that. So they had to call in this special imaginary big guns and call for a massive reparations. St. Patrick's pastor, who the news reports identify as very reverend as this title, I don't know, whatever the hell that means. He called the service a desecration and said it was all the worse since the scandal occurred at America's parish church, whatever the hell that means.

But the good news for Catholics is that the special Jesus spell was completed on Sunday, and the church hasn't been struck by lightning or brimstone in the interim, so it looks like God's inclined to forgive them for it this time. Yeah, I mean, look, Nazi gold is one thing, but that funeral was serving Thanksgiving dinner. I see why they were worried. thing but that funeral was serving thanksgiving dinner i see why they were worried and finally tonight in delusions of michigan news michigan state representative christian right theocrat and model for jay koo apparel joshua shriver is back in the headlines we talked about him last

month when he got mad at a statue of baphomet at the Michigan Capitol, made a video of himself yelling, I rebuke you. And the statue didn't go anywhere or respond to the rebuking. So Joshua angrily sponsored a bill that would remove tax exemptions from churches that aren't, you know, the real one with real God and the cross facing the right way. Well, you might be shocked to learn that Josh is also a racist idiot in addition to a religious idiot who tweeted about the great replacement theory last week. That's the idea that white people are being phased out as part of a grand conspiracy.

Yeah, and every time these idiots warn about it, they make it sound like a better idea. Yeah, I was like, hey, sounds okay. Okay, you guys joke, but without white people, who will steal everyone else's stuff? You want everyone to just have their stuff? Can you guys hear yourselves right now? Just having their stuff. It's crazy.

So here's the recent timeline for Joshua, starting with the post about replacement theory, which was actually just a repost of professional neo-Nazi Jack Posobiec. And when that was met with backlash, Josh decided to keep saying stuff on the internet and argue his way out of being a bigot. Hell yeah. Here's what he came up with he started with in response to nobody nothing there's an anti-white agenda no one is racist for talking about it then he said white erasure is wrong this is not controversial and he also added i'm a christian not a religion, a relationship vibes to that. Yeah. All right.

So here's a handful of fun facts that I learned recently about Josh in a letter to his constituency as to remind you, an elected official, very close to where I am right now. This is terrifying. He said that Abe Lincoln was an architect of the Constitution. Did he now? Sure did. He also voted against raising the legal age to get married up to 18. Unsurprised.

Because he wants children to be able to keep getting married. He argued that if kids can't get married, they'll have premarital sex. Oh, okay. I bet he'd take an only one of them has to be an adult compromise if they offered that to him. Yeah. Matt Gaetz taught him that compromise actually. Yikes. And here's my favorite part of the story.

He's a rapper. Oh, yes, he is. Yep. He is a professional rapper and he is exactly as good as you're imagining. I've included a couple of links in case anyone wants to check him out. Yeah. Podcast listener, if there was ever a time to become a patron and get access to our scripts, it's

today when you can see these breathtaking performances forwarded to my wife for future segments right away. Fuck yeah. Fantastic. They're like quadruple auto-tuned. It's like he auto-tuned it and then tried to auto-tune the auto it's so much it's pretty amazing so there's at least a partial happy ending to the

story sadly shriver still has a job but just barely in response to all the backlash about reposting a neo-nazi the rest of the michigan gop responded by shutting the fuck up and hoping nobody would notice but that did not work democrat house speaker joe tate heard about what happened and immediately took away all the stuff that he could from josh including josh's office staff his committee assignments and his budget pretty much all josh can do now is vote as part of almost always a losing cause and you know make rebuking videos on the front lawn at the Capitol and presumably do murders right before every picture of his face ever that I've ever found. Heath, did you sneak a picture of Stu Peters into our notes again? It's Clay Clark.

I thought you wouldn't notice. And with this week's invisible visual aids revealed, I suppose we can close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. To Manji. And when we come back, the guy who tricked us into thinking Turkish delights

tasted good has more bullshit to sell us. Hey, podcast listener. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Noah Lutions. And I'm Heath Enright. If your business does a lot of shipping like we do,

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Keith wrote this ad of all the things I ever got hooked on the one that this show has made me regret the most is phonics. But we're here with another damn Jesus book to dig our way through, so we're going to crack open C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity yet again in this week's God Awful Books. All right, so first of all, quick apologies to anybody who's elected to read along with us. We didn't ask you to do that. You brought that on yourself.

But this week, we're going to be tackling the first three chapters, which come in book one, right and wrong as a clue to the meaning of the universe. Reject the premise before the very first sentence of the very first book. I'd like to reject. Can we stop reading now? Can we just call it? It sounds an awful lot like how I can make the subjective sound objective by just saying it's objective.

Yeah. So now I feel like you guys aren't going to like my book, Pretty and Ugly, as a clue to who has the world's cutest pug. Okay, but that's objectively true about Matt. Thank you, C.S. Heath. Have you seen Rachel's pug? Okay, Rachel's standing behind you with a knife

and kiwi. Yeah, right. She's standing behind both of us somehow. She's got Madame Web powers. So, okay, so we get chapter one, the law of human nature, which starts off with arguing sure can be wacky. Yeah. Hey, C.S. Lewis, could I have, I don't know, six examples of what arguing sounds like?

You know, in case i'm an alien that just landed on the planet and picked up your book first thing yeah no problem so you know chairs and uh oranges it's like that arguing is like chairs and oranges plus arguing seriously that's the very first paragraph of the book sure is is. Yeah. He goes, have you ever noticed how our arguments reflect our cultural notions of right and wrong? And I'm like, how could they not? But like, imagine a world where that isn't true. All right. You need another example?

Chairs and oranges probably went right over your head. Don't worry. He says, and that's why soccer has rules about fouls. Otherwise, people would argue about that and it wouldn't make any sense yeah it would ruin soccer if people argued about the fouls wouldn't it close one but but no but lewis tells us those arguers are appealing to a universal sense of right and wrong right which is why when you do a crime for the very first time, they actually can't arrest you for it. Exactly, yeah.

Yeah, no, we are inches away from, you ever notice that when people disagree with you, they don't deny the existence of reality altogether? Ah, fuck, I landed on atheism again in my book. It's really early. I'm going to start over. Yeah. I got to empty out this bin full of paper that I keep throwing out. Well, right, the first page and a half of this book can be summarized as, you know, rules. Right.

Yeah. Well, he's trying to jam his rules into the category. He's like, yeah, no, my rules are just like gravity and chemistry, except I made them up just now. And I would like you to treat them like they're as real as real things. I am Christianity's best argument, apparently. Yeah, yeah, but that's the thing. The fact that morals aren't universal

temporally or geographically already negates his argument before he's done making it. He's like, the laws of morality are just like the laws of nature, except different in all the meaningful ways. You can literally watch him realize how dumb that was mid-sentence. He says, the laws of human nature are universal just like gravity.

Except gravity does always hold. The laws of human nature are one thing away from the laws of gravity. And then in the middle of all this, he brings up Nazi fucking Germany, a place that very clearly doesn't hold the same concept of morality as England at that point, thus the war, right? Which entirely disproves his fucking point.

Right. And correct me if I'm wrong, is his argument, look, deep down the Nazis know that killing 6 million Jews is bad, but they're like, you know what? It's been a hard week. I deserve a little treat. I'm going to kill 6 million Jews is bad, but they're like, you know what? It's been a hard week.

I deserve a little treat. I'm going to kill 6 million Jews and then I won't kill any Jews next week. Like none. So it'll sort of balance out. Yeah. Holocaust, that was a cheat day. Exactly.

Not a great argument from C.S. Lewis. And right after bringing up the Nazis, he says, okay, I know what you're thinking. I just ruined my whole point. Different groups at different times had different moralities, but no, they didn't. Almost exact words. He dismisses that by saying that cultural attitudes towards morality aren't that different.

Again, in the shadow of his sentence about Nazis. I'm like, holy shit, is that something only a white guy would even be capable of believing? Yeah. Look, I think we look at the long arc of history of the human race, the thing we all have in common is our values. Am I right? Like, late one time

we disagreed about values, okay? Oh, my God, it's so tortured. He says, you know, it's really striking how much the moral teachings of ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks, and Romans are and how they are, quote, very like they are to each other and to our own, end quote. Like, in the sense that fucking murder and theft are frowned upon and all of that. Like, I can think of no other similarity. And he offers none right and you can't even really count murder or theft because all of those cultures had things

that we would consider murder and or theft right that they would not yes exactly and even if you pretend those are all the same most of those places didn't have christianity even granting that the god of the bible created all those people in places you clearly don't have Christianity. Even granting that the God of the Bible created all those people and places, you clearly don't have to believe in Christianity to get morals according to him just now. Right. He says, look,

try to imagine a world with opposite day morals. And you're like, oh yeah, no, that's pretty easy. I can think of a number of books that imagine that. And he's like, impossible, isn't it? Right. Freaky Friday. And his example is, quote, think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle or where a man felt proud of double crossing all the people who

had been kind to him, end quote. And I'm like, buddy, we made him president. Yeah. Yeah. He's trying to prove that biblical morality is a priori knowledge just like math which obviously doesn't work the basic format would be like okay imagine a four-sided triangle that's impossible but for his thing he can't do that he's like imagine a coin with a good side and a bad side now try to picture the bad side you can't just describe it you can't i won't let you he says selfishness has never been admired in a country that had a royal family he wrote those words yeah yeah he also has this great section where he's like have you ever noticed when people say hot and cold are matters of perspective they still don't like it when you throw boiling water at them exactly i am making a great argument

he's like now for agreed about that i'm gonna move on to my next point i'm like you're gonna move on to your next point anyway and his next point is even though we know right and wrong we don't always do right yeah which which is a problem with your moral system then probably a moral system that nobody can keep is as useless as a diet that nobody can follow right but he's like come on let's face it sometimes you know you know what's right you know what's wrong but sometimes you break your promises and beat your kids and screw other people over on business deals and i'm like dude you need to stop talking about morality ah did i slip into the virtue of selfishness again oopsie she didn't even write that yet uh am i an atheist libertarian this is going badly for me in my book gordon gecko's reading this with his teeth all gritted i don't know man yeah he says

we cannot bear to face the notion that we might be acting immorally and i'm like dude in your like in this paragraph, you talked about mistreating your kids and your business partners. Obviously, yes, we can. Right. And, spoiler alert, you're eventually going to argue

that none of those things matter if you say you're sorry hard enough to Jesus. So, double why. Yeah. So that finishes up chapter one. He summarizes his two-part point at the end. People are compelled to act morally and they don't,

which are contradictory points, one of which is demonstrably false. The other one is selectively false. He says this is the basis of his entire book. Yeah. We're all unwitting crisis actors created by God to eventually thank God for the insane simulation

he put us in. Yeah. That's where he's going with this i miss the lizard jews from venus right right but he can apparently sense that we're not entirely sold because the title of the next chapter is chapter two some objections so again these were radio addresses so apparently even back then somebody wrote in to say man that first one was dumb so he's gonna answer some of those letters in this chapter. Yeah. He's like, I just laid out my foundation for my entire book and it was really bad now that I'm thinking about it. I got to make a better foundation. Again, that's almost exact words, the very first sentence of the chapter. Right. That first chapter sucked. Here, let me

take another go at it. So objection one is is aren't you just describing a herd instinct which yes he is but he dismisses that objection by pointing out that it's different because he says it is he's like okay so we all know what it's like to feel an instinctual urge right and this isn't that which is the argument equivalent of come on yeah you know how everyone figured out how they should bury their poop and not eat it well some of us are real shit eaters morally so right he's like well okay okay try this like you know how when you hear somebody call for help you're like well i don't want any piece of that drama no i don't cs stop involving me in your hypotheticals man you're an evil fucking person.

He says, you know, sometimes you feel both the desire and the need. The desire is different. And we're like, in what way? And he's like, go fuck yourself. Okay. This is where he does the piano thing, right? Where he tries to like make a piano metaphor to explain this. He's like, okay, so you know how a piano has keys?

Sometimes you want to play a B flatflat or an F-sharp. And sometimes you want to fuck a bag of flour at the store. And sometimes you want to eat your own shit, like Eli said. But there's this other thing. It's not a want. It's called God. It's called absolute morality. God tells you when it's time for a B-flat and when it's time to fuck the bag of flour

and when it's time for eating a shit sandwich. And then he's like, okay, well, lots of people, they get confused. They think morality is instinct. Those are the same. They think God is a fuck bag of flour or is a sandwich of shit. But of course, a fuck bag can't tell you when to fuck a fuck bag. A shit sandwich can't tell you when to eat a shit sandwich. That wouldn't make any sense. God can't be a shit sandwich button on a piano. That'd be crazy.

And his point is God is the sheet music. Yeah, that's what he's saying. Yeah. So here's a gem, right? He's like, moral law is different than instinct because in instinct the greater instinct wins but your moral intuition often pushes you towards the lesser instinct. And I'm like, how the fuck could that be relevant? You can't say

an instinct can't push you towards a lesser instinct because the existence of lesser instincts disproves that point, right? Plus, adding a secondary instinct to a lesser instinct could tip the balance to greater instinct. Plus, and this is the most important one. The only way to determine the greater instinct is by retroactively assigning that to whatever you did. Whatever you did was obviously the greater instinct. What if there's three instincts at play? OK, you lost me.

What the fuck is happening? Physically impossible. Did I mention it's like a piano? Yeah. So, yeah, but perhaps sensing that his first two rebuttals sucked, he offers a third. He's like, okay, if moral law is instinct, then you should be able to point to a single impulse that is always in agreement with the rule of right behavior. But you can't. What?

Now, I don't know how the fuck he gets there. I don't understand the therefore, but obviously it's still wrong. That impulse would be called your conscience. It has to exist for your argument to make sense. What the fuck are you even doing here, man? your sense of right and wrong. Yeah. Just two angels on C.S. Lewis's shoulder. One's like, fuck the bag of flour. And the other one's like, just playing a piano. Like, yeah, totally agree about the flour.

I just like, I just like playing piano too. Okay, this chapter is going to be confusing. Ah, all right. You angel guys really aren't helping me. I wrote all that down,

but. God. Consider how dumb this distinction he's trying to draw between instinct and whatever the fuck he's calling morality is. He's like, you know, we have instincts like eat and shit because that's some of the shit that we have to do to stay alive. So what he's saying is that staying alive can't be instinctual because there's no one discrete instinct saying be alive, though.

Yeah, yeah, you're right. That is dumber than I was giving him credit for. No, I'm sorry. But it gets even dumber. He then says that it's not an instinct because it isn't universal right like with the sexual instinct sometimes you should fuck and sometimes you shouldn't therefore the regulation of that drive can't be instinctual is what he's saying right which is the same as saying that eating can't be instinctual because sometimes you're not eating right there are things that you don't eat and

sometimes you don't eat the things that you sometimes do eat and therefore it's not instinctual nonsense okay well i thought i got it but that example just confused heath and i quite a bit noah so if you could stay on i don't okay when would you not eat a thing you sometimes eat who is he arguing with like a british guy called up this radio station in 1942 and was like i eat and fuck constantly because i see stuff it works great i don't need your god argue with that motherfucker and that's what this is so so that's objection one objection two is isn't what you're calling moral law just a social convention something that is put into us by education that's the exact quote and yes right between those two

problems, instinct and social convention, he has accidentally encompassed all the things that he meant. Yeah. Again, how could it possibly be otherwise, right? By his own definition, it's not an instinct and now it's not a social construct. What the fuck does he think it is then? Stupid, like hovering Jesus rules, right? That's right. It is stupid hovering Jesus rules. I forgot. It is, which somehow isn't instinct.

Yeah. And of course, since he's already dismissed the fact that moral codes vary from culture to culture, he already inoculated himself against that entirely reasonable objection. He just reiterates the moral rules aren't that different argument. Again, in the midst of world war ii world war ii exactly just for the record the bible teaches people nationalism and socialism at different moments those are the two words that make up nazi we need conscience to tell us when to not do religious morality your religion thing is just a dumb piano key

next to fuck bag and shit sandwich. And secular morality is a good piece of sheet music that doesn't use your religion key. Your whole book is backwards. Are we done? Can we quit? Will you please quit?

So, no, he finally gets to the if morals are subjective, there can be no moral progress argument, which is a much better argument, but it's still wrong, right? So the fact is, is that once we agree on a purpose of moral laws, any set can be better or worse at obtaining that purpose. So if your goal is maximize the freedom and happiness of the most people as possible, you can improve on that goal with new morals. If your goal is ensure the continued

dominance of white men in society, different rules are going to get you there. So moral improvements are actually just a shifting of moral goals. Yeah. It seems like he knows that phasing out religion in modern society is exactly moral progress. And this is him being like, that doesn't count whenever it comes up later when somebody probably calls in and mentions that right and again just because something is subjective doesn't mean that nothing about it is true right right yoga instructors are healthy and so are some marathon runners that doesn't mean we can't say shitting your pants every morning isn't bad right so it's and then he compares nazi morality to christian morality because i guess admitting that they're both working from the same book completely destroys

the premise of this chapter and this book sure right and more importantly it's a book he's about to argue is the source of the hovering jesus morality right yeah he's doing the no true scotsman on saturday thing like the nazis were only bad on cheat day but deep down they love jewish people just like kanye after seeing miami vice eventually yes that's what absolute morality gets you there just like kanye and miami vice the problem was that they didn't have miami vice back then yeah they didn't have 22 jump street that's right so yeah so So he admits that better and worse morals are comparisons to a standard. But rather than that standard being the goals of the culture, he just makes it an invisible, omnipotent ghost that lives in your brain. Right.

And sometimes the ghost tells you to kill six million Jews. Yeah. And sometimes the ghost just does that himself. Yeah. In that book. Right. Yeah. And sometimes the ghost just does that himself in that book. Right. Right. Well, and then he explains that the problem with witch burnings was that there weren't witches. It's not that they were cruel. It's that there weren't witches. Okay. I want to be clear. Noah is not

exaggerating or misrepresenting. Here's the real quote. Surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did, if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return, and were using these powers to kill their neighbors or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserves the death penalty, then these filthy quizlings did end quote. Yep. Yeah. And just for the record,

his version of absolute morality includes a death penalty is what we just learned. Yeah. Well, and also to be clear, we're 36 pages into the book before he has to start justifying atrocities to make his point. Right.

But yeah, but like, so he's trying to dismiss the point that somebody made to him that said, you know, come on, 300 years ago,

we were burning witches. But even if we accept that insane defense, just shift that to a hundred years ago, we were starving the Irish and suddenly it falls apart again. Right.

At absolute best, his argument at this point is, I am certain we will never be factually wrong about who deserves to die or be oppressed ever again. We've been working out the kinks and the bugs of absolute morality from God. We finally nailed it in 1942.

No more atrocities starting now. Lucky us. Yeah, so the summary of this chapter is basically, I can too triple stamp a double stamp. He points out two objections that completely eviscerate the point he's trying to make and pretends they don't exist. And that brings us to our final chapter for this week, chapter three, the reality of the law. Where he's like, so what the fuck is my point? And I'm like, bold way to start chapter three, bro.

To be fair, he's an idiot making terrible points. It's good to check in with yourself i'm guessing it won't help right yeah but it's good that he tried could be good yeah so he's answering the question why you got to bring up old shit with regards to humans failing to live up to the standards of morality yeah i mean to be fair humans didn't have his exceptionally humble and perfect book of morals yeah that's true that's. There's this great moment where he's like, well, you know, you'd hardly blame a tree for not being tree enough.

And I'm like, dude, your savior murdered an olive tree for not being in season. Did you not know? Really need you to check the book before you give examples, CS, okay? Just check your book, bud. Yeah, he's really drilling down on how useless it is to think of morals as being akin to scientific laws in this one.

But I'm like, but you're the one doing that. We weren't doing it. I love this part because he almost hears himself. Of course he doesn't, but he almost does. He's like, yeah, so a rock always just falls with gravity. But people keep doing anti-Christian stuff, which is weird. And instead of like, oh, right, because physics is different than human morality, he's like, I better keep writing an entire book to square that circle.

Yeah, right. I'm going to keep going. Yeah, he says, quote, electrons and molecules behave in a certain way and certain results follow. And that may be the whole story, end quote. Now, he's saying this to differentiate moral law and scientific law, but that doesn't stop him from adding a footnote that says, but it's not the whole story because there's also God.

Oh, hey, everybody, the Narnia guy is pretty sure he's found some shit about the behavior of electrons in the book that calls penises feet. So if everyone could just listen up to the Narnia guy. Yeah. No, but the fact that we fail to live up to his moral law he considers that very peculiar apparently it would be if there's a christian god and there definitely is one uh so i'm gonna keep uh working this square peg i've been working we're watching it's it's so stupid we're watching like a really bad mathematician keep getting to the end of a proof by contradiction

and being like, not writing down QED. I'm going to switch to a different pen and run that again. Blue ink. This needs blue ink. That's what it'll do. So he tries to dismiss the objection that our sense of morality is utilitarian by pointing out that you can be angry on behalf of other people.

Right? He's like oh well you know it can't just be a self-interesting because when you see someone else who's morally wronged you feel bad for them i'm like right but but they also live in society so that point is meaningless rule enforcement benefits all who benefit from the rule right but again nobody was making a purely utilitarian argument for morality no right the straw man he was ignoring in the last chapter was a societal one maybe those are close enough right again who is he arguing with did another caller to the radio station claim that like human morality is all about fucking elegant price discovery in the market for ethics and guns and butter who would say that

milton friedman would sorry yeah and he was probably right but like mostly nobody's saying that yeah so but he addresses my objection about rule enforcement his counter argument seems to be no though i can't even parse his fucking rebuttal. Right. So the objection is it benefits all of us to live in a society where we obey rules. His answer is, but why should I care if it isn't affecting me personally? Right. But to which the original objection responds, but it does affect you personally, which is what we just said. As long as you continue to live in society to which he says fucking wrong person says

what or something yeah he's got nothing yeah just a reminder though christianity has eternal bliss and eternal torture built into the heads of most of their adherents so it's mathematically impossible to be selfless when that's what's dangling yeah honestly but he even doubles down on this by saying, quote, society, after all, only means other people, end quote. But no, it doesn't. It's like it. It's not at all what society means us and the other people. And you have to deliberately misdefine it to make your silly ass argument work.

Guys, guys, I figured it out. He's seen me drive. Okay drive okay yeah that'll throw off your definition of society real fast no that's fair so okay so to no one's surprise on this spuriously asserted and spuriously defended premise he builds a spurious conclusion morals are a real thing in the world objectively arrived at in other words stupid hovering jesus rules is where we are and given that that's presented as the foundation of the entire book, we may have already debunked this whole thing, but just in case we haven't, we'll dig into it once more in next month's installment of

God Awful Books. Before we towel off tonight, I want to thank Heath and Eli for covering me for kind of a last-minute week off. I want to thank everybody who sent well wishes for my dad. He broke a hip, but he's recovering nicely. He's back home annoying my mom already. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat,

debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday. An even newer episode of our sister show's hot friend, God Awful Movat, debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Monday, and 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 show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern

on Wednesday. Obviously, I can't shut the fuck up until I thank Heath Enright for being all I dreamed of, Eli Bostic for being all I nightmared of, and Lucinda Lusions

for being more than dreams can manage. Wait, what? I was off for my anniversary. I owe her some Valentine's corniness. I also want to thank Robin for providing

this week's Farnsworth quote. They didn't have anything of their own to promote, but ask that I include a link in the show notes to the Missouri Abortion Fund, which, of course, I did. So be sure to check there for that if you're looking to help out some Missourians. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best bipeds. Shoes Off Boots On, Dragonfly, Jimmy Quill, Seek, Fenrock, Ace, Paul, Michael, Sheila, Clarence's, Jitty and Tonic. Now with more quinine, Kate, Logan, Tom, Miss, Shelly, Belly, Jelly Bean, Ace, Paul, Michael, Sheila, Clarence's, Jitty, and Tonic, now with more quinine, Kate, Logan, Tom, Miss, Shelly, Belly, Jellybean, John, JC, Jason, and Harry. Boots, Dragonfly, Jimmy, Quill, Seek, Fenrock, and Ace, who are so admirable I needed a week to warm up to complimenting them,

Paul, Michael, Sheila, Tonic, Kate, and Logan, who are so hot their muscles are technically classified as mantle, and Tom, Shelly, John, JC, Jason, and Harry are so badass lethal weapons have to register them. Together, these 18 agents of atheism aided our aim at the ahistorical anusry of the Abrahamic a-holes this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended

ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help but you spent all your expendable income going to see the Godolphin movies live in Orlando, Florida on March 2nd, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media. And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson

handles that for us, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathing skatingads.com. page versus mobile infirmary clinic what happened i don't know man i thought you really there's a herculean effort to read Pomuliferm Reclinic Inc. Guys, I'm turning on my camera.

You have to tell me if my smile's crooked. Do you have a tiny little baby stripe? Yeah. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2024. All rights reserved.