The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 103: Raiders of the Lost Mark Edition

Episode Date: February 5, 2015

In this week's episode, we'll beg you shamelessly to nominate us for a podcast award, Justin Bieber will cut his boobs off, and Lucinda will join us to learn that despite the name, this Testament is pretty old, too.

Warning, this episode uses pretty much all the swear words. Today's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new line of reverse cleaning products from Hoover Anti-Vax. Because no matter how big a mess society has already cleaned up, our powerful scientific vacuums always suck hard enough to undo the progress. Hoover Anti-Vax, eradicating all the diseases from the good old days since 1998. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, this is the crew from A Really Radio podcast, and we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. But how far is the question? I'm going to go ahead and say 1%.

Sounds good. Perfectly reasonable. And now, The Scathing Atheist. It's Thursday! It's February 5th. And Punxsutawney Phil Contrarians are correct 61% of the time. Exactly. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Enright. And from Little Caesars Valley, Valdosta, Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist.

In this week's episode, we'll beg you shamelessly to nominate us for a podcast award. Justin Bieber will cut his tits off. And Lucinda will join us to learn that Jesus is less moral philosopher and more ghostbuster. But first, the diatribe. I get a special little tingle inside when I check my email and I see a subject line that simply reads, Rip this a new asshole, please. I got just such an email from astute listener Eric this week. It had a link to an article on the Huffington Post,

and I made it about seven words into the headline before I sent my reply. I just said, Eric, consider it multi-anist. I actually got this one from several listeners, so you might have seen it, but if not, brace yourself for this bullshit headline, okay? New religion and science study reveals, note, by the way, those are the first six words. This is the peak of the article.

It will never get this good again, so savor this moment before I finish, okay? So, new religion and science study reveals post-secular rejection of evolution. That's right, post-secular. It's come and gone, folks. Secular was fun while it lasted. So here's the kumbaya coexist cleverly depicted in religious symbols thrust to this thing. It's a sociological paper essentially trying to make the argument that we're not seeing a conflict in which science is overtaking its antiquated precursor. No, no, no.

There's actually a happy hippie middle ground between religion and rational, a space that they call post-secular in hopes of downplaying the fact that religion is an archaic worldview that is in all ways inferior to empirical observation. They're challenging the traditional view that religion is in conflict with science, and their evidence is that some religious people know how lasers work. This is basically just a verbose rewording of the tired trope that says, don't worry, religious people, you can play too.

Now, follow me through their logic here, but be sure to limber up first. Asking you to follow this logic is like asking you to look me in the eye rectally. They examined some existing survey data about religion and science, and they identified four groups. Moderns, which are people whose worldview is informed by science, that's us. Traditionals, whose worldviews are informed by religion. Postmoderns, whose worldview is, let's face it, not informed at all. And then what they call post-seculars, which are people whose worldview, at all, and then what they call post-seculars, which are people whose worldview, so they claim, is a hybridization of science and religion. Now, no doubt they coined this specific bullshit term in a desperate attempt to suggest that religion isn't pre-scientific, it's post-scientific.

Science wasn't an improvement on the religious paradigm, they're just both equally valid and equally valuable, and both the Patriots and Seahawks should have got the same we-tried-really-hard trophy in the end. So they point to the fact that 21% of the people in this country exhibit a higher-than-average knowledge and trust of science while still rejecting evolution, the Big Bang, and the age of the Earth. In other words, they know the science, they just reject it. And if you hear the authors of the study tell it, they understand science. They're scientifically minded, they just science. They're scientifically minded. They just choose to reject certain scientific conclusions. Now, the problem with that, of course, is that if you think you get to reject certain scientific conclusions,

you don't understand science. That's like saying they understand the English language, they just can't speak, read, or comprehend it. Science is not a list of facts. It's a method of determining the truth of a claim. It's the tool, not the product. And if you accept science, you have to take the bits you don't like with the ones that you do. But of course, these post-seculars are nothing new.

It's just a new shade of lipstick on the same old pig. Some anti-scientific Christian zealots are able to hide from science, and they just distrust it. But the other ones, the ones that this survey Christopher Columbus, are the ones that choose to insulate themselves against the scientific inaccuracies in their beliefs with well-crafted bullshit. So congratulations, guys. You've discovered Ken Ham. You know, sure, this

demographic may say they trust science, but that's because they think that the shit that the Discovery Institute is doing is science. And yes, they answered correctly when you asked them what a laser was, but that's only because their religion doesn't have a vested interest in obfuscating that fact. I guarantee you that if Baptists decided tomorrow that the Bible said lasers were actually angel ejaculate, within a generation your survey results would look a hell of a lot different. Look, in some areas you can still hide from the science. You can still pretend that evolution

didn't happen or that the Big Bang didn't happen. You can pretend that Noah's Ark was a real event, and you can get away with that day to day without seeing undeniable evidence to the contrary. Now, don't get me wrong. There is undeniable evidence to the contrary, but it's just not staring you in the face every day, all day. Now, on the other hand, you can't pretend that prayer works as well as medicine. You can't pretend that following Jesus works better than TomTom. You can't pretend that a blessing works better than a vaccine. You can't pretend that an exorcism works as well as Thorzine. And sure, there are some deluded crazy fucks who've convinced themselves of all of these things,

but when the shit hits the fan, it's only the crazy people that would pray instead of calling 911. So for 999,999,997 of the billion questions the average person has about the world, religion can't even pretend that they've got anything on science. On all of those questions, the religious person is allowed to answer correctly. So what the survey is really saying is,

hey, look, we found three questions about which religious people are still able to successfully delude themselves. And regardless of what the study's authors might claim, that's exactly what they found. They didn't find people weighing each subject and choosing an answer by the merit of the evidence. They found a bunch of religious people rejecting all the parts of science that don't mess with Jesus. They found religious people consistently rejecting the same questions.

There is no post-secular. There's just pre-scientific with a smartphone. And sure, everybody can construct their own little way of viewing the world. They've got every right to look at the universe in any way they want. If you want to call all the squares circles, I can't stop you, but I can sure as hell tell you that you're wrong. Only one side gets to be correct. You can't build airplanes with post-modernism.

You can't launch satellites with religion. You can't advance human knowledge with theology. Despite all this magnanimous hand-waving to the contrary, religion and science are in conflict, and if we don't want the future to suck, religion has to lose. Joining me for headlines tonight

is one of the 315,999,999 Americans that had a better play call on second goal from the one with a timeout left than Pete Carroll, Heath Enright. Heath, are you ready to explain to the international listeners and the ones that just don't give a shit about football how stupid that call was? It's really good. They have Marshawn Lynch.

He's the perfect guy. You just run the ball from one yard. It's so easy. This would be like Argentina benching Lionel Messi for the World Cup final game because the coach wanted to try out their fourth string striker for a game. I was thinking more like it would be like trying to close the deal on a first date by telling her that she should fuck you quick before the rash comes back. Something like that.

Either between, maybe it's between those two things. I don't know. Well, soccer or herpes one way or another, the international listeners should understand just fine. I figure, yeah. In our lead story tonight, nobody likes the Patriots. Not even the people who win money off of them. That's just about the last I'm going to say about the NFL for a while.

But in related news, there were certainly a few entertaining commercials during the sporting event last Sunday. Noah, did you have a personal favorite? The one about the kid who drowned in the bathtub. That made me hungry. That whet my appetite. Kind of like atheist veal sushi. Exactly.

I especially enjoyed the 30 seconds of random people with fanny packs dancing around and fixing stuff with Loctite glue. That was a lot of fun. They've certainly locked up my annual glue budget of I can't remember ever purchasing glue once ever. But that's just me. If they get all the other 114 million viewers to buy several large drums of Loctite glue this year, they might profit from the $4 million commercial. Dude, I'm just going to say, we all profit from a chorus line of fat people in fanny packs. Everyone wins. Everyone wins.

Everyone wins. And as usual, in addition to the normal lineup of humorous ads, there was also at least one grossly blasphemous commercial. This year it was by Carnival Cruise Lines, featuring a clip of John F. Kennedy's speech at the 1962 America's Cup boat race, which included the following, I guess, aggressively inflammatory phrase about liking the ocean and hating Jesus tacitly. Quote, when we go back to the sea, whether it is to sail or to watch it, we are going back from whence we came. End quote. Yeah, but from whence we came, though, like that dude came everywhere at some point or another.

I mean, the oceans, sure, like motel rooms, elevators, brothels, orchards, Marilyn Monroe, and the whole point of the race to the moon was to reach yet another thing that he could splooge on. He even said that was the other thing. He was talking about it in the speech. He said it. He said that's why, because it is hard. What do you think he was talking about?

That's why we went. Behind every great man is an erection. So after hearing the suggestion from JFK that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey fish, Ken Ham got pretty angry, seeing this as an attack against creationism by another

typical atheist cruise line with another typical dead president speech. So, got into a big snit very clearly and typed up a strongly worded blog entry at Answers in Genesis about how science is stupid. And I'd say my favorite part is when he debunks atheism by pointing out that Neil deGrasse Tyson said we come from stardust, but Kennedy right here says we come from fish. So which is it?

Atheist checkmate. Who are you related to, your mother or your grandmother, huh? Atheist. Checkmate. Great point. Who are you related to, your mother or your grandmother, huh? I think he's just jealous because Carnival Cruise Lines can build a whole boat without losing their tax incentives. And in no seriously I fired me news tonight, the American Family Association is in the midst of a desperate attempt to apply a thin veneer of legitimacy to their appallingly blatant mission to have hate by sort of but not really severing their ties with legendary spewer of xenophobic vitriol,

Brian Fisher. And just in case it wasn't clear, Brian, please know, you're still very welcome to stay on with us at Skathe, that's part of the unpaid writing intern staff with Dave Manning. You guys have been doing tremendous work. Still not going to pay you, but keep it up. By all means, by all means. Yeah, you're welcome. Now, Brian Fisher, who rests comfortably between Jesus and Heath on the list of people most frequently mentioned on this show,

has been something of a liability for the group's attempts to be seen as something other than a hate group. In an anemic effort to distance themselves from Fisher's disparaging remarks about gays, the transgendered, Native Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Mormons, Sikhs, Wiccans, Burger King, bisexual, the French, and women, as well as his repeated insistence that gay adoption is the same as slavery, that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian, that being gay should be illegal, that Christians will one day be imprisoned by fascist buttfuckers, and that the Holocaust was perpetrated entirely by gays. All things that he said while serving as the official spokesman and director of the institution on a radio show paid for, staffed by, and distributed by the American Family Association.

The group sent a letter to the Southern Poverty Law Center saying that they disagree with some of that stuff, and now could they please be removed from that list of hate groups that those guys have? Right. Pretty please? Well, I seriously doubt the Southern Poverty Law could they please be removed from that list of hate groups that those guys have? Pretty please? I seriously doubt the Southern Poverty Law Center will be removing them from that list anytime soon, but regardless,

we just this moment started the scathing atheist law center hate group list, and it definitely still includes the AFA and Brian Fisher. That's right. That's right. You guys are first on the list, and not just because it's alphabetical. While the letters state that Fisher is no longer the official spokesman. Four years after saying shit so egregious the SPLC felt the need to classify them as a hate group.

Four years after the gay Nazi thing started, they say he's no longer their official spokesman. But they're still going to pay for his radio show. So he'll still be official and he'll still speak and he'll still be a man. He just won't be all of those things at the same time. And we're still paying for it. And in London Bridge on high alert news tonight. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is currently on a trip to the UK leading some analysts to believe he's gearing up for a waddle at the GOP presidential nominees. Although Romney dropping out doesn't leave quite as much space as Christie

may need. It looks like he's thinking about squeezing in anyway. However, he did hit a bump in the road this week while fielding questions from reporters. Someone asked if kids should definitely get vaccinated against preventable diseases like measles, and his answer was nowhere near close enough to yes, abso-fucking-lutely they should. Yeah, right. He instead stammered for a bit about parents' choices and autonomy, unless, of course, he thinks you have Ebola, in which case he'll suspend habeas corpus, toss your ass in a dungeon, and let you out when he damn well pleases.

Right, that happened, Chris. But just measles. That too. So according to MSNBC political correspondent Casey Hunt, who asked him the question, Christie responded that while he has chosen to prevent his kids from dying of plague et al., he believes the approach to vaccination policy should be, quote, balanced. But, unless Christie means balanced as in how it looks when Chris Christie's on a seesaw, balanced, that's almost homicidally insane, especially coming from a powerful government official. Which is why, after realizing the potentially murderous nature of the comment, Christie's wranglers quickly released the following opposite statement, quote,

the governor believes vaccines are an important public health protection, and with a disease like measles, there is no question kids should be vaccinated, end quote. So more time that's balanced as in absolutely no question. Right, right. Now, but luckily for Christie, of course, Rand Paul was there to make him seem moderate. He'll do that. Rand Paul is a member of the innocuously titled Association of American Physicians and Surgeons. This is a group that promotes AIDS HIV denial, the absolutely discredited imaginary link between autism and vaccines, and says that Medicare is, in their words, evil.

So, bandying about his credentials as a self-accredited ophthalmologist and thus an expert on vaccines, Paul went on TV in the wake of this whole thing to warn parents that vaccines caused, quote, profound mental disorders, end quote. So, Jeb thanks you. Republican contenders dropping like unvaccinated flies and GMO mosquitoes

I'm telling you and in Decalogue GM news tonight South Carolina Pastor Perry Noble of guys I swear I was in the middle of saying niggardly when a bug flew into my throat fame is in hot water with the Southern Baptist Convention for his careless and offensive speech and no

they weren't pissed about the parts where he nonchalantly tossed out the generally accepted worst word in English, but rather for a theologically inconsistent rewording of the Ten Commandments. You guys remember that really great pastor with the kick-ass denim jacket who said, naked leaves, and that really cool voice during that really great sermon he gave on Christmas Eve? It was awesome. Well, bad news.

Went over the transcript. He fucked with the top ten list. So we're going to have to say something about this. Yes, yes. After incorrectly asserting that there is no Hebrew word for commandment, Noble explained that God really meant stuff that at times seemed only tangentially related to the stuff he actually said. After rewriting the Decalogue with all of Carlin's poetic license and none of his wit,

Noble created a nearly Chopresque series of platitudes about how everything's going to be okay because Jesus. It's meaningless. Yeah, he just completely reworded all ten and also switched them from commandments to something more like the opposite. Yes. For example, in Noble's new version, instead of the rule about no other gods before me, it's a promise that you'll no longer be experiencing the disappointment emotion ever again in your life. Right. That's what he said. Yes. That's the new version of that. That's the commandment number one.

Everything is always better and never worse now. That's the rule. And that sounds great to me, but the Southern Baptist Convention is clearly going to cattle prod him off the stage like Goat Boy one of these times. Well, yeah, they're in the midst of doing exactly that. And in Bieber-Cleaver news tonight, according to our very own unpaid writing intern,

Pastor David Manning, the sperm latte guy, that's right, according to him, pop star Justin Bieber and an entire generation of young women just like him are finally getting old enough to regret that time when they were six and they had that elective mastectomy on the advice of their sodomite friend. Or penisectomy for boys because that's the male equivalent of breasts. What the fuck is going on?

I mean, at this point with Manning, I'm just waiting for the reveal. I'm waiting for him to stand up and he rips off the mask and he's actually Sacha Baron Cohen or he's like Joaquin Phoenix in blackface or something. He's just been fucking with us the whole time. Gotcha! I'm glad you said that so we don't look quite as stupid

when that clearly is going to happen. Just to make sure we're on the same page though, everybody, you heard that correctly. Pastor Manning thinks a bunch of children are mutilating their breasts and penises at a young age because of gay people existing and therefore tempting kids toward that surgical option. That's what he seems to think, yeah.

I guess here's why he sees this as a problem. It's an example of instant gratification. Cutting your dick off. That's why he's warning everyone, once it's it's an example of instant gratification so cutting your dick that's why he's warning everyone once you start reaching about 20 years old the mutilated genitals aren't what they're cracked up to be turns out it's not worth it despite what all the homosexual pro-child mutilation lobbyists would have you believe when you're six i'm just gonna say that that's a very impolite way to refer to gay jews homosexualosexual, pro-child, mutilation lobbyists. I mean, I'm not coming out against it.

I'm just saying that that was very rude of him to say that. These are Manning's exact words about this. Okay. Everybody ready? Quote, by the time they reach the age of 20 years old, they say, I wish I had never cut off my breasts. You're not even going to do the voice? No, sorry, sorry. I wish I had never cut off my breast. You're not even going to do the voice? No, sorry, sorry.

I wish I had never cut off. No, I don't know. I wish I had. Now, do you have a pastor, Manny? No, yeah, okay, I got it. Cut off my penis. I can't do it. I got this.

Wait, where's the quote? Okay. By the time they reach the age of 20 years old, they look and say, I wish I had never cut off my breast. I wish I had never mutilated my flesh. I wish I had never cut off my breast. I wish I had never mutilated my flesh. I wish I'd never cut off my penis. I wish I had never done that. I was just young. And the people in the church or the people in the media said or gave the impression that I had a right to choose any kind of sexual orientation that I wanted to choose. And so I cut off my penis

or I cut off my breast. But now I'm 20 years old, and I wish that I had not done that. All right, that was a great Pastor Manning. Thank you. I'm pretty surprised. Thank you. And after that nugget of wisdom he threw us, he went on to explain how he's not going to let this happen to another generation of kids, of course. You got that quote, too, the one about physically chasing the sodomites?

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. The one about physically chasing the sodomites? Yes, as a matter of fact, I do. I would chase every sodomite. I would chase every lesbo. I would chase every political leader with the power of God, with the chariots of fire. Once again, spot on. And I think I speak for most New Yorkers we absolutely cannot wait to see Pastor Manning take out the chariot that he owns

I guess, set it on fire and then chase packs of lesbians through the streets of Manhattan and there's definitely a reality television show if there's not a reality TV show in that America might as well not exist now don't worry though, I want to make it very clear that he's going to be chasing

gay men in his flaming vehicle from Greek antiquity in a totally heterosexual way for heterosexual reasons. Now, I guess a lot of people liked his theory, but they had a problem with the age 20 part seemed arbitrary, you know. So before closing out the report, Manning explained how mutilated man girls, once they reach about 20 years old, can't grow their breasts back. At 20 years old, can't grow their penis back. So I guess he gives us an important takeaway lesson there, right? If you're going to cut your penis off at age six, you better decide by like 17 or 18 whether you're going to want to grow it back, because 20 is clearly too late. Just ask that girl, Justin Bieber. Same thing happened to her, but, you know, with breasts. Which is the same as a penis.

Only it's a penis. Yeah. Good for girls. And speaking of voluntarily chopping off your penis to be a better gay per- No, fuck it. There is no way to segue seamlessly away from that guy's crazy shit, so we're just gonna hand things over to Lucinda with the hopes that she'll eventually

hand them back. A man wrote the Bible? A horse, which one? If it's a legitimate race. Then it's your slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This Week in Misogyny.

You know, I'm not much of a sports fan. But when the stakes are high enough and the game is close enough, even I can get excited about a good football match. So let me start by congratulating the winners of this weekend's big game. By which, of course, I mean Australia's 2-1 victory over the Korean Republic in the Asian Cup Finals last Friday. So congratulations to the adorably named Socceroos, a team with a name too cute not to root for. But, of course, the tournament was not without its share of sexism. Cute not to root for. But of course, the tournament was not without its share of sexism,

an inevitable consequence of inviting countries like Iran, where it's illegal for women to attend men's sporting events. To underscore the prehistoric views on gender roles in that country, government officials warned the Iranian footballers that even though barbaric nations like Australia allow women to attend ball-related events, that was no excuse to take pictures that might acknowledge that to folks back home. The head of the Iranian Football Federation's Moral Committee warned that players risked being used as political tools if they took pictures with female fans. He assured players that unspecified penalties await a brazen affirmation of unpenisced humans.

But of course, the Saudis have a solution to the problem of woman-man proximity that's even more sexist. With a kingdom still reeling from last October's woman-at-a-soccer-match gate, Prince Fahd bin Jalawi Assad, acting as consultant for that nation's Olympic Committee, proposed a gender-segregated Olympics, where men and women don't even have to be in the same country together. Believe it or not, this came as part of an attempt to convince the International Olympic Committee to consider Saudi Arabia as possible host nation for future Olympic Games. They could have the real games in Saudi Arabia, but all the women could have their knitting competitions or whatever in Bahrain. To their credit, the IOC president told Saudi Arabia to go fuck itself, explaining that when it comes to their commitment to non-discrimination, quote, Saudi Arabia cannot simply outsource certain issues

to another territory, end quote. And I believe he chose those words because he'd get in trouble if he said, do you assholes really have nothing better to do than worry about women wearing shorts? Are you aware of Yemen? Have you seen ISIS? Do you know how dynastic struggles work? Are you fucking kidding me? But eventually, all this sexism is bound to backfire for the Islamic faith. For example, one group of Muslim women in Los Angeles have grown so tired of patriarchy that they said,

to hell with the men, we can oppress ourselves. The women-only mosque is the first of its kind in America, though the practice of keeping women the hell out of the way is a time-honored tradition in the faith. Even mosques in the U.S. almost universally segregate the genders, with women confined to the back of the prayer room at best, or a separate but unequal room off to the side at worst. But, of course, even voluntarily sequestering themselves in a separate building from all of the penises isn't enough for the more conservative Muslims, who complain that for a mosque to be completely testosterone-free, women would have to say

the man prayers. So, yes, the move of creating entirely isolated places where women can speak after religious services without bothering the menfolk is being derided as too progressive for American Muslims. Tell me again about how the sexism is all regional? And while the apologists draft their angry emails, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda.

And in two-blave news tonight, people who are fuzzy on the whole alive-dead thing are claiming that a 200-year-old Mongolian mummy might not be dead after all. The mummy, so... There you go right there. He's a fucking mummy. not be dead after all. The mummy, so, there you go right there. He's a fucking mummy. He's dead.

The mummy was discovered in the Sunganogur Khan district of Ulaanbaatar last week. And when I say discovered, I mean seized after some government official saw it on Mongolian eBay. Right. So it's either possession of a cadaver with intent to distribute, or more realistically, it's a 200-year-old Buddha incarnation, in which case that's magical human trafficking. So it's a stiff penalty either way. You've got to sort this out one way or the other. When it was alive, the cadaver belonged to a Mongolian monk

who was believed to be taking part in the every-bit-as-bad-as-it-sounds practice of self-mummification. The practice of soku shinbutsu, which literally translates to suicide on layaway, is achieved through a liberal application of ingesting poison and starving oneself to death. But that's the whole point. Yes, of course. The idea is, if you can die during

meditation and manage to not move for three weeks, you sometimes didn't actually die, and you sometimes become part of infinity, and you sometimes become part of infinity, and you sometimes get a rainbow over your house for four days. There are several anecdotes

that prove this. And he's just one of them. Now, local monks point to the fact that the mummy was found seated in lotus position, and by then applying no human being would stack books in this way logic, they determined that he must have successfully self-mummified

and is now an enlightened Buddha, a state that only looks exactly like regular dead. Unconfirmed reports suggest that when people looked unconvinced, local monks grabbed the mummy's jaw, moved him up and down for a little while while they said, being an alive mummy is awesome. They still weren't convinced and in fingerprints of darkness news tonight equal employment opportunity commission succeeded

in their religious discrimination lawsuit against a natural gas and coal company called console energy on behalf of mine worker beverly butcher jr that's a dude just to be clear the suit claims he was forced to retire from his job under protest when they insisted he punch in and punch out on the time clock using the same hand scanner as everybody else. This, of course, was unacceptable to Mr. Butcher as a fundamentalist Christian who's not stupid enough to put his hand on a satanic beast marker machine. Not an idiot. He will receive $150,000 plus maybe some back pay for all his troubles. Right, yeah.

This guy who had arbitrarily decided that the hand scanner was the work of the devil and thus refused to use it. This is like absolutely no different than somebody deciding that the cafeteria is haunted and that the company has to accommodate them by building them their own lunchroom. Right, so this is obviously completely asinine and also an atrocious waste of EEOC resources that could be used for looking into the enormous amounts of actual employment discrimination that is probably happening. But it's even worse considering the ridiculous lengths to which this company went in attempting to accommodate this crazy person before it got to court.

At one point, they actually presented the guy documentation from the hand scanner manufacturer, asserting there was absolutely no mechanism by which their product could in any way place a mark on a physical object, for example, a human hand. Because apparently they'd had complaints like this before. When that wasn't good enough, they took it even further and I guess consulted with a theological physicist, and he also assured them that nobody was in danger of beast marking especially if they scan with their left hand palm up because satan only marks right hand palms and foreheads so you're safe with your left backhand and again

this is the inevitable byproduct of all this sincerely held belief bullshit being enshrined in law. There's no point at which you can say, okay, well, this was just too stupid to take seriously. And we know that because nothing could be stupider than this. Try to beat this. I mean, look, step back from this for just a second. that a hand scanner is going to insert a demonic microchip into his skin that's going to make the ghost that drives his body get tortured by a satyr when the magic carpenter comes to destroy the world. That's the belief that we've just legally protected.

I just won. He won in court. Yes, exactly. So here's how it even ends up in court, is what I'm saying. Yes, exactly! So, here's how it even ends up in court. Even after being offered the extra-safe, left-handed, palm-up version of the scan, Mr. Butcher still wasn't satisfied. Apparently, in his copy of the Book of Revelations, if you unfocus your eyes and then refocus about three feet past the Bible, you can see a 3D schematic of Satan's plan to take over the universe

using time-clock hand scanners in West Virginia coal mines to mark all the important people with a 666. I thought that was a schooner. Strangely enough, still no reports of other employees at the exact same place being secretly tattooed by Satan, nor of anyone being magically infected with cosmic evil in any way that seemed suspicious or out of the ordinary for a fracking company. We absolutely will not keep you posted. No, we won't.

And in premature eradication news tonight, Christian residents of Mobile, Alabama are cheering the removal of a pro-atheist billboard a full two weeks before it was scheduled to come down, according to dubious sources like the advertising contract. The Gulf Coast Coalition of Reason placed a sign which shamefully affirmed the existence of atheists in public, no less. Shocking.

Paid to have their ad run for four weeks, but after a mere two weeks, the advertising company has chosen to take the advertisement down in what seems to a layman to be a complete breach of their contract. Doesn't it? Yeah. This is when Christian libertarians

have their face explode, though. Isn't it? Secure contracts, markets, Jesus, individual freedoms, Jesus, markets, Jesus, markets, Jesus, markets, Jesus, markets, That's a great visual there. Now, to be fair, the company was two weeks late getting the ad posted,

so it's actually coming down when it was scheduled to come down, and the company is offering to refund 50% of the money that they paid, which absolves the company from outright theft, but it still kind of wreaks a discrimination. Yeah. If this was one of the 8,000 Jesus billboards in the famous-for-ings Mobile, Alabama area. There's no way it comes down early on a technicality. And if you think about it,

it's not like at the bottom of the sign it says, if you're offended by this ad, call 1-800-STICK-IN-MY-ASS or anything like that. You've got to go out and find out who owns that particular billboard. You've got to find the number. Your offense at the words don't believe in God, you're not alone has to linger.

For a while. Being a Christian must just be some miserable shit, mustn't it? That's gotta suck. Oh my God. And finally tonight, from the secret life of Falter Middyphile. Two-time failed GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney announced his aspirations to once again complicate the Republican primaries last month, Mitt Romney announced his aspirations to once again complicate the Republican primaries last month, but now he's officially pulled out of the 2016 race after an arduous three weeks of being told,

dude, you're just making it worse. And he already hears that plenty in the bedroom, so he doesn't need it from everyone else, too. So Romney clearly just went through a whole bunch of awkward conversations with party leadership and a bunch of rich people that gave him money last time, and clearly aren doing it it's really too bad he didn't record any of this accidentally because i would have loved to hear so you lost to a black guy no big deal rich white guys lose elections to black guys all the time in america sorry i couldn't get through that of course they don't of course they do not do that we're obviously not going to sponsor you i can't believe you're asking ted ted mitt's asking for money again. Check this out.

Look at him. He's going to cry. Watch, watch. And Romney couldn't finance his own election, of course, without revealing to the IRS how much money he actually has. So that's off the table. That's a non-starter. They're $250 million my ass, dude.

So that is pretty much 100%. Mitt Romney will never be president of the United States. Has a nice ring to it. However, anyone planning to spend the next year and a half making fun of the silly Mexican Mormon running for president on their atheist podcast and sister skeptical political podcast, well, those people are kind of fucked. Aren't they?

That's why we have decided to selflessly stick up for those people. So, Mitt, we're going to try to talk you into one more campaign. That's why we're putting 30 seconds on the clock just for you all we're asking is you hear us out with this before you pull the plug mitt romney 2016 campaign slogans we'd hate to see wasted go do it for the satirists mitt all right how about um mitt romney This time around, he knows that waiters have camera phones. There's a new advantage right there. Mitt Romney. Obama stole my idea for all that care. And I stole it fair and square from Bob Dole and Richard Nixon. You are welcome.

Mitt Romney. 20,088 days since the last gay kid tortured. Mitt Romney. Like Ayn Rand, but without the atheism. That's nice. Best of both worlds. Mitt Romney. Like Ayn Rand, but without the atheism. So, that's nice. Best of both worlds. Mitt Romney. Batman had a car elevator and nobody ever gave him any shit about it.

Mitt Romney. Name an issue, name a side, I've been there. I have tons of experience. They call me Pharma Chameleon. Whatever you want. Mitt Romney. Vote for me and I promise I'll stop being an asshole to my dog. Mitt Romney, with the taxes I've evaded, I could have employed thousands more Americans.

I didn't. No, I chose not to. That's a good thing. I also provide liquidity. Oh, how about Mitt Romney? Because Mormons are supposed to have women by the binder full. Quit being such a bigot. Don't judge me. It's part of our thing. Come on. Mitt Romney. Any decent White House needs a FLOTUS and a

SLOTUS. Bare minimum. Maybe a TLOTUS. Maybe a TLOTUS too. How about Mitt Romney? He thinks you're part of the good 53%. And finally, we got one more for you. Mitt Romney. My investment banking firm is so good for society,

they named a Batman villain after us. Well, with hopes that one of these will reach Mitt and inspire him to further humiliate himself with yet another surname-tarnishing, futile bid for the presidency, we'll close out the headlines for the night. Heath, thanks as always. Mitt Romney's out! And when we come back, Lucinda will be here to learn that despite the name, this testament's pretty damn old, too.

The summer of 1983 was, by far, the hardest of my life. All at once, I had poison ivy, strep throat, and a urinary tract infection, and just as I was getting over all of that, I caught asthma, and tuberculosis, and cancer, and gout, erectile dysfunction, St. Anthony's fire, and a yeast infection. And when all the chemotherapy, blood transfusions, and leachings were at their worst, I remember turning to my mother and saying, Mommy, I don't know if I can take it anymore. And she choked back a tear and she said, What would make it all right, sweetheart? And I looked her in the eye and I said, I think that I could make it through.

Nay, I know that I could. If I thought that there was some way that someday I could win a People's Choice Podcast Award. way that someday I could win a People's Choice Podcast Award. And that kind of freaked her out because podcasts wouldn't be invented for another 21 years. So she said, I'm sorry, sweetheart, that's impossible. And so knowing that my dreams would never come true, I lost the will to carry on and I died painfully. Like that little kid that fucked up the mood in the middle of the Super Bowl in that disturbing fucking commercial about babies drowning in bathtubs. Who the hell signed off on that? But today you can make little dead Noah's dream come true after all. And it'll only take a few minutes of your time. Just go to podcastawards.com and put in your nomination today. Be sure to read

the rules carefully because you can only submit your nomination once. That's right. Now we figure our best chance of winning would be in the religious inspirational category. It'll have the fewest podcast savvy competitors and I can imagine a lot of atheists might just vote for us even if they've never heard of the show just because they like the idea that there was an atheist show nominated in the religious category and voting for it would piss the religious people off. And remember, once again, check the rules. You're only allowed to nominate each show in one category,

so as much as we appreciate the people who nominate us in eight different categories, your nominations won't count, so thanks and everything, but we're much better off if you just nominate us in the religious inspirational category. But you gotta do it quick. The nomination phase ends on Friday, one day after this episode debuts, so please go to podcastawards.com or look for a link on our website, our Facebook page, or our Twitter feed. And remember,

if you don't nominate us, baby Noah died for nothing. And now, just under the wire, like literally a minute and 49 seconds before the Holy Babel intro starts playing for our first New Testament book, the scathing atheist proudly presents the last of these fucking minor prophet poems, Malachi in Rhyme. Long ago when we finished the pentateuch, and I thought of the time and resolve that it took,

and I bookmarked the page, and upon second look realized we'd made only a dent, I started to question our motives in reading a book that's less fun than your testicles bleeding, but we plowed through, and I say that while freely conceding it put the test back in Old Testament. Now, the historical books upped the ante of boredom. We had doubts of their value, but deftly ignored them, less fun than performing a roadkill post-mortem while deer ticks convene on your skin. As it repeats all the stuff it's already repeated, and just when you think that the echo's completed, you open up Chronicles,

and here you are treated to all of it said yet again. Now, the following section appeared to have promise. They call them the Wisdom Books, and to be honest, yes, they're vain and insane and they're famously pompous, but it's an almost appropriate title. For though it's paternalist, bent, still atrocious, and God's still a violent asshole, you'll notice that as bad as it is, it's still doubtless the closest to wisdom you'll find in the Bible.

The prophets come next. They're deranged and ignoble, and all of them warn us that God will make global conditions that suck when compared to Chernobyl, and thus he's merciful, moral, and wise. They babble like people who live on the subway. They're naked and frothing, their scalps are all stubbly, and they're ranting like Exoddor, screaming that someday an army of zombies will rise. But Isaiah through Daniel just weren't sufficient. Silly me, thought an author who says he's omniscient, could be slightly more pithy, but it turns out he isn't, so twelve minor prophets remained. These were short little books, so we cautiously hoped they'd be easy compared to the others, but nope, by the end of it I was seeking a stool and a rope, and for all of it, nothing was

gained. They said I'd be moved by the power of God, so I feel like I should be impressed, but I'm not, with no likable heroes and no twists in the plot, and a book that they claimed was unequaled? I was told there'd be insight, instead we got none as we ticked off the biblical books one by one. The only good thing I'm feeling is done. I just hope there isn't a sequel. The Holy Bible On the advice of a number of listeners and scholars, we've elected to start our dive into the New Testament with the book of Mark. It's been described to us as the most stripped-down or bare-bones version of the Jesus story,

and of course, its earliest forms predate the other three Gospels. Now, after reading the book, I've come to understand that when people said stripped-down, they meant like listening to a six-year-old tell a story. That's pretty rough. Oh, my God. It's like haphazardly connecting disparate topics, liberally applying trivial details, referring to unintroduced characters on a first-name basis,

backtracking on random details, exactly like listening to a fucking kid talk to you. Every chapter title might as well have been, and then. Of course, joining us to crack open what's been billed as the kinder, gentler version of Jew God is my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, welcome back. Genghis Khan was kinder and gentler than Jew God. Yeah, not exactly a high bar to get over. So without further ado, let's meet Jesus.

All right. Well, the whole damn book starts with spoilers. How are you going to reveal he's the Messiah in the first sentence? It actually starts with the phrase, the beginning of the good news about Jesus. Terrible. Like Mark's sitting around with a bunch of Jewish people. They're all depressed. They're part of the testament, clearly ran out at this point.

He says, you want the good news or the bad news? And everybody's so stupid, they went for the good news. So good news. Jesus was like the coolest Jewish guy ever. Bad news, he doesn't actually stay Jewish. You're all not chosen anymore. Yeah, yeah. And then from there, the intro,

we frenetically leap to John the Baptist who is back in a camel hair jacket munching on some honey-covered locusts as crazy people in rivers are wont to do. And apparently when Jewish people in Galilee see this guy, their first instinct is to walk right up and say, excuse me, sir? Sir?

Yes, you with the camel hair shirt? Whenever you finish eating that large insect, do you think you could pretend to drown me and my kids for a few seconds? We just saw you there and it seems so convenient as we're walking around. Like five seconds each. Pretend to drown. And then in the span of three sentences,

God reveals to Jesus that he's God's son. Jesus wanders into the desert for 40 days. He's tempted by Satan, and John the Baptist is arrested. All in one breath. And it's funny reading this after the whole Jesus is God, but he's also Jesus. Theology has been retrofitted into it, because when God reveals himself to Jesus in Mark, he says, you are my son, and I am pleased with you. So right away, first chapter, God is pleasuring himself.

I thought that was worth mentioning. That's not the last mention of that. No. Then he gathers up some fishermen, mid-net casting. By the way, he gets the fishermen on board by offering the chance to hunt human beings instead of fish. That was his selling point. And they love it. They love it.

They drop their poles mid-sentence. I'm sold. Right. Hunt some humans. We'll bring this net. Yeah, he enlists the fishermen, yanks a demon out of some dude at a synagogue, heals a town full of demon-possessed cripples, cures a leper. Basically, we get a whole miracle montage by Jesus.

We need a montage. Yeah, by the end of it, Jesus is famous. And then he cures a paralyzed dude, but all the priests were getting pissed because he also forgave his sin, and that is God's turf. Yeah, he's pissing all on their faces. He's not fasting. He's plucking weed out on the Sabbath. He's flashing his tits for beads.

He's clearly a wild man. They just can't keep in trouble. They're all mad about Jesus letting the cripple off the hook, I guess, so Jesus has to explain. What did you guys think I was doing? Like fusing dead neurons together? No, it's a lot easier if I just forgive him for whatever my dad was pissed about. By the way, my dad said I'm allowed to do that, so that counts. I can't get away with as many of those as I want. And then he picks out his disciples, and he gives the first couple of them new names,

like Peter and the Sons of Thunder. That's actually in the Bible. But after that, he just kind of gives up on the superhero team pretenses and just calls the rest of them by their normal names. He didn't get quite as much as I hoped for. And then maybe when he sets up that Rico chart, everyone clearly got into a fight about the names.

Why can't I be Sons of Thunder? Why can't I pick your name? You're Judas! One more outburst, you're off the team. Don't fuck us on this. Get your head in the game. Then right after he heals a dude with like a dragon arm one Saturday, that's when all the Jews start drawing up the now famous murder plot. That was the last straw.

He healed that dragon arm. That's it. You're fucked up now. You waited. So Jesus is babbling about seeds and shit, and one of the disciples has finally had enough, so he's like, dude, could you stop being all fucking Yoda and just explain what you mean to us once?

And Jesus responds with a parable about speaking and parables. And clearly he doesn't know how seeds work. No. Or that mustard seeds are by no means the smallest in the world. Not even the smallest ones known at the time. Right, or that mustard plants aren't really trees.

Not a whole heart. It's not a large plant. It's horrible in elephant. The mustard can have a fucking bird nest in it? Are you sure about that? Jesus. The real part. And chapter four also gives you plenty of that six-year-old telling a story thing you mentioned.

Yes. Definitely. Including a close that went something like this. And plus there's that time. That time when... Wait. When Ann there was... And there was that big storm. And when Ann – and when Jesus controlled the water into – and then there wasn't a storm anymore.

That was the end of the chapter. More or less. Yes, more or less. And then we get what might be the most bizarre story in this book so far. Okay, no. But one of the top 60. Sloth from the Goonies shows up. That was cool.

And I wasn't expecting that. I love Sloth. There's some dude that lives in a graveyard and breaks rocks with his head all day and when Jesus comes up on his boat the guy runs up to him and says, Jesus, what the fuck's up with me being so crazy? This is nuts over here. Why am I breaking rocks with my head says, Jesus, what the fuck's up with me being so crazy?

This is nuts over here. Why am I breaking rocks with my head all the time? What the fuck? So Jesus pulls the demons out of him and sends them into a couple of thousand pigs at the demon's request, mind you, and then drowns all of the pigs in the ocean. Which makes everybody just pissed because that wasn't helpful at all.

He just murdered 2,000 of our pigs. Leave now. Right. That's fucking bacon. Which he does. He heads to a different town. He's on his way to heal some little dying girl when a chick touches his clothes and he goes all Fonzie Fonzarelli.

Hey. Lay off the jacket, you. And then he jumps and starts to dead growl. Of course. And then he leaves town telling everyone to keep this all a secret. Because he's a giant, lazy asshole about wielding his magical healing powers

that require zero effort. Right. Yeah. Yes. So Herod hears about these roaming demon buster franchises that Jesus is setting up.

Na-na-na-na. He assumes he must be the reincarnation of John the Baptist for some reason or another. Right, which the six-year-old

then goes to say, oh, oh, and remember, remember when I was telling you about John the Baptist? some reason or another. Right, which the six-year-old then goes to say, oh, and remember when I was telling you about John the Baptist? Remember? Right. Even though Herod personally had John executed with his severed head brought to a dinner party on a plate to pay for the dancer at his dinner party. All of that's in the Bible. And then he does the walking on water bit.

And I always assumed that happened out of necessity or for some reason, you know? Not at all. Apparently he was just fucking with all the people in the boat league. Right. Like, ah, I was just fucking with you guys. Ooh, I was walking on water. No, there's still Tommy's. Come on.

I'll calm that wind down for you. Yeah. Yeah. Then Jesus takes a firm stand against basic hygiene and explains that sickness doesn't come from the food, but rather from the sins in your heart. Right. So Christians with hand sanitizer are totally going to hell. Clearly.

Good lesson. Clearly. And then he cures a deaf guy with a stutter, and I'm thinking, we get it. He cures, like, I mean, who's reading along and saying, well, yeah, sure, he cured a leper and he did a dead kid, but what can he do for any excuses? Come on. Apparently Pat Robertson hasn't heard about the Book of Mark because

Pat Robertson's deafness remedy involves rebuking evil silence demons. But right here, in the Book of Mark, Jesus tells us that all we have to do is stick our fingers in the dude's ears, spit in his mouth, and French kiss him for five seconds. So I don't know if Pat Robertson's even talking about it. That's an interesting twist that this takes because for a while

he just touches people or says words and they're cured. But by chapter 8, he's spitting in a blind dude's eye to cure him. So my guess is he's just getting sick of curing people all together. He's like, no, I have to spit in your eye. Seriously. Seriously, I've got to spit in your mouth if I'm going to do this. Hold on. Yeah, or to see if he flinched.

Well, right, right. Make sure he was really blind. Okay. All right. I hadn't thought of that. Jesus is wise. I know he spit in that dude's mouth, too. That was really blind. Okay. All right. I hadn't thought of that. Jesus is wise. I know he spit in that dude's mouth too. That was pretty close.

And by the way, remember when Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish? Well, for the big finale, because he's the worst stage magician ever, he went with some new material and he feeds 4,000 people with seven loaves and three fish. That's like less impressive in every category. Yeah. Then they're back on the boat and Jesus lays out the whole, I'm going to get crucified thing, which Peter objects to. And Jesus responds, get behind me, Satan, which makes you wonder why he wants Satan behind him, exactly. Right, it's a little weird.

I mean, let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say this wasn't a butt sex thing. Wouldn't you want Satan right where you could see him, you know, in front of you? Yeah, that would make more sense. You could see him, you know, in front of you. Yeah, yeah, that would make more sense. And then Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a mountain where he levels up like post-Balrog Gandalf or something. And then Moses and Elijah, Obi-Wan, Kenobi their way in to congratulate him. That was kind of fucking weird.

Then he goes back down the mountain and bitches at his other disciples for not being able to cure epilepsy with magic spells and shit. Right, yeah, the dad of the epileptics kid there, he's all pissed off. He's like, we tried everything. We've thrown him into rivers. We've set him on fire. I don't know what else there is to do. Jesus is like, my name. It's not that hard. Spit in his eye like I showed you before.

Then he gives this famous speech about when it is and isn't appropriate to chop off your own limbs. And it's way more often than you'd guess, too. It's scary. Despite what Pastor David Manning would have you believe. Right. And then he gives his famous child bukkake invitation. One way of saying it.

He also says that people who don't receive the kingdom of God as children will never enter it, so I guess that means that all the trolls on our Facebook page can fuck off. I'm 38. Too late. Jesus said so. Yeah, we're not rich, so the whole camel through the eye of the needle thing

isn't going to get us. But the young stipulation will. And the blaspheming against the Holy Spirit and the butt stuff. Yeah, the butt stuff always gets you. You know, when a blind dude walked up to him and asked to be healed, Jesus had to ask what the problem was. Right. You what, you got a headache or something?

Yeah, he really sucks at the diagnostics end of this whole thing. He needs house. Yeah. And then we suddenly start to see, like, Jesus' dark side. All in the same chapter, he tells his disciples to steal him a horse, he curses a fig tree for not being in season, and then he goes into a temple and starts a bar brawl. He's kind of being

a whiny bitch. Bring me this. Bring me that. This strawberry's too expensive. Whatever. Stop being an asshole. And I've heard a lot about him whipping the money changers before, but he was also fucking with the people selling doves. Why would you fuck with people selling doves? Yeah, no, by the end of it, he was like not

he wouldn't even let anybody carry anything. This is also where we get the famous, blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord, quote. My problem with that, of course, it kind of contradicts the taking his name in vain thing. Also, by the way, according to Mark, if you're really a Christian, you can throw mountains into oceans with your psychokinesis. I'll be honest, I'm surprised they don't talk that aspect up more often. People love superpowers. It's a good selling. It's a psychokinesis.

Not even on one poster. And by now he's pissing off all the people in power. So they send a bunch of people to try to out-theology him, which was fun. With questions like a brother A marries brother B's wife, and then he dies, and she marries brother C, and so on through seven brothers, who gets to fuck her in heaven? That's one of the actual questions that I asked. And by the way, the correct answer, apparently,

according to Jesus, is that in heaven, nobody gets to fuck anybody because nobody will have genitals. I bet it... That's not on the poster. That's not on the fucking brochure they're not advertised

play up the psychokinesis yeah exactly losing genitals for all eternity and we're reminded in Mark 12 30 to manually masturbate

the family next door in my case about five or six times a day I don't remember that bit love thy neighbor as thyself

then he goes all minor prophet and starts talking about the coming apocalypse. Yeah, so I'm about to die on a cross, and that's going to suck for me, but I'll be pre-erasing all these. It doesn't matter. I'm definitely coming back from the dead, but until that happens, yeah, shit's going to suck for you guys too. And you're going to look really stupid when you argue with atheists, but seriously, I'll be back right after that. And then we get the last supper and Jesus is betrayed, yadda yadda yadda, you know

this part. Yeah, so the Jews are about to murder Jesus, but they didn't want to do that during flatbread week at TGI Fridays after sundown, or else it might have been a riot, so they had to bump the most famous murder in history to the next week. Yeah. Right, but he can't get crucified until he's properly moisturized.

Right, and we get this non-sequitur of a moment when Jesus is hanging out before the lamb slaughter or whatever, and some woman walks up to him and pours like $5,000 worth of what the Bible calls pure nard cream on his face. The apostles are like, how much nard cream did you just waste on him? That's ridiculous. And Jesus yells at them, hey, hey, she wanted to put the fancy nard cream on my face. I'm about to get crucified. It's a nice gesture. Everybody just

relax. It's nice fancy nard cream. I kind of wanted that. Was I the only one who thought it was odd that when they actually captured Jesus, they mentioned that some kid ran off naked after they arrested Jesus? Don't forget that little kid's dong. Put that in there. Gollum was following the old man.

Yeah, right. He throws off his clothes and runs away. It's pretty fucking weird. Sure. And then we get to the part Mel Gibson jacks off to. Yes. Jesus gets tortured and hung up on the cross. Everybody's giving him shit for saying he was the king of the Jews.

And he asked God why he hath forsaken him. And they're saying that everybody's giving him shit. They're like, hey, bro, why don't you marry yourself off that fucking cross if you're so messianic, huh? Amnipotence doesn't come with a claw hammer. You can't use the force. Come on, man. Come on, Jesus. Even the two guys getting crucified can't use the force. Come on, man. Come on, Jesus. Even the two guys

getting crucified next to him. Right? They say that. The two guys are getting crucified. That looks awful over there. I'm fine. I would point at you if my nails weren't in so tight and laugh. And then you get the original ending.

There's two different endings to this thing. But in the original ending, it was kind of like a, is there a Santa or isn't there kind of thing, right? So two Marys and a Salome go to the tomb where Jesus' body was. The tomb's empty, and there's a dude in a white robe saying, no worries, Jesus rose from the dead. Don't look at the false body. That's it. That's it. Don't even look in there.

Jesus rose from the dead. And the dude in the white robe, he could have been an angel. It doesn't really say. He could have been a grave robber with a wrist fetish. Doesn't exactly spell that out. I think it was pretty clear he wasn't an angel. But it does close on more superpowers. Oh my god, now here's a line

that's killed a bunch of people, right? It says that you'll know somebody's a real Christian if they can eat poison, juggle snakes, and magically heal the sick. What the fuck? All right. So from now on, when anybody asks what it would take for me to believe in Jesus,

I'm going to tell them to toss a mountain into the ocean while a cobra blows them and then gargle lye. Just like Mark. Just like Mark says so. That's what I'm going to tell them. Now, I'd say from my perspective that Mark is far more notable for what it doesn't contain than for what it does. Like, there's no virgin birth. There's no nativity. No casting of the first stone.

No sermon on the mount. No post-crucifixion appearances of Jesus. You weren't going to say anything about that stuff? Yeah, not to mention no real moral philosophy. No. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm all about pushing back against religious authority. But when the big moral stand you take in your book is against washing your hands before you eat...

Right? I don't know if I'm ready to crown you the Prince of Peace yet. No, that didn't quite earn the title. Now, obviously we'll get to all those familiar details as they're added post hoc to the coming Gospels, but until then, I'm left with the impression that Jesus is kind of like a self-absorbed dick with an E.T. finger. Basically, that's it. We already know the Jesus stuff now, right? We can skip these other Gospels.

We don't really have to. I wish it were so. Lucinda, Heath, thanks as always. Fulgarity or something. Babylon. Before we fold, spindle, and mutilate tonight, I wanted to remind you one more time to nominate us for a podcast award quick while you still can. You can go to podcastawards.com or you can follow the link on our homepage. Nominations end on Friday, so please, please, please get your nomination in quickly.

And please check the rules. They're kind of poorly written, but just to be sure that your nomination counts, only nominate us in the religion inspirational category. Nominating us in multiple categories might invalidate your entry, and we want to make sure that your nomination counts only nominate us in the religion inspirational category nominating us in multiple categories might invalidate your entry and we want to make sure that every nomination counts it only takes a couple of minutes it's really important to us and we never ask you for anything except for money itune reviews stitcher reviews social media follows recommendations to your friends an hour of your life every week occasional political action and that you buy our book diatribes volume 150 1, 50 Essays from a Godless Misanthrope, available at the Kindle Store, Amazon, and other fine retailers.

But other than that, we never ask you for anything. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you this week, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be sure to check me out on an ostensibly upcoming episode of The Herd Mentality with Adam Riggs. And of course, we're less than three weeks away from the official launch of our sister podcast, The Skeptocrat, which will be available starting February 23rd. Of course, I need to thank Heath for extending his impressive streak of ass-kicking for yet another week.

I need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lusions for lending us her wit and wisdom this week once again. I also want to thank the crew from the Oh Really Radio podcast, that's O-R-L-Y, for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. If you'd like to learn more about their show, we'll have a link in the show notes for this episode. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most magnificent mammals. Mark, John, Nathan, Liam, Sean, Henrik, Stuart, Alan, Babrock, and Michelle, Thomas, Adam, Emin, Form, Steve, Lucas, Declute, Paul, and Angus. Mark, John, Nathan, Liam, Sean, and Henrik, whose orgasms give supernovae a missions envy. Stuart, Alan, Babrock, and Michelle, Thomas, and Adam, who are so revered that malignant bacteria avoid them out of respect, and M-informed Steve, Lucas, Duclute, Paul and Angus, whose wit is so sharp it forced Hattari Hanzo to put a disclaimer on his swords. Together, these 18 able-bodied atheists have aided our aims this week by giving us money.

Not everybody has the raw sexual magnetism that it takes to give us money, but if you think you can handle the relentless pursuit of attractive members of whichever gender you prefer fucking that comes with donating to our show, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist. As a per-episode donor, you'll have access to new episodes slightly earlier, they'll be slightly longer, and your children will love you slightly more. You can also make a one-time donation

by clicking on the Donate button on the right side of our homepage. And if you'd like to help, but you lost all your money in the crash of 29, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a glowing review on iTunes or your podcast aggregator of choice. And of course, nominating us for a podcast award at podcastawards.com. Don't forget, if you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly. And yes, I did have my permission. was discovered in the sunganokar khan district oh shit i fuck up district i get sunganokar khan

and i fuck up district really