The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 118: Roman Helmet Edition

Episode Date: May 21, 2015

In this week's episode the slow and inevitable death of the Christian majority in America will be laid plain before us; the Saudi Arabian job report shows good growth in the decapitation sector; and the bible finally gets around to condemning lesbians.

Warning, the following podcast contains adult language in its most juvenile form. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the controversial new Saudi Arabian sitcom about a Saudi Arabian sitcom about two gay lovers pretending to be bachelor roommates. The Riyadh Couple. Watch as these two incompatible Saudis avoid execution amidst many hilarious mix-ups and wacky shenanigans. The Riyadh Couple. The kingdom's favorite haramper roommates. execution amidst many hilarious mix-ups and wacky shenanigans. Three odd couple. The kingdom's favorite haramper roommates. And now, the skating atheist.

This is Pastor Jay from Know the Truth, and we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's May 21st. And studies show that coffee drinkers have more sex. So I guess I'm using the wrong months or something. Something like that. I'm Noah Lusions. I'm Heath Henright. And from Randy Fly and Spanish Moss, Valdosta, Georgia, this is The Scaming Atheist.

and Spanish moss fell dust to Georgia. This is the Scaming Atheist. On this week's episode, the slow and inevitable death of the Christian majority in America will be laid plain before us. The Saudi Arabian jobs report shows good growth in the decapitation sector. And the Bible finally gets around to condemning lesbians. But first, the diatribe. I need to stop being such a fucking optimist all the time. You know, it's easy from where I sit to get really fired up over all the little victories and then completely lose track of how little we've actually accomplished and how much there

is still to do. You know, I get so excited about the momentum of the movement that I start feeling like the world's really changing. And then I go to a public school graduation in Louisiana and the lack of progress just repeatedly stabs me in the brain. My sister's kid just finished high school, and his graduation ceremony was one day after his birthday, so how could I not make the drive over, right?

It's 11 hours one way. We've got an episode of The Skeptocrat due out, but my whole family's going to be there. I'm the cool uncle. My absence would be noticed, so I have to go. So we get there with just enough time to check into a hotel, wash the road stink off of us, and head over to the ceremony. So Lucinda and I find the section where my family is,

and we settle in for an exciting night of watching 138 kids get their diploma one by one. And my nephew's last name starts with a W. And I've already been sitting in a car for 11 hours. Now, I'll admit, even though my nephew might listen to this episode, that I was looking for ways to stay awake even before this thing started. You know, the high school bands over here lulling me to sleep with a symphonic rendition of Let It Go. My dad's on the other side trying to show me more pictures of his cat on his phone.

I'm glancing at this huge alphabetical list of this enormous graduating class trying to figure out which one of these high school kids is most likely to have some amphetamines I can borrow. And then I noticed this curious entry on the program. Okay, so it starts with processional, which makes perfect sense. And then you get the national anthem, which still makes sense. And then there's an entry that says remarks, followed by an entry for welcome. Well, shucks, I wondered.

Why would there be a section called remarks before the section called welcome? How fucking naive, right? If anybody in the world should have guessed that that was going to be a section called Remarks before the section called Welcome? How fucking naive, right? If anybody in the world should have guessed that that was going to be a prayer, it should have been me, right? I do this for a living, and I grew up down here. I heard prayers before every football game, before every pep rally, before my own graduation. I should have known it was coming, but I am a fucking optimist.

I see all the lawsuits that we're winning and all the great work the FFRF and other similar groups are doing, and I am a fucking optimist. I see all the lawsuits that were winning and all the great work the FFRF and other similar groups are doing, and I get this feeling like things might actually have changed. But sure enough, after we finish singing reverent praise to a graphical representation of federal authority, the principal asks us to remain standing while student so-and-so comes up to deliver her remarks. And of course, that's how they're going to squeeze this shit in around the law. It's just a student. She's just making remarks. The fact that her remarks happen to be about Jesus and how we all pray in his name, that's just a coincidence. You know, sure, not everybody in this graduating class is a Christian, but what are we going to do? We're going to censor

her? So what? So she mentioned Jesus Christ a couple of times and ended her remarks with amen at the spot in the program where there would be a prayer if that was legal. What about it? Now, this wouldn't be the last we'd be hearing from Jesus, of course. The commencement speaker was this local state representative who was such a stammering idiot, it's hard to imagine him winding up in a profession that relies on

public speaking. But of course, I didn't have to wait long to figure out how a person who couldn't deliver a high school commencement address without losing his train of thought half a dozen times becomes an elected official because he was happy to tell us it was because of his faith in God. And that was the bulk of his advice to the graduating class. Have faith in God. That and don't give up 13 times. He brought up God. He brought up Jesus. He brought up Christ. He brought up Jesus Christ. He brought up the Almighty. Total of eight times during his speech.

Coupled with the prayer, we got a total of 12 mentions at this public school graduation. And the only thing surprising about this, when I reflect on it, is the fact that I was surprised. Oh, fuck, of course the rural Louisiana graduation is going to have a prayer before it. Of course the local politician is going to verbally suck Jesus off. Of course we're going to get a dozen mentions of God if the Jesus lovers have themselves a captive audience that probably isn't going to sue him. Now I guess at this point I should mention that my nephew is an atheist. His mom's some wacky deist pagan hybrid or something. But he's a bright, unindoctrinated kid, so naturally he's already called bullshit on all the God claims.

And I get a chance to talk to him about the prayer the next night. From what he tells me, apparently the school had a vote on whether or not to include it. How about that shit, right? A fucking vote on which of the constitutional amendments they would and wouldn't honor for the evening. And wouldn't you know it, 50% plus one of the student body was in favor of excluding 50% minus one. Now, think about the demographics here. Sure, we're in the South, we're in Bible country, but these are 18-year-olds.

Statistically speaking, probably at least a quarter of that class was non-Christian. So when another student stands up at the beginning of their graduation to say, you know, people who don't accept the divinity of Jesus are inferior to those who do, which was precisely what her prayer said, that's a theological fuck you to dozens of the students this graduation is supposed to be for. And when the best they can do for a commencement speaker is a local state rep who reminds all the kids that as long as they recite wishes in their heads to a seditious Jew from the Bronze Age, all that other shit doesn't matter,

that's a clear fuck you to every kid who not only doesn't believe in this particular carpenter wizard, but it's also a fuck you to all the kids who do and prayed to get into a college they didn't get into, or prayed to make the honor roll and didn't make it, or prayed to have a commencement speaker who wasn't a stammering jackass. And of course, I'm just seeing the tip of the iceberg, right? If they're this bad when the public is there to see it, what are they saying when they have these kids away from the prying eyes of their parents? This is Louisiana, mind you. This is Bobby Jindal's state. from the prying eyes of their parents. This is Louisiana, mind you.

This is Bobby Jindal's state. That dude has proven himself more than willing to sacrifice education for the sake of looking conservative enough to be taken seriously as a VP candidate. I get to talk to my nephew and some of his rational friends the next day. They tell me all about this bullshit creationist propaganda they were subjected to in science class. They tell me that if they hadn't sought it out for themselves, they never would have learned anything at all about evolution, the chemistry teacher that railed against the evils of atheism in the middle of a lecture about the periodic table.

In other words, the exact same shit I was going through more than 20 years ago. You know what? We're not winning. It's depressing to say it. I'm sorry to be the pessimist here, but we're not winning and we're not even close. Sure, maybe we're a little closer, but there's a long damn way to go. The only silver lining I could find in that stark, depressing realization was the rage, though. Because if secular students are still being subjected to the same religious overreach that I encountered in high school, at least our side won't be at a loss for passion any time soon. They're talking about you, Jesus.

We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is my wingman, Heath Enright. Heath, are you ready to get high? To what we're waiting for? Never mind. In our lead story tonight, Christians are spiraling towards full existential crisis over the most recent numbers from the Pew Research Center's Religious Landscape Survey. According to one of the most comprehensive ongoing surveys of American religious attitudes, the number of people unaffiliated with any religion has increased by a whopping 41%

over the last seven years to nearly one quarter of all Americans. Over the same period, every single Christian denomination has shown at least a modest decrease. In fact, America has almost 25 million fewer Christians than we had seven years ago. And yet, the gay population continues breeding and getting larger. Don't make no sense. Well, you know what? There must just be aborting to Christian fetuses.

So, faced with the mounting evidence of their religion's inevitable demise, Christian leaders predictably responded to these undeniable facts by denying them. For example, Russell Moore, speaking on behalf of the Southern Baptist Convention, spun it as a positive by pointing out that more people leaving the church just means they're thinning the herd of all those half-assed believers and bandwagon Christians. Pretty soon you guys will be allowed to own casinos. It's not a bad deal. See how that works out. Now, it's kind of tempting to nod along because certainly there is some of that.

As Moore points out, there just aren't as many social benefits to saying I'm a Christian as there were 30 or 40 years ago. Like when people thought Christianity back then, most people associated it with things like charity or forgiveness or morality, whereas today the word is synonymous with things like homophobic, anti-science, and pretentious ass monkey. So in a sense, he's right when he says, quote, we do not have more atheists in America. We have more honest atheists in America, end quote. Plus a dishonest one that immigrated from Kenya. He's making a big difference. But as friend of the show and indefatigable atheist blogger Hemant Mehta points out on his friendly atheist blog, the numbers don't actually back up Moore's hypothesis here.

OK, so his argument accounts for some of the shifts, certainly, but the loss is consistent across the board with both traditionally liberal and traditionally conservative denominations. And what's more, the vast majority of the growth is in the youth. These aren't people who stopped identifying with Christianity when it stopped being socially beneficial after the Cold War. These are people that Pew couldn't survey until just now because they turned 18. People are leaving the church not because they're crinos,

but because they're dead and there aren't enough young Christians to replace them. That's how you guys exit the stage. And in rhymes against humanity news tonight, in response to the numbers we just discussed about the dwindling number of Christians in this country, real-life version of a racist Gene Hackman character Bill O'Reilly did a segment last week on Fox News, during which he offered up a theory about why that might be happening. According to B. Rizzo, the religious decline is just one more item on a long list of societal problems caused by rap music.

Rap music. Really? That's right. I guess that'll explain why the racial demographics of irreligion and consuming rap music are so similar. So, here's how he gets there. Starts with NWA releasing Straight Outta Compton in 1988, and the title of track two, Fuck the Police, being the entire extent of Bill O'Reilly's knowledge of rap music.

Oh, fast forward to 2014 and O'Reilly being the only guy in the world that was able to notice the role that rap music played in Michael Brown's death. And now, the last straw. It's stealing away Christians. Rap music is stealing Christians. Quote, The rap industry often glorifies depraved behavior, and that sinks into the minds of some young people, the group that is most likely to reject religion. End quote. Yeah, I guess back in the 60s when the music consistently praised

authority and respect for the police, we just didn't have this problem. Well, I guess to be fair, they did steal rock and roll from the black man, so it was already tainted, I guess. Now, let they did steal rock and roll from the black man, so it was already tainted, I guess. Now, let's be fair about this, though. It might have sounded bad, but, you know, let's be honest. Is O'Reilly really saying he doesn't like rap people? Of course not. Would he let his daughter date a rap guy?

Sure, as long as lyrics weren't too dark. And I'm sure he's got several rap friends. But it does sound like he secretly wishes he was bigger and rapper. Yeah. Maybe a big rap disc. An old penis. And in Talabancho news tonight, a 63-year-old ordained minister,

failed congressional candidate, and conspiratorial psychopath by the name of Robert Doggert pled guilty last week to plotting to carry out an anti-Muslim terrorist attack in New York. Doggert, who is not Dilbert's nearsighted libertarian canine sidekick, apparently cut his hand while trying to open a can of whoop-ass on a Muslim community in Hancock, New York, dubbed Islamberg. This area has long been considered the home of an Islamic terrorist training camp

by conspiratorial wackos, a charge that's been repeatedly dismissed by law enforcement agencies and people with a sense to realize that if they were going to hide an Islamic terrorist group there, they probably wouldn't call it Islamberg. I'm sure those guys blended seamlessly in with the people of upstate New York. But the real terrorists, they use clever names for the town. That's true. That is how it works. And trust me, if the police of Hancock, New York are saying there's no terrorist camps there, they probably did some invasive civil liberty violating to bring us that information. Yes, exactly.

They checked every inch of Islamberg. All right. Good men over at the HPV. And thorough. Now, the story actually could have been terrifying if not for a competent reaction by the FBI and the Inspector Gadget-esque ineptitude of Doggart himself. Apparently, the FBI first took notice of this bumbling ass-clown when he took to social media hoping to locate some expert gunners to help him burn down a mosque, a school, and other buildings with Muslims in them. Apparently, he figured a Facebook post with phrases like,

we shall be warriors who will inflict horrible numbers of casualties would go unnoticed. And, of course, it didn't. Nor did the wiretap phone call where he explained, quote, We will be cruel to them and we will burn down their buildings. If anyone attempts to harm us in any way, our stand gunner will take them down from 350 yards away. End quote. This has to be a training exercise. He's clearly a secret shopper to make sure the police are arresting white people too it's gotta be what's going on there anyone want to sign up for some terrorism seems like it doesn't it now dogger has been released on thirty thousand dollars bond and

faces up to five years in prison and a fine of up to a quarter of a million dollars because that's what we do in this country when crazy religious zealots plan terrorist operations to kill religious minorities on american soil right right? We go easy on them. That's the American way. I'm sure that's exactly what would have happened if you swapped out the religions in this story, no matter what the last decade of American jurisprudence says to the contrary. And in Protestant Reformation news tonight, while shopping at Walmart with his daughter earlier this month,

former Congressman Allen West became concerned for America when he saw what appeared to be a Muslim employee being accommodated. Specifically, it looked like a checkout clerk who had a Muslim-ish name tag was being given a no alcohol sales register for him to work. And when you say something, you say something. So that's what Alan West did. So he wrote an angry diary entry about it on his website, which he originally titled, Sharia Law Comes to Walmart? Question? Why, that seems like a perfectly reasonable speculation,

considering the details he had to work with. A foreigner-looking kid not selling alcohol? Why, I hope he got his daughter the hell out of there before somebody stoned her to death for wearing capri pants and showing a side chin like a responsible American would have. Well, it turns out, no, that's not what Sharia law means. And no, Sharia law did not come to Walmart, so Alan West was completely wrong. First of all, it's not even clear this was a Muslim employee. The only thing West offered on this was making the following remark about the kid's name.

Quote, let me just say it was not Steve. End quote. Neither was Alan West. Yeah, that was meaningless and at least a little bit offensive. But more importantly, Walmart requires its employees who sell tobacco and alcohol to be 21 years old. And Boutros Boutros not Steve is a little too young. Right. Well, yeah, as does Ohio State law.

So in light of that, he throws up this bullshit non-pology afterwards where he says, OK, yeah, this had nothing to do with my bigoted assumption that you're Muslim. This is connected to how unsteve like your name is and everything. But just because I'm wrong about every single fucking thing I said, quote, that isn't to say that Walmart isn't selectively caving to Muslim demands, end quote. Of course not. So yeah, just because he turned out to be wrong on every point that he actually made, it might secretly be right by accident still, so you never know. Possibly the worst part of the story for me was the reason

this was a problem for West. Let's assume the kid is Muslim, and that he was given an alcohol-free register to accommodate his religion, which wasn't the case, but let's assume it was. Based on this information, West and his daughter both agreed that this was given an alcohol-free register to accommodate his religion, which wasn't the case, but let's assume it was. Based on this information, West and his daughter both agreed that this was unfair, considering all the Christian bakers being forced to sell cakes for gay weddings. How do you even get there?

So even assuming West's bullshit premise, unless Mr. Not-Steve was refusing to sell alcohol to Christians, and was also the only register in the store and I'd say Walmart managed to avoid implementing Sharia law Right, just, I mean, how much of the shit that he's wrong about would you have to make right before he would actually be just even kind of wrong on this, for fuck's sake And in would somebody just persecute us already news tonight

Republican representative and sputtering dipshit Marsha Blackburn was stumped by a question that's as easy as, I'm sorry, could you say that again if you're not talking out of your ass? After railing about the persecution that American Christians face at the South Carolina Freedom Summit last week, Blackburn was taken completely off guard when a reporter nailed her with the clever gotcha question, could you give me an example? Didn't see that one coming, I guess. But honestly, she couldn't think of anything? Nothing.

Just off the top of my head, you got forced penis cakes, end of straight marriage, you got biology class, history class, rules against stoning people when you want to stone them to death, atheist teachers slapping Bibles out of kids' hands and confiscating them and burning them right in front of them meanwhile neo-nazis can't even get a swastika on their slice of pizza the world's gone mad she couldn't name one thing it's like fucking sarah palin not being able to come up with a single magazine i don't know so here's blackburn's actual reply though i'm afraid i won't be able to capture the desperate stupidity with which it was uttered, quote, You know, there have been several lately.

There have. Um. I can't give you a specific. Long enough pause that the transcript felt the need to note there was a pause here. It said pause on the transcript. Right off the cuff. I'm sorry. And unfortunately the quote just ended there,

so she was able to at least refrain from adding, I know I seen something on Facebook the other day, can't remember what it was, though. For the morning next day, she snaps away, abolition! I'm such an idiot! How did I not think, ah, pretty much can't do any of the slave stuff in the Bible anymore. How did I not, just one thing. No, to her credit, though, Blackburn does have long documented issues with her memory, No, to her credit, though, Blackburn does have long documented issues with her memory dating back to at least 2008 when she forgot to report over a quarter of a million dollars in campaign expenditures with the FEC, as well as forgetting to report over $100,000 in donations, as well as forgetting that her son ran one of the consulting firms that she was paying off the book. So it could just be another one of those completely innocent brain farts like those.

And in born identity choice ultimatum news tonight. A Loma United Methodist Church of Winter Park, Florida reached an agreement with former teachers Jacqueline Pfeiffer and Kelly Bardier who feel they were forced to resign from their jobs as a penalty for being in a same-sex relationship together. As part of the settlement, the church has agreed to pay about $30,000 in damages and legal fees.

And this is my favorite part, there's a stipulation that says the church leaders promise to meet with leaders of the gay community, most likely for some surprise humanity training. Yeah, I mean, but that's pretty broad, right? I mean, meet with leaders of the gay community? You could just pick at a pride parade, you know?

They're in there somewhere, I'm sure. So in response to the incident, their pastor, Jim Govatos, recently did an interview with the Orlando Sentinel, during which he attempted to offer the church's excuse for what happened. He claims the couple was in violation of the school policy that requires unmarried employees to remain celibate regardless of their sexual orientation.

So it wasn't about being lesbian. It was about having lesbian orgasms before marriage or any words. Oh, I see. No word on how the church confirmed the teachers were fucking or how they verified neither was faking it or which straight couples they were spying on while they were having sex. Well, now here's the fucked up thing, though. So when I first saw the story, I was puzzled because in Florida, it's perfectly legal to fire somebody for being gay, just like all the other southern states. Florida has no law against employment discrimination based on sexual orientation.

So I looked into it, and it turns out that Orange County apparently does. They have their own county ordinance against it. And apparently, I checked the map here, apparently if this school church thing was one mile to the north, this would have been legal. It's like one geographic mile that separated this from legality. Ed, just for the record also, lesbians were legally defined in Florida as unmarried people until about five months ago. Which means the policy was, very clearly, discriminatory against gay people until this January and

continues to be for all the gay couples that didn't immediately get married so they can legally have sex and also their job at the shitty big school. Tough argue. It's not sexism. We'd fire a man for having a vagina, too. Right. Exactly. And speaking of sexism and vaginas, we'll take a quick break

from the headlines while we hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. Because when I think of vaginas, I think of Lucinda. A man wrote the Bible. A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate rape.

If it's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man. This week in Massage. Massage. You know what? I'm not going to talk about rape today. Or abortion. And it's not that there aren't any relevant misogynistic stories in the news on those topics this week.

It's just that I have to work damn hard sometimes to keep this segment from turning into this week in forced rape babies. So instead of rape babies, we'll start this week with cheap prostitutes. So instead of rape babies, we'll start this week with cheap prostitutes, which is defined in a sex ed pamphlet in current use in New Zealand as any woman who cohabitates with a man she isn't married to. Because, you see, they're trading access to their lady bits for rent, which makes them cheap prostitutes. Even though in almost all the cases, they're also paying half the rent too, which I guess makes them free prostitutes.

From the pamphlet, talking about those filthy fornicating cohabitators, quote, she's nothing more than a cheap prostitute who allows herself to be used for his sexual gratification in exchange for what seems to be a stable and secure home life. This make-believe game may fool people, but it doesn't fool God, end quote. Not really sure how the originators of this comparison get around the fact that the same line of logic makes married women expensive prostitutes. Less insulting, I guess, but not exactly complimentary. Of course, it also left me thinking, is teaching this kind of shit legal at public schools in New Zealand? Well, the answer is not really.

Which left Principal Jeff Smith sweating like a cohabitating female in public school, I'm sure. And, of course, it just wouldn't be this week of misogyny if we didn't stop in and see who was saying something on Fox News that would make Elizabeth Cady Stanton want to skull-fuck them with a strap-on. Tonight, that honor will go to Gavin McInnes, who appeared on Sean Hannity's show to explain that women earn less than men because they're both lazy and condemned by God. After explaining that the true root of the pay gap is that women would rather go to their daughter's piano recital than stay at work all night, he went on to say, quote,

This is sort of God's way, this is nature's way, of saying women should be at home with the kids. They're happier there. End quote. So you hear that, New Zealand? It's God's fault those cohabitating women aren't at least middle-income prostitutes. And after two weeks in a row of closing out on really morbid shit, I was actually able to dig up some good news to cap the segment this week. Noah and Heath already talked about the new Pew numbers and the increasingly godless America they reveal, but there's a nugget buried in there that I thought was worth offering a little special attention to.

In 1997, 16% of atheists and agnostics were women, according to Pew Research. Today, that number is about 50%. Turns out that when you lag hundreds of years behind the rest of society and equal rights, eventually women start to notice. So, welcome to the club, ladies. Glad to have you. And on that refreshingly positive note, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda.

And in Jeb's Red Redemption news tonight, Republican presidential hopeful and guy who's sick of his brother getting all the can't-verbally-formulate-a-thought credit Jeb Bush came to the defense of bigotry last Saturday during an interview with David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network. Bush explained that it should be okay for Christian people to discriminate against gays because unlike many forms of bigotry, this one just doesn't count. It's a different thing. This definitely needs to be an official debate question from now on. Before the opening statements even, each candidate gets one minute to list the forms of bigotry that don't count for them. We all need to know. Should we all understand everybody's

stance on which people count and which people don't count as full 14th Amendment people? Yeah, no shit. So here are his actual words. Quote, a big country which matters apparently, a tolerant country ought to be able to figure out the difference between discriminating against someone because of their sexual orientation and not forcing someone

to participate in a wedding they find goes against their moral beliefs end quote i think we know the difference between those two things so just like yeah i don't think that sentence means what he thinks it means so let's just give him the benefit of the doubt and just pretend that all those clauses and negations make sense. And that what he meant to say was that there's a difference between discriminating against gay people and refusing to serve them because you're religious. But before we give him that credit, let's just take a minute to reflect on the fact that even the most judicious interpretation of his muddled, attempted speech is still that stupid. It's as if they think there's this magical verb to Christian that exists. Right. Nobody can be accused of stuff like discriminating

if that person was clearly in the process of Christianing at the time and takes over other verbs on a convenient case-by-case basis. Yes. As in, no, we were Christianing that abortion clinic. It's totally different. The priest was Christianing the kid. So for Jeb's sake, here's the definition of to discriminate as it applies here. To make an unjust or prejudicial distinction of different categories of people.

So what do you go, are you going after the unjust part? Maybe you're going with the, those fags have no cake coming defense, perhaps, because if that's not the case, then what you just said was that our country should be able to discriminate between discrimination and discrimination. And apparently the geographic size of the country somehow figures it because we're a big country. If we were small, I can see why we can put people in jail for not baking hell cakes. But here we are with this large country, which There's plenty of room for everyone to not have. And in Sweeney Toddler news tonight, Heather Hieronymus of Boynton Beach, Florida, has been jailed after authorities determined

she illegally went into hiding with her four-year-old son in order to avoid a court-ordered circumcision. That's a thing? Yeah, that's a thing, apparently. Police issued a warrant for her arrest when she refused to sign consent forms for the surgery and failed to hand over the child

as per the custody agreement with the boy's father, Dennis Nebus. For his part, dad is insistent that, one way or another, someone's cutting a part of his son's penis off. Part of the separation deal, so. Well, no, but to be fair, we don't know what he traded to get that.

Like, I mean, during the negotiation, she might have used that as a chip. And, like, I don't know. She agreed that, you know, maybe I'll take the dinette set. You can get the foreskin. So I'm just saying it might be more complicated. It might have been a really nice dinette set. We don't know all of the factors. Yeah, so the kidnapping thing, I get that.

That's definitely frowned upon. I'm glad that's the rule. But I'm having trouble with this penis-cutting contract. First of all, that's really weird that their separation agreement had a baby penis clause. It definitely had that. Admittedly. But more importantly, the kid doesn't want it, the mom doesn't want it, and a well-respected pediatric urologist saw no medical reason in favor of MGM in this case.

Also, seems like a court-ordered genital mutilation for a four-year-old shouldn't be something that exists at all. Right. Or maybe just genital mutilation shouldn't exist at all. Or at the very least, the kid should have to do something bad for that to exist. At the very least, he should have to be naughty instead of nice. And from the future as bleak as my career file tonight, internet punchline and bearded karate fighting version

of Michelle Bachman, Chuck Norris put crayon to paper last week to warn the readers of World Net Daily that even a person as mighty as he cannot stop the apocalypse that Obama is ushering in. After brushing off his failed prediction of a thousand years of darkness, should Obama win re-election by pointing out that he never said when that thousand years would begin?

He then went on to point out that if it weren't for Obama, there would be peace in the Middle East just like there was before 2008. Oh, yeah. I mean, they don't just hand out Nobel War prizes. He must have done something over there. I guess the crux of Norris' apocalyptic doom-crying, though, centered around Obama's revelation-hastening policies on immigration. In a spiral of doom as plausible as an episode of Walker, Texas Ranger, the ginger ninja warned that Obama was seating every conservative community with just enough loyal Democratic Muslim immigrants to ensure a democratic victory come caliphate in 2016. After agonizing over

Obama's failure to enact the Norris doctrine, he closed by pointing out that Obama had quote, literally helped build the environment for the apocalypse as defined by both Muslims and Christians. And literally, end quote. So, God needs certain conditions to make an apocalypse happen.

Not very omnipotent. And if that's true, then Obama's just helping carry out the prophecy. So what's the fucking problem? Yeah, right. He's necessary. Now, I do want to point out that the one thing Chucky accidentally got right here in his thing is that more immigrants definitely equals bad news for the republicans and i'm sure that that does drive some of obama's policies on immigration but for the record there's no rule saying republicans always have to keep being dicks to immigrants i mean there's another way to solve this political crisis i'm just tossing it out there seems like there's a rule yeah well yeah and finally tonight from the behead of state file, the government of Saudi Arabia is currently advertising eight new openings in their rapidly expanding non-elective surgery department.

New hires will allow them to keep up with increased demand for executions, most often performed as a public decapitation. They'll also do some minor amputations and light clerical work. That's in there, huh? And apparently the job of cutting pieces off of those who offend us is classified under religious functionary, according to the Saudi bureaucracy. So your mom can even still say

you're going into the priesthood. Or a momhood, or whatever it is that they have. So this means somebody's in charge of hiring decapitators. Tough job. Big room full of applicants. Okay, show of hands, does anyone have prior experience with beheading? Okay, about half the room. That's good.

Keep your hands up, because you're all under arrest. Right. The remaining half. Do we have anybody who's left-handed? Okay, did you bring your own finger scissors? Get out. Get out. We're not going to provide you with fucking lefty finger scissors.

So it sounds like one of the tougher HR jobs out there, I'm just saying. Yeah, probably. So we decided to help with the final stages of that process. We'll need 30 seconds on the clock. We will. Interview questions for the Saudi Arabian executioner job. Go. All right.

How about, what's your high score on fruit ninja start with the ballpark what about um if the hands of the clock pass each other 22 times a day how many swords do you own and how many if they don't um how about what would you say is your least favorite thing about heads that are still connected to necks? How much expertise do you have in optometry and dentistry? We do a lot of eye and tooth stuff. A lot more than just chopping heads off. It's no picnic.

You've got to do stuff like charity ribbon cuttings, for example, that kind of stuff. Okay, so obviously we're going to need some sadistic and uncaring people for this job. So do you have any experience working in a call center or for a radio shack? Perhaps that would be a relevant experience. What about how many windows were there in New York City in August of 2001? Too soon? I forgot. Scratch that one.

Take that back. What about sell me this guillotine? Right. How about who do you see yourself beheading five years from now? Where do you see your career beheading? And what about are you ready to work

in the public sector? And by that, I mean chop a dude's head off to entertain large crowds of people in public places. Of course, that's what you mean. Maybe we might be looking for a multitasker for this job, so maybe we could add, how are you with clits? Can you...

What about really small penises? All right, how about, have you ever worked for the Halliburton Company before? Yes, holy land, holy owned indeed. So before we wind up saying anything else that gets us on Cheney's radar, we'll close out the headlines. Heath, thanks as always. Back, back, back, back. And when we come back, Lucinda will join us in learning

that Paul's clearly just making this shit up as he goes. Now that we've made it through the entire Old Testament, suffered through the Gospels, and put the book of Acts behind us, we find ourselves in the home stretch, the last section of the Bible before Revelations, which is apparently so fucked up that it couldn't share a section with any of the other books. So as we enter into the final category of biblical books, we're obliged to ask ourselves, What the fuck is an epistle?

It's a letter. Just Latin for letter, but I guess having a section called letters didn't seem weighty enough, so they continue to use this archaic term, even though it sounds almost exactly like apostle, thus guaranteeing confusion and stupid jokes. Now, unlike modern-day letters, of course, epistles existed, because nobody in the modern day writes letters except my mom.

But also, unlike modern-day letters back when letters were modern-day, epistles were often intended for large public addresses and were expected to exist as literary works after fulfilling whatever communicative function they served. Thus, a number of the epistles in the New Testament are really fucking long compared to normal letters. There are a total of 21 letters in the New Testament, which account for slightly under half of the book's total content. These are generally divided into two categories. The first 13 are what is known as the Pauline epistles,

which were definitely not all written by Paul despite divine dictate to the contrary. The remaining eight are called the General Epistles, which is both more polite and less burdensome than calling them the for a Jew. Paul wasn't particularly prolific, so we had to add some more shit here so this book didn't just seem like an appendix when we coupled it with the Hebrew Bible epistles. Modern biblical scholars now believe that Paul himself was only responsible for eight of the letters. The remainders of the Pauline epistles are considered pseudepigraphic, which means blatant forgeries,

but in a way that doesn't freak out all the Christians when you use it talking about the Bible. The undisputed Pauline epistles are the oldest surviving Christian writings, likely dictated around 60 CE, and show a religion that has already mired an irreconcilable theological minutiae that would continue to plague the church for at least 1,955 years and counting. The earliest work, 1 Thessalonians, was written at least two decades after the alleged death of Christ, leaving many wondering why the hell nobody would have written about the resurrection at the time it occurred, and why the early church would obsessively protect anything

that anybody did write if they were going to bother saving Paul's letters for fucking millennia, but I digress. In short, the epistles are rambling attempts to plug the massive holes in the Christian concept of salvation that fail miserably. Christians consistently admit as much by continuing to write apologetics despite the Bible already existing. There aren't a lot of things the biblical editors got right, but I do like the way they ordered the epistles. Basically, they went longest to shortest,

so at least through the Pauline stuff, each one is less of a pain in the ass than the last one. Now, that does sacrifice chronological order, which makes the whole exercise of reading these things a little bit less coherent, but as we'll soon learn, there's no order that was going to make these motherfuckers coherent. So kudos for letting me get the worst of it out of the way first. That's why I've been enjoying this book so much, the ordering.

That's why the Bible's so good. Mystery solved. And of course, it just wouldn't be the Babel without the assistance of the lovely Lucinda Lusion. So Lucinda, welcome back. Well, thanks and everything. But you know, you really have no way of knowing that it wouldn't be the babble without my assistance. We haven't really tested that state. We're all about scientific skepticism on this show.

Nice try. Yeah, no, but I still haven't forgotten this shit was your idea. So, why don't you get us started with Paul's last and longest epistle, which is known to history as the Book of Romans. So, the letter starts with a bit of a humble brag by Paul, then some sanctimonious teabagging of the addressees. So for the first dozen and a half verses, it seems like it might be kind of a normal thing.

And then Paul starts in on the wicked folks, and it never, ever, ever gets normal again. No, you don't have to weigh the is this one going to be crazy question for very long. So first Paul proves God's existence with the trees are pretty apologetic. Airtight. Tells everyone that non-believers have no excuse. After all, they've seen trees, they've seen worms.

How could you look at that and not naturally conclude that an eternal anthropomorphized spirit that wants you to stick to missionary sex and not jack off, created out of a void and redeemed humanity by killing a Jew? Fucking obviously. Look at the trees. created out of a void and redeemed humanity by killing a Jew. Fucking obvious. Look at the trees.

And then we learned that God made all the gay people because he was mad at them for not believing in him. This might have been the weirdest part of the New Testament so far. Seriously. It was really fucked up. And they finally, by the way, get around to the lesbian bashing. So it's good to see Paul being more inclusive than the Old Testament, you know, getting everybody involved. More open-minded.

Yeah, but he was clearly confused about how God wrath works. This is how he describes the punishment for, I'm assuming, Dutch rudders and butt sex. Quote, Men with men working that which is unseemly and receiving in themselves the recompense of their error, which was meat.

And cuss. So, yeah, he seems to think that the penalty for being gay is the penis inside you. That's more like a reward for a lot of people. Well, generally, yeah. Well, and if I'm reading this right, God actually turns you gay as a punishment for not believing in him and then gives you the dick. So if he wanted, he could have given you the dick without making you gay first.

But I guess that's why they say he's so merciful. And what a bizarrely inclusive list of every kind of wickedness we get in chapter 129. Murder, deceit, and ruthless listed right along there with gossipy and boastful. Badgeful and dark. Yeah, right. Exactly. Like what? Kind of odd.

We also learn early on that Paul is just as shitty with analogies as everyone else in the Bible. He's trying to say at one point, he's trying to talk about, like, obeying the rules and not just bitching about people who break them. And instead of something nice and pithy like, karate here, karate here, karate never here, he goes with this tortured and extremely long attempt at a circumcision analogy. And he's saying, but if the Jews break the law, he will become uncircumcised in God's eyes. And if the uncircumcised person obeys the law, then they will become circumcised. Right, right. But since he knows that being good doesn't make your foreskin fall off, he has to go back and expand it by pointing out that I'm not talking about real dick-chopping circumcision. No, of course not.

I'm talking about the spirit foreskins for a couple of verses. Yeah, for a couple of verses. This is probably a good boardroom decision they made on this one. They're sitting around their shitty little table trying to figure out how to get the Romans on board with the Bible beta version and Paul says, maybe I'll write them a letter. You know, really just like playing up that new rule about how they can still get into heaven without cutting a piece of their penis off.

Do you think they'll like that? I feel like they're going to like that. It's going to make us look kind of stupid over here but I feel like we used to scare the fuck out of people with that part like all the time. So I think it's important that we remind them about the new, you know, keeping their entire penis thing, that that's an option. If we're picking our best new

selling point, it just seems like, you know, you put that on the cover, right? You focus the marketing, I think so. I'm writing them a letter. And that sets up the most theologically dubious proposition in all of Christianity. This notion that the only thing that counts, in the end, is whether or not you're Christian.

Right. He basically spends two chapters saying those who are evil will be punished. But then he does a 180 and reminds everybody that none of that shit really matters because doing good means accepting Jesus as your savior and nothing else. Right. And he also lets you know that if you think that's bullshit, you're damned by God. Right. And he spends a lot of time on the circumcision bit. Yes.

And that part I understand because he's trying to tell people they've been mutilating their dicks for no reason for the last 3,000 years. That really strikes me as the kind of thing you want to ease people into. Spend a little time on that. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm not sure he did it enough to make sure they feel like being Jewish and having the mutilated penis still counts.

Like, you want to address that. You want to tell them there's value in it. Basically, all they got was this vague promise that it's like, you know, showing up at the Heaven Club and you already left a tip for the guy with the clipboard. There's no guarantees, but still can't hurt. Yeah, you've got to make the new game system still play the old game system's games. It's just that they should have known that. He also has to sell the misery

is awesome concept in the next chapter. So it's a pretty hard pitch all the way through. Yeah, and he uses this proto-Deepak logic. He's twisting himself in circles with it, constantly trying to justify it. He's going like, oh, well, see, since it was Adam's fault that we were all

hell-worthy sinners to begin with, it makes perfect sense for only one person to redeem all of us, but in so doing not stop us from actually being sinners or being miserable, since God couldn't think of a better way to generate hope than withholding hope from most of the people about all the stuff that they hope that they have. Right, right. God was punishing you for something someone else did, so it makes perfect sense that he would stop punishing you by killing a different someone else.

But only for a couple of days. It's like, listen to your idiot college friend. They took mushrooms for the first time and I think they could see the invisible fabric of the universe.

Everything's connected all of a sudden. And Adam ate the fruit with the tree. And Kirk Cameron said Jesus hung from a tree and he died for life so he could live for death

in a giant circle of life. Death. Jesus. Good and evil. Trees, fruit, space, time. Jesus. tree and he died for life so we could live for death in a giant circle of life death jesus good and evil trees fruit space time jesus somebody with a stun gun yeah why do we even have that this whole fucking thing and like for several chapters in a row he starts off the chapter by pointing out another fatal flaw in his twisted web of pseudo logic that he never fixes well and it keeps being the same one he keeps saying yeah but if that's true, why shouldn't we just do whatever we want? And then he'll go off on a Jesus dying and being reborn for a bit and then land right back where he started, feeling once more compelled to say,

okay, but if that's true, why shouldn't we just all do what we want? I feel like that guy can die for everyone's sins and then get resurrected. We just saw that happen. So wouldn't we have to be idiots to just use him the one time? Right. Ridiculous. Once you introduce time travel into the story, they could just keep using it every time. So just a quick example of what we're talking about.

Not exactly quick, but here's Paul explaining why Christians can't technically sin, because when you're sinning, you're not a Christian. Okay, so this is from Romans 7, 14 to 20, the New Revised Standard Version, quote, For we know the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good, but in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me, that is, my flesh.

I can will what is right, but I cannot do it, for I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now, if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. I'm not just reading the same words. Like, right, exactly.

It's just that kind of goddamn Seussian Jabberwocky for 16 chapters. It's like a John Galt speech on the radio. Oh, my God. Awful. Yeah, so good luck teasing a point out of this shit. But as near as I can tell, in chapter 80, it explains that Christians get superpowers, and they can't sin. In the same way that Richard Nixon couldn't break the law. Pretty much, yeah, exactly.

Except Gerald Ford didn't pardon Nixon until after he committed the crimes. Makes a difference. Yeah, kind of. This is more like the Patriot Act of the New Testament. Like, pre, we can break whatever law we want. Yeah, exactly. Now, this is also the chapter that gives us all that weird predestination shit that makes the Calvinists and J-dubs extra crazy.

And once again undermines his central message that not sinning matters. Right, yeah, exactly. And it's just all over the map like that through the whole book. In chapter 9, Paul cites God being a complete dick to Esau and the Pharaoh to underscore the point that God reserves the right to fuck you in the ass whenever he feels like it, regardless of whether you're a good person or not. Just to be clear, the ass-fucking won't happen for any good

reasons. No. It doesn't have anything to do with your actions. It's just part of the script for a good handful of people. That's going to happen. Yeah, apparently. No improvising your way around the butt sex from God. That's definitely in the scene. It's in the cards. Right, and that forces Paul to address the whole well, why'd that asshole make me a sinner

if he didn't want me to sin problem which he brushes aside by saying who is the clay to question the sculptor which is a slightly nicer way of saying

quit asking fucking questions you asshole. What about the other sculptors that say Christian God is a shitty artist? What did I just say about questions?

And about not asking that. You brought that back. there also seems to be a concerted effort to justify hijacking the jewish religion and using it to hate jews well it's a running theme but but i will say that that that's where he makes his best argument because what what paul he does basically here is he just digs through the old testament and he says read this shit tell me that god doesn't hate the jews This is their fucking book. Clearly, that's a hard one to argue with. So that's happening.

We're going to hate the Jews, but we're not going to resent them. We're not going to resent them. They're an important piece of history. God had to choose them and then realize they were assholes and then smite them in order for us to get brought in on the heaven game thing. Now we're in on it, which is good. The Jews are like Tim Couch and Ryan Leaf, or like Sam Booey. First round busts are gonna happen, even to God, even to God,

even God misses Michael Jordan once in a while. But now we're rebuilding the franchise with no more Jews, so things are looking up. Apparently. Yeah, he even explains why God would offer salvation to a bunch of Gentiles if the Jews were his chosen people. Turns out he's just trying to make the Jews jealous.

Yeah, that was a bizarre bit of theological three-card Monty God was playing there, right? So apparently God is using the fact that the Jews aren't believing in him correctly as his means of saving the Gentiles, which will make the Jews so envious that they'll start being Gentiles, in which time he can save them because they'll be believing in him correctly. And that's the plan the all-knowing guy came up with. I guess so. And then in chapter 12, Paul finds room to squeeze in a few sentences that actually have good advice and say meaningful stuff like feeding your enemies and loving your neighbors and all that fun stuff. Right, for a second.

But then he immediately fucks that up by explaining that you should always submit to the king because if God didn't want that person to be king, he wouldn't have made him king in the first place. Even a heathenist black guy. All that means is the end times are about to happen. Just roll with it. Relax. Listen to Mr. Norris. And I love that when it comes time for Paul to list the Ten Commandments,

he sounds like a congressman getting interviewed by Stephen Colbert. He says, you know, when God said, thou shalt not commit adultery or murder or covet or steal or all that other shit that Moses said God said. Yeah, so either he couldn't remember them or he'd be bothered to look them up, or he agrees with me that the other six are kind of stupid.

Well, right, because he wasn't saying this off the cuff. He was writing a fucking letter. It's like the Rick Perry version of the Nine Commandments, or is it Ten? Yeah, no, it is Ten. It is Ten. There is one more, but it doesn't matter what it says. I'm getting rid of that one, too.

All the commandments. Everybody just try to blow your neighbor, and we'll be fine. That's the important thing. That's how I try to love myself. We would be fine. And then listen to this just weird, random, anti-vegetarian shit talk that opens up chapter 14. Out of nowhere it just says, some believe in

eating anything while the weak eat only vegetables. What the fuck, dude? Why you gotta be a dick like that? Yeah, right. By the way, this part, it also says you have to be nice to atheists and you're not supposed to argue with them. It does, yes. It says it it first line.

So if you come across a street preacher who won't stop barking at people, just remind him, Romans 14, 1, asshole. It says basically shut the fuck up because I said so. And tell him that's what it says. Make him look it up. Yeah. It doesn't really say that. It doesn't say the F word in here, does it?

Of course it does. Then Paul basically spends a chapter explaining why he hasn't visited the people in rome right he basically it's paul begging out of a classroom union for 32 verses yeah exactly exactly it's like he's writing his mom no ma as soon as i go to spain i'm gonna come by and see i promise i promise and then he tacks on a bit at the end of the letter that says oh yeah and by the way here are 48 people i promised you would take good care of when you got this letter. So give them some food, a place to stay, and shit like that.

So apparently that habit of hiding the request for a favor at the end of a long, boring correspondence isn't new. No, nor is ending your letter with stuff like, oh, and Bob and Tim say hi, and Grandma says she misses you. Oh, my God. Much of shit like that was crazy. All the pages. About halfway through the chapter, you hear the Oscars band start playing. I wish they would have been there. You're done.

Yeah. Yeah, and hidden in the middle of it, it's a quick reminder to shun all the people that disagree with his interpretation of God because fuck other people with other religions. Yes. And then back to his producer and his agent. Exactly.

Like the band had been playing for a while by the time this thing mercifully ended with the reader asking, what the fuck was the point of that? Exactly. Like, the band had been playing for a while by the time this thing mercifully ended, with the reader asking, what the fuck was the point of that? Like, I mean, like, okay, so, like, theoretically, it seemed like it was trying to answer some basic questions about Christian theology and clarify a few issues, but if you take the time to actually follow Paul's weird maze of logic, you realize that it never actually does. And who the fuck writes a 7,000

word letter? Right. For reference, by the way, that would be like getting a 12-page email from somebody. It doesn't have the response that the Roman Christians sent back to Paul, but I'm guessing it just said TLDR. Seems like there would be a title for the book. That would be more accurate, especially

for the Christians. Now the good news is that like I said, they order the Pauline epistles from longest to shortest, but the bad news is that we're going to be doing both Corinthians together, so together those will actually be longer than this boring fucker was, so rest up. I'm pretty sure there's a little bit more mind-numbing to come. Of course there is. Gentile mangy!

Run, grab the youngins, folks. It's time for Lucinda Lusion's Bible Stories for Kids. Gather round, boys and girls. Today we'll be opening our Bibles back up to 1 Samuel to find out whatever happened to that shepherd boy turned giant slayer, turned drive-by gangster mohel, turned outcast clement to the throne of Israel, David. When last we saw our hero,

he'd been forced to flee his beloved homeland and make for less friendly territory, namely the territory of the very Philistines whose dicks he had a habit of chopping off. Well, if there's one thing David does, it's kick ass. So the Philistines decided they'd forgive him for all the dick chopping if he would kick some ass for them. So he agreedistines decided they'd forgive him for all the dick chopping if he would kick some ass for them. So he agreed to, even though sometimes he secretly didn't kick any ass and told them that he did, but in a heroic way. Now, I'm sure you'll remember that Saul was warring with these very same Philistines, and wouldn't you know it? Eventually, the king and his son Jonathan, whom David loved in the butt, were both killed in a great battle at Mount Geboa. But David definitely wasn't anywhere near that battle, and he was actually really sad that they both got killed,

even though it meant he would be the new king of Israel. So once he'd spent enough time mourning for the king in his ear, that it would be clear to everybody that he definitely didn't have anything to do with it. He set about being king. And like I said, David is known for his kicking of ass. So his first major act as king was to kick some Jebusite ass, take over Jerusalem and bring the Ark of the Covenant there. And that made God so happy that he promised that someone of David's line would always rule in Israel. And of course, God always keeps his promises. But only if you ignore all the ones he breaks, like this one.

Well, David went right on kicking ass. He kicked some more Philistine ass, then some Moabite ass. But along the way, he discovered something he liked even more than kicking ass. And that was tapping ass. You see, boys and girls, one day, David was looking down from the high walls of his palace and saw a beautiful woman named Bathsheba taking a bath. So he watched her long enough to rub one out. But she was so beautiful that beating off just wouldn't do.

So he told his guards to go get her so that he could rape her. And they did. And he did. Well, that wouldn't normally be a very big deal, of course, because Bathsheba was just a woman. But she was a married woman. And that made it a big deal. David wasn't just sexually violating an innocent woman after spying on her naked. He was sticking his dick in her husband's property, After spying on her naked, he was sticking his dick in her husband's property, which in the Bible is way worse. And David was in danger of getting caught, too, since she got pregnant while her husband Uriah was off at war. What to do?

Well, David thought about it for a while, and he realized it wouldn't be such a big deal if her husband was too dead to notice. So he ordered Uriah's general to make sure he died in battle. The general did as he was told, and sure enough, Uriah died and David married Bathsheba, and nobody was the wiser. So how did this story that nobody knew about wind up in the Bible? Well, it turned out that at least one person knew, and that person was God. God told the prophet Nathan, and then he told every damn body. And God was really mad at David for all the women raping and husband manslaughtering, so he decided to punish David. He would murder their baby as soon as it was born. That's right, boys and girls. God was mad at David, so he murdered a baby. And after the baby was good and murdered, God got over his anger and let David carry on being king. And everybody except Uriah and the

murdered baby lived happily ever after. But the story of David doesn't end there, boys and girls, because Jesus himself is David's great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandson. And judging by how much fucking he does in this book, so were most of the other Jews alive in Jesus's day. The end. Before we ride into the wild blue yonder tonight, I wanted to thank everybody that helped us get over our latest Patreon milestone. That means equipment upgrades are coming soon. Just wanted to remind everybody, though, that even though we broke the milestone last week, we don't actually get to see any of the money until the beginning of next month,

so it might still be a couple of episodes before you notice any difference, but a difference is coming. We're not the fat guy in a red hat here. We're legit. Thanks to everybody who helped make that happen. I also want to remind everybody that just can't get enough of hearing me talk really fast that you can hear exactly that if you tune into the latest episode of the Herd Mentality Podcast with Adam Rieks. I'm only on it for a minute to thank a donor, but I say at least three and a half minutes worth of shit in that minute.

And there's also other more interesting stuff on the episode, which you'll find linked on the show notes for this episode. 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 sure to check out our sister show, The Skeptocrat, with new episodes out on Monday mornings at 8 a.m. Eastern Time. You can also find a few bonus nuggets of skatheism by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook.

Obviously, I would take the guilt to my grave if I neglected to thank the multi-talented, multi-tasker that is Heath Enright. Somehow, you make the show both more intellectual and more sophomoric at the same time, and we all love you for it. I need to thank the lovely Lucinda for carrying more than her fair share of the show this week. I also want to offer a big thanks to youtube's very own pastor jay for providing this week's farnsworth quote he would very much appreciate it if you check out his

youtube channel which you'll also find linked on the show notes as well it was a last minute submission so i can't actually speak to what you'll find there but i can't say he's the kind of dude that'll get you a farnsworth quote in under five minutes if you really need one so all the stuff i know about him is good but most of all of course i need to thank this week's apexes of evolution mark james nick bill steven carley jameson rachel devon ian jeffrey daniel christen All the stuff I know about him is good. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's Apexes of Evolution. Mark, James, Nick, Bill, Stephen, Carly, Jameson, Rachel, Devin, Ian, Jeffrey, Daniel, Chris, and Octor. Mark, James, Nick, Bill, and Stephen, whose erections make Jack's magic beans jealous. Carly, Jameson, Rachel, and Devin, whose opinions carry so much weight they have Lagrange points.

Ian, Jeffrey, Daniel, and Chris, who take Viagra to keep their erections under four hours. And Octer, who asked on Twitter that I compliment my own genitals instead of his this week, which I just did by mentioning them in the same sentence as his. Together, these 14 formidable forward-thinking folks have formally afforded our forum the fortune to foretell the forthcoming forfeiture of forced foreclosure of foreskins from fuckers that forbid foreplay and fornication forevermore by giving us money. Not everybody has the palpable sexual magnetism and ninja decimating dexterity it takes to give us money, but if you think you're up to the challenge,

you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash skatingatheist and get longer versions of every episode a little bit earlier than everybody else gets them, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at skatingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help financially but you're not going to, you can also help by donating the couple of minutes that it takes to give us a glowing review on iTunes and or sharing the show with people who wouldn't give you shit for it, and also the people

who would because honestly there's no such thing as bad publicity. 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. Is this funny? Am I being funny? You are.

It's funny.