The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 120: Happy Slavery Edition

Episode Date: June 4, 2015

In this week's episode, Heath and Noah will pretend the Muslims are after them too, if there's ten million bucks in it; we'll investigate the "corrective side" of rape; and David Michael of My Book of Mormon gives us his pick for the wackiest moment in the whole damn book.

Warning, it isn't true that this podcast doesn't, not not, contain explicit language. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Ben & Jerry's new line of non-kosher ice cream, Chunk's Trayful Truffle Shuffle. We took big chunks of exactly what you're not allowed to eat if you're chosen, and then mixed it with dairy just to make it worse. Hey you guys, it's time for Chunk's Trayful Truffle Shuffle, now featuring shell fish food, half-baconed, and rocky roadkill. And now, the Scathing Atheist.

This is Dan Jacobs, at your old pal Dan on Twitter, an ex-Christian scientist. Mary Baker Eddy was a fraud, and we sure as hell did come from filthy monkey men. Filthy, filthy monkey men. It's awesome. It's Thursday. It's June 4th. And American Pharaoh gets ready for a triple crown while Obama prepares for a third term.

Is that how that works? Ignore the sign. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Enright. And from Secondly Chronicle, Valdosta, Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll pretend like the Muslims are after us, too, if it's worth 10 million bucks. We'll investigate the corrective side of raping. And David Michael gives us his pick for the single wackiest moment in the Book of Mormon.

But first, the diatribe. My eighth grade science teacher was a Christian and a bigot. He stopped in the middle of class to preach once in a while, but the tangent that I best remember came on the day that he explained, and I believe that this is a quote, Fags can't reproduce, so the only way that they can make more fags is by recruiting. This led him to propose the obvious solution for dealing with the fag problem by, again, his exact words, dragging them out in the street and having them shot.

He said this to a class full of 14-year-old kids in a public school. Not sure why we needed to fuck traffic up for these executions, but dragging them out in the street, that was apparently part of his plan. See, I don't have a deconversion story. Like most atheists, there isn't some, like, aha moment where I rejected God. What I have is a series of stories like that one. I have a bunch

of anecdotes about the religious people in my life using their faith as a depository for their bigotry and their hatred. I have that really nice elderly Christian couple that lives next door to my sister-in-law that tells me that they don't talk to their son anymore because he's gay, and then they look at me like I'm supposed to nod along. I remember the pastor at the mall calling my little sister a whore because she was wearing a tank top. I have the comic book shop where we got together to play Vampire of the Gathering, being picketed by more than 100 local churchgoers that told us we were going to burn in hell for rolling the devil's dice. And you add enough stories like that together over a lifetime, you end up with an atheist, apparently.

But even with all that shit swishing around in my head every day, I was a passive non-believer. You know, I would tell anybody that asked that I was an atheist and that I thought religion was destructive bullshit, but I wasn't actively dedicating any of my time to countering it. And when it comes to my conversion to an activist, there actually was an aha moment. I can even put a date on it, actually. It was May 20th of 2011. That was a Friday, and it was probably about 7.30 in the p.m. Eastern Time. Incidentally, the day before Harold Camping told his followers

that the world was going to end. Now, they were in town, actually. A ton of Camping's acolytes decided to celebrate the apocalypse in modern-day Gomorrah, New York City, and there were signs and shit all over the place. So the overall wackiness and destructiveness of religion was already omnipresent when I hopped on the E train to get home. And of course it's standing room only. So here I am standing by the pole, and to my left there's a Hasidic dad with his three kids. His daughter, her younger brother, his younger sister. sister the three of them they're all squeezed together on a bench meant for two and the little boy maybe 10 years old he's reading a book now I got a podcast going I'm only half-assed paying

attention but I noticed that a little boy turns to his sister to show her something in the book or you know get help with a word or something and the dad freaks the fuck out he's loudly chastising his son for showing his sister this book, and it's clear that he is genuinely angry about it. Now this just struck me as really weird, so later that night I'm talking to my boss. He's a Reformed Jew, so I told him about the incident, and I asked him, I was like, are there books that only boys are allowed to read or something? And he said, yeah, they're called the ones with words in them. Turns out that in many ultra-Orthodox sects, the girls aren't allowed to read at all.

They're not allowed to know anything. They're supposed to just ask their dad and their husband questions and accept whatever answer they're given. He went on to detail some of the far more heinous abuses of women's rights in Hasidic culture, but he didn't have to because that was enough for me. To know that by some unfortunate happenstance of birth, this girl just doesn't get to know shit? She was born into the wrong, antiquated culture, so she's going to be denied all access to knowledge? She's going to have to lie to her mom and say she's out with her friends when she's actually at the library? That's exactly the opposite of how that's supposed to go. Now,

needless to say, I was livid. Hell, I'm still livid thinking about it four years later. It should be illegal to deprive a person of knowledge. A parent shouldn't have the right to sentence their child to ignorance on any level, let alone total ignorance. And it's obviously motivated by the fear that if she acquired even a shred of objective knowledge about the world, she'd realize that her religion was a horseshit scaffolding designed to prop up thousands of years worth of bigotry. And that was it for me. I was too publicly associated with the company that I worked for to say what I thought under my own name,

so before I went to bed that night, I created a new Twitter account, new Facebook profile, all under the name No Illusions. I bought ScathingAtheist.com, started a blog there, and though it took us probably a year and a half after that to actually get it started, that was also the night that Heath and I first started discussing this show. In fact, on Twitter, it still has May 21st as my birthday, which is incorrect, by the way, but thanks for all the birthday wishes nonetheless. Now, there's a reason that I'm bringing this all up. We've gotten a few emails in response to our feedback segment last week, specifically the discussion about sexism and men's rights. And virtually all of the feedback has been positive, but there were a couple of people who wrote to say that they were at least

mildly sympathetic to the notion that maybe we do devote an awful lot of time to sexism on a show, even when it doesn't directly relate to atheism. And you know what? That's true. That's a charge that I will absolutely cop to. Normally, we won't cover a story if it doesn't have a religious angle, but we make a lot of exceptions in This Week in Misogyny, and even in the headline segment, just when it's stories about sexism. And that's something that isn't going to change anytime soon. I'm an atheist by way of feminist.

My feelings about gender equality obviously don't inform my feelings on whether or not there's a God, but they are the primary thing that spurs me to action. If religion was off in a corner somewhere being harmlessly stupid and not interfering with equality, I'd probably more or less leave it alone. Maybe we'd devote a How Bullshit Is It segment to it or something, but it wouldn't be the primary focus of the show. See, there are a lot of great reasons to hate religion, and even if you don't hate it, there are plenty of solid reasons to counter it vociferously. But for me, personally, the foremost thing that boils my blood day to day is the way that religion treats women. And second to that is the way they treat the LGBT community, and after that it's the way they treat their own children, and after that it's the way they treat people with other religions, and after that it's the

way they treat science, and after that it's the way they treat me. Now, that might not be the order you'd put those things in. Probably isn't. I'm not even on your list, probably. You just might hate things that are wrong and pretend to be right. It doesn't matter. Look, I know that there is a lot of contention in the atheist movement about how much time we should devote to this social issue or that one, and that's an important ongoing discussion. But in the end, it doesn't matter what motivates you we don't need a common impetus or a common tactic or a common voice or really even a common cause we have a common enemy and that should be enough to unite us they're talking about you jesus joining me for headlines tonight is the doctor we've all been waiting for, Heath Enright.

Heath, are you ready to take over the TARDIS? I've had plans for this sonic screwdriver for a while. This could be great. I'm fine with taking seconds on that. In our lead story tonight, slobbering xenophobe and out-of-costume village person who sports the Nazi-sounding moniker of John Ritzheimer has failed spectacularly and has bid to raise $10 million

to protect himself against the Muslims. The story begins outside of Phoenix Mosque, where Ritzheimer organized a demonstration of mass bigotry that brought more than 200 spontaneous frothers together to protest the existence of brown people that don't love Jesus enough, as well as an equal number of counter-protesters that showed up to say, fuck those guys. enough, as well as an equal number of counter-protesters that showed up to say, fuck those guys. And according to Ritzheimer, when you're a jet, you're a jet all the way, from your first cigarette till your last dying day. Imagine there were lots of fun, choreographed taunting and banter to go along with it. I'm guessing it was a little more contentious than that, but there actually were no altercations

between the two groups of protesters, likely a testament to how well local riot police handled the situation, though some of it might be credited to Ritzheimer's decision to wear his nice Fuck Islam shirt. But despite the accidental peacefulness of his protest, Ritzheimer now claims that he has credible threats against his own safety and the safety of his family, and apparently those threats are coming from, like, Muslim Lex Luthor or Spectre or something, because according to his GoFundMe page, it's going to take a solid eight figures to protect himself. Apparently he's planning to have several Boeing drones encircle him at all times, like a triple red shell. Right, I guess. No, unfortunately it looks like his Mario Kart-based defensive system,

along with the genetically engineered cybernetic body double automatons and surface-to-air missile batteries, are just going to have to find an alternative source of funding. His criticisms of his attempted cash grab, as well as his Creflo dollar-like delusion about internet take-backs, led Ritzheimer to pull the page a few days later after drawing in nearly tens of supporters. Like $300. While he hasn't actually commented on why he took down the fundraiser. It was because it was stupid. We didn't really need him to tell us that. We already knew.

And in I Do Means Yes news tonight, BiblicalGenderRoles.com generated some controversy last month with an article entitled, Is a Husband Selfish for Having Sex with His Wife When She Is Not in the Mood? Raping? Which was, unfortunately, exactly like it sounds, yes. is a husband selfish for having sex with his wife when she is not in the mood? Raping? Which was, unfortunately, exactly like it sounds, yes. And it used the Bible to help answer that age-old question,

is raping your wife egotistical? Now, I hate to spoil a great read for everyone that isn't caught up on BGR blog posts, but their answer is no. According to the guy who founded the website and wrote the piece, quote, despite American laws to the contrary, biblically speaking, there is no such thing as marital rape. Boy, those eight words that start that off. There's nothing good ever came after despite American laws to the contrary, biblically speaking, dot, dot, dot. And the no such thing as rape.

Awesome. Well, that tooically speaking, dot, dot, dot. And the no such thing as rape also. Well, that too. Yeah, exactly. Now, he uses the her body belongs to the husband defense, but then I guess ignores the biblical stipulation right after that that says that the husband's body belongs to her. So, yeah, if you follow the logic all the way, she doesn't have the right to tell him what he can do with her body,

but she can tell him what he can't do with his, which she owns. So if I'm reading this right, I'm no theologian, but if I'm reading this right, she could say, you're not allowed to rape the body you own with the body that I own, and you also have to punch the body I own and the nuts I own with the fist I own over and over again. And also, you can rape him right back if you want. That's technically the rules as well. So basically, this guy's saying that the Bible's stance on marital rape all comes down to the lubrication issue. I guess we haven't reached that part of the New Testament yet.

This is what he thinks it says there. He explains, quote, if she is not in the mood, she will automatically have dry and painful intercourse, end quote. Because I guess dry, painless, not getting raped is already off the table. Apparently, yeah. So, fellas, if your vagina-drying aroma and personality are making things tough on your wife, you want to be sure you only rape her in the biblical way. Just buy some lube. Right.

Same goes for field slaves and concubines, except no lube requirement. The Bible has spoken. I wonder if that was the nard cream part. Anyway, and in Lazarus R. Us news tonight, despite disregarded rumors to the contrary, UK faith healer and bullet bill if he was a human, Robbie Dawkins, second Mario Kart reference, did not resurrect a dead worshipper last month in Inglewhite Church in Northern England, or in any other month or church or region or nation. But the fact that it's demonstrably false hasn't stopped the pastor from claiming it

is true because he's a pastor and damn it, that's what they do. Okay, but to be fair, a dude did recently come into Dawkins Church and not die. Well, that's true, yes. And multiple witnesses can confirm that Dawkins was standing right there when the not dying occurred. These are indisputable facts. Every bit as impressive as this story. So here's Dawkins' version of the same tale that Heath just told you. He's just getting his sermon started when a congregant by the name of Matthew Catlow collapses.

He then goes on to describe what is obviously a seizure just based on his own description of it. But to nobody's surprise, he's got a different diagnosis. Quote, what I saw was a strong demonic presence over him. End quote. Which is true only in the sense that this heartless charlatan was on an elevated platform. I think this tells us all we really need to know about Dawkins. By his own account, his magical powers can't even keep seizure demons out of his own church. That's like level one type stuff.

No way he learns resurrection spells without knowing fundamentals like that first. I mean, if a med student tries to put a band-aid on a doll and ends up, like, poking himself in the eye instead, he doesn't get to go on to specialize in brain surgery. That wouldn't happen. But wait, there's more. So

then he says that a doctor and a bunch of other congregants started praying. That wouldn't happen. But wait, there's more. So then he says that a doctor and a bunch of other congregants started praying. That's right. There was a doctor present during the seizure, but apparently he elected to pray rather than docked. But Dawkins did the right thing here. Quote, I began to bind the spirit of death and say, you

can't have him. End quote. Ah, he rebuked it. Yeah, exactly. Known in the business as the lieutenant ripley defense he then offers proof that katlau actually died during during this incident by adding that they could all hear his death rattle which he apparently thinks is a thing what right and then of course god stepped in and unkilled him just like dawkins told god too so it all ends happy okay but what the fuck is wrong with the doctor who just stood there doing nothing? I'd like to think if you see

a preacher jump on top of an unconscious seizure victim and start covering the guy's nose and mouth to prevent more demons from getting inside or whatever the fuck he did, you're tackling that preacher off. Whether or not you're a medical expert, it would seem like that'd be expedient. I would hope so, yeah, and according to

Catlau's sister, this genetic hybrid of Michael Chiklis and Patrick the Starfish got every single detail of the encounter wrong, up to and including her brother's surname, which apparently isn't Catlau, so she's not Catlau's sister at all. Anyway, she started a Facebook page to dispute every single detail of Dawkins' recollection using terms like medically proven, evidence, and charlatan. She also implies rather strongly that it takes a special level of assholery to dismiss a person's tireless work on their own physical therapy and then credit their recovery to your verbally assaulting a storybook phantasm while they were having a fucking seizure.

And in Satan bait news tonight, the numerically disingenuous advocacy group One Million Moms is upset about another stupid thing this week. Apparently, their orders of magnitudes less than one million supporters have turned their attention to a television show set to debut on Fox next year. The show, called Lucifer, is based on a spinoff from a Neil Gaiman graphic novel and is being produced by the creator of Californication. And if you're not sold by that, by the way, it's also based on a what-if involving the devil moving to L.A. to open a piano bar. Sounds promising. And they find this to be inaccurate because Satan's supposed to be more of a fiddle guy? I guess, yeah.

Shouldn't people be focused on something more pressing like a gay bomb? I don't know. Well, I'm sure that's what they worry about in their free time, but it should come as no surprise that the group that petitions women's razor companies not to show so much leg in their commercials are pissed about this one, too. They complain that it will portray Lucifer as a sympathetic character, in sharp contrast to the way he's portrayed in the Bible, because apparently they think that Lucifer is portrayed in the Bible. Sorry, guys, he isn't.

The only time that word comes up is in Isaiah 14, where he's clearly talking about the planet Venus and not Satan, since that's one of the Jew parts, and the Jews don't have Satan. So, QED. According to Supreme Court Justice Scalia, the actor they hired for the show looks nothing like the two red pitchfork dudes

that stand on his left and right shoulder and always seem to agree on his court decisions. Definitely going to agree on this one. Of course, the fact that Lucifer's the good guy isn't the only thing that was bunching up the granny panties at their home office. According to their website, the preview for the show, quote, depicts graphic acts of violence, a nightclub featuring scantily clad women, and a demon, end quote. So it's on TV and there's a demon, apparently. For their part, though, executives at Fox have thanked the One Million Moms organization for their accidental viral marketing campaign and told them they can fuck off in exactly 14 months. But not until then. And in Snopes monkey trial news tonight, Douglas County High School in Douglasville, Georgia, just got a strongly worded letter sent by the Freedom from Religion Foundation reminding them about the First Amendment in a stern, authoritarian tone. They needed it.

Looks like FFRF attorney Madeline Ziegler is going to count to three, and if the school doesn't brush its teeth and stop allowing Christian propaganda from science teachers, they're going to get a timeout. Better not make her come up there. She'll do it. Yeah, she'll start using middle names and everything. They're going to be fucked then. So, the science teacher in question is James Tillman,

and according to the complaint received by the FFRF, Mr. Tillman found out about a student being atheist and then began using class time to argue against non-religion like he was Kevin fucking Sorbo. Bizarro. As you might expect from a man of such Herculean intellect,

Tillman used the old what if God gave you cancer and then suddenly took it away, how do you explain that without God? Classic argument. He also gave the heathenist people two signed copies of the science book he wrote, entitled Are You Sure There Is No God? Angels, Demons, Supernatural Miracles, and Meeting Jesus. Not natural miracles. His book's about the supernatural ones.

I had to disambiguate in the title there. So I looked this one up. Three stars on Amazon. That's a total, by the way, not an average. Three one-star reviews. There was some juicy shit in the other two, but I prefer the brevity of David's reviews on the book Are You Sure There Is No God?

It read in its entirety, quote, Yes, I'm sure, end quote. Well done, David. So, the FFRF letter was actually pretty entertaining. Lots of fake polite condescension for the school district's lawyer, Philip Hartley, who they already know, actually. Went something like this.

Hey, Phil, you may remember us from less than a year ago when we forced you to get rid of the christian propaganda in your football program well you can see how you got confused but that wasn't about football no say football wasn't the issue so in case we weren't clear science teachers can't do that either and by the way to avoid this happening again next spring nobody is allowed to preach religion at a public school. See attached U.S. Constitution. Right, right. Yours, Madeline.

Bill of Rights as well. And while Heath and I lay bets on what the FFRF will be contacting Phil about this time next year, we're going to hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. A man wrote the Bible? A whore is what she was. If it's a legitimate rape. Then it's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This week in Misogyny. I didn't exactly plan it this way, but it looks like we'll be taking a tour of the Abrahamic faiths this week.

Because while there are plenty of disagreements these three religions are willing to chop each other's heads off about, one thing that they can all agree on is that women are subhuman servants created so that faithful adherents would have somewhere warm to put their dick at night. We'll start with possibly the mildest reprimand I've ever given to Muslims on this segment, but it's a story that still pissed me off nonetheless. This one comes to us from Canada and involves a group of pissy Muslim boys that couldn't handle getting their asses kicked at soccer by girls. Turns out this Catholic high school has a rule that says if there isn't a girl's team for a particular sport, the girl can play on the boys team if they pass the tryout.

And that's fair, so well done Catholics. But apparently it was an issue for an all-Muslim team that was pitted against them in a tournament. And strangely enough, it became a much bigger problem halfway through the game when it became clear that the Muslim team was going to get their asses handed to them. Now, unfortunately, the story doesn't have a happy ending. This tale of two girls World Cup ends with the coach asking the young ladies on the team to sit out the second half and bow to the misogyny codified in the sacred babblings of an illiterate child molester. So way to do half of the right thing Catholics and none of the right thing Muslims. And I bet Sepp Blatter played some role in this so fuck him too. But like I said that one is pretty mild compared to what we usually talk about on this segment. Not like the Muslim

team threw acid on the team and mopped off their clits or anything. But don't worry we'll ramp up the misogyny a bit as we move over to the UK to highlight some fucked up shit the Jews are doing there. Apparently, the Hasidic Brits are sick and tired of Saudi Arabia getting all the good press, so they decided they, too, would ban women from driving. In an effort to enforce this prehistoric notion of decency, they've even threatened to expel any students whose mothers drive them to school. In a depressingly submissive statement from some of the women targeted by the policy, they endorsed the new rules, agreeing that, quote,

Well, sorry, ladies, but if you're responding to this edict with anything other than rage and bad language, that's inappropriate behavior. edict with anything other than rage and bad language that's inappropriate behavior moving right along to the jesus portion of tonight's triad of patriarchy we come to where else texas where a southern baptist mega church called the village church has elected to shun a member named karen hinkley for the unforgivable crime of filing to divorce her child porn addicted husband she was placed under church discipline whatever the hell that means, after failing to give the church a square shot at saving what God had brought together, which is apparently a much more egregious crime

than beating off the pictures of naked five-year-olds since the church already forgave her husband. Now, apparently this fucked up church requires their members to sign a contract guaranteeing they aren't gay or polyamorous. And one of the fine print stipulations is that they can't get divorced unless the church and one of the fine print stipulations is that they can't get divorced unless the church agrees that jesus did everything he could to avoid it

when she failed to do that the church put her on discipline so she told them to fuck off and she quit so they sent her a notice that she can't quit while she's on discipline to which she reminded them that this isn't the 1300s and she'd do whatever the fuck she cared to. And finally, a tiny nugget of good news to close things out. As one of his final acts in office, outgoing Nigerian president, good luck Jonathan, pushed through legislation banning female genital mutilation in Africa's largest country. And even though a presidential order won't stop the process on its own, it's good to see any step in the right direction on that subject. So with that brief little uplifting twist, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath.

Thank you, Lucinda. And in hungrier-than-a-Jehovah's-witness vampire news tonight, two Australian parents are battling for the right to murder their offspring with medical neglect. Fantastic. According to people who know about livers and shit, the 7-year-old is going to need a new one if he wants to not die. But because about 95% of liver transplant recipients need a blood transfusion, and because a Philadelphian haberdasher interpreted some unintelligible scribblings

of some Israeli goat herders as an anticipatory prescription against blood transfusions, the parents are fighting against the life-saving procedure. That's a good reason. Yeah. Are these people not aware that human livers have blood in them? They're not aware of a lot. You have to have a blood match to get a transplant. How are they against the transfusion

but not the transplant? And even then, facing 100% chance of complete liver failure for their son, how are they not going to try for the 5% chance of the transplant with no blood transfusion? Well, you know what? At least somebody cares more about this kid surviving than Sky Daddy being pleased with their piety because the hospital itself has asked the courts to step in and override the parents' murderous bat shittery.

Their application is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court this month, and should the kid die between now and then, my hope is that at least it just gets handed down to a criminal court at that point. Okay, well, maybe Australia has a different system than we do. But isn't attempted murder a criminal charge in most places? It seems like they could have already decided that case and moved the child to a family that won't instruct doctors to let him die. What a wacky idea that would be. And also, keep in mind that this comes mere weeks after a similar case in Sydney, And also, keep in mind that this comes mere weeks after a similar case in Sydney,

where a seven-month pregnant woman refused a blood transfusion, forcing doctors to let her and her unborn child die unnecessarily. That case is currently being celebrated by Jehovah's Witnesses, by the way, with the woman playing the role of willing martyr to the faith. So at least they basically admit that her dumbass religion killed her, though maybe not to the level I'd like. Wow. And in capital offensive news tonight, the Washington, D.C. transit system

managed to avoid associating with Pamela Geller last week just barely by changing their rules at the last second so they wouldn't have to run her proposed subway ad. Taking a cue from New York's MTA, who made a similar move in April, the board of directors for the Washington Metropolitan Transit Authority voted unanimously to ban all issue-related advertising on Thursday, which was just in time to deny a request by Geller's anti-Muslim hate group, the American

Freedom Defense Initiative, or AFDI, to display a cartoon depiction of the Prophet Muhammad. Right, or as Geller puts it, they, quote, submitted to the assassin's veto, end quote, with a little blue. A little bit of an overstatement. Yeah. Yeah. It kind of makes me think about all those atheist transit ads that have been subverted in the same way when Christians have objected to them. So what are you saying about the Christians there, Pam? So the artwork in question is the winner of the AFDI's Draw Mohammed contest from last month and features the Muslim prophet wielding a sword and wearing a Sikh turban, because hate group-sponsored cartoonists are knowledgeable. Yeah, oh, clearly. According to Geller, the ad represents a political opinion,

and unlike her proposal for New York that included the phrase, Hamas kills Jews, this one contains nothing violent. Except for the sword. Uh-huh, well, yeah. And the latent racism. And the same general hate message as the Jew-killing one. Well, right, right. It's basically they said she couldn't run an ad that said,

fuck Islam, so she tried to run one that just said, fuck. Didn't work. Also didn't work. So, it definitely bothers me that society has to accommodate idiots that get viscerally offended by pictures and words, but in this particular case, everyone's freedom of speech definitely remains intact. Nobody's preventing Muhammad cartoons from being drawn or published, and there's nothing in the First Amendment that guarantees you can

make copies of your speech and have them displayed in every single public space you choose, regardless of the content. Well, yeah, you know, look, I'm all for pissing off the Muslims, but if I tried to put up an ad that showed Jesus getting the shit kicked out of him by Darwin and Madeline Murray O'Hare, they wouldn't let me run that one either. Or if I want to run one with tits on it. So everybody's sacred cow are nobodies. Let's keep it fair here. Also, bigger picture,

it's not like the ability to get a bunch of Americans to conflate their support of free speech and also hating Islam relies very heavily on anything. That almost describes an existing political party that we have. Really? I think that ball's rolling with or without Subway ads, unfortunately.

We all scream for fried pig fat file tonight. Apparently the Jews are fucking up bacon ice cream for everybody. In a recent interview, Ben and Jerry's marketing director, Alison Gilbert, was asked if the company has or would consider adding a bacon-infused flavor to their ever-expanding product line. While she admitted that bacon was one of the most frequently requested ingredients, she explained that the company's commitment to making kosher products supersedes their commitment to people who are actively seeking revenge against their cardiovascular system. I take this as a personal slap in the face. I figured you would, yeah. I've been doing an intensive letter-writing campaign about this for years and given them plenty of ideas. Most

recently, this is a great one, I suggested the solution to the kosher issue involving a sealed flavor pack of dried bacon puree like ramen noodles. There you go, yeah. Not sure what the fuck they're waiting for. Everybody would be happy. Now, I should pause here for our non-American listeners and those unpatriotic commies that hear about bacon and ice cream and think that's a vile misappropriation of both. Clearly, you either haven't eaten ice cream with a bacon spoon or you hate freedom. You haven't lived. Damn it. The only way to make that more American is to scoop it out of a disposable plastic container with a gun.

And if Jew God was worth his shit, he'd have laid out a Levitical stipulation that specifically excluded Ben and Jerry's bacon ice cream from the Kashrut law. And I consider that yet another proof that God doesn't exist. That's the only one I really need, but it's yet another. Well, I also wrote several letters to the people over at Judaism, suggesting

some rule amendments in light of this gross oversight they clearly made. Still haven't heard back from them either. Lazy bastards. And finally tonight, from the incestual healing file, India officially won the bet they made with all the other countries about who could produce more

awful fucking news this week. After reports of thousands dead from a record-breaking heatwave, and also a story about Hitler-branded ice cream being sold successfully throughout the country, it actually got worse with this next item. While producing a documentary about sexual assault called Satyavati,

filmmaker Deepti Tadanki told Times of India that she came across multiple incidents of something called corrective rape, in which gay children are forced to have sex with family members of the opposite sex so as to correct the homosexuality. The idea being that underage incest rape is a great way to sell kids on being straight. I guess, yes. And of course, in reaction to this news item,

Josh Duggar screamed into every open microphone he could find that that's what he was doing, too. He was inoculating his sisters against lesbianity. It was all for a good Christian cause. So I'd like to think that even among fucked up religious communities where people try to rape the gay out of their family members, this isn't just like normal dinner conversation, which means they probably have ways of talking about it in code like waspy hindu family at the table hey honey did you hear the neighbor's kid rajiv isn't gay anymore yeah yeah do you think shanti uh milked his sacred cow you know okay so that seems like a fun game

we've stumbled across yes of course we should keep playing we'll need 30 seconds on the clock i was afraid we would euphemisms for having your gay child correctively raped by a family member of the opposite sex okay go i guess i'll just get dugger bugger out of the way early that would probably be the obvious good good it's out of the way um what about let's just say june took a little cleave to the beef well i believe after the fact you're called a no homho-mo-fo, I think. About, we got into the deleted scenes from My Cousin Vinny, if you know what I mean. Prison scenes. I believe the gangsters call it going West Virginia on that ass.

What about, she learned to like a man from Uncle the Hard Way, if you catch my drift. Box set. She's getting an evening seminar in Uncle Tom's Cab. Yes, that would be it. If you catch my drift. Box set. She's getting an evening seminar in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Yes, that would be it. If you catch my drift. Maybe he was, you know, dribbling on a nib-nibbling sibling. Just leave it at that. A little quick unit of sex Oedipus at the home school. Let's just say they were taking the who's your daddy thing too literally.

Studied some Oedipistemology. Let's just say he Freudian slipped one past the goalie. He's going to be a father brother. He's going to be a father brother and not gay. So we're all happy. You should have worked on oedipoling out. And now that we've firmly established that we're

not above making rape jokes, even when they're incestual, I believe our work here is done. Even classy Greek tragedy rape jokes. We can definitely close the headlines there. Heath, thanks as always. Jumanji! And when we come back, White Isaac Hayes will be here to seduce you with some sexy Mormon talk. It's time for the Atheist Calendar portion of the show. Transcription by CastingWords We've got some great skeptical draws, so come for the conference and stay for the tropical Minneapolis beaches.

We also have two token non-American events this month, both in Brisbane and both involving friend of the show, Peter Boghossian. On July 2nd, he's going to be at a panel discussion titled, How Do You Know? It's going to be a mix of faithful and reasonable in the audience, so the more atheists we can get there, the better it's going to be for everybody involved. Boghossian will also be heading up a skeptic camp event in Brisbane two days later, so if you can't make the one, make the other, unless, of course, you're Helen gone from Brisbane, in which case, you can't make either, and we forgive you. The Secular Student Alliance has scaled back a bit this year. They've been doing bi-coastal conferences the last couple of years, but this time it looks like they're going to cram all the fun into one.

That's going on in Columbus, Ohio on the weekend of July 10th, and features speakers like Greta Christina, Danielle Moscato, Daryl Ray, and a lot more, plus interesting workshops all weekend. Of course, you don't need me to tell you that TAM is coming up. It's the biggest skeptical conference in the U.S., and I think in the world. It's taking place in Sin City July 16th to the 19th. Absolutely incredible lineup, as always, and tickets still available at the time of this writing, so the speaker list isn't exactly finalized yet, but it's already a who's who of skeptical speakers, always worth attending. And finally, closing out our busy month of events is Gateway to Reason in St. Louis, July 31st to August 2nd. I've been to St. Louis. I could use all the reason it could get,

which is why I was so relieved to hear that such icons of reason as David Fitzgerald, Teresa McBain, Aron Ra, Vicki Garrison, PZ Myers, Matt Delahunty, Seth Andrews, and friends of the show, David Smalley, Hemant Mehta, and Tracy Harris are all going to be descending on it at once. Should be a ton of fun. If you want more information on any of these events, you can find links to all of them on the show notes for this episode. And if you're aware of an event that you think our audience would like to know about, let me know.

You'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. Most of our listeners first came to know the sexy, silky, smooth sound of David Michael on episode 71 when he came on to discuss his show, My Book of Mormon. His ambitiously masochistic goal was to pick his way through Joseph Smith's magnum opus whilst lending the text his own brand of critical witticisms. So now, after more than a year of drudgery, David has put that quest in the rearview mirror and joins us to celebrate. David, welcome back to the show. Well, thank you for having me back, Noah. So, now, first of all, I should congratulate you not just on finishing the Book of Mormon,

but also for joining Eli and Adam Rieks in the coveted Five Timers Club. Wow. So there's a little something to add to the resume. You didn't know it had been that many times, did you? I suppose you're counting the Farnsworth quotes. Yeah, I have to to get you there, yeah. There you go. I'll take it, I'll take it. All right, so now just because you're done with the Book of Mormon,

that doesn't mean you're going off the air, correct? No, apparently, I didn't know this when I started, and had I known, I maybe wouldn't have started. But yeah, this was only the first of their books. They have more after this. They've got like a whole trilogy, don't they? Yeah, it seems that way. Thank goodness they consider the King James Bible a part of their canon, but thank goodness for Thomas, who's already tackling that one for us, because I wouldn't want to have to do that one, too. But yeah, next up is something called The Pearl of Great Price, so that sounds fun. And then after that, we have The Doctrines and Covenants.

So it'll be interesting to learn a little bit more about that as you go. Now, you were kind enough to agree to join us for something of a book report. But before we get started on that, I did want to ask you about something else, because we had a little fun picking at each other during the podcast award voting. And among the many things that I made fun of about you was an award that you won that just so happened to share a name with the Good Sportsmanship Consolation Prize for Women's Curling in Canada, which is also a very prestigious award, I'm sure. Consolation Prize for Women's Curling in Canada, which is also a very prestigious award, I'm sure. But when I started looking into it, I found out that's like a Mormon award for best scriptural discussion of some sort? Apparently it is. Yeah, so there's quite a bit happening from the inside of the LDS Church recently. So there was a movement called Ordain Women, started by this woman named Kate Kelly,

where basically attacking the blatant misogyny within the Latter-day Saints. She was excommunicated for her efforts. There was somebody else named John Dillon, who has a podcast called Mormon Stories. And these are all Mormons, right? These aren't apostates. And so he started kind of challenging a lot of the just common sense questions about their doctrine. And he's actually been on the air for 10 years doing that and recently got excommunicated himself. And so even within the Mormon movement, there does seem to be this intellectual curiosity, which I think was birthed primarily by the Internet. Right. It was pretty easy to keep all of these, you know, just, I don't know, bad facts about their history hidden from their congregation until it was just available to everyone. And so it's pretty interesting how many believing Mormons listen to my show. Like that shocked me from the beginning. And even

today, I still get emails from some. There's actually been a few people that have written in to say that the show kind of completely deconverted them which was great to hear even though it was never my mission to do that kind of cool right but yeah the john delin i actually have recently partnered with and it was interesting i never thought that i would take a show with you know being hosted by a very self-proclaimed atheist never hid that from anyone reading this their holy scripture and saying what i think of it, and that I would end up partnering with someone that still calls himself a Mormon. I was going to say, you say he's not an apostate. I think the Mormon church would differ with you on that a bit.

Yeah, they did kick his ass out. He's gone. They said, yeah, they had a nice little trial for him and said, get the fuck out. So yeah, he's still, it's tough to wrap your head around. Like, do you actually believe this? Or is this kind of like, you just like the cultural identity of it? So that's still a little unclear, but what I like about him, I tend to judge people more for their actions. You can think whatever you want. It doesn't really bother me. And so he's doing real

good work. I mean, he's started something called the Open Stories Foundation, which helps people with mental health issues as they're kind of, you know, trying to figure out their faith identity issues and sexual identity type issues. And so, as I probably mentioned the last time I was on the show, started something called the Taylor Scholarship, which is a scholarship for people that need that type of help, but can't afford it. And so the scholarship pays for it. And so a lot of the show's donations, actually the majority of the show's donations go into that. And so we actually just recently partnered with him to kind of use that network that he's created of therapists around the country that deal with these issues specifically.

Excellent. So, yeah, sometimes it's reaching across the aisle, I guess, if you want to call it that, is a good thing when you have evidence that they're doing good work, right? And so, yeah, I don't know what's keeping him from taking the next step to say, yeah, this is all just bullshit. Well, but that's probably a good thing that someone who has that legitimacy is trying to fix it from the inside. At least, you know, maybe he is going to throw in the towel eventually,

but I'm glad to see him doing it. No, I agree. And that's, you know, the point that I'm trying to make is that if someone is doing the good work, right, something to actually help their community around them, then, yeah, I really don't care what you believe. I would much prefer that over someone that talks the talk and doesn't walk the walk, right? So, yeah, I'm pretty happy about that. What was the original question? We lost track of that. Well, now I do want to ask, because I think this is the most important question, if our listeners want to get involved

in this Taylor Scholarship, how do they do that? Oh, well, you can go to the show's website at mybookofmormonpodcast.com. You'll see links for it on the right side. You can just click right there, and yeah, it'll take you to the PayPal site to contribute directly. Awesome. And of course, we'll have that linked on the show notes for this episode as well. So let's talk a little bit more about the Book of Mormon itself. I guess you already sort of answered my first question, which is, would you say that actually reading the book has changed?

I mean, I know you didn't know really anything about Mormonism going in, but has it changed your attitudes about the religion? Yeah, quite a bit. What's so bizarre about it is that I've, you know, since starting the show, I've learned a lot about Mormonism and Mormons in particular. It really is an entire subculture, especially of America. I don't know as much about what it's like around the rest of the world, but it's a whole, I mean, they speak a different language.

I've come to, been told it's called Mormonese is what they all jokingly call it. It's just a very different community. And they have all these different traditions and they have this prophet they listen to and all this kind of stuff. None of that is in the book. The Book of Mormon really does sound like just some lost chapters of the Old Testament that happened to be in America. So, yeah, okay, you have to get over that part. But otherwise, it's not that different. They do quite a bit of lambasting against the Catholic Church. So there's like this whole large section about how awful it is to baptize infants and you should wait till someone can make their own decision and this kind of thing. So it was

clearly an attack against Catholicism. But other than that, it just, and I actually said this at the end, I said, even if I got the vision from God at the end that said, yes, this is all true, I don't know that that makes me a Mormon. It would just kind of make me a Protestant, I think. Right. It just didn't really, I mean, there were even sections in there that talked about how bad polygamy was. And that, it's like, what's going on?

Where's the Mormon stuff? Right. So, yeah, that to me was the most surprising thing about the Book of Mormon was that. How little it had to say about, you know, the way that Mormons practice their faith today. Yeah, right, right. Well, I mean, if you look at, say, Catholicism and then read the New Testament, I'm sure you would feel the exact same way, you know, if you were more familiar with religion before you were familiar with their holy books. So tell us about some of the wackiest crap that you came across, maybe some fun stuff

that the average person doesn't know is in there. All right. Well, like I said, there's actually two stories in the book about people coming from Israel to America. I don't know if you knew this, Noah. It happened twice in the book. So the first time it happened, which I say first, even though it's one of the last chapters of the book, but chronologically, right after the Tower of Babel, which I'm sure you remember,

apparently there was a lost chapter because God decided to bless one family at the Tower of Babel and didn't mess up their language. I still don't know how that helps them. Everybody else speaks a different language, but whatever. Their language was good. But God promised them this promised land. And he told them they could have the promised land as long as they always kind of swore to it that they would always serve him and love him. They could have it. And so in order to get there, he instructed them how to build, and I'm not joking about this at all, submarines. What?

This happens. Read it. The Book of Ether is the name of this story. I bet it is. Probably what inspired it. The best part is they build these things just like God says, and they said they were tight as a dish and no water could penetrate them. And then the hero of this story says to God,

Hey God, I noticed something. It's going to be a problem. We can't breathe in there. And God's like, oh, right. Hadn't thought of that. My bad. And so he says, just cut a little hole in the top and stick a cork in it. And then when you're out there, sometimes you'll be above the water.

And so just pull the cork out. If there's water coming in, pop it back in. If there's no water, well, then you get some air. And I was just like, what the fuck are they talking about? And then it gets better, right? And then they were complaining that there was no light in it. And God's like, well, I can't help you there. What do you want, a window?

Come on. So then the guy actually has to say to God, like, well, how about I take some rocks and I'll hold them up in the air? And can you just, like, touch your finger to them and light them up? And God's like, well, I suppose I could. So he does that for them. Seriously, God doesn't have any of these ideas. These are the people coming up with them. So now they have light in there.

So they load these submarines. I think there was 18 of them or something. They load them with all their livestock and enough provisions for the journey. And it takes them almost a year. I think it was 344 days or something to get across the ocean. Wow. In a sealed container with a little air hole in the top. I mean, just the logistics of that.

And all the animals. Shitting all over the place. You're over. And they talk about the way they got there was God made these giant storms to push the boats along. I guess because God didn't know about sail. What, underwater storms? It's very confusing. I think it was the storms were so strong that sometimes they would go underwater

and then they just kind of bounce back up. Oh, I got you. It was this kind of a thing, yeah. So it was kind of a bobbing motion across the ocean. Like a rubber duck thing, kind of. Okay. Yeah, with a closed container full of animal excrement splashing around everywhere. Yeah, it must have just been fabulous.

Why haven't they made a movie about this? That one shocked me. As I was reading,. Why haven't they made a movie about this? That one shocked me. I was, as I was reading, because it doesn't say the word submarine, right? It's just talking about these vessels, and that they were tight like a dish, and I'm going, what? Are they talking? No, they can't possibly be. And then all of a sudden, it was like, yes, we had to make

them so that we could go down and be with the whales. I was like, fuck me, that's really our submarines. So yeah, that was pretty, that was a fun one. Wow. Yeah. So there can't possibly be anything wackier than the submarines, can there? That one, yeah, I think that one's got to be the best.

I mean, there's definitely some fun characters in the book, you know, and I'm trying to remember what I told you last time I was on, but there's this one guy named Ammon who he's like this missionary, and he's a badass missionary because uh when people didn't when he disagreed with him he just killed them right I mean there was some people that were that were messing with him well some that uh he just chopped their arms off and didn't kill and then he like dragged all the arms back to the king to show what a good person he was so and that guy was he was nuts uh so he was he was a fun character so yeah there yeah, there was definitely parts that were entertaining, kept the story going.

But, yeah, I think the submarines definitely have to take the cake for the nuttiest thing. Either that or the magic brass ball. But I don't have time for that. Oh, well, that's just kind of your way of making sure that I invite you on for a sixth time so you can beat Adam Rees, right? So they're wandering around the wilderness. They don't know where to go. And this guy walks out of his tent, and there's a brass ball just sitting on the ground,

and apparently God gave it to him. And so it has these little needles on it, and it points the way that they need to go. And if they want food, it'll point them to where the food is. And if they want, it just points. And it'll put little messages on there, but it only works if you have faith. So it's kind of like this magic faith compass.

And yeah, that's a thing that God gave them. And that was just fabulous. Seems like that would be more useful than the underwear, if they could have had one or the other. I don't know. The underwear's supposed to be bulletproof, so... That's true. Depends on the circumstances, I think.

Now, I guess there's a lot of ways that I could ask this last question of you, but I think the best way is with a little echo added in post-production. So when it comes to the Book of Mormon, how bullshit is it? Wow, on a scale of 1 to 10? Whatever scale you prefer, sir. All right, I think, man, all right, this is going to be a long answer, but I couldn't find anything credible in it, and I really tried.

This book, even if you take it at its own claims, is supposed to be a bunch of ancient plates. By the way, these were not the plates Joseph found. These were plates that a guy named Mormon abridged and then made new plates. I see. Those are the ones that Joseph found and then translated. Actually, there was some other abridging that happened too, even before that. So you had these plates from all over the place, from dubious sources, that some other guy that we don't really know decides to abridge them. So we don't have that original text.

Then you get the plates, they get buried, Joseph Smith finds them, then he translates them, then they disappear, and now they're gone. And he translates them. Then they disappear. Now they're gone. Everything about it is just so, I don't know, you cannot find any shred of historical credibility throughout it. So, yeah, I think it's, I would say, complete bullshit. No, that's the way I would answer. Complete.

And I hope listeners will appreciate that I really tried to give it the benefit of the doubt. But in the end, it is complete bullshit. Well, you know what? They can find out for themselves, obviously. It's all on record. So if you were waiting to check out David's show to make sure he wasn't going to puss out halfway or anything, you can get started now by checking out the link to my Book of Mormon on the show notes for this episode,

or, of course, you can find it on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you found this one. Now, can we get a commitment from you tonight that you'll be back on Post Doctrines and Covenants and Pearl of Great Bryce to let us know how those ones went? Absolutely. But I will not come alone, because for the Doctrines and Covenants, it sounded so boring, just a bunch of bullet points about revelations Joseph was having, that I actually have decided to co-host that portion of the show with Bryce Blankenagle of the Naked Mormonism podcast.

I believe you might have actually met Bryce out at ReasonCon. Yes, I did. Awesome. So he's going to do that with me. So as I'm reading it and getting my knee-jerk, what the fuck was that reaction, he'll actually be able to give us the historical context of it. You'll actually have somebody that speaks Mormon. He is right there on set.

That's excellent. Exactly. So yeah, I tell you what, when I come back, I'll come back with Bryce and we'll give you a full recap. Sounds great, man. Thanks again for your time and good luck going forward. Thank you, Noah, and good luck to you, too. From time to time on this show, we like to set aside a couple of minutes to discuss some of the common apologetics used in defense of theism. But this is not one of those times.

No, it's not. Because today we're going to be discussing an uncommon apologetic used in defense of theism. Exactly. It's good that this one is uncommon. Yeah, right, right. So, Heath, what maundering, nonsensical, slight-against-sanity do you have for us today? That would be the argument from happy slavery. Happy slavery argument. That sounds made up. All ideas are made up. No, I mean, it sounds like you just now made it up. Well, the world would be a better place if I had to make it up just now. But no, this is an apologetic you can find in any number of books, videos, and websites trying to reconcile the moral grotesqueries of the Bible. It's all

over the place. Okay, so when is a person likely to encounter this one? Anytime a person tells you the Bible is a book of morals, and then you correct them by pointing to its predilection for endorsing human bondage. Or, anytime you open your inbox if you critique the Bible on a podcast every week. Yes, uh-huh. But for the purposes of this bit, I'm still going to pretend I've never heard it before. So how is this one formally stated? Okay, well, it's more of a reactionary argument, so you're not usually going to get it stated formally.

But if you did, it might go something like this, I guess. Premise A, la la la. Premise B, ibid. Conclusion, I can't hear you. Something tells me that the person presenting this argument wouldn't agree with your characterization of it there. They probably wouldn't even understand my characterization of it there. All right, so break it down for us. In the real world, how is this argument used? All right, the argument proceeds in stages. The first step is to convince the challenger that slavery in the Bible wasn't really that bad.

I see. It was fun slavery. And what's the next step? We'll find that out if any of these apologists ever get past step one. Yeah, that's kind of what I was figuring. Seems like a tough sell. It is. But to their credit, that hasn't stopped them from trying.

A number of justifications for biblical slavery have been offered that seek to divorce it from the associations we all have with slavery today. The bad associations, I guess. Owning slaves, for example. The bad stuff like that, yes. They prefer you ignore that part of it. But barring that, they'll settle for asserting that there are many subtle levels of slavery, and biblical slavery was on the happy end of that scale.

Well, but, okay, but slavery is slavery. Either you own a person or you don't. I mean, there could be varying levels of how poorly you treat your slaves, but don't own people, that's a moral absolute. Okay, so this is the point where the apologist would play up the gray areas. For example, a person who has a job is, at least in some sense, a slave, if you think about it. No, they're not, because being an employee and a slave are two completely different things. But they still have people telling them what to do. Right, okay, but slave isn't defined by whether or not you have people telling you what to do.

We all have people telling us what to do. Yeah, so in a sense, we're all slaves. Well, then the term would be meaningless. Look, slave has a very specific definition here. Slave, noun, a person who is the legal property of another and is forced to obey them. But if you keep reading... Then I'd be reading the definition for Slavic, because that's all it says. To. Verb. Work excessively hard. Well, okay, but that's not even... We're not talking about that definition. Nonsense. I just brought it up, so of course we're talking about it. Well, I... Okay,

I mean, that's not what we're talking about when we talk about owning slaves in the Bible. Well, to be fair, we should consider all the definitions, I think. No, we shouldn't, because you can't own a verb. That wouldn't even make sense. You can't own a slave, either. Well, not legally, but that's not the point. What is the point? I don't even... that employees aren't slaves. No, but they're like slaves, aren't they?

No, they're not. They're not slaves-lite. The boss isn't legally allowed to rape them or beat them with a rod, regardless of how quickly they recover. And if you don't like what you're being asked to do, you can quit. Okay, sure. So you get mad at your boss for raping and beating you, so you quit. But what then? You hire a lawyer and try to get that rapist thrown in jail.

Okay, but in the meantime, how are you going to pay your bills or feed your children? I'm going to get a different job. And what about little Tommy's chemo? Is your new job going to have insurance that pays for that? What does that even have to do with anything? Well, for you or me, it might be easy to quit a job just because we got raped and beaten. But for some people caught in the cycle of poverty, it's not that simple. So for some people, having a job and being a slave aren't very different at all.

Well, okay, but for the record, I'm also morally opposed to bosses that beat and rape their employees. Yeah, but back in the Bible days, there weren't exactly, you know, OSHA regulations or labor unions. So it's awful culturally insensitive for you to try to view this all through your modern lens, I would say. It's culturally insensitive to be to try to view this all through your modern lens, I would say. It's culturally insensitive to be anti-slavery? Anti-Bible slavery, yeah, absolutely. We're not talking about Django Unchained here. This is more like Shmuel Unchained. I'm not sure that I'm the one being culturally insensitive now. The point is that you're using your preconceived Western notions of slavery and trying to apply them to a system in the Bible

that wasn't the same. We call both of those things slavery now, but the institution was different back then. The Bible talks about a far kinder and gentler version of owning people. It says you can beat them with a stick. It tells you not to knock their eyes out, though. It's very clear on that.

But somehow that doesn't quite elevate it to morally sound in my mind, sorry. Well, it differs in other ways, too. For example, in Bible slavery, you had to let your slaves go after seven years. Only the Hebrew ones. Well, the other ones are just lucky you didn't massacre them when you were genociding all the other men in their tribe. But even with the Hebrew slaves, there's still that loophole where you get to keep the slaves' kids, and if they ever want their kids back, then they have to pledge to be your slave forever, and you drive the owl through their ear.

They spell that one out in Deuteronomy. Yeah, the argument from happy slavery works out better if you don't know about that. Well, okay, but even if I didn't, I'm assuming I didn't, it seems like it would be fairly easy to argue that owning somebody as property for seven years is still morally repugnant. Okay, well, if you think any point is fairly easy, you clearly haven't argued with enough Christians before. Okay, so what's your answer then? How should we deal with the argument from happy slavery? I actually have a three-step system.

Step one is driving an awl through their ear into the doorjamb. After that, you beat them with a stick, taking care not to knock out any eyes or teeth. And then when they get up and start walking around again, a couple days later, ideally about 47 hours later, After that, you beat them with a stick, taking care not to knock out any eyes or teeth. And then when they get up and start walking around again, a couple days later, ideally about 47 hours later, either they'll admit they were wrong and that being a biblical slave sucks, or they'll still hold the same position and you can beat them unconscious with the stick again. Okay.

I'm not sure how well that would work in a formal debate, but I'd be willing to give it a try. You will not be disappointed. All right. Well, Heath, thanks again, sir. Before we bow out under duress tonight, I wanted to offer a quick congratulations to my friend Adam Reeks of the Herd Mentality Podcast. Apparently, he finally suckered a lovely and unsuspecting woman into agreeing to marry him last week. So, congratulations, bro. Of course, we wish him boundless

happiness and joy in that endeavor, and barring that, a fair shake in the divorce proceedings. I also want to let everyone know that I have seen the video from the Roast of God that we did at ReasonCon. It definitely exists. I'm not sure what the delay is at this point, but as soon as it's available, we're going to be posting it on our website, the Facebook page, Twitter feed, anywhere else we can think to stick it. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we have for you this week, but we'll be back in

10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister podcast, The Skeptocrat, debuting on Monday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern Time. Obviously, I can't close it down without thanking Heath for having such a huge dick joke repertoire. I also want to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for having such a nice ass-essment of sexism every week. I also want to thank David from My Book of Mormon one more time, just for being himself. And of course, big thanks to at your old pal Dan on Twitter

for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. If you just don't have enough ex-Christian scientists on your timeline, you'll find a link that'll help you correct that problem on the show notes for this episode, where you'll also find a link to David's show, as well as more information about the Taylor Scholarship that we were discussing earlier. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most mesmerizing mammals, Barbara, Andrew,

Luca, Orly, Bill, Mason, Jason, Other Andrew, Grant, Emily, Christopher, Chase, and Mike. Barbara, Andrew, Luca, and Orly, whose IQs still look impressive even if you accidentally just look at the exponent. Bill, Mason, Jason, Other Andrew, and Grant, whose dicks are so long they have rest areas between the head and the balls. And Emily, Christopher, Chase, and Mike, who are so sexy Antarctic

ice shelves are breaking off just to get closer to them. Together, these 13 thoroughly thoughtful thwarters of theism have helped us thin the throngs of theocratic thugs and thrive while throttling thick-headed theologians by giving us money. Not everybody has the genitals, genetics, and je ne sais quoi 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, where you can get early access to extended versions of every new episode. Or you can make a one-time donation by clicking the donate button on the right side of the homepage at skatingatheist.com.

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That's what it was. I did this on purpose so that I'd have a little something extra to give to the patrons. What it was is you knew that I needed another sip of my beer. Oh, there you go. And you were kind enough to give me the opportunity. Yeah, I generally speaking guess that you need another sip of your beer. It's always a safe bet. Yeah.