The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 129: Facilitated Edition

Episode Date: August 6, 2015

In this week's episode, we'll discuss Kentucky Fried Kapparot; we learn that god never intended "sex with tractors" to involve homosexuals, and we'll finally get around to talking trash about Zoroastrainism.

Warning, according to our entry on the Iron Chariots wiki, this show contains adult language and potentially offensive comedy. Not sure where they got the potentially bit from. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new poisonous snake wholesaler for Christian fundamentalist preachers who think they're immune to venom. Sir Pentecostco. Sir Pentecostco. Tired of pet stores refusing to sell you an industrial vat of deadly snakes just because there's a clear pattern of idiot pastors just like yourself murdering themselves in a room full of families with small children? Well, we know they weren't true Christians, and you are,

so there's nothing to worry about. Sir Pentecostco. Please ignore the fact that we're a proud sponsor of the Darwin Awards. And now, the skatingathing Atheist. I'm Tali from Monster on Sunday, and I can assure you that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men! It's Thursday! It's Thursday. It's August 6th. And we're only a few days away from opening day of preseason oblong steroid ball. Yeah, fuck it.

On second thought, soccer can have the name football. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Enright. And from Okefenokee Swamp Ass, Valdosta, Georgia. This is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll discuss Kentucky Fried Capirot. We'll learn that God never intended sex with tractors to involve homosexuals. And we'll finally get around to talking shit about Zoroastrians. But first, the diatribe. I'll tell you what, nobody can make an interesting conversation boring quite like a theist.

If you and I sat down and the opening salvo of the conversation was something like, where did the universe come from? I would be excited. You know, what a fascinating topic, right? We could talk about the Big Bang, and we could talk about dark energy, and the expansion of the universe, and multiverse theories, and the nature of time, and we'd ponder what exactly we mean by the word nothing. You know, we talk about the simulation hypothesis, get crazy esoteric, start digging into solipsism, and in the end, we'd both walk away from a really interesting conversation still not knowing where the universe came from. In my mind, that is the single most interesting topic for academic discussion.

In order to really ponder it, you have to delve so much into all this different weird shit about fourth-dimensional shit and quantum fluctuations and the nature of time. Virtually every aspect of the conversation can lead you down into another spellbinding rabbit hole of theoretical physics. Now, look, I'll be the first to, I'm nowhere near qualified for that conversation. I get lost in a hurry when physicists start talking about time, but I enjoy trying to keep up with them, even if it's hopeless. I just love, you know, thinking about this shit. I love the vain feeling that someday I'm going to be able to comprehend some tiny kernel of what the fuck is

going on around me. Hell, I've paid hundreds of dollars and driven for hours to listen to professors expound on theories of universal origins and the nature of time. I honestly can't think of any topic I'd be more excited to discuss unless, of course, the person I'm talking to is religious. Because nothing sucks all the fun out of the unknown like an undereducated asshat who wants to replace I don't know with I have this magic friend, you know. If a Christian started a conversation with me by asking where I thought the universe came from, I would roll my eyes, I would sigh, and I would tell him it was fashioned from the flatulence of Frank the Farting Space Chicken or something, because there is no chance in hell that that

conversation is going to be any fun. I learned that the hard way, of course. At one point in my life, I was convinced that maybe if I just talked to these Christians about the origins of space and time, perhaps I could infect them with a bit of my curiosity and wonder. Maybe I could get them thinking about things from a new direction, and maybe just maybe I could make them wonder if space wizard is really the best answer. Maybe I could help them realize that the incomplete scientific answer has way more explanatory power than the theistic dead end, and maybe I could help them understand that the most rewarding mental state is curiosity, not certainty.

And over and over again, I'd get a good run and start confident that this time Lucy was going to let me kick the damn ball, but inevitably I'd wind up on my back asking why the fuck I thought it was going to be any different this time. Now, I want to be clear here because I'm not saying that a conversation like that is useless. I'm just saying it's no fucking fun. You know, if you've got the patience for it, and you can handle the fallacies and bastardizations of logic all the way through to the bitter and seemingly futile end, you've almost certainly done a good thing. You've probably chipped away at their certainty a bit.

At the very least, the right answer is like floating around in their memories somewhere now something. So it's important that atheists are willing to engage Christians in these discussions, but when you do, it's a fucking chore, and you deserve a hug and a cookie when it's important that atheists are willing to engage Christians in these discussions. But when you do, it's a fucking chore and you deserve a hug and a cookie when it's over. This profound lack of curiosity annoys me more than any other religious trait. You know, don't get me wrong. The part where they murder gay people and throw acid at rape victims, that's way worse. And so is the part where they chop up people's genitals and blow themselves up on trains

and where they stand in the way of medical research and education and the psychologically torturing children by telling them they're going to go to hell if they beat off that part too. That's all worse. There's no question that a lot of what they do is way worse for society, way worse for the people around them, and way worse for their own mental well-being.

But at least to some degree, all of that is rooted in this same willingness to walk through life satiating your thirst for knowledge with holy water. And that's why I don't buy into this whole notion of the harmless Christian. I get that shit all the time that we should focus our show more narrowly so that we don't alienate the harmless theists. We should focus on the fundamentalists and the zealots, but we should also extend an olive branch to these so-called harmless Christians. Well, show me one of these harmless

Christians and maybe I'll back off of them. I mean, honestly, all the problems in our world from great to small, every challenge that faces us individually or as a community of 7 billion can only go one of two ways. Either we're going to solve it through a rigorous application of human ingenuity or we're not going to solve it. So how can it possibly be harmless to pretend to certainty in the light of mystery? In order to make this global society work, we need to know shit. And in order to know shit, you have to start by admitting that you don't know it yet. You know, this false certainty, that's a prerequisite to get into their club. It's baked right into the definition. The very act of being religious is a false application

of certainty to the unknown. When you strip away all the pomp and circumstance, that's what being religious means. It means pretending to know the unknowable. And in practice, it's pretending to know the unknowable with the most unlikely possible answer on all the most important topics. So tell me, how could that ever be harmless? Joining me for headlines tonight is part of this nutritious breakfast, Heath Enright. Heath, are you ready to stay crunchy even in milk? Is that like a euphemism for something? Like for you blowing me is what it sounds like?

When we come right down to it, what isn't? All right. Well, then, yeah, ready to go. In our lead story tonight, from the hell evangelism file, a prayer group from a coastal town near Naples, Italy, hired a priest last month to fly over the region in a helicopter and perform a mass exorcism of its land and inhabitants. Paid the dude to do this. Yes, he did. The group, thoroughly confused by the if-then mechanism, released the following statement.

Quote, by the if-then mechanism, released the following statement. Quote, if Satan exists, if Satan exists, then he has taken control of our town. There was nothing left but to try the exorcist, end quote. Okay, well, the first part of that sentence is technically true because Satan doesn't exist. So, like, any untrue thing in the second clause would count as true.

So, like, if I said, if Satan exists, he's licking my prostate as we speak. That is a true statement. I kind of went off the rails after that. That second sentence was, yeah, completely bullshit. So this was in response to a recent spike in so-called satanic crime in the area, including vandalism of churches and graves, crosses being flipped upside down, and religious artifacts being thrown off of cliffs, apparently. And although that last thing is the town's own fault for having high places, they still

felt the best way to fix the ailing local economy was to pay for a magical healer to take a really expensive helicopter tour. Apparently, exercising from ground level is a funny angle that makes it more difficult to vacuum out the demons or whatever. It's like an EMP, exactly. Look, I'm not exactly an expert in the field of criminology, but if your response to crime is to send a priest up in a helicopter to cast a magic spell,

I may have pinpointed why you have a crime problem. Systemic. So here's my issue with this. Let's say I'm a town resident and also a devil worshiper who was possessed by one or more evil spirits, perhaps. That's easy for me to imagine. So from a legal standpoint, should a priest be allowed to just fly over my house

and steal my fucking demons like that? Yeah, right? It seems like I should be allowed to just fly over my house and steal my fucking demons like that yeah right i should be able to sue this guy and you know get a demon back or exactly exactly it's like it's it's basically it's abortion really when you think about it's like a drive-by demon abortion they should be against this and in texas's news tonight texas wants to make it very clear that no fancy pants italian demon wranglers are going to one up the Lone Star State. They can mistake mythology for psychiatry, too, you see, and they don't need no fancy helicopter to do it. This fact was apparently on full display at a public duck pond in Odessa, Texas, where police were summoned in response to a progressively more disturbing public exorcism. in response to a progressively more disturbing public exorcism.

They arrived on scene while the bat sherry was still underway, but since religious practices were grandfathered in when they made all those disturbing the peace and public nuisance laws, the cops were unable to intervene. Great. As usual, Texas law has it all worked out, and they're not crazy at all. No. Regarding proper safety for supernatural underworld pets in public parks,

the police are allowed to enforce leash laws, but not in the case of a seeing eye demon. Right. And also proton packs are open carry. It's a delicate balance they have going. It's impressive. Exactly. My fundamental right to cross the streams.

Now, park goers describe the scene as a painful reminder of just how fucked up their beliefs actually are when you see people taking them seriously. so there was one witness who apparently goes to the park every day just to read her bible to ducks or something and she was disturbed not because two people screaming at a third person to relinquish the animate spawn of satan inside her is disturbing but rather because they were doing it wrong. Quote, no Bible was read, no prayer, because it got a little too crazy. Bad technique. Yeah, exactly. She says, Jesus can heal anyone, but it's not something you expect to see on the duck pond.

End quote. One of my favorite quotes from all of news in 2015. And in lots of blood, lots of foul news tonight. There seems to be some controversy in Brooklyn, New York, surrounding this year's upcoming Capra, which is an annual tradition in the Hasidic Jewish community just before Yom Kippur,

during which many adherents swing a live chicken around over their head three times, throw it at a wall, and then have it butchered to death right there on the sidewalks of America's most populous city. Yes, they do. Hoping to prevent Salmonella Fest 2015 next month, several justifiably terrified Brooklyn residents have filed a lawsuit against organizers of such events for the barbaric disease-spreading

illegalness, I would imagine, and also against the city for failing to enforce laws against illegal diseases. Now, to be fair, though, that is probably not the worst thing Jews do to their cocks when you come right down to it. Okay, but I think it's worth noting two things. First of all, some of the Jewish people just swing bags of old timey gold coins over their head, which is, I'd say, equally insane, but decidedly better for public safety. And also, as for Brooklyn's full blown live cockswingers, it's not like they're just building makeshift

slaughter shanties on the sides of city streets and torturing chickens to death for no reason. What happens is it's the centripetal force transfers all your sins for that year into the chicken, which you then proceed to murder. So it's not as crazy as it sounds. Yeah, right, right. Exactly. When you get deep into the context of it, it all makes sense. And in appalling news tonight, thealese government acted last week to put a stop to a centuries-old glorification of barbarism known as the gadimai festival the

quinquennial celebration is commemorated by gathering together feasting dancing and whacking the heads off of animals large and small it's like all good festivities should be if they want to revive that festival outside of nepal as i understand it you're allowed to whack off all the animals you want here in the united states now that we've legalized same-sex marriage those are right yeah exactly just ask any gop contender in the south after drawing international condemnation for decades the nepalese government has finally made at least a modicum of effort to curb the savagery of this pre-civilized custom though they've all but admitted defeat in advance here nepalese officials point out that even in fully modernized cities like New York,

people still swing chickens to death in the name of mythology, so it's probably going to take a while to reign this one in, too. Sorry, guys. Yeah, and also, it's not easy to discredit a jailed criminal from 250 years ago

who had a hallucination about slicing some heads off in exchange for magically getting released from incarceration. There's a lot of credibility there. So, you know, the government's going to need a really good reason to explain this to people. Just like Capra, it all makes sense. Now, we should be clear here that when we say sacrifice these animals,

what we're actually talking about is torturing them to death. And it's probably not a good thing to use those two terms interchangeably, so I wanted to make that clear animals killed in the festival are typically starved for several days beforehand because hey why waste the food right and the methods of slaughter are depraved enough to make comatose blush but we also we take this from a purely logical perspective it doesn't make any fucking sense either because nepal has been murdering animals in mass like this twice a decade for a couple of centuries and nepal is basically the worst country to live in that isn't actively being bombed.

And that was true before the big earthquake. Basically them and sub-Saharan Africa. Now, of course, we've got plenty more headlines to come. But since we're already discussing torture and sacrifice, I figured it'd be a perfect time to take a quick break to talk about all the horrible shit we talk Eli into doing for this show. He's read the entire Bible more than once. Oh, this fucking thing. He's suffered through all

three hours of international guerrillas. If aliens from the future came back and gave cavemen a camera and they just tried it for the first time and they produced international guerrillas, I'd be like, oh, come on, caveman, you can do better. He's watched Nicolas Cage phone it in, even for Nicolas Cage. Have you seen Wicker Man? I got eaten by beast he's witnessed ray comfort accosting random gay people in the street every time i would watch 20 minutes i'd be like okay you did good eli you get an episode of scrubs yes you do yes you do we're gonna watch the early

seasons when everyone was funny come on and he's even watched kirk cameron dance i wrote down in my notes here oh i get it the tv's off and i'm on acid but now you have the chance to help torture eli full time that's right for as little as one dollar per week you can help us launch god awful movies a new weekly podcast podcast featuring Eli Heath and myself reviewing and recounting the very worst the Christian cinema has to offer. At the same time, you'll allow Eli to take on podcasting as a full time job, which means you'll be able to hear more from him on both the scathing atheist and the skeptocrat. Our goals are modest and attainable. Eli's just not as funny when he's homeless. So all we need is enough money to kick in on his rent and possibly toss a little toward a psychiatric pension in case something in Kirk

Cameron's filmography causes a psychotic break, which isn't exactly unlikely. So please, help fulfill Eli's masochistic dream of seeing every piece of shit movie that a Christian zealot ever violently shoved through the production process. To learn how you can help, visit patreon.com slash godawful. That's patreon.com slash godawful. Or check scathingatheist.com for more information and a handy link. And now, back to the headlines. Next up in headlines, from the Homo Textuality File. Everything in Russia is going great right now.

Except, except for all the gay children and their gay text messages. Other than that, that one crucial problem, they'd be crushing it over there. Absolutely. That's why lawmakers are currently looking into a possible ban on homosexual themed emojis, which can now be found in a recent version of the iPhone operating system. Of course, this, you know, sounds absolutely crazy, but in fairness, Russia has a long history of, you know, extra-hetero stuff.

Right. Anti-gay propaganda, homophobic laws, his and his toilet his toilet stalls so it's ingrained in the culture okay but all right tough for them to first things first all emojis are inherently gay unless otherwise specified so that you do you pretty much have to get rid of all and i mean like what how do you know that a happy face that's not with a guy or a girl is straight right i mean like how do you you could be getting blown by anybody We don't know about this fucking walk, don't walk guy. He could be smoking pool. We don't know.

We got to get rid of this motherfucker. But secondly, and this bit's important, we might be able to use this information militarily. Okay, so my idea is that we just fill Ukraine up with a bunch of gay happy faces. You know, we call it the Dunbass don't tell policy or something like that, and that'll slow them way down, give us time reinforce good idea that's good thanks thanks so this all started

with that dunbass don't tell took me all fucking day to come up with so i'm glad you i'm glad you liked it i approve no it was worth your entire day okay so this all started with a complaint by russian senator mikhail marchenko His basic message went something like this. If you want to text someone the concept of two short-haired yellow faces with a heart or two long-haired yellow faces with a heart, you don't even have to type all that out. Because the digital sodomites over at Apple put built-in homosexual emojis for that exact fucking purpose, which puts every Russian kid with an iPhone one step closer to gay sex. So that's what this guy thinks is happening. And he requested an official investigation into the emoji's legal status.

And it was granted. There are Russian government employees right now investigating just exactly how much homosexual propaganda for kids is embedded in a text character. I want to see the birth certificate. And from the pedophile tonight, I'm going to bring the humor potential of the show to a screeching halt with a story out of Australia that we just can't ignore.

Apparently, the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sex Abuse is working through the religions alphabetically, I guess, and they're on the J's now. That's funny so far recent sorry about that the recent revelation about the jehovah's witnesses in that country are probably making the catholics feel like underachievers at this point okay it is seriously fucked up yeah the uh catholics rape plenty of kids too but but then they throw the kids a birthday party every so often which negates the whole process oh does it underachievers indeed yeah among the jaw-dropping disclosures that we've learned over the last couple of weeks came in the opening statement of uh angus stewart acting as the counsel for the commission according to stewart that jehovah's witnesses had received allegations of child sex abuse about more than 1 000 of its

elders since 1950 in 1006 out of 100 instances, these allegations were not reported to law enforcement. And I'm sure they tracked that very proudly with a nice big whiteboard at J-Dubs HQ. Probably. 1,006 consecutive child rapes without a workplace accident leading to a police report. Right, yeah, exactly. Now, any hope of defending the institution with the few bad apples excuse was thoroughly pre-debunked when multiple elders of the church testified about what they call the two witness rule. Citing biblical precedent, the J-dubs had a policy that said that if a child accused an adult of wrongdoing, they needed at least two witnesses before the transgression counted as something that they could do anything about. So unless dad brought in a spotter when he raped his daughter, she has absolutely no recourse. And even when dad did bring a friend to watch, the victim would have had to convince a hired rape spotter to testify in court regarding their job as a hired rape spotter.

Also, why doesn't God count as a witness here? You would think. Wouldn't that be a problem? Exactly. And it's worse, by the way, than mere tacit approval of child sex abuse not only are the accusations dismissed if the child rape wasn't you know notarized or whatever but the accuser is then punished for bringing false allegations against the grown-up which leads to horrifying stories like the one candace conti shared with the commission which included her getting shunned by her insulated Jehovah's Witness

community for the crime of speaking up when her father sexually abused her at the age of nine. So... She got in trouble. Yes, exactly, and got shunned, including by her family, by her own family. So, good luck segueing back to the funny shit. Sorry.

See what we can do with Mike Huckabee's story. Hey, if anybody can do it. He's got something. All right. All right. In plan Huckabee news tonight, during a campaign event at a Pizza Ranch location in Jefferson, Iowa last week, GOP presidential hopeful and guy whose underinflated face even Tom Brady's little baby hands can grip, Mike Huckabee decided to speak to a family restaurant full of people about

abortions which may sound inappropriate but that is the word that comes to mind when i think about a pizza chain in iowa right i don't mean as a topping although that would probably help it couldn't hurt i'm sure like the fetus would really bring out the taste of the ketchup in the sauce at the pizza ranch it's a good pairing so coming off a very successful holocaust reference last week huckabee figured it was best to roll with that momentum and suggest how he might finally start bumping up america's woefully small unwanted babies number he told the audience quote i will not pretend there is nothing we can do to stop this, end quote. At which point a reporter asked him, what the fuck that means?

As in, did you just suggest you might use armed government personnel to physically prevent abortions at gunpoint? And Huckabee's response contained nothing resembling no or no, that's crazy. Instead, he went with, quote, we'll see. We'll see if I get to be president. Well, and that's functionally equivalent to no, that's crazy. But it's still the wrong answer. That's not what he meant by it.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. As much as I enjoy the mental image of the U.S. Army securing a vagina like it was an Iraqi oil well, a bunch of Marines raising a flag on the clit or whatever. It's probably best not to feed the whole stop abortions with deadly force concept to the kind of Iowans that show up at a Mike Huckabee rally, or a pizza ranch for that matter. Very good point. So Huckabee also revealed his knowledge of the secret parts of constitutional law, I guess, and how that might fit into his anti-choice

strategy. Apparently, he plans to invoke something called the Fifth Amendment and also something called the Fourteenth Amendment, maybe, is what he's saying. I don't know. I guess once he becomes president, he's going to make a quick phone call and get all his baby-killing stuff straightened out. Hello, Supreme Court. Yeah.

You guys have that Roe v. Wade thing on the books. But I just wanted to check real quick. Were you guys using the fifth and 14th amendments that day? Five and 14, you say, huh? Hold on. So I'm just going to check the record. I'll be fucking God. Damn.

They were turned off. Those two. Unbelievable. Who knew? gonna check the record i'll be fucking god damn they were turned off those two unbelievable who knew and who was that masked religion news tonight we have yet another chapter in the ongoing saga that pits rap music against ancient semi-dualistic monotheistic middle eastern religions in decline and this time it's litigious another one huh that's right the parsi zoroastrian association of kolkata apparently has sued to have a new snoop dog video banned worldwide as they feel it disrespectfully depicts one of their holy symbols now as frivolous as this lawsuit might sound by the way it's actually a major step forward for them in terms of non-trivial legal action coming as it does on

the heels of a honest to god i didn't make this up lawsuit against a baby diaper company that shares a name with the faith's holy scriptures okay so here's what has me confused about these guys the name of their god is mazda yeah right these people are trying to sue a small-time diaper company and the makers of an Iranian music video. They pray to Mr. Mazda every morning. They couldn't come up with any better targets for a lawsuit than those two bullshit things. Might have a little more money. Exactly. Now, the symbol that caused the contention is known as the Faravahar, I think is how it's pronounced.

Basically, it was named by an Assyrian scribe who had too many A's in his scrabble hand. It's like it's a depiction of looks like a bearded Egyptian dude in a fez putting a cock ring on an invisible giant while hula hooping with a hollowed out condor kind of. You've probably seen it before. So you can see why all these marketing people are trying to steal it. Well, yeah, right. Exactly. So Darius Jams said Bapuji. That's really his fucking name. There's no like non insulting sounding way for me to try to pronounce the surname Bapuji. That's really his fucking name. There's no, like, non-insulting sounding way for me to try to pronounce the surname Bapuji.

I'm sorry. So anyway, the president of the Association of Pedophagic Butthurt explained in a statement, quote, our heritage should not be looked down upon. We are very proud people. We take pride in our religion and we cannot afford anyone to do such things. End quote. They can't afford for another year to pass because they're all anyone to do such things, end quote. They can't afford for another year to pass because they're all going to be extinct.

Yeah, right. We don't want that awful fucking video with Snoop Dogg in it. Don't watch it. Don't even consider watching it. Guys, your heritage should be looked down on. I'm sorry. I don't mean to be a dick about it, but there's like 11 of you left in the world, and you are basically the first ones to the there's only one God thing. You're like the you're like the my space of monotheism.

You guys should still be at least a little embarrassed about Alexander the Great whipping your ass with that much smaller army. Plus, you are effectively marginalized by a religion created by an illiterate child molester on a My Little Pony, despite a nearly three millennia head start. despite a nearly three millennia head start. Being featured in a geriatrics rap video is the coolest thing that's happened to your religion since the fall of the Sassanid Empire, for fuck's sake. Get behind it. And while the great and mighty Ahura Mazda sits there and takes it like a bitch,

we'll hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda. A man wrote the Bible? A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate race. It's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This week in Masada. You know, I'll readily admit that there are some very complex moral issues that arise when you start talking about human cloning. But before you summarily condemn it, I want you to consider this.

If Christians could make their own people, they would have way less vested interest in my hoo-ha. It's amazing when you consider just how much of religious dogma centers around the church's ability to control a woman's reproductive cycle. It makes perfect sense, of course, because the further away a person is from zero years old, the less likely they are to buy into your talking snake-based worldview. I mean, sure, you'll convert a grown-up here and there. But if you want to maintain the viability of the church, you need to be squirting new zealots out by the litter. And that's by no means restricted to a single religion. They all do that to one extent or another. Yes, even the Buddhist. And for a demonstration on that, we'll zip over to Myanmar, where a new law has made it essentially impossible for a woman

to marry outside of her faith. Of course, there's no need for the law to apply to men because men get to keep their religion when they get married. Not so much for the women. So Muslims in Myanmar might be considered inferior to Buddhists, but they're not as inferior as women. But of course, it's not always about equality so much as liberty. After all, if nobody of any gender is allowed to get an abortion, the sexes are technically still being treated equally. And as American evangelicals are happy to demonstrate, one way to achieve equality in a bad situation is to fuck the other gender too. That strategy is on full display at Wheaton College in Illinois, where they've elected to stop offering health insurance to their students altogether just to avoid sort of paying for women's birth control. Wheaton,

often called the evangelical Harvard by people taking advantage of the fact that Harvard can't sue them over that, has been fighting hard against the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate even after the law was changed so that it doesn't apply to them. But if they accepted the compromise, which by the way wouldn't require them to actually provide the birth control, their students would still have access to it for free. And that's too much for Wheaton. So to avoid women being given access to birth control by a third party, Wheaton is dropping insurance for all of its students. Despite the voluntary nature of this insanity and the repeated bullshit concession the Obama administration has made to try to calm these assholes down, the college's attorney was

happy to shift the blame to the people that didn't do it. Quote, it's hard to believe the government's making the world better by stopping Wheaton from offering the insurance it used to offer. End quote. And yes, I'll agree. Everything in that statement is really hard to believe. So yeah, it looks like misogyny is still alive and well around the globe. But the silver lining on that dark cloud is that there's no question I'll be able to scrape together a few more stories for you next week. But between now and then, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda. And then maybe Mark was talking about trouser snakes news tonight. Accidentally pulling a religiously inspired Cleopatra

moved that much closer to the leading cause of death in Kentucky last week when yet another snake handling pastor died after Jesus failed to protect him from the snake Jesus promised to protect him from. John David Brock, a 60-year-old viper juggling pastor from Bell County, Kentucky, became the latest casualty of Mark's 1618 after being bitten by a rattlesnake and then refusing medical attention, of course. Okay, first of all, it doesn't say the snakes have to be poisonous in any of the translations in the Bible.

None of them. So you're all idiots. What it does say is that real Christians can drink any deadly poison without being harmed. Right. So why aren't we hearing about pastors drinking arsenic at Sunday Mass? Bunch of posers. I don't think they really believe. I don't know if that's the right solution.

Everything in that book. Yeah, logically consistent, at least. Now, the county coroner was hesitant to close the books on the death, noting that Brock, quote, had some extenuating circumstances that may have contributed, end quote, though he failed to specify whether being retarded for Jesus counts as an extenuating circumstances that may have contributed, end quote, though he failed to specify whether being retarded for Jesus counts as an extenuating circumstance. And apparently, few people on Earth would be more familiar with a lethal combination of snake venom and stupidity than the Bell County coroner, of course, as the county has seen at least half a dozen similar deaths in the last 20 years.

Keep in mind that only about four or five people die from snake bites in this country per year so over the last two decades about one out of every 15 did it on purpose in the same stupid fucking county of about 28 000 people congratulations kentucky and in plus minus news tonight responding to a series of government-ordered cross removals in China, Catholic leaders from the city of Wenzhou have released an open letter accusing those in power of going way too far in what seems to be a growing anti-religious campaign in recent years. Several human rights groups have made similar complaints, alleging that the Communist Party is trying to get rid

of Christianity for safety reasons. According to the Communist Party, trying to get rid of Christianity for safety reasons. According to the Communist Party, yes, exactly. We're trying to get rid of Christianity for safety reasons. Read up on some Chinese history. They may have good reasons. And in putting the mission back into county commissioner news tonight, Escambia County, Florida has slithered their way back into the atheist news cycle this week after questions arose over their decision to give a church 30 grand worth of taxpayer funds to pay for an evangelical concert.

This seemingly blatant violation of church-state separation was made even more problematic by a little dose of nepotism. As it happens, the church's pastor shares both a mother and father with the county commissioner. Wonderful. Sound like the bad guys from every movie about the South. Right, yeah. So they're just about to shut down a teen center

and outlaw secular dancing. Awful. Is you is or is you isn't my constituency. They is. Among those adding their voices to the growing chorus of condemnation is attorney for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State,

Ian Smith, who explained that, quote, nobody is contesting that they have the authority to disperse funds. You can give tax dollars to a religious group for a non- church and state, Ian Smith, who explained that, quote, nobody is contesting that they have the authority to disperse funds. You can give tax dollars to a religious group for a non-religious activity, like funding a soup kitchen, but if you're talking about a proselytizing gospel concert, that's a religious activity and you can't do it, end quote.

Unless, of course, they have about $120 million budgeted for hosting similar concerts for about 4 000 other religions yeah right it was just a coincidence that christianity got to go first we're probably just about to use that that big 120 million dollar account at the moment the commission is dodging the allegation by claiming that the concert is a tourist draw so they're just promoting pensacola tourism not christianity the fact that they're exclusively promoting evangelical christian tourism shouldn't matter apparently organizers for the events fell right in line with this bullshit diversion by The fact that they're exclusively promoting evangelical Christian tourism shouldn't matter, apparently.

Organizers for the events fell right in line with this bullshit diversion by filing a document that said that they hoped that the event would bring as many as 400 people from outside the Pensacola area. That many? Yeah, exactly. So even if hope was a valid metric of economic forecasting, the county commission just spent 75 bucks ahead to bring people to town in hopes that they would stop at a local restaurant on the way home well done guys i really hope a whole big group of christians show up at my restaurant they're awesome when they come to restaurants and finally tonight from the jane deer file while introducing mike huckabee at a failing campaign event last week, GOP Congressman Steve

King of Iowa decided to use some of his brief time at the mic to double down on his stance that legalized same-sex marriage equals dudes putting their dick in a lawnmower. Or lesbians fucking a lady tractor. Marrying that piece of machinery. Yeah. Now, I want to put a standing offer for unlimited drinks on me to whoever convinced gop congressman steve king of iowa that that was how manscaping works bravo bravo troll you're my kind of human being yeah he's from a simpler time when equipment fucking was between one man and one greased upup tailpipe with a girl's name. So, here's Mr. King's original statement from early last month, behind which he's now standing firmly.

Quote, I had a strong Christian lawyer tell me yesterday that under this decision, it only requires one human being in this relationship. What? That you could marry your lawnmower with this decision. I think he's right. End quote. He's not. No. No. That decision. I think he's right, end quote. He's not.

No, no. That works. Moral of the story, though, consulting a strong Christian lawyer for legal advice is about as useful as consulting a strong Christian scientist about science. That sounded like the opening of a letter in Playgirl or something. I know that they've been camped out there for months now, but how the fuck did they get there?

It's madness. I mean, how do you get from gay people can get married to people marrying lawnmowers? What would that even mean? Because look, legally speaking, you can already fuck your lawnmower. There is no law about whether or not you can fuck your lawnmower in the privacy of your own home. That's always been legal, and in Georgia it's encouraged. So the thing that bothers him is that people can, what, have their lawnmower on the company insurance plan? Or bequeath a non-taxable portion of their estate to the lawnmower?

I don't even understand what he's afraid might happen. understand what he's afraid might happen so it looks like mr king might be overestimating the demand for dudes that want to marry the gay tractor they've been fucked he certainly inspired us to give us some attention to a niche market of sex toy retailers that often gets overlooked i would say no more we're gonna need 30 seconds on the clock. Ideas for the farm equipment sex shop. Obviously. Go. I have the world's weirdest job. Okay, how about the Chub Cadet?

Because it's about damn time the mower rode you back. What about the best little mower house in Texas? Or hers in Husqvarna? Tractor, it nearly killed her. That could be the tagline for them what about what about the scroto tiller going balls deep to spread some seed or maybe dr rimmers and blowers um different yolks for different strokes plowmen dig my girth. Oh, nice, nice. How about going farm deep, front end loaders and back? How about cream of the crop hay balers,

separating the cream of wheat from the chest? Or maybe twatapillar heavy equipment rentals? We have the regular kind of backhoes too. If you want to blow. Whatever, boring. Turn back. What about quit jerking my chainsaw. Put it in choke position before you pulse start it.

Boring. And with the flavor of that last dick joke still lingering on your tongue, we're going to close out the headlines. Heath, thanks as always. Jumanji. And when we come back, there will be bullshit. You can judge a community by how well it treats its most vulnerable members, and that's a pretty incriminating metric if you belong to the alternative medicine community. That fact becomes damn apparent when you look at what AltMed has to offer for people who can't

speak for themselves. Now, you may have heard of the controversial practice of facilitated communications before, but if you're anything like me, you don't know much about it. And to counteract that ignorance, Heath hit the books last week to help us answer the question, how bullshit is it? So Heath, tell us, what is facilitated communication? It is the kind of bullshit that makes quantum Bigfoot hunters look like perfectly rational people. Amen, sir. And it's not that I don't appreciate the analogy, but I'm looking for something more of a definition than a parallel. All right, well, what if we use the definition from the American Psychological Association? Yeah, okay, that sounds about right.

Okay, according to the APA's website, quote, facilitated communication is a controversial and unproved communicative procedure with no scientifically demonstrated support for its efficacy, end quote. Okay, that's closer, but that's not still,

it's not really a definition. It's more like a disclaimer. Okay, but what about the Wikipedia definition? Okay, yeah, that'll probably work for our purposes here. All right. According to Wikipedia, quote, facilitated communication, or FC, is a way that disgusting subhumans turn a profit

by using retarded kids as Ouija board planchefs, end quote. Is that really what it says on Wikipedia? Well, not anymore. Those bastards changed it back, like, right away. They always do. Okay, so what did they change it back to? All right, all right. Facilitated communication is a bullshit technique used by some bullshit caregivers

in a bullshit attempt to assist people with severe communication disabilities. Okay, so if you subtract out the subliminal bullshits, it doesn't sound that bad so far. Which is why I urge you to not subtract those out. Right. So how does FC work? Well, first, the facilitator chooses a mark. That's the hard part. It's got to be somebody with a child or a dependent who has a severe communication disability.

And they also have to not know how Google works. And they also have to not know how Google works because you honestly can't Google facilitated communication without it asking you if you meant thoroughly discredited bullshit. Okay. Are you sure you didn't? So assuming that you've located somebody with sufficient gullibility and the kid in need, what's next? said person that their child, who is severely autistic or brain damaged or otherwise unable to communicate, is actually filled with lucid thoughts that they're desperate to share with you, but they just can't do it without the help of facilitated communication. Okay, which brings us at long last to the heart of my original inquiry. So how does the facilitator unlock these thoughts or pretend to unlock these thoughts?

That would be by moving the retarded kid's hand around on the keyboard and typing shit out with their fingers. I don't think retarded kid is the preferred nomenclature. Yeah. I'm sure the con artist who steals money from their parents by putting words in their mouths is a much nicer term for it. But yeah. Okay.

So let me see if I follow you. The facilitator basically just just picks up the kid's hand and starts typing with it? That's pretty much the whole ball of wax. Yeah, that's how they do it. They do it slowly enough that it can seem like the subject is somehow responsible for where his or her finger might wind up. But in reality, they're either consciously defrauding somebody or they're fooling themselves with the ideomotor effect. Which we discussed during our segment on dowsing. Yes, we did.

Okay, so how did FC get started? We have the Australians to thank for that. Damned Australians. We do for many awesome things. Specifically, an Australian special educator by the name of Rosemary Crossley. educator by the name of Rosemary Crossley. Back in the 70s, she read about a complete failure of a study from Denmark that postulated the concept behind FC and then thoroughly debunked it. Realizing that the downfall of the study was clearly the scientific method involved, she

decided to try again, but this time without all the annoying methodical shit like controls and measurable results and efforts to replicate findings and i see so once you removed all the scientific rigor what did she find uh she found whatever the hell she wanted to of course yeah in this case she noticed that when she lifted the arm of a patient she kind of sort of felt like they were trying to move their arm in a particular direction and when they reached the place where she was hoping they would maybe try to stop, she kind of sort of felt like they stopped. And okay, wait, wait a second.

Wait a second. So there's no defined way of knowing where the patient is trying to move their arm. It's just no, there isn't even a defined way of knowing whether they're trying to move it. Like all good medical procedures for disabled people, this one is based entirely on the intuition of a caregiver. Wow. And, of course, the patient always winds up saying exactly what the facilitator was pretty sure they were about to say. It's weird.

In the absence of scientific validation, how do practitioners promote FC? Primarily through testimonials. Oh, well, that's no way to determine the efficacy of a therapy. Especially not when the bulk of the testimonials come from patients via FC. Wait, wait, really? Yep. Wow. So, okay, how did this nonsense make it to America, then?

Proving once again that scientific expertise in one field doesn't preclude being an ignorant fuck in another, it was popularized in the U.S. by Nobel laureate physicist Arthur Shalow, who first learned about it when researching therapy for his autistic son. It gained popularity through the early 90s before falling out of mainstream favor soon after that. Okay, so what prompted the shift in attitude? Well, as soon as scientifically-minded people started to look at the procedure, it completely fell apart.

There were a number of red flags that any critical thinker should have been able to see the whole time. Such as? Well, many of the subjects of FC are victims of accidents, but had the ability to communicate beforehand. The style and subject matter of what these victims said through FC didn't match up at all with their pre-accident modes of speech. Okay, but I mean, if there had been brain damage, it's not impossible that their modes of speech changed as well. That kind of stuff does happen, I guess.

Yeah, but oftentimes, so did their language. Formerly Spanish-speaking patients, for example, can't communicate in Spanish if they have English-speaking FC facilitators. Okay, well, yeah, that one's a lot harder to buy. Yes, it is. And also, if the facilitator isn't told about the language issue beforehand, the Spanish-speaking patients can communicate perfectly in English in those instances. All right, all right. Well, that's pretty damning. Yes, it is as well. And it actually gets worse. A lot of legitimate educators and caregivers also pointed out that much of the time, the patient wasn't even looking in the direction of the keyboard or letterboard they were using to communicate. So somehow an autistic kid who never spoke was able to memorize a QWERTY keyboard so

well that they could find each key without a finger on the board for reference. A feat that's impossible even for a person who types professionally. Right, exactly. I'd say that's even more damning. But the final nail in the coffin comes when you start blinding the facilitator. If the technique has any merit, it should only matter that the patient can see the keyboard. And yet when the facilitator's view is blocked, all the communications turn from poetry to gibberish.

Okay. So I think from the, like, I'm not a scientist, but perspective, we can say that absolutely FC does not work and it's been proven not to work, right? Well, it was certainly more than enough to convince every respectable professional and medical organization in the world. Association and the International Society for Augmentative and Alternative Communication have all passed official resolutions warning people that FC is not a scientifically valid technique at all. There's basically universal scientific consensus on that. Yeah, but since when has universal scientific consensus slowed down the advocates of a discredit therapy, am I right? Unfortunately, you are absolutely right. Despite multiple definitive results that show FC fails when any effort is made to invalidate

it, the practice is supported by the Institute on Communication and Inclusion, which is actually housed in the otherwise legitimate, for the most part, Syracuse University. Well, that's scary as hell. It gets a hell of a lot scarier when you see what some of these patients say through FC. It gets scarier is what I'm saying, yes. Well, within five years of the practice being popularized in the U.S., there were at least 60 cases where accusations of sexual abuse were made against a family member. Many of these led to loss of custody, and a few of them led to prison time. What, on the testimonial of a

person who's unable to speak that's correct holy shit this just got terrifying so how does this persist despite the the evidence against it in a lot of ways it's a matter of narrative the scientific community isn't fooled because they're generally basing their view on the evidence but the media and many patient advocacy groups are swayed by the more compelling narrative. And on the one hand, you have a group of people saying, this kid you thought was unable to think is secretly a treasure trove of deep intellectual contemplation and poetic reflection. And on the other hand, you have reality saying, no, he's really that dumb.

Sorry. That's how it goes. So the rational side doesn't make for the same heartwarming type of headline and story. Yeah, right. Gotcha. Now, don't get me wrong. There are plenty of people out there with severe physical disabilities whose brains are still unaffected.

Stephen Hawking and Helen Keller needed help communicating. So there are genuine cases where some other type of facilitation might reveal a much more complex mind than the physical shell suggests. But most of the time, the patient come victim of FC is no more able to communicate than a Teddy Ruxpin. So, OK, so considering all those factors together, I have to ask in echoey fashion, how bullshit is it? It's the worst kind of bullshit. It creates false hope. It distracts from legitimate attempts to understand the minds of people with communication disabilities. It falsely ascribes thoughts to them.

And in the worst cases, it landed perfectly innocent people in prison. Okay. Awful. So I'm going to ask again, and I want you to give me the same answer, but this time in the form of a really disgusting poop joke. So considering all those factors together, how bullshit is it?

All right. It's like the youngest child from the aristocrats right after the show. Much better, sir. It's time for the part of the show that comes next, listener feedback. This is the part of the show that floats like a butterfinger and stings like Bea Arthur. Our first message comes from Manny. Feels like we got a little carried away in last week's episode.

Manny writes, quote, I'm extremely offended by the offensive thing you said about the thing I don't agree with you about. While I'll agree that all the insulting stuff that you said about the things I agree with you about were all in good fun, the thing you said about the thing I disagree with you about was clearly in bad taste and not something that should be joked about. I will never listen to your show again, except the part where you respond to this email so please send me a time stamp it's like you've seen my inbox before manny so i'm assuming he's referring to the aftermarket fetus retailer segment with tom and cecil maybe and i wish i could say that aborted fetus jokes grow on you but they don't they don't know they stop right it's probably best that manny stopped listening we also got an email from will who writes to

correct an offensive oversight quote hey noah my name is will i'm a huge fan of the show and i've listened to every episode at least once but i was disappointed in the last episode when you referred to josh fierstein as fat hitler and then didn't take that opportunity to call him Mein Fierstein. Anyway, I love the show. Keep up the great work. So, yeah, well, there's no point in going halfway Godwin. I do. I apologize for the error. Thanks for keeping us honest.

We also had a Facebook message from Jeremy, who listens to a bunch of atheist podcasts and fears we might be going after the low hanging fruit a bit too much. He writes, quote, One thing that's very obvious is just how much a number of these podcasts lean on the worst of evangelical lunatics, such as Brian Fisher, Pat Robertson, etc. This leads me to question if we are leaning too much on these lunatics. If there were a fringe lunatic prominent atheist

that most theist programs used as a regular punching bag, I think atheists would rightly complain that they don't represent any significant portion of atheism. In a way, this seems similar to attacking these idiots. There's plenty of the same flavor of idiocy among Republican politicians to keep us busy with relevant material that is directly threatening our government. But more and more, I'm getting tired of hearing about the jackasses no one gives a shit about who don't hold any power over us, end quote. Yeah, well, we've more or less addressed this charge before. But before we rehash it, I want to tackle two assumptions in that email that I don't

agree with. The first is that P-Robes and Bry-Fi represent some kind of fringe of Christianity. Like, Robertson's obsession with demons and Fisher's paranoia over gay-colored whopper rappers are pretty damn mainstream in American Christianity. Okay, so the current polls suggest that almost half of Americans agree that gayness is a sin against God, and a healthy majority believe that your mind and body can be taken over by a demon. These are not fringe views. If anything, the educated apologists that debate PhD atheists, those guys represent the fringe. Right. And just to be clear, the group of crazy people that he's describing as the irrelevant fringe,

that group bleeds over into the GOP politician group on a regular basis. Yes, it does. Yes. Like Gordon Dr. Chaps Klingenschmitt, for example. Same goes for Mike huckabee and rick santorum who basically have the same job as fisher and robertson except they had a government office for a while yeah right exactly right now you know some of the people we talk about like you know pastor manning okay the idea that starbucks is spiking their lattes with blood cream semen is definitely a fringe idea but that that guy is no crazier than Dr. Chaps was before he got elected. And beyond that, like, I've never heard anyone on any atheist podcast

suggesting that, like, Pastor Manning's insane ramblings are part of the argument against God. You know, he's just a funny motherfucker to talk shit about. And that's kind of what we're here to do. You know, our first goal is comedy. And there just aren't many GOP congressmen churning out as much comedy gold as Dr. Pastor James David Manning. Yeah, and it's not like he's getting tricked by a reporter or something, like trying to trap him. He just comes out with unsolicited rants about this stuff. Absolutely nobody asked me, but semen is the cream of the blood. Sperm lattes, homo – and cut. homo and cut no no save it for the next show that's a day of work for this guy how are we not going to make that part of our job too yeah exactly but also i have to challenge the idea that people like

p ropes and bri-fi don't hold any power over us look b, Brian Fisher represents a group that takes GOP congressmen to the Middle East on big lobbying trips. The fucking 700 Club is one of the longest running programs in cable television history. It's broadcast in over 130 countries and has somewhere around a million viewers. Daily. I'd say that carries a hell of a lot more influence than your average member of Congress. I mean, and even if they have more power, it's not like they're going to wield it for 38 years. Right. Even Supreme Court justices have to retire at the latest when they die. Right. That's a rule for them. And that certainly doesn't count for P-robes. And finally, we got an email from an aspiring novelist by the name of Anne. And as it turns out, we got to play the role of her muse.

Anne writes, quote, I've been searching for the idea for my next book, and while I was listening to episode 127, you handed it to me on a silver platter. The mental image of somebody jowl-fucking Pat Robertson was clearly something that deserved to be immortalized in homoerotic fan fiction. Muse-worthy stuff. Thanks for the inspiration, but I could use help with the title, though. Worthy stuff. Thanks for the inspiration. But I could use help with the title, though.

Which, of course, means this week's top 10 is titles for homoerotic Pat Robertson fan fiction. All right. How about number 10? Enough creases for everyone. Just stick it under whichever cheek you like, baby. Number nine. D-robes with P-robes. A gay orgy on Tuesdays with Maury.

There you go. That old guy. Maybe the stiff stiff. It's not Viagra. He was just taxidermied that way. Number seven. The 700 Club members only. Chins aren't just for balls anymore.

That's way better. I was thinking of going with something like 700 Girls One Club, but that's not gay. That's not homoerotic if Pat Robertson says. Number five, down the wabbit hole, preaching the gospel of Fudd. Or maybe number four, tales from the crypt after dark. Number three, Sunday mass to mouth, bowels, jowls, and hot towels.

Well, I guess now that you've broken the shit porn ice, I could go with um howdy's duty alright what about number one living off tubes with anal p-robes a game of scat and mouse

and by the way if you choose any of these titles or if you don't please send us a copy and I promise I will not rest until I've tricked p-robes into autographing that book or until he dies which means you've got pretty much until next Tuesday. That's all the feedback you get. If you want more, keep sending us those emails, tweets, and Facebook messages. You'll find all the contact info on the contact page at ScalingAtheist.com. before we drop the other shoe tonight i wanted to encourage you once more to help us make a full-time podcaster out of eli he is the funniest human being i have ever met so if nothing else

do it to make the editing part of our job more fun if you want to help contribute to eli's new career and help us launch the weekly christ movie review podcast, Godawful Movies, head over to patreon.com slash godawful to make a per episode donation. You won't be charged until the podcast comes out, and thanks in advance for your support. Oh, and I want to make this very clear. If and when we start this new show, that does not mean Eli will be disappearing from the scathing atheist. Quite the contrary. Our hope is to allow him to do this full time, which means you'll get more of him here and on The Skeptocrat and on a new weekly show.

At least until the slate of movies we have in mind breaks his brain entirely. The Kirk Cameron Left Behind series, the Thief in the Night series, Expelled, Passions of the Christ, they all await the Eli treatment

and you can help bring that closer to fruition, you lucky bastard. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but 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 Skeptocrats.

Got a new episode out on Monday at 8 a.m. Eastern time. And remember, we've got a GOP primary debate between now and then, so it should be fun. Obviously, I need to thank Heath one more time for always cramming those dick jokes all the way in. I need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lusions for not filing for divorce after last week's 30 seconds bet. Also want to toss out one more thanks to TallyCast of Monster on Sunday for providing this week's very metal Farnsworth quote.

Quick reminder that their new album, Baby Eater, debuts this weekend, so if you've been counting the days until it comes out, you have very few days left to count. We'll share a link to buy that album on our website and our social media pages as soon as we have it, but most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most exquisite arrangements of organic matter, Richard, Sarah, and Mike, who the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man would have known better than to fuck with. Together, this trio of truly treasured trustees have helped us trivialize the trembling Trinitarians with a transmitted trashing of those troublesome troglodytes this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the baryons and leptons it takes to give us money, but if you think

your atomic makeup is up to the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash skatingatheist, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking the donate button on Thanks for watching. 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. Ah! Line. It's Thursday. Yeah.