The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 130: Thessalone Ranger Edition

Episode Date: August 13, 2015

In this week's episode, a Texas appeals court considers whether marriage constitutes cruel and unusual punishment; Louie Gohmert invokes Lord of the Flies to prove that gay marriage is unrealistic; and Lucinda will join us to wonder why the hell we're still reading epistles.

Warning, this sentence might be the only one in the show that has no chance of offending you. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Mike Huckabee's new iPhone mobile app that turns your ejaculate into the biography of an existing person using your DNA schedule. It's ZyGhostWriter. Just deposit your semen on the front of your phone, and the genetic fingerprint reader will unlock your screen and fire up our software. Based on the information contained in your seed, we write your unborn child's life story, so you'll know who you're murdering every time you masturbate. Zygost Writer, the industry leader in ejaculiterature.

And now, the Scathing Atheist. Hello, it's me, Ray Comfort. I'm calling from the New Life Ministries, just to let you know I've changed my mind, and that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's August 13th. And approximately 2% of lost TV remotes are in the freezer. That's why I keep looking there. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Enright, and from Titletown, USA, Valdosta, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, the Texas Appeals Court considers whether marriage constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Louie Gohmert invokes Lord of the Flies to prove that gay marriage is unrealistic. And Lucinda will join us to wonder why the fuck we're still reading epistles. But first, the diatribe. You know that you've made at least one decision right in your life when you get to buy a Jesus and the Apostles playset,

tee them up, whack them all with a 3-wood, and then write it off as a business expense. Last Saturday, I had a buddy come up from Florida to do a photo shoot for some of our PR stuff. And of course, that included stuff like headshots and group photos. But we also wanted a few shots that depicted blasphemy. And what says blasphemy better than a little plastic Jesus getting whacked with a golf club? And the little plastic Jesus getting crucified on a dartboard. Exactly. We wrote that off too. Now, if you're asking yourself, where does one obtain little toy Jesuses for the purpose of driving practice, then clearly you don't live artboard. Exactly. We wrote that off too. Now, if you're asking yourself, where does one obtain

little toy Jesuses for the purpose of driving practice, then clearly you don't live in South Georgia. We actually have a whole store for that kind of shit. In fact, in our town of about 50,000, there are at least three dedicated Christian stores, and I'm willing to bet that those aren't the only places you can get little plastic Jesuses. So in advance of the photo shoot, Lucinda and I stopped by a store near the mall called Christian Life. And I have to admit, I felt like I should have been dropping in from the ceiling dressed all in black or something. My wife's wearing her short shorts. I don't exactly look like a clean-cut Christian. So even before we went in, I'm treating it like a con. I mean, honestly, I was probably being a bit paranoid, but I don't doubt for a second that the people that run that store would have happily refused my money if they had the blindest clue what I intended to do to poor plastic Jesus.

So we went in with a backstory, right? I figured we couldn't pass for Christians, so we played the part of an atheist couple that was looking for birthday presents for a Christian toddler. Or we would have played that part if anybody asked what we were doing anyway. Now, this is the first time I'd ever been in a Christian store, and the experience was every bit as bizarre as I thought it would be, but not necessarily the same way I thought it would be. I was picturing the souvenir shop at Disney World, except with Jesus instead of Mickey Mouse. What I found was nothing like that, but it was at least as weird. Let me give you an example. Did you know that red means Jesus blood, yellow means heaven, and orange means Lord? I know that because I'm reading it off of my Blood of Jesus jelly beans from Scripture Candies, Inc.

But I could have bought any number of keepsakes that would have reminded me how each color of the spectrum means Jesus in some way or another. By the way, interesting side note, black means sin and white means clean. Take that however you care to. But subtle reinforcements of racism aside, I think it's kind of odd that I saw more rainbow Jesus mnemonics than I saw actual depictions of Jesus. Speaking of things I saw more of than Jesus, we can't ignore the anthropomorphic evangelical vegetable aisle. Something like 15% of the floor space in this store was entirely devoted to VeggieTales videos and merchandise.

That's actually where my wife and I went as soon as we could recover from the old lady candle stink that greeted us at the door. And I swear to you, if this store was like your first experience with Christianity, you would be unable to walk out of there without thinking that Bob the Tomato played some integral role in their theology. Now, luckily, there were a few toys that weren't vegan. I mean, we did, after all, acquire the aforementioned Jesus and the Apostles playset.

There was also a few toys with the animals and pears theme. But I'd say that the most fucked up thing I saw in the toy section was the Armor of God playset. Included a shield and a sword so that little Jedediah can play Crusades in the backyard or whatever. You know, I don't know, because there was also a Be Your Own Duck Commander Duck Dynasty playset, too. So that might be more fucked up I'm not even sure both of those were so insane I had to tweet out pictures so you can see them if you want but I didn't want to blow my cover and reveal myself as the kind of person that would tee up Jesus like a max fly so as I took the pictures I loudly told my wife I said hey honey maybe we should send a

picture to his mom and see if he already has a muslim murdering outfit anyway in the end we grabbed a play set which included a boat so that you can recreate the fishers of men story we get a a small wooden anti-vampire cross deck of bible rummy cards and of course the jelly beans which come complete with a recommended prayer for you to say as you eat each color of jelly bean in order by the way black is for sin. There are no black jelly beans. They're not going to sell you a sin at that fucking store. That's for sure. Anyway, there's a lot to process on the way out of that place. And of course, I'd also force myself not to say fuck or blaspheme against the Holy Spirit for almost half an hour. So once I got all

that pent up sacrilege out of my system, the conversation that we had on the way home was all about how little Jesus there was in that place. That's what we went in for. He was hard to fucking find. There were plenty of rainbow reminders of his sacrifice. There were plenty of talking asparagus. There were plenty of ever so slightly rebranded trinkets that became religious as soon as you printed a cross or a fish on them. No, look, Ma, this here's a Christian paddleball. It's all right. But with the exception of a few elephants and lions and pears, there was damn near nothing biblical in the whole damn store, except for, of course, all the Bibles. And I guess if I'd really thought about it before I walked in, that's exactly what I should have expected. I mean, you know, I knew I wasn't going to find

an apocalypse board game or a version of Operation using the Levites' concubine from Judges, but I should have known better than to expect anything that relied on any actual knowledge of scripture or theology. I should have known that the kiddie section would do its damnedest to keep the youngins from wondering what the Bible actually says, and the grown-up section would do its damnedest to obfuscate it. is to obfuscate it. That's why Christian adults can walk around every day comfortable in the delusion that the New Testament is full of a bunch of good moral advice and that Jesus was some revolutionary ethical philosopher. So let me make this clear. The New Testament is in no way more moral than the old one. You know, a smaller percentage of the book is devoted to ethics. The best Jesus advice is nowhere near as good as the best stuff out of Ecclesiastes, and the worst stuff is every bit as bad. It's just that God drowns the world in blood this time instead of water. But of course, the Christians don't know what's in there because they've never read it, and they've never read it because they think they already know what's in there.

I mean, why read all trillion pages of this boring fucking book if Larry the Cucumber already paraphrased it for you when you were a kid. So they assume it's filled with loving thy neighbor, turning the other cheek, and being meek. And sure, that stuff makes a guest appearance, but the book itself is about not having recreational orgasms. That is the primary theme of this thing. You know, pretending that it's all about universal love is like pretending The Wizard of Oz is about apple farming. And think about the admission they have to make to get there. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm very happy that they're not giving their children Jesus's guide to psychologically damaging sex negativity in place of a bedtime story. But any Christian who ever chose VeggieTales over reading from Revelations has already admitted that their book is so immoral that a below-average writer can do a better job

by computer-animating happy faces onto the fucking salad bar. Doesn't exactly strike me as a ringing endorsement of the perfect word of God. They're talking about your Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is the guy I reintroduced at the beginning of the headlines, even though he already introduced himself in the intro, Heath Enright. Heath, are you ready to reaffirm your presence with a briefer joiner? Hoorah!

That'll do, I guess. In our lead story tonight, we have to talk about yet another atheist martyr in Bangladesh. Apparently, the ongoing show of impotence from Muslim God has led yet another gang of murderous psychopaths to take their God's facile rage out on a living, breathing human being. And you can tell the murder was one of the righteous ones by how thoroughly they tortured him to death. Oh, were the torturous murderers from a

particular religion? Three guesses! Three guesses! Now look, I don't want to lead the headlines off with this kind of depressing shit i would much rather be talking about pat robertson trying to explain what the clitoris is or pastor manning telling us what mcdonald's does with the leftover cord blood from their fetus mcmuffins look i want to live in a world where disagreeing about whether a supreme being grants magical wishes never leads to somebody having his hands

chopped off before being decapitated you know i want the worst thing we ever have to cover to be silly old people freaking out about orgasms but unlike the bangladeshi law enforcement we're not just going to overlook this shit yeah well to be fair the the police over there have managed to protect the population from atheist executioners. They're batting 1,000 on that. Yeah, along with the entire rest of the world. So for those of you keeping count, this makes four atheist bloggers that have been murdered with swords in Bangladesh since the beginning of 2015.

The latest victim, and I apologize because I'm certainly going to fuck up the pronunciation of his name, is Niloy Chatterjee, who was found dead in his home last Thursday. In the time it's taken, by the way, for Bangladesh to rack up four brutal slayings of atheist bloggers, all of the non-Muslim countries combined have totaled zero, making Reza Aslan and CJ Whirlwind that much more full of shit. Take a good look, guys. That's the religion you're defending,

the one that inspired these guys to torture a man to death in front of his fucking family. But no, Western imperialism, sure. Yeah, that's what religion you're defending, the one that inspired these guys to torture a man to death in front of his fucking family. But no, Western imperialism, sure. Yeah, that's what it is. Just go sleep at night somehow. Yeah, somehow I doubt that Bangladeshi atheist bloggers were Western imperializing anyone over there. Odds are against it, yeah.

And look, I'm sorry to tell you, but we haven't reached rock bottom on this story yet. Because we still haven't talked about the government's response to the ongoing murder spree, and neither have they. The official response to these murders only differs from, hey, what are you going to do by being in Bengali? In fact, the Inspector General of Police all but endorsed the murders by going on national television and reminding atheist bloggers

that insulting religious sensibilities is a crime and they deserve to be punished fuck this guy if this was a muslim blogger killed by an atheist if the entire military hunting the guy down firing missiles right yeah no shit and unfortunately this almost certainly won't be the last story like this we cover the four bloggers that have been killed so far were all named along with 80 others on a list distributed by Ansar al-Islam a couple of years ago. There are 80 more human lives that have been publicly targeted by these terrorists

and their government isn't doing anything to protect them. You know, Chatterjee went to the police before this. He told them he was in danger and they turned him away. Yeah, he shows up at the police station and they're like, oh we we thought you were uh already yeah you are in danger that's true we'll let you know if we get any leads well sounds like you already have so we'll let you know yeah no shit so look this is one of those times when we

evil westerners need to step in and tell the innocent harmless oppressed muslims what to fucking do so with apologies for getting so heavy so early, I want to encourage anyone listening to this to check the show notes for this episode. This is episode 130, skatingatheist.com. This will be the first thing you see on the site this week. I'm going to include some links on how you can get involved in putting some international pressure on Bangladesh to actually do something about this. And if you promise to check that out, then you're completely forgiven for letting your

rage subside for now and just laughing at the dick jokes about Pat Robertson and Louie Gohmert with an icicle in his ass for the rest of the show. It's perfectly okay. And in breeder reaction news tonight, speaking at a conference for conservative college students in Washington, D.C. last month, GOP Congressman Louie Gohmert explained to the crowd of douchebags named Colin Blake that Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan should be impeached for their involvement in the ruling on

same-sex marriage. And here's why. If a gay cruise were to be shipwrecked on a remote island during a global apocalypse everywhere else, all those dudes wouldn't be able to repopulate the Earth. That's why. What the fuck is wrong with this guy?

I bet anybody who was in the audience there that remembers his snowball stunt is sitting there thinking, is this guy going to ram an icicle into his ass to show us we can't get pregnant through anal? And they couldn't decide if they wanted him to or not. You don't want to see it, but you can't look away. See, I was not going to make you wait for that icicle in the ass joke. I promised you an icicle in the ass joke about Louie Gohmert

for sitting around through all that heavy shit. I didn't make you wait. I just want you to know that. All right, so you ready for Louie to drop some science on us? Oh, boy, am I. This is his big checkmate sodomites moment. He must have been so fucking excited when he came up with this. Quote, we could take four heterosexual couples married and put them on an island where they have everything they need to sustain life.

Then take four all-male couples married and put them on an island. And let's come back in 100 to 200 years and see which one nature says is the preferred marriage. That's Louie. The island scenario logic. Yeah. Four gay couples stranded on a desert island is not the kind of scenario straight people spend their days envisioning. I'm sorry, bro.

You're telling us more than you mean to. I also think Louie Gohmert might be a little confused in general about how homosexuality works first of all there's an island full of dudes it doesn't matter if they're gay or straight that's how that works and if there was a woman on the island i'm sure they play like rock paper scissors and the loser would step up or whatever. Point is, getting married to another man doesn't mean your sperm becomes so gay that when it encounters a vagina, it tries to like swim back upstream

like a salmon or something. Crazy. And from the ever-widening anal P-robes file tonight, host of The 700 Club and Madame Tussauds replica of Alfred E. Newman that was left out in the sun for too long, Pat Robertson was working hard to cross accessory to kidnapping off of his bucket list this week when he encouraged a viewer to bypass their grandchild's atheist parents and put that kid in a Christian school.

Wow, that's illegal. Quite, yes. I could see it making a pretty good movie, though. A story of these bumbling idiot Christian grandparents trying to pull off a righteous kidnaping very badly. If it stars Pat Robertson, I'm already penciling it in for god-awful movies. Eli Obeah. Praising Arizona. Oh, nice, nice. So much. I think I got the best one.

So, first of all, let's consider this viewer Elizabeth. Okay, now here's a person who has bypassed all 11 common shortenings of the name Elizabeth in favor of the four-syllable version. Yeah, fuck, Liza, Jesus. Right, Liz, Beth, anything, fuck, come on. Secondly, she's so fucking stupid that when she's confronted with a big problem in her life, it's the functional equivalent of worrying that somebody's going to steal her grandson's mojo. And third, after mulling over said problem, she decides that she can't make an informed

decision until the guy who thinks that demons live in goodwill sweaters and gay people carry secret AIDS rings weighs in. You got P-robes on the horn first. That's the kind of mental stability we were dealing with before we started endorsing felonies. It's not just that she decided to ask for kids stealing advice on national television with about a million witnesses. She also chose Pat Robertson to be the advisor. Right. Rather than the standard, anybody asking me for advice should see a mental health professional disclaimer that any rational legal code would require at this point.

P. Robes pointed out that failing to alienate the child's parents in a potentially felonious fashion would really be the same as personally taking him to the lake of fire and signing him up for eternal torture lessons yourself. Same thing. In response to her closing line about being worried for her grandson's soul p robes responded quote you should be if there's any way you can get that child away from that and and then i'm just going to end the quote there because p robes never actually finishes a sentence so we never get to the like you know then of that if then but suffice to say he then goes on to talk about christian schools and daily vacation Bible schools in case grandma needs somewhere to stash the kid when mom and dad come to her house looking for him, I suppose. Yeah, perfect. And in balls and chains news tonight, as punishment for his role in a fistfight with another man, 20 year old Texas resident Justin Bundy was, I guess, sentenced to Christianity, as far as I can tell, by Smith County Judge Randall Rogers, or more Christianity in this case.

Right. He was already partially Christian, I guess. No idea where he was going with this. Not enough. So, in order to avoid spending 15 days in jail, Mr. Bundy had to agree that he would attend counseling, write down Bible verses, and immediately straight marry his 19-year-old girlfriend. Fucking what? Fast as possible.

You can just imagine the romance oozing out of that court-ordered nuptial, right? Beautiful ceremony. With this RFID-tagged ankle bracelet I.D. wed to have and hold in sickness and health until the statute of limitations on assault is expired. And by the way shouldn't the girlfriend get to go out and punch somebody now too i mean isn't she also being sentenced to get i mean she doesn't have to write the the sentences on the chalkboard but you know so in response to all this americans united for

separation of church and state sent a letter letter to Judge Rogers explaining how everything in the punishment except for the counseling thing is illegal and insane. Both, yes. And also respectfully requesting that he study up on American laws considering the large role they play in his job. Yeah, at least get those first ten amendments down. I like this particular quote from the letter. It says, Judge Rogers seems to think he's running a combination Sunday school and relationship counseling service.

But then they fuck it all up by following that with a suggestion. He gets back to dispensing secular law. And I'm thinking, look, I'm sorry. At this point, this motherfucker isn't qualified to dispense secular French fries, let alone laws. Let's just get his ass retired. How about? So I'm trying to imagine how this judge gets from assault to involuntary marriage and Bible verse. Good luck with that imagining.

Here's the deal. You're a crazy person with a bunch of anger issues. You're probably going to rape this woman at some point if we don't interview you. That's why I'm going to need you to marry her. So the consent thing becomes a moot point, and that's of our hands problem one check all right and as for the fisticuffs thing i'm going to need to reinforce the biblical teaching about this you'll need to write a thousand times on this chalkboard i will not hit judeo christian white guys in the face bart simpson and in sniveled disobedience news tonight, Florida pastor and insult to doctoral degrees,

Dr. Craig Connor of the First Baptist Church of Panama City has threatened to stop paying taxes if the government doesn't defund Planned Parenthood. Seemingly unaware that he already doesn't pay taxes because bullshit, Connor went on to outline what will inevitably become the 2016 Mike Huckabee economic platform, eliminating the national debt

by letting women die of cervical cancer. Yes. This place is costing us way too much money. We need smaller government, less regulation, a privatized open marketplace for baby parts. A tiny little undifferentiated hand that guides the market.

That's what they say they want. Now, using the same kind of Christian math that accounts for the one God, three dudes policy, Conor explained that eliminating the $540 million a year that the federal government gives to Planned Parenthood would eliminate the national debt, in his words, overnight. I'm sorry, what? Well, I guess he didn't say over which night. So hold on here. Let's see.

$18 trillion divided by 540 million. Carry the four. Yeah, carry the four. That would be December 11th of the year 35348, motherfucker. Assuming we balance the budget, the way right now you know plus you're not even factoring in all the the great stuff that unwanted babies end up doing later in life the crime rates go up and that creates jobs for police and then they pay taxes yeah exactly but connor took a look at his insanity and figured it could use a second coat. So sensing that adjectives like evil, wicked, ungodly, hellish and shameful weren't quite communicating the true horror of the federally funded baby murder.

He cranked the hyperbole up to 11 and added, quote, Planned Parenthood is to children what ISIS is to Christians. End quote. Just in case you're taking the SATs soon or something like that. I would have missed that one. I don't care what you blanked out there. I totally would have fucked that up. And in master debater news tonight, while fielding a question about abortion during last week's primary debate, GOP presidential hopeful and semen phenomenologist Mike Habee, once again referenced a scientific discovery that he made up called the DNA schedule.

It was a doozy. According to the Huckster, quote, we now know that the baby inside the mother's womb is a person at the moment of conception

because of the DNA schedule that we now have clear scientific evidence on. Sure, why not? So I think it's great that Huckabee's so dedicated to the study of ejaculate and its arcing path to personhood. But if his evidence is going clear,

he should probably stop experimenting for the rest of the day, or at least a couple hours or something. Take it easy, buddy. And since there's just no better mental image to leave you on than Mike Huckabee's worn-out man pudding, we'll take a quick break and 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. Then it's your slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This Week in Misogyny. I have to admit that sometimes it's tough to find the stories I want for this segment. There's never a shortage of sexism, mind you, but a lot of the time it's just the same old shit. And I could easily fill three minutes a week by just saying,

here's a list of people that are still assholes, but it wouldn't be very entertaining. So to keep things fresh and on topic, I'm looking for stories about religious-inspired sexism that have a hook, something I haven't already had to think of funny shit to say about a dozen times already. Of course, you can't always get what you want, so a lot of weeks I have to settle for stuff that doesn't have anything to do with religion or stories that are damn reminiscent of ones we've already covered. But this is not one of those weeks. Take this first story out of Virginia's Wesleyan College. It starts off like far too many tales we've heard out of Christian colleges recently, and secular ones, too, for that matter.

A female student goes to the school to file a rape complaint. The school sits on their hands, and the victim has to lawyer up before anything gets done at all. So far, yes, that's a story we've heard far too many times before. But where this one really goes off the rails is in the school's response. See, as part of the discovery process in a suit against the school, the lawyers for Wesleyan College have requested a complete sexual history from the victim in an effort to rule out the possibility that she's a slut. The lawyers defend themselves by pointing out that in her lawsuit, she says that she suffered from a lack of interest in sex that has damaged her romantic relationships. And how can they determine the veracity of that statement if they can't interview her last couple boyfriends

and ask them how good of a fuck she was? And if that's depressing the hell out of you, let me make it worse by reminding you that, all things considered, America is a pretty good place to get raped. Consider what this poor woman would be dealing with if she lived in, say, for example, India. Astute listener David sent me a story from India today about an unnamed woman whose government denied her an abortion after she was raped into

pregnancy. This disgusting practice is all the more unforgivable when you consider how rapey India is. But her story gets even worse. According to cultural tradition, she now must undergo a test of purity to prove to her husband that she didn't secretly enjoy the rape. After all, if it was a legitimate rape, she shouldn't have gotten pregnant, right? So how does one prove they didn't enjoy their sexual abuse? Why, by balancing a 90-pound rock on their head, of course. This comes from a misogynistic practice called Agni Pariksha, which loosely translates into the most fucked- up concept of prenatal care in human history. But unfortunately, we've got lower yet to go. Because as disgusting as these responses

to rape are, it turns out that we found a method of rape prevention that's even worse. Killing her before any men can get to her. Now, I want to point out two things before I relay this story. The first is that it hasn't actually been confirmed by a reputable news site, so I can't guarantee its veracity. The second is that the story is so fucked up that the fact we are even considering it as a possibility says everything you need to know about the culture in question. This story comes to us from Dubai, where the father of a 20-year-old woman allegedly attacked lifeguards

that were trying to rescue her from drowning because he didn't want strange men to touch his daughter, even if the other option was watching her die. Now, to Debye's credit, according to the story, the man was arrested and awaits trial for negligent homicide. The deputy director of Debye's police force lamented how unnecessary the death was in a statement that read, in part, quote, for fuck's sake, she could have just balanced a giant rock on her head when they got her back to shore, end quote. So with apologies for once again crippling your attempt to maintain faith in humanity, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda. And in we also haven't ruled out lions or wardrobes news tonight, we'll keep the comedy ball rolling with a brutal triple homicide in Pensacola, Florida.

An elderly woman and her two adult sons were found dead in their home last week in a horrifying crime that involved a gun, a knife, and a claw hammer. Based on the savagery of the crime and his knowledge that people who don't love Jesus are evil, an Escambia County sheriff spokesman told reporters that the crime was probably part of a, quote, Wiccan ritual killing possibly tied to the blue moon, end quote, which is precisely as socially responsible as telling the media that a missing child was probably eaten by Jews. Probably one of them seventh son werewolf Jews from Argentina. That's quite a callback. Those are real. So first of all all let's be clear on this this was based on nothing but a bunch of redneck cops in the florida panhandle

looking at a grisly murder scene and saying what do you think they're cletus witches and that's the latest thought it was yes exactly that's the level of detectivery that went into this statement and secondly referring to a ritual wiccan And secondly, referring to a ritual Wiccan killing is like referring to a ritual Baptist orgy or like a ritual Amish video game tournament. That sounds awesome too. The only way you're going to see a ritual human sacrifice at a fucking Wiccan ceremony

is if you subscribe to the Scott Walker Every Sperm Has Inalienable Rights Theory of Personhood for fuck's sake. Apparently the police briefly did detain a suspect and they did do the nose and the hat, but they're quite certain she's a witch anyway. They had to let her go, but they're pretty sure

she's a witch. She did turn him into a nude. Regardless of how well he recovered. When asked what evidence they had, by the way, for the claim that the Wiccans were to blame, Sergeant Hobbs explained, quote, the injury to the victims, the position of the bodies, and also the person of interest right now is also a practitioner, end quote.

What? So, first of all, apparently Hobbs has some knowledge of how Wiccans position the bodies of their ritual sacrifice. That's hard information to come by, so kudos for that one, Officer Dexter. But the real meat of this one is that last little clause. Well, we arrested a Wiccan, so of course it's a ritual. I mean, something tells me if the prime suspect was Church of God, nobody would be referring to this as a Pentecostal ritual killing. You fucking bigots.

And in poll smokescreen news tonight, Michigan GOP state representative and notorious anti-LGBT crusader Todd Courser might be the first politician ever to get in trouble for not fucking a male prostitute. According to a recent report by Chad Livengood of the Detroit News, Corser was cheating on his wife with fellow bigoted Christian state legislator Cindy Gamrat, who is also married. Hoping to soften the blow of a possible adultery scandal in the future, the pair decided to orchestrate a fake smear campaign against themselves,

part of which included an email that falsely accused Courser of fucking a man whore. Now, cunning as their ruse may have been, plan completely backfired. The scandal is way worse now. And Courser never even got to bang a dude. So it's just lose, lose, lose. Yeah, exactly. This is the weirdest fucking story.

And by the way way it's also worth noting that the same dude may have won an earlier election by distributing flyers that said that he was a child molester and then blaming that on his opponent i'm just i'm just saying there are all kinds of reasons to worry about the boy who cried wolf when wolf is i've been fucking kids again so so yeah it looks like the plan had a few flaws going in. First of all, they tried to enlist the help of an aide named Ben Graham, who refused to get involved with their enormously stupid lie, at which point they fired him. As you may have already guessed, Graham is the one who leaked the story.

Somehow they never saw that coming and continued with the same cover-up. And I guess the plan could have still worked, but Courser obviously forgot to send out, you know, a third-level bluff fake email accurately accusing himself of sending out fake emails

falsely accusing himself of fucking a male prostitute. You got to cover your tracks of your tracks of your tracks. The end of Bill and Ted's excellent adventure here. And in flock shock, does Rock mockeded news tonight believing that they'd built up a reserve of credibility they could afford to lose the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints

released photographs of founder joseph smith's magic rock last week now many mormons see this as a tactical mistake by the church while others welcome any reason for people to make fun of something other than their magic underwear. I'm sure Pam Geller's already working on a subway poster. This rock murders Jews every day. It's like Mormons fighting to have the rock blurred out in the photo, black rectangle redacted over the rock. Now, okay, so for those of you who are unaware,

let me fill you in on the new layer of crazy that's being revealed here so mormon founder joseph smith earned his living as a magic rock looker before he found the magic golden place that only he could see his job was to con people into thinking that he could find treasure buried in the earth by putting a magic rock in his hat and then sticking his face in it. The same rock, by the way, that he then used to translate said golden plates from the original Reform Elvish. And to give you an idea exactly what a crooked fucker Joseph Smith was, by all of the non-him accounts,

he actually stole the goddamn rock itself from some other dude. Who had stolen it from a hobbit. Right, yeah, who stole it from Smeagol. So Mormon scholar Richard Bushman, speaking on the grossly misinformed belief that this was somehow going to make everything seem less bullshitty, explained that the seer stone was basically just an enchanted 19th century sedimentary iPad. Actual quote.

The stone suggests that there's a technology of revelation somewhat resembling iPads. I'm sorry, he actually said that? Yes, yes. He brought iPads up that assist us in getting divine intelligence. End actual code. So in case you thought that a guy looking into a hat with a rock in it to see what God thinks, strange credibility. Just think about it like a guy looking into a hat with a magic iPad in it 200 years before iPads existed. And then it all makes sense.

It's not even a fully functional laptop. Stupid rock. existed and then it all makes sense it's not even a fully functional laptop this stupid rock and finally tonight from the casick training file during a recent episode of focal point on american family radio host brian fisher took issue with ohio governor and gop presidential backrunner john casick for hating gay people wrong yeah guess. This was in response to a moment from the debate last week during which Kasich was asked about same-sex marriage, and apparently his homophobic answer wasn't homophobic enough for Fisher. Specifically, the part when Kasich talked about attending a gay wedding without also helping to organize a faith-based labor strike among the catering staff. Yeah, and by the way, most depressing moment in the entire debate.

Because John Kasich firmly staked out his position as the moderate on the stage by saying that while he still thinks gay people offend God by existing, he doesn't think they should be as discriminated against as before. Slightly less. That's centrist for the GOP at this point. So, to help us better understand why attending a same-sex wedding might be evil, Fisher explained,

quote, if you have somebody you love and they were dealing crack and they were opening up a new crack house, he thinks that's how it works, and they invited you to come and be part of the grand opening celebration of this crack house. Would you go?

Of course not. End quote. He also then added something along the lines of, yeah, I'm not trying to compare gay marriage to a crack retailer. But, you know, you could see how they're very similar. And that's why I reverse contrasted them and use them in my analogy. All right. This is such a fucked up analogy on so many levels,

but the worst thing about it is this whole of course not shit. What do you mean of course not? Why the fuck would you not go to the grand opening? I can get blown for $8 at a crack house. Why would I not go to that? There's going to be a bunch of crackheads there. I could probably get it for four.

Brian Fisher should get all the information before he starts condemning crack houses. So I'm not sure if his remarks helped clarify things. If anything, I'm now confused as to what my reason should be for refusing to attend the grand opening of a homosexual crack house. Is it the gay part or the crack part? It's not clear what he's trying to say. crack house is the gay part or the crack part it's not clear what he's trying to say regardless though here we are talking about gay crackhead entrepreneurs again that means we're gonna need 30 seconds on the clock ideas for the sodomite drug den retail location obviously yeah it's amazing that we haven't done this yet how about wesley pipes soom Mighty Wind? Free crack with every crack.

What about Bottoms Up in Smoke? Rock bottom prices, cock bottom service. Well done. Jon Snow's Coke and Poke? We'll put something white in every hole in your face. What about Smokeback Mountain? Come get your pipe fitted. Or maybe Wolfman Cracks Rock and Cock?

Putting the head back in crack head. About Crack That Ass. Thuggery and buggery, smuggles and snuggles. Or maybe Tommy Schlong's Bong and Dong? Just find anything cylindrical and start sucking. Somebody will enjoy it. They'll figure it out. About Cocktails and Pipe Dreams. Blowing smoke up your ass for a corkage fee. All right. cylindrical and start sucking somebody will enjoy it they'll figure it out about cocktails and pipe

dreams blowing smoke up your ass for a corkage fee all right and flair and continuing with my celebrity endorsements theme how about meth mcfarland's crank and spank because it'll be more fun once you lose your teeth anyway everybody everybody appreciates that yeah speaking of missing teeth what about baking bad? Meth is way more fun at the wedding reception than penis cake. Way more fun. And I guess now that Heath has inadvertently offered up the final missing piece of my Walter White homoerotic fanfic, we can close out the headlines.

Heath, thanks as always. Scrabble! And when we come back, the overall entropy of the universe will have increased. The Holy Bible At this point, it's starting to feel like the Bible's getting bored with itself. So, in my Bible, each book starts with a brief essay about what you're about to read. And for first Thessalonians, they were so fucked for shit to fill the space with that they actually felt the need to mention that the title first Thessalonians doesn't actually appear in the original letter.

Fascinating. This, despite the fact that first Thessalonians is believed to have been authored around 49 CE, which makes it the earliest of all the epistles and by default the earliest non-Christian writing. And yet, despite its significance, it's still too boring to merit more of an intro than an academic translation of another boring fucking letter from Paul. Yeah, but in fairness, I like how they put the letters in the wrong order but still all clumped together and then added some fake ones.

That really helped push the narrative for me. And joining us to discuss what is perversely both the first and last of the Pauline epistles is my lovely wife, Lucinda. Lucinda, what did you think of Thessalonians? It was so short it only managed to bore me to sleep twice. There you go. Definitely an improvement. So why don't you start us off?

Well, I guess at this point I don't need to tell anybody how this opens, but I will anyway. Paul spends an inordinate amount of time talking about how awesome God is. And of course, it just wouldn't be Paul if he didn't try to compliment the people he's writing to by telling them how awesome he is. Yeah, isn't that just a Paul compliment? I'm exactly as awesome as God and you're almost as awesome as me. And that's pretty fucking awesome. Give yourself a pat on the back there for that one. It sounded like Paul was definitely surprised

by how well all the Jesus stuff caught on with the Thessalonians. Clearly, yeah. He's basically saying, holy shit, did you guys keep doing all the crazy shit I told you about? Because I'm hearing about two other cities that started doing it too, and it's that weird moment when a person realizes he's a cult leader and he says you know what fuck it i'm gonna roll with this i'm good right i'll blame it on jesus long term and and and then he reminds people in thessalonica to tell all their friends how much fun it is to give paul food and

a place to stay when he comes rolling through town it's pretty good good time and of course he caps it off by reminding them that Jesus will be back any minute now. And then he starts protesting to shit nobody's even talking about, and really poorly, too. He's like, you know what's awesome about us? The way we're not a bunch of con artists. You know, the fact that we're not lying to you about this Jesus thing, and we definitely didn't just make all this shit up so that we wouldn't have to get real jobs. That's what's awesome about us.

He's in a letter now. Right. He even basically says, and you guys all have such rippling muscles and gorgeous dicks that I don't even have to flatter you. Well, I also love this line. Okay, so recounting his trip to Thessaloniki, he says, we did not seek praise from mortals, whether from you or others, though we might have made demands as apostles of Christ, but we were gentle among you. Didn't have to be. So just take that however you care to. Right.

And if you're in danger of not taking it homoerotically, we should mention the very next sentence that talks about the precise depth to which Paul loved that. Yes. Yeah. Also, they mentioned sharing not only the gospel, but themselves. A lot of gay fucking in this one is what we're trying to say. Yeah. Seriously. Most so far in any epistle.

And it was mostly consensual, so, you know, you're welcome. Yeah. Obviously, we're all hyped up on Jesus magic, marauding around. We easily could have raped the shit out of you guys, which it is now well documented that we did not. No. That's chapter two in a nutshell. First Thessalonians 2.

Paul's gang rape alibi. Yeah. Also, I think we'd be remiss not to bring up chapter two, verse 14 through 16, which are just loaded with rank Jew hate. Oh, yes.

Remember, this is the earliest known work of Christianity, and it lays on the anti-Semitism thick and early on. And none too subtly. He basically says, the problems you face in life are almost as shitty as Jews.

Who are the Jews? Great question. They're the people who, it's already been well established, killed Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. That's verse 15 almost exactly. Definitely another one of the spots

where the editors decide to plant a gun and sprinkle a little crack on Judaism. Right. Well, and then he turns it into a cheating lover that isn't even trying anymore. He spouts some shit about like, oh, and I was definitely intended to come to your rehearsal, but Satan blocked my way. You know, the damn devil, you know, he's always throwing up toll booths in the middle of the desert and shit, trying to get through.

Fucks you all up. It's the worst excuse ever about why he couldn't make it to Thessalonica, even though they had clearly made firm plans. Yeah, no, yeah, no, I really wanted to make it up there for your slam poetry German dubstep open mic night. I was literally in the cab. I'm on the way over, and just out of nowhere, fucking Satan rear-ended us.

There's no police report or anything, so you can't check on it. But we're all fine. Moving on. And then he closes the chapter with a quick reminder that Jesus is 93% loaded and will be finished updating at any second now. Yeah. Paul's trying to tell these people that all the extreme suffering means the plan is right on track. Like this delusional boss with a failing business.

I bet you're all getting persecuted and tortured, right? Right? Right? What did I say? This is perfect. And when you pray, nothing ever happens, right?

Right. Exactly. You guys are crushing it. You're doing it right. All is according to plan. All right. Well, and this is one of those spots where the translation really matters. Because in chapter four, verse four talks about how every man should be able to control

his own body or control his own vessel or be the master of his domain. All depends on the translation. Or his dick or his rod. Johnson. Johnson. He also tells Christians to mind their own fucking business in chapter 4, verse 11. So as little time

as the Bible spends on advice, its devotees still ignore it. Yeah, right. Yeah, this guy's impossible to follow. First he's saying, master your domain. Then a few verses later, he's saying,

work with your hands and mind your own fucking business. It's a mixed message. It's confusing. It is. And then we get the meat and potatoes of this book, which is Paul's desperate attempt to explain why Jesus hasn't returned yet. And that was way back when.

Well, yeah. I mean, we should really focus on that one because clearly, clearly, clearly, as clearly as anything can possibly, as clear as Mike Huckabee's semen, the book says over and over again that Jesus is going to be back any minute now, like within the lifetimes of the people that Paul is talking to. He says that over and over again. Jesus says that over and over again in the Gospels. It could not be more plainly stated. It is impossible to read this book without coming away with the definite impression

that all the Christians in 49 CE expected Jesus to return within the next few years at the latest. So much so that he spends half of this chapter explaining why some of the people that had converted to Christianity had already died without Jesus coming back. Right. Exactly. And he's treating it like a broken promise. Right. It's also funny how he has to walk this fine line, too, because he's telling them, don't

worry, all those dead people still get to go to heaven. But he also wants to make it very clear that the rest of them should still avoid dying, even if it means just going straight to heaven. Yeah, right, right. Well, it sounds like a little kid changing the rules on the fly during a wiffle ball game. No, no, no, no. The ghost runners move up automatically. We said it's foul from the corner of the shed,

but that was a ground rule double because it bounced fair and it hit the first branch. We said that earlier, first branch. Also, we have to keep playing with no winner forever. Right. And then he reminds us that even though it seems like life is governed by impersonal forces that don't reward good behavior or punish sin, that's just God being God.

You know how he is. Yeah. And he also says to test everything in verse 21, which seems to contrast entirely with all the other advice in the book. Right. I have no idea what this is saying. And according to 1 Thessalonians 5.26, you should greet each brethren with a holy kiss,

which is kind of strange because as I understand it, you never go holy to mouth. Ever. No, no. This is also where Paul describes the upcoming resurrection of the Savior in the rapiest way he could possibly think of. He says, if you don't stay awake, the Lord will come inside you like a thief in the night. Yikes. He repeats that.

And then it's over. The earliest known work of Christianity, and all it has to say is, A, Jesus will be back before you pay off your layaway, and B, if God wanted you to fuck, he wouldn't have made blue balls so pleasant. Okay, that's it. So moving right along.

Second Thessalonians is interesting, and by interesting, of course, I mean insanely dull in a slightly different way, because it's basically just like First Thessalonians, except obviously fake. Yeah, apparently biblical scholars are somewhat divided on this one, because some of them are blinded by their allegiance to God, but it's really obvious at a glance that this was written way later. Well, sure, because it basically says stuff like, now I'm sure that 60 or 70 years from now, people are going to be

reading that letter I wrote to you guys before, and they're going to misinterpret the shit out of chapter 4, so I better write you this second clarifying letter that might get lost for a while and then show up a couple of decades later when there's a lot of contention in the church about what I meant by chapter 4, that last one that I wrote much in the same way that I wrote this one.

Dan, it's pretty obvious early. Chapter 1 of this book is basically the C.J. Wurliman version of the opening chapter from the last one. Seriously. He's got a new book coming out, yeah. Plus we get a graphic reminder about how we were serious about that Judgment Day thing. I know I just described it as a nocturnal rapist scenario. But I feel like you guys didn't really react to that. It's actually going to be way worse. Like fire and brimstone bad.

Jesus will rape you with a brimstone if you don't believe in him by the time he comes back. Which is any minute. So get to it. Or maybe some other minute in the distant future. But probably now. Okay, not now, but now. Now, but now. Eventually.

Well, and surprise, surprise, that's exactly the potential misconception that this letter is there to clarify. Weird, huh? Yeah, and I think it's interesting, too, that this one refers heavily to the Antichrist, who, if I'm not mistaken, has not been talked about anywhere yet. So, like, fake Paul is basically saying, well, of course Jesus hasn't shown up. I mean, come on.

The anti-Jesus isn't even here yet, guys. What? What are you thinking? And by anti-Christ, they mean somebody's going to pull the exact same shit we just did. And as we now know, you guys are all idiots that listen to crazy homeless people ranting about God. So don't get tricked again. Tricked. Don't get tricked.

And it even implies that you shouldn't listen to all those fake letters from paul right and that's pretty much it he goes straight to the verbose clothes from there and i was tempted to skim over it but i'm glad i didn't because there was a bit of rush limbaugh haunting in the the normal farewell there well i'm sure you're talking about chapter 3 verse 10 where paul reminds everybody that even though Jesus is all about charity, those lazy welfare moms don't deserve shit if they're not willing to bust their asses for it. Yeah, the actual words, anyone unwilling to work should not eat, seem at least a little out of place in the New Testament. Right. Only spot I can remember in the book where they directly endorse starving people to death. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Starving people to death is not the preferred nomenclature. Entitlement reform. Entitlement reform. Oh, and also, fuck all the people who tell you later that this letter is fake. Yeah, right. This is definitely not fake. I mean, that is just barely an exaggeration. This is the actual fucking sign-off on this letter.

2 Thessalonians 3 3 verse 17 i paul write this greeting with my very own hand now i should say that much we've seen before because like sometimes he wants to point out that he didn't use a scribe on this letter that he actually wrote it but then it continues with an elaboration that we have seen nowhere else yet, this is the mark in every letter of mine. It is the way I write. End quote. Boy, am I mean. Exactly, yes. In the NIV, it literally ends with, this is how I write.

This is how I write. Yeah. In conclusion, I think it's safe to say this entire letter sounded completely normal, just like all my other letters. I'm Paul, and this is how i end letters not fake paul ending my letter normal normal inconspicuous yours truly always real paul paul i would just call myself paul there yours truly paul so so for me the big takeaway on this one is that you can throw out every scrap of biblical scholarship before the 19th century really yes look there's almost no way to ignore the fact that this letter isn't genuine it's comically obvious so anybody who ever read the bible and didn't say well here's some bullshit that snuck in just wasn't trying they weren't paying attention

and and that matters in the public discussion about the Bible because a lot of apologists like to cast aside everything an atheist says about the Bible because they point out, well, you haven't read all the biblical scholarship

and the interpretations through history. Well, fuck that. Like if St. Augustine never said, oh, and we all know 2 Thessalonians is nonsense, right? I can basically discount

everything he ever had to say about that fucking book. He was not a scholar. That's not what scholar means. No. Biblical scholar means given the Bible, let's see what else is true. That's the opposite of scholarship. Yeah, exactly.

So with that, we've reached yet another milestone. That's it for the Pauline epistles. So when the Holy Bible returns, we'll start churning through the pastoral epistles. There's 12 of those, but they had to divide a lot of tiny books into even tinier ones to make that happen. So we're going to be knocking that out in five episodes. That plus Revelations makes a Bible, yo. Awesome. Pretty close.

Awesome. This is great. Only 13 more books of this shit. That's it. Great. Stratego. Run, grab the youngins, folks. Stratego. Because there's only about four stories in this entire fucking testament, so we were bound to do this one eventually. Now, once upon a time, there lived a man named Jesus.

And we're quite certain about that, despite the lack of first-hand sources, contemporary accounts, or a consistent historical record of basic facts about his life. And not only are we certain that he existed, we're also certain that he's the son of God. Because it says so in the book where we learned about him in the first place. And it also says he had magic powers. So we're certain of that too. Of course, Jesus didn't do anything cool with his magic powers, like fighting crime or making furniture dance to shake Sonora. Instead, he used them to selectively heal a very small number of people that his dad condemned to the miserable life of a pre-scientific cripple

in an area that only covered about 0.0001365% of the inhabited parts of Earth for a couple of years before voluntarily dying while almost all of the blind and lame people were still blind and lame. But somehow, the fact that he used his one-of-a-kind ability to effortlessly cure all ailments to cure a couple of ailments makes him the best person of all time, even including the scientists to cure disabled people without the help of effortless magical powers. But not everybody loved Jesus, boys and girls.

In fact, the people who were in power hated him because he challenged their religious authority. And how did those people wind up in power? Well, God did it on purpose with complete knowledge of what would happen when he instituted a power structure based entirely on family lineage. So the evil people that God intentionally put in charge decided that they needed to punish Jesus for making all these lame people walk and yanking so many demons out of people. Now, they could have just arrested him when he was walking around, but they decided not to because the crowds love him. Instead, they'd arrest him when he was alone and then count on the very same crowd that loved him

to condemn him later in the story, even though that doesn't make any fucking sense. Well, to get Jesus when he was alone, they'd need an inside man. So they went to Judas, who probably told them that they could just follow Jesus home one day if they wanted to know where he was, since he was walking around town all day. But if they wanted to give him 30 pieces of silver to give them information that wasn't a secret, what the hell?

So Judas agreed to betray Jesus. So one night, Jesus and all his disciples were having dinner when somebody let out a fart so raunchy that everyone on that side of the table decided to crowd together on the other side. And while they were all eating, Jesus told them that the bread was his body and that they should partake of it. But nobody took the hint that he was asking for a hummer. So instead, they just ate bread. And then Jesus washed his disciples' feet. And even though

most biblical scholars will agree when I say that feet is often used in substitution for genitals in the Bible, they will most vociferously deny that applies here. So for the record, Jesus definitely didn't wash the apostles' dicks at the Last Supper, even though it kind of sounds like he did in the Gospel of John. But this wasn't going to be just any old fun meal full of dick washing and nard cream, because Jesus also told the apostles that somebody there would betray him. Which is a completely dick move if you're not going to tell them who it is at the same time. Since the only thing you can possibly accomplish at that point is sowing distrust among your loyal followers. But he did it anyway.

So sure enough, Judas told everybody he was just going to go to the vending machine while the mainframe compiled for a few minutes. But in reality, he was really going to go steal the DNA for all the dinosaurs and put them in a fake can of shaving cream. Or at least that's what he would have done if this story was interesting. But it's not. So he just went and got some soldiers who came back and arrested Jesus. And then Jesus got brutally beaten and murdered so that God could forgive you for Eve

eating a fruit. And everybody afterlifed happily ever after. The end. Before we clear the service for the night, I want to thank everybody who's chipped in so far to make the launch of our new Godawful Movies podcast with Eli Bosnick happen. We've been overwhelmed by the response less than a week since we launched the Patreon page, and we've already raised more than 90% of our goal. If you'd like to help push us over the line, get that new show rolling, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash godawful. That's patreon.com slash godawful, which you're going to find linked on the show notes for this episode. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you this week, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be sure to like us on Facebook. You can find the little bonus nuggets of scatheism there. Obviously, I still need to thank the one and only Heath Enright for having dick jokes more impressive than his very impressive dick. I also need to thank Lucinda for taking on a larger-than-normal workload this week so that I could spend more time getting the new show underway. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's primary primates, James, Magnus, Justin, Alex, Matthew, Clarence, Mike, Thomas, Aja, Robert,

Allison, Andrea, Richard, Leslie, Nicole, Drake, Jeff, Ryan, Paul, and Jay. James, Magnus, Justin, Alex, and Matthew, whose mighty cocks will be immortalized in life-size bronze replicas as soon as we find a nearby planet made entirely of copper and tin, Clarence, Mike, Thomas, Aja, and Robert, whose opinions couldn't carry any more weight without emitting Hawking radiation, Alice and Andrea, Richard, Leslie, and Nicole, whose neuronal pathways qualify as mass transit systems, and Drake, Jeff, Ryan, Paul, and Jay, whose ejaculations make Mount Vesuvius pine for the good old days.

Together, this score of scandalously sculpted skeptics have helped us school the scourge of schizophrenic scriptural scrotums with scathing scorn this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the rhyming and or alliterative series of positive qualities that I'd usually come up with if I had a little more time this week than it takes to give us money. But if you think you've got what it takes and you know instinctively what that is, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the Donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. Of course, if you'd like to help, but that would require you spending money, and fuck that, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes, or sharing the show with your friends,

especially the ones who are inclined to give us money and five-star reviews on iTunes. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly, and yes, I did have my permission.

And done with the show.