The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 141: Rap Guide to Religion Edition

Episode Date: October 29, 2015

In this week's episode, we'll learn that despite my intuitions, you should not bleach the rectums of autistic kids; the Vatican will make Archie Bunker look slightly less progressive than they used to make him look; and rap-artist Baba Brinkman joins Noah for what may be earth's first conversation between two people who have independently asked themselves "what rhymes with postmodernism?"Religion Evolves was written by Baba Brinkman and used with permission.  For more information on his music, check out his website.

Warning, the following podcast contains language that some listeners might find offensive, like divine providence, spiritual, and creationist. We also swear a lot. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new fairy tale replacement therapy for recovering Christians that want to stop believing in Santa Claus and other made-up bullshit, St. Nicorette gum. Are you a grown-ass adult that still thinks magical sky warlocks are real? Still struggling to get past that Bronze Age moral fixation? Do you wish you

could break free from all the delusions? Well, it's time to bite down and choose reality. St. Nicorette Gum, when your priest starts getting really hard to swallow. And now, the Skating Atheist. Good news, everyone! I'm Kenny Weiland from LiberalGeek.com, and as an ex-Jehovah's Witness who carries the shame of having argued with his high school biology teacher about creation versus evolution, I can now, after getting properly educated, assure you that we did indeed evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's October 29th.

And I'm currently in the carb-laden throes of a week-long pizza and bagels bender. I'm no illusions. I'm Heath Enright, and from New York, New York, and Valdosta, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll learn that you shouldn't bleach the assholes of autistic kids. The Vatican makes Archie Bunker look like a progressive. And rap artist Bob O'Brinkman will blow your fucking mind. But first, the diatribe. Once upon a time, many moons ago,

I managed a little pizza place in South Georgia. And among the many marketing tools at my disposal was a costume of a giant slice of pizza. It was our mascot. So, like, if we got a big order at a school or if we donated pizzas to a charity event and there was going to be cameras there, you know, I'd stick whoever drew the short straw into this nasty nine-year-old, never-been-clean-saturated-with-years-worth-of-South-Georgia-swamp-sweat costume, and I'd make him stand near the pizza and get punched in the nuts by six-year-olds for half an hour. So when Halloween rolled around and we started getting a bunch of big orders for parties and stuff, naturally, I planned to send our little pizza costume along with them, right?

You know, well, one of my employees had what I considered the damn clever idea of getting a costume for the costume, so that our mascot would actually be dressed for Halloween. So after a few ideas, we eventually settled on getting a witch's hat and an old broom. You know, the head comes to a point, it's a pointed hat, makes perfect sense. So we get our seasonally attired mascot ready and we send him out the door. And for several minutes afterwards, we thought this was a good idea, but we were wrong. See, most of these party orders were going to churches. And of course orders were going to churches. And of course they're going to churches.

There's a church for every dozen people in that city. We always had a bunch of church orders. But unfortunately, I'm from sanity. So I didn't realize that the reason we had so many church orders that night is because the fucking churches are trying to shield children from the evils of their own holiday. And as any of you who are unfortunate enough to grow up in a devoutly evangelical household probably have already figured out,

our witch costume did not go over well. I spent an insane amount of the rest of my night fielding complaints from Christians about our wholesome, innocent pizza slice being decked out in the garb of Satan. And the worst thing is I had to pretend to take this seriously because that was my job, right? I'm not allowed to just scream into the phone,

it's a conical hat, you ignorant fuck. If all it takes for the desolate one to corrupt the heart of your Christian children is a pointy hat on an anthropomorphized piece of pizza, maybe you should be more worried about what an impotent weakling you're worshiping on Sunday than what kind of fucking headgear we put on a rancid styrofoam triangle. Look, I'm from Detroit. We love Halloween in Detroit. We got so excited

about it that we'd set our whole damn city on fire the night before. So it was baffling to me to try to acclimate to a culture where people honestly thought that kids dressing up as power rangers to get free Tootsie Rolls was a tool of the fucking devil. You know, it's easy to write this off as pure, unadulterated stupidity, and I mean really easy, but there's more to it than that. And if you scrape the surface, it gets even more depressing. I mean, consider the worldview

of the average devout Southern Baptist. This is a person for whom the devil is a real, genuine thing. You know, a person who reads in their Bible that Jesus definitely pulled demons out of people, a person whose worldview is terrifying, sure, but even more importantly, it's inconsistent as all hell. The devil thing doesn't make any sense if you dig all the way into it. The existence of demons doesn't comport with our present knowledge of mental illness or all the other stuff we have

present knowledge of. The worldview of a lot of these believers only works because they don't hash it all the way out. That's important, right? Because if you start asking too many questions, the idea of worshiping a guy with an eternal torture chamber has to feel kind of fucked up. So the key for a lot of these people is to simply cordon off certain questions, certain areas of inquiry. And there's no way to do that without leaving the doors of your worldview wide open to whatever cultural bullshit comes down the pipe. Are there ghosts? Well, it's consistent with your worldview regarding an afterlife, right? The Bible has a few ghostly apparitions in it. Maybe they exist. You can't rule them out with any logical process that wouldn't also rule out God, so you can't rule them out, right? Do witches exist? Well, the Bible

expressly commands believers to kill them, so they must exist. God wouldn't order you to go out and massacre something that doesn't exist, would he? do demons exist well they have to of course they do there's absolutely no way to reconcile the biblical jesus myths without literally inhabiting a demon haunted world see when i hear a freaky sound or i see an eerie shape in the dark my mind instinctively goes to the same place as theirs. Holy fuck, that's a monster. But I can brush that instinctive fear off in the second that it takes for my brain to remember that monsters aren't real things. But what is it like to live in a universe where your very ability to comprehend the world around you demands ambiguity?

Can demons get inside you? Do your lucky socks really make a difference? Are you cursed? Have you angered God? Is that a demon in the backyard? Was that a ghost that knocked that book off the shelf? Will my children burn in hell if the pizza man wears a witch's hat? On all counts, their worldview doesn't allow an answer any more definitive than maybe. They're talking about you, Jesus.

We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight is a New Yorker in its natural habitat, Heath Enright. Heath, are you missing Georgia yet? Be honest. Well, it's like my white privilege just evaporated once I got north of Virginia. It's tough up here for a white man. Well, for what it's worth, I had to turn the air conditioner on this afternoon, too. Wow. it's worth i had to turn the air conditioner on this afternoon too wow in our lead story tonight in synods and ends news the catholic church just wrapped up a three-week summit meeting

in vatican city during which 270 creepy virgins and or creepy liars discussed the official company policy regarding several important societal issues of the day. And after much deliberation, this led to the announcement that Catholicism will no longer be discriminating against divorced people as much because it's too expensive not to take their money too. But the church is still going to continue hating gay people, at least until it becomes financially unfeasible, I guess. Taken together, this will be known as the Kim Davis Doctrine.

Right, yeah. Here you go. This is the Vatican being progressive. This is what Catholic progressivism looks like, folks. We will no longer think of divorced people as lesser humans unworthy of communion with God. Glad to know we at least know where the last 270 people to get over this were and when that happened.

Yes. So the new plan to slightly ostracize divorced people a little bit less might not sound like any sort of meaningful change in the Catholic Church, but it was a disaster for a large block of traditionalists. One such bigot was Italian Cardinal Robert Serra, who hate spoke the following, quote, What Nazi fascism and communism were in the 20th century, Western homosexual and communists are like gay people, abortion and ISIS. So circle the ones that don't belong. It's all of them. None of them belong on any sort of list together. Sounds like one of those fucking, you know, just we're messing with you. S.A.T. questions like Nazi fascism is to Western homosexuals as communism is to blank.

Islamic fanaticism is to dentures as pastoral nomads are to blank. What the fuck are you talking about, dude? E, one dollar. No idea. All right. And if you're wondering about the goat boy moment, it came on the final day during the closing speech from Pope Frantaconda's hunt for the blood orchid, who once again angered conservative Catholics when he failed to make an official new rule that banned all future new rules.

They were mad about that. Oddly enough, nothing to indicate a new stance about aiding and abetting pedophile fugitives. However, it seemed like that would have been near the top of the docket. But no, that's that's minor. Minors. Right. Right. Yes.

That's minors. Right, right, yes. Speaking of which, in Duggar baby buggered humpers news tonight, the Duggar family's fall from grace has now officially lasted long enough to qualify as Orbit, with the news that a homeschooling program that they're connected with is facing a lawsuit for the sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and unwanted and inappropriate sexual contact. According to the five plaintiffs, the organization and its board of directors systematically covered up and enabled sexual abuse and harassment of its interns, employees, and basically anybody else they could quite literally get their hands on.

Right. But to be fair, this was a highly successful business model for some major churches until very recently. And it's still, I would say, at least mildly successful now. Apparently, yeah. There's proof of concepts out there. The group in question is called the institute in basic life principles and if the complaint is accurate thou shalt not sexually abuse underage interns does not qualify as a basic life principle probably no room for it

around all the jesus-y stuff they had to add so in addition to featuring the iblp and their curriculum prominently on their show the duggars also acted as the spokes litterer for the group at homeschooling conventions around the country and covered up an enabled sexual abuse of minors. So apparently they're all in on this shit. At least as far as those tight little orifices will allow. Oh, wow. They'd get the balls in there if they could.

Oh, God. Have not been able to yet. Because I was just thinking to myself i don't think he's taking this mental image far enough that's exactly what i was just thinking and check and in grand papa don't preach news tonight thanks to a refreshingly logical ruling by a canadian court earlier this month the jehovah's witness grandparents of a four-year-old girl have been officially forbidden from acting against the mother's wishes in their attempt to indoctrinate the child with a bunch of J-dubs nonsense. Seems like there should have already been very clear laws on this, but apparently not clear enough to prevent the crazy old people who are not legal guardians from filing a lawsuit demanding the religious freedom to brainwash whomever they please.

Again, they lost, but I'm offended they even got this into court in the first place. It's fucking ridiculous. Because it's basically a custody hearing over a soul. I mean, who gets control of the little ghost that drives the four-year-old around and talks to Jesus for her? Public money was spent adjudicating that. Like, if I won the lawsuit about riding a centaur without a license, that's not a victory for jurisprudence. Right.

So the conflict arose after the mother realized what was happening when her daughter was left with these grandparents unsupervised, and she insisted they stop all the preaching if they wanted to continue seeing their grandchild. Go mom. First, they lied and claimed the kid was expressly asking to learn about volcano demons. But when it was pointed out that no four-year-old

has ever said anything like that ever, they resorted to the lawsuit attempt. I'm trying to imagine this. Hey, grandpa, has anyone died for my sins? And if so, who? Also, can I be a cookie when I grow up? I mean, it just sounds like one of those kind of theories you can feel all right just dismissing out of hand.

Now, I'm hoping some good will come out of the giant waste of taxpayer money on a court case that's completely asinine. Specifically, I'm hoping they can use this precedent to set a legal standard regarding the ear rape of captive audiences regardless of age or location yeah here everybody should not be allowed to be ear raped for example subway preachers should not be allowed to bellow bible verses at 7 a.m while i'm commuting any more than i should be allowed to blast like yokoko Ono poetry mashed up with Gitmo dubstep torture. Fucking ridiculous.

No, absolutely not. But by the way, I think this is one of those rare two wrongs make a right situation, though. That is the only time I would ever be willing to forgive Yoko Ono poetry mashed up with Gitmo dubstep torture music. And from the mysterious plays file tonight christian persecuto files identified the latest in an endless series of imaginary slights against their faith last friday when a new york high school football player was penalized for excessive celebration just because he pointed

to the sky to thank god for divinely sanctioning his touchdown run and of course the very fact that a christian was punished for something meets all the requisite criteria to count as persecution in the eyes of Fox News Radio's Todd Starnes, who dubbed this just the latest in an epidemic of Christians being told to keep their beliefs to themselves. All right. Well, just from a football perspective, that's just bad coaching. I mean, it's part of basic football fundamentals to learn secular sky pointing so that the ref can't tell you're Christian when you do that. I mean, I grew up playing mostly soccer and even I know that. Come on. It's called gamesmanship, guys. Come on. Now, of course, just to rub in the affront to Jesus, the team ends up losing by two points. And of course, they missed the two point conversion

after the 15 yard penalty. Now, they wouldn't have been going for two points if it wasn't for the penalty and the game would have played out differently if the other team wasn't nursing a lead at the end, but that's not what matters. What matters is that God felt slighted by this penalty, so he took it out on the team that was thanking him, because that makes sense, according to this fucking Christian website. Or maybe God's an atheist. We still haven't heard anything about his stance on that.

We haven't heard a word. I think he leans atheist, though. It seems fairly obvious. I get that impression. So to be clear, this is yet another case of a Christian being persecuted by being treated like everybody else. Look, the rule says no celebrations. And they're pissed because the rule should say in their minds no celebrations except if you sincerely believe the invisible author of the universe personally intervened in your sporting event in which case it should be okay no matter what and since i want to kind of drive home the better things you can do with your index finger than pointing it at god

message we're going to take this opportunity to hand things over to my lovely wife lucinda get that pinky involved too a man wrote the bible a horse which one if it's a legitimate race cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man. This Week in Massage. One of the perks of doing this podcast is the free stuff. Like this week, Noah's interviewing Baba Brinkman, a rap artist who just released the Rap Guide to Religion.

And of course, his publicist sent along a copy of the album in advance to inform the interview. Well, we listened to it last night and holy shit, I may be this guy's new biggest fan. And of course, his publicist sent along a copy of the album in advance to inform the interview. Well, we listened to it last night and holy shit, I may be this guy's new biggest fan. Beautiful music, brilliant lyrics, and most importantly, shit that makes you go hmm. So one of the major themes of the album is the way that religion propagates by taking control of women's reproductive cycles and turning them into Christian factories or Muslim factories or whatever. And I've really been chewing on that concept all night, so I decided to find a few present-day examples for this week's trip down paternalist lane. We'll start with one of our favorite least favorites, Patty Meltz Robertson, who spent a few minutes on a recent 700 Club episode reminding us

all that the most important qualification when it comes to making financial decisions is a penis. This came in response to a viewer question about tithing. He wanted to know if he should tithe based on 100% of his income or just half since he shares his income with his wife and she doesn't want to tithe. Well, no surprise that Robertson fell on the give us more money, not less side of the argument. But the way he got there was 100% testicular. Quote, God made you the man. He made you the high priest of the household. End quote.

And apparently, that's what old P. Robes considers a complete thought. Of course, if you're looking for examples of religious paternalism, Tennessee is as good a place to look as any. So for our next story, we'll turn to volunteer state pastor Ben Bailey. He took to the local airwaves last week to decry the evils of abortion. Quote, a person can be fined $20,000 or get five years in prison for breaking a bald eagle egg, and yet nothing is done if you abort a fetus. What's of more value, a bald eagle that doesn't have a soul

or a human being that has a soul? End quote. Now, not that I need to point out why this argument is insane. I do want to draw a distinction here. If somebody else aborted your fetus against your will, that person would go to jail. We don't imprison eagles when they break their own fucking eggs. And for our last stop this week, we'll hit up the most consistent source I've ever seen of the gross dehumanization of women, BiblicalGenderRoles.com. Hell, I could probably just read you the titles of their most recent blog entries every week if I wanted to do this the lazy way. But there was a story on there this week that was bad even for them. The argument they're offering, and I'm paraphrasing here, is about why you shouldn't look your wife in the eye when you rape her.

Okay, so our launching off point here is that you're having sex with your wife against her will. We're starting with marital rape. And the question that the author wants to know apparently is how do you get the most out of unwilling sex? And his answer is not to look at her face. Just imagine the face of someone who's having sex with you by choice rather than by the brutal enforcement of bronze-aged concepts of gender roles. So yeah, paternalism is still alive and well

and making those poor quiverful women spit out a dozen little Christians apiece. So with this quick reminder that there's really no path to a more atheistic world that doesn't pass through women's reproductive autonomy, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda. And in the pen is mightier than the rabbit's foot news tonight, a Zimbabwean religious con artist slash pastor with the strange Loviian moniker of Prophet Sham is offering his congregants a viable alternative to intelligence for the low, low price of whatever they've got on them.

And sure, yeah, right. Up until now, I could have been describing any pastor on Earth. But Prophet Sham Hungway of the House of Grace International Church distinguishes himself from his peers by putting his Jesus magic in ink pens and then selling them to you. Well, this is actually refreshing to hear, I think. I mean, the magical religious fraudulent product doesn't involve something mortally dangerous this time. That's actually kind of right.

Yeah, there's no refusing medical treatment, no drinking bleach. This time it's purely financial fraud. That's a big step forward. It's like it's like the Vatican getting on board with the divorced people. Yeah, exactly. Same principle. So according to Sham, his magical Jesus pens will answer the questions of your exams correctly, even if you don't know the answer. Quote, the pens are anointed and I declare passes when your children sit for exams or when you sit for exams. End quote. So yes, Jesus will cheat on your chem final for you. The pens are being sold for between $1 and $20,

and while the pens are the exact same at every price point, Sham assures us that, quote, the more you pay, the more you pass, end quote. What the fuck? So the Son of God is supposed to be living in these pens, and all he can guarantee is a 65 right i'm not impressed like once again adderall beats jesus it always does i can just see jesus up there right now going adderall but there's meth in that what am i supposed to do good stuff and in perks

package news tonight during a recent episode of his Washington Watch radio show, Family Research Council president and strangely confident middle-aged white guy who definitely ends up being the pedophile at the end of SVU, Tony Perkins, discussed the issue of transgender rights and how they shouldn't really exist. Specifically, he was responding to a new policy

adopted by the state of California that allows prison inmates to obtain gender affirmation surgery. And he's quite certain that if we give transgender people transgender surgery, then everyone's going to want transgender surgery. Of course. No, as far as you know, is that how that works? Well, as far as him winding up the pedophile at the end of the episode, yes. Well, as far as him winding up the pedophile at the end of the episode, yes. But as far as the only thing standing between me and not having a penis is financial viability, I'd say not so much.

No. Yeah, I think you might be right. But at first it did sound kind of reasonable. anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 for these reassignment surgeries, I think there's no shortage of people that may want to sign up to go to prison, end quote. So yeah, I mean, given the opportunity, who wouldn't want to get a free penis removal and some butt rape? But then I started considering the market forces involved. I think he might be overestimating the demand for getting your genitals altered by prison doctors. And also the demand for recovering from genital surgery while you're in fucking jail. Yeah, right.

Convalescence. Yeah. Well, but also like maybe this is more of a problem with our health care system that doesn't ensure this shit rather than our prison system. Right. Look, it's not just that you're an idiot, Tony. It's that you're a dangerous idiot stop it and in matrimony shot news tonight marilyn newey wed brellin bowman saved her father the trouble of probing for her hymen on her wedding night with a certificate of purity assuring him that his psychologically damaging effort to control independent expression of her

sexuality were not in vain she later posted a picture online clearly under the mistaken impression that giving the bride's father a carfax for her vagina at the wedding was not of her sexuality were not in vain. She later posted a picture online, clearly under the mistaken impression that giving the bride's father a Carfax for her vagina at the wedding was not creepy as fuck. See, Dad? Just to the side of the left labia, the engraving that says,

nobody was here with a Z. Told you I was pure. See? Look at it. Look closer. Now, in case the concept of certificates of hymenal integrity don't quite make you cringe, I should point out that the certificate was signed by a doctor who apparently checked.

Her hymen was notarized. Of course, the unavoidable consequence of this is a message to all the ladies out there who have used their genitals for pleasure purposes that they are impure and of course the doctor needs to see a hymen so rape counts as impurity too as do all the other non-penis ways a hymen can break apparently she got connotarized fantastic and finally tonight from the commodus operandi file according to a recent headline at the Christian website CharismaNews.com, quote, Obama now officially forcing girls to share showers with boys. Oh, fuck off. Translated back into reality, a school district in Chicago, Illinois, is doing their best to deny

equal rights to transgender students, despite a law against doing that, which the president did not create because that's not how our government works. Yeah, you'll notice the POTUS's quota for scrotums in every commode is more than just bogus. It shows us the lowest ferocious psychosis, the hopeless misfocus these bigoted boneheads create. Oh, I'm sorry.

I'm going to interview Baba Brinkman in a few minutes, and I have to warm up in case he wants to rap battle. Oh, nice. Stretch rapping. Exactly. Exactly. You just never know. Yeah.

Drop a few mics. Just get ready. All right. So here's what happened. Apparently, a bunch of awful transphobic parents convinced district officials to impose a rule at Township High School requiring transgender students to use separate and therefore by definition unequal bathroom facilities. Yes. Because of all the raping that would otherwise occur. Apparently, I guess.

Well, they got rightfully sued by a trans female student who was barred from the girls locker room. of losing federal funding for violating Title IX laws about gender equality, the district recently responded with a letter stating their intention to continue the illegal discrimination. Well, you know what? The problem here is that this development threatens to make forced group nudity for teenagers awkward. Just like all across the board. Why do we still do this? Either way, this story from Char charisma news brings up an interesting dinner table conversation about president obama and his plan to facilitate more transgender rape scenarios in public schools and that means we're going to need 30 seconds on the clock as you might have guessed

titles for obama's disturbing new line of kiddie porn that's probably the end game here okay sorry in advance um okay so kevin spacey's already got some evil democratic president cred so i'm thinking about midnight in the kindergarten of good and evil to start off hopefully what about um pubic sector growth bear force one oh nice nice maybe Mohammed molesting mo problems black cast what about the trans PP

piddle diddle little big pointers or maybe Hawaii 5 why oh picture it written out picture it written out all right

about the Baracki Horror Picture Show. Let's do the sex crime warp again. Yes, of course. But I don't want to give O-Man too much credit here because this is all just a follow-up to George W.'s Yo Child's Cleft Behind, which itself was just a follow-up to Bill Clinton's classic I-Petaphilia Pain. I kind of like that one. I'll admit. Thanks. All right. I got one that one, I'll admit. Thanks. All right, I got one more.

I got one more. What about, what about like a slogan? Up with hope, down with grope. The last we can. Yeah, there we go. I'm cheering that I'm going to hell. There should be a hell just so that I can go to it. And with regrets that we already used the two girls, one sippy cup joke when we did

kindergarten sodomite shit porn book titles back in episode 125. We'll close out the headlines for tonight. Heath, thanks as always. Smash Brothers. And when we come back. 64, original. Papa Brinkman will be here

for what might just be the first conversation in history between two people who have independently asked themselves, shit, what rhymes with post-modernism?

I'm really excited to welcome my next guest to the show. Baba Brinkman is a transformative hip-hop artist, a scholar, and an award-winning playwright who draws his inspiration from academic fields ranging from classic literature to computational biology. He's appeared on The Rachel Maddow Show, BCIT News, and BBC Sunday Morning Live, and he shared the stage with such scientific luminaries as Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins. He joins us tonight to discuss his newest album, The Rap Guide to Religion. Baba, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for having me on. I don't know if I've ever been described as transformative before, but I like it.

Awesome, awesome. I'm glad to be the first. So before we talk about the new album, I want to talk about you, because before you, I don to talk about you. Because before you, I don't think that white Canadian hip hop peer reviewed science rapper was a job. No, I definitely invented that one. Awesome. And I'm always fascinated by people who say, Hey, I'm going to do this thing that doesn't exist for a living, and then actually make that work. So if you don't mind, tell us how this niche came about for you. Well, I mean, like, in a way,

it's a job that other people do, because I'm just a rapper. I just happen to tackle subjects in my lyrics that are quite distinct from what you would hear in most rap. But in terms of the form, you know, it's beats, rhymes, and life. It's hooks and choruses and 16 bar verses and throw your hands in the air and good production and sampling voices. And all the craftsmanship side of it, I take straight up from hip-hop. And that's my background. I've been rapping since I was a teenager. I've been just a sort of disciple of the art form since way back. I'm 37 now, so I guess I've been rapping for almost 20 years.

But there was a point at which um you know I was kind of like how do I distinguish myself in the game how do I have a unique identity clearly I can't be a gangster I can't talk about being a drug dealer or shooting guns or any of this stuff because I'm from Canada and I'm you know I grew up in a fairly sheltered uh lifestyle and I was a kind of a bookworm, you know, so it's like either, either being a bookworm and being a rapper is impossible or requires me to be fake, or maybe I could be a rapper about the things that I'm fascinated by in my books. So I decided to go with that third way and just sort of put it out there and see what happened.

And it turns out there's an audience for this stuff people want to be intellectually stimulated um so i started with literature i did the canterbury tales uh and then uh the next one was uh the origin of species and that got me into rapping about evolution and then that tipped me into all these other sort of related science subjects and my rap guide to religion is kind of a sequel or an offshoot of the rap guide to evolution because it's really all about evolution and darwin it's just about specifically how evolutionary theory can help us understand what religion is and the forms that it takes and where it comes from and what it does for people or does to people and how in what context that might be uh desirable or undesirable so you know that that's sort of the the path that i took is took is just chasing ideas down the rabbit hole, but always with the purpose of I'm going to be a rap artist and tell my story.

My story just turns out to be a little bit more complicated. Yeah, and I find that really interesting because it should just be that. It should just be this is a guy rapping about what he's passionate about. But when I hear educational science rap, it brings back memories of cartoons they played for me in fourth grade that started with stuff like, my name is MC Chloroplast and I'm here to say. So I wonder if that's something you've had to overcome,

this feeling that people have that things can't be both educational and genuinely entertaining. Yeah, well, I know that is a widespread expectation, and that comes up a lot because people just assume that that's what educational rap sounds like. But I think I'd like to describe my stuff as incidentally educational because I don't want its primary purpose to be about teaching. I want its primary purpose to be about just stimulating ideas and

being entertaining. But I know my stuff is used by professors and teachers to teach in classrooms, and you can get a lot of information from it. But my main thing is I want to entertain people who are entertained by brain food and being intellectually stimulated. And in that sense, the education value is just a sort of incidental necessity, but I'm not rapping to teach. I'm teaching to rap. That's awesome, man. That's awesome.

Now, I think my favorite aspect of the album really was, because I don't find the theological questions very interesting. Is there a God? No, we can move on. But what your album really focused on, as you already mentioned, is the interesting stuff. What is religion? Why is religion? Where does it come from? So three-part question, what is religion? Why is religion? And where does it come from? Religion is a collection of behaviors that are shared beliefs and practices associated with interacting with or orienting towards

supernatural beings or agents that's my definition of it i think if there's no supernatural in it most people wouldn't recognize it as religion and if only one person does it you're safe to call it mania right but if enough people do it then it ceases to be insanity and becomes religion. And why is it? Well, I think there's a whole suite of evolutionary benefits that have been associated with it, but most of them have to do with collective belief becomes a badge of membership that allows you to cooperate with people and overcome the free rider problem. So there's a group level adaptation benefit that comes from religion where groups of people that are in deep trust with each other can accomplish more than

people that are more atomized or in suspicion of each other and it became a sort of scaffolding allowing civilizations to to scale up and people to accomplish larger scale projects that's one side of it another is that it's it's partially a side effect of our social cognition which gives us intuitions and instincts about there being invisible entities around us which is really just like a safety strategy it's better to assume they're there and have the turnout not to be then vice versa evolutionarily speaking and what was the third question again and well i guess you could sort of tackle that one as well it was sort of the where does it come from question and and uh you know just to break in when you're talking about evolution there's no distinction between why does it exist and where does it come from

and one of the really interesting points you made in the album i think you made it best in the in the tune not andrew murray is that even today you can see religion conferring a survival advantage by encouraging a lot higher birth rate. So that kind of scares the hell out of me. Now, it feels like it took the whole album for you to make this larger point. So I hate to ask you to sort of summarize it in the span of an interview, but can you give us sort of an overview of the whole concept of adaptive religion? Well, sure. And there's multiple strands that I trace in the album. So I've mentioned two of them already. One is that religion actually isn't adaptive, but it is produced by other things that are adaptive, i.e. our social sort of cognition instincts that allow us to

interact with other people sort of misfire and have a side effect, which is that we have imaginary gods that we try to interact with as well. So that's the spandrel or byproduct version, which accounts for, I think, a good portion of religion's initial origins. My view that I present in the album is that religion probably started in its embryonic form as a side effect and then take on adaptive benefits over time, one of which is group solidarity and overcoming the free rider problem and overcoming selfishness. And the other is promoting reproductive fecundity and that's what i talk about in andrew murray religious people do on average have more babies than secular people and if religion just had the effect of encouraging reproduction and there was no other

effect associated with it it would be sufficient uh to say that it had an evolutionary benefit just because of that and and you know as I say in the song, Andrew Murray, if beliefs can motivate you to an action that's adaptive, there's no reason those beliefs need to be factually accurate. And so you can believe false things that lead to adaptive benefits, and those beliefs will, the cognitive architecture that manages to support those beliefs will be favored by evolution. Although, if that freaks you out, the one thing that I, that manages to support those beliefs will be favored by evolution.

Although, you know, if that freaks you out, the one thing that I – I say this in my show, and I really should have put a line in the album about it. I didn't end up doing that. But when I do it as a live show, I mention it, which is just that, you know, religious people have more babies, but it's okay because religions have more apostates, and that balances things out, you know. They breed more prolifically, and then half of them end up leaving the church and becoming secular, whereas people that grow up secular

don't tend to go find religion when they're adults, but it does go the other way a lot more. I wish you had included that because I've sort of been wrestling with this kind of like, oh shit, are we doomed kind of mind state since I listened to the album. So now that really is interesting. So then what lessons should

we take from that as movement atheists? Is our goal then just to make secularism as attractive as possible to these potential apostates? Yeah, I think just making the argument is an important part of it. I mean, I think a lot of people converted because they read one of the new atheist books and thought, okay, this is just intellectually very persuasive stuff. But I think that'll only get you halfway there. And I think the other side of it is, you know, a charm offensive, putting a positive face on it, the sort of Hemant Mehta approach of friendly atheism, and also just showing that we have as much to offer in most of, or if not all of the domains that religion purports to provide some benefit for people, that there are communities based around secular values and,

and, and common purposes and, and there are, you know, social circles and there are works of art and there are forms of inspiration and we can draw off from our scientific understanding of the world and it's, and the universe and its vastness. And you know,

that basically everything people say, well, you need religion because you get this from it and that's good every one of those things can be filled without uh fulfilled without the need for a supernatural belief but on the other hand and i do say this in the final track of the album belief in the supernatural carries a lot of nasty baggage with it and and that's often associated with these sort of bronze age scriptures that have all kinds of morally reprehensibleensible imperatives in them that people still think that they're supposed to follow today. That's just, you know, that's unnecessary baggage. So that's why I advocate for, you know,

I don't even advocate for atheism, although I personally, I am an atheist, and I'm happy to talk about that and represent for it. But I think advocating for an atheist world is pie in the sky. I think it's a long way away. And I think the religious instincts that we have are going to make that very difficult. So I advocate for something more along the lines of religious naturalism, where people have the religious affiliations, communities, experiences, stories, songs, whatever, but they have lost their belief. They've lost a literal belief in the supernatural. As soon as you lose a literal belief in the supernatural, religion

becomes defanged and a lot more innocuous. Now, I know I have some listeners based on my inbox that are going to take issue with that. And I would just encourage them to listen to the album and listen to you present all of the sort of evidence because I don't want to say that the album is scholarly just because I don't want to say that the album is scholarly just because I don't want to leave people with the impression that it's inaccessible. It's super accessible, but it is scholarly in the sense that it sort of presents a thesis. Then you go through the album, you know, backing that up with data, and then you sort of tie it together with a conclusion at the end.

And it's really, you know, one of the few albums that I think has to be experienced in totem to really be understood. Yeah, I would encourage that as well. And if people want to go one further, if you go to music.bubbabrinkman.com, you can not only download the album, you can also read all the lyrics. And for each of the songs, I posted a further reading link or two

that has links to the original sources from which I draw all of the ideas and research and material that went into writing the raps. So if people, you know, before people take umbrage with something I say in all of the ideas and research and material that went into writing the raps. So before people take umbrage with something I say in one of the songs, they should look at the sources and see where it's coming from and see whether they're disagreeing with my interpretation of the data or the research or if they're disagreeing with the research itself. Right on, man. Right on. Awesome. That's good to know. I definitely am going to

be perusing your further reading suggestions so do you have any thoughts on what the next rap guide is going to be yeah i'm working on it now the next rap guide is going to be about climate change oh awesome yeah i've written it already i premiered it as a one-man show at the edinburgh fringe festival in scotland um got some great reviews there and now i'm just in the phase of sort of rewriting and revamping it and and I haven't started the recording process yet except I put a one of the songs is on YouTube actually but yeah it's going to be you know that one will be less uh sort of evolutionary religion and science and

faith kind of base but it you know it it takes a scientific understanding of the world to to realize why climate change is a major issue. Then you get into the economics and the politics of it, which cuts across religious belief and cuts across whether you're associated with atheism, secularism, whatever. There's atheists that think climate change is not a problem, and then you got the Pope that's advocating for doing something about it. So it's interesting, the sort of Venn diagram of overlapping and conflicting interests that you find with these various projects yeah yeah no they're definitely looking forward to it i'm sure i will learn something from it so i'm dying to give the audience a

chance to hear some of your stuff so we're going to fade to music here this is a track from the new album entitled religion evolves which i consider to be something of a thesis statement of the album um is there anything you want to tell the audience about this one before we uh before we spin it yeah well this is this is sort of like the starting point. The various hypotheses that the album explores are all outlined one by one in this song and the sort of challenge at hand of what are we trying to explain and what's our strategy for how to explain it. So if you're intrigued by any of the ideas in Religion Evolves, then you go listen to the rest of the album and you'll find them fleshed out in full song form but also the important thing that i wanted to start out saying and you mentioned this before is that we're not playing with theology ideas here so i'm starting by clearing the table and saying we're going to assume that religion isn't attributable

to divine providence and if we've already taken that possibility off the table, what is left in terms of interesting questions to ask about it, if it evolves, how, why, where, under what circumstances, and that's what this track is about sketching out. Awesome, man. Awesome. Well, thanks a ton for giving us some of your time today. And thanks for giving us yet another counterexample for the apologists who say that science cannot inspire great art. Okay. And how about we just add to that and also for the apologists that say rap isn't great art. Oh, amen, brother, amen. And without further ado,

Religion Evolves from Bubba Brinkman's new Rap Guide to Religion. Religion evolves. You can watch it. It evolves. I spent my whole life perplexed by religiousness Front doorstep debating with Jehovah's Witnesses I was a teenaged empirical thinker A spiritual seeker Obsessed with rap

I considered it lyrical research This was the medium that I could think and speak in Flipping ridiculous figures of speech over beats like every weekend, my CD collection became my personal gospel, I was an apostle, like Thomas wondering was it impossible to rock shows and still be thoughtful, so paradoxical, speaking in tongues, all over the drums like Pentecostals, I figured if I could master the craft I could start a new religion, devoid of superst superstition a descendant of secular humanism with the ecstatic rituals of ancient mystical shamanistical visions except based on philosophical naturalism which means no counterfactual claims no supernatural nothing but reason and evidence

troops salute the rational in my religion the truth is sacred and science adjudicates it and meditation is cool if you want to find your buddha nature but human nature exists too and it's not Thank you. or whether it benefits all. Adaptive problems are gonna get solved. Religion evolves. The bigger the scale of a society, the bigger the gods. People get along when someone's watching them. Religion evolves. We'll send a rocket on a manned mission to Mars. If the holy wars don't kill us first,

let's hope religion evolves. I'll turn my religion upon itself like an irroborous religion evolved it adapts ask a biologist a cognitive psychologist a sociologist an anthropologist a behavioral ecologist religion is all of this two or three new religions get founded a day they're just like rap artists most of them won't be around in a decade They all compete for space and followers and human devotion Religion evolves, cause many are called but few are chosen Approximately 10,000 religions are currently active So forgive me if I don't ask which exact version you practice

Chances are, flip of a coin is probably Abrahamic Half the planet is either Christian or Jewish or Islamic We can track the demographics, study the epidemiology, but human beings have been religious since before the Holocene 12,000 years ago. Agricultural revolution prior to that, most of our significant evolution. Small scale societies surviving in the Pleistocene had a strong incentive to unite like a hive of bees. Religion is a device for binding people tribally. And Thank you. benefits all. Adaptive problems are gonna get solved. Religion evolves. The bigger the scale of a society, the bigger the gods.

People get along when someone's watching them. Religion evolves. We'll send a rocket on a manned mission to Mars if the holy wars don't kill us first. Let's hope religion evolves. Religion isn't evolved in mental technology, definitely. But did it Thank you. or theory of mind, which means reading people tactically. Like, I know what you're thinking. Who the hell is Bubba Brinkman? Is he some kind of cross between a prof and juvenile delinquent?

Yeah, that's right. That's what I am. Now, let's get back to the question at hand. I have a conscious mind, and I'll try to predict your thoughts as best I can. And I predict you've never considered what religion is adapted for. Or if you have, then I predict you've never heard it rapped before. So how do I know it's adaptive? I mean, it could be random drift. Outro Music or it might be an adaptation for maximizing descendants it might benefit individuals or it might benefit whole groups or it might be the invention of cynical priests trying to control

you or it might be a belly button byproduct or adaptive in the past and maladaptive in the present those are good questions to ask and science can find the answers and the answers are non-obvious except for the answer to where religion doesn't come from divine providence Did it give you goosebumps? It gave me goosebumps. It's okay to get goosebumps. Anyway, that was Religion Evolves from Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Religion. If you want to hear more, check out BabaBrinkman.com. That's B-A-B-A Brinkman.com.

You can hunt him up on iTunes, or you can check the show notes for episode 141 at SkatingAheist.com for more information. Gather your children close to you, for it is now time for Lucinda Lusion's Bible Horror Stories for Kids. Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho. Gather round, boys and ghouls, and turn the lights down low, because tonight we'll be opening our Bibles to the book of Luke for a good old-fashioned horror story. And like all good horror stories, this one starts in a graveyard. Once upon a time, Jesus was wandering the lands of the tiny little spot on earth that the Abrahamic gods give a shit about, and curing people of all the horrible diseases and disabilities he had inflicted them with.

So after healing a minuscule fraction of the people he'd blinded and struck lame, he took a boat to the land of the Gerasenes, which I don't care that I'm pronouncing wrong. Well, it turns out the people there had unwisely situated a graveyard right beside the shore. Because as soon as Jesus and his apostles came ashore, a naked man came running out of the graveyard, yelling at them in a strange language that none of them could understand. Of course, while the apostles were busy soiling their robes, Jesus just walked up to the man. After all, if anybody would know what caused mental illness, it would be the guy who created it, after taking human form as his own son, right? Well, Jesus knew exactly what caused mental illness, boys and girls.

Demons! That's right, demons! demons. That's right, demons. So if your Aunt June thinks she lives in the French Revolution, remember, it's not that she has a chemical imbalance in her brain or anything. It's that demons from hell have infested her mind. Anyway, Jesus asked the man his name, and the man answered back, I am legion, which doesn't make any sense from a grammatical perspective, but it's creepy as fuck. Well, Jesus realized that there must be a bunch of demons inside this man, so he reached in and he pulled all of the demons out so that he could banish them to hell. But before he could, the demons asked Jesus for a favor. Jesus was a pretty nice guy, so he at least decided to hear the demons out. What do you want, Jesus asked.

Instead of going back to hell, could you maybe just put us in those pigs over there? We could possess them and this guy can have his body back. Well, that sounded like a fair deal to Jesus, so he agreed and put the demons in the pigs. But before the demons could even say, whew, at least we didn't have to go back to hell, Jesus used his poor sign Jedi powers to make all the pigs run over the edge of a cliff so that they would die and the demons would go straight to hell anyway. So the whole swine of pigs with their pudgy little faces and their curly little tails died in a bloody, broken pile on the rocks of the seashore for no reason, and nobody even got to eat the bacon. The end. According to a recent report from the Secular Policy Institute, tax exemptions for churches

cost the U.S. taxpayer approximately $71 billion a year. That's about the cost of a manned mission to Mars annually. But my next guest is here to remind us that churches cost us a hell of a lot more than that. Jeff McLeod is the founder of Autism Hero Designs, and he's been an advocate and an activist for the autistic community for a number of years. Jeff, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me on. Now, the main reason I asked you on today is to talk about the Genesis 2 Church of Health

and Healing. So tell us, if you will, what makes this one bad even for a church? The list goes on. What they're promoting is two different types of basic cures. Now, they're not specific to autism. Their site actually claims that their products are able to cure 95% of all illnesses in the world. Now, I want to be clear on this site too, because they actually never say, at least anywhere that I could find, that this cures all these things. They're very careful about their wording to not directly say that, but to imply it and also to say we won't treat anything. We will teach you how to treat things, which absolves them legally from the obligations regarding people who offer treatment.

Well, their closest to that is the people that finish the course will know how to fix 95% of the diseases of mankind. Exactly. So basically the solution is laundry detergent at best. It's water and bleach. Right. And I would imagine most people who have been involved in the skeptical community for a while are familiar with these guys. This is the miracle mineral solution. Now, internationally, there has been a ton of legal pressure here

from a number of different sources. I've read stories about people being convicted for selling this stuff, convicted for bringing it into their country, convicted for promoting it. I've seen where parents have been convicted for giving it to their children. The international medical and legal community is nearly united against this stuff. So how are they still operating on any level? It's each country has their own laws on how things can be done in the US. Basically, you just set up a church.

That's all you have to do. Wow. All right. So now this is industrial bleach. This is basically paint thinner that they're giving people as a medicine. And I'm almost scared to ask you this question because I'm afraid the answer may be no. But is this the worst bullshit autism cure that you've come across? As far as the worst, I honestly would have to say yes because of the actual physiological damage that it does to children and adults.

Now, there's a difference between the MMS and the CD autism. MMS, if you have cancer, if you have AIDS, everything they cure, you take that orally. The unfortunate aspect of CD autism is it's enemas. Oh my, so they're shoving bleach in the kid's ass. That is correct. That is correct. So I think when it really comes down to it, the CD autism, which is the bleach enemas, which actually they claim releases parasites. And the parasites are what causes the autism. And what's actually coming out of the child is their intestinal lining.

Oh, my God. And then you have to pay extra money to have that intestinal lining sent off to their laboratories, which is a homeopathic doctor. And he looks at it and says, yep, yep, that's autism coming out. That's autism parasites. Wow. Right. That's what's coming out. And so they get so excited that, you know, now you're looking for the sports bottle to shove in your kid's ass.

You want to hook it up to a truck and a hose because you think you're going to get it all out. And realistically, you're killing people. Right. And kids have died. And the FDA is starting to try to crack down on it. But the fact of the matter is once you set up as a church, the state will not touch a church. And as a bonus, they're tax exempt.

Wow. Well, that's a way too depressing thing to close the interview on. And we only have a few minutes left. So if you don't mind, could you tell us a little bit about Autism Hero Designs, like what it is

and what inspired you to start it? Well, about a year ago, I started looking around online for autism-related products, some shirts, some things. My kids are on the spectrum, and I want them to know that it's okay. There's nothing wrong with that. The line different, not less is extremely important to the autism community. So they're not less of anything. They're just a little bit different.

They have some different ways of thinking and a different way of seeing things. So I started to try to find different designs or different t-shirts, hats, other things that I could come up with. And everything I found was either extremely overpriced or just wasn't what I was looking for. So I got together with a friend of mine over the pond, and he came up with an amazing design. And then once that started, we just couldn't stop. We went through a Batman parody, Wonder Woman parody, Captain America parody. Eventually, I started getting a lot of questions about how do I order shirts?

How do I get different products? And I wasn't planning on doing that. Well, over the past eight months, I've been researching the equipment that I would need to do it right. So I decided to start a Kickstarter. And it just went live two days ago. We're already at 5% funding, believe it or not. Eventually, I'd like to go to a 501c3 status so that I can donate some of the proceeds and help out the community a lot more.

But as of right now, I'm working on my Kickstarter, trying to get it going, trying to get it funded so that we can get where we need to be and get the right equipment so we can continue on. Awesome, man. Well, of course, if anybody's interested in supporting Jeff's work, you'll find a link to more information on the show notes for this episode, including a link to his Kickstarter page.

Best of luck to you, man. And thanks for being a part of the show tonight. It's been an honor and a pleasure. Before we drop the mic tonight, I wanted to let you know, if you can't get enough of me talking, I did some extra talking this week. Thomas from Atheistically Speaking invited me on to share my opinion on the present field of presidential candidates. That was a lot of fun. We'll have links to that conversation on the show notes for this episode, of course, or you can just look up Atheistically Speaking on iTunes or Stitcher or whatever it is that you use.

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 on the lookout for a new episode of Godawful Movies on Tuesday morning at 8 a.m. Eastern. The scheduled episode of The Skeptocrat will not air this week because of some family issues that Heath is dealing with, but we'll be back in production with that one as soon as possible. I appreciate your patience on that one. Obviously,

I can't end the show without thanking Heath for being a first-rate friend and co-host. I need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lusions for being a first-rate wife and co-co-host. I need to thank Jeff McCloud for joining us tonight. Again, you'll find links to Autism Hero Designs on the show notes. Big thanks also to Kenny Weiland of liberalgeek.com for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. You'll also find his website linked on the show notes as well. And of course, big thanks to the world's finest white Canadian hip-hop peer-reviewed science rapper. I cannot recommend his new album enough. I heard a rumor that you liked thought-provoking witty wordplay about religion, and the Rap Guide to Religion offers it in spades. This is honestly

some of the best lyrical work that I've ever heard. Again, check out bababrinkman.com. That's B-A-B-A, or just check out the link on the show notes. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most honored hominids, Malcolm, Sin, David, Jacqueline, Timothy, Scott with one T, Adrian, Jeff, Larry, Daniel, Bill, Scott with two Ts, Blake, and Chetil. Malcolm, Sin, David, and Jacqueline, whose brains work so fast they make quantum entanglement jealous,

Timothy, Scott with one T, Adrian, Jeff, and Larry, who have enough gravitas to create an einstein ring and daniel bill scott with two t's blake and the norwegian dude whose name i'm really sorry for butchering whose tongues are so dexterous that the vibrator industry lists them as direct competitors together these 14 freakishly fuckable friends have fostered our feeble fortunes to further our feverish fight against the foibles of faith this week by giving us money not everybody has the enviable intellect and genitals it takes to give us money, but if you think your naughty bits are up for the challenge, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended version of each episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side

of the homepage at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help but you fear that the online financial donation thing might alert the shadow government as to your whereabouts, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review on iTunes or your podcast rating vehicle of choice. You can also follow us on Twitter and Facebook. Just don't follow us in real life because that kind of weirds us out. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at SkatingAtheist.com. Where not otherwise noted, all the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly. And yes, I did have my permission.

Also, I had Bob as in for his stuff. Started my eight-game winning streak this week. Nice. So did I. Awesome. So did I.