The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 145: Hellbound Turkey Edition

Episode Date: November 26, 2015

In this week's episode, Texas will get dumber on purpose again, a Florida resident will use gay erections to distract from illegal manger scenes, and Lucinda will join us in almost not reading the bible anymore.

Warning, the following podcast is for mature audiences only, because according to people who do ratings, if you make jokes about poop and say fuck a lot, that means you're mature. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by the new Holiday Toys for manipulative religious parents that like to torment their children with false claims of magical espionage. Inspired by Elf on the Shelf and Mench on a Bench, Creepy Ass Toys presents Jew in a Pew, Gent on a Tile, and Shiite on a Shingle.

Happy holidays. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, I'm Sarah, and I'm the president of the Secular Student Alliance at UC San Diego, and... We did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey men! It's Thursday! It's Turkey Day! And it's the perfect time to engage your family in a friendly discussion of Israel and Palestine. I'll see how that goes. I'm no illusions.

I'm Heath Enright. And from New York, New York, and Valdosta, Georgia, this is The Skating Atheist. On this week's episode, the state of Texas intentionally gets stupider again. A Floridian man distributes demonic gay erections to distract from illegal manger scenes. And Lucinda will join us in almost not reading the Bible anymore. But first, the diatribe. You know what? It's not even that I'm pissed that they want to argue with me. I'm pissed that they want to argue with me poorly.

You know, they just want to throw arguments at me. I'd be happy to argue with them, but only if it's one of those arguments where, you know, I get to say shit and then they say shit that remains relevant in light of the shit that I just said, but they don't want to do that. They want me to say, you know what, you're right, without evoking an invisible omnipresent atemporal all-powerful creator that loves me, this just doesn't make sense, does it? I mean, look, if they actually wanted to talk about the origins of the universe, I'd be stoked. You know, if I knew that every year at Thanksgiving my brother-in-law was going to get three beers in them and start talking about cosmology,

I'd be looking forward to that shit. You know, where does the universe come from is a fascinating question, as long as it doesn't come with the, if there's no God, then preamble. But that's not the conversation they're after at all. They're just flabbergasted that a person can be an atheist without having a PhD in cosmology and evolutionary biology, and solving all the remaining scientific mysteries in both fields, and all the other ones, and also possessing the ability to fully explain those answers to a layperson in 12 words or less. So with apologies to all of our listeners outside the U.S. for whom this is just Thursday, and also I guess to those lucky few whose annual family gatherings don't include a three theological debate minimum, but the rest of us are in need of catharsis. In fact, I'd, to those lucky few whose annual family gatherings don't include a three theological debate minimum,

but the rest of us are in need of catharsis. In fact, I'd imagine at least a few of you are sneaking away from your creationist cousins right now and listening to this episode while you're pretending to take a shit in some desperate effort to maintain your sanity for the next three hours without screaming, you worship a magic zombie carpenter, you fuck! Your neurons are ashamed of you. They tell people that they're somebody else's neurons in their dating profiles. If the aliens

came, all the rational people would try to fool you into thinking there was a 50% off sale on Duck Dynasty merchandise at Walmart or something so you wouldn't be around to embarrass us. Just imagine if all of our arguments were that stupid. You know, imagine if every time a Christian told an atheist that they believed in God, we demanded a tweet-sized explanation of precisely how many angels could dance on the

head of a pin, and then wholly rejected their worldview based on their inability to satisfy us with their answer. Now, you know, look, I know that some Christians have pretty intelligent arguments. Well, I know some Christians have well-thought-out arguments. I just don't happen to be related to any of those Christians. The ones I get to spend the day with are more of the, then why are there still monkeys variety? And even though I'm writing and recording this before Thanksgiving, I can already tell you exactly how it'll go down. It's going to be my brother-in-law first.

I'm already going to be on edge because fuck the lions and their inept bullshit. And he'll say, so if you don't believe in God, where did life come from? Now, the answer is, I don't know. or more accurately, we don't know, as a species, which is the most awesome answer in all of science. That's where all the fun theories and discoveries are, you know, right at the threshold of our knowledge. But that's because the answer is, I don't know, so let's find out. You know, look, despite what Ken Ham would have you believe, we don't know isn't the same as we have no fucking idea.

We have a lot of ideas. We don't have enough experimental evidence to say this is probably how it happened. But there are plenty of plausible theories to explain the various steps between chemistry and biology. We just don't know which one of them is right or if any of them are right. But science isn't just flailing its arms yelling, where the fuck did all this biology come from? They're doing science. They're trying to answer that question. And what's more, they'll succeed at it. You know, if you asked me 50 years ago, I couldn't tell you how cell walls develop. But today we got a pretty solid handle on that. 100 years ago, I couldn't tell you where

amino acids come from. 100 years before that, I wouldn't have been able to definitively rule out spontaneous generation. And 500 years ago, I wouldn't even know what a fucking cell was. So run the tape forward and what do you see? Eventually, we fill in the fucking gaps you're trying so desperately to cram your God into. 100 years from now, your answer is still going to be the same God did it that it was 100 years before. And in the meantime, science will have figured out the answer, synthesized it in a lab, and gone to court against your ass over whether synthetic life has a soul. And my brother-in-law's 22nd century analog will be asking where time comes from

or why life uses left-handed amino acids or whatever the hell the next gap is. And that's what makes this so disingenuous. I mean, how thoroughly would I have to explain life's origins before my brother-in-law gave up on the God-did-it hypothesis? After all, look, this is a big question. And like all big questions, what he's really asking is a bunch of small ones with an economy of question marks. So how many of those small answers do we need to have? You know, how big a gap between the stages do you need to fit a whole God in there? Because if answering

your question won't change your position, then it's kind of pointless for me to spend the next half hour of my life trying to explain spontaneous formation of lipid vesicles in the prebiotic ocean, isn't it? And it's not like there aren't consequences to this God of the gaps bullshit. Using God to spackle over the holes in human knowledge isn't just intellectually dishonest, it also discourages inquiry. And even the most liberal apologist has to concede that, because the pursuit of knowledge does not give a fuck where you're hiding your superstition, and ultimately it's going to be harder to fill in those gaps if they're all gunked up with a bunch of Jesus nonsense. Hell, I just finished Robert M. Hazen's audio course on the origins of life. Highly recommend it. But even in that academic medium, we have to waste several

minutes in several lectures apologizing for the correct answer to where did life come from not being God's love. I mean, they act like God is the first runner up in the shit we know pageant, but an answer with no explanatory power is worse than no answer. And the fewer unknowns that we have left, the more vociferously the theists are going to defend them. Meanwhile, cutting edge science is often incredibly expensive and a lot of it's publicly funded. So any population with a vested interest in not knowing something

is going to cause a problem for the people trying to figure it out. Look, we all share that same deep-seated urge to know. It's baked right into our DNA. That urge that drives me to listen to audio courses about astrobiology is the same one that drives my brother-in-law to wave the question away

with a quick sprinkling of mysterious ways. He needs an answer. You know, and the concepts of the cutting edge of origin of life science are crazy difficult to wrap your head around. So I'll freely admit that even forcing yourself to accept a self-contradictory concept like God is easier than actually learning shit. What's more, there are plenty of people offering to take that burden of inquiry off your shoulders for the low, low tithe of 10%. They'll circumvent your natural curiosity, build a nice little

compartment where you could imperfectly sequester all the shit you don't get. But at best, the compartment is imperfect because the urge to know is baked in. That's huge. And ultimately, the God answer is insufficient even for a believer, which is why ultimately I'm just going to bite down on my fucking frustration as best I can and spend the next half hour of my life trying to explain the spontaneous formation of lipid vesicles in the prebiotic ocean. And whether he likes it or not, by the end of the answer, he's going to know more than he did when he asked, and I'll have chipped away a tiny flake of his intellectual need for God answers.

And then I'll go tell my cousin why there are still monkeys again. They're talking about you, Jesus. May I interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin? Joining me for headlines tonight is my fantasy football arch nemesis until after the Monday night game, Heath Enright. Heath, are you sure you don't want to maybe roll with Tebow this week? I hear he's making a comeback. Might get signed to a team or something. Fantasy football, clever smack talk rejoinder fantasy football.

Well, biting retort based on word reversal of original rejoinder and or player name pun fantasy football rabble rabble okay in our lead story tonight from the lone star out of 50 file the texas board of education recently voted against having a panel of experts make sure the content of public school textbooks is factually accurate. Against. And yes, I said that correctly. The state that already had easily the worst system for teaching true things to its public school students decided against, against having knowledgeable people read through their textbooks and remove the false things. Yes. They did that.

Pro-correct cannot be assumed. And let's be clear here, because we've known the Texas Board of Education was in the anti-correct camp for quite some time now, but at least they used to pretend they were pro-true. I mean, at least they used to say, no, no, I'm pretty sure Moses really was one of the founding fathers, and that's why we want it in the textbook. But now they're just saying, hey, you know what, man? True stuff isn't Jesus. So no, we'll be having none of the true.

Thank you. That's what's actually happening. So in response to the board's refusal to consider the truthiness of their books, Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network released the following statement. Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network released the following statement, quote, with all the controversies that have made textbook adoptions in Texas look like a clown show. It is mind boggling and downright embarrassing that the board voted this down, unquote. And, you know, I understand what she's trying to say, but let's be fair to the clowns. A troop of clowns reviewing the textbooks would be a significant step forward for them. Or even just like a group of clowns staring at the children instead of textbooks, because at least that would be information neutral. I mean, you wouldn't think that you knew history at the end of getting stared at by clowns.

You would be ahead of the game. It would be better than a texas public school education but uh unfortunately instead of the clowns the board opted for maintaining their current system of local idiots legislating science and history except now there's going to be two groups of local idiots doing that oh good in the existing board of mostly ignorant rednecks, there will now be a review panel chosen by mostly ignorant rednecks. Oh, great. Specifically, the panel will be vetted on their expertise by the Texas Commissioner

of Education, who gets appointed by the governor. And that's Greg Abbott. Oh. The same guy that thought the U.S. military was trying to invade Texas earlier this year and turn it into part of America. Right. I guess was what he was worried about. Oh, you know, maybe he's just a reverse psychic. Because, I mean, we did do that once.

I mean, honestly, how the fuck would he know about that? He went to school in Texas. So he'd have no way of having that information in advance. Texas. So he'd have no way of having that information in advance. And in Holy See No Evil news tonight, the Vatican has taken a bold stand against honesty this week with their decision to try five people

including two Italian reporters for leaking secret documents that threaten the Holy See's reputation as a competent and well-managed international child rape cabal. Yeah, they've worked hard on that. Right. The fear of competence. Yeah yeah that's important to them well but judicially speaking it's clearly more important than punishing child rapists while

they're still alive obviously because they're doing this so according to prosecutors three vatican officials formed what they dubbed an organized criminal association which i guess just sounds more actionable than three mouthy assholes with the goal of embarrassing the vatican by saying true stuff about it which which is apparently illegal in Vatican City. Sounds like they got a book policy similar to Texas, actually. Yeah, similar. More top down than bottom up, but similar goals anyway. Now, some of you might be wondering how a group that is the villain in a new movie about raping children and then covering that up could have a more pressing PR concern. But the revelation in these two books goes way beyond pointing out what an ineffectual fuck-up Pope Francisco kid has been.

Included in the revelations are details on how much it costs to get your own saint, almost half a million dollars in some cases. That even means. How much of the money they raised for the Roman Pediatric Hospital that actually ended up going to refurbish some Cardinal's mansion. That's almost a quarter of a million dollars. And how much the Vatican's real estate holdings are actually worth. About seven times what they say they are. And by the way, that does not include some large revenue streams like owning Europe's largest gay spa. There's that.

Selling Nazi gold. I mean, they can afford to silence a lot more rape victims. And they'll need to. At the current price. Yeah. Now, for their part, the Vatican has long held that books with facts in them are nothing but trouble and is simply offering a continuation of their on-again, off-again inquisition policy. The two authors face four to eight years in prison,

though it would basically be voluntary since they're Italian citizens and Italy has a much stronger pro-not-lying stance than Vatican City. Just there to be polite, I guess. And in xenophobes paradox news tonight, the House of Representatives voted last week to shut down President Obama's current plan to allow 10,000 Syrian refugees to enter the United States over the next year. The proposed legislation would also tighten up security procedures for any Syrians we do allow into the country, including a new provision that may require a manual prostate exam from the CIA director and two of his deputies. And as much as I'd love to see that porn video go viral, I'm hoping the Senate, which will soon be voting on this as well,

decides to go with national security measures that work statistically and make sense rather than this attempt at clearly just ignorant, bigoted vote grabbing. Well, we should be okay then because when you say works and makes sense, I think of the U.S. Senate. First thing that pops to mind

when those words show up in the same sentence. As long as the entire government doesn't shut down to promote cervical cancer, we should be fine. Right. Anyway, one of those vote grabbers I was talking about is none other than floundering GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush. During a recent radio interview, he explained that we should definitely take on some of the Syrian refugees, but only the Christian ones. And he thinks we can easily screen for this

by looking at names. That's what he fucking said. Yes. For example, you you know if your name is albert albert the syrian that's fine you're in but there's any sort of hyphen or apostrophe after the l you're banned right right yes also if it says genuine christian on your syrian birth certificate you're safe fascinating stuff jeb bush i guess when your dad's the former head of the CIA, you learn sophisticated techniques like that. Republicans just don't get birth certificates. They just don't know how those work, I guess. Yeah. And not to be outdone, Rubio and Kasich want to stop accepting refugees until we develop some kind of a reliable jihad skin test.

And then Ted Cruz wants them to all have to pledge allegiance to Jesus. Andz wants them to all have to pledge allegiance to jesus and trump wants them to all have to wear little badges and the rest of the field just didn't want to let any brown people in regardless of syrianness the entire gop presidential field is against letting syrian muslim refugees not live in the water pretty much awful and in casick instinct news tonight john casick is hard at work reminding liberals that he only seems reasonable because he's usually standing so close to ben carson and donald trump when you see him that helps while chipping in on this desperate attempt to link syrian refugees to the terrorist attack in paris in a non you know this is what they're running

from way casick suggested that we fight back against is terrorism by covertly de-Musliming them. Specifically, he suggested the creation of a new government agency assigned to the task of promoting Judeo-Christian values abroad. Oh, is Halliburton not doing that job anymore? I thought we had them in charge of all that stuff. I mean, what's more Judeo-Christian than Americans making oil profits in Muslim countries? We already have that, right? Yeah, nothing more eagle-y and red, white, and blue. It's redundant.

During a speech last Tuesday at the National Press Club, Kasich addressed the threat of ISIS by quite literally proposing a Christian propaganda department that would be tasked with surreptitiously telling Muslims, Russians, and Chinese folks, how awesome Jesus is. Now, to his credit, this is more of him being stupid than theocratic, because when he was pressed on a definition of Judeo-Christian values, he said he meant things like freedom of speech, democracy, gender equality, and the right to free assembly. So, you know, stuff never remotely mentioned in either testament, and the Christians are generally speaking against those those judeo-christian values the the secular one yeah casick accidentally slips into liberal humanist territory from time to time when he runs out of his prepared talking points and he starts speaking from his conscience can't have that and then he has to be yanked off the stage

by wranglers like the pope that just announced gays are sort of people now or whatever yeah pretty much the american version of that now of course casick passed up on an opportunity to walk back his language in an interview later that day with nbc and news amazingly enough in fact the only part of the constitutionally and thematic department of theological conquest that he felt like he had to kind of tiptoe around in the interview was the fact that the new agency would require a growth in government funding. That would be the problem, yeah. The small government people wouldn't like it. So when asked point blank what his effort to promote Judeo-Christian values says to

the 28% of Americans who are neither Christian nor Jewish, he assured interviewer Peter Alexander that the Muslims would be cool with it, too. He's talked to him. interviewer peter alexander that the muslims would be cool with it too he's talked to him and they know unfortunately there wasn't enough time for a follow-up question about what the 27.1 percent who aren't christian jewish or muslims would think are you fucking kidding me and from the amish wolverine file tonight christianity's favorite ex-manonite ken ham issued a challenge last week to mythBusters co-host Adam Savage. Reeling from his embarrassing patchy defeat in their facial hair contest, and upon hearing that

Savage was visiting Cincinnati, which is very close to Ham's creationist propaganda facility, Australian Joe Dirt posted the following on his Answers in Genesis blog. Quote, I've got news for Adam Savage. The real myth busters are found at the Creation Museum, sick. If Savage came to the Creation Museum, he would meet some academics and scientists, sick, who powerfully bust the myth of molecules to man evolution, sick. End quote. So you hear that epic rap battles of history ken ham versus adam savage it's never been easier than this guys and it never will be again so the

uh the big challenge was a response to savage's remarks during a recent interview in which he very eloquently explained that young earth creationism is so stupid. It's not even worth debunking in response to a question about a potential visit to Ham's so-called museum. Savage had this to say, quote, there's a scientific term, which I really like called not even wrong. And these are ideas that are so far off the mark.

They're not even worth discussing i'm worried about giving oxygen to ideas that are not even wrong lest i lend them credibility as something that's debatable end quote and then he dropped the fucking mic waved his dick and balls in bill nye's face and walked off the set because ken ham only thought that was a dig at him. Ken Ham's just not bright enough to see who he's really insulting there. I love me some Adam Savage. And in paranoid, caucasoid news tonight, if you're still looking for something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, no worries. The Pew Research Center has you covered.

According to their most recent religious landscape survey, the majority of Americans are not white Christians for the first time since we wiped out all the brown people that were trespassing on our country before we got here this data published monday pegged the white christians at 46 percent of the populace down from 55 percent in 2007 so looks like obama's effort to import black muslims while secretly genociding white christians is clearly working that's what pre-Minocta was made for. Dude must be exhausted. Good work, though. No shit.

In a turn even more predictable than Charlie Sheen having HIV, the data also shows that the vast majority of the Republican Party is drawn from that no longer majority. Now, the result of all this, of course, is a dwindling minority with a persecution fetish holding an inordinate amount of power in half of the country's viable political parties. Hard to imagine how there might be any negative consequences stemming from that. So we should be just fine. Well, I cannot wait to see the GOP's awkward attempts at pandering to non-white people.

I'm sure it'll make it all worthwhile. The Republican Party now accepting applicants in eggshell, smoker's teeth, and light molasses. Register now. GOP. Well, and the silver lining, of course, is that there's no non-genocidal way that the demographics shift back in their direction. So, you know, the Jesus is my policy advisor shit is going to continue to be less and less important in elections on both sides of the aisle. Or there will be a genocide. So either religion's influence in American policy diminishes,

or Heath and I get a whole new category of horribly inappropriate shit to make jokes about in the 30 seconds pizza. Either way, we win. As a country. And with that morbid but seasonally appropriate combination of thankfulness and genocide, 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 was. If it's a legitimate race.

Then it's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This Week in Misogyny. I love Thanksgiving. It might just be my favorite holiday. And even though way too many people try to shoehorn Jesus and God into it, by and large, it's a secular holiday built around being thankful for your family and the things you have.

And that's something a humanist can really get behind. So in the spirit of the holiday, I'm going to put a positive spin on this news item. According to the World Economic Forum's 2015 Global Gender Gap Report, According to the World Economic Forum's 2015 Global Gender Gap Report, the U.S. ranks a whopping 28th in terms of gender equality out of 145 countries they measured, down eight spots from last year. That's right. We're moving backwards. Now, on a normal day, I'd be talking about how ashamed I am to have to admit that. By those standards, we're worse at gender equality than Rwanda and Slovenia. But a B- is still a passing grade.

So instead, I'll focus on how thankful I am not to live in one of the 117 countries they ranked worse than us. We'll start 25 spots down the list at number 53, Israel, where we're reminded just how much a significant population of religious nutjobs can steal away from a nation. Citing the risk of vandalism and general bedlam, theaters in Israel have elected to remove the picture of Jennifer Lawrence from the advertisements for the upcoming Hunger Game movie. Apparently, ultra-Orthodox Jews are in the habit of ripping down posters that show the female form,

and marketing companies have no real choice but to capitulate, especially since the government is terrified to punish people for being too Jew-y. So if things like abortion rights, wage inequality, and access to contraception seem too distant to fire up your activist passions, remember, guys, the sexists are also trying to take away the hot pictures of J-Law in skin-tight outfits. And who wants to live in that world? But obviously, it gets way worse. And for our next stop, we'll slide twice as far down

the list all the way to number 108, India, where temple chief Prayar Kopal Krishnan, or something, sparked Twitter outrage when he called upon scientists to get to work on a menstruometer they can put at the front of temples to see which women are clean. Speaking with reporters about his temple's vag-free policy, he said, quote, there will be a day when a machine is invented to scan if it is the right time for women to enter the temple. When that machine is invented, we will talk about letting women inside, end quote. Outraged Indian women took to Twitter with the hashtag happy to bleed, which challenges the absurd taboos Indian culture places on menstruation. Like the Abrahamic faiths, Hindus are insane when it comes to girly bits. So apparently when a woman is menstruating, she can't enter a temple, touch an idol,

enter the kitchen, or, and your guess is as good as mine on this one, touch the pickle jar. Not sure exactly what the Hindu dudes think we're going to do with the pickles, but I digress. And with that and a quick happy Thanksgiving to you all, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda. And in Big Bing Theory news tonight, on Tuesday of this week, the Google Doodle on the search engine's front page contained images of primates transitioning to humans in honor of the 41st anniversary of archaeologists discovering Lucy, the name given to a group of fossils

that led to a more detailed understanding of human evolution. Naturally, this led to a series of Twitter meltdowns by angry creationists. And, of course, this prompted the intrepid, friendly atheist Hemet Mehta to compile several such ignorant rantlets into a fun little highlight reel. Would you like to hear a few nuggets of stupid?

I wouldn't be here if I didn't. By the way, quick trivia question for you. Do you know who Lucy was named after? Peanuts Lucy. Lucy in the sky with diamonds. Ah, nice. Cool. Yeah, some pretty cool anthropologists.

Some drugs. Good stuff. All right. So let's start with at Doug's wife, 82, who tweeted, quote, at Google, my web page shows Google in evolution form. GTBKM. What do you think are we are evolving to? I am teaching search engines.

Offended, in caps, end quote. There's a fair question in there. I mean, who are we are evolving to? It's not bad. I can't imagine where one might be able to search for that kind of information good question this is somewhere that might even correct your speech for you and whatnot i'm i'm sure doug's wife though would tell you that you search in your heart right let's see um at brad dog eight also chimed in he tweeted quote today is boycott Google Day for me due to their evolution theme.

Sorry, but something from nothing is just, dare I say, stupid. End quote. You dare. So it's always fun when creationists accidentally troll themselves. That was nice. Right, right. Yeah, something from nothing, like a formless void. And then, yeah, that'd be stupid.

Agreed. Whole thing, right, yeah, something from nothing, like a formless void, and then light, yeah, that'd be stupid. Agreed. But I just want to point out that he went straight from, like, human evolutionary ancestor to Big Bang cosmology with no steps in between in 160 characters or less. So it's stupid, yes, but it's good stupid. Very impressive. All right, let's see, last one. This one might be my favorite, actually. Listen for the tacit mic drop at the end. According to at a over it, quote, Google displaying ape to man evolution.

If man came from ape, why are there still apes? End quote. Which makes you wonder if Google exists, why is there still Yahoo? Mysterious ways. Very mysterious. But to be fair, though, he's right, because the children will never learn to read in a building that small. They won't be able to fit.

I mean, fucking idiots. God, they'll just give anybody a Twitter account now, won't they? No standards over there at all anymore. By the way, just a quick disclaimer. Yes, these are just a handful of idiots on Twitter. Fine. But they clearly represent the opinions of millions of Americans, many of whom are allowed to do things like vote in elections and operate vehicles like real grownups.

It's fucking terrifying. Yeah, right. Leave the GOP presidential field. What kind of shit we're letting these idiots do now? elections and you know operate vehicles like real grown-ups it's fucking terrifying yeah yeah right leave the gop presidential field all kind of shit we're letting these idiots through now and in wookie mistake news tonight the crumbling vestiges of an evil empire are rising up generations after their fall from power calling upon a dark and mysterious fictional force that binds the universe together in a doomed effort to turn the universe back to a much darker time. And, of course, I'm talking about the Church of England

and their failed attempt to preempt the new Star Wars movie with a commercial about how awesome prayer is. A long time ago, on an island far, far away, Tim Tebow almost got aborted. Where would the Eagles practice squad be without his four months of offseason workouts?

Hello, Swan. That's the key to your fantasy victory this week. Now, this quasi-controversy began when digital cinema media, a giant in British cinema advertising, rejected an ad set to play before the much-awaited black supremacist manifesto, The Force Awakens. The ad featured a series of Christians working their way through the Lord's Prayer one line at a time, which didn't mesh well with DCM's longstanding policy against political or religious advertising, a policy the church would vociferously defend in any case where the religious or political slant of the ad was anything except theirs. Every other time.

Pro-abortion ad. I think they'd have a little something to say about that. Yeah, and just think they'd have a little something to say about that yeah and just think about that for a second the church of england the church of england doesn't understand why their ad qualifies as religious and political right it's not exactly ann coulter's poster of a muslim beheading a jew with a machete. Come on, obviously religious is political. Well, no, they explained it. They trotted out church spokesfossil and molehill Sherpa Aaron Aurora,

who described the ad's rejection as bewildering, considering how darn many Christians there are. In a statement so melodramatic, it came with a notation for the violent accompaniment, Lacrimoso and D. Minor, by the way. He said, quote, in one way, the decision of the cinema is just plain silly.

But the fact that they have insisted upon it makes it rather chilling in terms of limiting free speech, end quote, because free speech includes a podium and a fucking microphone, apparently. And finally, tonight, from the poll smoking file, secular activist Chaz Stevens continues to infuriate Florida Christians for spite because, well, that's just a fun hobby. And he's good at it. He's very good at it. And it's also because people that support First Amendment violations definitely deserve the harassment. I'd say so.

harassment i'd say so and now with the holiday season upon us as a countermeasure against illegal nativity scenes and also as a protest against anti-gay discrimination for the third year in a row he's planning to install an eight foot tall erection inside the state capitol building in the form of a rainbow colored festivus pole hells yeah i mean the rest of us he's been doing like he's been doing beer can polls in the Capitol building for the last couple of years, but it seems like he really stepped up his game this time around. The rainbow coloring is awesome, but also went with a big disco ball on top. Classy. He's classy.

Because erections with no balls always look weird to me anyway, so I like this as an aesthetic touch. Yeah. This guy is fantastic. Big man crush. So he's clearly got some good momentum going. And this year, he decided to expand his Festivus poll operation and turn it into a national campaign, hoping to get like-minded citizens to get similar erections into Capitol buildings all over the country. Excellent idea.

Like a glands across America thing. I like it. Awesome. You got it. So a glands across America thing. I like it. Awesome. You got it. So here's how it works. Stevens is currently offering to construct and deliver large gay Festivus polls

to anyone willing to donate $1,000 to his fundraiser with the vast majority of profits going to support LGBT causes. Hopefully this will include some other motivated activists like himself and we'll see these gay polls popping up next to the baby Jesus all over the place.

And if anyone's interested, check out the links in the show notes. It's a great cause. And of course, before we close out headlines, we'd like to help out Chaz with some ideas for gay caroling to go along with this Festivus poll. Hells yeah. Let's go ahead and put 30 seconds on the clock. We're looking for music for the sodomite holiday celebration. Go.

Okay, but by sodomite, I want to use the biblical definition of all sexual deviancy, basically anything that would make Christian ladies gay. Yeah, butt sex, mouth stuff, all that other stuff. Yeah, all right, okay, all right. I guess this is pretty easy because it's kind of the classic Bukkake song,

but oh come all ye facial. Start there. Usually you finish there come all ye facial. Start there. Usually you finish there. You don't usually start there. What about Old Wang Zine, a.k.a. Santorum Claus is coming to Brown. Or maybe have a Polly Bolly Christmas by the man with seven wives that I met on my way to Burl Ives. About Frosty the Blowman. man let it snowball there you go and uh by the way everybody google snowball or just watch clerks yeah yeah exactly so one or the other or both uh maybe bukakan around the

christmas tree because i mean by the third chorus the tinsel stays put that's all i'm gonna say it's worth it. Right. I guess the sodomy comes in with the tree thing. What are you going to do with that tree? Bend over and I'll show you. All right. How about Jingle Bell Cock? Or A Spray and a Stranger?

It Came Upon a Midnight Queer? We Three Queens? How about O Come, O Come in Manuel? Oh, how about Grandma Got Worked Over by a Reindeer by the Tijuana Brass to Mouth? I like that one. I like that one. I had that in my back pocket this whole time. All right, I got one more.

How about JC's Girth Day? I'm Dreaming of a Wide Christmas. There we go. Peace on girth, good spill towards men. The Advent Calendar would be awesome for that one. And comfortable with those visions of sugar plums can move the fuck over and make room for the Imagine Music video for any number of those

song suggestions. We'll close the headlines out for the night. Heath, thanks as always. Double Dragon 3. And when we come back, Lucinda will join us for the last people-faced locust-free books of the Bible. I have to admit that if the Old Testament was as boring as the new one, we would have had to give up on this segment years ago due to the simple lack of humor potential. I mean, for fuck's sake, this book is the same story four times in irreconcilably different ways,

and then you get an extended Breakfast Club ending about the apostles, but they forget about all but two of them, and then you get 21 letters about Jesus definitely being real and Jews being allowed to leave their foreskins alone. 21 letters. And so it is, with the greatest of hard-won relief that we offer you tonight, the last of the epistles. Don't you forget about me.

I'm forgetting about him as quick as I can. As you walk on by. And of course, we'd just be a pistol in Dixie if we didn't invite in the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions. Lucinda, welcome back. I feel like after this, I shouldn't even have to read emails and shit anymore. I should never have to read another correspondence of any kind whatsoever. Fuck letters.

Letters suck. They suck. They're stupid asses. Yes. Now, we've got four letters to knock out this week, but three of them are basically business card sized. So mostly we're going to be focused on 1 John, which is the second John in this book, because there was already a book of John earlier. Exactly. Yeah, but don't worry, because that's probably the least stupid thing about this one.

Yeah, true, true. the least stupid thing about this one. Yeah, true, true. So the book of John was written at the end of John's long life of approximately 162 years, assuming he met Jesus when he was about 12, which forces Christians to admit that this book is a forgery. And to be honest, that's probably better than the alternative, which would be that the Christian church's first schism

happened about nine minutes after the crucifixion about whether Jesus existed. Right, and the fact that John opens up in first-person plural should be a dead giveaway. You'd think that real John would definitely know that he was only one guy. But the writing team behind this one didn't figure that shit out. So it starts out with a bunch of, we are telling you what we say with our eyes shit. The royal we, the editorial we. In the parlance of my time. We say with our eyes shit. The royal we. The editorial we. Of course.

In the parlance of my time. In the parlance of me, a single real person named John, who is now 162 as I write this. Or you know what? Maybe John was just like Gollum. That could have been it too. True. So after this bloated preamble about how we definitely know this stuff is true, he lets the reader down with nothing but God is light, I have sinned,

and Jesus' blood will take the stain of sin out of even the most delicate fabrics. Pretty much it, yeah. It's a really weird instruction manual they're working with. Don't sin. Like, okay, God will show you't sin. Like, oh, okay. I know. God will show you the way. Stupid, but okay.

And just one last thing. Not a big deal. You'll need the blood of a Jewish hate crime victim. I'm sorry, what? Hate crime? Circle the one that doesn't belong there. Right. This should be easy.

Strange instructions. And that's not the only thing making this bizarre either because chapter one ends with we all sinned everybody sins all the time jesus blood so it doesn't matter but anybody who tells you he doesn't sin is full of shit and then chapter two opens with whatever you do don't sin right yes exactly and then he also follows that up with I mean, it doesn't matter or anything because you're going to go to heaven no matter what because of Jesus. So even

if you do rape some puppies, you're going to still be okay. But you know, scouts honor and all, don't rape any puppies. Wink wink. The takeaway here for me was if you're going to rape some puppies puppies best bet do it inside a confessional booth

and you know kind of start repenting and professing newfound faith as you go it's important to be safe about it and then we get the chorus of this book I don't know he just says a bunch of shit and then he says basically the same shit again like there was a copying error

and also this part feels like it's gotta be the origin of that weird you know half monotone sing talker thing that priests do because there's nothing musical or poetic about the words it's just I write unto

you dear children because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name Jesus. Fucking weird. Then he reminds us not to love the world or the things in it again too. No loving things that exist. Bad, bad.

That's straight out. And women, if you can read this, go ahead and raise your hand. Someone will come around and burn you to death for witchcraft. Take care of it for you. And then we finally get the first mention of the fucking Antichrist. We're just a couple of pages left in it. Don't get me wrong.

They alluded to an Antichrist-like figure here and there, and we knew that's who they were talking about. But John is the first and only book of the Bible where they actually use the word or term Antichrist. So, fuck do they make you wait for it. And speaking of making you wait for it, we're once again reminded that we're in the last hour, his words, and that the apocalypse is right around the corner. Clearly.

Unbelievable. Idiots. How hard is it to read a Mayan calendar? Come on. And then we get to the crux of John's issue, which is all those assholes run around saying Jesus wasn't magic, or saying that he was magic but not God, or disagreeing with him in general. Fuck those people.

They're all a bunch of antichrists. Am I right? I'm right. And then there's some, how awesome are we shit. Well, and then he spends an inordinate amount of time laying down the no true Scotsman fallacy of sin, right? Because he's like, godly people never sin because people who sin aren't godly. So when I behead prostitutes, it's okay. Wait, no, I'm sorry.

Did I say that last part? I meant to just imply that last part. My bad. My bad. Sorry. And then actually we get a surprisingly lucid moment from fake John et al. Chapter 3

verse 13 says basically don't be surprised when the entire world hates you people for taking all this shitty advice. It actually says that in almost those exact words. Yeah, pretty much. That could be just a different translation. Yeah, yeah. There's also a strong undercurrent

of fuck the haters in there. Mostly from the perspective of who's going to be laughing at them when they roast in hell. That's who. We will. That's this guy right here. Two thumbs pointing to this guy. And then we get one of my favorite moments in the New Testament. John tells the little

children to make sure you test the claims of anybody who says they speak for God, since some of them might be full of shit. So here's the test he proposes. If they're saying the same shit that I've just been saying, they're legit. If not, they're

liars. And you know who just said the same shit that I just said? Me. So guess I passed the fucking test, y'all. And if you're not sure about one of these prophets, ask him to ask me whether I would say he's lying about which

path to take. Apparently everyone was walking around telling riddles like a bridge troll back in the day. Ridiculous. And by the way, in chapter 4, verse 3, he goes so far as to say the Antichrist is already in the world. Right. So he's probably pretty old by now.

Might be P-robes, y'all. Oh, shit. My money's on Ban Ki-moon. Oh, good call. Secretary General. We also get a ton of there are a bunch of fuckholes without any real indication of who they are. No, no. But they are real indication of who they are. No, no. But they... He explains who they are.

They're people who disagree with him, a.k.a. the Antichrist, a.k.a. people who were not born of love. You're correct. And of course, Jews who refused to take that golden parachute made of the foreskin they were told they could keep.

It's a fun visual. Everybody pause for that fun foreskin they were told they could keep. That's it. It's a fun visual. Everybody pause for that fun foreskin parachute visual. I just like the idea of right before it catches air, you know, the kind of moment. It's even worse.

Stop it. It doesn't matter. Gross. We also learn which verse got Josh Duggar in so much trouble, by the way. Chapter 4, verse 21. Those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.

Yeah. You took that a little too littler. And then we get a little Bible logic. This is so insane. Okay, so if I'm following this correctly, here's his argument about how you know that Jesus was really the Son of God. Okay, so A, you already believe in God, so he's already fucked up, but whatever. But the people he was writing to believed in God, so I'm going to give him a pass on that one.

Fair enough. A is good. So then B, if you loved God, you wouldn't call God a liar, now would you? C, God said Jesus was his kid. What now, motherfuckers? Honestly, if God went on Maury Povich, he'd be sweating like Tom brady looking for a lost cell

phone fun fun to uh all of a sudden mary runs out from backstage starts slapping him i would watch that yeah and by the way also worth noting here this is where the king james version has that asinine uh extra perfect words of God added 700 years later section. It's not like it was a good piece of patchwork either. It takes the already meaningless Trinity concept and makes it even worse, even less comprehensible. Not a good move. And then he closes on what will now forever be my email sign-off.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols. And then it ends. I'm signing off like that forever. Yeah, well, and then we get like two little addendums that basically add nothing. Yeah, I feel sorry for the letter carriers on these ones. Like, dude, you couldn't have added a fucking PS or something? They are the drunk dials of the New Testament. Hell, they even have the exclamation points. Well, they could have

easily been replaced by, you know, hey girl, Ryan Gosling doesn't care for Jews. Would have accomplished just as much. Right, and all he says is, hey, I heard somebody told you Jesus didn't come in the flesh. That person is full of shit and the Antichrist. Explanation point, explanation point, and that's it. It's so clearly a liar mincing words. I mean, instead of saying, like, Jesus was a real flesh and blood person, it says people that sometimes lie sometimes say things like,

Jesus was a ghost who was not a flesh and blood person. Why phrase it like that? Right. It's like a suspect at a Senate hearing. Right. My lawyer has advised me to say only that. And I swear, if there was a fourth John, it would be somebody trying to sell him discounted Viagra or something. Because holy shit is the third one random.

It's just him telling Gaius that diatrophis is a douchebag and yeah and it's so passive aggressive too the way he does it okay so this is basically the whole book summed up the third john all right and i'm honestly my summary can't be much shorter than the book itself but basically he says hey bro i heard you were awesome which is awesome you know who't awesome? That asshole who wouldn't let my buddy crash on his couch. Man, am I going to fuck him right up. Anyway, can my buddy crash on your couch? Pretty much, yeah, and that's it. That was included in the Bible.

For no apparent reason. Because they'd look like pussies if the New Testament only had eight books. They're just assuming that nobody's going to check and realize that, no, that's not a fucking book. It's 19 goddamn words spread out over the page. It's like the kid who had to fucking fill the page for the assignment is writing a long list of all the animals they could think of. It reads like this guy, Diatrephes, beat fake John at Scrabble and then fucked his girlfriend with a bigger penis. She was then forced to hear about later during a really awkward fight in a crowded restaurant.

That's my poem. I got you. Just in case you hear anything from that asshole liar, my penis is not like a roll of quarters. Not like coins. Not like coins. Not like coins. I'm going to get the lisp in there. See, now I want to say diatrophies so that we can all three pronounce it differently.

And as if to reinforce to you what the fuck is going on in the Bible motif, we get this book of Jude, which is long compared to the last two Johns, I guess. It's basically them together. And the take home from this one is basically, don't forget about all that evil shit God did early in the book. He'll still fuck you up if he has to. More or less, that's the whole thing. Keep that shit in mind.

And then he closes by reminding us that the real enemies are the butt fuckers. Am I right? It's the gays. It's the gays, y'all. Seems like a weird note to end on, though. Slightly. But yeah, the clear thrust at the end of this one was, if you stop thinking Jesus is the Son of God, next thing you know, you got lesbians.

And then you're fucked. You're screwed. It's like bed bugs. I guess I must have been sleeping at the wheel for this part. It actually tells you how to get fucked by lesbians. I'm going to need to circle back. Did not catch all of that. You got to read between the lines.

And that's it. This ridiculous gauntlet of pointless testament fodder finally yields to our perseverance and we stand only one book away from capping off the Bible altogether. All I'm going to say is that Revelation better be damn crazy.

We worked really hard to get here. We've earned damn crazy. Sure it will. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't want to spoil anything, but I saw a crown-wearing, scorpion-tailed, horse-footed, people-faced, lion-toothed, poisonous locust in the preview, so I'm guessing, yeah, it's going to be pretty fucking crazy. All right, so Revelation in three weeks, and then we're done with this fucker. Yes.

And then we move on to Cat's Cradle and Breakfast of Champions to learn about Bocanonism, right? That was the plan, right? Is that what we're doing? That's much better than the plan. That's locked in. It's better than the plan at least. It's time for the part of the show that comes next, listener feedback. This is the part of the show that all the rats run to if the rest of the show starts to sink.

Our first message comes from Jeremyeremy who writes quote i'm pretty sure you guys are joking about heath being dead but just in case you're not does anybody have dibs on his putter does he need a new putter end quote okay well that was a hoax i'm not really dead but i will make sure that any penis putters in my estate go to Jeremy when I die. All right. We also had a post from LaVisa on Facebook who offered an alternative explanation as to why Kevin Swanson wants to cover himself in cow feces. She's pretty sure it involves the constant stream from his mouth and the need to put it somewhere. Oh, okay.

Besides the large pile next to his desk i would imagine i love the people who didn't hear that episode and just got all of that out of context that's awesome i mean like basically this guy just spent a whole fucking weekend gift wrapping jokes for us and we were bound to miss a few um overachiever that swanson dude but we appreciated that one and by the way just a quick follow-up on that i did get curious And by the way, just a quick follow-up on that. I did get curious, so I carved a happy face into my gay friend's pussy skin sore. And it looks great.

It looks great. It's adorable. No idea what Swanson was complaining about. Whatever. That out-of-context thing just got way better. We also got a ton of feedback about last week's diatribe. We had a lot of people asking if we could post just the diatribe as a standalone audio clip that they could share.

And if you're paying super close attention, you'll know that that kind of ties into our most recent Patreon goal, which we have reached. So yes, we will be posting individual segments of the show on SoundCloud, which you'll be able to then access from our website and share on Facebook or whatever.

In fact, we've already hired Lucinda for a couple extra days a week to do exactly that. But unfortunately, that came at the same time that Heath needed a little extra time off. you know all the extra Lucinda hours we have now are just currently going to you know the shit that Heath normally would do if he was in town yeah I'll have a word with my dad about his uh stroke timing much like a talk he gave to me back when I was in middle school very similar it's important so yeah I mean if you thought that

there was still that one subject that heath wouldn't be willing to turn into a masturbation joke you were wrong and shame on you for thinking it in the first place but yeah that's that's definitely coming and it is coming very soon we also got a facebook message from nathan who wanted to fault noah for not knowing how to count. Oh, yes. In the How Bullshit Is It? segment on homeopathy, Noah identified 200C as 1 times 10 to the negative 20,000, which it is not. And I missed it, too. It's actually 1 times 10 to the negative 400,

which Nathan was nice enough to misidentify as an easy mistake to make. Yeah. Nice about it. Come on, dude. I was only off by 19,600 orders of magnitude. I think you're being a little nitpicky, even pointing that out. Well, it's a good thing you didn't do that immediately before I made a joke about how stupid lots of people are when it comes to exponents.

It must be extra embarrassing. Yeah, no. I mean, thanks, Nathan. But for whatever it's worth, I will live the rest of my life thinking about how stupid that was as I try to drift off to sleep. I may honestly just go back and rerecord that line and stick it back and reedit it. Anyway, we also got two posts on Facebook this week that both vie for my all-time favorite show-related comment. The first one comes from Jennifer. It's kind of long.

She writes, quote, I've been a huge fan since I first stumbled upon your podcast this summer and have quite happily spent a hefty portion of the last three months binge listening to your podcast. The thing is, though, there was always something that felt odd, something different that would leave me always feeling slightly off kilter. There was something missing in your show that was ubiquitous in everything that I watched on TV, listened to on the radio, or even experienced in my everyday interactions. Today, I was finally able to put my finger on it. There is no misogyny with your show. today i was finally able to put my finger on it there is no misogyny with your show none of that fear hatred or dismissal of the feminine that lies just under the surface in almost every personal or impersonal situation women face on a daily basis we become so accustomed to misogyny in a patriarchal world it feels somehow strange when that undertone is absent

so thank you no illusions heathen right lucid illusions for that fantastic hour i get to spend with you in an egalitarian atheistic garden of fucking eden the way it should have been in the beginning thank you very very glad to hear that we certainly certainly strive to be equal opportunity misanthropists hell yeah it's important to hate ann coulter for the right reasons none of which are vagina related based on my research so she probably keeps like slave puppies in there uh or something so there's probably that but for whatever it's worth my feminism is completely born of self-interest i i grew up a boy that liked to braid his hair and play with stuffed animals and i'm still pissed off that they wouldn't let me twirl a baton in the second grade

so that's well uh my feminism comes from a thorough dose of highly intelligent mom who could embarrass me in an argument until I learned to not be an awful jackass. That helps. Stuff like that. Yeah. And she also took the self-interest angle with me, explaining that girls worth talking to won't touch your penis if you're a dick. There you go. She used different words, but that was the general message. I like that, though.

That's pithy. And finally, we also have contender number two for our all-time favorite show comment. She used different words, but that was the general message. I like that, though. That's pithy. And finally, we also have contender number two for our all-time favorite show comment. This one comes from Karina, who messaged us on Facebook to say, quote, A favorite part of my week is chatting with my 59-year-old mother about your shows. And then she presents the rest of the message in dialogue. Mom, Noah was sure angry this week. I learned so many new things from that podcast. Me. Yeah, the situation in Syria was, Mom, I never knew men used lotion for that before.

She continues. Important nuggets of knowledge. Right, yes, absolutely. Corina continues, thanks for filling my week with laughter, introspection, and bonding with my awesome atheist mom. For me, I'm just super vigilant about sunburn that's the worst place to get it you gotta rub it in deep you know i'm but see i'm dying to know what her mom thought that guys used i mean and also and also this car to me afterwards think about the power that we have over her mom now because i mean i could have just as easily said if i'd known about this you know i just jellied up my dick and then she'd have to go to sleep that night thinking how does that i mean does it help is that for viscosity or aroma maybe there's a dog

involved i'm gonna have to work hard not to abuse this newfound power that's all i'm saying also and uh you know just to be clear yes yes, it does help. It is for viscosity. The aroma is nicer. And dogs love it. Yeah, but so do insects. You've got to wash nice and thoroughly. So, yes, Karina, thanks again for the laughs. And thanks to everybody who chimes in to make this a two-way conversation.

Really appreciate you. And that's all the feedback you get. If you want more, keep sending us those emails, tweets, and Facebook messages. You'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com Before we devour the leftovers tonight, I want to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving on behalf of the whole Skating Atheist team.

I know that like 30% of you or so aren't American and it's not your holiday, but damn it. It's about giving thanks and all bullshit aside, you are what I am most thankful for. I'm a grown man that gets to make dick jokes about Jesus for a living and without you, that wouldn't be possible. So I know that usually I zero in on thanking the people that give us money, but all of you have really impressive genitals and I am truly honored to be a part of your life every week.

Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you today, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for what should be our final Heath-less episode of the Godawful Movies podcast on Tuesday at 8 a.m. Eastern Time. You can also find Bonus Nuggets of Scatheism by following us on Twitter or liking us on Facebook. As you all know, I can't end the show without thanking Heath for his tireless commitment to excellence in sperm jokes. I need to thank the lovely Lucinda Lusions for all the sacrifices she continues to make to keep the whole operation afloat. I also need to thank the Secular Student Alliance of UC San Diego for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. Always awesome to hear from an active SSA chapter.

And by the way, if you're a student and you're not familiar with the SSA and the work that they do, check the show notes for a link to more info. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's most euphonic eukaryotes. Wag Zevin, Chris, Richard, Delina, Matt, Nancy,lly, Robert, Danny, DeVito, Andy, and Ken. Wags, Evan, Chris, and Richard, whose gravy and stuffing the ladies always give thanks for. Delina, Matt, Nancy, and Shelly, who are so notorious the devil has them to eggs at his Thanksgiving dinner. And Robert, Danny, DeVito, Andy, and Ken, whose dicks could lead off the Macy's Day Parade while their balls bring up the rear. Together, this dozen filthy monkey cousins help prolong the discussion that doesn't give a fuck who can stomach it by giving us money. Not everybody

has the inspiration, indignation, and inclination to give us money, but if you've got all the requisite ins and asians, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist which you'll find linked on the show notes, 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 only if there's a way

to do it in less than four minutes that's free, you can actually help us a ton by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes or by telling however many atheists you can about the show in three minutes and 59 seconds. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at skatingatheist.com. All the music used in this episode was written and performed by yours truly, and yes, I did have my permission. Is this old Irish dude named Sean?

He goes, fuck yeah, we got mention of Benj. He's very excited to show up to me. Awesome.