The Scathing Atheist - ScathingAtheist 158: Anecdote Antidote Edition

Episode Date: February 25, 2016

In this week's episode, Cardinal George Pell's child abuse stalling tummy ache enters its third week; the Georgia senate finally acknowledges the #White Sheets Matter movement; and Tracie Harris of the Atheist Experience will be here to tell us why the one time that dude thought he saw that thing in that place isn't a path to true knowledge.

Warning, the following podcast contains the A-word, the B-word, both the C-words, all three D-words, the E-word, the F-word, the G-word, the H-word, the I-word... This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by the new gay-inducing candy bar from the big gay conspiracy, Sodomister Goodbar. Is your elementary school student starting to hang out with the straight kids? It's probably time to nip that in the butt. Our secret formula will have them firmly homosexual within minutes. Sada Mr. Goodbar, if your confection lasts more than four hours, keep thinking about baseball players. And now, the skating atheist. The gamma word, the tau word, the enye word, the ja word, the alof word, the oh with umlauts word, the upside down explanation point.

Oh, so, g'day. It's Ray Comfort here at Loving Waters, and we're having a fabulous time catching up with all of our wonderful people, and we just wanted to let you know that we... Did he get a black-team ball from filthy monkey men? No, no. Under no circumstances was there any evolution whatsoever. It's Thursday. It's February 25th. And once Sri Srinivasan finishes healing that last blind orphan, we should have a functional Supreme Court again.

Um, no illusions. I'm Heath Enright, and from shot in the dark east of Dasta, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, George Pell's child abuse punishment immunizing tummy ache will linger into its third week. Poor guy. The Georgia Senate finally acknowledges the White Sheets Matter movement. And Tracy Harris will be here to explain why that time that dude thought he felt that thing

in that room doesn't mean shit. But first, the diatribe. In 1543, just before his death, Copernicus published his On the Revolution of the Solar Spheres. This is an event that is largely considered one of the seminal moments that sparked the scientific revolution. Now, of course, he wasn't the first person to propose a heliocentric model of the universe. He was just the first one to do it convincingly. Heliocentrism had been proposed and dismissed as far back as ancient Greece, and when we look at it with the benefit of hindsight, we have this habit of dismissing the people who wanted to keep the earth at the center as just being pig-headed traditionalists and religious dogmatists, and obviously some of

them were, but with our distorted lens of modernity, it's easy to forget that there were also logical reasons to doubt heliocentrism take the problem of the stellar parallax or lack thereof ancient greek astronomers reckon that if the earth was moving around the sun we should see a slight difference in the position of the stars from one side of our orbit to the other i think of one side of the orbit is your left eye the other side is your right and the stars in the background is your thumb right when you look from one eye to the other the orientation of your thumb should move. And of course, if we're orbiting the sun, that has to be true of the stars. That would have to happen. And it does. You know, it does happen. It's just that none of the ancient

Greeks had the blindest clue just how far away the stars were in comparison to like how small our orbit was. So they were all radically overestimating how much the stars should shift. In fact, telescope technology didn't advance enough to measure that difference until 1838, so for almost three centuries after Copernicus proposed his theory, this was basically an unsolved problem. Now, I say basically because long before that, we'd figured out the stars were way further out than we'd been assuming, and nobody was holding out on heliocentrism until the 1838 parallax data came through. But at the time of the original publication, this was a really sound argument against it. But of course, not all the objections were intelligent. Some of them were religious. For example, legend has it

that Martin Luther was asked about Copernicus's theory at a university dinner where he famously remarked, quote, So it goes now. Whoever wants to be clever must agree with nothing others esteem. He must do something of his own. This is what that fool does who wishes to turn the whole of astronomy upside down. Even in these things that are thrown in disorder, I believe the Holy Scriptures, for Joshua commanded the sun to stand still and not the earth. End quote. So there you go. If the earth revolves around the sun, the story about the magic wards you wouldn't even make sense.

But of course, the real irony of this quote is how dismissive luther is being about people who want to do something of their own and turn established shit outside down right i mean after all this would have been like 30 years after he kicked off the protestant revolution with his fateful post-it note now obviously widespread religious intransigence slowed the acceptance of the sun-centered model but over the next century the facts became harder and harder to ignore and by the middle of the 18th century even the church was getting on board as we collected more and more data the evidence century, the facts became harder and harder to ignore. And by the middle of the 18th century, even the church was getting on board. As we collected more and more data, the evidence eventually settled the issue. And now, of course, but for a couple of cranks that nobody takes seriously, we all agree that the Earth orbits the sun, even if half of Americans still get that wrong when you survey them.

And that's the beauty of science, right? Like, eventually, the disagreements get adjudicated by the facts. Meanwhile, what about that other 16th century conflict we mentioned? You know, the one with the post-it note. Martin Luther got into an argument with Catholicism half a century ago about the nature of their magical cracker, and to this day, we're no closer to settling it. Protestants and Catholics didn't collect sacromycological observation to compare against actual cracker behavior.

They didn't take DNA samplings from pre- and post-liturgy Eucharists. In five centuries, they've never honed in on the answer. In fact, the exact opposite has happened. The Protestant Church just keeps getting into these minor stupid disagreements with itself and splitting off every generation or two, and that's a process that continues to this day. That is not how true things behave. You look at anything that's verifiably true. A couple hundred years ago, there was far less agreement in the world of biology or physics or take your fucking pick. But as we learn more and models more closely approximate reality, the differences get whittled down. We converge on the truth. And sure,

cutting edge theorists will still have plenty to argue about, but I don't think anybody expects us to still be arguing about string theory in 500 years. By then, we'll have confirmed it or dismissed it. And when you look across the world, you don't see different sciences with every country, right? There's not a Japanese version of chemistry or a Bolivian kind of biology. There's just biology. There's just chemistry. And what's true in China is true in America is true in Zaire. Scientific debates, unlike theological debates, go somewhere.

Now, religion isn't by itself here. There are plenty of things that act just like religion in this way, right? Culture, fashion, language, artistic trends. In other words, things that have no innate truth value. There's no true language, so languages can split off indefinitely. One might subsume another. One might borrow from another. But you don't see them narrowing down on the one true language, so languages can split off indefinitely. One might subsume another, one might borrow from another, but you don't see them narrowing down on the one true language over time.

There's no objectively correct series of phonemes that mean unexceptional. We've just chosen unexceptional as a social convention. It's no more or less correct than the Spanish or Romanian term for the same word. And again, this is just the natural byproduct of having no truth value. Sunnis and Shiites have had 14 centuries to figure out who was supposed to succeed Muhammad, and I'd reckon most Muslims would agree that if we gave them another 14 centuries, they'd be no closer to the answer.

You know, unless one group kills the other one off sufficiently or humanity outgrows religion, fingers crossed, there will always be Sunni and Shia. They're never going to see one really convincing argument in a peer-reviewed theological paper that's going to make them say, well, shit, I guess it was supposed to be Muhammad's kids. Our bad, we're back in the fold. You know, and it's not just succession issues or divine cracker properties here. It's not like these are just a few little areas where religion disagrees. Every detail is like that. What is God? What does he want from us? What does he love? Who does he hate? What is he made of? Where is God? What does he want from us? What does he love? Who does he hate?

What is he made of? Where is he? What are his properties? All these questions grow more and more divergent with every passing generation of theists, exactly as though there was no truth behind it. Religion is an element of culture. It's just like language or music or diet. I mean, it's not just like those things, of course, because nobody kills anybody over their ethnic cuisine, but that's largely because it's an element of culture that's trying to pretend like it's an element of truth. But it's not even like truth. It doesn't even behave in the same way as truth. As any legitimate field of study gets older, it grows less and less factionalized as it moves ever closer to the truth. It converges. It does not diverge. And we almost certainly will never reach that

absolute. There will always be room for disagreement at the leading edge of our knowledge, but it'll be clear that this generation is closer to the truth than the last one. And a hundred years from now, we'll be a hundred years closer than that. And the Protestants and the Catholics will still be arguing about a fucking cracker because you can never get any closer to something that doesn't exist they're talking about joining me for headlines tonight is best actor on a podcast or a musical heathenwright heath are you ready to thank the academy oh wow i i just can't believe this is so unexpected um of course it's just an honor to be nominated for you guys that lost.

That was an honor for you. So many people to thank. My mom, my dad, Zeus, Poseidon, Ares, Apollo, the First Nations peoples, other people who aren't white, Margaret Thatcher, the soldiers but not the war, the bald eagle. Soccer is a fun sport. The good guys in Tibet, Rachel Dolezal for showing us what courage really means. Oh, is that my time? Yeah, sorry, hair trigger on that orchestra apparently.

In our lead story tonight, software engineer Tom Anderson released a recent textual analysis of all three Abrahamic holy books and determined that of the three, the Quran is actually the least violent, even when compared to the Old and New Testaments separately. This new data, of course, stands in direct conflict with previous evidence, such as the Bible and the Quran. I've read some of these, yeah. I'm sorry, but bull fucking shit, this is profanity infixed with even more profane profanity wrong. Because I'm only four surahs in and the Quran is already in the lead. Yeah, the Quran could literally end after chapter four.

Yeah. And we'd already be serving like 18 eternities in a fire pit for 18 slightly different reasons. Right. And that's just the fire pit-related violence parts. And we're not even Jewish. Yeah, exactly. And that's assuming we don't take the book seriously and murder people.

So let's take a quick look at Anderson's, let's call it, methodology. Apparently he uses a text analysis tool called Odin Text to count up all the mentions of destruction and killing and then tallies them all up to find out that the Quran contains the fewest. So, by his criterion, the most violent book of all time is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Because a whole world dies in that one, in multiple dimensions eventually. Of course, Anderson admits to the faults of his research,

but stops short of pointing out that they render it completely fucking useless since nobody who says that one book is more violent than the other is talking about how often it refers to killing or destruction. We're talking about which one encourages the most violence. Yeah. The Dungeon Master's Guide isn't dangerous. Right. Fat nerds aren't dangerous.

We're just not. Your thing is broken. And if you thought about it for like three seconds, you could have been looking for phrases that mean you should literally kill those people right there now. In which case, like you said, Kron already wins in four chapters. Right, well, I do believe Jack T. Chick would strongly disagree with your assessment of the Dungeon Master's Guide, but yeah, good point.

Look, one of the books says go out there and murder everyone who doesn't believe in this book, and the other two don't. We don't need a computer algorithm to figure out which is more violent here. And yes, the New Testament has the single most violent moment. And yes, the Hebrew Bible has God justifying the most despicable human actions by leaps and fucking bounds but i think most people would agree that there's a substantive difference between trying to justify past

atrocities and trying to justify future ones oh and and by the way before any muslims rush out to tout these findings i should also point out by the same methodology here your book is also the gayest so keep it under wraps and in white reparations matter news tonight oh this will be good facing conspiracy charges for her role in the armed insurrection that briefly captured a birding building in the oregon woods from nobody former bundestan resident shauna cox filed a counter lawsuit against the U.S. government last week for illegal use of an evil demon. Huh. According to her complaint, the Justice Department collaborated with Satan, the Prince of Darkness

to illegally oppress her and all those other harmless militants. Right. With the guns. And that's why she's seeking damages in the amount of $666,666,666,666.66, which means she couldn't think of the next bigger one past billion. Right? I mean, because you know if she could have, she'd have added a couple more orders of magnitude. Excuse me, ma'am. You know that evil demons aren't a thing, and even if they were, we wouldn't give you the GDP of Switzerland over it, right?

No, you don't know that. Well, I guess that explains this whole damn escapade. Now that you mentioned that. And also, by the way, this might help lots of our listeners. If you're thinking to yourself, this woman sounds familiar, but you can't seem to put your finger on it. You may know Shauna Cox by her stage name, Shauna Cox from Big Bag of Dicks with Shauna Cox. And also, Stop Sending Me Big Bags of Dicks with Shauna Cox.

Anyway, regardless, this whole lawsuit idea was clearly pretty stupid. I mean, she obviously didn't think it through. Just first glance, you can already see that she's off by two-thirds of a penny. Right. Or at least six-tenths of one. So the counter-spell's not going to work, and Lucifer's going to get away with it, again, obviously. But whatever, it's not my problem. She can figure it out the hard way. And I love that...

Okay, so in her lawsuit, she claims that the devil caused the two Mars missions and 13 Newmet-class aircraft carriers worth of damage, but she's not suing the devil. She's suing the government who is working with the devil. So she's going after him on RICO charges, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know how this works exactly. Right.

Now, you can never be sure about how a case might go, but looking at past precedent can help sometimes. So here's a piece of the transcript from a very similar case that might guide this decision. Similar one. Yeah. Quote, in the matter of crazy person v. America, we have the plaintiff seeking 6.02 times 10 to the 23rd dollars because the U.S. government wouldn't let him have Yellowstone Park.

Is that correct, Counselor? Yes, Your Honor, it is. And is that by any chance Avogadro's number? Yes, it is, Your Honor. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm holding one liter of an ideal gas at STP in my hand right here. For every molecule in this container, the plaintiff has been damaged $1.

Go ahead. Count them. That's math. Oh, wait. Hold on. I forgot these other 21.4 liters. Wheel them in, boys. Crowd goes crazy.

Lady faints. Order in the car. Bang, bang. And ever since that trial, that crazy person is allowed to camp at Yellowstone pretty much whenever. There you go. And well, Deuteronomy sounds like a science news tonight. Fearing the rest of the country

might lose track of how much they suck, the state of Idaho is considering a new bill that would allow teachers to use the Bible as a reference book in astronomy, biology, archaeology, and geology classes. Because, you know, the Bible has all that astronomy, biology, archaeology, and geology in it. In fact, Senate Bill 1321 out of Idaho would allow teachers to use the Bible wherever and whenever they choose and to whatever end. Although, to be fair, the bill also includes language that will allow a child to publicly volunteer for ostracization by refusing to use the biblical references the teacher recommends.

Oh, good. They finally have a system in place for this. Right, yeah, exactly. Do you want this biology book or this Christian biology book stapled to a Twix bar and you don't get beat up there? Yeah, right. So that's nice. Nobody loses the right to choose.

That's important. It's all about freedom, religious freedom. Now, it's probably worth noting that David Barton had to clean the inside of his pants out after he read this thing, because within the list of acceptable classes for biblical references is United States history. So this would finally allow teachers to propose Barton's Moses wrote the Constitution theory. And while I will readily admit that a knowledge of biblical teachings is essential for a thorough understanding of American history, I'll temper that by pointing out that that's why it's already legal to use the Bible in those type of circumstances. Already doing that.

Yeah, right, just like you can use the Koran when studying West Asian history. Ooh. Or when you want to hear what evangelical parents sound like when they scream themselves to aneurysm. Right, yeah. I mean, I guess I could see a holy book showing up on day one of class for, like context or something as in hey look how

shitty we were at this science we're about to study way back in the day well right as hemet meta points out on his friendly atheist blog quote unless we're pointing at the bible and saying this offers up nothing of use i have no clue why anyone would ever need to reference the bible in astronomy geology archaeology or biology classes end quote yeah you burn this, lightning won't strike you. That's how lightning doesn't work. Yeah, right. Useful book. Well, and see, this point not only expresses how vapid the legislation is, but it also

makes me wish that I could just be an Idaho teacher for a day if this fucking thing passes, because I would do exactly that. I would tell parents and students, oh, I'm sorry, the law allows me to point out that the bible doesn't know anything about science or reality now you pass the law dumbasses and in plan zika news tonight according to pope francis interruptus considering the tragic birth defects that can result from the zika virus maybe it's not the worst thing in the world if infected people just happen to not get pregnant so much. Oh, yeah. He's not saying how, but, you know, just don't.

Well, sort of. Mostly don't. During a recent press conference, he told reporters, quote, avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil. Oh, quote. Well, how progressive of him. And that no shit led to the following headlines. Pope radically softens Vatican stance on birth control

and Pope stance on birth control angers conservative bishops. The fact that he's saying it's not an absolute evil and not even by name. Yeah, so you're still evil. God gave you Zika virus for a reason. Can't be altering the space-time continuum of egg and sperm vectors without being evil. But it's not as bad as you think.

It's only like normal medium evil. Not absolute evil. So again, he's not telling you how to do your job. But, you know, maybe some of those babies never get born. What if there was an unfortunate accident? You know what I mean? He fell, yeah. We happen to have a charley horse and finish on our back.

That's not the same thing as murdering a child like the guy who did it on purpose. Sometimes your erect penis just falls right into a condom. It's more like hand slaughter. It's still evil, but less. Just walking around. It sounds worse, but it's less. Yeah, I mean, it's less like whacking a baby's head against a rock and more like you're just out swinging babies.

You know, there's rocks around. You've had one, two. No, I'm sorry. Actually, I need to apologize for that joke because the more I think about it, the more I feel like smashing the baby's heads against the rock is the wrong approach to kids with microcephaly. Your aim is going to have to be spot on because they have the little heads. You get the glancing blow off the shoulder. I'm just saying there's more effective ways of doing it. Irresponsible rocks flying around all over the place.

So this advice from the Pope, it might sound a little vague, but don't worry. He also offered his thoughts on how to solve this whole problem in general. Oh, good. Yeah, and I thought this was actually an interesting idea. He's suggesting that doctors should work on finding a vacine. Or is it vaccine? I'm not sure. It looks like a word like that.

Either way, it means like a blocker against the Zika virus, as in nobody gets it anymore. So yeah, it's a good plan. And I sure hope the science community was listening up because that, yeah, it's genius. It's exactly what we need to start doing now that the pope gave us the go-ahead yeah or maybe a prayer maybe they just haven't found the right prayer yet and in which way did he go georgia news tonight we have good news and bad news out of the georgia state legislature this week first the good news but not because i'm an optimist i just want to get it out of the way so i can dwell on the negative shortly after we

reported on it last week house bill 8 816, or the Georgia Student Religious Liberties Act of 2016, was withdrawn from the legislature for a host of reasons, including that it was stupid. But of course, being stupid can't be the whole story, since House Bill 757 passed to the Georgia Senate this week, thus ensuring that anti-LGBT bigots in Georgia will finally have a voice in the public square. Yeah, or a gay lyn voice in the public square. Yeah, or a gay lynching in the public square. They sincerely believe that's important.

Maybe not to death, but within reason. Stonings, you know. Pretty much whatever they want to do. A light stoning. Within reason. So let's dig into House Bill 757 a bit, because we've seen a lot of these nobody-has-to-let-gay-people-eat laws, and I would dare say that Georgia's version would have made Indiana and Arkansas look progressive even if they hadn't repealed theirs this orwellianly titled first amendment defense act would protect the bigot's right to discriminate against gay couples or straight couples that have

sex out of wedlock and how do you know if an unmarried couple is fucking you may ask well they just they look kind of fucky right yeah just look fucky. And they sparkle in the sunlight. And when you stab them with a stake, they die. Of course, the bill's chief sponsor, Republican State Senator George Kirks, would strongly disagree with this assessment in public. According to Kirk, quote, this bill protects the constitutional rights of individuals and faith-based organizations. It takes nothing away from the same-sex couples or members of the LGBT community. It's a live and let live bill. It doesn't? End quote.

Well, people who know things seem to disagree. For example, according to Maggie Garrett, the legislative director for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, this bill would allow any person, business, or taxpayer-funded organization to, quote, refuse anyone else rights, services, and benefits because they, this is a long list, are part of an interracial couple, are part of an interfaith couple, are a single mother, are part of a same-sex couple, are divorced, are remarried, live or have lived with a partner without being married, or have had sex outside of marriage at any time in their life, end quote. So in summary, anyone can discriminate against anyone as long as they're religious about it.

Wonderful, yeah. Seems like the only people that have to follow laws in Georgia at this point are So in summary, anyone can discriminate against anyone as long as they're religious about it. Wonderful. Yeah. Seems like the only people that have to follow laws in Georgia at this point are atheists. Right. And we're going to be moving soon. So just about come full circle back to a Christian prison. They're going to run out of atheists in no time. It's worth pointing out that this bill is staunchly opposed by Georgia business leaders who fear the kind of boycotts and negative publicity that plagued Indiana after they passed their anti-gay version of RFRA.

But clearly, Georgia lawmakers get precisely one turd shy of a shit about that. In fact, when it was pointed out to Greg Kirk by an African-American colleague that the bill protected the Ku Klux Klan as long as they call themselves faith-based, which they do, and asked him if he had a problem with that, Kirk's monosyllabic response was simply, no, he does not. Apparently not. So with that realization, Heath and I are going to take a quick break to pencil a holy book about our new religion called Pissing on Republican State Senatorsism. And while we do that, we'll hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda.

A man wrote the Bible. A whore is what she wants. If it's a legitimate race. It's a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey, I'm proud of a man. This Week in Misogyny. One of the scariest things about religious institutions is that by their very nature,

they assume themselves to be above the law. How often do we hear politicians acting like the Bible trumps the Constitution? I mean, the saying is, God country-self, not country-God-self, and you can pluck this shit out of a lot more than their rhetoric. Because when religious groups can't get their way through legislation, they look for ways to get around it and don't see anything wrong with that at all. It doesn't matter what the law says, if God says different. And obviously, my most ready example is abortion rights. I mean, for fuck's sakes, we've got politicians on the campaign trail competing with each other over how many women's health clinics they're going to defund if they get elected.

Hell, we don't need to retreat to theoretical here. When John Kasich felt like he needed to throw a bone to the hard right evangelicals, he signed a bill to defund Planned Parenthood in Ohio. That was his response to a poor showing in Nevada. defund Planned Parenthood in Ohio. That was his response to a poor showing in Nevada. He's punishing women so that he can stay in a race he can't possibly win for a couple more weeks. And conservatives are applauding him for it. And of course, some people misread the whole thing and say, well, can't you get all the same stuff done elsewhere? I mean, sure, maybe these things would be less convenient without these clinics, but it's not like there aren't other medical facilities out there. And that is true.

But the problem is, way too many of them are owned by religious groups. The Catholic solution to the abortion problem has been clear for years. They'll just buy up all the hospitals with one hand and push for a bunch of bullshit RFRA laws with the other. And when they find a medical procedure objectionable, they just won't do it. And if you think they're restricting themselves to abortion here, you haven't been paying attention. A recent expose in The Guardian highlighted a few of the more heinous abuses

of America's many fine Catholic hospitals, including a hospital in Michigan that forced no fewer than five women to endure painful and dangerous miscarriages when inducing birth for the non-viable fetus would have been the safer option. And this wasn't somebody fucking up and doing the wrong thing or misreading the situation. This was a matter of policy. It was a matter of policy to risk the life of their patients

in order to adhere to a religious doctrine that stands in direct conflict with the law. And if that's not depressing enough, I should point out that this problem isn't exactly leveling off. The Affordable Care Act has provisions that encourage hospital mergers. And while that's intended to help drive down costs, the real-world result has been a Vatican buying spree. In fact, as of 2013, out of the 10 largest hospitals in the U.S., 10 of them were Catholic affiliated. So I guess at least that number has leveled off. And on that terrifying and depressing

note, I'll hand things back over to Noah and Heath. Thank you, Lucinda. And in Nike no likey news tonight, world champion boxer and brain damage candidate for the Philippine Senate, Manny Pacquiao accidentally reminded Earth what a terrible little bigot he was when he recently tweeted a comparison between gay people and animals that also suggested that gay people should thus be murdered. Though, in his defense, the inference that he thus supports genocide against all the animals is probably unintentional. You know what? Who the fuck knows? Maybe he's planning on going biblical deluge one of these days.

Couldn't be any less successful in his acting career. Well, I don't know. That guy Tattoo from Fantasy Island made a whole career out of that look. I mean, he had the whole Dunkin' Donuts gig. Maybe Sweet Cakes by Melissa could use some commercial work. There you go. In response to this aberrant declaration,

Nike promptly cut ties with Pacquiaoiao leading many to question whether ability to accurately punch people in the head is sufficient qualification for adulation the comments did not unfortunately cost him any support in the upcoming philippine senatorial election so looks like we're not the only ones with a donald trump guys us in the philippines equally good at vetting candidates for higher office i don't mean you feel proud proud to be an american bald eagles but uh in fairness though he does look like the type of guy that you know you could drink a beer with like like at a brothel before going back to his room he's an attractive man is what i'm saying i'm not gonna disagree guy uh now for his part manny clearly learned his lesson only days after nike's announcement he returned to twitter to explain that it isn't that he thinks that all

gay people should be murdered it's that god thinks that and he just agrees with god oh somehow failing to realize that this would not ameliorate the problem he tweeted out the deuteronomical passage that reminds us of our religious obligation to kill gay people you know the one that comes right after the bit about how he's going to go to hell over his Pac-Man tattoo. Now, luckily for Manny, though, he realized his mistake and deleted the tweet, so now none of us will ever know it was there. And finally tonight,

from the knockin' on heaven's backdoor file, Chaz Stevens and his Church of Satanic Activism continued their campaign for secular government last week with a newly erected display on the City Hall front lawn in Pompano Beach, Florida. After giving the local lawmakers a friendly warning in advance that they should stop putting religious displays on government property, Mr. Stevens showed up to assure them that he was not bluffing.

He was indeed very serious about installing an upside-down crucified Jesus monument. Wait for it. Complete with a big red butt plug right outside their building. So now they've got an ass Jesus, whether they like it or not.

But not just any ass Jesus, because I think most Christians could get behind a run-of-the-mill normal ass Jesus. They have a satanic ass Jesus. It doesn't make it even worse. Now, it's not like the Christians of Pompano Beach can't keep their regular no-butt-plug-Jesus type stuff. Nobody's taking that away, even though that's really supposed to be the whole fucking point.

But until they change their stupid rules, they have to keep the-ass Jesus, too, if they want their lawn to remain Christianly magical. Exactly. So I guess we'll find out just how much they love Jesus in the following weeks. It'd be a difficult question for local Christian residents. Will you deny me? Do I love regular Jesus enough to put up with ass Jesus? You know, he used to be only around his birthday, but now it's all year. Tough call.

You're just asking for it too often now. But see, this all fits in with their mythology, right? I mean, according to Christian mythology, Jesus paid the ultimate price and had the ultimate suffering. And also, according to their mythology, having things put in your butt is unpleasant. I find the latter harder to believe, but okay.

In order for both of those statements to be true, Jesus had to have a butt plug during the crucifixion or their salvation wouldn't count. And a big one. I mean, with ribs and eight horsepower and stuff. Yeah. So gotta love Chaz Stevens. Great work.

So with all due respect to Chaz Stevens, of course, just a quick note on the composition of the piece. It seems like there should have been dicks going through the hands and ankles. I felt like my eye wanted to see that. It was missing from the artwork. We were splitting hairs. Great overall presentation of a sex toy themed Jesus display. And I've seen a lot of those. Anyway, it seems like all this monument really needs at this point is a fun catchphrase for tourist families to read.

Of course it does. And I think I speak for just about everyone when I say that we want to make sure Pompano Beach comes off as a dignified place to see an ass Jesus. Right. That's why we're going to go ahead and put 30 seconds on the clock. Just for the Pompano Beach City Council. Pro bono public service for them. That's how we are.

Slogans for the placard on Florida's newest satanic ass Jesus. I love how you phrased that as though there will be newer ones later. That's how we are. I love how you phrased that as though there will be newer ones later. There certainly will be. Before we even get into this, I'm just going to guess here that the actual plaque just says, You're welcome, Noah and Heath. Okay, so here we go. 30 seconds. How about Satanic Ass Jesus?

We finally nailed him where it matters. What about Satanic Ass Jesusesus dildo unto others or satanic ass jesus dildo unto you asses to asses and duffs to no wait no that would only work if you had two of them how about how about a sign above him that just says brown eye nri it'd be awesome really should have done that loving that deep that deep dick this. All right. So what about Satanic Ass Jesus? It's not just Floridian guys that are giving up on Bush. Oh, nice, nice. Topical. Satanic Ass Jesus.

We're just trying to speed up the second coming. Something in the butt usually does the trick. What about Jesus Christ Super Starfish? Always use plenty of nard cream. Save some for the face. Make sure everyone's enjoying it. How about Ass Holy Father? Stigmata just got way more appealing.

What about Jesus Christ Pooperstar? Oh, he went back. Sometimes it's best to let Jesus come to you. He moves, you stay put. Yeah, there you go. There you go. How about The Res the resurrectum? Consider the

what would I do question settled. Stop wearing those fucking bracelets, guys. All right. I got one more. What about satanic butt plug Jesus? Abandon all soap,

ye who enter here. And because I always like to end the headlines on a piece of good actionable advice, we're going to close it right there. Heath, thanks as always. One potato, two potato. And when we come back, Tracy Harris will be here to see if we can still salvage intellectual content after the satanic ass Jesus story.

I feel like we can. I do? I believe in debate. But I learned quickly, as I'm sure most of you have, that simply being right is rarely enough to be convincing. The atheist debater is often buried in illogical propositions, fallacious rebuttals, and counterpoints so bafflingly erroneous that without preparation, one could easily find themselves at a loss for a more cogent response than David Silverman's what-the-fuck face. Well, it's in hopes of combating that situation that I've invited my next guest back to the show. Tracy Harris is the co-host of The Atheist Experience, a call-in show where she feels theistic questions ranging from the well-informed apologist to the ranting drunk uncle.

And as such, she's one of the most experienced informal atheist debaters you're likely to ever meet. Tracy, welcome back to the show. Hey, thank you. Fun to be back. All right. Now, I don't want to be presumptuous here, but I assume that because you live in Texas, you're going to be supporting Ted Cruz's bid for the presidency. Absolutely. Yes.

Yeah. you're going to be supporting Ted Cruz's bid for the presidency? Oh, absolutely, yes. Yeah. Now, not to completely derail the conversation before it even gets started, but who scares you the most up there? Ted Cruz. Yeah, that's got to be the right answer. I mean, at least with Trump, you know most of that stuff he doesn't actually believe. Yeah, that's the thing.

It's like, you know, Trump's just out there because he's the reality TV star and the megalomaniac. But Cruz believes it. I mean, they showed a clip of him tonight on CNN where he was like, you know, there's two things that drive me, the Bible and the Constitution. Both written by Moses, I do believe. He's convincing as far as like he's got me convinced that he believes this. convincing as far as like he's got me convinced that he believes this yeah well you know i mean you listen to his dad talk for any amount of time and imagine growing up around that be hard to come up sane all right now last time you were on we discussed pascal's wager we talked about the burden of proof and the prime mover arguments for anybody who missed that discussion i'd encourage you to go back to episode 119 give that a listen uh this time around i've got three new nuggets of god logic for you and i wanted to start off with the one that I hear most often. That would be the argument

from personal experience. Now, obviously, these come in a lot of forms, but I'll start off with the simplest. I felt the Holy Spirit. My mom did. My brother did. My pastor, my grandpa. Why don't you find all of these different personal experiences convincing? Yeah. I mean, for me, there's only two real options when it comes to personal experience, right? It's like, either something happened that was so unimpressive that it doesn't need a God, or something happened that really was so extraordinary that you just think, like, this could never have happened without some sort of weird supernatural intervention. And if I personally experienced something like that, I would think probably it's more likely my brain is messed up than that this actually happened. So of the two options, you've either got something so mundane that I don't know why you're convinced that there's a God involved, like I had a feeling. Or you've got something that is a super extraordinary story. Like I watched somebody's arm grow back and they had had it amputated.

And I'm sitting there thinking you're absolutely nuts. I have actually heard exactly that one before. Yeah, me too. It must be like a really common story. It's amazing how prayer groups can heal, you know, amputees and regrow arms, but somehow not in a hospital. Right, right. Or not get pictures of it happening or video or anything. It's so common.

And yet no one ever meets the guy who had his arm cut off that has an arm now. Well, let me be a little more generous to the apologist than I normally am on this one. So even if it is a fairly mundane experience, like it's a feeling and my choice of how I'm going to interpret this is that it was God. If you pile enough of those on top of each other, you know, in your community and everyone is interpreting this same relatively mundane feeling as a feeling of divine presence, is it enough to just simply say, well, that's a mundane thing that doesn't require God? Well, I mean, it is for me. Clearly, it's not for a lot of people. choir god well i mean it is for me clearly it's not for a lot of people but i i don't see how feelings especially when you understand how emotions work and it's really funny because

they just had that children's movie that came out about you know how your emotions work yeah inside out yeah yeah and because your emotions come from your brain your feelings come from your brain and if you don't know how that works, you need to go and take a course. And if you can't afford it, then see if you can just sit in and do a survey on an intrapersonal communication course. And they will explain to you how your emotions work. And when you understand that, you will understand why thinking that God gave you emotion or some specific feeling is incorrect. All right. So what about, let me up the ante here.

What about when this like miraculous experiences is well documented, like in Fatima? Yeah, yeah. That's just funny. I mean, with Fatima, you have a whole host of problems. You know, first of all, it wasn't really well documented. I don't know of any observatory that reported the sun moved. Well, other than the way it normally does. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So there was no documentation that would be like verification that the sun actually did anything weird.

There was no like planetary devastation that should occur if the sun was jumping all over the place. Right. I mean, either the planet was jumping around and it looked like the sun was moving or the sun really was moving and in which case we should have had like planetary devastation and we didn't so there's like anything that would have verified that the sun was actually jumping around in the sky didn't happen we didn't observe it we didn't you it. We didn't, you know, there's nothing. All there was, was uneducated peasants in a third world country in front of, you know, reporters saying that they saw this thing.

And we've all seen people get really hyped up on religion and, you know, do or say, or think they saw weird stuff. And especially when you're primed for it. So you get a big crowd of people standing all day in the sun, looking up at the sun for hours. And then some of them saw something and some of them didn't.

And some of the reports say something and other reports say something different. Right. And it seems like everybody saw something somewhat different and some people saw nothing whatsoever. And it's pretty much what you would expect if nothing actually happened and some people were just full of prime woo and just ready to see something. I guess it's kind of like if you put a bunch of people in a haunted house and tell them all these spooky stories before they go in there,

some segment of that population is going to see a ghost. And that shouldn't be surprising. You know, it's not like they're really seeing a ghost though. And you could have two or three people that are looking at the same thing. And one of them swears they saw something and other person says they saw nothing, you know, and this is what I, I actually made some notes. I don't know if you want me to just go into them or if you have other questions. Yeah, well, sure. I've got some other questions, but by all means, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, when you said personal experience,

it was funny because I just had a conversation about this with a theist who showed up at our after show dinner, which they're welcome as long as they're atheist friendly. But he wanted to argue apologetics. Some people enjoy that. I do it on the show. I wouldn't say I enjoy it. I would say that I wanted to argue apologetics. Some people enjoy that. I do it on the show. I wouldn't say I enjoy it. I would say that I'm willing to do it. But I think it's not something that I sit back and have a good time with.

So I was at dinner. It was a little annoying to have a theist there wanting to argue about apologetics. But I engaged him for a little bit. But there was no point. It's like it's not going to go anywhere. So he started out and he said that he believes because of personal experience, but that he understands personal experience can't convince other people, or it's not enough to convince someone else.

It's just simply enough to convince yourself, right? It's just evidence for you, not other people. Right. And I replied and I said, I don't really understand that argument because I've heard it before. Maybe it's not an argument, but the point, I don't understand the point

because if I had a personal experience that convinced me that a God exists, kind of like what I said earlier, either it's so mundane that I would have to say, why in the world does that make me think there's a God? Or it's so extraordinary that I've got to wonder why I trust myself in that experience. Now, did he give you specifics of his personal experience? Was it one of these just, I felt God? No, did they ever? No. No, they never do. I mean, when they do, it's always one of the two things, right? It's always something so mundane that you're left sitting there going, okay, you had a feeling?

I remember, I think one of my favorites was on the Atheist Experience, actually. Somebody was trying to write, God doesn't exist with their pen, and the N and the T, the pen kind of skipped a bit. He's like, well, that's proof there, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. You either get something that's so mundane that it's laughable that it would convince anybody, in which case, no, your personal experience is not sufficient evidence even to really convince you personally. It's just that you're gullible.

You're that gullible. And the other issue is when you've got something so extraordinary that you have to wonder why the person would actually believe, if what they're saying is what they perceived, you have to wonder why they trust their perception. And I presented him with that, you know, and I said, if something is so outside the range of what I understand to be reality, when something happens to me that I am like,

the world doesn't work this way based on all the years I've been on the world, based on all the things that I've done on the world, based on everything I know about it, this cannot be happening. Why would my interpretation be it actually happened that I take it at face value as opposed to saying something's really wrong with me and I need to go seek professional mental help. Or maybe I had just a brief psychotic break, you know what I mean? And that happens too. You can have psychotic breaks and even a normal person, you don't have to be severely mentally debilitated to have a psychotic episode. It can happen to people. They can have these, you know, your brain can do strange things, even if you're otherwise normal, healthy person. And so I think it's weird that how much trust they put in this biological tool that is the brain that is so susceptible to, we know it's susceptible to deception. I mean, that's all magic is, right? You go to a magic

show, you're paying for illusion. All of us understand optical illusions, right? We all understand natural occurrences that aren't what they appear right right and we all understand that so i mean and these are just things that if you're perfectly you know having a perfectly normal mental day are enough to convince you that what you're seeing you know you know you think you know it's not what you're seeing and we know this yeah right i mean we know illusion exists we and we don't know that god exists so that automatically makes it the better explanation i guess right yeah there was And we know this. Yeah, right. I mean, we know illusion exists, and we don't know that God exists, so that automatically makes it the better explanation, I guess.

Right. Yeah, there was a—like, we know, for example, that the woman wasn't really sawn in half. Right. And she's not smiling and waving with the other half of her body on the other side of the stage. But that's what we perceive, right? But that's the whole thing. It's like you can be convinced from a perception standpoint that you're looking at a particular thing that you should, based on what you know about the world, understand cannot be real, right? Right.

understand about the natural world around you, even if it is happening, let's say that there is something like we find some spot in the world where gravity isn't working, right? Like, or whatever. Maybe there is something like that. But the first time I would experience it until I had verification and some explanation for it, I'd be thinking I was nuts, that I'd lost it, that whatever I was perceiving was wrong. And so I don't trust, I trust my perception up to the point that it starts telling me things that conflict with all of the other data that I have about the world. Once it starts to conflict with other known data, that's when I have to start doubting what's going on, right? Once I see the woman's sawn in half and she's smiling and waving, I have to know something's not what it seems.

Right, yeah, and I think that so many of the personal experience things, whether it's about theism or any of the other wild woo claims, really just boil down to an understanding of psychology and the limitations of the brain. Yeah, why would you trust your brain? So when I told him this, he gives me this example, right? And he says that what if you were at home and you're sitting having an average evening with your family and then a dragon comes into your living room and it plays with you and your family all night long and it even burns your leg, it breathes on your leg and burns you. And so the

next day, your whole family, you know, recounts the events and you have the burn on your leg. And, you know, he's like, then you have all these other people that verify it. And I'm like, no, then you have all these other people that perceived what you perceived, but they're not verifying that what you saw was really what you think you saw. That's the problem. They may all have perceived the same thing, but you know what? If I get in a car and I drive through the desert with you, I'll have a car full of people that perceive water up ahead in the road.

And when we get there, there's no water. Right. No, excellent point. You know, and we all saw it, but it's not there. And so if something like that were to occur, I might be sitting here saying, you know, I don't know how so many people could be perceiving this. But it's just like the Sagan dragon in the garage, which is funny that he used a dragon. Because Sagan's point is when you can't verify it and there's no way to demonstrate that it's true and it is so whacked out, all you can do is say you don't know why so many people are having this bizarre perception, but doesn't seem to be a dragon.

Yeah, I guess even if you can establish the perception, then you still haven't proven a miracle or proven God, even if you had done that. I had, I'm, you know, he's not here to speak for himself, but the guy at dinner, I'm, I'm almost positive if I, if I had asked him to relay his personal experience, it would not have been even close to the, to the experience that he described. The dragon with the bird on the leg. Yeah. With a bunch of people seeing it and yeah, it's not going to happen. And I said, you know, what would be convincing if at the, the next morning when you were cleaning your house from where the dragon had, you know, what would be convincing? If at the next morning when you were cleaning your house from where the dragon had, you know,

trashed everything playing with you, you found a giant scale. And you took it down to the university biology lab and they tested it and said, wow, this is some kind of big lizard thing. We don't have, you know, a record of this DNA. We've never seen anything like this, but it's definitely genetically some species of lizard. I go, now you've got something. Now you have something that people can hang a hat on and say, oh my gosh, you know, and that's why a lot of times in movies when they have people have these weird experiences and like somebody will wake up and they find the feather in their hair or something, you know, that's like the smoking gun that this was real.

Right. Yeah. Because you have to have that verification or else you're just telling a story. And so when I tried to tell him that you could use the same argument for belief in something like fairies, I was interested because he raised a point that I've heard raised before, which was, yeah, but fairies aren't attributed as a cause of anything. And I found it interesting because this, like I say, this has been raised before to me, and I didn't understand the significance of it. And I was just like, why does it matter?

Why does it matter what the attribute is if you're just listing attributes? So what if I say it does things? I said, let's use gremlins then. They break things. Yeah, right. Now it's reasonable. Yeah. I said, so how do you disprove something broken wasn't broken by gremlins, right? You have a stripped wire. How do you know the gremlins didn't do it? Right? I mean, just because you say they do things doesn't really help me establish if they exist or not. Right. I have to know more about them. And he was talking about, he's like, well, Santa Claus, for example, is attributed with stuff, right?

He does something, and you can test it. He goes, we could monitor, like, all the chimneys around the world and see if he comes down. And I said, well, what if we find Santa one day, and he says the chimney thing is just bullshit that people made up because they couldn't figure out how he was getting in the houses. And really he just magically transports the gifts from his workshop in the

North pole, just, you know, by magic, he can transport gifts. So he doesn't use chimneys. I go, did we disprove Santa because Santa has to use a chimney or did we prove

Santa and Santa doesn't use chimneys, you know? And it's like, and that is the thing. It's like God's attributes don't help. Right. Right. Because anytime you change up those attributes or lose an attribute or get

somebody to back off an attribute, they're still saying, Oh, but still God. So you can't, you can't say that because it has this attribute that people claim. No, because then when you disprove that attribute, when you say, you know, evolution really did happen,

and it's pretty indisputable, they don't back off God. They just say that's how God did it, right? Right, yeah, exactly. You've disproven that claim without disproving their God. Right, they just change up the God, and it's still to them the God. And so if you changed up Santa coming down the chimney, it's still Santa. So how do you how what what is it that convinces you if none of these attributes have to stick? What is it? Right. And so there was a really good

article and I wish it was still online, but I can't find it anymore and haven't been able to find it for a couple of years. But it was posted by Harvard Law School, and it was an article about religious legal protections, like how they protect people for religious freedom. Like if somebody says that they have been sent to some religious rehabilitation center by a judge and they want protections and they say this is, you know, against what I believe and it's not right. How do you protect? You can't really have legal protections, religious protections for people if you can't define religion. And so there was this big long article about different precedents for different cases where people had claimed religious exemptions. And it was very interesting to see how diverse what you could label a religion was. And I find that God works the same way. And so what would happen is you would have two things that could be labeled a religion,

and they have absolutely nothing in common. But it's like thing A has some overlap with thing b that's established as a religion and so a gets established as a religion and then thing c has some things in common with a and b but it's got some other different things but it's a religion because it's got these other things that are in common with other established religions and then you have like this thing d that has nothing in common with like a and b but it's got some stuff in common with C. And it was just so weird how there was no like guidelines. There was no set of things that it's like,

you have to hit all these things to be considered a religion. It was just like, you have to have, you know, any of these things or some combination of these things. And it was so fluid. And I thought to myself, you know,

this is what they do with God. It's just fluid. Right. Right. And they make it, they make it fluid and it makes it impossible to nail it that you can't pin it down. And, you know, there, there seems to be some sort of distinguishing features because if I try to convince you that a pencil is a God, you're going to say, you know, no, that's,

that's wrong. If you were trying to teach somebody the language and they, you know, you told them God, and they picked up a pencil, you would think they misunderstood something. So there is something, right? There's something about the concept that we do understand as things being within or without the realm. But there may be gray areas where they're very difficult to tell, right? Like you get the pantheist concept and it's just like, well,

I don't, you know, I don't know. I don't, you revere it, but it's still just the universe. It's still just matter. And so I don't know.

You're calling it God. And there's enough of you calling it God that I guess you can do that. But you're in that gray area where I'm not really sure I'm sold that I'm with you that that's a god. And so you can have the gray area where it's like, yeah, I'm not sure, but there really is an outside of that line. Somebody picks up a pencil and says, this is God. Everybody is going to pretty much look at that and say, no, you don't understand what a god is. So there is an exclusion. So there is an exclusion, you know, there is exclusivity, but I don't know.

I really don't know, like, what it takes to make a god if I had to try to define it for everyone. And it was like that with the religion article. It was like anything you could try to define, there would be this other thing over here that is like, yeah, that should be protected under the religious clause, too. But, you know, but it doesn't have any of those attributes. But it has this other thing. It was just so messed up. And I loved the article because it showed how difficult it is to define it, and yet it has to be defined in order to be protected. Right.

I think that kind of works you almost into the atheist concept that you haven't even defined what God is enough for me to refute it yet. Oh, yeah. It's wild. And I've had that conversation a lot, too, where you just say, OK, well, let's figure out what it is you're calling God. And then we'll talk about why you believe it. But can I understand what it is first? And half the time I can't even get through that. I remember this one quote, and I'm paraphrasing because it was so long ago. I don't remember the exact quote.

But somebody said something like, you know, it's a, it's a disembodied intelligence, you know, I forget how they worded it. And I said, where have you ever seen such a thing as that? And they said, I haven't. And I'm like, well, then why are you saying that it exists? Why in the world would you be advocating for something that you're basically saying you have no reason to think it could really even exist you have no experience with such a thing you've never seen such a thing everything you've ever seen is the opposite of that and yet you're promoting it and and also giving it properties and and and using it as an answer

and arguments and things as well yeah it's just amazing if you really dig into the logic there what is a disembodied intelligence like what the is that i mean seriously like at a certain point you just have to look at them or say what are you talking about well you know i i get that same thing when you when you deal with the you know the kalam cosmological argument and they say well things that don't have a beginning have this property i'm like well give give me a an example of one of these things without a beginning so we can determine if they have said properties. Well, I fear that three apologetics was a little ambitious tonight. We got into such an interesting labyrinth of conversation just on the appeals to personal experience

that I guess we're going to have to have you back on sometime to talk about these other two. Oh, we're done? Yeah, it's all the time we've got. Are we done? Oh, bummer. Well, like I said, I just have to extract a commitment for another interview in the future because we don't have a lot of interesting ground to cover yet. And of course, between now and then, you can catch Tracy on all the best episodes of The Atheist Experience.

We'll have their website and their YouTube channel linked on the show notes for this episode. Tracy, always a pleasure to talk to you. Oh, thank you. It's always great being on before she comes around the mountain tonight i want to remind everybody that heath and i guested on not one but two episodes of the atheistically speaking podcast one came out on monday where we discussed presidential politics. The second, I believe, comes out today in which we discuss when it's okay to make fun of dead people.

And, of course, we'll have both of those linked on the show notes if you'd like to give them a listen. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you this week, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting this coming Monday at 8 a.m. Eastern. And, of course, a new episode of God Awful Movies coming out 24 hours after that. Obviously my work here isn't done until I thank Heath for all of his hard work, and you know what? I do it so often, I thank him so much,

that it almost seems obligatory at this point. So Heath, I really, really mean it, even more so this week than usual, because I'm going on vacation next week, and Heath is going to have to do way more shit than usual, so he's definitely in need of being buttered up, even though that's not what I'm doing now because I'm being entirely genuine. But for the record, fear not, there will be an episode out at the usual time, vacation or no, nothing stops this train. Of course, I also need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for all the loveliness and all the talent. I also want to thank the brilliant Tracy Harris one more time for lending

us her wit and insight tonight. Again, can't encourage you enough to check her out on the Atheist Experience if you haven't already. And if you ever have a chance to hear her give a talk or something, I can say from experience, you will not be disappointed. I also want to thank everybody except Ray Comfort for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, most notably, of course,

Adam Rieks of the Herd Mentality podcast. But most of all, of course, I need to thank this week's best people, Glenn, James, Ian, Taylor, Sarah, Graham, David, Leonard, Stephen, Emily, Jan, Teresa, Nicole, Gretchen, Encounter Digital, The Astound, and Thanatopsis. Glenn, James, Ian, Taylor, and Sarah, Graham, David, Leonard, Stephen, Emily, Jan, Teresa, Nicole, Gretchen, Encounter Digital, The Astound, and Thanatopsis. Glenn, James, Ian, Taylor, and Sarah, who are so bright that the sun gets to see the transit of Venus too.

Graham, David, Leonard, and Stephen, who attract so much pussy they've been named honorary laser pointers. Emily, Jan, Teresa, Nicole, and Gretchen, whose ovaries are so strong they could pop out those little plastic eggs with prizes if they so chose, and Encounter Digital, the Astounds, and Thanatopsis, whose names don't readily lend themselves to compliments, but who are also very intelligent and well-penised and or vaginid. Together, these 17 men, women, titles, and William Cullen Bryant poems have helped work their way to the front of the line for Atheist Heaven this week by giving us money.

Not everybody has the wisdom, physical dexterity, and keen perception it takes to personally fund all the Jesus butt-plug jokes, but if you'd like to help out, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended edition of every 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, whereby you'll earn the satisfaction of knowing that some of these puppy rape jokes are all your fault. And if you'd like to help, but your money is currently tied up in getting the fuck off of the planet Earth

if Donald Trump ever sniffs the nomination, you can also help us a ton by leaving us a five-star review on iTunes or by tweeting about the show, both of which I believe you can still do from near-Earth orbit. 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.

It's like there should have been something about fudge packs and Hershey Highways in there. Yeah. Yeah. Could have been. Didn't get anything. Didn't get anything. You can't always cram everything into the sodomy joke that you want to cram. Fudge pack everything into the Hershey Highway there.