Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 15: Slick as Santorum

Episode Date: October 3, 2011

News items for the week of 9/26 - 10/3 B-Shoc gives a Christian prayer rally in South Carolina, Neutrino could go faster than light, Faith healing parents let son die, American secularism on the rise, Refusing to Kill Daughter, Pakistani Family Defies Tradition, 11,000 kids in California enter the school system without being vaccinated, Skeptic book reccomendations, Obama's class warfare, Huge support for the "Buffet Rule," Elizabeth Warren kils it, Santorum asks google for help, Whale found 800m on shore. Clips: "The Moon, the Tides and why Neil DeGrasse Tyson is Colbert's God," The Science Network. Ali G on Science, Jesus Camp, Fox News, In the Stone - Earth, Wind and Fire, Anderson Cooper 360, A Few Good Men. Drew's link: http://www.bjupress.com/about/look-inside-science-4.php

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. We do understand the tides. The tides are part of the 4% we understand. So Bill O'Reilly is giving a list of things that are fully understood. If he had given a list of things that are not understood, okay, that would be a different reaction. And it would be less susceptible to comedic mockery than saying, tides come in and out, you can't explain that. It's like, yes we can, we've known that one for the last couple of hundred years. Give me a better example.

So if he said, this dark energy forcing an expansion of the universe so fast that it's accelerating, you can't explain that. Right. We can't explain it. I don't think he knows enough physics to be able to tell us what it is we don't understand yet. That would have been a more interesting exchange with the atheist guy. I forgot his name, forgive me, but the guy who he was interviewing. Now, if he wants to use that as evidence for God, but then we just have to come back and say, well, it doesn't mean if you don't understand something and the community of physicists don't understand it, that means God did it. Is that how you want to play this game? Because if it is, here's

a list of the things in the past that the physicists at the time didn't understand. And a talk show you might have conducted 200 years ago would have said, the planets do retrograde? Can't understand that, must be a god. And we'd say, you know, you're right. And then 10 years later, we understand it, so what do you do? So if that's how you want to invoke your evidence for God, then God is an ever-receding pocket of scientific ignorance that's getting

smaller and smaller and smaller as time moves on. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. Welcome back for episode 15 of Cognitive Dissonance. We've got some great stories to go through on this show and some things that'll probably make you absolutely

nuts. I think the first one we're going to talk about is religion popping up in schools again. If you're unfortunate enough to be a student in South Carolina middle schools, you may have had to suffer through what Cecil, I think, might be the worst assembly ever. I remember these things from when I was in high school. They used to bring in like motivational speakers and all these different people. And and they would like sometimes there would be comedians and sometimes it would be like fucking Jesse White's tumblers. Jesse White's tumblers show up. If you're in Illinois, Jesse White's tumblers show up every fucking where. Yeah, they do.

There could be like a fucking seatbelt check on the side of the road. It's like fucking Jesse White's tumblers are flipping about. What the fuck? Tumblers are everywhere. But, yeah, we get all these different types of people that come in and do their little spiel they do little motivational speech well down in uh in south carolina they decided that what they wanted to do was have a a prayer rally uh hosted by uh this guy what's his name d's nuts bShock, something like that. Anyway, this dude, he comes in and he's got – he's one of these rap for Jesus guys.

And, you know, take this guy. This is like the most insulting thing you could do to rap music. You know what I mean? Is inflict this guy on it. Inflict him on a style of music. It's so bad. But what they did was they come down and they have this little, like, it's like a concert in the middle of the gym,

and they have, like, a 4x4 projected screen behind him. I don't know if you saw the video. It's like a tiny little screen behind him and, like, a laser light show you get at Spencer's. It's just like – It is fucking low-budget productions. It's fucking super low-budget. That's why he's B-shock.

He's fucking budget shock is what he is. This is going to be fucking B-broke. Anyway, this guy does his little spiel and then this pastor comes in and says, you know, we need fucking seats for Christ in the church or whatever. And then he basically gives a spiel about Jesus. But, Tom, you know, what I want to say is I'm not as offended that it's Christ in there. I'm just saying that, you know, religion doesn't belong in there at all. I mean, how upset would these people be if it was a Muslim preacher in there?

You know, the first thing I'm thinking is, you know, it's one thing for me to be an atheist and have to suffer through this nonsense because, you know, I'll be honest, if I grow up in a Christian nation, which we have, and I arrive at the conclusion of atheism, I'm probably better equipped to deal with this auditorium nonsense. Right. Because I've probably given my views some thought. But what I'm thinking is, can you imagine being, you know, a Jewish parent and finding out like, well, they're going to have a great big Christian assembly.

Like that undermines my fucking faith. Right. What are you talking about? Why would you have this in my school? And then I saw it was in South Carolina. I was like, that undermines my fucking faith. Right. What are you talking about? Why would you have this in my school? And then I saw it was in South Carolina. I was like, all right, there's no other faiths in South Carolina. There's no Jews down there. But it is insane that they would have this thing in school.

I don't understand who approved this. Who's sitting around being like, let's let all in favor of b-shock b-shock everyone b-shock school well you know he even says tom he even says in the thing if you watch the entire video there's a part at the end where he's like the principal contacted me and said i can't be a hypocrite anymore he's like and the guy said well how'd you get permission to do this he's like i didn't and you're like well. You can't fucking make decisions for everybody's child like that. Like, I recognize that you do make decisions for people's children, but it's based on a set of rules that you have to follow. You can't just be like, well, it's pedophile day.

We invited all the pedophiles in, you know, you can't do shit like that. Um, so there's a, there's a set of rules that he's got to follow. He can't just fucking loose canon this shit his way through fucking being a principal. And then there's this really stupid part at the end where one of these guys says, he's like, they preach evolution five days a week, you know, nine hours a day. He's like, give me 30 minutes of your week to tell you Jesus Christ loves you and I'm going to win. And I'm just thinking, what does that have to do with anything? What What you're mad that they're telling people about like science, but you're going to tell them that some fucking imaginary figure loves them and

that's supposed to win them over. Yeah. You know, the reason that they're giving them all the information about evolution is because they're in fucking school. Right. Keep your church in your church. You know, the principal does have to follow a set of rules. Some of them are in the Constitution. Right. Yeah. It's, this is insane that they let this happen. And it's funny because these videos, like they try to like, they try to take these videos down, you know, because there was a bit of controversy about it when I was reading the story.

You know, originally it was on the school's Facebook page. Then it came off the Facebook page. But it's kind of funny because it's still on B-Shock's page. B-Shock's all like, what, what? I got hired for something. Well, and then he takes it down and then people are like, fuck you, dude. We saw that shit. You can't hide that nonsense.

You can't stop the signal, so to speak, dude. What the fuck? I love when they take that stuff down, too, because it's like, oh, you took it down. You don't understand the internet. Once up, there is no down, my friend. Yeah, you've got to understand something here. And what is happening in this part? There's one part of this where this guy says, you know, okay, now we just saw B shock up there, fucking

jiggling his balls or whatever. And he's like, now we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna go, we're gonna take a break and we're going to take you, take your name down and get some information to you and get you plugged into a church. Like, and I'm not, I'm not stretching what he says in this video at all. Like that's pretty much what he says. And you're like, like, I can't imagine sending my child to a school if I was – and it's – let's not just say I'm an atheist, right? Let's say I'm a Muslim. Let's say I'm somebody who's not – who doesn't have the same views of Christ as these people. What if you're a very tolerant Christian, Tom?

What if you're – let's say you're a Christian who's just like, yeah, you know, I think Jesus is pretty cool. That's all. I don't – I'm not, I don't fucking look at the Bible and think this is how I need to live my life. I'm a good person. I live my life how I think I should live my life, right? There's people out in the world. There's a lot of people like this that aren't very religious, but you know, they believe in Christ or God or whatever. And they're, and they're fine with it. And nothing changed. Nothing's going to change how they look at it. But then they send their kid to school and suddenly you've got this guy who's preaching the gospel to him.

He's singing all these church songs to him. What if this guy, this guy who comes in, suddenly has a problem with gay marriage? What if that guy has a problem? He's more fundamentalist than you are. Sure. Or if he's less. You know, the thing is that this only works if he's the exact same as you. It's only not offensive to somebody's secular or religious values if this guy happens to have the same.

It's not like Christianity is one thing. Right. It's a gradation of things. There's a huge continuum of that nonsense. You can disbelieve vast swaths of that garbage and still fall somewhere on that continuum. swaths of that garbage and still fall somewhere on that continuum. So to have this guy pop up in your school is insane. And to have the principal just unilaterally make this decision.

Way to be not a principal anymore. Way to not have principals. I see what you did there, Tom. I am clever. Yo, science. What is it all about? Technology. What is that all about?

Is it good or is it whack? So it would have been interesting, Cecil, while this guy was preaching his biblical nonsense, to just kind of stand up. It would have been nice if they had like a question and answer session to stand up and be like, hey, so what do you think about the whole story about the neutrinos? This has got to be blowing some people's mind who thinks that science is dogma, right? It's got to be blowing their mind to see the scientific community going, fucking awesome. Let's check this shit out. Rather than, you know, oh God, it's turned up on its head. The world's going to fall apart now. Right. You know, news came out relatively recently. It's been popping around that there is possibly some evidence that certain subatomic particles may be traveling faster than the speed of light. And Einstein's

theory of relativity pretty much demonstrates that nothing can travel, that the maximum speed of any particle or anything at all would be the speed of light in a vacuum. And there's some evidence that might not in fact be the case. It might still be the case. There's a lot of investigation still needs to happen. But what's crazy exciting is that, you know, the scientific community is like, wow, that's fucking awesome. Let's test and retest and retest that shit. Right.

Because that's how you'll arrive at something approximating truth. Right. And that's really the that's really the difference is that science understands that it can't demonstrate complete truth. But what it can do is arrive at approximations. It can take evidence and say, OK, well, based on this evidence, what are the conclusions we should draw? X conclusion? Great. We have drawn X conclusion. And if X turns out to be wrong, well, we're going to leave the possibility for Y and Z to be up. And it's not like the scientific community has been fucking ripped asunder by the news. The scientific community has been fucking invigorunder by the news. The scientific community has been fucking invigorated by the news.

Imagine if Jesus came down, right? Like imagine a comparable scenario in a religious setting, right? Like imagine if Jesus came down and was like, hey, the Jews, we got to talk. Also, I'm black. Right? Like it wouldn't work. It wouldn't work. Like you can't come down and violate a religious group's basic assumptions about how the world works.

There's backlash. It doesn't work because that is dogmatic. Yeah, I was thinking that like when the Shroud of Turin came around, do you remember when that sort of popped up, that Shroud of Turin? And they initially were like, oh, it's the Shroud that Jesus was buried in. And when he got raptured or whatever the fuck happened to him, it like burned his image into the death cloth or whatever. And then they went back and checked it out, and they did some carbon dating, and they're like, oh, it's not real. And then they're like, oh, well, you know, science can't really tell you.

And that's the total difference, right? Because the difference here isn't that they're not going to continue to test this thing. They're going to try it. One of the things that came out of this, it actually came out of the, that CERN, is that what it is? That big, like, Hadron Collider area? Right. That's where it came out of. It came out of, like, the big physics lab there.

It wasn't the Hadron Collider that figured it out. Like, they didn't use the Hadron Collider to figure this out, but they, it's in the same sort of place. And they released this information, and they said, well, why are you releasing this information? Like, we want other people to test it. We want, we're releasing this information because we look at our, our data and our data says something's wrong. So what we want to do is send this out into the world and have other people take a look at it and see if our data is right. And that's, that's how this thing works. Instead, it's like, you know, with the Shroud of Turn, they just like, you could take a little piece of it. Oh, it didn't turn out the

way we wanted. Well, too bad. We don't really listen to what you have to say. So it's like, you know, with the Shroud of Turin, they're just like, you could take a little piece of it. Oh, it didn't turn out the way we wanted? Well, too bad. We don't really listen to what you have to say. Sure. It's like, I don't like your data. It's exactly the opposite of how religion and science work. They're on completely two different levels. Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord.

Open hearts. So this next story, stories like this are unsettling, Cecil. This next story is about... Yeah, these are hard to talk about. It is. It's a story about faith healing. Now, there's a silver lining to this story. So I'll get to that in just a moment. But this is a story about Dale and Shannon Hickman, a couple of faith healing fundamentalists. They're part of a denomination called the Followers of Christ. They don't believe in taking yourself, your kids, your family members, whatever, to doctors. They don't believe in medical intervention at all. The only intervention that they'll use is prayer, which doesn't even make any sense.

That's not a medical intervention, by the way. Yeah. That's not even an intervention really. That's some fucking wistful fucking thinking. Didn't God get my kid or myself sick? Like why do I have to tell him I don't want to be sick? He fucking knows everything. You have to opt out of the program.

It's like the no-call list. Oh, I see. I got you. I want to call God and be like, hey, I'd like to be in the no-die list. Wouldn't you be on the yes, I'd like to die list? You'd be like, hmm, heaven? That's better than this. I know, I know.

That doesn't make any sense. Yeah. So they had a kid. Their kid had, according to medical experts, a 99.9% chance of surviving if he'd been taken to a hospital. He had staph pneumonia and underdeveloped lungs. They didn't, of course, take him to a hospital. He was born at home, didn't take him to a hospital. And kiddo died, lived less than nine hours.

Oh, man. Totally savable, 99.9% chance. Now here's the silver lining. They're going to jail. Yeah, you know, it's the saddest part of this entire thing is that, um, is that people like this can have children, that they can have children and that they can make these decisions to kill a child. Right. You know what I mean? Like, like you can't, I don't know how a pro lifer could look at this, right? Somebody who's a pro lifer, somebody who's against abortion could look at this in any other way. This is,

this is, you know, aborting after it's born basically. I mean you waited the nine months out and then just decided to abort. So this is the exact same thing. It's a horrifying thing that they would just look at their child and be like, well, turn in blue, time to pray. You can't stress this enough, Tom. Call the fucking paramedics and pray because you can do two things at once unless you're partially retarded. I don't understand somebody who can look at their own child turning blue and gasping for breath and not pick up that phone and call 911. Yeah, that's sadistic. At some point, you've got to recognize.

going to call 911. Yeah, that's sadistic. At some point, you've got to recognize, you know, and they even said, you know, they even said that they, it wasn't God's will for David to live. I mean, that's your kid. I don't understand that at all. I just, that's like, that's a point of view. I can't, I can't even come to that. I can't imagine. See, so I can't imagine that for a fucking stranger. You know, let's say I walk outside my house, you know, and there's some fucking random stranger laying in my yard, turning blue and gasping for breath. I can't imagine being like, wow, I'm just kind of curious to find out if they live. I mean, you take action. Right.

Right. Because decent human beings take action in a crisis. That's what you do. You do the thing that helps. If you don't know what the thing is and you don't do it, then you can be forgiven for that. But if you know the thing to do, and it's as easy as picking up the phone. I mean, even young kids know when there's an emergency, 911. We fucking shortened it to three digits here in the States. You can't even do that.

That's tough. So enjoy jail, stupid. This is an article from Atheist Underworld we're referring to here. And at the end of the article, it says, apparently the Hickmans were indicted before that loophole was closed. And they're referring to a loophole of giving people who do this sort of thing more time because of this fact, it is possible that they may not receive the minimum six year sentence. However, the state prosecutors said that they will be fighting for a longer prison term. And I hope the Hickmans receive the maximum possible sentence. So basically they're saying that there's

a chance they won't even serve six years. That's depressing. I thought there was at least like a lead lining in this story. No, no. What I don't, what I, you know, even when your own fucking, like you said earlier, even when their own experts are coming up and saying

you know, yeah basically this kid was fucked and they should have called the doctor and they didn't. Like, your own experts your own expert from the fucking defense is saying that. You know you fucked up and it's just, I can't imagine looking at it

like a little, I don't care if it's any child any child ever. I don't care if it's a kitten man. I would not be looking at the thing being like, oh, looks like it's any child, any child ever. I don't care if it's a kitten, man. I would not be looking at the thing being like, oh, looks like it's labored. I better pray. You know, like we've said before, walk and chew gum. Do two things. I mean nobody's going to care that you're praying as well.

But do the thing that actually can save them 99.9 percent of the time. Don't fucking avoid it and do the thing that can save them no percent of the time. I do believe that atheists are parasites in the sense they're benefiting from everything that religious culture is built in America, but they're doing nothing to add energy into the system. So our next story is actually a very positive story. It's about America's secular revival. It's from Salon.com. And it outlines five signs that the religious impact on the U.S. politics will soon decline. I know we've been accused of being too American in the past. Nothing I can really do about that except to talk about America.

Kind of American. That's pretty good, America. That's pretty good, Tom. Man, channeling G-dub there. But here in the States, the Republican Party, there's only two viable parties in the States. The Republicans and Democrats. The Republican Party is completely controlled by the religious right. And there is some hope that that might change, at least according to this article, because secularism is getting a revival. I actually see this. I was talking to my wife about this not too long ago, and I've actually seen signs of this now for some time.

The very fact, Cecil, that our show exists. Right. And that our show has an audience. Yeah. And that our show has an audience. And it's not just, you know, you and I listening to ourselves babble. I think it's pretty solid evidence that secularism is on the rise. Yeah, I think so too. I think that there was, you know, there's been some shifts in our culture, in American culture especially. You look at, you know, I didn't grow up in the time of, you know, communists when the communists were,

you know, communists were an enemy when I was a young man, when I was very young, the communists were an enemy. And right when I was in high school is when the wall came down, the Berlin wall came down. And that's when things started opening up for, for Russia, um, for the then USSR. But before that point, there was that idea. It wasn't as strong in the seventies and in the eights about godless communists. But I know that that idea existed. And at least I understood what that idea meant as a young man in that time. And so like there was this pushback.

Religion, we're the religious people. We're the ones that believe in God. We're the ones that are wholesome in America and apple pie. You know, that sort of thing all sort of fits into one big mold. And that's what we were. They were ideologically having this combat with with the USSR for a long time. Well, then that goes away. And then, you know, as a as I was getting a little, you know, out of high school and, you know, maybe up until I would say 9-11, it was starting to flow back the other way. But then 9-11 hits and, you know, the Muslims, it's the Muslim nation versus the Christian nation, even though nobody really wanted to admit that. Everybody really thought that. And for a long time, Tom, in this country, I would say for about five or six years after 9-11, it was not a healthy thing to tell somebody you were an atheist in this country. somebody you were an atheist in this country. It was not an easy thing to look somebody in the face and be an atheist because that event caused so much psychological damage to this country.

It changed how people looked at you. And if you said, hey, I'm an atheist, they would be like, well, you're not, you know, you're not American then. You're not a patriot. Right. It's, you know, this whole idea of your religiosity being tied to national pride. Right. You know, that that nonsense was sold. You know, I will say that I think the last 10 years, the continuing ubiquitous nature of technology, I think, is what has allowed secularism to really rise and flourish. Yeah. Shows like this.

Now, I'm not giving ourselves mad props for the rise of secularism in America. Don't get me wrong. But shows like this. Shows with this as a topic is what you're saying. Right. Yeah. The Internet in general, podcasting in general, blogs in general, the ability of people to access the Internet

casually and easily and quickly. You know, in the 90s, in the late 90s, even the early 2000, 2001, yeah, people had Internet at home, but it was slow. It was laggy. It wasn't, you didn't have casual, comfortable, everyday sort of access to the Internet. Now it's on your phone. Now it's so fast. It's everywhere that you look. religious blogs and atheist blogs and things like Reddit's Atheism Board and shows like this one or the many other atheist shows out there, it gives people an ability to expand their network and expand their community. And I think as that continues to grow, because it's never going to shrink, as that continues to grow, secularism is the response. Because I genuinely don't believe that you can be confronted with

all of the world's major religious organizations and religious beliefs and look at them in anything even remotely considered a careful way and say, aha, one of these is definitely true, right? It at least is going to plant a seed of doubt. And those seeds will germinate, and those seeds will rise. And secularism is the response to knowledge. I truly believe that. Because as knowledge increases, the need for religiosity, I think, decreases substantially. And technology gives rise to that. It gives you access to information and viewpoints that,

you know, even in the late 90s, 80s, 70s, 60s, 50s, your religious understanding was limited to your community, to your church, to the people at the grocery store, the people you met. If you were fortunate enough to go to university, many universities were religious in nature. They had religious affiliations. The professors and what have you would be predominantly religious folks. And that wasn't my experience. I don't think that was your experience. No, I actually went to a Catholic university and my experience was that even the priests were not that religious. They're having no sex for nothing. Marriage. Marriage is what brings us together today. Marriage, that blessed arrangement, that dream within a dream. So Cecil, this next thing we're going to go ahead and post, this is a shameless plug to go to our

website, dissonancepod.com. We're going to post this image, link to this image rather, on our page. This is kind of awesome. It's marriage equals. There's a lot of talk, obviously, as the candidates for the Republican Party continue to debate as election season draws nigh. And by draws nigh, I mean is over a year away, but whatever. There's a lot of talk about marriage. You know, marriage is between one man and one woman. You hear it all the time from the loons.

There's this great image about marriage in the Bible. It just says marriage equals. So there's eight examples of what marriage really equals in the Bible. I'm going to grab my favorite one from here. Cecil, why don't you grab your favorite one from here? And then you can look at the other six of them on our site, dissonancepod.com, shameless plug. My favorite one has got to be rapist and his victim. You stole my favorite one. It's so evil. Of course, I'm going to go to the most evil one.

Yeah, it's really bad. And this is a direct example of biblical marriage from Deuteronomy. A virgin who is raped must marry her rapist. The rapist, though, doesn't get off scot-free. He's got to pay the victim's father 50 shekels of silver for his property loss. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough. My favorite one is man plus woman plus woman plus woman. Because, I mean, come on now. That's fucking hot. And it basically just gives you many places in the Bible where polygamy is mentioned. And that's why you could have a whole sect of people in the United States that think, hey, it's totally cool to do this sort of thing because the book says.

I love the examples for yours where it has, you know, different characters in the Bible and, you know, how many wives they have. This guy's got two, this guy's got three. 700! Solomon is knocking boots. That's all I'm saying, man. 700 wives! He is able to fucking populate an entire fucking country See, so that's probably as awful, and it is awful, as it is to be fucking married to your attacker in the case of rape.

It's probably better than the nonsense that goes on in Pakistan. There's a story from the Atlantic about a family in Pakistan who is taking a lot of heat. And it's not like I got to mention this, too. They're in Karachi, too. It's not like they're in some fucking backwater. They're in Karachi. This is a Pakistani family who has a 17 year old girl. 17 yearold girl was raped four years ago. They make her 13 when she was attacked, drugged, gang-raped, held in captivity for three days before she finally escaped.

Local custom would have her family consent to killing her or the family kills her themselves by stoning because she had illicit relations outside of marriage. What kind of fucking backwards fucking thought process do you have to be so fucking just so vehemently against the victim? I understand that rape is one of these things that really is a polarizing thing.

And there's many people that actually blame the victim in a lot of rapes, even in, you know, countries where you would think they would want to murder the person after they after they were raped. But even still, in countries that that don't think like this, there's a lot of blame the victim. That happens a lot. And and that, and that's a problem with rape in general is that there's a lot of blame the victim that goes on. Um, but this is a whole new level of blame the victim, Tom. I mean, this is really just fucking the most outrageous thing ever. And now I don't understand, you know, maybe she is, you know, maybe she's lying. Who knows? Right. You don't know because there's, they said there's no evidence, you know no evidence. It's words against words and there was no genetic evidence.

They couldn't get evidence out probably because they didn't fucking try. But maybe they did. I don't know. So there's not evidence that says it. But maybe she's lying or whatever. But who cares? You shouldn't kill somebody for that. No.

I mean this is insane. The idea that her family is supposed to murder her because she was brutally victimized. Pakistan, when faced with a penalty such as a horrid, painful, slow execution, I very much doubt that anybody is going to be like, well, I'm just going to make up this story. Here's a story I'm going to make up. The one that will eventually end with my family murdering me. You know, but even regardless, because obviously the truth can't be known. The truth can't be known. The truth can't be known. So the idea that you would live in a culture that not only condones this sort of barbarism, which is all that it is, but that actually pressures families. This family has had their home attacked.

This family is having a hard time making ends meet. They go without food. They live all together in a one room apartment. This family is under a tremendous amount of pressure because they're not doing what is local custom. And the local custom when your daughter is raped is to fucking murder her to preserve your family's sense of honor. I can't think of anything that involves less honor than that. It's not just Islam that promotes that same sort of thing. I was just, you know, in Googling about, you know, the Bible's got plenty of mentioning of stoning women.

Stoning rape victims is a little bit, is in the Bible. It says, if a young woman who is a virgin is betrothed to a husband and a man finds her in the city and lies with her, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and you shall stone them to death with stones. The young woman, because she did not cry out in the city and the man because he humbled his neighbor's wife. Well, the only reason, Tom, that I could imagine that any of these fucking, that this sort of like idea even exists is that it was made by rapists to protect rapists.

Sure. I mean, like it's made by people that want to get away with violating other people. This rule is put in place so that they can get away scot-free because, hey, she was raped. Well, now she, you know, it's pretty hard to accuse your accuser when you've been fucking, you know, like fucking 400 pounds of stones have been dropped on you. It is awful to the point of being absurd. You know, you look at these things and you think, you know, this whole idea like, well, everybody's got their own, you know, right to their own religious principles.

Or, you know, you hear that all the time. It's like, really? Because this is it promotes barbarism. Yeah. It promotes Bronze Age ethics. It promotes brutality against women. Wakefield is not just any researcher. His 1998 study on autism and childhood vaccines literally changed the way many parents

think about vaccines. The study was based on just 12 children. That's right, 12 children. But many parents desperate for answers around the world embraced Wakefield's claim that he'd found a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps, and rubella. So there's an interesting story. The Associ the associated press thousands entering california schools without vaccines um last year's class of california kindergartners had a record high percentage of parents who use a personal belief exemption to avoid immunization uh still yeah what more evidence do we need get your your fucking kids vaccinated. Here's what people don't understand when they say like, you know, they have a personal exemption. They can go and make sure that their kids don't get vaccinated because it's their own personal choice.

Understand that getting your kids vaccinated is a public health decision. It is not a private health decision. Getting a vasectomy is a private health decision. It is not a private health decision. Getting a vasectomy is a private health decision. Getting your kids immunized so that they don't become carriers to disease and hurt other children is a public health decision. It's like, imagine if like in the late 90s, a researcher came forward, Tom, and said, you know what? We've found that in these 12 kids wearing seatbelts caused autism. Now it's, you know, it's just these 12 kids, but it's caused autism, not getting in an accident. I'm not talking about getting in an accident. I'm just saying wearing the actual seatbelt caused the autism. Even though there's

tons of data, they go through all this rigorous testing of these safety belts. Nope, nope, sorry. These 12 kids got autism from the seatbelts. And then suddenly there's this epidemic of people not wanting to seatbelt their kids in. Would people stand for that? Would people look at it and be like, it's not about, you know, your personal preference with your kid thinking they're going to get some sort of disease from, you know, putting a safety belt on. It's about, you know, preventing the possible damage that could happen to your child if he's in an accident. Nobody. And, you know, it's exact. It's very similar, Tom, because you remember the fucking rumors that were going around.

It's like, oh, it's always better to be thrown from a car. Right. Yeah, there was that, you know, anytime a public health initiative goes into place, there's always a handful of nut jobs who oppose that decision based not on evidence, but on fear first. And the anti-vaccine crowd is a fear first crowd you know they push forward fear first and then they try to back it up with some made-up science sounding nonsense um the science is not on their side it's just not on their side um and as these kids 11 000 kids entering the system you know that's a lot of fucking kids entering the system. And they're like, we've talked about this before. There are plenty of kids who cannot get vaccinated. I actually didn't get the MMR vaccination and a variety of other vaccinations personally when I

was a kid because I was allergic to eggs and eggs are incubated or vaccines rather are incubated in eggs. And so I wasn't able to get a lot of those vaccines. Thankfully, I didn't get any of those awful fucking diseases like measles, mumps, rubella. You know, I didn't get any of those things because I was a benefactor or a beneficiary rather of herd immunity. Herd immunity kept me safe. Everybody around me was vaccinated. So that disease didn't enter into the population that I was a part of and I was kept safe. Everybody around me was vaccinated. So that disease didn't enter into the population that I was a part of and I was kept safe. Those things are going to disappear. You know, there's a tipping point for the, for herd immunity. And there's going to come a point where, you know, the elderly infants, children, and other people who are at risk and who are unable to get vaccines,

children and other people who are at risk and who are unable to get vaccines, they're going to start getting sick. And yeah, maybe your kid, and I understand, your kid is the most precious thing in the world to you, yada, yada, yada. You want to keep him safe. I get it. I do. But how are you going to feel when your kid gets whooping cough and gets better and somebody else's kid gets whooping cough in your same preschool and doesn't. What happens when you don't get better from whooping cough, Tom? I think you die.

You think you die. Yeah, I think you die. I think if you're fine with a kid dying on your hands, then yeah, sure. But that's like driving drunk. You know what I mean? We frown on that sort of fucking activity because it's stupid and it's pigheaded and it doesn't make any sense. And there's no reason not to vaccinate your kids.

All the, you know, and it's all this garbage that they throw out there, all this like noise. It's total moving the goalposts to what they asked for initially is like, well, there's mercury in those things like, yeah, but it, well, there's mercury in those things. Like, yeah, but it's not what you think. It's not the – you're not fucking like breaking thermometers from the 40s and fucking injecting that shit in the kids. It's a totally different substance. Oh, but it's mercury. OK.

Well, let's take it out of there. Just – not for any scientific reason at all. Just to shut you up. Well, that's not good enough. I got to move the goalpost again and again and again. And now research has shown that Wakefield was a fraud. Well, that's just big pharma. They're trying to they're trying to run him out. Nothing you can do can satisfy these people. Nothing you can say, oh, well, it's incubated in dead fetal tissue.

It's like, well, you're just an idiot. You have no idea what you're taught. And it's not that they don't even say that, which is which which would be closer to the truth. If they said that instead they say it's, they inject your kid with dead fetal tissue. And like, you don't even, you don't even know what you're talking about when it comes to, uh, the research that goes into this sort of thing. It's the same thing. I mean, it really is very similar to what, what would happen if we had some sort of big scare about safety belts. It's just the big auto industry, this billion dollar industry that's trying to inflict their decision making on you. You know, it's the same thing. It's just this ridiculous idea that we should, you know, be so and it's not it's not

skeptic. I was going to say skeptic, but it's not skeptic. It's denialist. Yeah, it is not skeptical. To be so denialist about facts, about scientific facts. There is no science on these people's side, none whatsoever. And the fact that you wouldn't vaccinate your kid because you think it's some sort of personal choice is fucking outrageous. There should be a lot more exemptions, a lot more scrutiny paid to these exemptions that these fucking parents have. A lot more scrutiny because it's a public health issue. It is. And this idea that vaccines don't work and really? Because I don't know anybody with fucking smallpox. Or fucking polio. Because we eradicated smallpox. Smallpox doesn't exist on the planet. Used to be one of the most virulent killers ever, disease-wise. Billions of people, billions of people died of smallpox.

It has been eradicated. It no longer exists on Earth except for in stockpiles in the U.S. and Russia that have been weaponized. That's all the smallpox that exists. It's gone. Polio, Tom. You can't get smallpox. Polio has been eradicated from almost the entire world. It's very close to being eradicated. The only thing that stops polio from being eradicated is vaccine fears.

Yep. And it's like we have a chance to wipe these diseases off the face of the fucking planet you know i don't know anybody who has mumps because of because of these vaccines i don't know i've never it's like it's like people have fucking whooping cough regularly it's like people like people have fucking measles anymore regularly. I mean, hell, we're even close to working on chicken pox. I mean, why do we, this idea like, well, I'll just let my kid get these sicknesses naturally and then he'll be immune. Yes, but then he would have gotten sick. Yeah, he would have gotten a possible scarring or,

you know, a damaging fever or what, you fever or blindness, possible blindness, maybe even death. This is not a safe thing to do. There's a much safer way. Get your kid immunized. If he can't be immunized, he's able to have that herd immunity. There's just no reason to do this. Thinking people vaccinate their children. Unthinking fucking morons that probably shouldn't be parents anyway, they don't vaccinate their kids.

And with that, we're going to take a short break to give you an opportunity to send us your hate mail. We'll give you all the information on where to send it. There's ways you can call us and find us all over the intratubes. So stay tuned for the rest of the show in just a moment. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. over the intra tubes. So stay tuned for the rest of the show in just a moment. Thanks to everyone who shares our podcast through Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. We'd also like to thank the people who have rated us and subscribed on iTunes and Podfeet or promoted the show through message boards like Reddit. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. All right, so the next thing we want to talk about is actually a thread.

We'll post a link to it on our site. And it discusses books, specifically books that you would recommend to other people as far as getting them interested in skeptical issues. Looking through this thread, there's several of these books that I've read and several of these that I agree with very sharply. There's one of them that's actually in my Audible or not my Audible, my Kindle now, and I just haven't gotten to it yet. It's Why People Believe Weird Things. So that's actually going to be one of the next books on my list to read.

Several of these books, though, I have read. Cecil, what is your best recommendation for somebody who wants to pick up a book and really kind of get into the ideas of skepticism. I, you know, I think we're probably going to agree here, Tom, when I, when I say demon haunted world, I think that's probably one of the greatest books that leads people to think about things skeptically. Carl Sagan was a spokesperson for the movement for years and years and years and years. Why people believe weird things is a very good one. And actually, Michael Shermer is one of those people that is,

he's a really friendly skeptic. He's one of these guys that really has a lot of sympathy for people who believe in really dumb things. Whereas you and I, most of the time, Tom, do not have a lot of sympathy. But he's actually really, you know, he seems like a really nice guy when you read his book. You're just like, wow,

you just want to give everybody a hug, don't you? But Demon Honored World is one of those books too. I think it's not one of these very vicious laugh at people books. It's definitely a way to look at the world and to think, and the baloney detection kit in the middle is just great. A book that is on my reading list for the future though is Randy's, Flim Flam. I'm kind of interested to read that. James Randy is a huge leader of the skeptical movement, founder of the Randy Foundation, the JREF, and those are the people who give the million dollar prize for anybody who can prove any paranormal activity. So, you know, there's a lot of these books I really want to read and I want to take a look at. And I'm glad that a list like this exists.

So we want to share this so other people can find books like this. Two of the books I want to mention that are a little more specific. I mean, Demon Haunted World is outstanding. Yeah. Demon Haunted World, you know, deals a lot with, you know, kind of the UFO space alien phenomenon that was a product of its time. the UFO space alien phenomenon that was a product of its time. But it is a really good general primer for skepticism and just kind of understanding logic and science and separating, giving you tools to separate fact from fiction to some degree.

More specific subject matter. I recently read God is Not Great. That book, though, is great. Yeah, it is. It's incredibly well-researched, well-thought-out. It's acerbic at times for sure, but I don't think it's ever unnecessarily so. Right. I think it is a book that is very honest about its subject.

I think it is a book that is very honest about its subject. And it benefits from that honesty because many books that deal with religion and religiosity, they try to deal with the problems of religion while still maintaining this sort of sense of the sacred. And what I liked very much about Hitchens is that he doesn't stray off topic. He doesn't get bitter and angry, but he also doesn't try to have this false sense of the sacred when discussing religious issues. Instead, I think he's like, hey, look, this is what these people believe. This is where it comes from. These are the examples specific and cited. And this is why it's a problem.

Right. And because of that, I think it's phenomenal. Second book I would recommend that's also on this same thread is The Greatest Show on Earth. This is a book that specifically deals with evolution. It's not an evolution versus creation sort of thing. It's just the case for evolution. It's not an evolution versus creation sort of thing. It's just the case for evolution. I had no idea that the case for evolution was as unbelievably powerful as it is until I read this book.

Evolution was never something that struck me as untrue. However, I didn't realize how many different ways science has backed this up. I didn't realize that there was as much laboratory research as there was to back up evolution, that evolution had been seen. You know, one of the biggest criticisms, well, you've never seen it. Fuck you. Yes, you have. Here's the science. It's a tremendous book and I encourage everybody to pick it up and read it. I think it's awesome. As a matter of fact, the president has redefined millionaires and billionaires as any company that makes over $200,000 a year. That's his definition of a millionaire billionaire. The two things we're not supposed to talk about, you know, is religion and politics. So now that we've talked about religion, we break every social right in the show.

Like that's all we talk about are the things that people fucking always stay away from in normal conversation. So this is an article from The Atlantic. The title of it is Obama's class warfare. It's not about class. It's about age. And it's actually a very interesting article. And what it's suggesting is that this idea that we're going to take funds from the wealthy and we're going to use it in part to heal some of the deficit problems that we have, what they're not saying, the other side of that coin, is that one of the reasons we're doing that is we're not saying, the other side of that coin is that one of the

reasons we're doing that is we're not going to touch the basic entitlements that account for much of our budget, which is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. And what that really is, is a way to protect the elderly in this country. Yeah, I love this line from the article. It says, the rich aren't being asked to pay for an expansion of the welfare state. They're being asked to pay for a preservation of the entitlement state. How many people that are on Social Security that are attending these Tea Party rallies, right? You see it all the time, like, don't touch my Social Security. Tax it off already, but don't touch my Social Security.

And you see it all the time. Cognitive dissonance, there it is, folks, right there. There's this concept in this country and it really is off the table. This idea that, you know, you can't, you just can't touch these things. You can't dip into social security. You can't cut social security. Look at the budget for our country. Military comes first for some reason, because we're so afraid of all of it. And then the other part that comes second is always, you know, Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. If you lump it all into one big sum, it's nearly as much as we pay for defense. It's a lot of money.

It is an immense amount of money and it's not going to get smaller. It's not like, you know, as time goes on, there's fewer old people. More people become entitled to this program as time goes on. And that money is expected to be there, especially by people nowadays that were sold this idea back when they were starting with Social Security. The people that were probably born in the 40s and the 50s, those are people who are thinking, hey, this is, you know, this is the, I'm entitled to this money. This is money that I've put in for years and years and years

and I should have, you know, as much money as the next guy. And well, it's not going to, I mean, it just can't be there forever if we're going to keep on going with the same exact plan we have. You know, the country's aging. You know, the country is aging. You know, the country is aging. And as the country continues to age, you know, you're going to tell, we're really as young

people, young enough people, middle-aged people, we're going to turn to our parents and our grandparents and say, hmm, sorry, pops. You know, I'd like to make sure that you were able to get the Social Security that you paid into your entire life, but the deficit. Right. You know, I'd like to make sure that you were able to get the Social Security that you paid into your entire life. But the deficit. Right. You know, no, no one's going to do that. You know, the thing that strikes me so keenly about this article is that this idea of of of making wealthy folks pay their fair share, pay the same percentage of taxes that middle class Americans pay.

Let's be honest here. Most millionaires and billionaires, not all, but most are getting up there in age. Yep. Because it takes a long time to accumulate that kind of wealth. So you've got, if you just look at it as an age demographic, the wealthiest group of people are also the people who – the same age demographic who are in need of these services, the Social Security, the Medicare, the Medicaid. Now, obviously, if you're a millionaire or a billionaire, you need Social Security like I need a hole in my head. But that doesn't mean that – shouldn't you you shouldn't your generation help pay for your generation. Yeah, that's that seems fair.

I'm more than happy to help pay for that generation. You know, I'm more than happy to kick my money into the kitty and, you know, make sure that my dad gets to collect a Social Security check every month and make sure that he gets Medicare and Medicaid because I want to make sure my dad is taken care of because I'm a decent fucking human being. And I'll be honest, I would like to pay for all that out of my own pocket. If I could, I would do that in a heartbeat. If I could just roll up to my dad and say, dad, I got you covered. You don't have to worry about it. I would love to do that. Right. That's the whole idea. Like, well, if you want to pay for your dad, then you should just pay for your dad. Well, I can't. Right.

But I can pay a little for my dad and a little for your dad and a little for your dad and a little for your – that's the whole idea of having a government. Well, and then these policies are never going to go away. I mean you've got to look at it. One of the things in this article, one of the parts of this article I'll read directly. One of the things in this article, one of the parts of this article I'll read directly, it says, seniors show up prominently in our public policy might have something to do with the fact that they also show up prominently at our polling stations. Between 70 and 80 percent of the citizens over 65 voted in the last two elections. So this is your voting bloc.

These are the people who decide who's the fucking leader in this country. They're the ones who get to make that decision. Make any kind of move towards fucking Medicare or Social Security and watch what happens in the next fucking election. I dare you. I double dog dare you, motherfucker. Because you're going to get voted out. Because these people are the ones that control it. Because the kids don't do it. They don't get out to vote.

Right. It rains they don't go vote. Yeah. Kids don't do – they don't get out to vote. Right. It rains they don't go vote. Yeah. There's no way that people are going to vote against their own best interests. Right. It just doesn't happen. So this whole idea that it's class warfare, that's just – and nobody is buying it.

No, yeah. That's the problem. And you're going to say it all day. And what really comes down to is I think a lot of people in this country, and they did a, there's a daily cost article where they talked about this. A lot of people support the idea that the, that, that people make that people that make a lot of money should have to pay more taxes. There's a lot of people that support that idea. It's not just, it's not just, you know, a tiny percentage of the America. It's a majority of the United States thinks, Hey, you should probably pay more percentage of America. It's a majority of the United States thinks, hey, you should probably pay more than what you're paying currently. Most people aren't fucking millionaires, right? So they, the idea of raising taxes on the rich,

that polls very, very well. What, so what they have to do, what opposition to that has to do is they have to, they have to change the subject. They have to make it about something else. They have to create this idea of class warfare. Sure. Which sounds scary, right? I mean, it's got class and warfare in there. I mean, God, they don't want to go to school or have a war.

So that's terrifying. But, you know, that's changing the subject. It's not class warfare to ask wealthy people to pay a little more into the kitty. There's nothing class warfare about that. It's not separating us from them because there's already a separation between us and them. They create that separation by virtue of their wealth. of their wealth. You know, it's disingenuous to pretend that there is not a major stratification in this country between the wealthy and everybody else. And that division continues to grow. So this idea like that they put forth it like, oh, well, you know, it's class warfare. We're

trying to, you know, divide America instead of unite America. And it's like, look, America's already fucking divided. Rich people lead lives that are so fundamentally different. And I'm talking about even the very moderately wealthy. They lead lives that are so fundamentally different from the middle class that they cannot be reconciled. middle class, that they cannot be reconciled. If I have a net worth of a million or more, you know, I'm not concerned. I have few concerns about paying for my groceries this week. That's most of America. I'm not worried that when it gets cold, if I lose my job, I can't pay for heat in my house and I may become too cold. Right.

You know, that's a fundamental difference. There's already a class distinction. Well, then you throw in the buzzwords of like socialism and redistribution of wealth and you throw in these buzz terminology to get people all riled up, to get your side all riled up. Elizabeth Warren pointed out this week, you know, like, you don't get fucking rich in a vacuum. You know, you don't just fucking become rich. Tom, you should read that quote from her because I think it's really, really awesome. She says, there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there.

Good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it.

But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along. I love that. And I think I think it's you know, it really illustrates the point that you don't get rich in a vacuum. I mean, think about it this way. When people say, you know, oh, well, the reason why they're rich is because they're the first ones into the office and the last ones to go home and yada, yada, yada bullshit. You know, the reason why a lot of people in this country are rich are either because of luck or because they're in the right place at the right time and not the right place at the right time because they deserve to be, but because they have some connections to be in the right place at the right fucking time. You know, you figure, look at somebody like George Bush, our

ex-president. Like, there's a guy who had a lot of fucking opportunities in his life, not because he was a fucking really smart guy, not because he was a fucking really smart guy. Not because he was a fucking, you know, that guy is fucking wicked smart. No, no, no. George W. Bush would never be confused with anyone in the world who is wicked smart. He's just a guy who had a rich fucking dad

who had a rich fucking dad and happened to be in the right place at the right time because his rich fucking parents arranged for him to be in the right place at the right time because his rich fucking parents arranged for him to be in the right place at the right time. And that happens a lot more than you would think. People don't pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. You can't, just like she says, you can't, just because you built something, you made something, you had this great idea, you profit off living in this country.

You are prosperous because this country helps you be prosperous. Now help other people be prosperous and pay for the fact that you are prosperous. If Steve Jobs invented the iPod, right, but he lived in Cambodia or Albania, there wouldn't be an iPod because he doesn't have an infrastructure to take his idea to market. Right. America is the infrastructure. All of it. The entire system here is the infrastructure. This civilization that we've created together.

You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth! So Cecil, this next story relates to our previous episode, so if you haven't listened to the last episode, we'll pause for a quick break of about an hour and 15 minutes while you go back and listen. Okay, good.

So this next story. We didn't really pause. No, that's all a lie. Fake presidential candidate because he's not got any traction. Doesn't go anywhere. And Senator Rick Santorum. We talked about it last time. If you Google Santorum, which I encourage everybody to do, if you Google Santorum, the first as I am doing, the very first thing that pops up is the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex.

The second thing that pops up is actually Rick Santorum. This is the result of a campaign by Dan Savage from 2003 after Rick Santorum made some incredibly offensive anti-gay remarks. Dan Savage, pretty popular guy, he's got Savage Love both as a podcast and as a column, which appears in The Stranger, and you can also get Savage Love's podcast on iTunes. Basically called out to all of his readers to say, hey, let's fuck with this guy.

Let's rename, let's re with this guy. Let's rename. Let's reappropriate his name. Now Rick Santorum is calling on Google to change it. Now, Tom, you said earlier that he's a candidate that doesn't have any traction. Is that because he's covered in anal fecal matter and lube? Is that why he has no traction? He's so slippery. He's just so slick.

He just slips around all over. This is a guy, you know what he said, what really ticked, and I didn't know this because I just heard about this story last week from you, Tom. So I didn't really know a lot of the background behind it, and when I read

this article, one of the things, the reasons why he said this, the reason why Dan Savage even did this to him is because he compared, you know, homosexual marriage to like bestiality and pedophilia. And what, you know, you got to follow your own logic here, dummy. Okay, Santorum. The fact is, is that if two consensual adults, two adults consent to a relationship that is so different than bestiality and pedophilia, it's like not even – how can you even bring those two things up in the same sentence? You make no sense. I understand that you're trying to use a logical fallacy, that argument.

What is it? Ad certum. Arguing from the absurd, but there's a Latin term for it. Isn't it ad absurdum? Ad absurdum, I think, is what it is, yeah. So, yeah, you're using this – you're using a logical fallacy to even argue your point, right? You're saying, oh, well, if they let gays marry, then they'll marry trees or rocks or lobsters or rock lobsters. You're not going to be able to stop people from marrying inanimate objects or rocks or lobsters or rock lobsters or what you're not gonna be able to stop people

from marrying inanimate objects or uh or children or whatever but that doesn't make any sense because inanimate objects children dogs whatever else you want to throw in there that is not a consensual adult is not the same fucking thing so i'm glad that your fucking name is now equated to fecal matter and lube, you piece of shit, because you're a piece of shit. Yeah, it's not going to work out for you, Rick. The more you protest, the more people are going to Google it and click on it. You just need to understand how to Google's works.

Google's not going to do it. They're not going to make a change. Yeah. They're not going to change. They're not going to take your side. So I think I want to end on the absurd again. This is a, an article from the Epic times. I've never heard of the Epic times before,

but I do insist on pronouncing it Epic because I like the way that it is spelled. but I do insist on pronouncing it epic because I like the way that it is spelled. A dead baleen whale was found in a Yorkshire field this week, about 800 meters from the shoreline off the Humber Estuary in England. This is kind of awesome. This is a pretty rare whale. It's a female sigh whale, they think. It's about 33 feet long. So it's a sizable chunk of fish. I know whales

aren't really fish. They're not fish. I know. I know. I had to correct myself before. I don't need that. But it is still a sizable chunk of stinky swim animal. 800 meters off the shore. The only explanation, Cecil. Space aliens. You know, that's the best explanation on this article.

The thing looks shopped to me. I don't know. I look at this thing and I'm like, I don't know. It looks a little shopped. Dead whale in some sort of salt marsh over there. And like the best you could come up with is space aliens what the fuck are the aliens doing they're just like flying around like dude hold on a second we're gonna get a whale let's get a whale from the water right a white water whale and we'll put it on the land like 600 miles in what do you say come on you know if it was 600 miles in no actually do you say? Come on. You know, if it was 600 miles in?

No, actually, pardon me. It's 800 meters. Then, okay, maybe we have something really wacky going on. But the article itself posits, like, four explanations that could actually happen. It's like, here's another explanation. You know, you have to believe that, like, space aliens fly over with, like, a UFO. And they're just, like, what? They're using Earth as the crane game.

They're like reaching down there and they got like little three prong crane game. Like, Oh, I got a prize. And they pick up a whale and it's, it slipped again. Oh man. I totally thought we had it. Yeah. And those whales got to be slick. You know what I mean?

Like really bad. Oh yeah. Yeah. They're covered in Santorum. Oh! So we want to go through some of the feedback that we've gotten recently. We got a dumbass guide. We've mentioned him a couple of times on this show.

He's mentioned us on his show. So there's definitely been some cross-promotion there. We're shilling for the man, the dumbass man. The dumbass guide. We really appreciate you mentioning us on your show. It's very kind of you to do. We'll post a link on our website to his show as well so you can find him. And anybody else who wants to shamelessly market us, I think we're happy to shamelessly market you in return.

Rick Santorum, I'm thinking of you, buddy. I think there's some marketing opportunities for Santorum here. It would be awesome if a company manufactured a lube called Santorum Lube. I think that would be hilarity. Oh my God, that would be great. You would get shut down, but it would still be the best product ever manufactured. Can you trademark your own name? Because then he could make some money off it at least.

He should have an anonymous shell corporation that mocks himself just for the money of it. Somebody makes the product, and then he could sue him and profit off his own name. It's genius. Santorum, you should totally follow this. We did get – Tom, one thing I want to mention. A guy by the name of Rob posted on our Facebook page and you can read his post. He talked about – well, we talked about last show how we said we were kind of just preaching to the choir and we're not really somebody who could convince anybody else. said we were kind of just preaching to the choir and we're not really somebody who could convince anybody else. And he, he leaves a long comment, um, two comments actually, where he talks about,

uh, you know, his wife, uh, he, he has a lot of arguments with his friends and his wife and they kind of, they don't, their beliefs don't mesh. And he was wondering like, how do we get through that sort of thing? And I did want to talk about this time because, um, while you and your wife are both atheists, uh, and pro and we're atheists before you met, my wife and I, I actually met my wife talking about religion at a party one night. And so she was not an atheist. She actually was a pretty strong religious person when we met. And I was in – I guess I was an agnostic back then. I was sort of dealing with a lot of other things in my life at that point.

So I wasn't really thinking about whether or not there was a God. But it turns out that one of the best things and one of the best pieces of advice I could give you is just respect each other's beliefs. Don't ever mock anyone, especially somebody who's a loved one. That doesn't help anything. It doesn't fix any of the problems or any of the differences between you and your loved one's belief. I would say respect their beliefs and try to make them see that your beliefs are just as valid as theirs are. And I see that you say like when you use logic, she says, well, you're just afraid to believe. That's a cop-out. That's a cop-out of an argument.

And don't let them cop out of the argument. Just say, well, look, that's a cop-out. That's a cop-out of an argument. And don't let them cop out of the argument. Just say, well, look, that's not the case. If I could believe, I would, but I can't believe. So now we've got to reach, we've got to get to the next level where both of us are communicating our own ideas, even if we don't agree. And I think that that's obviously the recipe for a good marriage anyway. Yeah, I mean, that's just kind of communication. You're going to get frustrated, right?

I mean, you're dealing with another human being, you know, and they're not going to believe and think everything that you believe and think. My wife is an atheist, but she leans toward the spiritual, and she knows that I have no interest in the spiritual and, you know, that sort of – I don't even know what that shit means, to be honest with you. And, you know, it's just a subject that we chat about, but neither one of us is trying to kind of convince the other of anything. I think if you're proselytizing to each other, that's going to be a recipe for the fail. And it will, it will. We, Sarah never tried to convert me when she was

very religious and she still doesn't. Um, she's a lot, She's a lot more tolerant now with her religion than she was. But but yeah, you just don't have we just don't have conversations where one of us is trying to convince the other. We're just trying to understand the other. And that's a that's a different feeling, I think, than a lot of people can. It's hard to get to that level, Rob. I'll admit to you. I mean, it's hard to get to that level. Most of the time when people say something, they want to convince somebody else of it. And here it's, there's not going to be a convincing. It's just going to be an understanding of belief. But that's a common thing that happens. A lot of times, you know, people, you know, have hard times with religion in their, in their marriage. And that's a, that's a cause for a lot of rocky roads in marriage. So,

you know, best of luck to you, Rob. I hope it works out. We also got an email from Drew. Drew sent us a very awesome, kind of a longer email, so I'm not going to go through and read the whole thing. He loves the show. Hey, Drew, I love the show. Thanks, buddy. That's very nice.

He actually does a very nice email, and he says that we rock. Donkey balls are, of course, optional. Yeah, and that's important. That is, yeah. But I do keep a set. Just in case. Just in case. One of the things he does is he shares a link with us.

We'll link this as well. I say this so casually because I don't have to do any of the work, but this is from BJU Press. This is a look inside a science book offered by, I'm presuming, some religious authority or some religious institution. It's very amusing because it has a history of the moon and the very first thing in there is a quote from Genesis. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser night to rule the night.

He made the stars also. I love the stars are an afterthought as if they're somehow different. Less, much less. Than the sun. Well, Drew, I appreciate this very much, and I see your crazy book, and I raise you one much, much crazier book. There was a screenshot of a page from another religious nonsense text being offered in a school, which I'm going to read from because it's insane. But before you do, though, I just want to mention that this resembles something that

would come out of Google Translate. Like it is something that like if somebody were to call into our show, which you can do, by the way, if you're interested in calling into our show, I know that we mentioned it earlier. But if you wanted to, you could leave us a voicemail and we'll play it on the air at 74074DOUBT. Long distance rates apply. We would play your voicemail on the air. But anyway, if you were to call in and read something, I would imagine that it would look like this.

My favorite part is this is a page from Chapter 3, which means somebody has waited through two chapters of this. Chapter three. It is impossible to conceive that God doesn't exist. In fact, this thing so truly exists that it can't be conceived not to exist. For something that can be conceived to exist but can't be conceived not to exist is greater than one which can be conceived not to exist. Hence, if that than which a greater can't be conceived can be conceived not to exist, then that than which a greater can't be conceived is not that than which a greater can't be conceived. But this would be a

contradiction. Therefore, something then which a greater... Do it! I love the therefore. Like, oh, I follow you so far, so what's the summation? Therefore, something then which a greater can't

be conceived so truly exists that it can't be conceived not to exist. And this thing is you, Lord our God. This is somebody who cannot write. Writing. This is also somebody who just didn't hire an editor. I love the hence when you mentioned earlier the hence. Yeah, the thing is hence.

You don't deserve hence. We haven't gotten to hence. That is not a word you get to use right now. Well, therefore suggests that there has been an argument with premises before. And therefore is now the – this is the cue that this is the conclusion. This is the conclusion of my argument. But that's not a conclusion. And there's no premises before it at all that even make any sense.

No, no. There's not even complete sentences. Some of these aren't even complete sentences. Looking at this page, therefore is used one, two, three, four, four times on one page. And this is only two paragraphs. Yeah, this is a small – this isn't even a complete page. We don't even see the top of this thing. I can't help but think that what they did was just put a bunch of nonsense together and then they're going to give it to somebody who's a nonbeliever and look at it and be like, wow.

Either they're going to be impressed or they're going to be frustrated and just throw it down. I can't imagine going to a school and being handed this thing. What would the test look like? I don't know. Therefore, hence, elaborate. It seems like it's in code or something. That's the problem. It's in Da Vinci code.

Ah, yeah, the Da Vinci code. Those fucking Da Vinci coders. So you've weathered the storm and listened to another episode of Cognitive Dissonance. We're happy that you did. And we're going to leave you, as always, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating,

pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water downward spiral, brain deadpan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Viral brain dead pan sales pitch. Late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces. Cancer cures. Detox. Reflex.

Foot massage. Death in towers. Tarot cards. Psychic healing. Crystal balls. Bigfoot. Yeti. Aliens.

Churches. Mosques and synagogues. Temples. Dragons. Giant worms. Atlantis. Dolphins. Truthers.

Birthers. Witches. Wizards. Vaccine nuts. Shaman healers. Evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this.

Thank you for listening to Cognitive Dissonance. If you want to reach us by phone, you can call us at 740-743-6828. That's 740-74-DOUBT. Long distance rates apply. Send us an email at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Follow us on Twitter at dissonance underscore pod. Outro Music