Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 159: Adam Reakes - The Herd Mentality

Episode Date: June 23, 2014

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What day of the week do you look forward to most? Well, it should be Wednesday. Ahem, Wednesday. Why, you wonder? Whopper Wednesday, of course. When you can get a great deal on a whopper. Flame grilled and made your way. And you won't want to miss it.

So make every Wednesday a Whopper Wednesday. Only at Burger King, where you rule. Do you want to get cognitive dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. Conspiracy theorist and the minister for yelling, Alex Jones, welcome to the herd mentality. Thanks for your time. Now, my listeners, they know your script. How do you think they

perceive the quality of this show? It's very low. Probably the most factually correct thing we'll hear from you this interview. How do you think our discussion might affect listeners? Anybody knows that if somebody jumps off the Empire State Building, they put cops up there the next day because copycats come to do it again. So simply listening to this show could actually drive people to suicide. I actually actually did pull up the statistics. Here, let me pull a note right here. I figured you'd do that. Enlighten me. There were about 11,458.

Sounds about right. But how would you describe listeners of your own show? Hordes of people burning down cities and beating old women's brains out every day. I see. We have a lot in common. What sort of weapons do they use? Have you seen the FBI numbers? Knives, bats, rocks. Now you realize I'm most likely going to copy and paste this out of context, yes?

I'm sick of the same old script here, bud. Very well, bud. So let's switch it up a gear. You openly admit that you're a recreational user of over a dozen drugs. How about Prozac? No, thank you. No, I'm trying to quit. I want to get lost pills. Which pills specifically? Mass murder pills. They make mass murder pills? Do you have a bodyguard? No. Should I consider one? Why do you have a bodyguard?

I don't yet, but I feel like I probably should get some. Perhaps arm them with... M4AR15 variants. A reasonable precaution. How many chimpanzees can dance on the head of a pin? Maybe one? Over 140. I have the proof.

No, it's okay. I'm prepared to believe it on face value. You're a hatchet man. And I want to say this right here. You think you're a tough guy? Head me back with a boxing ring in here and I'll wear red, white, and blue and you can wear your Jolly Roger.

Hmm. The issue of gun control in the US. 1776 will commence again if you try to take our firearms. No, but... Oh, whoa whoa gotta cut that off don't you more guns means less crime the second amendment isn't there for duck hunting

well we did it as a way to bring attention to the fact that we have all of these foreigners and the Russian government the official Chinese government Mao said political power goes out of the barrel of a gun he killed about 80 million people because he's the only guy that had the guns.

And when they get our guns, they can have their world tyranny. They need them to protect us from the number one killer in history. We will not relinquish them. Do you understand? Alex, did you just orgasm? Yes, I am finished. Okay, so then... The tyrants did it.

Hitler took the guns. Stalin took did it. Hitler took the guns. Stalin took the guns. Mao took the guns. Oh, this is pointless. Armoured vehicles, tanks, helicopters, predator drones, armed, now in US skies. Alex, stop. If you had one outcome for the safety of the US, what would it be? Total gun ban for the

citizens. Oh, thank goodness. Alex Jones, president of the One Direction fan club, thanks for your time. Criminal elements of the military-industrial complex, the same ones that staged Gulf of Tonkin, the same ones that staged Operation... 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. Recording from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irrelevance.

And irreverence. Too any funny thing. You can't even finish it. Too any topic. I don't even finish it! Too any topic? I don't know, too a bunch of shit. Anyway, here we are, episode 159. Fucking nailing it from the gate. Nailing it from the gate, Cecil.

You know, I'm just saying, we have an amazing-voiced Australian on. I might actually ask him. You know, I think we might have a job opening, Adam. I don't know if you're interested, but we need somebody who can actually get through the fucking intro without fucking it up. Is that a possibility? Welcome to Cognitive Dissonance.

An eclectic weekly mix of consistent cock-ups, mess-ups, and screw-ups from Tom. Coming up after the break, your chance to call in and tell us who needs to die. Yeah, you're hired. Tom, you're fired. break, your chance to call in and tell us who needs to die. Yeah, you're hired. Tom, you're fired.

Yeah, all right. I'm dropping the mic. I'm out. So it's good. It's good. Congratulations, Tom, on not your 159th episode, but actually getting the number of the episode right. Oh, thank you.

Thank you. You know, I had to use the script. I used the script that one of our listeners actually put together. It's very valuable. It adds one to the prior number. So not something that you actually worked for. Oh, no, no, no. There's nothing that I actually have worked for.

Speaking of stuff that you also didn't work for, you manufactured a smaller child. So a round of applause there, too. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, that was delightful, actually. The manufacturing process for people, fucking that's amazing. I highly recommend that, by the way. That's great.

I look forward to learning. The birth process looks really hard, though. I just want to say, again, just like this show, I had nothing to do with it, but people still congratulated me. I don't know. They're like, hey, great job. I'm like, really? Because, I mean, when I fuck my wife, she doesn't say that.

So that's really the only involvement I have. She doesn't even smack my ass and say good game. Are you kidding me? So you're sort of putting on level pegging, listening to cognitive dissonance and childbirth, both equally painful in your view? I don't know. I think cognitive dissonance, at least with childbirth, you can opt for an epidural. And with cognitive dissonance, we just have to rely on a crystal meth to get us through the rut to our house. You have a fucking nail into your ears.

That's about the only way that you can get through this fucking nonsense. So how is, is it a little boy or a little girl? It's a little boy. He's a little early so he's very, very small. He came home, he was four pounds, five ounces. He's five weeks early. But a little boy, he's doing great.

Very healthy. He's gaining weight like my son is. He's got good genes. He's got good genes, Tom. Right. Like, I look at him, and I'm like, man, the only thing anybody wants you to do right now is put on weight. You're my son. This is going to be easy for you.

You have one job. You were born to do this. You know, and everybody, like, he gains a pound. He gained a pound in nine days. And everybody's like, one job. You were born to do this. You know, and everybody, like, he gains a pound. He gained a pound in nine days. And everybody's like, great job. And I'm like, fuck it, I gained like three pounds in the same amount of time. Nobody's telling me great job. Yeah.

They're just like, oh, can you take the Krispy Kremes out of your hair? Yeah. Why are you covered in frosting, sir? I get all the bullshit questions. Tom, did he get a biblical name like Moses? No, he got a... So my wife's family is just two generations removed from Ireland, so they've got like a real strong family heritage and tradition there.

So we opted with an Irish name. His name is Eamon. Our other son's name is Finnegan. So we went that route. I basically will do anything to appease my wife is really what it comes down to. Because being pregnant looks fucking awful. It just looks like the meanest thing you could do to your wife possible. It's like, first of all, she had to suffer through sex with me, right?

Yeah, right. So that can't be pleasant. Like, that's a fucking. And it's far from a full-time job. Are you kidding me? It's not even a part-time job. So, like, she has to suffer through that nonsense. And that's like, you know, 28 seconds out of her life.

And then she has to be pregnant for the better part of a fucking year. And that just looks awful. So basically she could say, like, I want to name him anything at all. Fucking anything. She'd be like, I want to name him fucking Zebra Banana Pants. I'd be like, great. Awesome name, beautiful. I love it. Let's go with it. Zebra Banana Pants

would have been a pretty great name. Certainly preferable to calling him Ray Comfort. I think it sounds like your wife has standards. Yeah. I mean, well, I mean, very low standards, but still standards. So the first story that I want to talk about comes from the consumerist. Dr. Oz grilled by Senator over miracle weight loss claims. And it's funny, Cecil, because we posted this story to our Facebook and our Twitter page,

and there were some people who came to Dr. Oz's defense with some vigor and alacrity. I was very surprised. So Dr. Mehmet Oz was called in front of Congress, and they asked him such hard-hitting questions as, is there any evidence for this shit? Yeah. Ask them such hard-hitting questions as, is there any evidence for this shit?

Yeah. I think that the surprise of the claim is directly proportional to the expression on his face in the photograph of the article you sent to me because he looks like he's one of those roosters that sort of preens under his wing. He's got the beak out, the eyebrows are well and truly two-thirds of the way up his forehead. They are. Hang on, you're questioning me? You want facts?

To me, this picture looked like a fart snuck out of him and surprised even him. He was like trying to hold it. He's like, whoa. Well, and the guy clearly knows he did it because he's looking right next to him. Mr. Peeler is or whatever is looking right at him. Right. He's like, whoa! Well, and the guy clearly knows he did it because he's looking right next to Mr. Peeler is or whatever is looking right at him. Right. He's like, that was you, Dr. Oz. Do you think that's one of the weight loss strategies

that he was aiming towards? If it is, I'd be fucking buoyant, I'll tell you that much. Maybe there were some solids and liquids with the gas. All three states of matter at once. Boom. your miracle white well that's what happens when you drink so much fucking green tea i mean come on that's just you got to expect goji

berry juice guys i'm not a doctor neither am i but i'm but i'm prepared to have an opinion on this i've spoken to doctors and pretty much every doctor who isn't crazy or a television star says exercise and healthy food. That's bullshit. How would that work? That's oppressive. Senator McCaskill, in this interview, he does quote three statements, Adam, that Dr. Oz had made. So I'd like to read these three statements to kind of have you talk about them because I think that these are, you know, Dr. Oz, I think,

put up a spirited defense of the following statements regarding green coffee extract. Spiritual. But when you do read these to me, could you add a little authenticity, please, by using the Deepak accent? No, I cannot, as a matter of fact, because that is a shitty accent that I made up at the moment and cannot replicate.

So Dr. Oz says regarding green coffee extract, you may think magic is make-believe, but this little bean... Sorry. Sorry. Can we go back and just start that one again? Well, you know, what occurs to me is that Dr. Oz would have gotten away with this if it wasn't for those meddling kids.

But anyway. Right. This is regarding green coffee extract. You may think magic is make-believe, but this little gene. That one. That one that was called. Has scientists saying they found the magic weight loss solution for every body type. Hmm.

Regarding raspberry ketones, I've got the number one miracle. As opposed to the number two miracle? Aren't miracles just miraculous? Anyway, I've got the number one miracle in a bottle to burn your fat. Regarding Garcinia cambogia, it may be the simple solution you've been looking for to bust your body fat for good so i don't see why anybody would take objection to those uh modest and humble it looks like the sort of stuff that was taken directly from the cover of women's day magazine but uh

look i just can't get enough of this first one you may think that magic is make-believe he's a doctor yes yeah he's actually supposed to supposedly he's actually a very gifted heart surgeon like legitimately outside of his fucking bullshit show, I'm to understand that he is actually a very gifted heart surgeon. How do you justify beliefs when obviously being a heart surgeon, so cutting into people and playing around with their internal workings and their plumbing, this is not straightforward stuff, contrary to what you may be led to believe from watching things on the TV. So you actually do have to do a lot of school and you do have to do a lot of critical thinking. But he's obviously found very little time beyond that to question his own stance on what magic is and whether it exists. Hello, Napa!

Hello, Napa! Hello, Napa! So this story comes from the New York Post. Muslim terrorists killed dozens of Kenyans who fail Islam quiz. Thank God it wasn't a chemistry test because I'd have been fucked. What does a Scantron look

like for this quiz? It's like one of those old-timey computer ones with the holes, except for the holes are bullet holes. You forget to bring your 9mm pencil to class. God damn it! So these fucking in Nairobi, Kenya these these gunmen go door to door

um in uh and nairobi is not exactly like you know sometimes you hear about this stuff and it happens in you know sort of like little known lesser communities kind of in the bush kind of rural areas where some fighting and endemic violence is kind of part and parcel of the world there. Not to say it's any better, but fucking Nairobi is as fucking high. I'm not rural in Kenya as you can get. Anyway, Ghani went door to door in the coastal town, demanding to know if the men inside were Muslim. And they spoke Somali. And they didn't like the answers.

They fucking executed them. They just fucking executed them to the tune of dozens of people. That is the worst, that is the fucking worst Girl Scout cookie presentation I've ever heard. Worst door-to-door sales pitch ever. Right? Fucking Willie Loman would be ashamed. I am terrified that the U.S.

is sort of heading in the same direction where with the number of guns that are now on the streets, that you're going to have the JWs or the Memphis Preaching Group or whoever turn up at your door and say, hi, we'd like

to talk to you about Jesus. And they sort of shh, shh. When was Jesus' birthday? Oh, Jesus. Zero! Christmas! Christmas! And they go, alright.

And so they sort of fire a shot into the sky and say, okay, what was Jesus' favourite colour? And you go, seven! And then cop a bullet to the temple. Yeah, it was clearly red. I mean, come on.

Clearly red. It's always covered in red. Do you think this is perhaps how atheists should perhaps get some more publicity? No. Furthering our agenda. I think it'd be very effective, Tom. You just walk door to door.

Here's the problem what are we going to ask him like when Sart was born like I mean how many gods don't exist yeah right quote something from Bertrand Russell I don't even know what that is what happened on Cosmos last night

well my pastor said bam they've got this flow chart at the beginning, and they walk in, they sort of unroll it, take it out of the tube, blue tank it to the walls. As everyone puts on their balaclavas and gets the video camera set up. And they go down and go, okay, do you understand why there's still monkeys? Yes or no? All right. They didn't stop at shooting people, because that'd be ridiculous. Oh, yeah. They didn't stop at shooting people because that would be ridiculous. They even took the time out of their day to torture a couple of houses.

In this photo here, I can see somebody's bicycle has been burned to a crisp because clearly it didn't know enough about the Koran either. So there's really no expense spared. So mad at the bicycle. When I checked the compartment, there was not a Koran, so we are going to light it on fire. Well, maybe

there were two blue bicycles next to each other. It wasn't a blue bicycle next to a pink tricycle. That was the giveaway. It was a gay bicycle. This sounds like the world's worst knock-knock joke, though, doesn't it? It's like, knock-knock. Come on, guys, knock-knock.

Who's there? I ran. Don't shoot. I'm going to play along here. I ran away. What? I ran up and down the block killing all your neighbors. It shouldn't be funny, but guys, this is...

It really shouldn't be. This is the year 2014. Right. And this stuff is happening. And it seems to be... Look, I've no doubt it's been this bad all along. Right, right. But now, every day, there is no shortage of these articles in the news

fueling podcasts such as this and to to desensitize the way that people can absorb this you you have to do something a little different i mean you can sit on the news and and deliver this story straight faced and have no impact on people you know they're not going to change their daily schedule. But guys, this is why you fight. Yeah, it is. This is why you begin to reason with people. Because on the same, just imagine America, if it wasn't a secular government, and it's currently borderline, right? Yeah, yeah.

Imagine if it wasn't a secular, is it that hard to imagine? I'm trying not to go down the slippery slope fallacy here, but is it that hard to imagine? You know, it's funny that you say like, you know, this this this isn't an isolated incident because there is another article that we we didn't do this week. That's the Boko Haram people in Nigeria. They possibly killed 400. So they're there. The Islamists there are spreading, you know spreading their terror by killing lots of people. And they've been killing people and ruining lives down there for quite some time. And recently, there was that big march that happened in Iraq. And I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on where people are just, there's a lot of people losing their lives. I want to say in Iraq, something like 1,700 people were killed. And not all this is religiously motivated, but there is a Sunni Shia thing going on over there. And then this is clearly religiously motivated,

the one we're talking about. They are specifically asking, at one point, this woman answered the door. They said, they came to my house at 8 p.m. and they asked in Swahili whether we were Muslims. My husband told them we were Christians and they shot him in the head and chest. So clearly, I mean, they're looking for people to murder that are not the same as them. You can't pretend this is not religiously motivated violence. You know, it's so funny, though, because you can already hear the protestations from the from from from from Islamists, you know, and from people who are worried about being not appearing sympathetic to bad ideas. And, you know, they'll say, well, you know, this isn't all of Islam. This is not representative of Islam.

And it's like it doesn't need to be representative of all of Islam. There's no such thing as any one group or person or people that is representative of an entire idea set. But clearly these ideas are being used as a tool for violence, as a tool to excuse and rationalize. It's representative of faith. Yeah. No, that's true. It's representative of what people can do when given the right set of circumstances. And the right set of circumstances, because people take the path of least resistance. You get told something, well, it's hard work to go and research to find out if there's actually something contrary to that claim.

So you take the path of least resistance. You form your beliefs on that, and the cycle continues. We're going to have Adam back at the end of the show. We're going to do a short interview with him after we cover some stories. He's going to spend some time in Glory Hole Studios polishing the solid gold black plug until we're ready for him. It's like it's always been the little women that caught the vision of giving, beginning with Jesus himself, out of their private means. Some of you little precious ones have that little grocery money, some of that little money set aside.

Assure tonight the blessings of God on your family by giving it to God. And speaking that, say it, God, this is for blessings on my family. So this story comes from the Christian Post. Evangelist? I was going to say Evangelicist. That sounds better, actually. I'm going to call him an Evangelicist. Evangelicist.

I like that. It almost sounds like he's a performer of some kind. He's an Evangelicist. I like that. It almost sounds like he's a performer of some kind. Huh? He's an evangelical. Huh?

Evangelist Benny Hinn, citing financial teacher Todd Kuntz, asks supporters to donate $1,000 in higher seed level giving. And if that didn't make any sense for you, let me boil it down. Benny Hinn wants your fucking money. He wants a grand. He wants a cool grand. I got to say. A fucking thousand dollars, man. What would you?

I'd rather seriously take the thousand dollars from the bank in fucking rolls of quarters and shove them up my ass than get them to this guy. You know, I will say that just like looking at this page, right, if you look down, there's a screen cap of his page. And the first one is Feed the Hungry and it's called a Hope Seed. And that one looks like, it's like, I don't know. It says, so your $30 monthly hope. So essentially that's a $30. That's the lowest level is a Feed the Hungry.

Then Double Portion Seed, which is $200, double for your trouble, which is Job 42.10. There's no way it's double for your trouble. What do I get double of? Do I get double Jesus hugs? Like does fucking Mary give me a blowjob? Like what is that double? But that's $200.

Okay, so the double portion seed is $200, even though the first one is $30. Okay, anyway, so it's $200. The breakthrough seed, though, is only $73 more and expect supernatural change within 90 days. And that guy, he's going to need it within

90 days because he's going to die very soon. He doesn't have 91. Exactly. But then the thing I don't understand is the triple favor seed is $1,000. Now, double portion is $100 from $30. Double portion is $200. $200, yeah.

And then triple is $1,000? Yeah, well, look. No, no, no. You just don't know math. Okay, right. So you start with $30. Right. Then you double it.

Then you double it. So two times $30 start with 30. Right. Then you double it. Then you double it. Right. You get 60. So two times 30 is 60 plus your God's 90. Oh, yeah. Or your God's 30. Yeah. So it's like Jesus loves you for 30 more. Okay.

So then there you go. And then 273. That doesn't make any sense either. That comes from... Yeah, no. 273. 273, everybody knows that 273 is $183 more than 90, which is three times 30, which is 30 more than twice 30. So I'm sure, I mean, you're right there. I don't know what you're talking about.

Is this Common Core you're trying to teach me? Then you take your 273 and you multiply it. Because I ain't going to learn your damn Common Core. Then you take your 273. Because I ain't going to learn your damn common core. You know, I just look at this page, though, and it has it's essentially all the same problems that prayer causes. But then it also has like the sadness of walking through a casino slot section at like 7 a.m. on Wednesday morning. Doesn't it, though?

I mean, you like read it. You like look at you just like because everybody's essentially asking for shit back. They're just like, I want something back. And it really feels like you're feeding fucking coins into a machine that's going to, you know, putter some things out that you're going to call a miracle, but it's not going to, you know, it's clearly not going to deliver because it's not fucking real. What strikes me, too, is like the first one is like, feed the hungry. Here's 30 bucks. And then the rest of them are like, fuck the hungry.

Feed yourself. You know, like, get shit for you. Like, if you want to actually help other people, you can give, and there's like a picture of a fucking sad African kid. Right. Exactly. It's like, oh, fucking sad. Here's 30 bucks.

So, like, the little, so what they're saying is the least important thing to do is look outside the self. Looking outside the self and helping others is the least valuable of the four things. You're absolutely right. And then you notice, too, that, like, do you see the financial freedom pack? I do. It's down there. My guess is the financial freedom pack costs a lot of money.

I bet it does. I bet it does. I bet it does. It's very infrequently that you hear Warren Buffett talk about how Jesus just gave him buckets of cash. Right. He did not find it at the end of a rainbow.

Right, exactly. I'm just glad he's talking about seeds and in the long tradition of seeds, like Catholic Church has been giving its seed to little boys for long, long time. And I think that this is an important tradition that they need to carry on. So Cecil, before we go into this next story, I want to, I want to just tell you that earlier today, um, my wife was giving me a hard time because I was spending the whole day, you know, doing other things. I was drinking mostly while I was doing them.

And she seemed to be insinuating that I spent the whole day drinking and, you know, very little of the day actually getting anything accomplished. And I just think that's kind of rude before we go into the next story to insinuate such a thing without any direct evidence. You just opened two beers? That would be... No, Cecil, that would be gross. That would be accurate. You just opened two beers? Well, I want to make sure that they're...

Look, if I have the beer open in the middle of a story, that's interrupting to the audience. You want to make sure you're quiet. I see. This is me looking out for you. I have edited around so many farts and burps and fucking clearings of the throats and sounding of someone vomiting in the background.

I have edited around it all. Again, I like to think that I am looking out for you here. That's how this works. All right, this next story comes from Right Wing Watch. Dutch sheets. What? I don't even know what that is. Dutch sheets.

When I saw this, I was like, is that like where you fart under the sheets? No, I think these are the kind of sheets that are endorsed by Martha Stewart Living. Like they have a really high thread count. Those sheets are just all made out of wooden shoes. They're like windmills. Like recycled windmills and tulips. And they only come in orange. These sheets are alive with the sound of music.

That's not the Dutch. I don't care. God needs an army to save America from demonic destruction. Probably. Yeah. Because one thing demons hate is armies. Oh, yeah, God? You and one army.

This one. Wait a minute. The one that Dutch sheets fucking beats out of the bushes. That's the one that's going to take over, right? Let's just hope the demons don't show up with any iron chariots. Because then they'll just be like, fuck. Yeah, just fucking nothing. God's just like, nothing we can do about that.

What's the story behind that? I hear that all the time, but I don't know the story. There's a line. So in the Old Testament, God shows up to battles. Like, fucking shows up. Like God in armor? Like Jeffrey Baratheon? But God fucking smites a whole bunch of

folk right so like he has to right okay attend the event for the smiting right but then there's like there's this one like scene in the bible where like they go to their enemies because they're like the whole old testament is all about fucking like it's like a fucking real estate land grave it's fucking chinatown so like the whole and there's a lot of incest too so it is a lot like chinatown actually yeah like people's noses just get cut but like they show up and like at one point like there's a there's a line in the bible where it's like they showed up to fucking smite the i don't know the hittites or whatever but they had iron chariots so there was nothing anyone could do.

So they're fucking stymied by iron chariots. The Lord is with the men of Judah. They took possession of the hill country, but they were unable to drive the people from the plains because they had chariots fitted with iron. So the fucking God was there. He was like, I got this shit. I'm fucking it'd be like a fucking superman showed up in like an mma fight and then the dude had brass knuckles and superman was like uh-uh fuck that i gots to go brass knuckles made out of kryptonite right exactly clearly iron is

god's kryptonite it's fucking crazy isn't it that's awesome i hadn't i i guess i you know i'd always heard that and i had heard you you know, the Iron Chariot. I knew the context, I guess, a little bit, but I did not know the whole story. That's very crazy. I had no idea. All you have to do is read that and be like, wait a minute. Wait a minute. What the fuck happened?

Yeah. Like they had, they had fucking wood with some metal bolted on it and an omniscient god was like, uh-uh, sorry, nothing I can do, bro. Well, maybe that's why we haven't seen God in a long time, because, man, you know, after the invention of the Iron Chariots, he just, like, went the way of the Amish and just gave up on technology. He's like, I'm sorry, man. He's just like, I got nothing.

He's like, fucking A, man. Fucking, if I can't handle an Iron Chariot, you think I can handle a fucking hybrid? Right. Like, a Kevlar? Are you kidding me? He's like. Exactly. What about Dutch Sheets?

Yeah, so Dutch Sheets. So Sheets, I guess that's a dude. That's actually like a guy. He's a leader in the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation. You know, that fucking thing where they want to take over. Anyway, so he's fucking complaining. He's the guy with the whole persecution nonsense and all that rhetoric. And he gave a keynote at a conference, which is organized by the idiots from the Family Research Council,

which I suspect does very little research and carries very little for families. Anyhow, so he's making fun of churchgoers and he's talking about how God is not done with America. He's making fun of churchgoers and he's talking about how God is not done with America. And he basically says, like, you know, hey, we need, you know, God needs an army because there's a fucking demonic destruction. And we need to build an army to prevent the demonic destruction, Cecil. At one point he says, I'm going to read, says, fellow warriors, we cannot fear that if we resist the government and the political activists, we might be taken out. Neither can we fear that we might go to jail, lose our government funding. I like that. Lose our government funding or tax-exempt status or our business is shut down for speaking the truth or refusing to marry the same-sex couples.

Yes, these things are already happening. Some are already paying a high price to stand for righteousness um and and you're like what what's the what's the high price they didn't want to marry somebody in some place and now they can't make cakes there anymore because nobody will buy them like that's the high price they paid that's like well that's like that's like essentially like like you're giving people bad service and they get bad service, but somehow you want to be like, oh, well, I shouldn't have to pay the price for that. Really? If you give me bad service, why the fuck would I go back there?

I should be able to tell other people that you suck, right? Is that a person persecuting you because you're a dick? Right. That's persecution, Cecil. It's persecution. People make, you know, what's so funny is these are the same guys who have fucking they've got their fucking esophagus filled with the cock of capitalism they really do yeah yeah i got fucking they're fucking tearing up you know what they're like

they're like one of those fish that's trying to swallow or like a bird trying to swallow a fish hole and they like move their necks like just to try to get it in there they have to like smack their head back that's capitalism going down their throat yeah right right they're like an anaconda eating a fucking alligator right you know like they're fucking dislocating their jaw they're fucking mascaras exactly i'm just saying but these same people as soon as the free market turns on them, right? Because that's really what we're talking about. We're saying like, hey, man, when we fucking have businesses run by a bunch of shithead bigots who want to discriminate and then you guys won't come buy our fucking food items or, you know, you guys are fucking mean to us or you don't want to give us fucking free taxes or government funding. Now it's a big deal.

All of that stuff, which is clearly, like if you're fucking choking on the cock of capitalism that hard, like gobbling the knob of the free market, and then the free market's like, all right, here's what the free market's like. You're like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What I meant by free market was government money and fucking shielding from my bad behavior. Protection from my bad behavior. Exactly.

That's exactly it. And they also, I think, play up the card. He says at one point, he's like, I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor, everything to stop this insidious plan of hell. honor, everything to stop this insidious plan of hell. And you're just like, okay, you know, there's, there's clearly, uh, you know, the rhetoric here is so thick and he's, he's utilizing essentially, you know, this huge straw man slash ad hominem. You know what I mean?

Like it's a straw man because he's essentially saying like, these are their positions when it's not really to anybody's really position. And then it's, these are the, you know, these are awful evil. I mean, these are their positions when it's not really anybody's really position. And then it's these are the you know, these are awful evil. I mean, these are evil people. An insidious plan of hell is basically saying the opposition to me is made of pure evil. They are only here for your and everyone else's destruction. And you need to make sure you stop it. Like that's just I mean, really, that's where we're going with this.

And and and and the stuff he talks about is, you know, it's like gay marriage stuff. It's always gay marriage, man. What else is there? They got fucking nothing left to say. Like, I look at this and it's like, you have nothing left to say. Like, it just always comes back to gay marriage every time. I can't see how gay marriage is somehow going to destroy the world. Like, I mean, I just can't put those two things together.

That's like being like, you know, like that's like saying cross stitch is responsible for the bombing of the two towers. You know what I mean? You're just like, those two things don't even make any sense. Well, you know what? I love to, I love when they talk about like

fellow warriors. Yeah. And it's like, really? Yeah. Because what you really mean is prayer warrior. And what you really mean is idiots who hope in the same building together. That's not a warrior. That's not a warrior. Like, bring me, you know what a warrior is? Yeah.

Somebody who goes to war. Right. Like, that's a warrior. A warrior is a motherfucker with a shield and a spear or a fucking kevlar vest and a fucking ied detection thing you're like that's a fucking warrior i want an ied detection thing that's a i'm sure that i have no need for it i just want one i just want one like hey what is that well technically this is an ied detection thing it's from sony yeah it's remember those ones they sold yeah the one the fucking dowsing rods?

Yeah, those are great. Those are IED detection things. Filled with goldfish or whatever. It's just garbage. It's just like actual garbage. It's filled with pencil shavings and spit. You're just like, come on. This isn't even filled with anything.

I just pray over this equipment. We speak over the PowerPoint presentations, all of the video projectors, and we say, devil, we know what you love to do in meetings like this, and we say you will not, in Jesus' name, you will not prevent this message from going out.

No microphone problems, in Jesus' name. So this story comes from irishtimes.com, and I actually love this story. Mick Alice, whoever that is, says asking bishops advice on family life is bonkers. And I like this because it is fucking totally bonkers. Yeah, absolutely. So Pope Francis has his plan to ask a synod. Synod?

Synod? Sure. One of those things. Yeah, an S-Y-N-O-D. That's not a word. You've had a lot to drink because normally you're on point with the pronunciation of things.

So they ask a synod of bishops to advise him on whether church teaching on the family should change. And it's like, she says, there's something just profoundly wrong and skewed about asking 150 male celibates to review teaching on family life. And it always strikes me as terribly amusing when people are, you know, they have to go through that like pre-cana and like all of the other where they'll go to their priest. Like, ah, man, I'm having a fucking tough time at home with the family and the wife.

I'll ask my priest who the family and the wife. I'll ask my priest who has no family or wife. Right. I went through pre-cana because my wife was a Catholic when we got married. And we went through it. And I remember there was a couple of things that were on our test because you have to take like a fucking aptitude test to see if you're like compatible with each other. Is it Scantron? Please say it's Scantron. Please say it's Scantron.

I think it was Scantron. Are you fucking kidding me? It was multiple choice. Oh, that's amazing. Did you have to use a number two penis? Because I've been called a pencil dick many times. That joke was great because it had two parts to work. It really did. You had to sort of stick it in there.

You know what I mean? Just sort of wiggle it around. But the guy essentially looked at our quizzes and then said, and I love it. It's a fucking quiz. I mean, it's so ridiculous now looking back on it. But essentially, if you want to get married in a church, you have to follow the rules. And we were sort of pushed into a corner because Sarah's parents at that point wanted us to get married in a church. So it was really an important thing for them and for her.

And it's like, okay, well, we've got to do this thing. So I went through it. And the whole time I'm just sitting there like, really? like this. And, and like, one of the things that you do is like, you have to go on a retreat, like for a day and you essentially just go there, like to this like little retreat center and a nun, like essentially this nun did stand up comedy all day. She just talked about like how you're supposed to talk out your problems. And, and then like, you know, here's a funny anecdote and I'm a nun. So it's even funnier, you know? And you're just like, okay, that's great. And then like, you left that thing and then you had to do your little, and you had to

meet with a couple. So like, like there's couples who pledge their time and you go talk to them and they essentially just give you like aw shucks advice for like three hours at three times a time or so. I don't know how much it was. It was like an hour. Did you have to come up with questions? I don't remember. I don't even remember what, what we talked about.

They seem like a nice couple and they had a nice house and they were nice enough. They offered me a Coke or whatever, about. They seem like a nice couple, and they had a nice house, and they were nice enough. They offered me a Coke or whatever. You just sit on their couch, and they talked. I'm sure they were super nice people, but if I didn't have any fucking relationship questions, I can imagine just being like, so you got a cat? It's like getting sexual, and not even sexual advice, just relationship advice from some stranger. So I filed it in a place where I file all things that I'm not going to use again. And I essentially deleted it from the RAM as soon as I left their house.

I call that cognitive dissonance, my friend. It's like, I don't even care. I'm just like, whatever. You're a person I don't care about. And you're going to tell me about things I don't care about. So I'm just going to pretend I care while I'm here so that you could tell the priest, yes, they were a very nice couple and they deserve to be there. I don't even know. Like, are they our judge?

I don't even know what you do with it anyway. So then we leave there and then we have to take this little test. So there's three parts to it. The third part is the test. You take the stupid test and then you sit with the priest and the priest is starting to talk to us. And the whole time I'm thinking to myself, I even said it to Sarah on the way. I'm like, I'm not going to take any relationship with this guy.

He's never fucked anybody. I'm just like, like he's never had an intimate relationship with a woman. How not going to take any relationship with this guy he's never fucked anybody I'm just like like he's never had an intimate relationship with a woman how the fuck am I supposed to trust this guy and so we sit down he starts talking about a couple of things like there was a couple things like one of them was um we both scored like 94%

of each other's stuff but like one of them was we wouldn't forgive the other one if they cheated on the other one was like one of the things that we said and he's like that's a big problem so you need to have forgiveness we're like it's not a problem for us other one was like one of the things that we said and he's like that's a big problem because you need to have forgiveness we're like it's not a problem for us because we know our boundaries and we know what we do and he's like well it's something you should we're like we're not interested in talking about that like that's a thing that both of us agree on we're done you know like and that was the end of it like that was the but it's like it's like the whole time there's a guy who's a fucking you know a

celibate man who's trying to tell me about how I need to be forgiving if my wife ever cheats on me. And it's like, no, I don't need to be forgiving. And my wife is in the exact same boat saying I don't need to be forgiving. It's just it's super simple because both of us agree on it. And the one thing I want to say about the story is there's a there's a this push, this sort of theology to sort of get women. You know, it's like we don't need the new theology of women. She says at one point, we want this. We don't we just want to end the bull, the old boys club.

And she's essentially saying, like, we want to make sure that women are included and women are inclusive. And, you know, they threw the idea of women priests out when they were talking about it recently. And it's like, I actually kind of hope they never include women. And the only reason why is just so that as time goes on, it gets more and more out of date and people recognize how crazy and out of date these practices are. And then they start to question more and more of it.

I hope the church never changes. I hope it keeps all its crazy, stupid beliefs. And then all the people who eventually, you know, realize it's garbage, but we're doing all the good works that the church does come over and be like, fuck, I guess I didn't need all that to like give my money and give my time and give this, you know, these things to other people. We Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord. Open hearts. So this story comes from Mediaite. Christian metal star

convicted of attempted murder admits he was secretly atheist. Dun, dun, dun. Dun, dun, dun. In fact, the whole band was secret atheists. Wah! Wah! Tim Lambesis,

the front man for a popular Christian metal group. Christian metal group, by the way, is called As I Lay Dying. Because there's the good news. Anyway, Christian metal group. Is it really called As I Lay Dying? Yeah, the band is As I Lay Dying. Anyway, he was a secret atheist, Cecil. He's a secret.

In fact, the whole band were a bunch of secret atheists. And they didn't tell anybody because they didn't want to affect their sales. They thought if everybody found out that the Christian rock band was a bunch of atheists that they wouldn't make any money. Yeah, I guess that's probably true. He says, I'd get three pages of

the traditional evangelical conservative point of view, and then I'd get three paragraphs or sometimes even just three sentences from the atheist perspective. But even just a few sentences in, I'd think, this whole point of view makes more sense. Even when it wasn't being well represented, in the process of trying to defend my faith, I started thinking the other point of view was a stronger one. Okay, you know, whatever. I mean, a man fucking deconverts. It's like it's not even a story.

But here's why we're talking about it. We're talking about it because of this quote. And I'm going to read it and then see so you can go. He says, the first time I cheated on my wife. I hate even reading this. The first time I cheated on my wife, my interpretation of morality was now convenient for me. I felt less guilty if I decided, well, marriage isn't a real thing because Christianity isn't real. God isn't real. Therefore, marriage is just a stupid piece of paper with the government. I thought of myself as super scholarly at the time. My academic pursuit has led me to this.

I was sincere to a certain degree, but we all hear what we want to hear to justify our actions. I interpreted the evidence how I wanted and felt it was intellectually dishonest to consider myself a Christian. I felt at best I could consider myself agnostic and at least I would consider myself an atheist. Everything is wrong with that. Yeah. Yeah.

I kind of want to go through it a little bit and talk about it. He says, God isn't real. Therefore marriage is just a stupid piece of paper with the government. Actually marriage is a promise that. Yeah. Yeah. I kind of want to go through it a little bit and talk about it. He says, God isn't real. Therefore, marriage is a stupid piece of paper with the government. Actually, marriage is a promise with your wife. That's what marriage is. So, you know, you weren't even thinking about what marriage was. It's not a promise to the government, right? I'm not, I don't give a fuck about what the government thinks about what my marriage is. But the real meat of it is, is that it's a, it's a promise to another human being. That's what marriage is. But the real meat of it is that it's a promise to another human being. That's what marriage is. That's what a union is, right? You're promising that you're

going to be with that person. You're going to love and respect them. And if you promise that you're going to be faithful, then you're not going to sleep around on them. It's as simple as that. It's not a, there's nothing there. That's why that whole statement is wrong because he didn't understand what he was getting into. Well, and it's not like becoming an atheist means that you no longer have a moral structure. You know, he says in here, too, my interpretation of morality was now convenient to me. That now word is problematic to me because what it suggests is that his morality is in flux. What it suggests to me is that now, now his morality has changed. Now, all of a sudden there's something which is different about his ability to differentiate

right from wrong. Well, nothing should change your ability to differentiate right from wrong. Is hurting your wife wrong? I would say probably was, at least it was before, right? When you, when you thought of yourself as a Christian, you probably thought, man, I shouldn't hurt other people. Well, why would that change? Because God isn't real. Right. Once you find out God isn't real, isn't it more important how we treat other human beings because there's nothing bigger than another human being? Well, I mean, that's a great way to put it.

I mean, I think that's exactly how you should think. And I also think, too, that there's something wrong with the way he thinks, too, when he says, I was sincere to a certain degree, but we all hear don't think to try to justify me hitting with someone with my car i say fuck i messed up i did i shouldn't have done that right i you know like like there's a there's something in you that should stop you from justifying your own actions when they hurt other people i mean it's as simple as that you know it's the old it's the old like atheism means that all of your morals are relativistic right which you know there is a certain amount of truth to the idea that like you're you know the morality comes from a considered perspective and my considered perspective may be slightly different than your considered perspective for example you and i were driving the other day i would turn left when it says no left turn. You will not turn left,

Cecil, when it says no left turn. Right. Right. So but like this is not a great moral difference between you and I. No, no, no. This is more of a personality distinction between you and I. So like that's not a great like moral disconnect that you and I have. So but there is likely to be within, you know, some amount of flexibility. But that's not the same thing as sort of like, hey, everything goes on a moment by moment basis. Instead, what what happens when you build a moral case for yourself is that you're building a system, you're building a fucking flowchart that you put moral decisions through. It's the same flowchart every time. You're not building a new flowchart at three o'clock than you are at four o'clock, right?

You're not. So what he's what he's suggesting is that we arrive at our answer and then we build a flow chart to support the answer. But that's not the case. Right. He's doing backwards. Yeah, you're right. You build the flow chart first. Yeah. And whatever fucking happens at the end is the answer. Is this a moral distinction? And then there's a series of questions that you ask yourself. And most of these are sub or unconscious decisions that you make as you go through your life. But you still, you put them through the rubric, right? And you grade, how did it come out? Does this pass muster? Is this moral, amoral, or immoral? How does this fit into my definition of self? These are questions, fundamental, that we ask about ourselves

as we move through the world. It's not like because I don't believe in God, I just decide, you know what I want to do? Rob seven banks. Woo! Yeah. And then just fucking build a series of questions that makes robbing seven banks a moral good. What strikes me is that this guy's a bad person, right?

Like this guy's a bad person. It's not like he's a good person who somehow, you know, he just fell out of this moral code and now he doesn't have one and then he fucking flipped the fuck out, right? Maybe he's not a good person to begin with. to that there being some sort of punishment and reward in another life for people that are going to be bad if there isn't that? Yeah, man. I wouldn't have said yes until a moment ago, but maybe I'm thinking, because look, when I look at this guy, all the evidence points that this guy is a shithead, right?

Right. He's willing to lie about his belief system to make money. I think one caveat you got to be is like if this guy is telling the truth, right? Right. He's willing to lie about his belief system to make money. He's willing to – and in an exploitive way, not just in a being quiet about it at work way. Like he's being actively pretending to be one thing to make money, right? Pretending to be in this Christian band, even though he's an atheist.

He's actively willing to cheat on his wife, despite them presumably having a promise to one another for fidelity. I'm making a presumption there. And then he's also willing to fucking hire a hitman to murder his wife. Right. So it's not a great leap to say this guy's a fucking shithead. Right. Right.

He sounds like a shithead. So then I think your question is like, does this does does the belief in a morality, does a fucking spiritual choke chain keep people like this on a leash? Yeah. Does it? Maybe it does. But, you know, my hope is that these people are three percent of the population. You know what I mean? That like most people would never hire a hitman to kill their wife, no matter how much they didn't like their wife. It's not like not like the only reason, like, you know, it's not like you're thinking like, man, I had a breakup with my girlfriend or hire a hitman to kill her.

And I don't know which is the better option. Everybody knows which is the better option. It's like, it's like either I get a prom date or I blow up the prom. You know? Right. Or like go all Carrie on this shit. Yeah. You're all dead.

Oh, be nice. Oh, my son doesn't stand a chance. The whole world's gone gay. Oh, my God. What's happening now? We work hard. We play hard. So this story comes from Right Wing Watch.

Robert Gagnon. I think that's how you pronounce it. At FRC, Bible says gay sex. Gagnon. Gagnon. Gagnon. Hey, what you gagging on? Bible says gay sex worse than incest. Christian author Matthew Vines published a book entitled God and the Gay Christian.

Jesus Christ. The Bible case in support of same-sex relationships. Vine's book so angered the religious right leaders, this blows me away, like Matt Barber, that its publisher was pushed out of the National Religious Broadcasters. The Southern Baptist Convention, I can't speak, Southern Baptist Convention rushed out an e-book, God and the Gay Christian?

A response to Matthew Vines. The question mark really is what nailed it there. Yeah, right. Way to be original. And anyway, Robert Gagginon at the FRC, he's got some things to say about this, Cecil. He does. Let's listen to what he has to say here. A third corollary that follows is homosexual relationships are worse than polygamous ones

because it is, again, an attack on the foundation. Jesus derives a view about polygamous relationships on the basis of a male-female requirement set in creation. In other words, it's a principle extrapolated secondarily from a prior foundation that God deliberately designed male and female for union with one another and nobody else. And this is verified by the Old Testament's view of polygamy and homosexual practice because of some degree of license, as we've already seen in the Old Testament for polygamy, not for women but for men, there's never already seen in the Old Testament for polygamy, not for women, but for men, there's never any license in the Old Testament granted towards homosexual

practice, because that is the more foundational element of sexual ethics. Even incest, there's some degree of license that's granted, because some of the patriarchs engage in relationships that subsequently will be closed off in Levitical incest law long before Jesus arrives on the scene.

That doesn't mean incest is great. Is he really saying that? Did he really say that? There's like some, like, it's okay. Like, okay, there's a little bit of polygamy. He's like, polygamy, totally cool, as long as it's not women, right? He specifically says that, like, totally cool, as long as it's not women. And then it's like, oh, well, it's a maybe.

And now he's going to get to gays here. It means simply that it's worse than polygamy because the loophole is closed off earlier, but not quite as bad as homosexual practice, which never has a loophole needing to be closed off subsequently. Why would a fucking God that knows everything ever have a loophole? Like, loopholes are things where you're like, I made a law, and you're like, here's an unintended consequence. You're like, fucking, well, let's patch that up with a new thing. Like, if you're a goddess, it's like, I know everything. And you're like, here's a loophole. And you're like, I didn't think of that.

Wait a minute. No. You slipped one past old God again. Definitionally, I must have thought of that. Yeah, keep slipping them past old God. That's awesome. That's fucking great. I must have thought of that. Yeah, keep slipping them past old God.

That's awesome. That's fucking great. Yeah, I wonder, too, like, clearly God has, like, a rating scale of, like, relationships. Like, how does he rate them? Like, by, like, how many dicks they are? Like, there's, like, one dick is not good. But, like, five dicks is good. So, like, clearly polygamy, you know, like, five dicks is good.

Right. And then, like, you work your way down. It's, like, incest. That's, like, three dicks. But gay sex, that's, like, one dick. Forget it. That's not enough dicks. Actually, maybe we switch work your way down. It's like incest. That's like three dicks. But gay sex, that's like one dick. Forget it. That's not enough dicks. Actually, maybe we switch them around.

Actually, maybe it's too many dicks. I think maybe we switch it around. Let's switch it around the rating scale. So it's one dick for polygamy, right? Because he said no women. So that makes sense. One dick for polygamy. Then for incest, we'll say three dicks.

And then for gay sex, well, that's way too many dicks that's five dicks for incest it's a dick and a richard yeah i i don't understand how you can ever look someone in the eye and be like there's a little wiggle we got a little wiggle room on the incest you know we can i can get there i can i can totally see having sex with your relatives more than I can see having sex with another person of the same gender. Yeah, I just don't understand how they can even bring these things together.

I think the reason why they're bringing them together is so that they can show these two things that don't happen very often that they already kind of demonize are less worse than this thing that they really want to demonize are less worse than this thing that they really want to demonize. Right.

That's what they're doing. So they can have a conversation where incest and homosexual marriage are in the same conversation. Sure. Right. Even though they have nothing in common. Right. I wouldn't have been surprised if he would have said,

you know, bestiality is okay. Right. In that case, you know, it's like, Oh, well,

you know, there is some, cause you know, there's an amor oh, well, you know, there is some, because, you know, there's an amorous woman who gets with a donkey, so there is some bestiality in there, so you gotta, you know what I mean? Like, so. Sure. Sure. I wouldn't be surprised if he would have said that. That wouldn't have shocked me, because that's something that they always try to connect the dots

with. Right. It's a way to create an analogous situation that's not really analogous situation that's not really analogous. So we're back with Adam Reeks from the Herd Mentality podcast. Adam, you recently had a little bit of a format change with your podcast. Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing? Switched it up a gear. Switched it up a gear.

It's a lot to add a little bit more entertainment. So something that's a little more unpredictable. I've begun taking great delight in going to Right Wing watch which i think is one of your favorite oh yeah every article comes yeah and there's there's just no your show writes itself almost yeah just go into that website and thank god otherwise we'd have to do the work yeah i click on a couple of the little youtube links there and it's really not hard to find somebody who has some very firmly held belief based on nothing but strong feelings and ignorance. And then taking an interview of theirs out of context, and I'll take all their answers, I'll script some different questions, and I really try to sort of stick to the theme that they're talking about but just just crank it up a notch so they're even more insane just to sort of highlight that that's a bit of good fun

and i'm doing a little more with the comedy sketches so we're doing a little bit more ray comfort impersonations and uh another sketch called the champion of reason which is one of the few that i actually script with an author, Jim Reaver. And it's all about critical thinking and adventure. It's child friendly, which is about the only part of the show that is child friendly. There's fun stuff there. And then, yes, of course, I just continue talking to strangers I meet on the Internet. It's good fun.

So you don't script your Ray Comfort sketches? No, none of that gets scripted at all we sort of get together on the call uh get a different person each time to to impersonate an idiot so we might have somebody on to say oh what's a good example of something that happened recently ray and raylene had their atheism vaccines wear off yeah and we had to get in jenny mccarthy so we said okay who can impersonate jenny mccarthy that's that person in said now we need a beginning middle and end and let's just go so we just we just talk and laugh and giggle and break character and carry on for about an hour hour and and a half. And then I go through and spend about 10 hours editing it down. So it actually makes some sort of sense. And they're just ludicrous. It's just very funny.

We enjoy doing them very much. I got to say, during that one sketch that you're just talking about, there's a line in there that Ra says that made me spit out my water. And she says, she's talking to Ray Comfort, and she's like, Ray, I'm feeling like, you know, she's like feeling a little horny. And she says, I'm foaming at the gash. And at one point, the water just ejected from my mouth. I was like, that is dirty and awesome, and I love it. So they are very amusing.

They are very amusing sketches. The stuff that you guys put out is hilarious. The idea is that I impersonate Ray Comfort, and I'll talk like this, and I get very angry about things that don't make very much sense. It's so awesome. It's so good. Mainly because I only remember Ray Comfort from one video, and it's where he's jerking off a banana.

That's the only one I know. I'm doing it right now and I'll thank you not to steer. Totally sounds like. But the beauty of it is, is you can make these people do anything you like. Yeah. So when we have guests on, we say, okay, what's the most ludicrous thing you can think of that Ray Comfort might do? For example, you know, we'll have him orgasming to death on an eight horsepower solid gold butt plug or.

I like that it's solid gold. I do too. I think that's the thing that pushes it over the head. Not that it's a horse. There's horsepower involved. No, no, no. It's that it's solid gold. It's not gold plated.

Yeah. Exactly right. You recently had recently had some pretty big people on your show. Who have you had recently that you're pretty proud of? Oh, gosh, there was a blasphemy episode. My show, you sort of either laugh or cry. There's very little in between. And in this instance, I had Michael Nugent from Atheist Island, Acharya S., who's a religious historian from the US, Sonal Edamaruku, and he's a gentleman who sort of exposed in India a miracle of the Catholic Church and then was locked up

and he fled the country as a result. And Michael Sherlock, he's an author, he's written I Am Christ and several other books. But they came on to discuss a topic like blasphemy, which is actually more pervasive than you might think. And there's hate speech laws that are trying to be passed in governments all around the world. And what I learned is that they're actually very, very similar to religious protection laws. Because they're so poorly defined that it could mean anything. And these laws exist. There's a lot of European countries.

I think it was episode 61. It's called Blasphemy in the Feed. But you can have a listen to it and get the details on it and sign a petition because we're trying to get the UN to change the blasphemy laws. Oh, that's good. Yeah. If you listen to this podcast, there's a very good chance it affects you. Your government will have something buried away in the form of religious protection or hate speech laws that can be reactivated with the change in attitudes of your particular government.

I was really surprised at some of the countries that they named. But we've had plenty of other interesting people on. Coming up on the next episode, we've got a little bit of Seth Andrews, Matt Dillahunty and Arun Ra, so the unholy trinity. So we come on and chat some nonsense. But typically the most fun I have is with the everyday people and they get to come on and talk about their own experiences,

how religion has affected them, science discoveries. It's a very science-friendly podcast. So if I have a scientist who comes on, they've discovered some sort of new whiz bang discovery or they're trying to raise funds in order to do this research then i encourage you to get in touch with me we we talk about that and we go for something really specific i love that that's good fun uh and somebody like religious tea the religious tourist he comes on once a month he's a gentleman in eng England who's trying 12 different religions in 12 months.

And I think this month he's a Mormon. Oh, wow. I always do the month-to-month debrief with him. And I mean, he's been a Muslim. He did Ramadan. He's been a spiritualist. He's going to be a Jedi in the future. I like that.

And he gives it a good shot over the course of the month. He still hasn't found God, but he's probably trying harder than most atheists. Plus he gets the possibility of a lightsaber, which, I mean, come on. You've got to give him credit there. It's about as likely as perhaps finding a God, Tom. Can't hurt to wish, can it? So if people were going to find you on the internets, where would they go? Quite simply, Herd Mentality Podcast, H-E-R-D Mentality Podcast dot com.

And have a squeeze through, see if there's something that takes your interest. But there's a lot of recurring jokes. None of them are as funny as this show. Oh, yeah, right. All of them are more fun. Any single one of them is more funny than anything we've ever done. Actually, air silence would just be better. It's more funny.

Well, there's an idea for your next week's episode, Tom. That's one that perhaps even you could put that together. I'll tell you what, it wouldn't be too hard to edit. So that's good. I like that. Adam, thank you so much for joining us. Good luck with everything in the future. And we look to hopefully do a skit with you in the near future. Oh, very much looking forward to that.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for having me on to discuss some religious atrocities and other nonsense. So we want to thank our patrons. We just got several brand new patrons. We want to thank Amanda, the Reverend Jesus H. Christ, Shane, Jonathan, Alexander, Pascal,

Kevin, Michael, and Andrew. Thanks so much for donating to the show. We appreciate all the patrons that we have. It goes a long way to making sure that the show happens. So we want to thank each and every last one of you. And thank you guys very much. I want to also say thank you. I plan to eat all of your donations.

We got a message from Jim, and he sent in a pretty hilarious image, from Jim and he sent in a pretty hilarious image, but it is in reference to the last Mad Lib Viticus we did, Tom. It is. He says, thanks for nearly killing me at work. I usually listen to you idiots while driving around an open pit coal mine and the esophagus fisting nearly made me wreck. I couldn't see for laughing too hard.

I searched Google image for esophagus fisting, and this was one of the pictures I found. Love this. Nailed it. And it's the facehugger from Alien. That is esophagus fisting. It is esophagus fisting. It's actually incredibly accurate. Yeah.

And he goes on to say, P.S. One of the pits we are currently mining is referred to as the glory hole. I don't think the old timers get it, but at least it makes the radio chatter interesting. Let me tell you, the old timers get it, but at least it makes the radio chatter interesting. Let me tell you, the old timers get it. They get it. They get it. They understand the glory hole. The old glory hole. So we got another message from David. David had called in and left a voicemail and he talked a little bit about that. But then he also says, another point I wanted to make is one that I feel is critical critical but doesn't get much discussion. Christianity adds on obedience as a moral value.

As Matt Dillahunty has pointed out, Christianity doesn't have a moral system. It has moral proclamations, but it doesn't have a method of determining moral actions. This is why I am saying that obedience is added to morality by Christians by proclamation. Abraham's intent to sacrifice Isaac is considered a moral act because of the chief moral value in Christianity is obedience. of Christianity, not just the Bible, but also the personal lives of the virtuous Christians in the anecdotes, pastors relay, and so on. Look at everything done in Christianity, past or present, virtuous or vicious, and the lens of the obedience being the chief value and the worldview makes much more sense. It's still grossly immoral and simplistically wrong, but at least the method of making it is comprehensible. What do you think of that, Tom? I actually think that's a very insightful way to look at Christianity. I think particularly the point that Christianity does not

have a moral system, that it doesn't have a method of determining moral actions. I think that's absolutely the case. It's not the case that anybody's going to say, oh, well, because I'm a Christian, I know what to do in this situation. I think because you're a Christian, you know not to do certain basic things. But I think those things are pretty generally abhorrent to most people. And you don't know necessarily what to do in times of gray area. So obedience being the driving factor, like the chief motivator, that actually makes a tremendous amount of sense to me. And it does actually help me to understand a little bit better kind of how the Christian moral ethic has come to be.

This is interesting. We got a message from Matt who talks about, he talks about the evolutionary basis of ethics. He says, the nearest we can get to first principles in examining our ethics is I want to live and I value resources. Any organism which didn't hold to these premises

would quickly go extinct. Anytime you start examining, don't kill, don't steal edicts, our biology lies at the heart of the matter. In the human case, we evolved to excel when we work as a community with divisions of labor increasing our efficiency and our big brains

allowing us to plan, make tools, and hunt in ways that made up for our lack of speed, sharp teeth, long claws, or effective camouflage. We are, in animal terms, clever spam. Because we are selective animals, low number of offspring, large investment in each offspring, it pays genetic dividends to

ensure we know the offspring we care for are the product of our genes. This is easy for women because there are no known mammal cuckoos, but less so for men. So men abhor rape because it can short-circuit their paternal certainty. Women abhor rape because it's rape. Either way, we know rape is wrong at a species level, as is evidenced by the furtive actions of rapists who aren't so mentally ill they can't connect causes and effects. They know if their actions are found out, they'll be punished. And even if that only extends to a shunning, we are communal and rely on others to thrive. So being shunned harms an individual's biological fitness. Once you have don't kill, don't steal, and don't rape in hand, most of the rest of human morality is

just window dressing. I think this is an interesting way to kind of look at things. I think that, you know, our point in the last episode was that evolution as a set of ideas about how animals change and adapt over time doesn't tell us anything about whether or not something is right and wrong, Cecil. That's not a method. Evolution itself as a concept in biology is not and does not lead one to a method to determine whether or not an action is moral or immoral, though. Right. And I think that that's the thing we're trying to hammer home. You can't flip open the origin of species and find in there the way in which to live your life. I think the reason why they want it,

and like I said last time, they have to connect the creation with the morals. That's how they do it with God. And they want to do the same thing with evolution. So they're essentially constructing a straw man and that's what we were taking apart. But I, this is not lost on us. And I think that this is an interesting, interesting point of view. We got a message from, uh, from Elena and, uh, Elena sent us this, uh, sort of very tragic story of, uh, of a, it looks like a couple of people died and, uh, and there's a GoFundMe right now to help take care of the children. I'm going to link to this. This is a really sad story about, and there's a whole story behind this. Essentially, two people who were in a car accident and they died,

and their daughters are essentially there now, but they don't have anybody to take care of them. So there's a donation link. Both of these people were involved in the secular movement, and essentially they need to, they're trying to raise $50,000 to try to make sure that these girls

are able to be able to survive, essentially. So we're going to post a link to this on our website this time, DissonancePod.com, episode 159. And so if you're interested in giving any of your money to this, you can check out a link to both the news story and I'll also give the donation link so you can follow the donation link if you feel like you want to donate to this cause. Yeah, and this is a couple that, you know, after they passed, a lot of people evidently told Elena that, you know, too bad they didn't belong to a church.

Churches can really be helpful. I think the secular community can also be helpful, and they can also be generous. Yeah. And so it would be a good opportunity to show the world how generous the secular community really can be. We got a message from Mike G. about Skepticon. He asked if we're, you know, if we're thinking about possibly going. And we looked at

the dates. And as of right now, we're sort of putting it on the calendar. It looks like what's something that we might want to be able to do when it comes time for November. So, Mike, thanks for thanks for the invite. We think we will probably make it down there. So that would be really cool to head down to Skepticon, which is in Springfield, Missouri, and get a chance to hang out, see other people. We had a great time at TAM, and this is close enough to drive to. So we're looking to do this. We're also looking to go to the Foundation Beyond Beliefs conference in Chicago. That's kind of maybe up in the air for Tom, but I'm definitely going to be at the conference in Chicago.

It's the Humanism at Work National Conference. It's going to be on July 18th through the 20th at the Hilton Rosemont in Chicago. I'm going to be there. My wife's going to be there with me, and hopefully Tom's going to be there, too. So if you're interested in going to that, that's something that we may wind up showing up to. So if you're going to go to that, send us a message and maybe we'll get you a shirt. Now, we're not going to get to everybody, but if a couple of people send us messages and they are going and they'd like a shirt, send us a message. It's just easier to pick you out of the crowd that way.

Yeah, right. You're essentially wearing the dunce cap. The cone of shame. the cone of shame the cone of shame i found out today from cash from atheist on air he's like hey by the way i was searching some roku channels and he's and he saw us listed under a under a roku channel called sound reason yeah that's kind of cool so i guess if you want to listen to us on your TV through Roku, you can do that. So there we go. We're there. It's another way for us to invade your living space. Exactly. So if you're interested, I will post a link to Sound Reason Roku channel on this week's episode.

So if you're interested, you can always click on it and add it to your channel list on Roku. We also got a message too on our last, on 157 about the shunning. And this person by the name of Chase had posted on the Stitcher site. Basically they said, and I'm going to quote the very beginning, it says, also your assumption that shunning is not beneficial when done correctly is just false. Essentially this person grew up in a religious household and people were shunned or what they call it, he says more correctly, disfellowshipped. And I said to Tom earlier, I think disfellowshipped is when you die bringing the ring to Mordor. And it helped them to see that their behavior was not acceptable and to turn around and change. It's not hateful unless the people do it with hate.

Like the difference between a father kindly punishing his son and bringing out the belt and whacking his ass in anger. Essentially, this person says, obviously, sexual orientation is not something a person can change, but sex does not equal love. And someone with those urges can decide not to act on them. That sounds like really fucking stupid uh why would you care what other people do whether or not they want to act on their sexual desires if it doesn't hurt anyone else that's a fucking stupid stance to have and then also shunning people is fucking stupid it's just dumb that doesn't solve any questions i was telling tom earlier fucking of all the times

I've ever fought with my wife, whenever we decided to ignore each other, that didn't fix the fucking problem. We had to stop and figure out what the problem was and fix it. I don't know what kind of fucking society you could live in where you'd be like, well, if there's some good shunning that goes on. Right.

You gotta lovingly shun people. You have to lovingly turn your back on those that are a part of your life so that they'll be alienated enough to love you to change in a way that you will accept them for. See, that's how shunning works, right? Yeah. I don't accept you the way you are, so you have to change in order to fit. You're like a fucking key that doesn't fit this lock right like and i'm not gonna fucking change i'm not even gonna i'm not even gonna give you i'm not even gonna fucking give you the dignity of telling you that right i'm just gonna shun you just some good

old-fashioned love shunning that's what it is some good old-fashioned love shunning that is dumb as hell like that idea that you'd be like oh i'll just stop talking to him that'll fix him like that's a that's the child most childish fucking three-year-old attitude of fucking how to handle your relationships i've ever seen remember that time that your car was making like a weird noise and you're like oh i'll just put in earplugs yeah oh the car's fixed and real quick we want to say thank you to John. John was kind enough to send us a donation, which we received last week. Also, he sent some artwork over to us, which is great. And it's going to be gracing the walls of Glory Hole Studios.

So thank you very much. It was terribly kind of you to do. So I wanted to say thank you. And, you know, Cecil and I, we're also thinking, we live in the Chicago area, and we were thinking about having a first annual, possibly only, thank you picnic. Cecil and I would host it probably at a forest preserve or a place with a pavilion. We'll brew up some beer, and we will serve a little bit of food just as a way to say thank you to our listeners who have been kind enough to support us all these several years that we've been doing this show.

However, we kind of want to gauge your level of interest, bearing in mind, of course, that we are in the Chicago area. The picnic would be in the Chicago area. If it's something that you'd be interested in going to, can you send us a message, an email, something on our Facebook page? I don't care. Just get in touch with us some way and say, yeah, I'd go to that. Or no, that sounds like shit. Just so we can get an idea. Yeah, if it sounds like shit, don't send a message. How's that? Yeah, that's true. Yeah, just don't even send the message. Yeah.

But if it's something that you're interested in going to, send us a message, leave us a note, just so we can kind of gauge the level of interest and book a venue appropriately. Yeah, and if you're interested, send it to dissonance.podcast at gmail.com or you can post it on Facebook on this episode. This episode we'll post on our Facebook page. You can post a comment on this episode

or you can tweet it at us. So we want to thank Adam Reeks from the Herd Mentality podcast for joining us today. We're going to put a link to his show and a link to his Twitter account on this week's show notes, episode 159. So you can check out his stuff there. He runs a great show, highly edited. Probably I would say, I would go out on a limb here and say the best edited podcast in atheist podcasting right now is Adam Riggs' show. So you should check it out if you're into shows that, that really do some really cool stuff with editing,

with, and he does some great stuff with, we played something earlier of his, the Alex Jones piece that he did, but there's other stuff that he's done that is, that is really funny. His skits are funny, and his guests and his questions are insightful.

It's a worthwhile podcast to check out, so you should definitely check it out when you get a chance. So that wraps it up for this week. We hope to see you next week. We will also hopefully be on Jake's show, the Imaginary Friends Show podcast, very soon. We're also hoping to have Jake on our show.

Look for that in the very soon category. We hope that that happens within the next week. But until next time, we'll leave you, as always, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. 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 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. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local Dairy Council. Outro Music