Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 162: Great White Throne of Judgement

Episode Date: July 7, 2014

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Do you want to get cognitive dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. Hey, glory hole, guys. Man, let's see you forever. Skeptic1970 over here. Hey, I'm in West Michigan. I heard your latest podcast where you talked about value, the pedophile. And there's more of it and less of it than what you know about.

The fact they didn't fire him wasn't a big deal, because they certainly did after it looked like the allegations were true. And the allegations got much, much worse. I recommend going on the web, checking it out. But sex with an 11-year-old boy that he paid for through a pimp, and he confessed to having a storage locker where he had his quote-unquote bondage kit that included handcuffs and ropes, and he also had a file full of obituaries for children. Oh, this guy's a major fuck-up. And they did let him go, but, you know,

I think it's going to get deeper and worse the longer you watch this one. Don't worry, Holt. Love you guys. Hey, Cecil and Colin. So I had a realization the other day while I was eating lunch that I realized that the whole YOLO thing is a liberal atheist conspiracy because you see, when you say YOLO,

you know, you only live once, which is entirely an atheistic belief and not a religious one. There's no, like, religion out there that says you only live once. And by propagating this meme, this YOLO thing, we are slowly winning over some more liberals and atheists. So I think this is something that we should be telling people, especially in the right wing, because I would love to see Pat Robertson freak the fuck out over this. All right, guys. Glory hole.

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. We'll be right back. makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political. And there is no welcome at this is episode 162 of Cognitive Dissonance. And we have no guests. That's right. There's no Jake. There's no Rob Blazkowicz. It's just us. And I know at least I am disappointed. Everybody else is like, Jesus, man. Do you hear that, Cecil? That's the sound of a thousand iPhones turning off right now. A thousand?

A thousand. Jesus, man. My mom has like 500 of them. Yeah, well, yeah. That makes sense then. So, I mean, I guess we have nothing to introduce. We're just going to launch right into the very first story, which comes from the Friendly Atheist blog.

Minnesota Archbishop, who denounces homosexuality, now being investigated for having sex with priests. Who would have thunk that, huh? Archbishop John Niensted has spent years... I think I hit that one.

Yeah, it's good. I like that. He needs to buy a vol there at the end, I think. Right. It's just... Yeah, there's just, any time it's just... Instead it's... Instead it's... Yeah, there's just like... There's a vestigial T at the end there.

It hasn't evolved because he didn't believe in it. No, that's not fair. He's Catholic. He believes in it. But what he didn't believe in was homosexuality. He railed against it, and that's not the only thing he was railing against. As it turns out, he railed against it. He really did. He spent years arguing against LGBT rights. In 2007, he wrote that those who actively encourage or promote homosexual acts formerly cooperate in a grave evil. And if they

do so knowingly and willingly, they are guilty of mortal sin. Nobody cares because sin isn't real, but still, he decided to get all fucking bent out of shape about it. Turns out he wasn't so bent out of shape to stay nice and straight for some of the priests that he was interested in. Maybe he was bent. You don't know. You don't know. He could have gonzo dick. We have no idea. he was bent. You don't know. You don't know. He could have gonzo dick. We have no idea.

Is a mortal sin when you reach out and pull their spine out of their body? Is that when you throw a harpoon into their chest? Get over here! He's throwing a harpoon in someone, though. You know what I mean?

Let me just look at the outfit this guy is in. Tell me a straight guy is that color coordinated. You know what I mean? Not happening. Not happening. You know, if I were a priest, I'd be one of the guys in the big brown smock. Fucking A. Those fucking brothers have it good. They don't have to wear shit underneath.

They're like judges. They just fucking let that fucking air flow in, baby. Yeah, and it's plus there's like, not only is there no effort, you don't have to ever give any thought to it. It's like, what are you wearing? Big wool muumuu. I'm wearing a big wool muumuu. Rock! This is the best day ever. Every day

is the best clothes day ever. What are you wearing to the wedding? I don't know. Maybe my big brown muumuu? Is this all I wear anywhere? It might get a little scratchy. I don't know. I hope that they have like, like for like the special occasions you get the velvet muumuu. The velvet muumuu.

So anyway, Archbishop Magenta here has... He's being investigated for multiple allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with seminarians. Well, now they are. You know, it's interesting, Tom. The results of this probe are the results of a probe. You know, if you want to figure out who to investigate investigate all you have to do is see who's making the most noise like it's really easy it's so true god that's so true that's i mean it's like

all he's doing is banging fucking pots he's like trying to scare a bear away it's all he's doing he's just the fucking squeakiest wheel ever. And on the side, he's banging whoever he can. And it's, you know, it didn't say he had sex with nuns, right? It's saying he had sex with priests. Right. And who cares? Who fucking cares? The only reason we care is the guy's a fucking hypocrite.

Right. The guy's a total hypocrite who's trying to stop gay marriage. Let me read a couple of things here. hypocrite who's trying to stop gay marriage let me read a couple of things here he says he spent six hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the church's money to trying to convince minnesota voters to pass an amendment banning same-sex marriage you know i mean like like that's this is a guy who's clearly out for blood when it comes to the homosexuals you know and not just anal bleeding we're talking about he's really out for blood and and he's trying to stop them from doing this and you know the only reason uh he gets caught is because

there's there's massive allegations against him he's the other thing too at the bottom did you see the thing where he might have had somebody who was a pedophile uh yeah it's just like that should just get swept under the rug right yeah Yeah. Really, this is the problem with the church is that they have this weird old boys club that operates on its own rules. It's above the law. They keep shit in house. And that's just it's damaging. That stuff doesn't get out to the public. And then suddenly, you know, you're bringing your kids into daycare and they're coming home scarred for life. This is this is not something that, you know, can be defended. And this is not a one time occurrence. This happens all the fucking time all over the place where people are molested and their lives are turned upside down by priests that, you know, don't have any moral compunction about diddling a child.

Right. And it's funny because it says that he denies the allegations. And then he adds, which I thought was interesting, that the allegations, quote, don't involve minors or illegal or criminal behavior. Yeah, so what? And it's like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I mean, that's a weird thing to say, right? It is. It's very weird.

That's like saying like, hey, Tom, did you rob that liquor store? I did not rob that liquor store. And also, I did not have sex with that little boy. Yeah. Like, wait, wait, slow down. Back up. Hold on a second. What little boy?

Yeah. I said I didn't have sex with him. Why are you pestering me? This interview was over. And I'm not saying that he did have sex with minors, right? It's not the allegation. I don't want to insinuate that. And I don't want to cause a correlation between homosexuality and pedophilia.

And the chances are he didn't, right? Right. Right. Yeah. So no part of that comment. But what's interesting to note about that comment is it's a comment that sort of belies his guilt, right? It's a comment that says like, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm not being accused of sex with minors. Why would you even bring that up unless it was so endemic in your church,

unless it was so ingrained into the culture of your church that no matter what you're being accused of, you have to stop and point out like, whoa, hey, I may be a lying ass bag hypocrite. I may be campaigning on the front lines to take people's rights from them and to damage families. I may be doing all of that while at the same time having sex with these same dudes that I'm fucking telling everybody else they're going to hell for doing. That may be true. Alright. But at least I ain't fucking children. Yeah, I ain't no child fucker, damn it. So, hey.

Who's that guy on the other side of the glory hole? It's Cheetah. So these next two stories we want to talk about in conjunction with one another. The first one comes from Talking Points Memo. The second one comes from ForwardProgressives.com.

The first one, post Hobby Lobby. So that's been a week. Religious organizations want exemption from LGBT hiring order. Not terribly surprising. The day after the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby ruling, a group of religious leaders sent a letter to President Barack Obama asking that he exempt them from a forthcoming executive order that would prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against LGBT people. The second story from Ford Progressives, South Carolina restaurant owner refuses to serve black people,

cites his religious beliefs. So since businesses can now be treated as people and people have religious beliefs and religious beliefs, evidently are fucking sacrosanct over the public interests of the nation. How much of this, Cecil, do you think we're going to see? I think you're going to see a lot more of it. There was an article that was posted to our page on cognitive dissonance. Mother Jones posted something that said,

it's not just Hobby Lobby. These 71 companies don't want to cover your birth control either. And it's a list of 71 companies, some of them large, some of them small, that are going to not be covering birth control coverage. This is it's it's not something that feels like it's going to go away at all. And it feels like this decision is going to try to keep on expanding, even though that I think it was it Alito or the chief justice. I can't remember. But somebody had put out something that essentially said, look, this only covers this sort of tiny little subsect. But even still, I think people are still

going to try to be chipping away at this in some way. You're going to see a lot more court cases, a lot more of this stuff, because people want to use the religious exemption for all kinds of crazy shit. Right. You know, and I think it was in the majority decision. I know what you're talking about. Yeah, right. They did try to, they tried very hard to limit, I think because there was a sort of a tacit understanding that this is going to cause an avalanche of this kind of bullshit. And I think that there was a reasonably conscious effort,

although I don't think it was going to be effective effort, to specify that this ruling is for this very specific set of circumstances and yada, yada, yada. But, you know, at the end of the day, if you read the majority decision and then you take that logic and you start applying those same similar logical principles to other cases, it's actually very difficult to look at a case and say, well, what about this group of religious leaders? By that same logic, not my logic, but by their logic, why shouldn't they be exempt from hiring LGBT people? I mean, some of those people, Tom, think that that is equally abhorrent to abortion or whatever. Because Hobby Lobby, they were they were on a stance of

not all contraception, because if you look at their page, they have just, you know, tons and tons of different types of contraception and, you know, male vasectomies and then also male. They were covering Viagra and other other stuff, but they wouldn't cover like the morning after pill and like abortions like they were like really specific about what they were and IUDs. They wouldn't cover IUDs. But I don't know how an IUD works.

I don't know if the IUD is actually, is it the same thing as the birth control pill, which prevents it or does it? Well, there's a couple of, there's a few different ones. There's some that are just mechanical that prevent implantation, which I guess, you know, they could argue that if life began at the very moment of sperm meeting egg and the egg didn't get an implant. But then there's other IUDs that not only work mechanically but then also have a hormonal component similar to the pill. Is there any IUDs that work like the Death Star and like shoot a laser?

Yeah, that's actually – yeah, that's a little known one. It's harder to get up in there, but it's 100% effective. Not 99. Yeah, right. 100% effective. You know, this ruling is just it's just fucking madness. And, you know, I can't help but just think, like, as soon as you start talking about corporation, I know I talked about this last time, but I just I. Right. Well, it's too fucking hard not to talk about. As soon as you start saying like corporations are people like we are in a fucking world of hurt.

We are in a fucking world of hurt. And these are decisions that are going to take, I think, generations to reverse before we come to our senses and recognize that corporations are not people. They do not have consciences. You know, corporations cannot have a conscience. They can't conscientiously object. They can't have religious values. They are not a person. In fact, Cecil, you and I, we don't have religious beliefs, right? You and I have beliefs and you have beliefs. But cognitive dissonance, although we agree, I would argue that cognitive dissonance doesn't exist. Like it's a fiction that we create together. I have my beliefs and you have your beliefs.

And there's intersection there and then there's difference there. So how can we say that there is this one thing called cognitive dissonance which has rights which are sacrosanct the same way that my personal rights are sacrosanct? I literally fail to understand that concept. One of the things that you mentioned too, when you were just, you just talking there, you said generally generationally, this could last a long time. This brings up this other story from the forward progressive. That's a South Carolina restaurant owner refuses to serve blacks and cites religious beliefs.

And it's a, it's a story about a guy who went to the Supreme court saying, look, I don't want to, I don't want to give black people any chance to sit in my restaurant. Now, they can come in and order takeout, which is weird.

I'll serve them some food, but they better eat it somewhere else, because I don't like to see them eating food. I don't even know where that comes from. But he doesn't want them there. He did all kinds of stuff. This guy in 1963, he was attacking other people who had integrated restaurants. He ran for the South Carolina House. He had pictures and Confederate flags and pro-slavery literature all over his restaurant. So in 2010, his family takes over the restaurant. He's still alive. The guy just died earlier this year. So this Maurice Bessinger, I guess I'm going to call him Bessinger.

He died earlier this year, but he was still alive, probably Alzheimer's out or crazy or whatever, like dementia out at the end of his life. So he had no say in the matter when his family, who took over the business, took out all that shit. They took down the Confederate pictures. They took out the pro-slavery literature. Because clearly he had to serve blacks because you can't fucking do that.

And so he had to do it throughout his life. But now it's more friendly to them. It's just like, you know all that bigotry shit? We're not doing it anymore. But it's a generational thing, right? Those people die out. Now, generationally, I think this is really important

to see that maybe when our kids are old enough, this won't be an issue. But until then, it's going to be an issue for a long time. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. This story comes from Right Wing Watch. Klingenschmitt. Jesus will overrule the Supreme Court and toss gays into hell.

He looks so awesome. The picture, the still of this video is him with his hand out. And he kind of looks like a mobster. Like, hey, what do you want from me? Look at you. Hey, forget about it. Nice Supreme Court you have here. It would be a shame if something happened to you.

Yeah, this guy continues to prove his rationality. He was reacting to a recent decision from the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down Utah's ban on gay marriage. Gay marriage actually had a great week. Utah and Kentucky both had their bans stricken down. So that's great news. But Klingenschmitt had some words, Cecil. He did. You want to hear them?

No, but let's play them anyway. Here we go. Here's Klingenschmitt had some words, Cecil. He did. You want to hear them? No, but let's play them anyway. Here we go. Here's Klingenschmitt. This is courtesy of Right Wing Watch, and they stole it from his dumb show. This is like rubbing raw glass into my ears to hear this guy, by the way. It's fucking ridiculous. But let's predict the newspaper in 100 years. When these two men, these two men who are kissing on your screen, they're both dead.

And in 100 years, I'm going to be dead. You, the viewers are probably going to be dead. We're all going to be, what's the next appeal and what, okay. The U S Supreme court didn't get this right. Didn't fix it. Well, then there's a higher court because after that, these two men will appear before this court, the great white throne of judgment. Oh my fucking God. The great white throne of judgment. Doesn't that sound like a penis reference? It does. It does.

I think the great white throne of judgment was one of the floats in the pride parade last week. I don't know. Actually, it'll be honest. It looks like the outfit Jesus is wearing was in the pride parade last week too. That little loincloth that he's wearing. That's a popular one, I think.

Um, so there's a little more of this where Jesus Christ himself is sitting on the throne and issuing his determination. I sit on the throne and issue my determination. Well, as soon as he said that, I was like, well,

I hope he's got some good reading material. No kidding. I'm going to cut it. And some Charmin, you know, cause you don't want to, you don't have to wipe with that Scott stuff. That stuff's fucking mean. That's, that's how you know you're in material. Yeah, no kidding. Because the Bible ain't going to cut it. And some Charmin. Right. Because you don't have to wipe with that Scott stuff. That stuff's fucking mean.

That's how you know you're in hell. Like, they're indistinguishable, except for one's got better toilet paper. Let me tell you, you've got to be angry at your anus to use that shit. You know what I mean? You've just got to be mad at your own body. All right, there's more. And he will overrule whatever the Supreme Court said. And what will Jesus' determination be?

Well, probably the same as what he declared in Matthew 19. Have you not read from the beginning that God created them male and female? It said, for this reason, a man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife. And the two become one flesh. They're no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, God has joined together. Let no man separate. Jesus, as the judge, will overrule the U.S. Supreme Court.

And what will he do with these two men? It'll be printed in Heaven's newspaper in a hundred years. Heaven's newspaper. That God throws them into hell. Heaven's newspaper? You know, that kind of makes sense. An outdated concept of heaven gets outdated media. Right.

It's actually going to be Gutenberg up there, just like with his fucking first printing press. Well, they also have a telegraph and old-timey radio, too. Today in heaven. What is in heaven's newspaper

anyway? On the forecast today, bliss. Next week, bliss. What do you say in heaven's newspaper? Newspapers are about conflict, for crying out loud. Yeah What do you say in heaven's newspaper? Newspapers are about conflict, for crying out loud. Yeah, what would be in a heaven newspaper? Heaven actually sounds like the idea of heaven, doesn't it sound so fucking boring?

It does. It sounds ridiculous. You know, and the thing is, I want to get back to what this little Klingon was reading a moment ago. Like that Matthew verse. To me, I read that and I think like that speaks more to divorce than it speaks to anything else.

Absolutely. You know, and why is he not railing against all the divorced couples that are going to go to hell? Like, isn't that like when he's, when he's saying like, if that's the quote,

if that's what we're going to quote mine out of the Bible in order to determine who's worthy of burning in an eternal fire for all time. Like if that is the one line from a book that's going to decide the fate of this fake idea of a soul, like wouldn't it be divorce based on that? That would be the bigger deal. Like let no man tear apart, blah, blah, blah, what God has joined or whatever the fucking line is. Doesn't divorce do that every fucking time? Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I mean, it's flying in the face of it. You're absolutely right. And, you know, I'd be honest. I kind of like that line. Like they said that line at our wedding. And I think that that's great. It's like, you know, and I don't know that I like the God part of it, but I just like this idea of like, hey, you know, what's what's going on here today is, is so important and nobody should be able to break this up kind of feeling. And I understand that, you know, clearly marriages break up all the time, but it gives a feeling of permanency to your own marriage. And I, and I don't dislike that idea. Uh, but I totally agree with you. I

think that it's, it's absolutely talking about divorce. I mean, you know, there's nothing in that that sounds to me like he's talking about. I mean, yeah, he says man and a woman, but just because they fucking ostracize people, we're supposed to do that too? Like, well, you know, 2000 years ago, those people were stoned to death. Well, big fucking deal. We're fucking more. They were barbarians for crying out loud. They're fucking, that's a, That's a horrible way to live.

Why do you keep pointing back to that and be like, that's fucking awesome. Remember when they used to stone people to death? They used to hit them in the face with hard objects until they stopped living. Isn't that awesome? What are you, a fucking idiot? Nobody thinks that's awesome. Not the person throwing the stones, not the person getting hit. You're all idiots.

Not the person throwing the stones, not the person getting hit. You're all idiots. This is harkening back to a time when a legitimate form of transportation was a donkey. Yeah, a chariot. Right. Like this was like, yeah, the chariot would be for the fucking rich people, man. Are you kidding me? Yeah, chariots, don't they just seem really dangerous? Like it's only like two wheels.

Yeah, and you have to fucking have. The thing about a chariot, too, is the horse is in front of you. And I don't know if you've ever ridden a horse or spent time with horses, but horses just shit constantly. Yeah, they do. Yeah, they just fucking constantly. That's how they go. That's like their propulsion method. So you're like in the chariot, just like watching a horse shit.

It's fucking awful. And that's what the rich people get. And, you know, like the two-wheel turning shit like that. Like they outlawed fucking ATVs with three wheels in Illinois. Like, you know. You think you can ride a chariot here? Are you kidding me? This is a people who did not have the bicycle.

Right. Right. You know, like we're looking at the world and being like you didn't have basic you didn't have basic metallurgy at this time like you had well you had basic but you didn't have fucking like steel this is not a world anybody wants to go back to except they only want to go back to for the punishments they only want to go back to it for these weird crazy like laws that that they're picking and choosing because there's more laws than that in the Bible. There's more laws than that. When you go – because they have to point to this and say, well, this is where he says man and woman.

Okay, well, what does he say about – he just says that they can be joined and not torn asunder. Well, where does he talk about it being bad? Oh, we got to go back to the Old Testament for that. Oh, okay. Well, let's look at the Old Testament. Oh, we got to go back to the Old Testament for that. Oh, okay. Well, let's look at the Old Testament. Oh, yeah. Well, fucking that's right underneath. Fucking no two cloths can be the same fucking or different material.

Right. It's in a list of irrelevancies is really what it is. So we're going to take a short break, give you some information on how to contact the show and how to become a patron of the show. And we'll be back right after this with some fucking unbelievably sad stories. Want to contact the guys? Go to dissonancepod.com to get links to their Google+, Facebook, and Twitter accounts.

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take a second to give us a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher or spread the word about the show. We want to send a big heartfelt glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. Okay, so here we go, Cecil. I found this story and I was flabbergasted. Yeah.

So this comes from the journal.ie. And the title of the story is just a quote. I was just 27. I was butchered. Symphiosio to me. I can't pronounce that word. Survivors in their own words. This is just unbelievably chilling reading. And I think, you know, we were called out a little

while ago for not giving a trigger warning. This one might be a trigger warning for some people. So the gist of the story is that over 300 survivors in a 50-page document chronicled their personal childbirth experiences that were carried out by the church, basically, that wanted to make sure that these women could continue to have children. That was the primary objective of this procedure, whose name I cannot pronounce. I think you did a pretty good job because it's a pretty long word. Symphysiotomy. I can't. That's probably the closest I think. Symphysiotomy I think is pretty or physiotomy. Yeah, I don't know.

So, and it's a fucking unbelievable horror show. It's described as the upper and anterior portions of the symphys are severed together with part of the arcurate ligament leaving the last fibers to be gently torn Jesus. Jesus. the words of one of these doctors is, I'd like the baby to come naturally, but because you are paraphrasing or cutting pieces out, but because you're such a good Catholic, I'll do a symphiosomy.

You're a Catholic family. You'd be expected to have at least 10 children. If you have a cesarean, you can only have three. And as a Catholic, you need to go through the pains of childbirth. If you had a cesarean, you wouldn't. And so the solution was to basically saw their pelvis in half. It's like having a baby in a wood chipper.

It's fucking awful. Fucking awful. You know what it's like? It's like having the lady from Misery as your midwife. Like she hobbles your pelvic bone. That's fucking horrible. It is so unbelievably bad.

It's like you have to wonder about the doctors like, oh, man, we could, we've got a better method. No, no, no, no, no. What about if we did this? I know. I know. You know, there has to be a point in medical school where you're sitting around and they're like, well, look, look, if they're Catholics, we need to breed them.

And so if they have a C-section, they can only replace themselves plus one. And that's not enough. It's like fucking, you know, if your dumb fucking thousand, 2,000-year-old book or collection of stories or whatever had some shit in there about fucking dental pain and like how you're not allowed to get fucking Novocaine at the dentist or whatever had some shit in there about fucking dental pain and like

how you're not allowed to get fucking novocaine at the dentist or whatever you know you know you were supposed to suffer you're supposed to sell your mouth is supposed to suffer or something and so every time you you know if you were one of these people every time you go to the dentist they just fucking hit you in the face with a hammer or something you know like it's like that doesn't sound like fun and this also harkens back to the fucking, you know, women and they have to suffer because they're women. You know, they have, they are the ones who fucking ate the apple. So they're the ones who have to suffer.

It's like that old joke. Why do women get PMS? They deserve it. Waka, waka, waka. You know, it's like, okay, great. You know, this is another reason why, you know, if you're a woman and you believe in this stuff and you think that – you've got to look at this sort of war against you and think, what the fuck are people thinking? They get oppressed in all these different religions. I'm surprised there is not such a huge atheist movement among the women of these of these religions because it

makes it makes no i mean fucking i would become an atheist immediately if somebody's like well gotta break your pelvis for no fucking reason be like um yeah i don't believe in god anymore right yeah i need you to cut my stomach open and tear that baby out the right way it's like well you know you're gonna need to suffer like wait a're going to need to suffer. Like, wait a minute. Do I need to suffer? Yeah. Or do you just want me to suffer? Yeah. Because there's like, here we are in the glorious age of technology, right?

Like, you know, we have the ability to reduce a tremendous amount of suffering. So if somebody came up to me and was like, yeah, look, we've got two ways we can do this. We can either do this in a smooth, quick transaction that's relatively painless, and there's going to be some recovery after the fact, but during, not too bad. Or I can take this hacksaw and fucking hack away at your pelvis and then basically splay your legs apart until the last fibers holding your being together crack. Really, it's your choice. So how Catholic are you feeling today? I would not be feeling very Catholic, man.

And I also would not be interested in having more. Like, that's the other selling point, right? Like, well, you know, you got to have more kids. It's like the first experience is the worst thing possible. No kidding. I wouldn't have sex again. Are you kidding me? It'd be like if you went to work on your first day and they're like, well, welcome to work.

We're going to put cigars out on your arm for eight hours. And you're like, wait a minute. I'm not coming back tomorrow. I quit this job. We'd like you to meet workplace motivation Leatherface. He's in this room here. Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, all truth, and nothing but the truth?

Why don't you answer him? He's talking big right now. I don't know what he's saying. He's asking you if you swear. No, but I know all the words. He's asking you if you'll swear to tell the truth. Truth is stranger than fiction, Judge Woody. So this story also comes from the Friendly Atheist blog.

A Florida judge who ran her Christian ministry from the courthouse may soon be kicked out of office. And what flabbergasted me about this one is the word may. Really? Like we haven't figured that out? Like we're not 100% locked down on this one yet. This is a judge, Hawkins, Judith Hawkins. She's a county judge in Tallahassee, Florida. And she was using county money and time and employees to literally run her ministry. And she may be kicked out of office.

May, yeah. I mean, if I did that at my work, and there's no separation of church and state at my work. It's a private corporation. If I did it at my work, they would fire me. They'd be like, we fucking pay you to do a job. Yeah. Not to squander resources, you squanderer. I'd kick my ass out for squandering.

Right. Yeah, that's definitely a fireable offense. And, you know, I think it's even better because she's like an innovator, right? Normally people go on a book signing tour. She takes the tour to herself. She's just like, I'm just going to bring the book signers to me, sign their books while I'm on the fucking bench and charge them $15. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable.

I can't believe the $15 thing is what threw me. I'm like, really? 15 bucks? I love that the guy's got to pull out, like, what does he whip out a 20 and she pulls out change? Where do you get the change from a fucking robes that you're wearing? I like this too. I want to read this.

It says, they also found Hawkins guilty of posting images of her wearing her judicial robes on her ministry website, failing to comply with tax law, reading magazines during court proceedings, and using less than her full time for judicial duties. I got to think too, you know, if this was just a porn site rather than a religious website, know what would that what would that's you know like that's that's what i keep wondering it's like why does religion get this free pass you know why does it what if she was doing something else yeah what if she was selling cars yeah what if she was selling comedy and i say porn site just to be provocative but what else you know well porn site i don't know the porn site works she kind of looks like a star trek admiral she doesn't really look like a you know somebody who i'd want to see naked but let's say there's a market for that yeah i'm just saying star trek admirals hell yeah some fucking anal akbar or whatever like i'm sure there's a market for that but you know what is she out what if she was selling cars what if

she had a fucking coffee shop whatever and she's in her robes you know it seems like the the religion gets the free pass that's what gets the free pass around here is like robes you know it seems like the the religion gets the free pass that's what gets the free pass around here is like oh well you know it's a religious book so that's why people sort of look the other way oh it's i actually think that's worse well she's clearly bolstering her fucking ministry based on you know because she's gonna make a fucking lot more money as a fucking minister than she will as a judge especially now that she's like she's like been uh ostracized for her beliefs right now that's made her like a true christian or whatever you know i was gonna say that you know the the problem here is it's a no win situation for society as a whole because she's now going to be martyred you know in her own mind

not in reality you know in reality she's getting fired for being a fucking dumbass yeah but you But, you know, unfortunately, what she's going to do is talk about how, you know, she's not free to practice her religion. And, you know, the state is, you know, an atheist or secular state that's repressing her religious freedoms and blah, blah, so on and so forth. And she'll take that to the bank like so many of these people are doing. They take that idea of martyrdom and victimhood, and we've talked about this before, and I've been given this little bit of thought, and I think a big part of that narrative, and we've wondered, you know, kind of before, like,

where does that narrative come from? Because it's clearly not accurate. And I think it's often financially motivated. That martyrdom, that victimhood, um, sells books. It, it creates urgency. It builds fear in a populace. And then they say, you know, fear is the one thing that religion does a pretty good job of selling the cure for. Um, unfortunately it's, it's, it's a liar's cure. Um, and it also is the fucking fear itself. So it's sort of a self replicating cycle, but, um,

she'll, she'll turn this into money. This is a fucking, this is the pot of pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. She had a, uh, she was a judge and now judges makes make okay money, but she's going to make more money on donations,

you know, and from her books and from her bullshit than she's ever going to make as a judge. So I think she's, you know, you're right. She's winning. Let's fuck. Let's fuck!

I'll fuck anything that moves! So this story comes from richarddawkins.net. Senior Orthodox Jewish leaders face cover-up inquiry over child sex abuse. Some of Australia's most senior Orthodox Jewish leaders are under investigation for allegedly failing to report multiple instances of child abuse, child sexual abuse. So let's let's be clear.

So the only thing about this story that's terribly shocking is nothing, unfortunately. Right. Right. This is one of those stories that you hear it and it's like, oh, wait, an insulated religious group behaved in an insulated way and try to protect its membership at the expense of children. That's a story we all know. Like, we know that story super, super well. They like to keep that shit in house. You know, like that's the that's the big problem with these, especially these tinier, smaller sects of religion. They try to keep that shit in house and try to be like, well, we're going to punish these people in-house, whatever they do. And it never fucking works out

because they have respect for the people. You just have a personal relationship with the person. That's why we need people that are impartial, that don't care about what this person did beforehand, what they did after. They just care about the facts of the case. Did they fuck a child? Yes, they fucked a child. Oh my gosh, then that's bad. We need to put them away. It doesn't matter how many fucking churches they put up

or how many people they blessed or how many fucking babies they cut the tiny piece of the dick off of. They did some awful shit and they need to be punished for that. It's funny, I was looking through those six, you know, the 617 or 613 laws, the mitzvah or whatever they call them for the Jewish.

I was looking for, you know, what prevents molesting of children? Because they have fucking two fucking shellfish laws in there. You know, do you have anything in there that's like, hey, you can't fucking rape little kids. Well, I did a search for children. I didn't find anything. They did have that you can't have sex with your daughter,

but I didn't see that you couldn't have sex with your son. just can't have sex with your like your son's daughter um but i don't know i i guess maybe that's the audience they were going for guys only there i don't know there you go yeah so maybe you can have sex with your buddy's daughter yeah your buddy can have you know like a like a seven-year-old kid and i guess that's fair game i guess it yeah i don't i don't, yeah. I don't know how that works. I did want to do a little game with you, Tom. Do you want to play a game? Let's play a game. All right.

So I have four of these mitzvah, these things that are forbidden by the Jewish culture. I have four of them. One of them is fake. So I'm going to read you four sets of four. You're going to have to pick. They're one, two, three, and four. Why don't we do A, B, C, and D instead to make it less confusing.

So A, B, C, or D, you tell me which one you think it is. Let's do it. I'm going to nail this, Cecil. The first set. All right. Not to eat non-kosher maggots. Not to eat non-kosher maggots. Not to eat creatures that fly other than kosher birds.

Not to eat worms found in the fruit on the ground. Or not to eat non-kosher flying insects. Which one of those is fake? Fucking three of those are real? Three of those are real. I'm going to go with C. C I'm gonna go with the worms C Okay

Not to eat worms Found in fruit on the ground C Not to eat a limb Torn off a living creature Fuck you Not to eat blood Not to eat the sinew of the thigh

Not to eat the marrow of the bone Uh A A Okay A Not to eat the meat of the bone. Uh, A. A, okay. Not to eat the meat of an animal that died in ritual slaughter. Not to benefit from an ox condemned to be stoned. Not to eat the meat of an animal that was mortally wounded. Or not to eat certain fats of clean animals.

Shut the fuck up! What? Uh, certain fats? I animals. Shut the fuck up! What? Uh, certain fats? I don't know. None of this is real. No, no. I'll go with the... Hold on. I changed my answer. I got a phone friend. It's okay. I don't have any friends. I'll take the one about the ritual slar.

That seems like it promotes waste and that seems like a bad idea. So it's gotta be that one. Okay, so that's the fake one? Yeah, that's the fake one? Yeah, that's the fake one. Because I think they're pro-waste. Okay. Yeah. And the final one.

Not to slaughter an animal and its offspring in the same day. Not to cover the blood of a slaughtered beast or fowl with earth. To send away the mother bird before taking its children. earth to send away the mother bird before taking its children and finally to wash away blood of a slaughtered beast or fowl with wine. You have motherfucking got to be kidding me. I feel pretty proud that I actually wrote something that confused you. I'll go with C, I guess. C, okay.

It's all so fucking madness. So the first one, you chose the worms on the ground. You were fucking wrong. It's actually not to eat creatures that fly other than kosher birds. That's the one I made up. So worms on the fruit of the ground, you're not allowed to do it, Tom.

There's such a thing as a non-kosher maggot, too. There is. I'm surprised you didn't go for the maggots. All right. So no. So the next one you picked not to eat the limb off a torn creature. Sorry.

That's Deuteronomy 12, 23. The right one. The one that I made up was not to eat the marrow of the bone. So that was actually D. Cause my other one was going to be the sinew of the thigh, but then I was like, Genesis 32, 33.

So that one's fucking a real thing. That is fucking insane. Okay, you picked the right one for the third one. Not to eat the meat of an animal that died in a slaughter. I love the one that's not to benefit from the ox condemned to be stoned. Thinking, what the fuck could an ox do to be stoned to death? Remember when they wanted to stone the whale at SeaWorld? Do you remember that?

It's so ridiculous, dude. It's a fucking ox, man. Are you fucking kidding me? Plus, how long would that take? Oxes are fucking big, man. They're like strong as fuck. You'd have to have like a fucking rocket-propelled rock launcher. You know what I mean?

Like just to fucking whack the thing with. What would you use? No, you'd use one of those fucking railroad spike dispensers launcher. You know what I mean? Like just to fucking whack the thing with. What would you use? I don't even know. You'd use one of those fucking railroad spike dispensers that they put them well with in like the fucking meat processing plants. You'd have to get the uh like the Wile E. Coyote like boulder dropping shenanigans. Like an Agri fucking

Rube Goldberg device to kill the ox. Stoning an ox? I'd be fucking tired before I even hurt the ox. I'd be terrified. I would just buy some weed and get the ox. Stoning an ox? I'd be fucking tired before I even hurt the ox. I'd be terrified. I would just buy some weed and get the ox stoned. That thing would fuck you up, let me tell you. You hit an ox with one fucking stone and see what happens to you. Okay, so the final one.

Nobody ever stones lions, by the way. You ever notice that? No one's like, hey. I stone a tiger. Right. So the final one you picked to send away the mother bird before taking its children, that's Deuteronomy 22.6. Actually, the wrong one, the one that I made, was to wash away the blood of a slaughtered beast or fowl with wine. So you got one out of four right.

I am not good at this game. Yeah. I feel pretty good that I got that they were they were great i mean they're all so crazy and but you did a great job writing them in the same vein of crazy they're so nuts they're just all crazy nutty things and you know that you want to point to this list every time somebody starts pointing to fucking levitical law and all this bullshit and be like fucking you know when was the last time you know you fucking ate a non-kosher maggot, dude? Right.

You know? Well, I mean, leg of lamb. Leg of lamb is the sinew of the fucking thigh, right? Yeah. Can't do it. Yeah. What about chicken thighs? Fuck, I love chicken thighs.

It's like my fucking- I ate 40 of them last night. I consume chicken thighs constantly. Fucking, I'm eating four of them right now. I've sewn them into a coat and I'm wearing it want to buy a chicken rotisserie it's rotisserie we lord we just asked it to be covered with the blood of jesus open hearts lord open hearts so this story comes from the progressive secular humanist blog apatheos christian homeschoolers lock boy in basement for two years christian homeschoolers in georg in basement for two years. Christian homeschoolers

in Georgia have been charged with first degree cruelty to children, which strikes me. How is there a cruelty to children that's not first degree? Like, at what point are you like, I mean, it was cruel, and to a child, but it's not

really first degree cruelty. I wonder if that's just like they're too stupid to realize they're doing something so fucking abhorrent that other people would think it's wrong. Maybe. I'm baffled at the idea. Because isn't second degree inadvertent? Although this seems pretty fucking advertent. This would be clearly. But how are you inadvertently cruel to a child?

I don't know. I don't even know how that would work. Yeah. And false imprisonment. It was actual imprisonment. After keeping his 13-year-old son. It's true imprisonment. Alone and locked up in a dark basement for nearly two years as a punishment for stealing.

Jesus. He stole their DVD player. Then he lied about it. The victim had no access to books, toys, entertainment devices, or siblings. He was locked downstairs in basically a small room. It had no windows. It had a box spring, mattress, a large plastic jar, which was used for the toilet. That's nice.

For two fucking years. That's nice. I think the problem is like these radical Christians think that they own their own kids. Right. You know, it's like a fucking homeschooling gulag. You know, it's a fucking terror show. I can't believe that, you know, and they really do think that, you know, like I can do whatever I want to this kid. It's like the fucking old Bill Cosby skit where it's like I'll kill you and make another like these people really think that i know i know that's not a joke to them that's not a ha ha ha that's a real fucking thing

man cecil would you notice if my kid disappeared for two years of course i would although if you admittedly if you had 10 i might be like well, well, where's Billy? Fuck, I forgot about Billy. Fucking, I can't count all your kids. I don't know. They're all over the fucking place. He's at home slapping both of his cheeks comically. Like, whoa.

Tell me, tell me, tell me you know fucking all the Duggars' names of their kids. They don't even know all the names of their kids. They have no idea what they're on. Yeah. I can't even remember what show number we're on.

You'd be lost if you had more than two kids. So to read real quick, it says, The victim had been confined to his room for the past two years, and the lock had been added to the room on January 2013. The victim had no access to books, toys, entertainment devices, or his siblings. The Lannisters treated Ned Stark better than that. I mean, that's ridiculous. That's your own goddamn child.

Are you putting your own fucking child in a prison? What is fucking wrong with you, man? That's the worst kind of parenting. I can't believe that they don't just fucking sweep in and take all these children like you really don't know how to raise kids man we fucked up we fucked up and let you raise these kids long enough yeah well you know here's the here's the other thing that's that's crazy is like this is two years for stealing a dvd player dvd players at this point are valueless items. They're

50 bucks. Find them on the seashore. They're $50. Wash up on Lake Michigan. They're like dirty needles. They're all over the place. Right. I mean, you could get them out of fucking vending machines at this point. You open up a fucking Snickers

bar and DVD players fall out of them. I mean, it's ludicrous. Like it's not like if he had gotten caught by the police, it would have been petty theft. It would have been a misdemeanor. He would have got probation. Right. They would have put him in the beyond scared straight crap. If that, like it's such a minor offense, they would have probably just been like a 10 or 13 year old kid or whatever.

They'd have been like, really? You're stealing a fucking DVD player. Come on. We're going to call your parents. You're going to come down to the fucking Walmart. We're going to have a big fucking show in front of security. And then that's probably going to be it. You know, you didn't steal anything.

You didn't steal a car. He didn't fucking shoot a baby like two years in solitary confinement. Are you fucking kidding me you have to at that point you just have to be you're using your christian homeschooling front as an opportunity to be cruel as as as an as a front for your sadism that's all that this can be because there's no way this can rationally work in your brain and you're treating one of your kids as an example to the rest of them right to scare it's like i mean that's like fucking that's like pulling a jew out of the lineup and shooting them in the face so the rest of them listen yep yeah man that's ridiculous yeah and i totally godwin this shit so fuck off and you know the only other thing i want to say is like this is why i object in general to

homeschooling well this and a couple other reasons other reasons, but you know, if my kid stops, if my kid just disappears one day from going to school, he's in the system, so to speak, he's in a system, whether it's a public school or a private school, it doesn't matter. You enroll your kids in, into society. When you enrolled them into school, They start to exist. People start keeping track. Right. There's accountability outside of your family. Very true.

When your family is this crazy and this insulated, nobody knows you exist. Nobody knows about you. Your neighbors, you're not allowed to go outside and play. The neighbors aren't looking. The school's not calling. Nobody fucking knows. And you can hang out in this fucking cage in a basement for two fucking years as a goddamn tweenager and nobody's knocking on your door. I guarantee if my son missed three days of school and there was no call, no show, nothing,

I didn't disenroll them. I didn't, you know, have a plausible explanation. The school would be fucking knocking on my door. They would be calling DCFS because my kid is part of society now. Right, right. Well, that's Tom. I think that's just because you're pro big government, though. That's true.

I'm pro the biggest government. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. So this story comes from the biggest government. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. So this story comes from the Raw story. Representative Paul Breen. Breen?

Right to have guns everywhere. This guy actually has a gun strapped to his face during this interview. So the right to have guns was given by our Lord. He was. Yes, before the gun. Yeah. He said

have a gun. Put it everywhere. None of you have ever heard of this term but I'm going to use it anyway. Don't worry, it'll make sense in 2,000 years. You know what, man? If that had happened. Fucking A, man. I'd be like, wow, you fucking predicted a one thing. One

fucking thing. It's a pretty, I mean, it's a pretty big deal predicted a one thing. One fucking thing. It's a pretty, I mean, it's a pretty big deal. I think that would be pretty good. That would be awesome. If it was like a real prediction though, like, you know, like, and thou wouldst say to them, the AR-15 is totally fine or something like that. It's like, that is not an assault weapon. Then, okay. I'm like, all right, fine.

Okay. I'm good with that. Yeah. There's nothing in there about it. There's a fucking iron charots is as far as they go i want to play a clip of this guy there's a it's about three minutes long so we're going to split it up a little bit but this guy uh he called into uh a show uh this story is courtesy of the raw story and they the person is calling into uh to news mac news max's america's forum which was

broadcast on j July 1st. So I want to play a little bit of what this guy has to say. And the clearer voice is the commentators, and then the person who this representative, Paul Brunn, is the guy on the phone. Well, Congressman, I wanted to get your take on some of the reactions that are starting to pour in now from different school superintendents. They are saying, at least in some of the coverage that I've read, that they are not going to have these guns in their school districts and they're advising against that. Of

course, that's their choice. But are you hearing about any school districts, public school districts in the state of Georgia or other institutions that are advocating for this type of carry carrying on their campuses? Well, most of being very quiet about it. We've seen these school shootings all across the country and and we've seen where there has been a shooting with someone there that has the ability to protect themselves, actually prevent kids from being shot, prevent people from being hurt. And there is, of course, folks who don't understand firearms are just, are fearful of them, but actually firearms have been proven to reduce crime. What are you talking about?

I love that. Like the one thing, you know, you're talking about like firearm deaths and you're like, oh, but they're proven to reduce firearm. No, they create firearm deaths.

Yeah. I don't like that. So that's such a fucking bass backwards way of looking at that shit. It's like, Hey, you know. Yeah, I don't like that. So that's such a fucking bass-ackwards way of looking at that shit. It's like, hey, you know, if people if you want to get people to stop shooting each other, what you should do is give more put more guns and inject more guns into the system. And that way more people just hadn't if we had no guns in the system, nobody would be like, it works. Like, look at Japan. Like, how many fucking shooting deaths are there in Japan or in England or, you know, in all of the many other countries that don't allow for citizens to just wander aimlessly about pointing guns in every direction? We've gotten a, just a tremendous social experiment that was done several decades ago when Morton Grove, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago,

decided to outlaw firearms in that city, the crime rate skyrocketed. Well, in response to Morton Grove, a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia, Kennesaw, an ornate farms, but you can opt out if you've got an objection to doing so. And farm has been that way ever since. Okay, I've got to stop, because clearly what he's saying is that there's another place in Georgia that basically made firearms required. You could opt out is what he's saying, but I know that's what he's talking about, because I've heard of that city or whatever, like one place where like you have to have a gun you can opt out if you want but you're everybody's like supposed to have a gun essentially in their in their city you know

the the morton grove thing doesn't that seem like correlation you know without causation or whatever it feels like you know you could just be like well the crime rate skyrocketed well what were the factors that contributed to it like do we know only that the only thing that changed in Morton Grove during that time is that they didn't allow guns? You know, is there is there anything else? Was there, you know, maybe an economic downturn? Was there, you know, an influx? Was there a closing of maybe one of the projects downtown and people got, you know, shipped out from there? Was there you know, that was what was another factor that could look at that stuff? We No, we can't look at that stuff. Because if you look at that stuff, it spoils the narrative of more guns equals less crime. Yeah, totally.

How can you – it's clear, Cecil, that what they did is they took the city of Morton Grove and they put it in a vacuum sealer, you know, like they have for keeping food fresh. Right, yeah. Yeah, a food saver bag. It's a huge bag, though. Yeah, and then they pulled all the guns out of it. Right. And then they resealed it, because, you know, when they pulled the guns out, it broke the seal. And then they resealed it again, nice and tight, and then they

let it percolate for a little while. And then there was more crime. Mostly it was just people trying to get out of the vacuum bag, though. Yeah. It's like a crime terrarium. Yeah, it's a crime terrarium. Okay, so there's more. In both communities, firearms do prevent crimes. These cowardly people that go into schools and shoot kids go to places that they know there's no one that can defend themselves.

That's what they do. And once we see as we go forward that schools are going to be safer, everybody around in any locale is going to be safer because someone who understands how to utilize a firearm will be there to protect other folks. And I think it's going to be a very positive move. It's going to be a positive move. Totally positive. What do you think about that statement, Tom?

That, you know, like, if they have guns in these locations, these locations that they, you know, they disallow them now, that they're going to stop, somehow stop gun deaths in those places. You know, the first thing that occurs to me with regard to the school shooting thing, like, you put guns in the hands of all these, because obviously you're not going to put guns in the hands of the kids, right? I don't even think he's advocating that. Although, I don't know. I wouldn't go. I certainly wouldn't discount that.

But even if he's just advocating arming the administration and the staff, like, who's to say the administration or the staff doesn't fucking snap and start shooting kids? And like, is crossfire, you know, as a gun, is a Wild West gun battle in the middle of a fucking elementary school something we want to promote? Or do we want to have

like, are we, because what are you doing? Like, you're promoting vigilantism. Yeah, it's a vengeance hard-on. Right. Is what you're doing. You're saying like, let's not leave. Let's not leave dealing with crime to professionals who are trained on how to do this in a way that reduces collateral damage. Let's make sure to handle our, you know, violence problems just on a fucking fractional individual by individual basis. Yeah. fractional individual by individual basis. Yeah.

Where people can just start fucking blazing away at each other over you know, I saw him pull a gun. No, you didn't. I started I mean, it's like this is you don't solve gun crime by injecting more guns and hoping for less crime. Yeah, there's another

part of this that he's going to get into that. Hold on a second. This is another minute left. And his gun rights advocates guys are so quick to point out, these school shootings happen in gun-free zones. That's what schools are. And they have yet to dull the impact of these school shootings, even though they have already been declared gun-free zones. Well, absolutely. In fact, those shooting in Aurora, Colorado, occurred at a movie that is a theater that advertised that they were a gun-free theater. And the crazy person passed several other movie theaters and went to one where he knew that he had just the village to go about his dastardly deed. Dastardly deed?

Yeah, before he did it, Tom, he tweaked his mustache. What, a snidely whiplash? He was, yeah. He's got a little dog that goes, There's a little more. A heinous deed with no one there to be able to stop him. No one there to be able to stop him. And so these gun-free areas are actually, they're free shooting zones for people because they know that there won't be anybody there that can stop them. But that's bullshit, though.

I mean, you were saying earlier that a lot of these people do this so that they can actually die at the end of it. Yeah, you know, like if you look at like mass murderers, by and large, not exclusively, but by and large, these things end in suicide, either by cop or just suicide. Almost all of these things end in suicide. Very few of these folks are ever arrested. You know, I can in fact, I can only think of two off the top of my head. The Colorado guy. The Colorado guy. The Colorado guy.

The Colorado guy. And then that berserk dude in, I think it was Norway, who shot up that island full of kids a few years back. He was arrested. Yeah, he was arrested too. Yeah. But most mass murderers, see, the thing is, like, I was thinking about this the other day. Like, you choose mass murder as your method, not because you want to kill a lot of people, right? If you just want to kill a lot of people and not get caught, it would make much more sense to choose serial murder because you

can choose the time, the location, you can do it and hide the body. You can probably get away with more, with creating more death. Like if they, if they're really the goal in your, in your mind is to create more death, um, serial murder is much more likely to give you a longer time frame to commit your crimes and stay free. Mass murder is in part about spectacle. It's in part about creating a great show and making a bold statement and ending your life on that statement. And that's why so many of these things, I think, end in suicide. I don't, may or may not be accurate, but that's my personal feeling. It's certainly the case that many, many of these things do end in suicide. Yeah. The Fort Hood one is

another one. That guy, that Hassan guy, he, he's, he's still alive. Yeah. So like I said, it's not exclusive. There are a few, you know, for sure. But you know, you hear about these things and most of them end in suicide. Like they end they end in sure they end with the death of the of the of the person because it's not about making sure that nobody takes you out or creating a safe environment for you to plug away at people it's about creating spectacle creating show creating horror that's what that's what mass murder is like that's why it's a different action than serial murder i also think too this misses the fucking point about gun violence completely only what it focuses on is uh white mass murder gun violence i mean really let's be honest here

what this is this is caucasian gun violence this is when you know somebody breaks into a place that is mainly you know that is a wide range of people there or you know mostly caucasians shoots a bunch of them and then it gets all over the news dropping you know having more armed people on the west side of chicago where most of the fucking gun violence happens in this city is not going to help crime it's not going to slow crime down it's not going to slow shootings down right because the problem isn't that the populace there is not armed it's just the opposite the problem is that everybody's fucking armed and when an argument happens amongst people um it's solved with violence and it's not even solved with fisticuffs you know it's solved yeah i'll shoot you you shoot

me we retaliate it goes back and forth in an endless cycle. Or it could be started with fisticuffs and ended with. You know what I mean? That happens all the time. It's like, well, you know, it goes from fisticuffs to bats, then bats to fucking knives, and then knives to fucking guns. You know what I mean? One time this guy got stabbed, well, I'm going to kill that guy.

This is all in the fucking narrative that these people want to have with the justice, right? These people are playing this out every day on the west side of Chicago. That fucking vengeance, vigilante justice. They came by and shot our block up last night. Well, we've got to go shoot their block up. That shit doesn't solve anything.

That doesn't fucking fix the problem of gun violence. It creates more gun violence. I mean, it is exactly the antithesis of what you're trying to do. And these people that are, you know, perfectly safe in their homes, never have any kind of danger in their lives. All they want to do is think about how awesome it would be to be fucking Charles Bronson. That's fucking exactly right. And, you know, these are not trained shooters. And you look at how many thousands of horror stories have you heard over the years of this person or that person getting shot, you know, inadvertently.

The bullet goes through a window. The bullet penetrates a wall. You know, it shoots a bystander. It knocks a kid off their bicycle. Like, you know, these are not like this is not again, this is not trained shooters working to reduce or eliminate collateral damage when trying to put down a threat. These are people just blazing away at each other across the street or from cars or from, you know, however the violence plays out. How often is the person who's actually the target of that violence, the actual target of that violence, gets shot? Lots of times those people, they just like duck, dive, and cover.

And the other people that are just fucking sitting there watching goddamn Wipeout on television get shot in the face. Right. So we want to thank our patrons. We had a couple of new patrons this month. We want to thank all our patrons. First off,

thank you for donating your money. You're generous and we really appreciate it. But we got some brand new patrons that we want to mention. We want to mention Sonia, George, Petri, Mr. Bullhammer, George again, a different George. This is George R., Craig, Michael, and Kevin. Thank you all so much.

We're so happy that you've donated to the show. We're just so flattered that people would give their money to our production. So thank you very much. And I also want to point out, I posted on our Facebook page our donation. I got a thing back from Doctors Without Borders after our last donation. We'll be doing one more donation this year. So the money that you guys put forward to help our show, we do try to turn that into some good work on occasion, as well as Hot W Um, and you can see evidence of that posted on our Facebook page. So we want to thank you for being able to help people. Um, without you guys,

we never would be able to make donations of that size and that frequency. So you guys have really done a lot of work to help a lot of people across the world. Thank you. We got a comment. Uh, somebody said, uh, you guys were hating on those cake bigots. And the person said, I side with hating them. I support gay marriage all day long. However, is it their right to refuse business just like any pay for hire? I mean, what if some Klan member wanted an offensive cake? I'm going to the extreme example, but still. Though the cake bigots probably ruined their own business by being idiots about this,

at the end of the day, it's their business to ruin. Yeah, we talked about this in the past. I actually think that, you know, I think it's difficult, one, to put that sort of motivation on people. It's difficult unless they come right out and say, I'm not going to make a homosexual cake. I mean, I personally think that the person who finds out it's going to be a homosexual cake, my guess would be that they would say, oh, crap, I can't make it this week because I'm out of town or something. You know what I mean? Like I would imagine that they wouldn't just come right out and say, I hate gay people.

But, I mean, I don't know. But more to your question, if somebody wanted an offensive cake, say a Klan member, that's not something you can control, right? So being gay or being black or being Jewish is something that you're born with. It's just something you just happen to be born with. So it's not anything you can control. So it's okay for the government to make a law about something like that that says they can't control this, so we will make sure that they can't be discriminated against for it. Now, you can be discriminated against for something that you can control, like being a racist douchebag.

Like, you can totally control that, so I can discriminate against you for being a racist asshole. We got an email from Carolyn, and I just want to read a short portion of this. She says, I've been meaning to email you guys for a long time, much like Tom of fucking lazy. No kidding. She said, I laughed so hard hearing you guys would science the shit out of the large Hadron Collider.

My husband sometimes works at facilities like the large Hadron Collider. I love that shit. Can he invite us over so we can science the fuck out of some science? Oh, man, do I want to science that thing? I would science it so hard and fast. To be honest, I would love to just see what the fuck happens there. You know, because I kind of understand it in a very vague fucking I'm a real dummy

when it comes to physics sense, but I would love to see like what the fuck happens in a place like that. Wouldn't that be awesome? It's probably super anticlimactic, I imagine. It's like the fucking warning signs go off, there's a second, and then they go, oh, let's look at the data. Yeah, I'm sure that that's exactly what it is,

but I still want to like, I still want to see the fucking thing. I do too. I want to climb through the fucking tunnel. I want to race one of those particles around there. Yeah, wouldn't that like particle go-kart racing? Yeah. Tom, we got a message about vaccinations. We did.

And let me, it was a longer message, so I'm going to excerpt a little bit. He says that they have some concerns. Let's say you get a flu vaccine and you do not get the flu. Is it the case that the vaccine worked and you did not get the flu despite being exposed to the flu virus naturally or that the vaccine did not work and you did not get the flu because you were not exposed to the flu virus naturally? Also, if you did get the flu, and by that I mean flu-like symptoms, was it because you had a reaction to the vaccine and had adverse effects, or the vaccination did not work and you got the flu anyway because you were exposed to the flu virus naturally? Then they go on and say that—

Well, let's talk about that real quick. Okay, sure. So the thing that I think is these aren't just like – these aren't guesses. These are things that they've gone through and tested. So they've tested this flu vaccine against the flu virus. It's not willy-nilly. I think that if you were to become a scientist and have access to these things that they have access to, you would be able to conclude the same conclusion from your experiments that they have concluded. I understand that I'm putting some level of trust into doctors, but I don't see any profit method

in that. I don't see, yeah, could they give us all flu viruses or flu vaccines that don't do anything, but yet we have to pay for? Maybe they could. But the fact is, is that every time I've gotten the flu vaccine, I've never gotten the flu. And I've gotten the flu several times in my life. So, you know, every time I've gotten the vaccine, I've never actually gotten the flu. If there was huge flu epidemics, and that's the other thing that you can point to is like the lack of epidemics when people are having this virus. If there's a lull in epidemics, then you could say, well, the flu vaccine is doing its work against that virus. I also think that the flu is a particularly bad example to use when discussing vaccines in general. And that's

because the flu is not one thing. Right. Yes, absolutely. The flu is a variable disease that has many, many strains that change very quickly. The flu vaccine is developed based on basically the best information available at the time. But the flu strain that may be going out, going around in your area may not be the same strain of the flu that you're vaccinated against. When we talk about vaccines, I think it's a much more, do I think there's value to the flu vaccine? Sure. I get the flu vaccine because I have asthma and I cannot afford to get the flu because I can't afford to get an upper respiratory infection. It knocks me out for like six months. It's fucking awful. Is the flu vaccine recommended for everybody in all cases? It's not actually recommended for everybody in all cases.

And when you look at vaccines in general, I think it's a much more rational approach to look at things like measles, mumps, rubella, polio, smallpox. You know, these are specific, you know, diseases that have less variation and less strain variation and less evolution. So you can get data that is a little more concrete on the effectiveness of vaccines in general. The flu vaccine is kind of a bad example to take when evaluating vaccines as a whole, as a concept. Later in the email, he says, I find it so strange that I have to measure out a Tylenol dosage for my son by his weight. However, doctors give the same vaccination dose to babies regardless of any factors, e.g. weight, allergen analysis,

vaccine ingredients, general health, etc. Why does vaccination get a pass here? So there's a couple of things I want to talk about. The first is the Tylenol dosage. And I know this is maybe a little bit of just an example for your sentence here. But part of that is that Tylenol is actually deadly, very, very deadly if it's given in doses higher than what's recommended. Tylenol is... Isn't it like liver failure or something like that? Yeah, I don't know. I remember if it's liver or kidney, but acetaminophen is actually quite significantly toxic. And there are a tremendous number of Tylenol overdose deaths. In fact, there was a really interesting story on This American Life, which I would encourage you to listen to regarding

Tylenol and Tylenol overdose in children. So it only makes sense that something like Tylenol be treated like the controlled medication that it is because it's wonderful in small doses and in doses over its recommended amount, it becomes quite toxic and can kill you. So I know that's not the point, but, you know, when we throw out things like, well, what about Tylenol? Like it's an over-the-counter medication that, you know, that doesn't mean that it's not perfectly safe. Right. So to go through these examples, regardless of any factors such as weight, my son is under weight.

He's a preemie. He is not eligible to begin the vaccine schedule until he reaches a certain threshold. He's reached that threshold, thankfully, and we'll be able to get him into the vaccine schedule until he reaches a certain threshold. He's reached that threshold, thankfully, and we'll be able to get him into the vaccine schedule. But they do consider weight to be a factor when promoting or discussing vaccines. We had a conversation about this just two weeks ago at my pediatrician's office. So weight is considered. If you're within the normal parameters, then the vaccine is perfectly fine. But weight is a factor. Allergen analysis, I know for sure that if you are allergic to certain things, for example, I was allergic to

eggs when I was a kid. I could not get the MMR vaccine because it was created with egg culture. So allergies are taken into consideration. Yeah. General health too is taken into consideration. And that's one of the main reasons why herd immunity is absolutely important is because some people, because of their general health, cannot be administered vaccines. They just can't get them. And those are the people who are susceptible, not only because they're in poor general health normally, but they also can't get the vaccine. So they're doubly susceptible to those viruses that go around. Yeah. So you say, why does

vaccination get a pass? It does not get a pass. It doesn't. Vaccines are incredibly well studied. These are not unknowns. Like Cecil said, these are incredibly well studied. And there was a massive study. I'd encourage you to look it up. You can just Google massive study regarding vaccines. And it's like one of the first things that pops up. An absolutely enormous study that was just made the papers, you know, what, a few weeks ago, Cecil? Yeah, it was a couple weeks ago. I forget exactly what it was. I think it was at least 100,000. It might have been more. Yeah, it was just an absolutely enormous study discussing. It was a meta study, actually. It was a... Yeah, it was a breakdown of other study. Like they took many studies, put them together, and then analyzed the details. And,

you know, vaccines have very rare, very few adverse side effects. In fact, zero deaths were reported. The side effects were nothing of the scaremongering sort. So it wasn't, you know, they didn't cause food allergies. They didn't cause autism. They didn't cause cancer. They caused things like seizures and high fevers. But in cases that are absolutely tiny, you know, one out of 500,000, one in a million, your chances of getting struck by lightning are nearly as high. So by any reasonable standard, vaccines are incredibly well studied and very, very safe. Yeah. And I stand corrected. It's 1.256 million was the children. And it's five case studies. So that's a lot. Yeah. Look it up. You can Google it. It's an interesting read. I

think it will give you a lot of information that Cecil and I can't give because we're just not that well informed. So Terry from the Amateur Skeptics podcast sent a message in, and she's a bike rider. She's actually doing a metric century, which I think is 100 kilometers, although I'm not in a metric country, so I have no fucking idea. It's far. I'll say that. It's really far. idea. It's far. I'll say that. It's really far. Yeah, it's far. But riding a metric century in the Colorado Tour de Cure to raise money for American Diabetes Association.

It's her first event ever. She wants to raise – their team is trying to raise $10,000. She's just trying to raise $10,000. She's just trying to raise $200 of that. So Terry, we hope people will visit our website episode 162 at dissonancepod.com and they will donate to your cause to help

donate to the American Diabetes Association. So Terry, good luck on your metric century and we hope you finish. That sounds awesome. That sounds great.

It sounds like your ass is going to be sore, though. Yeah, it does. But, hey, have a great time, and it's a good cause. So check that out. Tom, we haven't done this in a while. I would like you to read the Google Voice from this last July 1st. Hey, Oreoole guys. That was here forever.

Skeptical Con70 over here. Hey, I'm in West Michigan Everglades. Podcast for you talked about following. Who's the file? And there's more and less of it and what you know about. The best Empire Room was a big deal because I certainly did. The best Empire Room. After it looks like, you know, Haitians were true.

Any allegation that much, much worse recommend them on the web checking it out. Bye. Sex with an 11-year-old boy that he paid for through a camp. I love that that came through. I love that that came through. And he confessed to having a storage locker, worrying his quote-unquote bondage kit that includes handcuffs and ropes, and he also had a file full of obituaries for S.H.I.E.L.D.

No, this guy's a major up. And they did let him go, you know hey i give me a deeper and worst worry wash this one floral looking at but i love that the empire room was great floral looking at that's great we got a message about the picnic which we're still going through with we're going to find a site for it soon and when we do find a site and we get the permit, we're going to put an event together on Eventbrite so people can RSVP. You won't be able to show up. We're not even going to tell you where it is unless you RSVP to the event, because we need to have a really accurate number because of

how they run permits out here. If you go over, you can get fined and things like that. So we need to have a very accurate number. So we're looking for people to RSVP to the event. We'll let you know when that's up. But Alexi sent us a message. We got a bunch of messages about the picnic that we're planning. This one, Alexi says that he's visiting Chicago this summer for a weekend. It'd be great if he knew where it was, he could maybe show up.

Chances are, he asks, is it going to be accessible via public transportation? Chances are, no. Most of the real nice wooded areas around Chicago are in the suburbs of Chicago. And those are really just, that's a car. That's a renting of a car if you don't have a car or getting a ride. Those are really your only options. Public transportation outside of the city of Chicago, hell, inside the city of Chicago kind of sucks. So getting outside of the city of Chicago isn't great either. He says, is it going to be a family-friendly event? Chances are with a tagline

like glory hole, no, it's not going to be a family-friendly event. At least I wouldn't bring an impressionable young child there because I can't expect people to watch their language for being fans of an explicit podcast. Yeah, we have no way to control the behavior of others. We hope that they would behave in a somewhat responsible way, but in terms of watching their language, I would be shocked if that were the case. You ask if I'm going to bring my kids.

I'm not bringing my seven-year-old, but I might bring the baby because babies are dumb and they don't understand shit. Baby can't tell. Right. Yeah. But beyond that, no, I would not count on this being a family-friendly event. We got a message from Richard and we want to thank Richard and we want to thank another person who sent in a message about the Swedish genital mutilation story that we posted this week. Two corrections. The first one was, we're going to talk about Richards. Richards said that basically, he sent us an article

that kind of blows up that story we were talking about that was the 800 dead babies found under a boiler room in an Irish Catholic orphanage. According to this article, they didn't find anything.

And so we were wrong on that. Maybe they're Al Capone's babies. They're in a safe somewhere. Hopefully Geraldo Rivera is standing outside with his microphone waiting for them to unearth the corpses. But yeah, he was right. You know, this is something that, you know, we absolutely love to get corrected on this stuff because we don't know. We're only following the news stories that we have and we do as much sort of research as we can up front. But we don't we certainly don't research these things into the ground.

This still doesn't let that orphanage off the hook, though, Tom. It doesn't. So the orphanage still sounds like it's a fucking horror show. They are cramming people in the into the orphanage still sounds like it's a fucking horror show. They were cramming people into the orphanage. So there were many reports of the orphanage, 800 dead bodies, not true or not confirmed, whatever. Sounds like it was kind of a fiction in order to generate headlines. Right. But the mortality rate, the infant mortality rate, the images of the starved and neglected children, the vast overcrowding.

And then, frankly, the very idea that there should be a home where women are treated as indentured servants because they're fallen women with children out of wedlock is so patently inhumaneane and abhorrent um as to render it inexcusable now again that doesn't make the story accurate so i'm not i'm not trying to hedge or i'm not trying to like defend you know my our position the position we had no we were in error absolutely following that story um i still think that fucking orphanage was a horror show, but it's maybe not an Auschwitz horror show. Yeah, right. Exactly. And we also got a message. Now, this is from John on Facebook and then someone else. I forget the name on Twitter and I didn't look it up, but someone else tweeted us, tweeted at us and said, hey, look, that story that you guys posted on the female genital mutilation that is exposed in a Swedish class is actually wrong. Here's an article that follows up on it. It's in Swedish.

And so in this article, basically what they're saying is that these girls were not in the same class. They had been put together in a group to talk about human rights and circumcision. There's no suspicion that the girls should be circumcised in Sweden. Sweden. Sweden. I'm going to Sweden. Sweden sounds like very clean. I like that.

Squeaky, squeaky. It's very clean. The girls were relatively recent arrivals from country like Somalia, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. Is that how you pronounce that country? I think so, yes. Yeah. And that's relatively common with circumcision in those places. So they were actually put together in one class. So when we tweeted this out, it was published in all these other places. And in many places, it wasn't just one place that Tom found this story. In many places, they were talking about how this whole class basically had their genitals

mutilated. Well, they put them together specifically because of that, right? And to talk about human rights. So that was sort of missed by the rest of the public. So we want to thank you. We actually didn't talk about that story this week because, specifically because it was not,

you know, it really, there's not a story anymore. That's people who are trying to combat something awful and that's great. But, you know, there's not a lot of jokes to be had when people are doing, when they're doing the right thing, it's hard to make fun of it. So we appreciate, I want to just stop and say that we appreciate the people who correct us. You know, I don't want to, I don't, I don't want to come off that we ever don't appreciate that.

If there's, you know, our desire is to be ridiculous, but also reasonably accurate. So thank you very much for the corrections. Sometimes the pedantic stuff about like, you know, it doesn't matter. It's just for a joke. That's a little different than what we're getting at here. These are two major portions of the stories that were debunked. So you got to acknowledge that stuff all day. If it's like, like you know whether or not

somebody came to america in a in a country in a certain time and somebody's being pedantic about that shit i don't give a fuck you know what i mean like that's right i'm trying to make a joke stop fucking being pedantic is the thrust of the story true or not yeah exactly so that wraps it up this week uh we are uh gonna leave you as always with the skeptics 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 dead pan 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, doublespeak, 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. you