Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 183: Decapitation Gene

Episode Date: October 13, 2014

 

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Hey guys, heterosexual sodomite here. I have not engaged in anal sex with a man, but I have engaged in anal sex with a woman, and I can tell you there is life in the rectum. I recently had to do a course of antibiotics for a bit of a urinary tract infection due to some anal sex with a woman.

So, yes, there is life in the rectum. Hey, guys. This is Foster calling back from Pennsylvania. We recently had a pretty serious health scare with my mother. Bad enough that I had to call 911 for the first time in my life. And while she was at home and back to normal now, they actually had to give her last rites

and they called the whole family to the hospital. You know, that whole deal. Anyway, during the crisis, I was standing outside a room talking with her priest and trying as hard as possible to remain civil. Well, he told me that I should be praying for her, and lighting prayer candles for her, and attending mass in her honor. Right in the middle of this textbook Catholic guilt trip, my phone rings, and the sweet

sounds of a long black clock come drifting from my pocket. He got this weird, horrified look. I'm assuming because it was partially muffled. He asked me if it was the Islamic call to prayer. I'm assuming because it was partially muffled. He asked me if it was the Islamic call to prayer. I'm not sure if it was the overall stress of the situation or just annoyance at the guilt trip. But my answer was,

oh, that's a priest in Africa began at children's mass. Thanks, guys. It was still a really shitty day, but it was a great stress reliever. And the priest never seemed to visit when I was there after that I wonder why

boy hole hey man this is Mutt and you asked a call about being a religious listener and I'm a devoted religious listener man I listen to your show all the damn time so yeah that's what I wanted to say

and uh thanks for the show, man. I got to go. I got to take your prayer, baby, man. Talk to you later. Hey, guys, it's Rusty here from Skeptically Challenged Podcast. You know, I had some Skype credit lying around and I thought I'd waste a bit of it on you guys.

I was listening to the show a few weeks ago and something you said got me thinking. I mean, when you think about the kind of podcasts in the atheist and skeptical world, there are probably two types, the insightful and intelligent kind, and the kind that's probably going to give you Magic the Gathering and Dynasty Warriors references. And I think we all know which kind yours is, although I wouldn't have it any other way. You know, Dynasty Warriors is up to the eighth version now. Anyway, love the show, guys. Keep up the good work. Bye.

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 irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat.

This is episode 183 of Cognitive Dissonance. And Cecil, I will have you know that this is a landmark episode. I don't know if you noticed, but we ticked over the 3 million download mark. Did we really? I didn't even notice. We did. We ticked over. We just ticked over it.

It was 3 million all-time downloads. Oh, wow. Man. So, you know, you can tell your wife that she can stop clicking now. I have been so busy downloading this show. I have no idea, Tom. God.

3 million all-time downloads. I just, I mean, it's fucking totally arbitrary, but I think it's fucking cool. And hold on, no, I gotta do, let me just do a little, I think that means we have seven listeners. That could be. It's up to.

I mean, that's just a sort of a back of a napkin sort of calculation. But I think it's either between seven and ten. Well, interestingly, we're going to get at least two million emails from people who tell us that they're done listening to the show now. This is why. Yeah, that's right. Right. So this is the episode 183. Three fucking million downloads.

We've hit some really fun landmarks this year. You know, we've got our 1,000th review recently. We got the three millions. We had our listener appreciation picnic. You know, as this year is winding to a close, I can't help but honestly feel like this has been an awesome year for the show. One of us has to die in like a Cessna crash then. I call Cessna

crash. Yes. Yes! I want to die like a rock star if I can't live like one. Absolutely. You know. I want to wear my sunglasses when I go down too. I'll fucking be playing like rock band on the fucking Nintendo if the thing goes down. You're, like, beating on those little, like, pads that are just, like, simulators for drums.

Like, the pilot comes on. He's like, bad news. We're going down. I fucking grab one of those shitty Guitar Hero, you know, things. And I'm like, as we start. I wonder, you know, when you have the whole band. Let's say you have the whole band, right? And it's Saturday night and you have your whole group of friends playing rock band with you on Saturday night and you're watching TV and you're doing your whole thing.

I wonder if you catch yourself and go, we really could just be at a live music festival right now. What are we doing? Hey guys, we're not actually a rock band. You guys, God damn it. Wild stallions rule. Allah, Akbar, Akbar, Allah, Akbar, Allahu, Akbar. Just a little Allah. Thank you, Chicago. at bar just little thank you Chicago so this story comes from NBCNews.com

gay in Indonesia's ASE brace for 100 lashes in front of a crowd what I want to talk about here this is a story about the Orthodox corner of India. It's Ase. It's a province or a region. And gay sex is now punishable by 100 lashes on a public stage with the express purpose to not only punish the offender, I don't even like using that word here,

but to humiliate the offender because they encourage crowds to jeer and gawk and count as this person is being tortured on stage. about this is that Indonesia is very frequently cited as, you know, a secular or a Muslim country, which is not rife with all of the other sorts of abuses and violence that we've talked about so many times on this show. And so people who are apologists for Islam will often say, and they'll often point to Indonesia, Cecil, as their example. Yeah. And, and, you know, one of the things that they always say, and this is, this was coming up this week, Ben Affleck on, on the Bill Marshall, and then Sam Harris was there as well. And they were arguing back and forth. And I don't know, did you, did you watch that? I did. Yeah, I did. And I got into several conversations about it.

I watched a little bit of it and I just got little bit of it. And when people start screaming over each other, I just give up. I just stop. I can't process what everyone is saying, so I'm not interested in the yelling at people. It just doesn't do anything for me. So I turned it off. I never watched it. So I may repeat a point that someone brought up, but clearly there was another

one, another one that came out and this was another gentleman, a Muslim scholar, a scholar of, he was not just a Muslim scholar, but he's like a religious scholar, uh, who was talking to some people on CNN and they were referencing the Bill Maher thing. And so these, these clips have been sort of flying all over the Facebook. Everybody's talking about it. And really what it breaks down to, I think, is there's going to be people who just apologize. They're just like completely apologize 100% for anything that another culture will do. Right.

So there's one camp of people that are just going to do that regardless. So there's nothing you can say to those people. Those people, I think, are lost people. You're not going to have a conversation with someone who thinks that anybody in another culture has the right to do whatever the hell they want because they're in another culture. That's not a person I think I can reason with anyway, right?

That's like arguing somebody out of the arc. Like, I can't do that. I don't think that that's possible. So I just wouldn't even try. But then there's a group of people who I think have the exact same thoughts I do. They just don't take it one more final step. And these are the people who say, they make this comment like, look, it's just the fundamentalists

who are ruining it for everybody. It's just the fundamentalists who are the bad ones. The fundamentalists are the ones that make everybody look at them. And then we look at the fundamentalists and then we paint with a broad brush over the rest of the people. And what they don't understand is that the fundamentalists are the most adherent to the religion. They are the ones that are, they are the epitome of that religion. They are following that religion more than any of the other people that are more lax. And what they don't take the final step to do, which I am willing to do, is to say that religion is the problem.

The religion of those people is the problem because they are the ones who are adhering to it more than anyone else. And they are a problem. And if you take that away, what do you get? You get a person who's much softer, who's much more understanding of other people. Like think about moderates. When you talk about moderate people, what are they, what are they less of? They're less religious. Well, can't we just all fucking agree that the religion is the thing that does the wrong? Yeah. I, I, I don't know why we have this reluctance. Like I guess I do. And I say that I do. I say that I'm being sort of facetious, right, because I do understand why we have a reluctance. We have a reluctance because we have this idea that in order to be good, in order to behave amongst each other, to be civilized, to not be assholes, we should be loving and accepting of all people. And I, you know, I got to say, like, I tend to agree, like, as long as people are loving in return.

But there's nothing loving about torturing people on stage for imaginary crimes, right? Like, you know, gay sex is an imagined crime. It's not, there's nothing criminal about gay sex. It's silly. That's a ridiculous idea. And I think like Hitchens actually says it, I was listening to a debate the other day and somebody said, you know, you're judging, you know, you're judging all of religion. They were talking about Christianity, but it doesn't matter. It's analogous.

You're judging all of them by their fundamentalists. He says, I don't have to. I can judge them by their holy texts. I can judge them by their authorities. And you can do the same thing here. This is what we do when we talk about Islam on the show. And I think it's important also to be very, very clear that a criticism of Islam, and this is something that was totally not understood by Ben Affleck when he was bemoaning and calling it racist and

gross to criticize Islam is that a criticism of Islam is not a criticism of every Muslim. That's a ridiculous idea. Islam is a set of codified ideas that form a belief system. Muslims are people. You can be very critical of something a Muslim does. That's critical of an action. Actions are subject to criticism. You can be critical of an idea that a Muslim holds, such as Islam. That's perfectly reasonable. And you can do both of those things without painting a brush across everybody who happens to be Muslim, right? That's a very reasonable position to take. You can attack somebody's ideas without necessarily attacking the person.

And if they're incapable of separating the attack of an idea from attack of the person, that's their failure of intellect and imagination, not mine. intellect, and imagination, not mine. And so I, you know, I just wholeheartedly disagree with that precept that we can't take a look at something like this, take a look at something like what's happening in Indonesia, which is, as I mentioned, held up ostensibly as a Muslim country where, you know, they're supposed to have this, you know, much better human rights record. They're like the outlier. They're the thing that proves that a Muslim country need not descend into violence and chaos. And then you look at something like this and, oh, the lashings are administered under Sharia law. Oh, right.

Wow. Amazing. Torture in front of a group of people for imagined crimes administered under a religious law. And let it also be said, too, that when we say that this is Sharia law, that's because that's what they say it is. This is not an imperialist Western interpretation of where this law's genesis came from. This is their word. This is their word. This is their culture's, you know, motivation through their own mouths. Like, where does this come from?

Comes from fucking Sharia law. Okay, well, you fucking said it, not me. It's the injection of religion into this culture that is making it commit moral wrongs. It is the injection of, I mean, I'm looking at this and there's a guy in this picture getting ready to be caned. And there's fucking idiots out in the fucking audience with their cell phones up, taping it like it's a fucking Roger Waters concert.

You know what I mean? You are a fucking degenerate if you're ready to tape, unless you're taping it to post it somewhere and be like, this is a fucking horrible thing I just saw, right? If that's the motivation, then maybe. But clearly there's too many people there I think to make it look

I mean, first off, why would you even attend something like this? Why would you even be there if you weren't excited about it or want to see it? But it is my contention that we all are, I think, striving for something that is going to be, you know, the moderates of the world need to step away. I mean, everybody picks and chooses. Everybody picks and chooses their religion. The moderates are just, they're just fucking honest about their picking and their choosing.

They're just honest with the rest of us. They say, yeah, I pick and choose. I don't take Leviticus to heart. I don't take the Romans chapters that, uh, that, uh, criticize the gays. I don't take the Corinthians chapters that criticize the gays to heart. I take the stuff where Jesus helps the poor people to heart. I take the stuff where Jesus helps other human beings to heart. I take the stuff where Jesus says, treat other people like you would treat yourself. Okay. I take that stuff to heart. The rest of the stuff, I don't, I don't think there's a fucking arc. Well, why, why do we think that that person deserves praise? Because they're being less religious than the crazy person who is fucking,

who thinks that there was an actual arc and who thinks that we should stone homosexuals. there was an actual arc and who thinks that we should stone homosexuals? We don't see the religion. We, along with the moderates, don't see the religion as something to think of as pious and admirable. Instead, we see it as something that is detrimental to other people. So why can't we all just agree that it's the religion that's the fucking problem? It's funny because when you praise somebody's moderate stance, moderate religious stance, what you're really doing is praising the secular parts of their nature. That's really what you're doing.

You're right. You're absolutely right. You're praising their secular nature and ignoring their religious nature. Yep. You're praising their secular restraint. A long black cock, long black cock. their secular restraint. A long black cock, long black cock.

A long black cock, long black cock. So what the fuck is going on in Tehran? This story is fucking super weird. This comes from The Independent. Oh, boy. Gonche Gavami. I don't know. Not comes from The Independent. Oh, boy. Gonche Gavami. Not bad. Not bad.

I think Gavami is exactly it. I think I nailed that. That's a designer, isn't it? Yeah, these are actually Dolce and Gavami. I have a Gavami watch on right now. British-Iranian woman detained in Tehran for watching men's volleyball match goes on hunger strike.

So it turns out that if you watch volleyball in Tehran, that that's jail if you're a woman. What are they, wearing banana hammocks? Are they actually just playing volleyball by fucking hip thrusting the ball? Are they playing naked? Because let me tell you, naked volleyball, if somebody spikes that ball, I mean, even clothes, it still probably would hurt. But at least there's just that illusion of protection from the clothes. It's that one millimeter worth of cloth makes it suddenly dissipates that energy

just a little bit more than if your naked balls were out there and you got smacked right in the nuts with a fucking 60 mile an hour volleyball. It's so crazy. The idea that you would have a law that specifically makes it illegal for women to attend a volleyball match. Yeah. Is it that, or is it just that, you know, it's Sharia. So people just get to pick and choose their law. Oh, match. Yeah, is it that or is it just that, you know, it's Sharia, so people just get to pick and choose their laws? Oh, right, yeah, because there is no actual law. It's just, you know, but I, you know, this article did indicate that, you know, it sounds like she kind of went to the volleyball match

specifically to kind of push back against the fact that she couldn't go to the volleyball match, which I think is sort of a bizarre and unbelievably dangerous thing to do. As evidenced by her getting thrown in prison for seeing volleyball? I just can't even, like, what happens if you see whirlyball? Like, what kind of, do they have, like, a whole system of, like, they're, like, looking,, like leafing through the book. Like, what do we do if they saw a cricket match?

Like a woman saw a cricket match. They're like, I don't know. Nobody watches cricket. We didn't plan for this contingency. Fuck. You know, like paging through, like, are they allowed to miniature golf? I'm not sure. There's a shaft on the club where it's cylindrical.

That strikes me as, you know. Got to keep her away from the farmer's markets, too, because there's cucumbers there. You know, I wonder if they, like, if they do see Whirlyball, if they have to give them, like, a carnival-like discipline as well, so that, like, they make them, like, they turn them into, like, whack-a-mole. They, like, put four women there, and they, like, hit them with mallets until they fall down.

I guess it's kind of just like Iranian prison, really. That's not really whack-a-mole. Yeah, how is that different? Whack-a-mole is actually modeled after Iranian prison. You know, but I do think that Iran can rest easy knowing that they got this menace off the streets because

this 25-year-old was in the country working for a charity to teach literacy to street children oh and i have to say like when you have when you have fucking people like that roaming your streets teaching literacy to children and seeing volleyball unfettered in all of its volleyball-astic glory how are you supposed to build a just society? Man, they did the right thing. Good for good on you, Iran. This is why the world loves you.

And you know, you're just like, bonus to those illiterate kids, huh? Bonus! Maybe you could teach them how to read at the volleyball match. Do you have, by the way, this is an aside, but do you have the independent images thing? Like on your page?

Yeah, let's see if they're different. There's one for extreme body piercing. There's a guy with like 10 huge knives. Do you see it? I do. Oh, this is the guys. This is a Phuket vegetarian festival. Wait, I'm kind of curious about this.

He's got knives sticking through his cheek. And the thing is, it's not like extreme body piercing. It's like extreme thing in your piercing. Like, it might as well have like a fucking like fucking, like, that thing from fucking, uh, phantasm in his face, you know? He's got eight knives sticking out of his face. Could you imagine if this guy, like, was in one of the Jason movies, and, like,

Jason keeps stabbing him, and he's sticking knives, and he's losing the knives in his face, and he's like, clunk, clunk, clunk, and Jason's getting frustrated because these knives keep dropping into his cheek. Dude, you got to click on the side slideshow for a second. This guy's got an antler through his face. And the other guy has to hold up. The other guy has to hold it like youler. The guy has to hold it.

Like you're an old human being following you around because you're piercing so big. Okay, the third one is just ridiculous. Okay, the third one. The third one is kind of backwards. The third one has like, it's like fondue skewers through their face. He looks like a porcupine. Oh my gosh, the other one's got a pistol through his cheek. He's got a gun

in his mouth going through the cheek and out the mouth. It's like a reverse suicide. If he fires the bullet, he's born again. Alright, I'm going to put a link to this on this episode's show notes. It has nothing to do with anything, but it's amazing. It has nothing to do with anything, but you're going to want to look through

these pictures. They're probably not safe for work. There's no blood, but there certainly is a lot of things going through other things. That is the worst street festival ever. Let me tell you, the food from that street festival sucks. You can't eat it. It just falls out of your face. Father, I ask that you would forgive us for taking prayer out of the schools

father when that happened secular humanism flooded in father it began to penetrate every part of the But today, Lord, we reach up into heaven and we say, on this day, your kingdom come, your will be done in public education once again. We draw the line in the sand today and we say no more. So this story comes from the Raw Story. Freedom from a Religion Foundation. Church-funded Bible class in North Carolina public schools teaches kids seven-day creation is literal fact. In North Carolina, in the Rowan-Salisbury School District, they just straight up fucking do Bible class, man.

It's just like, boom, what's up, public school? We're just fucking doing Bible class. Jesus. For fucking 45 minutes a week. And as part of that, they're just fucking teaching the creation story. So it's like super crazy Bible class, it sounds like. You know, it's not like, did you do the Bible in high school or grade school as literature at all? I did it in college.

It wasn't as literature as it was history. It was looking at the Bible and comparing it to historical things that happened. We did biblical reading in my English class my junior or senior year, but it was done as literature. year, but it was done as literature. And the whole discussion was about, you know, the Bible as a piece of literature, um, and not as, you know, a, a piece of theology. And it was totally useless. I thought it was totally fucking worthless. Like, I mean, the teacher obviously loved herself a little Bible, um, cause she thought it was like just really beautiful and so on and so forth. But, um, it was just fucking gobbledygook because if you can't discuss the content, which you can't without devolving into religious discussion,

it's just utterly meaningless. And this school isn't even going that route. They're just straight up saying like, yeah, well, it's fine because kids can opt out. That's absolutely the worst because now, like you said earlier, the kid who's got a shame face stand up and walk through all these kids to be like,

I'm not allowed to be in the room when they talk about the Bible. Right. Yeah. I just I want to make sure while I'm in fucking Salisbury, North Carolina that I get beat up as often as possible. I want to be the weird kid. Oh, great. Then you can be the

one who leaves during Bible time. You will be too, man. It's like the kids who had to leave the school. I mean, because we noticed them when they couldn't do sex ed. Like, I noticed the kids that weren't in class. Oh, yeah. You know? You're like, oh, that's the fucking really hyper-religious kid. I know that kid can't be in here.

Yep. You know? Same thing with this. You're gonna notice when fucking little Timmy and his atheist parents don't sign the fucking permission slip for him to see fucking the Passion of the Christ. Absolutely. You are. Absolutely. You are, you know, and the, and the excuse, the excuse that's being made, um, is I think this is a great program. Um, it gives children, it gives young people the ability to learn about history, except for the nothing in the Bible is historically true. Like, what do you mean it gives them an opportunity to learn about history?

Like, the historicity of the Bible is sketchy at best. Oh, come on. They walked around for 40 days in the desert and got manna from the sky. That's right. That's a real thing that happened. They parted the fucking sea. Yeah. I mean, come on.

Like, what, honestly, like, what history lesson would you draw from the Bible? I mean, the only thing you could draw from it is the history of the Bible. Well, I'm sure that some of the history of tribes that fought each other are in there. That's real. I'm sure that there's some of that. Certain people that were in power at certain times. Sure. You know, but the thing is,

is like, just like other history, you use multiple sources for that history. You don't just believe one source. You don't just sit down and crack the Bible and be like, well, this is exactly how history happened. Instead, you look through all these other things.

Like that's how they've come to find out that the Bible is wrong. When it says that the, the, the slaves, the Jews, built the pyramids. That was not true. It was a civil works project put on by the Egyptian government that would hire people during off season to come in and do this. And they found things that reinforced that opinion. Those things aren't in the Bible. Those things are in other sources. So you're physically restricting yourself by choosing only one source to go after anyway. Well, right.

I guess that's what I mean is like, you know, the stories in the Old Testament, you know, even if they're talking about like, yeah, this tribe fought that tribe. It's like, yeah, this tribe fought that tribe. But then in the Bible, it's like, yeah. And then fucking God came down, but he couldn't fight because they had fucking chariots of iron, and like, how are you supposed to even read that and be like, oh, yeah, well, that isn't

fucking, it's just not true. It's not even relevant. Who gives a shit? Who gives a shit what one fucking tribe of a few hundred or a few thousand people did in the fucking dirty-ass desert 6,000 years ago? Yeah, 3,500 years ago, who cares? Now I gotta ask a question. Yeah.

Would you be against this if it happened as an opt-in program after school, but on school grounds? As an opt-in after school? I don't think I'd give a shit. Let's say it's like a club after school or something. No, I don't care. Yeah, I wouldn't be against it either. No, I don't care.

It's opt-in. It's not part of the school day. It's no different to me than the lacrosse team. Yeah, I was just going to say like fucking tennis team or something bad. Well, I care. Kids want to get to... I can't imagine anybody opting into

it. My God, of all the things to opt into, geez. Well, that's I think that that's telling though, right? Doesn't that make... I think that that's how you have to run it. The problem is, is that they want to force kids to do it because otherwise kids wouldn't do it. Yeah, right.

Exactly. You know what I mean? Because if this was an opt-in program, then you would opt in and you wouldn't, nobody would care. Nobody would, there would be nobody who would say, okay, well, you know, this is a bad thing. Instead, you're forcing all these children to sit through this. You know, we had a conversation with Bill and Susie on their show where they're talking about, they were talking about being tricked as children to go to some place to be proselytized to.

And they wouldn't have gone if they weren't tricked. If the person came up to him and said, I'm planning to proselytize to you for an hour, they wouldn't go. But instead, Han Solo was there. So the bill decided he was going to go. Well, the same thing here. There certainly wouldn't go to a 45 minute Bible class if it wasn't mandatory. Right, right. Yeah.

Kids aren't exactly clamoring for some fucking Bible class. Like, it's not like, oh, man, do you see that new Bible class? What, what? It was awesome. All these kids are high-fiving each other like, Bible rules! Want to contact the guys? Go to DissonancePod.com to get links to their Google+, Facebook, and Twitter accounts. If you want to contact them directly,

send an email to dissonance.podcast at gmail.com or you can call and leave a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Do you want to support the show? Go to patreon.com. That's p-a-t-r-e-o-n.com forward slash dissonance pod. Or click the link on the podcast homepage, and you can donate to the production of Cognitive Dissonance on a per episode basis. If you can't spare any money, 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. From the Springfield News Leader, high court to hear religious man's child abuse case. Missouri's Supreme Court is going to hear arguments this week regarding whether a Springfield man who practices a certain type of Christianity is guilty of abusing his children. So the thrust of the case is that this guy, who very clearly abused his children, is claiming that, nah, fucking Jesus.

And so since Jesus, it's not really abuse. And I can only hope this guy, I can't even believe that they're hearing the case to be honest with you yeah they're hearing it specifically because of the religious element they wouldn't be hearing it if it was secular if the person wasn't claiming religion and just saying yeah I didn't I only fed my kids two cups of food

a day and kept them in the bathroom like my house was like fucking the set of Hogan's Heroes. And I was like, I know nothing! Fucking Hogan! He's got a radio! But seriously, like fucking, nobody would even, they would be like, yeah, you can't appeal this case.

You clearly abused your children. But the fact is, is that he's relying on this type of Christianity that he belongs to to say, no, what I really mean to do is say, I beat my kids because I've read it in a thousands of year old book. And that makes it okay. I discipline, I don't say beat because I don't think he beat them. It doesn't sound like he beat them. I discipline my children in cruel and unusual ways in which we would never do to a prisoner if they were a fucking prisoner in a fucking goddamn prison. We wouldn't do it to him. We would give them enough food to eat and we would provide them with enough space to

at least stand up. Right. Yeah. I mean, these kids were kept in rooms which are temperature controlled in the mid-50s, so they were cold. They had less room or the same amount of room as an average prison cell. They were locked in that room for weeks at a time. Nurses that examined the kids said that their shoulder blades and ribs were prominent. So, I mean, they're being fucking abused.

They're being terribly abused. And I think the real insult to injury here is that this guy can even get his case heard. Why is he getting his case heard? What is so broken? Like, you know, we talked earlier, we talked about this idea that like, oh, we can't criticize Islam because it might be interpreted as a criticism of all Muslims.

And if we criticize all Muslims, that is, you know, if you're Ben Affleck, that's racist and gross to criticize all Muslims, even though Muslim is not a race. It's a fucking stupid thing to say. But anyway, it's a stupid stupid thing to say but anyway there's it's a stupid fucking thing to say but it's like here we've taken that to an extreme where where all of a sudden we give religious deference and we give it so often and so fervently um that we're willing to actually consider thoughtfully consider the idea of whether or not it's okay to abuse children because somebody thinks that the right, you know, sky dad says it's cool. That's crazy. That's enshrining cruelty in order to protect somebody's religious liberty. You don't have

religious liberty. Like I couldn't fucking go down the street and just crucify somebody, right? That would be wrong. I think I would get fucking in trouble for that. But why, why is it that you can fucking abuse your children? Why is it you can lock your kids in a room and starve them and make them fucking cold and miserable for weeks at a time? Because you know, some religious book tells you it's cool? All the cool kids are beating their kids. Right. Man, you should totally beat your kids.

I was going to, but I've actually been feeling a little sick, Cecil. I think I'm coming down with a virus. A virus? A virus, Cecil. What kind of virus? The decapitation virus. You can only do that once on your children, by the way. It's a one-time only deal.

That's it. That's it. Let me tell you something, Alan. If America continues to reject the mercy of the Christian cross, America will live under the tyranny of the Islamic sword. This story comes from Right Wing Watch. Fisher, ban Muslim immigration because we don't know who is carrying the decapitation virus. Another thoughtful, well-considered position from the great intellectual Brian Fisher.

Well, let's listen to Brian Fisher fumble fuck his way through this point. This is Brian Fisher from the Stupid Brian Fisher Show on American Family whatever. Yeah, that thing he does. I think our policy toward Islam should be the same as our policy toward Ebola. I do not think we ought to allow anyone to immigrate into the United States that comes from a country where the Ebola virus is present. For the simple reason that we do not know who might be carrying the virus. We're not suspecting them all of carrying the virus. We're not saying everybody from Liberia, everybody from Sierra Leone, everybody from Guinea has the Ebola virus.

We're not saying that at all. But we're saying we don't know. We can't tell who is carrying the virus and who is not. And therefore, I'm sorry. We can say to many people from Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea, we know that you don't represent a threat to public health. And we're sorry that we can't let you in our country. We feel badly about that. We're sorry about that. But our first priority has got to be to protect the health of our own people. And therefore, we're not going to be able to allow you to immigrate into the United States. Now, we ought to be saying exactly the same thing about people who come from Muslim majority countries, because we have no way of knowing who might be carrying the decapitation virus. We simply don't know. And so we say to them, look, I'm sorry we can't let you into our country.

I don't believe that you represent a threat of any kind, but we simply don't know. We have no way to tell. We've got no kind of scanning device that can identify whether the decapitation virus is in you, whether it's alive in you, whether it's going to erupt. Whether the decapitation virus is lying dormant and going to, no, wait. Right. You know, I think it'd be pretty easy to stop people in customs and just look if there's a head in their bag.

Right. Like, Joe Pesci's got no chance. He'd be like, hey, forget about it. I got these fucking eight heads over here. He's got eight chance. He'd be like, hey, forget about it. He's walking eight heads over here. He's got eight heads in a duffel bag. What do we do? It'll never work.

Oh, my God. It's ridiculous. I love this. The decapitation virus. What we need then is a decapitation virus vaccine. But then you get autism from it. So what is it? You know what he doesn't understand is that it's not a virus. It's a gene.

Oh, no. No, no. His name's decapitation gene. And he lives over there. And he's the one who does all the decapitations. You know, it's a shame that it's a virus and not a bacterial infection. So it doesn't respond to anti-decapitation antibiotics. Right. That would be good.

Yeah. That would be much better. You've got to make sure you take all of those because then the decapitator just gets stronger. Yeah, right. It builds up resistance. So you've got antibiotic-resistant decapitation bacteria in your system. It's fucking terrible. It's fucking amazingly bad. How many decapitations do you think

you could get off? That's the thing I don't understand. Are these people fucking from Dynasty Warriors? They could chop off 700 heads in one swoop? Is that it? Exactly. Everybody's Lubu. They just fucking have their giant pole axe

or whatever, halberd. They cut people's heads off. They just fucking have their giant pole axe or whatever, halberd. They cut people's heads off. They just walk in a big swath and just cut heads. They're just flying off. Nobody's going to chop anybody's heads off because we have rules against people chopping each other's heads off. The thing is, how is it done in a Muslim country? is like, how is it done in a Muslim country, right? You get the people whipped up in their religious fervor, and then you say, these things are wrong based on this book, and then you go out and you chop somebody's heads off. And they don't do it fucking behind closed doors. They fucking have a finger chopper machine in a town square in Iran.

It's not like they're fucking hiding this. They're doing it out in the open. How many fucking public square decapitations can you get off in the United States? You know, and I can hear the argument now, right? Like, because there's that British guy who, like, decapitated somebody, right? And, like, right there, like, on the street, like, fucking killed that soldier and then decapitated him a while ago. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a dude, yeah.

But, like, events like that are necessarily, necessarily in a civilized society a one-off. Because when you start sawing the heads off of people, people call the police and we have police that show up. Yeah, people tend to notice that. Hey, you can't do that at the 7-Eleven. That's totally inappropriate. Right. It's like when, you know, somebody you know doesn't wear a bra and you can see the nips through there. You know what I mean? People tend to notice the same thing here. It does not pass like, oh man, I was walking to work and I could have sworn I saw a decapitated head. Maybe not. Maybe not. It could have been a Coke can. I don't know. Who knows?

can. I don't know. Who knows? As, you know, it's so funny too because like, I would think they would have a lot in common. And I tend to think of myself as really pretty anti the religion of Islam. I think of myself as pretty anti the religion of Islam. And Ivan, I'm not saying

that they should be fucking held up at the border because they might be fucking rogue decapitators. Right. Just decapitate. Like, where did they come from? It's a country with a Muslim majority. Fuck. Is it 51%?

No, it's more. Fine. Okay. Check his bag. Does he have a guillotine in his bag? Yeah. Fine. We knew it.

Yes. Success. We caught another one. It's such a stupid fucking idea. It's such a stupid fucking idea. I mean, clearly the people that are committing violent acts in the name of their religion are not going to hop in an airplane and fly to America and then just go fucking crazy and cut off somebody's... It's just a weird, such a strange, weird thing to get worried about.

To cut off all immigration, though. To just be like, no, we're not going to immigrate at all. What about the people that are fleeing the decapitators? What about people that just are murderers? Like, people, some people, like, just cut the shit. Like, some people are just fucking evil, shitty fucking people. Like, and that's, you you still we still have ways to vet the people that we let in the country. It's not like our

immigration system in this country is the fucking you know, 1919 open arms. Yeah, welcome! We love everybody! Ellis Island's that way, you know? You're poor, yeah. It's like instead it's, you know, it's pretty fucking difficult to immigrate into the

United States. And it is particularly difficult. I guarantee that if you're from fucking Syria right now and you're like, yeah, I think I'd like to immigrate to the United States, you're going to fucking answer a couple of questions first. It's like a two-question questionnaire. The first one is, do you decapitate people? And then, like, when you get to customs, like, do you have any heads to declare? Do you have any heads or enormous knives soaked in blood?

Do you have any of the following? Guillotines, scythes, large knives, chainsaws, hacksaws, heads, or necks? When you watched the Ned Stark scene from Game of Thrones. Did you get a chubby?

Did you criticize the executioner's technique? Or are you like, he's not even wearing executioning shoes. He could hurt his back. He's got to put his hips into that. You can't cut through a head with it if you just use your arms. You'll never get it off in one swing. I'm Raymond Massey, and I have a special message for senior citizens. Today's doctors, drugs, and medical devices truly work medical miracles for young and old alike.

But there are some as phony as a $3 bill. Investigate before you invest in health services or products. Help stamp out quackery. So this story comes from a blog, the Red Wine and Applesauce blog. FDA... FDA?

FDA cracks down on... It's fucking late. FDA cracks down on essential oils distributors and other natural health peddlers. Fucking about time. The FDA issued warning letters last week to three individuals regarding their health claims for essential oils and related natural healing products. The letters sent to Young Living, sent to the idiots at doTERRA International, and sent to Natural Solutions Foundation, sell garbage like essential oils, nano silver, hemp oil,

and other fucking jib jab and whatnot. They got letters that said the therapeutic claims on your website to establish that the products claims on your websites establish that the products are drugs because they are intended for use in the cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease. As explained below, introducing or delivering these products for introduction into interstate commerce for such uses violates the act. Fucking right on, FDA, because they are absolutely making bald face claims. These

supplement companies, these snake oil sales people. When you say snake oil, I mean there's a picture here that I saw and it's like this amber liquid and at first when I looked at it I was like what is in there? Is that like a hornet? And then I look it's a coiled up cobra in there.

And I was like I thought the honey bear thing is weird. This is really strange. Oh, yeah. Nothing like some good old snake honey on your pancakes. I mean, literally snake oil. Like, this is literally snake oil. But it was so funny. I was watching this thing.

I found it on Reddit today, and it was, are you familiar with the shark tank? No, what's shark okay so shark tank is this thing and i think that's what it's called but it's this it's okay so it's like six really rich people and i don't i don't want to call them billionaires but they might not be they might just be you know really rich ultra rich people and they sit and people come in and pitch ideas to them and say i have this idea for this thing. I need funding. And then it's like a reality show. It's like fucking The Voice, except for instead the person is pitching an idea.

And then they go around and ask questions. And then they either get funded, and it's sometimes for a certain amount of money, or they don't. They get thrown out, whatever. And so people get to hear all these good ideas that these people have. And then these people will give them a certain amount of money to start their business. And then if the business is successful, they'll take part of the profits back. And it's just this reality show. So it's like venture capital, like venture capital, the reality show. Yeah. I mean, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, and it's, and I think there's a British version

too, but I was watching that it was posted on Reddit, and I got a chance to see it and this guy comes in and he's got this fucking Ion fucking water and he says I got this ion water I'm here's your free sample of ion water and he's like here's all the stuff it cures He's like it cures You know this and this and this and this and it cures leukemia and it cures this and this and this what and you should see this and it cures leukemia and it cures this and this and this what and you should see all of these people every single one of them was just like get the fuck out of here you charlatan awesome dare you how fucking dare you come in here at one guy's just like i'm gonna say no just so everybody else here can just say no and you could leave because i think i use at first i thought you were joking

he's like now i think you're an asshole and then they go back and the guys, the one person's like, you're saying this cures cancer. He's a cancer kills people. And it kills people. Cause they take shit like this and they die from it. And he's like, you, this is bullshit. And the guy's like, it's not bullshit. I have the research right here. And he pulls out like a fucking photocopied piece of like fucking Kevin Trudeau's book or something, you know. And he's like, here, look. And they're like, this isn't research. This is somebody said it's true and it's true.

Get out. And it's like a six minute clip of this guy just fumble fucking his way trying to lie to these people. And nobody there. None of those people who is like ultra rich is like, yeah, I'm going to believe this. Right. This is not a real thing. It fucking ion water is not a real thing. Goodbye. I didn't get rich by dying

from cancer. But you know, the thing is he's making a claim, right? He's making a claim that this stuff does all these things. It should damn well prove itself to do all those things before you invest in it, right? You should

be able to say, okay, well, how many doctors tested it? What were their findings? How did they find these things out? Was the sample set, you know, was it botched? Was it done successfully? You know, is it peer reviewed? Not just by one person, but, you know, peer reviewed, meaning peers sat down, looked at this research and either tried to replicate it or knew what was going on well enough to say, OK, this is a good idea. Did it happen? Because the problem is, is when you make claims, you have to be able to back those claims up. And this is exactly why they should be getting these fucking letters.

Because if you make a claim about something it's no longer a supplement it's no longer this wishy-washy well it'll make you feel better it's it cures fucking gonorrhea well motherfucking it better cure gonorrhea right like you better be able to be like i have gonorrhea step one yeah take shit step two step three no morehea. Like, if that's not the end result, if the end result is like, step three, have less money, then that's the only next step, which is the only next step for this shit. That's exactly it. Have remorse and less money. Right, and still have gonorrhea.

Yeah. Fucking my dick's like a drippy faucet. Thanks, essential oils. Jesus, I got a fucking, I got a viper hanging off my dick here. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth.

You can't handle the truth. Oh, this story, fucking what? This story comes from Right Wing Watch. The Bible code definitely proves Obama is the Antichrist. I love some Bible code, dude. Bible code breaker Jonathan Wright appeared on True News, not actually containing any true news, last week where he told host Rick Wiles that Obama is either the Antichrist or the Harbinger of the Antichrist. Because the Bible code says so. Harbinger. Man, why can't I be a the Harbinger of the Antichrist, because the Bible code says so.

Harbinger. Man, why can't I be a fucking Harbinger? You are, as far as I'm concerned, you're a Harbinger. Every time I hear from you, it means I got to do something. I got to do the show. You know, I think the Bible code is fucking brilliant. I mean, okay, so the Bible gets translated from its original language into maybe Greek or something, and then it gets translated again into something else. So there's

like a couple of translations between us and it, and then you're going to actually run the code off of the translation. Like you're going to run the code off of like the English version of it. You know, you're not running the code off of the fucking, you know, Aramaic or whatever language they were speaking. You're not running the code off the the fucking, you know, Aramaic or whatever language they were speaking. You're not running the code off the original. If you can even find anything at this point. Right now, they just look at stuff and say, well, this is the most authentic one we can find, the farthest back one we can find. Well, let's also point out, too, that there's no such thing as the Bible, right?

The Bible is just some books we decided to put together. Like, it's not like one book, like at least many other holy books are one book, right? Like the book of Mormon, it's like, you know, it's primarily like, it's a book, like here it is. Joseph, you know, fucking Joseph Smith wrote this stuff that the Bible is, here's a bunch of books. And there's more books that are written, you know, kind of along the same vein. And some made the cut, and some didn't make the cut. And some people put greater emphasis on this part than that part. There is no such thing as the Bible.

The Bible is just, yeah, these people agreed this is probably what we want to consider as our holy text. I guess if it's all magic, though, it's like, well, then God took into account the translations. Right, yeah. I guess if it's all magic, though, it's like, well, then God took into account the translations. Right. I guess if it's all magic, it doesn't matter. God took into account what would become apocrypha and what would become canonical and knew it ahead of time and put it in the code. And then the code works in like three languages. The code is like the fucking Rosetta Stone of the Bible. Like works in all languages.

The thing is, it's like, why the fuck is he coding it? It's like, it doesn't make it. It's like fucking just tell us, dude. It fucking just be like, you know, it should say in revelations,

one of the lines should be like, and the locust fucking head armor and Barack Obama is the antichrist. Yeah, right. You know, and if there, if there is a secret code, who gave this fucking guy the decoder ring?

Like what fucking cereal box of fucking Bible did he get? He had to eat a whole bunch of Bible-os and then send away the box tops. It tastes like shame. Alright, so there's two clips, or three clips. Let's start. This is Rick Wiles and it's his show. He's talking to a Bible

code guy. Okay, so either Barack Obama is the man of sin he is commonly known as the antichrist the bible says doesn't say antichrist it says man of sin but either either barack obama is the man of sin or he is strongly connected that's right to the man of sin or the spirit of Antichrist. Right. Those are my own, and I've tried to look at this as an investigation. Investigation? Not with an agenda, by the way.

I can't tell by your accent that you have an agenda at all. No, I went to the, I made this up on a whole cloth objectively. Objectively. But what I've come up with is those have to be the possibility. Let's just face it.

He's got a ring on that says there's no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger. Now, by definition, that's anti-Christ. Wait. And, you know, the thing is I want to find out. I want to see the passages that say Barack Obama is the man of sin. Yeah. And are they, you know, I kind of want to see like, where is that? And I know it's probably not that hard to find it in a whole book, right? In the whole Bible.

It's probably not that hard to find, say, Barack Obama. Like if you were to count out certain spaces or whatever. But really, I kind of want to see the part where he's fucking referencing this instead of just saying, oh, well, he's fucking, he's the bad one. What is this thing about a ring? What is he talking about? Do you know what he's talking about? No, I, you know, you're probably saying that he's got some sort of Illuminati or a fucking

Muslim ring on or something. Let's see. Maybe they'll answer it in the second clip. I would like to do things like triangulate something. So I would look for a totally different axis term and see if there's a connection to Obama, like in reverse. So I would look up the man of sin or Beelzebub or any name that has a connection to Satan or Lucifer. And then go and see if there's a connection to him.

And it's usually they both confirm back and forth the same thing. That's amazing. Wow, man, that's fucking deep. How many hours do you think this guy spent making this up? I know, I was just going to say making it up. None? Ten minutes? Yeah.

What do you think? Do you think that he did this? Do you think he actually sits with his Bible and pounds it out somehow? Like A is seven, B is... Possibly, I guess. But I wonder, too, how much they're just fucking saying. You know what I mean? Because how much proof do you have to have to people who already want to believe that he's the Antichrist?

Yeah, I know. You know what I mean? You don't have to prove it to them. They already think he is. So they're just like, all they need is one more thing to say that he is. And all Rick Wild's listeners, that's what they want. This one's a little longer. This is two minutes, so let's see.

What have you found about Barack Obama? What kind of words and terms have you found? Well, the beast, the man of sin. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I've got to write this down. You found next to Obama's name, you found the word beast? Absolutely.

There's a strong connection to the beast. And I might be talking about his car. That's what he calls the White House limousine, the beast. Yeah, and do we think that's very, do we think that just by accident or just a chance that he did that? You know, there's too many coincidences in there. It's not a chance event that you would call a multi-ton armored personnel carrier disguised as a limousine the Beast. Because that's what that is.

Well, my brother used to call his car the Beast. Because it was a piece of shit that fucking sounded loud. There's a blue superhero called the Beast. Maybe that's the one, guys. I don't know. I know. Is he in the Bible Code? Yeah, he's Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is actually a blue, furry X-Man. Yeah, what's his Secret Service code name? Renegade. Renegade. Renegade, which is the man of sin. You know? And then there's always the photos that you see everywhere with the flies landing on his face. You know?

I can show you in the codes where he's got a strong connection to the Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub. Well, I call him Beelzebub. Because he had those flies stuck to his lip. What? He also, when he was a kid, he had a pig head on a stick with a bunch of flies. Oh, my. Yeah, I call him Bielsa Lip because a bug landed on him. For fucking serious.

Like, for fuck, these are grown men. You know, I'm not here to trash the man. I don't have anything against him personally. You know, what I have found, God has shown me. And this is what God has shown me about the person. You're calling him the Antichrist. I'm just calling him the Antichrist. The beast.

The diesel lip. Well, wait a minute. You just said he's... I don't believe that he is. Wait a minute. You just said he's the spoiler from within. He's the beast. He's the man of sin. And you don't want to trash him. I mean, those are pretty strong terms, man.

I get emails, brother, that say, oh, we're supposed to pray for our president. And, you know, you're cursing him and things like that. And I don't see it that way. When God shows me something in the codes, this is what God put in the codes about him. It is not my opinion about him or who he is. I really didn't want the American president to be the AC or the man sent. It just looks like he's the forerunner.

We're not looking for a needle in a stack of needles, by the way. What? In a what? I'm not looking for a needle in a stack of needles. Look, I'm not looking for an antichrist in a stack full of antichrists. Let me tell you something. A needle in a stack of needles is pretty easy to find. Yeah, there's one. Got it.

Hold on. I have a whole stack. Nailed it. Has anyone. I have a whole stack. Nailed it. Has anyone seen my stack of needles? Yeah. Such a ridiculous. I love that not only do we call them out, but Rick Wiles even calls them out. I know, man.

You know you're fucking crazy. When Rick Wiles, when you're on his fucking show, is like, hold the fucking train, dude. You don't want to disparage this guy? Right. It's like, come on, why are you on the show then? Like, what are you talking about? This is the disparagement program. It's what we do.

You know, I got to wonder, though, with the fly stuck to his lip thing, because clearly it's a thing, right? Clearly we looked it up. It's a thing. You know, you got to wonder to wonder like did any of these other people ever have like a bee by them or something maybe they had bees in their bonnets i don't know yeah i just want me i was curious like does an insect ever interacted with you you know who knows i mean you know we all know that the fly landing on the lip of like a black dude.

Like, I mean, there's there's kind of a commentary there, too, right? Like it just buzzed around his head and landed on his fucking floor forehead for a half a second. And then he was like, bug, like, that's it. Like, that's the thing that happens to people, you know. people, you know, but it's, it's trying to, it's also like trying to paint them, you know, like the, you know, that, that the quintessential old images of, you know, the, the poor starving Africans with the fucking flies on their faces and shit. Yeah. That's, that's reminiscent, isn't it? That's why, that's why they're saying it's on his lip, right? Because it, it paints that, it paints that image. It paints that image of, you know, Barack Obama is like the man from Africa, you know, like, let's not forget his Kenyan roots, you know, Barack Obama is like the man from Africa, you know,

like let's not forget his Kenyan roots, you know, all that kind of nonsense. It's just fucking weird, weird shit, man. Like, but you have to look at this and say, what else do you expect from people who actually believe in an antichrist? Yeah, no. Like, did I expect anything better? No, no. I mean, you might as well just have the person fucking hooting and hollering like a... I mean, even if she started screaming like a monkey, you would be like, yeah, I guess I kind of get that.

The person believes in the Antichrist and they sound like a monkey. This is no different than like... Honestly, it's no different than having a really earnest debate over what color unicorns are. You know what I mean? Like, who fucking cares?

I think they're all white now. Oh, you come in a variety of colors. Who cares? You fucking idiots and liars. So we want to thank, of course, we want to thank all our patrons, but we specifically want to thank the newest patrons we just had, Matthew, Amy, Shane, and Graham. Thank you all so much for your generous donations.

They go a long way to making sure the show happens. And we just recently, we talked about it before, we just recently had a picnic using some of the funds from the show, and it was a before, we just recently had a picnic, using some of the funds from the show, and it was a really good time. We had a blast. And one of the things that happened while we were there, Tom, was we had an opportunity to meet another podcaster.

It just so happens that my Book of Mormon, the guy who runs my Book of Mormon, lives in Chicago. And I was shocked. I was too. I was amazed that we would actually run into us. I mean, like, honestly, it was a moment where I was like, I got like a celebrity feeling.

You know what I mean? Like, it's cool when you run in. It's like, we're having this picnic, and I was actually having a conversation with some other people, and I had introduced myself, and he had introduced himself earlier in the day. But he didn't introduce himself like, from my Book of Mormon, you know, like we fucking called each other our names. So I was standing around and was talking and like I just brought up his show naturally in the course of organic conversation.

He was standing right next to me. He's like, that's me. And I'm like, wait, what? And he's like, yeah, it's me. It's my fucking show. And I was like, oh, well, holy shit, great show. Yeah, that's awesome. And, you know, we got a chance to meet him, a really cool guy.

We're going to have him on our show in a couple of weeks, we hope. But yeah, we just, the My Book of Mormon guy was there. It was just very, very cool. We got a message from Ben. And Ben had said, he kind of asked, he said, I'm going to read directly here. He says, anyway, I was wondering whether over the course of doing the podcast, you had changed your mind in regard to the

aspect of atheism and the surrounding issues. I actually think it's a good thing to change your mind if evidence comes up to make you change your mind. So I'm all for changing your mind when the evidence is there. But I guess what

I want to say here is, it says here, do you think you became more passionate about atheist activism? You need to be honest. It sort of gets thrust upon you a little bit. People send you stuff and say, hey, this thing is happening. We'd really like to get the word out. And we're just a

megaphone. While we're just a megaphone. While we're not doing the boots on the ground stuff, we are the person, we're the telegraph to get it out to people. We're the method of communication that people use to get this word out to other people. So you can choose not to be that. And we had an opportunity in the very beginning. We actually, I remember the conversation Tom and I had when people sent us stuff. And it was pretty early on in the show.

Somebody had sent us something about a mentioning of a conference. And we had to make a conscious decision based on whether or not we're going to mention it and whether or not that was going to be a thing that we did. And we decided that we would do that because we thought that the show is about community and the community should benefit from the show in any way that we did. And, uh, and, and we decided that we would do that because we thought that, you know, the show is about community and the community should benefit from the show in any way that it can. And we've taught, we've, one of the things that we've always pushed is people, um, raising money for other people. Uh, we, uh, you know, we did the people in South Carolina, the, uh, the atheist, the upstate atheist down there. Uh, we, we try to send people to that place. We, we sent people to, uh, to many other charities to try to raise money. We ourselves helped raise money for Doctors Without Borders. I think that's one of the things that Tom and I both really enjoy doing. And also,

it's something that we really get a lot of pride from doing. So I think that that is probably the biggest atheist activism that we do. But I think just being a mouthpiece is a great piece of atheist activism that we do. Yeah. And as far as changing my mind is concerned over the course of doing the show, I would say I would say absolutely. I was never really interested in any kind of atheist activism until we started doing the show. It was just, you know, if somebody wanted to talk about it, like, yeah, sure, let's have a conversation. But that was as far as any kind of activism, you know, in the atheist community. That's as far as it would ever have gone. And in fact, I think, Cecil, you and I were both much more accommodationist when we first began podcasting seven years ago.

I remember talking about Richard Dawkins. You and I talked about Richard Dawkins a long time ago. Richard Dawkins. You and I talked about Richard Dawkins a long time ago, and we both felt that like he came off as, as rather strident and harsh and, you know, difficult. Uh, and that was not, and I think you and I both felt at the time that that was just, just the wrong approach to take. Well, and, and I think that that really does show, and I think that really models your own mindset, right? We were both at that point, I think, relatively new to the movement, relatively new atheists ourselves, because I think at that point, both of us had been agnostic for a long time, but that step to atheism is a step regardless of how you take it. And we both thought,

wow, you're just going to push people away. And I mean, even when we had that conversation with Silverman, I remember even just asking him, being like, look, we don't think that those billboards are very useful. And then he explained to us why they were. And we were like, oh, I guess we're dummies. You know, I guess we didn't consider that. We had thought that you're trying to convert people with your eighth with, with these billboards. And the same thing goes for Dawkins. We, we had thought that what Dawkins was doing was trying to convert people with a book. Uh, instead what he was doing was he was trying to convert people with a book. Instead, what he was doing was he was working on the people who are already converted to get them more well-versed in their own opinion, you know, to get them to understand the apologetics, to get them to understand

the arguments that are behind these things. It's not for a brand new atheist because they have different sensibilities and you're never going to be able to reach those people. Tom, someone wants you to read a poem, so read it. I'm happy to do it. So the title is a play on finding Nemo, but it's finding Neem, strike out God. It'd be difficult to read and give it justice, but I'm sure you've all heard that stupid phrase, they spouted strangers between the half-formed apologetics and bouts of gibberish, that stupid phrase they spouted strangers between the half-formed apologetics and bouts of gibberish, self-labeled praise. Have you found God? What do you mean found him? Was I even supposed to be looking? Did I miss the memo that the magical cloud wizard went missing? If your bearded old

man deity has wandered off and you're now asking for help from strangers to find them, then bluntly it sounds like he's at best senile and at worst likely in danger. Oh, it's a metaphor. No? Yes? Maybe. Could you perhaps just, you know, decide? I know logic isn't your strong suit, but this strikes rather as the blind leading the blind off of a cliff, repeatedly. Anyway, even if personally invited, I can't say that I'm all that tempted by the game of cosmic hide-and-seek, the sanity being in the pages of the Koran or Deuteronomy, especially when the grand prize seems to be the same each time. Congratulations, you guessed it, a self-inflicted lobotomy. And let's suppose for one horrifying second that they are somehow right,

and that somewhere out there at the end of a sparkly spirit rainbow, their god is waiting for me with a vast celestial picnic and champagne just waiting to go. Do they honestly believe I want to go find him? Spoilers. No. I'd rather shake hands with pestilence, get ass-fucked by war, let famine babysit my children, and trust death with the poor, than spend a single moment with their god, a being whose supposed actions make the previously mentioned famous four look like Gandhi's corpse-sprouted sanguine quintuplets, horses and all. In short, I'm reminded of Aladdin in this quote from Robin Williams himself, infinite cosmic power, itty bitty living space. Because let's be honest, there is no smaller space in this universe to hide than the last

crumbling remnants of a believer's mind once they begin to conflate the act of helping a stranger with vomiting out their tired little diatribe. So no, I haven't found God. Thank God. Fuck! I like how it ends. I do too. It's fun to read it that way. I like that. Thank you very

much for sending that. I enjoyed reading it. We got a message from Caldwell and he just said, Hey guys, here's a couple of things that I could help you with. If you're interested in some tech help. Um, those are things that I just really never really considered doing. I mean, I know I can do them. I just never considered doing it cause we'd always use the Gmail account. And we just thought that that was about the same amount of brain space that would take for people to set up a dissonance pod account. So we just never did it, but thank you for the, thank you for the offer. And we just thought that that was about the same amount of brain space that it would take for people to set up a DissonancePod account. So we just never did it. But thank you for the offer. It's just so nice to get this stuff. And there may be a point in the future where I'm going to need some tech help. I know that I was considering changing the WordPress template. And there's this

weird framework thing that I need to do. I don't really know how to do it. I've never really worked with WordPress. So I may be calling on certain people who have sent us messages in the past who said, Hey, I can help you with tech stuff. So you may get a message from us called. Yeah. And as usual, I'll do nothing. Yeah. Interesting message from Oscar who, who talks about the two commandments instead of the 10 commandments, Tom. Yeah. He says the two commandments really should be the better two commandments of the New Testament should be, love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment, and the second is like it.

Love your neighbor as yourself. All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments. And Oscar says that he thinks these are both very good principles or at least a good basic set of principles. The first one, regardless of, his argument is regardless of who it's saying to love, the idea that we're framing a conversation first in terms of love, rather than fear or shame or guilt or sin, has value. And Cecil, you had some ideas about this. Yeah, I guess just because you're framing it in the sense of love doesn't necessarily mean that it is, that there's no, that fear isn't

involved. And the one thing that brought to mind was if you look at the way people treated Kim Jong-il when he would walk down the street, how they would scream how much they love him, they would, you know, weep and they would, you know, I mean, they would just be, they would fall apart around him and they, they would, you know, I'm sure that some of them said they loved him because they knew that it was bad to not say it. Right. Cause he's, cause he's basically, he basically was that little kid in the twilight zone who could put you in the cornfield.

You know what I mean? So it's like, you know, you basically have to fucking treat this tyrannous fucking man child of a fucking dough boy with every bit of reverence that you possibly can. But there's probably some people who had been brainwashed into thinking that they loved him because they loved him, but don't think that that fear is not there. And that's the sort of love that I see people give to God. And that's a scary, weird kind of love that I see people give to God. And that's a scary, weird kind of love that I don't know has a lot of virtue in it. I'm not saying that it's a bad thing entirely that people love God or whatever. It's whatever is whatever. It's what they want to do. I don't care. But I just don't think that it's automatically because you're framing it that way.

It is a good. But I do understand where you're coming from though. And I automatically because you're framing it that way. It is a, a good, but that like, I do understand where you're coming from though. And I think that you're right. It's a good shift in the literature to make people forget about the fear and the sort of absolute fucking terror that, you know, Levitical law and the 10 commandments put on people and start thinking about things in the context of love and helping other people out. Yeah, I think it's a, from a framework perspective, I appreciate the sentiment. But, you know, I guess I would agree with Cecil that it matters very much who we love, you know, we got to love the right things. So, but I do understand the sentiment behind it. And I appreciate you sending the email.

Thank you. Yeah. And to me, I guess the one thing that I think about is the people changed their ideas of what they did based on this, based in the, in the text, right? The people changed where Jesus said, love your God. He's telling the people to do this. And he's also saying the greatest commandment is love your neighbor. He's telling the people to do this. Has God changed since then though? You know, it doesn't, I mean, just because the people changed how they treat him doesn't mean that God has changed. Right. If it's the same Abrahamic God, it's still a fucking bloodthirsty monster. A couple of weeks ago, well water drinkers became a subreddit. I love it. This week, I got to say, as far as Reddit goes, this is the fucking jackpot.

So we're going to put a link to this. This is a subreddit called Well Water Drinker. Somebody made it as a joke for one of the things because we had said, what is there? Some weird subreddit where people talk about well water. And so somebody made the subreddit and sent it to us as a joke. And we mentioned it on the air and a bunch of people liked it or didn't like it. They upvoted it and then they went and subscribed. And so a bunch of, like, all this stuff happened.

And it was great. It turned out it was, you know, a bunch of people were sending all this stuff. And then the person did a makeover of it and made the up and down arrows into our faces. It's so funny. It's fucking great. It's so funny. But anyway, they want to turn it into like a unofficial cognitive dissonance place for

people to talk about cognitive dissonance and, you know, make, I guess, share funny things and whatnot. So we encourage it because we think it's great. We're going to be posting on it. And, you know, I'll be posting a show there once in a while when I remember to do it. And I have time. And I also will be checking it once in a while. So if you happen to say something,

I may be reading it and I may comment. So if you want to go check it out, Well Water Drinkers, we'll put a link to it on this episode's show notes. And I love that I'm the down vote. I love that you're the down vote too. I love that I'm fucking the down vote. In reality, you're the down vote.

I'm always the down vote. Tom, we got a message from Mike. Yeah, so Mike sent us an email. He and his girlfriend are expecting, and he is an atheist, or at the very least an agnostic, and it sounds like his baby mama is not, and they've kind of got some conflict abruin regard with that. It says, she wants me to respect all religion and not say that they're wrong. While I've explained that I'm not going to tell the child

everyone is wrong when he's younger, I'd wait to engage him in a discussion when he's older so he's more capable of reasoning for himself and making his own decision. She views my atheism as me saying that I am right

and everyone is wrong. And there's a little more to the email. But I would say, Mike, that this is going to be a lot of conversations that you're going to have over a long period of time. In fact, I'll relay a personal anecdote. My wife has always been very much accommodationist. She very much is on the side of, you know,

I don't want to offend anybody. I don't want to, I want to make sure that everybody's beliefs and whatever are respected. And she just feels that to be overly critical or to engage in heavy criticism can be very disrespectful. And obviously we disagree on that point. disrespectful. And obviously we disagree on that point. And I mean, we've been together for 18 years or something at this point. And this is, you know, it's not been a barrier in our relationship, but it's certainly been a lot of conversations. And in fact, we had one just last weekend about this same subject. And it can occasionally be kind of an awkward subject. But as long as both parties recognize that, you know, I'm not trying to win you over. I'm not trying to persuade you. This is not a persuasive essay that we're writing here. We're both

expressing our heartfelt beliefs on a subject and we don't happen to come to the same conclusion. And this is going to be an ongoing conversation. And honestly, child-rearing should always be an ongoing conversation. If you can look at an infant or a bump in a belly and say, man, I fucking game-planned this thing to 21, you're wrong. You're just wrong. It's an ongoing conversation. It's an ever-evolving conversation. Yeah, and the only small thing I have to add, I think Tom did a great job of explaining pretty much anything that I could even hope to offer. But one thing I would say is it seems like she

wants you to promise that you're never going to admit you're an atheist and that you're never, ever going to talk about your atheism ever. And I will tell you right now, whether or not that's the case, that's what I got from reading you right now, whether or not that's the case, that's what I got from reading your message, but whether or not that's the case, don't ever in a relationship, make a promise that you yourself can't keep. It's always, you know, it's fine. I guess if you make a promise and outside forces make it so you can't keep that promise, but you yourself, I mean, really you have, you are the ultimate control over all that. And if you can't keep that promise, don't make it.

So that's a conversation that needs to be had for sure. And probably with somebody who, you know, if it doesn't get resolved, it probably needs to be had with somebody who can actually moderate that conversation with some sort of expertise, like a therapist. All right. Well, we're going to have another show out next Monday. There's no double show this week, so you can enjoy the week. And then we'll be back next Monday with a new show. And we're going to leave you, as always, with the Skeptic's Creed.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain 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, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. 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. We'll see you next time.