Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 200b: Guesticulation, Part 2

Episode Date: January 12, 2015

Thanks to Jake Farr-Wharton from Imaginary Friendshow, Noah and Heath from Scathing Atheist, and Thomas from Atheistically Speaking, Comedy Shoeshine and Thomas and the Bible, for joining us and celebrating 200 episodes.         All the podcasters that joined us:                

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. This is Steve. And I'm Aaron. And I'm Shay. From the Waiting for Wrath podcast. And from all of us at Waiting for Wrath. Glory hole motherfuckers. Glory hole motherfuckers. 200 glory holes. Glory hole motherfuckers. Glory hole. Congratulations on your 200th episode from Waiting for... He's taking his pants off! You are so drunk! What is this? Congratulations on your 200th episode.

Keep up the good work. Stay skeptical. And gloryhole, motherfuckers. Hey, this is Lisa. This is Oliver. From Tucson, Arizona. Glory hole, motherfuckers. And happy 200th.

Hello. Glory hole. This is Sam from the UK. I'd just like to say congratulations on 200 episodes of the Cognitive Dissonance podcast. Thank you for the laughs. Thank you for the swearing. Thank you for the laughs, thank you for the swearing, thank you for the facts, and thank you for the opinions. You fucking rock. Ta-ta.

F. Did you know that the Founding Fathers said evolution was wrong? Did you know that Christopher Columbus said that light bulbs are from the devil? Did you know that Julius Caesar said that antlers are far better than iPhones? Did you know that God himself issued his parents a last hundred sheaths game last week? Did you know that glory holes were invented for the sole purpose of flooding

Tom and Cecil? There you have it. Evolution does wrong, so says Thomas Jefferson's R2 unit. Tom and Cecil, you glory holiest motherfuckers. This is Sebastian from the Headless Phoenix podcast on YouTube, and I just wanted to call in and wish you guys a happy 200th episode. You know, your guys' show is one of the things I look forward to most in my weeks, second only to playing, recording, commentating video games for the entertainment of the internet. That is to say, nobody. Can't wait to hear the next 200 episodes. Keep up the good work. Glory hole. This is Packard Sonic from the Packard Pokes at podcast, which airs live Friday nights at 9 p.m. Central time at Vaughn live dot TV slash Packard Pokes at and all of us here at the show want to wish you a happy 200th episode. Tom

and Cecil glory hole. Hey, Tom and Cecil, on behalf of the Minnesota skeptics, I would like to congratulate cognitive dissonance on 200 episodes. We love you guys. Keep up the great fucking work. Hey, guys. I'm too late for this, but this is E.J. also known as Foster Disbelief from fosterdisbelief.wordpress.com. I just wanted to wish you guys a happy 200th episode.

You guys are an inspiration. Love it. Glory to hope. Hey, Cecil and Tom, this is Sarah. I know you hear me say this every week, but congratulations on your 200th episode. You fucking rock. 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 do some fuck oh wow wow you just forgot it i just forgot it yeah wow yeah you know what i'm gonna do blast everyone is in their way and yeah there's every every episode some stuff that gets googled and then how did i fucking google it wow do you have to google it no i mean i've got it 200 times favorites right here 200 times so it used to be on the on the main page do you want to start over or do you want to just go from here no let's just go from here i feel like when you're 200 episodes in people forgive your mistakes well they have to right because they can't celebrate my successes no that would be a really short celebration yeah take that gosh it's been a long day so uh it's been a long day

so this is episode 200 b b yeah this is part do this is i don't want to call i mean you know i don't want to give the people on this show a complex because we had people on the other show and then we had to split it up and put right so we put the better ones on the first one no no i'm sorry that's unfair yeah we put the people we personally like better no no no what we did was we took and made sure that we took the people who probably wouldn't be offended by being on the second show in Jake and Thomas, and then we also

have Noah on this show. Okay. Noah and Heath will be on as well. We're looking at Jake, Thomas, and Noah and Heath on this episode. We had a great episode last time. This episode should be very good.

All this stuff is prerecorded except for the email section, which we're going to be doing at the very end. Yeah, you know, all three of those shows were a total hoot to record. Two of those shows. Well, all three of the segments. The three segments that make up the set. Fuck you. How about if we just go straight to... Recording from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago.

Just, you know, you do something a few hundred times. Oh, you start to remember it. That's awesome. So, Tom, really quickly, let's reflect. I don't want to get all fucking wistful and sentimental here. You're going to have an Au old Lang Syne moment here. But I do want to reflect a little bit on sort of a couple of our favorite moments on the show. We don't want to play them, but they are both on YouTube.

So if somebody wants to go check them out, they can find them on our YouTube page, which if you go to dissonancepod.com on the upper right-hand side, there's links to all of our social media YouTubes on there, so you can find our YouTube page that way. But one of my favorite moments that we ever did, and I think this is a lot of people's favorite moment, is the moment that we found Hillbilly God. That was awesome. It's where we didn't just, and he didn't just pop up out of nowhere. Right.

It sort of morphed. It was, you were talking about like a really slow, partially retarded god right and then it sort of worked its way into the south some way as it always does well i mean he was slow and partially retarded and so it just seemed like a natural like a natural stuff there you know we are going to be lynched when we go to reason hickory north carolina i'm dressing like someone else i'm gonna dress like david michael i'm gonna black out my teeth oh so fit right in you know just wear one of those like you know the the things that they put in their mouth that looks like it's like you got giant butt right right yeah like a pacifier for your kid or something yeah if if that doesn't work you know i'm gonna i'm gonna try it ahead of

time take a look in the mirror see if i look suitably confederate if that doesn't work oh no if if that doesn't work i'm actually going to start uh smoking meth and the thing's in april so i'm going to start smoking meth you know like in february give myself a good 60 day run yeah if you do that i bet you you know you could get some skin lesions by the time you know i just want to look malnourished. It would take a lot of meth for you to look malnourished. I know, right? I was just thinking like, I'm actually thinking like the meth diet. Yeah, it's like, well, maybe with a tapeworm.

Walter White, enslaved for a year, couldn't make you look malnourished. So that was one of my favorite moments, I think, is the Hillbilly God moment. That was a great moment, especially because it really happened organically. You know, there wasn't any planning, and it became kind of a great character for the show there on out. So I think one of the best bits that we ever did, and you can also find it on YouTube, is the pork bullets. The pork bullets. And it doesn't hurt that we had just solid gold material to work with. It doesn't hurt that we had just solid gold material to work with.

This was the bit, if anybody hadn't heard it, where there was some fucking Yahoos in, like, Washington State or something who were making bacon-laced bullets or some shit. And we just, I mean, we just went off on it for 15 minutes or so. It felt like forever, you know, most of us. I was talking to you. But, you know, it was hilarious. It was so much fun. It was so ridiculous. I think if we do anything right, it's looking at something ridiculous and then finding a way to make it even more absurd.

Right, right. So that was a great bit. So if you want to send in your favorite bits, we ask the audience to do this all the time, and on occasion we'll get some good ones where people suggest them, but we'd love to get more of these loaded on YouTube. So if you have a favorite bit that isn't on YouTube, uh, send us a message, tell us where it is. Tell us what episode it is. If you have the time codes, that's even better. And then we

can cut it and we can put it on YouTube, separate it out from the, uh, from the episode. And that way we can get more content on YouTube and more, more little tiny vignettes that, uh, really are sort of the best little funniest parts of the show. This is Stephen Heathen. And this is Joe Kindik. From the Unbuckling the Bible Belt podcast here out of Nashville, Tennessee. We wanted to congratulate y'all on your 200th episode. You guys are one of the main reasons we started doing this shit in the first place. Glory hole, motherfuckers. You guys rock.

So for this spectacular goddamn horror show of a story, which comes from the Daily Mail, God damn horror show of a story Which comes from the Daily Mail We are joined by Jake From the imaginaryfriendsshow.com Podcast org Biznet Did I get that right? Yes, you got it really, really right

It's the most right thing that I've ever heard Guys Congratulations Thanks for being on our crappy 200th episode Yeah, yeah congratulations on 200 episodes i'm so sorry to all of your listeners yeah this is actually our 200th episode unlike your 200th episode which is really like your 313th episode yeah it was very confusing i've just realized that i probably had my 200th episode about, what, two or three months ago?

And I had you guys on, and I've just realized you've just about caught up to me. So I think from now on, my two weekly shows will be separately numbered. Because the last thing that I want to happen is to be overtaken. You know, I'll tell you, there's some people out there though that are really prolific thomas is almost at his hundredth episode from thomas from atheistically speaking he's putting out a show like every 30 seconds pretty bad the quality though wow wow and we're also joined by thomas it turns out we're like fucking pull a mori on you and like have him like run out from the fucking

sidelines from the green room oh yeah with a chair oh that would be fantastic jake the whole time is just denying that his it's his baby he's just like it's not my baby it's not my baby you are not the father do they have that kind of shit like do they have those shit shows in australia by the way do they have that like is there an australian equivalent to shows in Australia, by the way? Do they have that? Is there an Australian equivalent to the Maury show? The Australian paternity test show? We actually used to have Maury Povich beamed into Australia.

But no, Australia has actually got an IQ over 100. So we generally just don't need that sort of stuff. Oh, man. Yeah, we moved away from that. By the way, could I just rescind the comment that I said about Thomas? Because I do love, adore the shit out of Thomas. No, you cannot rescind it. You cannot.

Okay, good. I'm doubling down then. God, he's a dick. I actually, as you said that, I chiseled it into a stone tablet. Sorry, what? You jizzed it into a stone tablet that is disgusting however i should say your ability to jizz in words is yeah is prolific you know it is fantastic it is but it's a little unsettling that it will etch stone you know that was yeah that's true acidic yeah kind of like predator because you got the penis inside the penis slides out spurts the acid everywhere of the two i was more impressed with the etching than the actual spelling but yeah i mean i think both are really impressive

to be honest with you yeah yeah no you are totally correct but congratulations guys 200 episodes it's uh it's a real feat i know because i did it recently myself yeah you know i mean i will say it feels like an accomplishment uh there is no barriers to us doing it so we have literally nothing to overcome in order to get here you know as a podcaster you know if you just think about like the the barriers to podcasting you have to um Just think about the barriers to podcasting. You have to podcast, and that is all. That is literally the only requirement. I found it very difficult this afternoon, or just before you guys called. I had to walk down a flight of stairs, which is arduous in and of itself,

to turn on my coffee machine and make myself a coffee so that I would be um you know interesting enough i suppose uh in order to you know in order to be interesting enough to to discuss this with i think that's probably the challenge let us know by the way when that kicks in because so far go ahead and get yourself another cup we'll wait yeah it's fine uh this is from the daily mail brutal initiation ceremony at sayananda Yoga Movement. Whoa, fuck. Saw a seven-year-old girl sexually assaulted after a leader licked her blood.

An inquiry into child sex abuse at Australia's oldest yoga ashram has found children were subjected to sexual abuse, starvation, neglect. Two women have now told the Royal Commission that they were sexually abused by the man who founded the worldwide yoga movement. One of them described how she was stripped, cut, sexually assaulted by him while a number of men watched on. Shockingly enough, celibacy was a requirement at the ashram and people would be beaten if found to be having sex. So while you may not have Maury Povich,

you've got yoga. You do have crazy weird sex yoga. And I got to say, like, I'm generally a fan of crazy weird sex yoga. Like if somebody said, like, hey, do you want to do crazy weird? I'd be like, fucking yeah, let's do that. Okay. All right. Absolutely.

Fucking downward facing dog all day. Like if you remove the seven-year-old from this story, I mean, it's still awful. It's still beyond awful. Yeah, yeah. But it's kind of one of those things. Like I used to teach yoga. You know, a few lifetimes ago, I was a personal trainer, and I did the fitness classes, the group fitness classes. And one of those was a yoga class. And, you know, the interesting people that come along there of those was a yoga class. And the interesting people

that come along there, there's the yoga devotees, the ones who really get into the yoga. And then there's the people who just come to sweat and fart and that sort of stuff, fart in public. Because I mean, look, it's one of those real unfortunate things that you can't, it's not socially acceptable to fart in public. I mean, I still do it, don't get me wrong. But it's, you know, when you go to a yoga class, you are expected to fart. But, you know, the real yoga devotees, they're the interesting ones, right? They're the ones who talk with that, like, really breathy voice. And, you know, they'll come up to you after the session, you know, in this fictional universe, and they'll say something like, so I've been wondering, like, I like your yoga classes,

but is there any way to take my yoga to the next level? And, you know, you might suggest something like, you know, hot yoga or Bikram yoga. You know, Bikram yoga is quite intense. So you say, I suggest you go to, why don't you try out Bikram yoga? You know, it's quite an intense yoga. It's for advanced yoga practitioners. And then they say, yeah, you know, I tried Bikram yoga.

I think I'm looking for something more like intense, like properly intense. Like I'm talking the kind of intense where, you know, you're a seven-year-old girl and you get blood raped by your um by your uh yoga practitioner uh guy who runs the ashram that's what i'm really looking for i'm really looking for a way to get raped while i'm trying to do something that isn't it doesn't have anything to do with rape that's really what i'm looking for and uh so then you tell them that you tell them about this ashram and they go and get exactly what i'm looking for and uh so then you tell them that you tell them about this ashram and they go and get exactly what they were looking for and you know they come back and they thank you because you gave them exactly what they were looking for i don't know exactly how to follow

that to be to be perfectly honest for just a moment i was rendered speechless although it it does occur to me that in a place which is called an ashram, you don't have a whole lot of expectations outside of this. At some point, you're just like, I mean, you go to IHOP, you get pancakes. You go to the ashram, you get ashramed. This is it. What else is there to expect? I'm really hoping that my silence is distancing myself from both of you i hope that i could do that this is a terrible people party and you are invited sir this is something that i found interesting it said that

they practiced and preached abstinence as a path to enlightenment And the first thing I thought is like, that's you or I preaching that fasting is the way to enlightenment. And then gorging yourself. Giant Jabba the Hutt looking freaks are dumping frogs into their face saying, no, no, no, no, you shouldn't be eating right now. Yes. Guilt gorging. Yeah, I mean, this is pretty much it. I mean, this is the great issue with the Catholic Church. In fact, through this same Royal Commission that's taking place,

the Catholic Church actually admitted, I believe it was last week, that celibacy has played a large part in the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, the institutionalized issue that they've had pretty much since day dot when there wasn't celibacy. So, yeah, it's really testament to the fact that any time you try to seek these types of things, especially when they're for bullshit reasons like enlightenment or whatever, you tend to gorge yourself on the thing that you're attempting to.

Because it becomes something that you treasure far more than you would have previously. It's something that you idolise and then all of a sudden you get a taste of it and you dive in with a seven-year-old, I presume. Wow. Wow. that you idolize and then all of a sudden you get a taste of it and you dive in with a seven-year-old oh wow wow can we just talk for a second about something completely different like say i don't know the like the images in this when they're showing the images of these people what is it that you're hoping to accomplish when you join something like this phil you're like oh you know what i hope i hope you fucking make me work all day in the sun setting bricks and my wife gets to look like she wore a fucking sack to work today like what are you looking for in a place like this like

do you want to be a luddite is that sort of what these people are looking to do how happy does the director guy look though he's got such a great smile on his face. He's got the crow-feet eyes like he's smiling with his entire face. What a happy guy. He has fringe benefits, though. But he doesn't look like a typical pedophile, I suppose. Maybe he does, actually. Maybe he does. There you go.

Well, you know, the thing is, like, anytime you have one of these communities, like, and it's like, oh, yeah, what we're going to do. And here's where it won't go wrong at all. See, what we're going to do is isolate ourselves from all of the rest of society. And then we're going to elevate one or two people up to, like, kind of like a godlike status. And everybody will come to us for the approval for how to live and our lifestyle choices. Oh, and meanwhile, you guys can do all of the work while

i sit on this like throne of fucking soft cushions oh yeah okay i can't see how that would possibly fucking backfire no but hang on tom like that that is too much that is too much because you know the reason that they do that tom is because if they were to lift a finger in manual labor they would lose their wisdom you know they have to have a finger in manual labour, they would lose their wisdom. You know, they have to have all of their energy conserved in order to, well, rape the children. But also for the wisdom. For the wisdom.

Because if you, look, yeah, like raping children aside, you know, that takes quite a bit of energy. But the wisdom is also really important. So if they set bricks, bricks for example or if they chop wood or if they do anything related to the manual tasks that they are forcing the people of the ashram to do then they just could not they could not provide the level of child rapery you know and wisdom i suppose um that they would be that would be expected of them. And then they can't be called leader because they're not fulfilling their child rapist duties.

I wonder why people don't just leave after their wife is forced to fillet someone. Why isn't that a reason to go? It's the same question as anything to do with domestic violence as well. They're in your head as much as they're in any other part of your body they're they're in your head they force you to stay there um you know they they it's part of the psychology you know it's battered women's syndrome it's battered child syndrome it's um stockholm syndrome it's it's that sort of thing like the you have no opportunity. And for a lot of these people especially, you know, one of the stories in there was of a woman whose child had been molested. That woman had grown up in the ashram.

So there were people in there who had lived their entire lives effectively not knowing anything outside of that. And, you know, that's probably a rather large reason lived their entire lives effectively not knowing anything outside of that. And that's probably a rather large reason why they didn't leave because they simply didn't know they could. And I dare say that even for the ones that thought they could leave or who knew a life outside of it, there's a good chance that they didn't think they could leave either. I mean, it's just an unfortunate unfortunate it's the worst sort of thing you know you being inside a a scenario like that

you know you've got you've got that forced psychology of you you cannot leave otherwise you know you will be nothing uh you know there's no way that you can achieve what you've set out to achieve which is some sort of spiritually ambivalent thing yeah i guess you can't like you can't apply like a rational rubric to it but there does seem to be that you know and i hear everything you're saying but at some point like you get back to your fucking mud hut or wherever you're forced to live in in this fucking godforsaken hellhole they call australia and uh you know you're like you're like covered in the fucking you know ashram leaders semen and you're just like oh man today was just fucking weird man just like like something about

today like i don't want any more todays like today is enough i've had it i got can do yoga at any strip mall in Sydney. I don't need to do this out here in the middle of the fucking bush being constantly attacked by dingoes. This is horrible. They are in dingo territory as well. Yeah. Look, it's an awful scenario. I mean, I've heard stories of Mormons who live in the Warren Jeffs type cult areas where if they leave, they leave their entire family. If they can't convince their kids to come with them, if they can't convince their wife to come with them, not only are they at risk of being tattled on and being forced to stay there or killed, risk of being tattled on and being forced to stay there or killed. They are leaving their entire family, their entire friend structure behind, their work. They have to now become

members of society. I reckon that's probably the hardest thing that they would ever do in their entire life. I dare say that if they made it out, the rest of life would just be generally a breeze, even though it literally would just be generally a breeze, even though it literally wouldn't be. But don't you think these people would be a little more flexible? Like a little more... Nice. Very nice, yes. This has been the only segment I've ever regretted doing on this show. So, Jake, besides reaching 200 a lot faster than we did

and with a lot less fanfare uh what else is going on you got anything important coming out lately yeah i suppose we're doing some really awesome things um in in 2015 i well actually firstly i i interviewed robin intz who i'm a huge fan of he's uh he's he sits next to brian cox the physicist, on their podcast, The Infinite Monkey Cage, the BBC show. I interviewed him last week, and that show's just come out over the weekend. I have a great Christmas song that I've just put out, Merry Mithmas. Enjoy that. And a bunch of fellow podcasters got together.

You were invited, but you didn't respond, so you're not in there, for a Christmas play that we put together, a radio play, I suppose, on the very first Christmas. And that'll be out later this week on imaginaryfriendshow.com. And then 2015 is massive for Brisbane Skeptics. We've got two Skeptic Camps occurring, one in March and one in June. And then we've also got the National Skeptics Convention that we're doing in November next year. So it's going to be absolutely incredible. Huge year. Huge year for 2015.

I think we would have gotten that email if we didn't set you to spam uh ah yes yeah i think that might be the problem however i do totally understand well jake uh people know where to find your show because you've been on our show i think the you're the guest i think we've had the most on i am am so sorry. Or at least the tie. I am so sorry. Not to you guys, to the listeners. ImaginaryFriendsShow.com is where you can find Jake's awesome podcast. Jake, thank you so much for joining us on our 200th. No, thank you. And guys, honestly, congratulations. You know, 200 episodes is not a small feat.

Despite what you said, it is not a small feat. You know, what you guys put together every week is incredible. It's certainly worth listening to 5% of the time. The rest of the time, do it because it's part of your habit. Fake it till you make it. That's right, baby. Like it a little bit, that's fine. No, really, guys, you are tremendous.

I love everything you do, and I love the both of you. uh we'll speak again soon all right thanks thanks a lot jake hey thomas easel it's joey from tucson arizona i just wanted to call in and say congratulations on your shitty podcast reaching its 200th episode i'm not sure how you fuckers pulled it off but you really got me feeling like the little tugboat that could and inspired me and my buddy blake to start our own crappy podcast anyway we're still're still pending iTunes and Stitcher approval, so for now your fans can go out and listen to our introduction episode at thegodlessdrinkinghourpodcast.com. Anyway, you guys really know how to make me shit my pants at work,

so keep up the awesome job. So for this fucking horror show of a story, we are joined by Noah and Heath from the Scathing Atheist podcast. Gentlemen, if I can use such a term to describe you, thank you for joining us. Appreciate you having us and that loose use of the word gentlemen, too. It's helpful for both of us. Thank you. Hey, we're pretty liberal up here in the North.

Now, when you guys got to 200, you were hoping to have somebody real on this show by now, right? You were hoping to... We were hoping for like a... I don't even know like a david smalley or something you know at the very least you guys couldn't book sarah palin or not like well all right so i'm not gonna lie to you guys the fucking cat's out of the bag when cecil and i were putting together our list of you know like hey who do we really want to have it's a big episode for us we want to make sure that it's funny and we want to make sure that it's funny, and we want to make sure

that it's interesting. We want to make sure that it's insightful. It gets the most, you know, attention from people, and so when Neil deGrasse Tyson finally backed out, we thought, fine, scathing atheist. At the last minute. It was just like, he was like, guys, no, I'm sorry, my wife is, I'm like, I don't care.

Get on the fucking show. I am happy to be sloppy seconds to NDT anytime, brother. That's 200 episodes. That's like 1,400 dog episodes. That's huge. Now, I definitely want to congratulate you guys. It's a big accomplishment. But I also want to pause in a second to remember the tens of thousands of winged buffaloes that gave their lives to make those 200 episodes possible.

So it's a bittersweet kind of thing we love a good beefalo that depends depends on your opinion of winged buffaloes if it's bittersweet or just win-win or so now i have to ask because we're coming up on our 100th episode when you guys listen back to the older episodes do you get embarrassed by how bad they are because i know when i listen to your older episodes yeah i get embarrassed listening to episode 199 i mean what are you talking about i am what show are you guys regretting this as we do it so i know i i think that's an excellent question i can say honestly that i have regretted every episode yeah pretty much yeah i i've never one. The important thing is that you're consistent. I'm in a constant state of regret about everything.

You know, the thing is, every time we record an episode, I think, man, this show would probably be pretty good if I put my mind to it. But I haven't gotten there yet. You just had competent people that actually ran it. It would be amazing. You guys are like the still-living Siskel and Ebert of Atheist Podcasts. Yeah, for now. For now. You guys are like the still-living Siskel and Ebert of atheist podcasts.

Yeah, for now. Let's not get too optimistic. 2015, let's get some resolutions on the board. So this story comes from OpposingViews.com. People say God made them miss AirAsia flight. Some people. Yeah, some people. Not everybody. It still took off with 162 people.

The other people were quoted as saying, Ah! I don't know how many genes that has, but it's got something. Maybe we were dictating. I have to say, only religious people could find the bright side of this horrible fucking disaster. And the bright side is, it happened to some other motherfuckers. That's actually their bright side. Yeah.

So 162 people are presumed dead when the AirAsia flight QZ8501 crashed in the fucking ocean. It's tragic. There's no way to even. Why are we laughing? I don't know. Because there's a silver lining we're going to get to. Because the next part is the 23 people who are like didn't get on the plane. They were scheduled to get on the plane.

And then fucking their dad got sick instead. didn't get on the plane. They were scheduled to get on the plane, and then fucking their dad got sick instead. So God's fucking plan to save the fucking 23 lucky people is to make a 24th person sick. Cancer, perfect.

This will solve everything. All the power in the universe. This is a being who can fucking shape a son with his hands. And he's like, man, I really want to save those 23 people. He doesn't disappear their fucking gate ticket. Instead, he fucking makes dad get sick.

He's so sick that 23 people are like, fuck. Well, and I tried to do some research on this. I'm not 100% sure. But if I'm not mistaken, 23 for a flight this size is actually really low compared to the normal no-show uh rate so god went out of his way to not kill fewer people he's bucking the tread oh no oh leave it to religious people though to be so unbelievably fucking narcissistic as to think that that they're going to be served saved by some god while other people perish in some flaming wreck right i think

this flaming wreck is about you it's unbelievable there's so much arrogance there i will say the other blind bright side cecil is the flaming wreck was quickly extinguished as the plane hit the ocean and plummeted down to the crushing depths. All of those people sitting there with severed or broken limbs only had to suffer until they drowned. Right. That was the silver lining. We kept promising we were going to get to the good news end of this. There's a bright side.

They could have been eaten by the Kraken. There's options. God. Well, that's at least as likely as God reached out and saved these 23 fucking people. Can you imagine? All I hope is that at the funeral of these 162 people is that the 23 show up and they're like, man, we're just fucking glad it wasn't us. I mean, I feel really bad. Like, your mother seems really sweet, little boy.

Yeah. And your dad, too, as it turns out. Wait, you're getting raised by fucking strangers. Well, listen, it wasn't me. See, I hope they're haughty about it and, like, pick up the flowers and spike them on the ground. They're like, fuck you, bitches. Who's alive, motherfucker? Honestly, it's like they're trash talking, right?

I mean, I'd like to thank our God, the real one, the worst. You guys have a decent one, too, though. You have a good one. He got you killed, but he tries. He cares. Every God can't be tall. Everybody can't have a tall God. What are you going to do?

No, my favorite line from the whole story, one of the guys says, or I think it was a woman who said, this is a special Christmas gift from God that we missed the flight. We are so thankful to our God. And all I'm going to say, I don't mean to look a gift horse in the mouth or anything, but not dying is the same thing God got you last year, or last Christmas. No creativity

here at all. And plus, East Java is clearly outside of Jesus' jurisdiction. These people thanking Jesus are getting the DNA wrong at least. Right. Check with Homeland Security on that. These people thinking Jesus are getting the DNA wrong at least. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Check with Homeland Security on that.

It sucks, too, when you open up your fucking Christmas present, like you come downstairs, you fucking rub the sleep out of your eyes, and you're all excited, and you pull it out from under the tree, and inside it's like flaming wreckage. This wasn't you. You didn't get this in literal form. It's got a beautiful bouquet of charred flesh and screams. What a. Well, that was an actual almost direct quote from one of the people on this story. They said that God's plan was so beautiful. It's like, really?

You couldn't. God couldn't come up with. This is felonious. This guy could be playing for Cecil's fantasy team. And you're praising how beautiful his plan is. Oh, he stabs me in the heart. Wow. The low blow comes out. Take that. I don't even have any excuses.

I'm just like, fucking yeah, that sucked. That's it. That's good, yeah. Well, isn't there still a hope? Couldn't God intervene? Yeah, maybe God. What if fantasy season's over? I don't care what God does. I don't know how this works, but I just assume that God can intervene.

He could have crashed a plane on DeMarco Murray if he wanted to, and that was a Christmas gift to me. Yeah, it wouldn't matter for you to be like, fucking, I don't care. I'm fucking, use them like a fucking condom. I don't give a shit. Now, I got to say, though, I've been thinking more and more about this, and I love this worldview that these people are expressing, because if you think about it, how much does God love our asses, right? All the planes that have ever gone down, we haven't been on any of them.

He's kept us off every single one of them. God loves the shit out of us. Doesn't this get into a topic we've discussed before a little bit, kind of like the branch of ethics that deals with puppy rape analogies in a way you know and i think this one falls into like the complimenting god on all the puppies he didn't rape category right right right it's like thank you god for not raping almost all the puppies every time he gang rapes 162 puppies but he doesn't gang rape all the rest it's a big big thing he's doing that's the whole good and evil argument right right? It's like, yeah, well, you guys get free will. And so as a result of free will, you get evil. But no, not all of you get evil.

Just like black people and the people I don't like. Like that's it. Those are the people that get the evil. That was redundant, by the way, clearly. I could talk about Jesus and Scott. So let's move away from this horrible fucking story for a second to talk about you guys. Now, you guys just reached a major milestone with your Patreon and you guys are starting a new podcast. That we are.

What's what's else about it? What's going to happen? Well, we're still kind of ironing out a lot of the details. Are we are we sure on the name? Are we are we 100 percent on the name? I'd say we're 99. We're 99 percent sure on the name. So you can you can see how far along we are.

I hope it's cognitive dissonance. We were going to go with like dogmative kissidence or something like that. Wasn't it schmog? Schmog. Schmog. There you go. Nice, nice. You guys are branching off into the skeptical field now.

You're stepping away from atheism and into skepticism? Well, I wouldn't say we're stepping away from atheism as much because I think of atheism as a part of skepticism. I don't think you're doing skepticism right if you still believe in God reaching down and saving Malaysian air flights passengers by the dozen. But yeah, the thing is we want to focus more on – I hate to say this because it's almost going to sound like the intro to your show. But we want to focus more on the political topics and on the topics that maybe don't directly involve religion right but you are of those the larger skeptical interests so all right so you're launching this when it when when can we expect this new show when's the launch well we're actually going to be launching it just for our patreon listeners first so there's going

to be like a three-week window between when we start when it'll be available should be about the middle of february oh cool are you going to do like a three week window between when we start and when it'll be available should be about the middle of February. Oh, cool. Are you going to do like a current events format? Like what's the what's the. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Basically the same format as our show now, except for tackling a larger, like a broader range of topics, including the like we said, the skeptical topics and also just those weird ass news topics that really don't fit into any category. But you can't fucking help but want to talk about them.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. If somebody gets arrested fucking a potato, we will probably talk about it. We already have a segment penciled down for potato fucker. I thought we were clear on that. So, Tom, get on that if you don't mind. I haven't been arrested yet. It's a flashlight that lights up automatically when you put your dick in it.

I was going to say, I'm tempted just to do it just so that I could hear the fucking segment at the end. I'm not even sure what they would charge you with, but I'm sure they'd figure something out. You're like, sir, that's just, I don't know,

just come to the station. We'll work it out later. It just seems wrong. That's like crimes against Irish people. Whatever it is. Well, guys, thank you for joining us

on our 200th episode. You guys were amazing. And where can people find your podcast? You can check us out at scathingatheist.com or on iTunes or Stitcher or wherever you generally go for podcasts. You'll probably find us. And, amen, thanks a lot. And congratulations, guys. Huge milestone for you.

Thanks so much. Appreciate all your time. Congrats, absolutely. Thanks for having us, too. Podcasters. They live in squalor, destitute and disenfranchised, eking out an existence as best they can in such desolate places as Chicago. In pairs, but otherwise alone,

they suffer from hunger and thirst, barely making it day to day on store brand chicken wings and weak domestic beer In the arms of the angel Fly away from here From this dark, cold hotel room And the endless nights that you fear But now you can help.

For just a few dollars a podcast, pennies a day, you can give them the restaurant-style chicken wings and imported beer that they so desperately need. For less than the price of a cup of coffee, you can make a difference in their lives, allowing them the opportunity to rant unfettered, as nature intended. Please, go to patreon.com backslash dissonance pod today,

make a pledge, and help these poor, innocent creatures lead a life worth living. So for this story, we are joined by Thomas from every podcast currently available on the Internet. Yeah, I just finished recording Serial. It was pretty good good i hear good things about that breakout guilty or not guilty i'm just curious like way out totally guilty okay first off guilty now we're going to talk about cereal by the way oh wow spoiler alert for anyone here we go yeah no i totally buy it okay but if you haven't listened to Serial, just turn off the show and listen to my show. No, don't do that.

Listen afterwards. No, that's terrible fucking advice. No, I totally think you did it. Why are you on our show? You're telling people to turn off our show. Hey, you wanted to talk about my other project, Serial, which I'm deeply involved with. Yeah, no, go on, Sarah Koenig. Yeah.

No, I totally think you did it, don't you? Did you guys listen i totally think he did it don't you did you guys listen to it yeah i think i i don't i don't know whether he did or not i think there's no way they should have convicted right there's no way to listen to that story and be like hmm i don't think there's any reasonable doubt here no i totally agree with that i think that he should have gotten off but just on an interpersonal like vibe you get from the guy kind of feeling i obviously wouldn't bet my life on it or anything but i just think it comes down to the when he talks about jay he's like yeah i don't know it's like okay if your ex-girlfriend was murdered and there's only jay knew where the car was so he a hundred percent has a connection

to the murder and then you're convicted and then you're like they're like who did it well there's jay yeah i don't know if he did i don't know like you would have more reaction though because it's 15 years after the fact at this point and the man's been in prison for 15 years well it does matter he's been in prison for 15 years he's enculturated to prison and he also has to face the fact, just the straight up fact, that he will die in that prison as a convicted murderer. At some point, you have to take a bit of a backseat philosophical view on that in order to get by.

If you are actually wrongfully convicted on that, at some point, you just have to say, hey, this is the reality of my day to day. And different people are going to respond to that differently. I don't think that whole like, yeah, his vibe doesn't come across right. So no, it's not his vibe. It's it's that like there's I just in my deepest humanity, I cannot imagine having that reaction toward Jay if if I were him and totally innocent. I can't even imagine it. I've heard this theory floated that all the time, you know, but it's like, no, he's literally the only person who's possibly connected to it for sure.

Like he has a for sure connection to it and there's no reaction. Like it just seems hard to believe to me. But anyway, yeah, he shouldn't have been convicted. I am super glad that we don't convict people on people's feelings though. Oh, no, I know. I'm a hundred percent acknowledging that. Like I wouldnict people on people's feelings, though. Oh, no, I know. I'm 100% acknowledging that. Like, I wouldn't have convicted him based on the evidence. I was just giving you my feelings because that's what I come on your show to do.

I talk about cereal and give you my feelings on it. Why are we talking about cereal? I know. It was fucking derailed right off the bat. Right off the bat. So skip all that. The actual podcast that you are involved in are fucking this american life enumerate them would only do them a disservice so thomas if you can

enumerate the actual podcasts that you represent that you come to this show as the as the fucking gleaming light representing please yeah i've decided that I'm a podcast mogul. That's actually something I've talked about. I mean. Do you comb your hair over? A mogul? Isn't that a thing you like? Go around skiing?

Isn't that? I don't know. Well, people go around as podcasts and search for others. Oh, no. Oh, I get it. I'm such an easy target because I'm a few rungs down the ladder, a podcasting ladder from you guys. I get it.

I get it. I get it. Just wait. One of my 37 podcasts was going to hit it huge. And then you guys are going to be fucking crying to me. Oh, God, dude, please come on our podcast. You're such a big podcast guy now. I'll be like, what? Who is this?

I don't even remember who the fuck this is. How did you get my email address? You can get your fucking chest swole over your position as a podcast. Oh, man. Like, if you wake up and you're fucking thumping your own chest because you're a fucking big fish in a pond nobody even fishes in. There's more podcasts than there are people now. That's actually a documented fact.

Like, there's no... I don't know how they're even making that many but i think i think now like computers are creating podcasts so that there's more than they'll never it's just never it's exponential it's it makes me want to get out of the business listen to podcasts are podcasters that's it it's like blogs at this point right like trying to read the blog like other bloggers well maybe you and i you guys and i ought to take what do what blogs are doing now and then just talk shit on each other and then like report and then like you know kind of do a clear the air and then talk shit about each other again you know like that that's

the cycle you have to go through to get the list manufacture some controversy yeah just fine yeah i heard you uh you know i don't i don't mean it's like this is just an aside. Like doesn't we can edit it out. But I totally heard Thomas fucks giraffes. I'm just saying, you know, don't hear that or anything. All right. That's it. Tune in next week.

I'm going to talk. You will not believe what those fuckers over a cognitive dissonance said about me. So you need to tune into my podcast. One of them is atheistically speaking. Get the get the real story behind the fucking giraffe fucking comment it was me giraffe gate it's a huge gate i mean it's an enormous gate you gotta keep them in there that's true that's true yeah no that's what we gotta do we gotta generate that controversy get those clicks and then you know ad sponsor you know ad supported content that's that's the that's the business model that i'm on right and then backstage we're just high-fiving each other

right we're just like yeah exactly fucking got those clicks what's up i saw them at the parties oh wait that's not a thing like all right so the actual fucking podcast name them all okay sure we don't have all fucking night do you want a chronological alphabetical uh do we guess i don't even know if you can remember them all i know you write them on your fucking hand sarah palin i'm actually just like that's why i'm just killing time trying to remember like i'm frantically like just rustling through papers and like documents and shit like hoping something will tell me um yeah atheistically speaking is my most atheist one and then uh that's on mondays and thursdays so find that it's gone strong always interesting do i have to tivo that or

can i just download it whenever i believe it's available for uh for download whenever so sweet i think that's how the internet works now for the last 20 years. No. And then Thomas and the Bible comes out every Wednesday in the PM. And that's still going strong. Almost, I think I'm like 62% done with the Bible. It's taking the rest of my life, but I'll get through it. And then I just started up one called Comedy Shoeshine, which is really funny and it's

actually fun to do. So that's out on Sundays. So, you know, I got a full schedule. And weren't you just on Incredulous too? I was just on Incredulous. I'm not sure if it will have posted by this time. Probably will have. But yeah, thanks to a recommendation from some Tom or Cecil jerk offs.

I can't remember some some names like that. I was I was invited onto Incredulous. It was very fun. It was it was a challenge. They gave me you'll appear pretty quickly. They've got a strict production schedule of three to four shows a year. I think there's more mass shootings in the US than there are Incredulous episodes in a given year. Easily, wouldn't you say?

I think that's probably unfortunately accurate. When you produce, I don't care what it is that you produce. Like when you can't produce more than the mass shootings in a year, like you just need to up the ante. I don't care if it's fucking Beef Wellingtons in a year. Either that or Andy's got to reduce the number of shootings in one or the other. Like either he's got to work on, you know, shooting violence in the U.S. or put out more episodes. It's, you know.

Well, Thomas, we brought you all the way here to Glory Hole Studios, you know, fronted the plane tickets, the hotel fair. You trashed the fucking minibar. All to talk about this story from the Washington Post. Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn't add up. This is an article, as I said, from the Washington Post. It kind of goes through the different conversation pieces, the different evidence points, to support the idea that there was really even a Jesus of Nazareth at all,

that this historical figure, regardless of the divinity claims, that it even existed at all. And those claims turn out to be pretty spurious at best. Thomas, what did you think of the article? Yes. Well, I just want to say thank you for inviting me all the way over here and paying for the expenses that you mentioned. I mean, once you're a podcast mogul like I am, maybe you'll get the same treatment. I don't know. But as a podcast mogul, to keep that reputation, I do have to trash the minibar in every hotel room I go to. So sorry about that.

But that's the game. That's how it goes. So yeah, I was particularly interested in this story because I saw Richard Carrier speak the other month. And one of my favorite things that he said that's not – I don't think it's in this article unless I missed it. I missed it. One of the funniest, most obvious things about whether or not there was a historical Jesus is that Jesus's name, you know, Yeshua or whatever the hell it would be, means Savior. What are the odds, you know? He so happened to be named Savior. And, you know, like, it leans toward a sort of a legend that's made up, you know, like, his name happens to be what he is. Seems a little, it's one of those things that I just never thought of.

That's really obvious when you think about it. I think those are minor details. You know, my son's middle name is Danger, you know. And so on occasion, like he'll like crash riding his bicycle and I'll be like, yes, because, you know, then I feel like I've done my job. You know, it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Yeah, right. Exactly. Yeah.

It's not he did. You know, he was careful to say that, you know, it's not impossible self-fulfilling prophecy yeah right exactly oh yeah it's not he he did you know he was careful to say that you know it's not impossible that he would be named yeshua it was a somewhat common name but not like terribly common so it would be a bit of a coincidence i love that that was a common name like we're just named like we're just fucking named everybody your savior your savior like everybody's a savior i guess whatever it'll hit eventually i guess when you're the jews and you're looking for a savior your parents have a savior i guess whatever it'll hit eventually i guess when you're the jews and you're looking for a savior your parents have got to be don't your parents kind of have to be dicks to do that though like what if okay if a picture we're all jews right and we're

like we're all waiting for a savior and then we're like i'm gonna name my kid savior because it's it's him it's my kid i know it look i could Well, don't you have to be kind of a dick then not to? Like you grow up and you're like, wait a minute. Throwing it back at me. Yeah. Like, how come all the other kids are named Savior? Oh, yeah. No, no.

We didn't have any hope from you for the beginning. Or wait. Or what if your kid did turn out to be the Savior and he was named like Jeff? And you're like, ah, fuck. Or like Stoneworker. Like everybody's name was just like what their parents thought they would be. Yeah. You know, they're just like, oh, yeah, what a beautiful baby.

Let's name him Scullery Maid. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, he's just like Pot Smoker. Yeah, like just total nothing. Oh, look at that little baby. Let's call him Cheetos Fingers. Oh, now there we go.

Yeah, Unemployment Collector. Oh, no. Look at our little Unemployment Collector. Oh, no. Look at our little Unemployment Collector. And he turns out to be the freaking savior. He's the son of God. He's like, Unemployment Collector, son of God. Yeah. I know it's an unfortunate name.

It just went to my parents, you know. And just, I don't know if we wanted to try to, you know, get some sort of interesting, like, valuable information to your listeners. I don't know. Is that, do you care? Why start now? Yeah, I know. Yeah, listeners. I don't know. Is that, do you care? Why start now? I know. I don't want to kill the mood of your show, but.

200 episodes in, I think that we're, you know, we shouldn't sort of swim upstream at this point. I think we're really good with what works. Go with what works. We're more of the dead salmon at the end of the stream. You know, like we're not like the healthy, vigorous fish swimming toward victory. We're just kind of the flopping carcasses that don't know they're dead yet. But if you'd like to accidentally impart something of note, yeah, feel free.

Yeah, you're just someone's like recycling they didn't take out. They ended up in a river that's just kind of like collecting a bunch of shit on it. Just float it up. It's still kind of going. Plastic rings around a turtle or like a sad otter. From like a shitty beer can. With like an oil slick around him. Somebody's like, they got a picture

of like a fucking well-meaning worker, like some don, like rubbing a fucking turtle and they rub it off and it just says cognitive dissonance when they're done. It's like, ah, those fuckers. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, okay.

So the interesting things to note here, and I'm assuming most of your listeners know this kind of stuff, but for me, I just never thought about it before. And there's so much about the Bible that you can just go through your life in America where most people believe in this bullshit and you just never question it. Like, for example, I mean, I don't know if I've mentioned this to you guys, but like how much of the Bible would you think the Old Testament is versus the New Testament? Just like if you had to guess based on like just growing up in the country. Well, I think the temptation would be to say half and half. I think in terms of like, are you talking about page numbers?

Just length. Yeah. Okay. I would say probably 70 30 30 yeah well you're just about exactly right it is 70 because i i've cheated though because you're 62 of the way through exactly you had mentioned earlier that you're not i was trying to get you to guess as though you didn't already cheat like the cheating slimy sons of bitches you are but uh no i would have thought like if you'd asked me i would have been like i don't know half and half or like with the level of importance people place on the new testament i would have thought maybe the new testament is like 80 i don't know right no one talks about the old testament except for genesis no the fucking old testament is worthless garbage and 70 of the book. And similarly, no one really talks about, one of the

things Carrier and others have pointed out about the historical case for Jesus is like, it's sort of one of those things that's just unquestioned. Like no one really, because most of the people who have skin in the game who would really be historians who care about whether or not Jesus existed are already Christian. And they're not approaching it with the mindset of like, ooh, did this guy exist? They just assume he does. And it's a very compelling case when you go through what their evidence is, rather, you know, their description of the lack of evidence for Jesus, that there really isn't anything. Everyone always references, oh, Josephus, but he was like a hundred years later, and not terribly descriptive. It's very brief.

And there's just almost nothing. So it's just one of those things. It's interesting. So are you suggesting, Thomas, that when something unbelievably important and vital to the very well-being of your eternal soul was to go down, you wouldn't wait hundred years to document that in a culture that historically documents every fucking thing? Yeah, I would just, if I were God, you know, I would have maybe thought ahead a tiny bit and put

like, along with his issue of the Bible that he was, you know, his printing press issued at the time, I would have just put a little, like, thumb drive you know, that had like, here's some vital info. You can't use this now. Don't try to plug it into a tree. You guys don't have the technology for this.

But someday, they'll be able to pop in this thumb drive. Maybe it'll have like a Beatles song on it just for fun. Back when Windows 95 had that Weezer song or whatever. Maybe it'll just have one of those things and then it'll be like, hi, I'm God. So here's all the evidence you need to believe in this it'll be a it'll be a free you too song i think is what oh god pre-installed yeah but god didn't even have a choice jesus thumb drive whether you want it or not you kind of sound to me like a fucking jesus birther yeah i mean honestly like oh where's the birth certificate, Jesus?

Yeah. No, Jesus birthers just think he was born like, you know, born in Nigeria or something. They don't think he was. They don't. They're not buying that he was born in America, like most good Americans believe. You know, so here's what I'd like to do. I'd like to read a couple of because I think these we got two messages on our Facebook page when I posted this article. I actually think both of these both of these comments are kind of indicative of what you had, what you had presented earlier about how about how Americans just tend to. And I think maybe a lot of Christians in general tend to like they don't want to even think about the idea of the historicity of Jesus, right? Like, they just want to assume that that's true so they can move on to part two, which is the divinity of Jesus, right? So I posted this article, and we got these two comments, and so I kind of want to get

your thoughts, guys, on these. All right. So this person posted, how horrible to believe in a man that spent his life spreading love and acceptance. If I'm wrong, so be it. But if praising jesus makes me a better person who are you to argue our beliefs should hurt no one as an atheist you believe there is nothing out there what does it hurt if the rest of us believe who do we hurt

who do we harm so that was that was one person kind of a lot embedded let's cover that okay let me just quickly you guys are big enough to have trolls? Oh, you lucky fucks. I don't even have trolls. I actually don't think that that person was trolling. Well, okay, sorry. Maybe not the strict definition of the word troll, but I don't even have religious people who post like,

oh, that kind of crap. Who are you harming? I guess that wasn't a very good example of a comment, but it basically reads, that's what I get from it. I wish I were the behemoth that you guys are. See, my plan is to create three or four hundred thousand little podcasts that will add up to one of your podcasts.

You've got a hundred duck-sized horses. That's really where you're at. Right. You're awesome. That's awesome. I think when I read this, Tom, the first thing I thought was I don't think praising Jesus makes you a better person. I think that's the huge disconnect here. I don't think praising Jesus makes you a better person.

I think if you were to distill the beliefs that you think are moral beliefs, which may or may not be true. I don't know. I've read, I think, one or two of the Gospels, but I don't know that I've read them all. And Jesus does some dick dick move shit in those gospels anyway spoiler alert so i'm not there put your fingers in your ears you guys just go you're praising you're not praising him what you're doing is just following

a sort of philosophical mindset or a moral mindset based on what he said that's that you don't necessarily have to praise him to do that i'll do you one better it mindset based on what he said, that's, you don't necessarily have to praise him to do that. I'll do you one better. It's based on what some people maybe, maybe who knew some people who witnessed it, maybe said that he said, like, slash was also altered in translation and not, you know, actually documented that there's forgeries that, you know, different stakeholders throughout the years would insert in to try to get their own views across. So the text is so problematic that you don't even know, you know, even if we assumed 100% Jesus existed and we assumed that the Gospels were describing that person, we would still

have no guarantee that any of it was even right. I mean, think about, you know, think about something written in the year, you know, 2100 about Obama, like based on talking to some people who are around, you know, there's no way that you'd have any guarantee that it would be accurate. Maybe you talk to a tea partier, you know, like, how do you know the kind of person that you talk to to get your information from? I think one of the other things, too, that's important, kind of what you're teasing out there,

is that the reason why I think that Jesus' historicity is problematic is that the problem is that Jesus, if he's not telling the truth, if he wasn't just a dude or if he wasn't if he didn't exist and these are just a collected a collection of writings, then the promise of eternal life doesn't hold up. And a lot of the things that you're basing what you're doing on is based on this sort of reward and punishment, not in this world, but in the afterworld. So it does a lot of the things that he's saying doesn't actually add up to what he's saying. So maybe we need to have a better view on it. If you were to take somebody like Aristotle, and if it were to come up that, let's say,

Aristotle was actually a woman, or Aristotle was a slave, or Aristotle was, I can't think of an analog, because there really isn't a very good analog, but let's say Aristotle was something else, something that he wasn't just a noble Greek. Okay, well then, does it change what he said? No, it doesn't change what he said.

It's still the same stuff. The problem is, is if Jesus didn't exist or was, you know, just a guy, then it changes completely what he said. And that's where the issue comes. One of the other things I wanted to bring up from that comment that I thought was particularly of note is that commenter wrote, what does it hurt if the rest of us believe? Who do we hurt? Who do we harm? And I thought that subject of harm was kind of interesting because, you know, getting rid of all the various harms that, you know, we could argue that religion does and just going down to the ground level, like the grassroots level.

argue that religion does and just going down to the ground level, like the grassroots level. And I read that and I thought and I actually commented back on the Facebook page, which I kind of never do. That's not the point. The point is whether or not we want to believe things that are true. Right. If we want to believe things that are true, then how we arrive at truth should really matter. And arriving at truths that are actual should matter. And looking at these questions, I feel like this is like a reaction. It's like, well, what does it hurt? Are we harming anybody? Well, no, you're not harming anybody, but that doesn't have any relationship to the truth of the claim. Like you can believe in Bigfootfoot you're not going to harm

anybody but it doesn't make bigfoot more real like there's not it's not like like every time somebody believes in a bigfoot like one of them just fucking appears confused in the fucking pacific northwest like raw like i don't know somebody must believe in me it's not angels getting their fucking wings what else do we treat that way you know i i hate to yes and i'm not yes and you but now that i think about it i think we treat all supernatural things that way because i was just i i agreed with you and i thought wait a minute i have that all the time with people with you know fucking astrology and stuff if i ever try to say like hey you know this is kind of bullshit what did you't you just shut up? Come on. What harm does it do?

And what struck me about that comment is just how irrelevant it is. Like, oh, okay, so because people believe in this Jesus character and they're not causing any harm because of that, which is this guy's little, like, thesis, therefore you shouldn't write an article about whether or not the historical Jesus existed. Therefore, you shouldn't write an article about whether or not the historical Jesus existed. Like that's somehow it's your responsibility to like check, you know, people's beliefs and see what's going on. And then maybe you can write a factual article about something. It's just ridiculous. Same goes with astrology. Like if you, you know, not that it's very hard, but if you had some factual interesting article to write about why astrology is bullshit, like, is it your responsibility to take into account if people believe in it and it doesn't cause harm or something?

It's like, no, you're just you're doing some factual writing. You know, it's really the converse. The converse is true about evolution. Right. Should we not stop writing about evolution because people don't believe it? Right. Yeah. Like, I mean, what do we take a poll? Is that how we decide what's true?

That's how you decide if you write articles or not. The other comment kind of goes in the same vein. So somebody wrote, there isn't definitive evidence of many figures from antiquity even existing. Did Plato exist? Aristotle? Muhammad? Regardless of one's opinion of divinity, the historical burden of proof is to disprove a figure's existence. What? Many have also claimed Shakespearepeare is a myth you're going to believe that one too and i thought like and i answered back to this person too because i was feeling saucy today but uh you know my my feeling is like well we should be skeptical of figures from antiquity because they could be aggregate characters right they could be right

allegorical characters they could be fictions that are created that are representative of a number of people, or of the ideas of a whole culture. Here's the thing that people, I think, don't get, because you're very right. Yes, thank you. It was, people don't get that you kind of know what you're talking

about sometimes. That's what I'm trying to say. No. No, what I got from the lectures I watched, which was very interesting is, no, actually, we do have way more evidence that Plato existed. People just assert that. Or I think there's another example, people use some general or something from that time. They'll say, well, we don't know he existed. But it's like, well, what happens is for people who really existed you get a shitload of incredibly boring writing about them you get like weird documents or random like mentions if they're historic you know notable people you'll get like

well you know just some random shit like an invoice it'll be like a bill it'll be like a cable bill that like it's like yeah to yeah, to Shakespeare, pay your Comcast. Like, here's how much you owe. You'll get a bunch of random shit like that. And it'll kind of, you know, it'll tie in together and it'll connect and it'll be consistent. One example was, I think of this general he was talking about, his face is on a coin. It's like that kind of crap from that time, you know, and just a bunch of little stuff like that where we actually do have a ton of evidence. People just like, you know, Christians just a bunch of little stuff like that, where we actually do have a ton of evidence.

People just like, you know, Christians just like to assert, well, we don't know really that anyone existed. And another thing about Jesus that's interesting is that almost all the writing is written from the sort of Christian perspective. There's almost, there's nothing that's just like, oh, this guy, Jesus was executed, like happened to be, you know, there's nothing from that just like, oh, this guy, Jesus, was executed, like happened to be. You know, there's nothing from that perspective that's strictly factual. So it's very – you can be more skeptical about Jesus than you can about other historical figures. So, Thomas, if people were going to find one of your many podcasts and or all of your podcasts, where would they look?

Just throw a dart out in the wilderness. You'll find them. All they have to do, Thomas, is plug their headphones into any headphone receptor and they will get one of your podcasts. Yeah. You got a Walkman from the 80s. I'm on there. I'm huge in the Walkman charts. Yeah.

Just my favorite thing to say is go on iTunes and search Atheist. Yeah, just my favorite thing to say is go on iTunes and search Atheist. Just an I after Atheist and I'll pop up because no one else has a podcast called that. I'm starting a podcast called Atheist-y. Oh, you bastard. You're cutting in on my market share. This means war. It'll just link back to our original show just so we can fuck with you.

The thing is, is if I created that, there's no way I would be able to create it faster than you've already created it so that's right yeah i've got guys working on it right now i'm working on a concept for the show yeah search thomas in the bible or search comedy shoeshine in the itunes store that seems to be where people want to go wonderful thank you so much for joining us on our 200th episode it was great to have you on as always hey thank you guys you're my absolute favorite podcast to come on and do. Don't tell any other podcasts. Actually, you can tell. Fuck them. You guys are my favorite to come on and do. Congratulations from the bottom of my

podcast mogul heart on your 200th episode. You guys are amazing. It's really fun. Alright, man. Well, back into the private plane and just sip the champagne on the way back. All right? That's our fucking expense account you're hitting.

No promises. Don't you ruin our hookers. Oh, no. They've seen me naked. They're ruined for life. Yeah. They actually weren't any good. They were just crying in the corner.

That's the way I like them. Oh, no. weren't any good. They were just crying in the corner. That's the way I like them. Oh, no! So we want to thank our brand newest patrons. We got a ton of patrons this week and we just want to thank everybody. We want to thank Tor, Wesley, Travis, Dimitri, Michael H, Jeff,

Steven, Chris, Jason Ott, Emily, Paul, Chris, Joshua, Tim, Squall, Jay, Anthony, Benjamin, Adrienne, and Jack. Thank you all so much. We just really appreciate the groundswell of support we received this last week. And we really appreciate all our patrons. So thank you all so much for donating to the show. Absolutely. And, in fact, we made some improvements today to some of our equipment, some of our setup. We're getting Cecil out of a shitty folding chair and onto a skid loader or something. Yeah. You got to make sure we got a hydraulic jack.

So I actually lift myself up in Glory Hole Studios up and up close enough to the mic. Because right now my head is literally straight up and down. Like I look like a bird that's ready to feed. Like my mother's ready to regurgitate in my mouth. That's how I have. The best part is there's two decent. There's one decent chair in Glory Hole Studios. Cecil is like 30 feet taller than I am. and he's stuck sitting in this fucking ridiculous little chair.

So for once, I get to be the tall one. We didn't get a ton of email this week, but we got enough that we want to talk about. The first one is from Quincy, and Quincy says, I have a question. I wonder if you can address. A few days ago, my childhood cat died of old age. I was lucky enough to be able to be there holding him as he died. I wonder if you're friends with me on facebook you'll likely know this however many of the responses to my excessively emo posts about my dead cat told me that he was in a better place and heaven gained an angel that night what a weird thing to say about the angel like it's just like because there is nothing more terrifying than a cat with wings. That's all I'm saying.

Like, a regular cat, probably scary. A cat with wings, I'm fucking, I fold. A cat with wings can be indifferent in so many more dimensions. Oh, gosh. I'm out. Yeah, I'm out. And then it says. Think about how many birds it can catch.

The bird. They would fold. If I was a cat with wings, I'd fold my fucking wings up, jump, miss the bird on purpose. And just when the bird felt safe, fly up after it. Be like, fuck you. Says my own mother, who is an atheist as well, talked about him going to heaven and meeting our dog who died many years ago. I understand that some people find comfort in these thoughts, but it took me out of the moment to think, fucking really? My cat is playing on the goddamn rainbow bridge. comfort in these thoughts but it took me it took me out of the moment to think fucking really my

cat is playing on the goddamn rainbow bridge if he hasn't been cremated yet he's in a pile with other frozen dead animals right now is there any polite way to tell people to knock it off with uh the god in heaven and heaven and the kitty angels bullshit or just tell me you're sorry and my cat died i know that they meant the best, but it's really frustrating. And this is from Quincy, who is also a girl. She went out of her way to mention that so we can call her she. Yeah. Because that's awesome because I totally always mess up.

I would have just been like, call her dude. Yeah, I wouldn't have had any idea. Quincy, first I want to say I'm sorry for your loss. I've had a couple of uh older cats die within the past couple years and it's it's super sad it is it's super just sad and i i was there for both my cats holding them when they died too and that's i think that's the way to go but it's fucking ultra fucking sad when it happens i mean it's not there's nothing it's it's like getting hit with a face with a fucking brick i mean mean, it's really just the most, like, heart-wrenching thing you can do.

Because you've had this animal for a long time. I know you've done it to dogs, too. So it's like, you know, it's a fucking bad feeling. It's not a good feeling. So, you know, my heart goes out to you for sure. But just know that they're in a better place. No, I'm kidding. Haven't gained a kitty angel that day, is what we want to say.

I haven't gained a kitty angel that day is what we want to say. I think it's hard to not look like a jerk and not come off like a jerk if you snap on someone who says things like that. I think you've got to take the context in which they're saying it as positive, even if you don't accept the things they say. They don't mean anything by it. They don't mean to hurt your feelings and they don't want to start a debate. They just want to wish you well and say, you know, I'm sorry. But this is sort of the program response they have to say, I'm sorry. So I try not to take it to heart. They mean good. They're just not able to express themselves in a way I think that would satisfy both of you. Yeah, I don't think that there is a way to say like this is how I want you to express your condolences to me.

You know, even though it may be totally you. I mean in any grief situation, right? I think that there's there's a there's a way that you can have grief or condolences rather expressed to you in a way that feels meaningful to you. And many people are not going to do that. Many people are going to express condolences the way that they would like condolences expressed to them. And so the things that are comforting to them are the things that they're going to try to

do that's comforting to you. You know, like when I know that like personally, like when I know people that are grieving or going through something difficult, what a lot of times I'll do is make a food. I got to make somebody a food and bring them a food. Cause I don't know what else to do. It's an awkward, difficult thing. And you just want to be like, I care about you.

Here's an expression of my caring about you. So just, just don't even listen to the words. Just take it as that noise they're making with their mouth hole. That's them loving you. Yeah, that's them trying to be good to you and trying to be nice to you. I understand, though. It totally, 100% annoying. And I get it.

I get hearing somebody say something like, oh, but your cat's in a better place now. And I'm just thinking, no, because they're not alive anymore. Right. We got a message from Craig who's listening in a better place now. And I'm just thinking, no, cause they're not alive anymore. Right. We got a message from Craig. Who's listening in the past. Yeah. Yeah. Craig,

Craig relays the story of his, uh, obtaining an iPod for which to listen to podcasts, which amused me greatly. He acquired the iPod. I love the way he phrases us as the ill gotten gains of a new year's Eve. Um, acquired the iPod. I love the way he phrases this. As the ill-gotten gains of a New Year's Eve, let's call it a men's encounter group that I, quote, participated, end quote, in.

It's a very funny email. Thank you very much for sending it. I love that you are listening to our show on a iPod that you received as the result of the rather illicit evening one New Year's long ago. So it's awesome. But you also bring up a documentary, and the documentary that you're bringing up is actually a documentary we talk about on the show. So once you make your way through the archive, Craig,

you will find that we have talked about the documentary you're referring to. This is the... Revisionaries. Revisionaries. Thank you. Revisionaries. It's the one about the Texas school board and the debates that they have in approving school books.

We did a whole show, a review of it. A lot of a show on it. So check it out when you get there we've gotten a bunch of requests since we mentioned we're going to go to reason con we've gotten three or four requests of people's asking if they could take us out for drinks or go to different places and things like that uh we're gonna be sort of whirlwind in and out because we're not spending a lot of time a lot of extra time in hickory north carolina so we're gonna as it turns out we're gonna sort of fly in um where i think we're hitching around with david michael at this

point from the airport um and then we're gonna drive down to north carolina the hickory area and then we're just gonna be there from friday until sunday and then we're leaving so it's we're just and we're only gonna be at the hotel we're not gonna have a vehicle so if you want to come see us you want to hang out with us you want to drink a drink with us, come see us at ReasonCon. We'd love to talk to you. We'd love to hang out with you. We'd love to drink a drink with you. It'll be great time.

So feel free to come by and we'd love to see you. But I don't think we're going to be leaving the site very much. No, no. We want to make sure that we have an opportunity to meet and greet and wander around and stagger drunkenly. Yeah, a lot of staggering. Yeah, very much. So we'll be at the hotel bar. We'll let you guys know. We'll tweet out just like we did at Skepticon.

We'll tweet out where we're at and where we're going to get there. I really think that's the only way you need to treat yourself in North Carolina is to be fucking stone drunk the entire time. Yeah, I just assume that all of North Carolina is like that constantly. They're either high on meth or they're drunk. I don't think that's an or. We got a message. This is from Richard. He was talking about whether or not there was anything new under the sun with Barton.

And he makes a couple of jokes. But one of the things that he says in here, he says, nothing new under the sun, planes, anything electronic, water purification tablets, vibrators, glory holes. Now, I'm going to stop you at the glory holes because I tend to think Romans had glory holes. I tend to think that as long as there's been a dick, someone's stuck. Yeah. I mean, if someone, yeah, somebody's like, yeah, I put my dick in that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Absolutely. Because there's been a random hole. Right. And he also says that the Bible extensions PDF that we posted a couple weeks ago is brilliant. That's awesome. And that's great. I'm glad that someone thinks it's fine because it-

We don't understand it. I don't understand it, but he said it was brilliant. That's awesome. previously we'd all been in the TARDIS, but now some of us were in a different room and no one knew what to call us. When I joined the conversation, I just finished listening to one of your podcasts and had a few choice words fresh in my head. Conversations were had, but long story short, I now work in the glory hole. It made a few people uncomfortable.

They tend to. Yeah, it tends to. When you say the glory hole, we had somebody who was going to send us something and they did they felt like they probably weren't going to be able to put glory hole studios on the thing that they were going to send us that's awesome we got junk mail recently to glory we did it was so fucking funny because we we incorporated and so you know we incorporated was as the proper name glory hole studios and And yeah, we got Comcast Business sending us junk mail. It was awesome.

It's fucking amazing. I just, I love the idea that the fucking mailman was like, What? What the fuck? You know the mailman's kind of walking around your house then, like looking in the basement, like, what's going on in there, huh? They seem like such normal people. It's like one of those buildings that they just rent out to film porn in.

Right, exactly. But they're looking like, that must be really shitty porn. I've seen the people go in there. I don't want to see them naked. God, that must be some really niche stuff, man. No one would pay to see them naked. In fact, you could probably set up a thing to make like a donation page where we keep our clothes on. It's like, do you remember those pens where you turn the pen and the clothes fall off?

This would be like, you have the lady and she's wearing, it's just a picture of me and I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt. You turn it and I'm wearing a parka. And that's actually the most titillating I can get. It's better this way. You can put on more clothes. That depends. Self-destruct. People mistake you for a small hill.

They're always sledding down the side of me. Guys, I'm trying to sleep. Goes so fast with all the bacon grease on him. You can sled four seasons a year. So we got to thank all the people who joined us last time and this time. We want to thank both Andy and Marsh. Andy from Incredulous. Marsh from Be Reasonably Skeptical.

Oh, you beat me to it. We want to thank them for both coming on. They're great guys. We really appreciate it. We want to thank Adam Reeks from his shit show, The Herd Mentality. We want to thank him. And, you know, he put in the work. You know, he got, like, early morning to put that piece together that he did last time.

And he did a great job. He did a great job. It's super funny. You know, we were really thrilled with that. David Michael, who came and endured us down in the Glory Hole Studios. Yeah, he's tolerable. He's from My Book of Mormon, so we want to thank him. We also want to thank the people

who appeared in this podcast, Jake from Imaginary Friends Show podcast. Jake is one of our favorites. We love talking to Jake. Great dude. Thomas from Thomas and the Bible. Oh, boy. From Atheistically Speaking.

Atheistically Speaking and from Comedy Shoe Shine. And Serial. So he came from all those podcasts. We want to thank him, of course. And he had us on his show last week, so if you missed it, you can go to Atheistically Speaking, 99 and 100. We're on both of those.

So if you want to listen to us on his show. And we also had Noah and Heath on from The Scathing Atheist. And what was the other podcast called? 99% Sure on a Name? Is that what it's called? Yeah, I think that's what they're not naming it. Their skeptical podcast is called 99% Sure on a a name which is a weird name for a strange one i don't know strange one but i think that's i think it'll be a success i think yeah it'll be

a success because they'll hit it out of the park for sure yeah but we want to thank them of course for coming on they were great to have on and we had a lot of fun talking to them too we want to thank everybody who joined us and we want to thank everybody who listens we're always thrilled uh with all the people that we get a chance to meet through this podcast. And we get a chance to really meet some great people and talk to some people that, you know,

we would have never had a chance to meet if we didn't do this show. And, you know, it's just, we, we didn't know that this show was going to be even remotely popular when we started it. We,

we were going to be happy with a couple hundred downloads a week. And we were thrilled when we first got our, you know, broke a hundred with this show. We were just thrilled. happy with a couple hundred downloads a week, and we were thrilled when we first broke 100 with this show. We were just thrilled. I remember when you called, and you were like, there's 1,000 downloads. What is happening? We thought it was like a glitch. We're like, well, that's never going to happen again. Doing this show has been really an adventure.

It's been a lot of fun. Like you said, we've met a lot of people, but just the opportunities that we've had as a result of doing this show has been really an adventure. It's been a lot of fun. Like you said, we've met a lot of people, but just the opportunities that we've had as a result of doing this show, some of the places we've been able to go, the people we've had an opportunity to talk to. I couldn't be happier with the first 200 episodes. I'm really going to slack off now, though. I'm just saying.

Quality decline, sir. Are you planning on having a series of heart attacks and going into a coma? Huh? Are we doing a show? So we're going to leave you on our 200th episode, as we always do, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. 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 and towers tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Outro Music