Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 208: I’m Tagging in the Owl

Episode Date: February 16, 2015

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Hey guys, this is Mike in California. Something that you guys said kind of resonated with me regarding Christian women being repressed. I have a friend, one of her little nieces had posted something on Twitter about someone that had a six-pack and was good-looking. She said, I just want to sit on his face. And, you know, everybody in the room started laughing, whatever. And, of course, the Christian girl, my friend, she didn't understand what that meant. She could not understand what it meant to sit on someone's face. So we had to kind of sort of explain

to her understanding that she's a Christian woman what the benefit of sitting on a face would bring. But it was kind of crazy. Anyways, glory hole, motherfuckers. You have a good day. Hi, this is Emmy Wood from Raleigh, North Carolina. I just wanted to say I hope you guys know the backstory to 50 Shades of Grey. It was written by the username Snow Queen Ice Dragon, which is available online as Twilight Erotica. Yes, so 50 Shades of Grey is Twilight porn. Hey, Dom and Cecil.

Just had a thought to share with you about the Sabbath Helper Monkeys. Now, in Genesis chapter 17, when God commands Abraham to circumcise himself and his new family and the whole covenant between him and God,

it's made very clear The family is, you know, the whole covenant between him and God, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, it's made very clear that slaves are included in the bargain. So I think there's a case to be made that monkeys are going to have to get the chop, too. So now that I've put the image of severed monkey penises in your heads, I think my work here is done. Glory, hope, love you guys. 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 live 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 208 of Cognitive Dissonance. And we just got done recording an incredulous episode. Yeah, and that should be available sometime next year. Well, let's be charitable. I know.

I think we have every reasonable expectation to listen to that show on the flight down to Reason. I think that that's an entirely reasonable expectation. Sure, the first half of it will be ready. But we recorded with the Scathing Atheist crew, so it was Noah and Heath and Tom and I on Incredulous, and Andy's always funny and Noah and Heath were really funny. So when that comes out, we'll list it on the show notes. But we had a great time recording, and we really had a a lot of fun and we're looking forward to the episode. Cause it

was, it was laugh out loud, funny throughout the whole thing. I was laughing until I was crying and the whole thing turned into really a commercial for be reasonably incredulous. Yeah. Be reasonably incredulous was a huge, I strongly encourage you guys to check that out. A Marsh's a Marsh's baby there. It's reasonable. Yeah. Skeptic. Be reasonably skeptical. Be skeptically reasonable. No, it's be reasonably skeptical with a K. I think that's it. But we nailed that. And here we are

recording here in beautiful Glory Hole Studios. We are together again. Again. And it feels so good. I would point out for our listeners that this is a post-meal episode. Oh, it's nappy time. Right? See, so I used to have a pretty strict policy when we would work on each other's houses with each other.

We'd have a policy that we don't eat at all until we're done working. And there was a good reason for that. It's because food and the overconsumption of food makes us. The massive, the unbelievable massive overconsumption of the food yeah makes us incredibly lazier that during our meal my infant son vomited the contents of his stomach yeah and someone else's stomach yeah all over like sitting else's stomach. All over. Like, he's sitting at the table in his little high chair thing. Yeah.

And Cecil's response was to look blithely over at the piles of cream-colored vomit and reach casually for another slice of pizza. Look, that pizza isn't going to eat itself. That's all I'm saying. It's not now. You're an atheist. Give me a fucking break, Michael. All right, you know what? We need to start going to church every week. We want to talk about the story that's kind of setting the atheist community so kind of a buzz or a light.

And that is the murders that took place in Chapel Hill. Now, the story goes that there is a vocal atheist and the media found out he was a vocal atheist because of what he wrote on Facebook. Yeah. And the pages he liked, like anti-theism, he liked. He also liked Seth. Yeah. I don't know if you saw that. Yeah, I know. He liked Seth.

So, you know, I don't think that you get a lot of go kill your neighbor doctrine from the thinking atheist. Yeah, I haven't heard that episode. I don't know which one that is. Is that behind the paywall? I don't know. You know? Right. And anyway, this gentleman murdered three people.

Don't call him a gentleman. Okay. I don't know why. Because clearly at this point he turned himself in. I think he's saying I did it. Yeah. So this scumbag killed killed three people i don't know i did that just reflexively yeah i don't know um but the guy killed three people murdered him fucking like execution style um and the the three people that he killed were muslims yeah and you know this guy is an anti-theist uh-huh and so the media is attempting to draw a correlation there between this person's anti-theistic views and the impetus for their action.

Sure. When, in fact, all of the stories all report that the police are saying. Yeah. The police are the ones that are saying that it appears to be a parking dispute even if it was for let's i'm just going to make an assumption and say that those people are right that he killed them because he did not like religion i'm going to say that let's say let's just say that's right say for the sake of argument what's it there is it proves nothing because there is no doctrine whatsoever that i know of that i would i would ever uh ever encourage anyone to follow that says that you should go out and hurt another human being that just doesn't i just don't i don't follow that says that you should go out and hurt another human being. That just

doesn't. I just don't. I don't follow that type of doctrine. I know many, many, many, many other atheists that don't follow that type of doctrine. And there's no there's just no doctrine that says go out and hurt other people. Now you can Rick people out of context and you can say, well, Sam Harris said that, you know, this and this

and this and this and you can tear it out of context, even though it's fucking completely, you know, when it's in context, the explanation is there. So you could tear it out of context and say, well, when I twist their words the way I want and it looks like a fucking tortured marionette when I'm fucking done, then I can make it sound like they're this devious group of people who are actually out to hurt other human beings. are actually out to hurt other human beings. The very, the most important distinction you have to make when you're talking about being either an anti-theist, which I don't think we are. I don't, I don't find myself being an anti-theist. I don't care. I don't, I really, to be honest, don't care enough about religion to be an anti-theist.

I think you really have to, I think you have to spend a lot of time either indoctrinated or something in order to even get to that point. And I don't have, I just don't have the energy. So I just don't care. But to be honest, it's not about people. It's not about humans. It's not about hating Muslims. It's about hating the doctrine of Islam.

It's about hating this book that is that is changing how people look at the world and bringing us back to a bronze a, a bronze age mindset. Right. That's what it's about. It's not about, I hate you because you wear different clothes or I hate you because you happen to read this book. It's, I hate the ideas that those books, that book give you. Let's talk about why we, why I hate that or why I dislike it or why I don't think it,

it should be so widely distributed or whatever, whatever it is, the argument you want to make. But I don't I don't think that there is anybody out there who's who's who one is a humanist who's saying, yeah, these murders, you know, they're kind of kind of justified. Right. Because there's a look at it in the other sense when because there's all these people who are comparing now atheists to the extremists. sense when because there's all these people who are comparing now atheists to the extremists muslims they're saying these extremist muslims go out and kill people uh and so do extreme atheists so they're trying to make this connection but you know where's the where's the parade the next day to say that this guy was justified in killing them where's the because that happens all the time right yeah they go out and kill a uh they kill a cartoonist and there's a parade the next day that says, hey,

this might be justified or whatever. None of the atheists are going to be saying, this is justified. This is justified. We're not just going to say it. And I also find it, I'm going to let you go after this,

but I also find it extremely hypocritical of the people on the other side, specifically the vocal atheists that don't like what they call the new atheists. And this is like Resla and Glenn Greenwald and C.J. Wurliman. They all say the same thing, which is you – the anti-theist went out and did this awful thing.

And then they say – but whenever it's a Muslim who goes out and does something, it's not the religion. But when it is an atheist, it's the doctrine. And I just want to ask him like what the – which fucking one is it? Because you're clearly vacillating here. Which fucking one is it, man? Is it fucking that doctrine influences you or that doctrine doesn't influence you? Yeah, right? It's like pick one.

Pick one. You've got to be consistent in your criticism. Pick one. You've got to be you've got to be consistent in your criticism. If we're going to criticize, we're not allowed to criticize, you know, Muslim doctrine as being a force for motivation for evil, according to the Greenwald Aslan Whirlman camp. Right. But somehow that same exact methodology of thinking is available for use when it's turned on its head. Right. It's an atheist, you know, who's been indoctrinated into this anti-theistic worldview, right? And I hear that and I'm just like, meh, like it doesn't, like it's a one-off, if it happens to, like, things to consider is that widely condemned by virtually every, you know, group, quote unquote, of atheists.

So, you know, there's not, like you said, there's not been this, you know, ground swelling of support for this action from, you know, the filthy atheists who are like, yeah, let's get them, you know. There's no organizational feature that allows atheists to rally around violence. The other thing is the new atheists, what are the rallying cries for why people like Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, right? The three horsemen, right? Well, two now, but still. One's being dragged behind on a saddle.

But, you know, like what were they famous for? They were famous for their humanism. They were famous for criticizing religion because religion causes violence and pain and degradation of the human spirit and of the body. So it is literally impossible to be intellectually consistent and to say that I follow this doctrine of new atheism if it's even a doctrine. And it's not really a doctrine but to follow or to even agree with or to sympathize with the ideas and thoughts that have been identified as new atheism they're identified as being critical of religion because of religion's propensity to create suffering so you cannot say yeah i i hate religion because it creates suffering allow me to create some suffering right right to add to the prior suffering in order to negate the suffering that's that's crazy and nobody is proposing that like nobody you know no influential voice on that side is proposing that action so it's clearly it feels like first of all it feels like a parking dispute yeah it feels like a parking dispute but even if it is not a parking dispute even if it's a

parking dispute that's also muddled by some other thoughts and feelings even if it is not a parking dispute even if it's a parking dispute that's also muddled by some other thoughts and feelings even if that's the case it's a one-off incident by an asshole right and even if he is following let's say he is he's he's misinterpreting harris let's say let's say he reads sam harris and he misinterprets it and thinks i'm gonna go out and kill people because that's what sam harris wants Right. Because he's the leader or whatever. I don't even know. But if he goes out and kills these people and he misinterprets it, why is that Harris's fault? And I'm going to and I know people will be like, well, hey, you said about the Bible.

Well, the Bible explicitly tells you to stone people to death. Right. Right. So the Bible explicitly says some horrible shit. The Koran specifically says some horrible shit and people don't have to interpret it because it's right fucking there. So you have to twist these texts in such a way in order to get that message that I just don't think that the argument is relevant. I just don't think you can be like, oh, well, you know, he got it from here. Well, he has to fucking twist it in such a way that, you know, you can't you can't.

He could have got the same fucking message from Puff the Magic Dragon. You know, I would be more sympathetic to that viewpoint if it was more than a single person, right? If this was a group of people, if this was some kind of, you know, I'm just throwing it out there, like wacky new atheist church where there's an influential preacher who's standing at the pulpit and screaming fire and brimstone type bullshit and thumping the god delusion while doing it. I would be absolutely critical of that because that would mean that we have not just a human being like a single person out of the seven billion on the planet who said like, well, I'm fucking whacked out and I read this book and now whack me when you have. I think there's a huge distinction to be made between the actions of an individual and the actions of a group or an organized body. You don't have the actions of a group here. You don't have the actions of an organized body.

You have the actions of some dude. Yeah. Some dude is not representative. And there's no atheist, no big atheist names that are stepping up and saying that it was justified. Like that Muslim Chumlee guy who's in fucking whatever his name is, Chunjin Chunjee or whatever the fucking, you know what I'm talking about. Right, right. That guy who's in Britain, whenever there's some horrible shit that happens, some fucking awful, horrible shit, like fucking someone's head got pulled off by another human being because they had sex outside of marriage. And he's like, oh, that's okay because it's Muslim. There's nobody saying that.

There's nobody out there who's like, yeah, totally justified. Right, right. There's nobody saying that. Yeah, there's nobody out there who's like, yeah, totally justified. Right. Right. You know, there's no imams. Yeah. You know, there's no priests. There's no there's none of those people saying like, yeah, well, you know, we condone this or this is this is the inevitable result of whatever. This is just one dude. Yep. And let it be one dude. And last thing I want to say about this is there's all this talk about how atheists always say Muslims should denounce this. Muslims should denounce this. I personally and I think the last time when the Charlie thing happened, we even said like I don't think Muslims need to come out and apologize for something some crazy fucker did. But you understand that your doctrine is giving shield a shield to these other people because you're you're believing the same thing.

I still stand by that. I don't think that we need to apologize for this guy. I think that that there's no reason that we need to apologize for him. He's a he's a clearly unbalanced guy who we just don't have. There's there's no connection anymore. There's no even if he did do it because of anti theism. There is no connection. anymore. There's no, even if he did do it because of anti-theism, there is no connection. So I don't feel like atheists need to come out and say murder is bad because I think we all kind of get that

murder is bad and murder is not a good thing. So I don't think that there needs to be that, that outcry from our community to try to apologize for this guy. Um, and I saw a couple of major, uh, organizations actually did kind of do this. And I, that's a little disheartening because I don't think that there's any doctrine. Point to the doctrines out there that say this. Yeah, I think that's a good point. And I think when you do that, you're almost lending credence to the idea. Right. You know that we have as atheists that there is something to apologize for.

I think if you want to know my stance on violence, listen to the show. Yeah. There's 207 episodes where we absolutely decry human suffering and violence. Yep. And if 207 hours of – Plus. Plus, right? Probably closer to maybe 300 hours at this point of us decrying human violence does not put you pretty well on task with where we fall on this particular subject,

then there's nothing else I can do. Right, yeah. You're just going to believe what you want to believe at chaka. Hookah, hookah, hookah, chaka. I'm hooked on a feeling. I'm high on believing. So this story comes from Richmond.com. House panel approves oversight of daycare providers. Well, not all daycare providers.

What the fuck, dude? Yeah. So it turns out that daycare providers in Richmond will need to license the providers, the people who work there. They'll have to fingerprint them to make sure they're not predators or felons or whatever. I actually think a lot of these things in place. You're protecting your children. I don't dislike these things. I think these are good ideas. I think you drop off like the most helpless thing that you have and you're like, hey, I would like you to make sure that you take really good care of this.

It's terribly important to me. And they're just like, well, we hire maybes. The story in here is fucking terrifying. They say drop off a kid. This person drops off a kid at a daycare. There's a fire at the daycare and they evacuate people and the daycare provider's like,

yep, everybody's out because they didn't have a list. And one of the kids died because of it. No idea how many people are in your place. And they have to, so they're putting in these regulations and that's great. But, but the religious institutions

are all exempt from them. That's fucking outrageous. They institutions are all exempt from them. That's fucking outrageous. They're just all exempt from them. It's outrageous. I can't I can't understand how you can. I don't understand even why you would want this. Like why? If who's pushing somebody has to be pushing against this.

Right. So that means that a religious institution is saying, whoa, wait a minute. The state can't regulate me. And I know that that's part of that, like, you know, independent American spirit sort of stuff, right? Like, you can't tell me what to do on Sam. You got a giant hat, right? And you're very short and a huge handlebar mustache.

And when you shoot your guns, you lift in the air. Yes, I know exactly the person you're talking about. And I guess, like, I get that. And to some degree, I'm even marginally sympathetic to this idea that you don't want government interference in your life. But Mike, I mean, really, this this is the place where you draw the line and you make your stand like, wait a minute. I shouldn't have to know how many kids are in my charge. I think that this should be more public knowledge, though. I think people should know there should be some sort of disclaimer on the form when you take your kid to the evangelical daycare and it says we don't have to follow all the rules that the state puts out.

Yeah, you don't have to follow the rules, but you got to disclose it. You got to tell everybody else that you that you that you don't follow the rules. And maybe they're willing to sacrifice their to sacrifice a little bit of their money. They're willing to sacrifice a little bit of their money to take them to a place that has that ability. The people I'm worried about are the poor people. The people who don't have a choice. The people who recognize that they're not hiring qualified professionals. And what you're getting is bargain basement daycare.

And they don't know the difference because they think, hey, my church, these people got to be upstanding folks. None of these fucking safeguards are in place. Not a single. I mean, they just basically just fucking it's an open door to be like, hey, you know what? We could just put the out for the prison right here and you could just come right in. You know, the prison bus pulls up beforehand and your staff gets out. It's the perfect halfway house because you only have to watch the kids half the day. Oh, no.

So it's literally a halfway house. There's a synergy there between them. You know, wouldn't it be great if it said, like, you know, Jesus Daycare. Reminder, this is an unregulated, unlicensed, uninspected facility. Yeah. You know, it's just like, wait a minute. It's a who's a what now? Would you?

I mean, everybody who has any extra money would go to a new place. They would. They would have. And these places probably would go out of business because I mean, who's going to take it? I mean, I guess maybe if you trust your church or I don't know what that mindset leads you to. So I don't I don't have a I'm not so connected with a place that I would be willing to sacrifice the safety, possible safety of my child for friendly relations.

But there might be people out there who do that. But I would imagine that a lot of people who don't pay a lot of attention to that, who just presume that they're just as qualified as the places in which their other places are advertising, they would drop – that business would drop off. You know, at least in Illinois, the same is true of private schools. Like you don't – in Illinois, I don't know how it is in other states, but in Illinois you have to have a license to be a teacher. So you have to be licensed K-8 or 6-12 or whatever you're licensing. But if you want to teach at the Catholic school, you don't have to have any license. There's no licensing or educational credentialing required. None whatsoever.

So you could just, like, stand in front of the students and bang a symbol the entire time? You could be like, yeah, I'm the math teacher. And be like, what's your degree in? Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da! A degree! You pull your pants down and run around the office. Right. Crazy as a motherfucker!

Well, shouldn't our religious ideas stand up even under a scientific approach? I mean, either thing is true or it isn't. Well, certainly. But listen, Joe, there are some things we just have to accept on faith. So the next two stories, they share a certain common theme, a delightfully common theme. The purple hair is kind of awesome. Yeah. So this comes from Fox News.

Katy Perry, God spoke to me before a Super Bowl performance. Katy Perry says that she received a message from God. And the message was, how you doing? I've done at least one thing right. You know, I could maybe come down there. We could create another savior. What do you think? This conception will be anything but immaculate.

She says it's so funny. She said she overprepared and she did a lot of prayer and meditation. I'm thinking that any success came from the over-preparation portion of the program, right? Maybe. But she says, it's funny, I was praying and I got a word from God and he says, you got this and I got you. Because God was like, totally

into the halfway show. Yeah. Half-time show. Halfway show. Halfway show. I'd watch that with Katie Perry. Halfway show. Whatever. It's the middle. It's show. Whatever. It's the middle. It's the middle show. The middle part of the footballing. It's the show of the middle footballing.

That's what it's called. It's when the guys are tired and they need to rest for half an hour. And the announcers want to talk for 20 minutes. Right. That's what it's called. Yeah. It's the locker room thing. It's the break.

It's the commercial break. It's time for the- It's the puppy bowl. Isn't it? No, the puppy bowl is during the game. The kitten bowl- The kitten bowl is at halftime. It's the halftime show. it? No, the puppy bowl is during the game. The kitten bowl. The kitten bowl is at halftime. It's the halftime show.

Yeah, that's halftime show. Speaking of kitten bowls. I can't say it. That's a pussy I would watch, though. I threw it up there for you. I couldn't do it. I'm hoping you spike the volleyball. Oh, God.

Gosh. So then later. I would ride her like a dark horse. So that's all I said. I love this. He says, and then I was on top of the lion. Oh, yeah, you were. Just some random guy.

He looked at me with a headset I've never communicated with before. And he just looked me straight in the eyes. He said, you got this. And I was like, oh, this is God confirming I can do I had no idea God was like a roadie I know like God's like God's like the key grip he's like the gaffing tape just taping down cords in the side boy no that's Jesus yeah Jesus is the best boy he's the best lord. Yeah. This is just pretty evident. But when you're religious, I think if you want an explanation for something, it's very easy to find one.

Sure. And this is exactly the explanation. Her showing off without a hitch. It's just like Russell Wilson guy who's like, I threw a bunch of interceptions, but God wanted me to because I came back and won the game. You know, that's a stupid thing to say because you fucking threw an interception on the last fucking play of the super bowl and uh that didn't work out so well for you you never even should have thrown the ball exactly right at all yeah so so clearly there's a there's uh you know there's something there where you know these people want to justify what just happened through their own faith and this is just an example of that her justifying what just happened i mean

she had a great what if her fucking super bowl show sucked what if lenny kravitz guitar exploded or you know or missy elliott really did start rapping backwards or whatever you know i mean you would have this really weird experience that just and and she would be like she certainly wouldn't be blaming the failure on god and that's what happens all the time and isn isn't that a shame, right? Like, here it is, like somebody, whether you're a football player, whether you're a performer, whatever it is, whether you're just some dude,

when you give all the credit to God, you don't give yourself the props for all of the work and the preparation and all of the shit that you've done ahead of time to make your own successes. And you don't even give credit to like the fortunate stance that you just happen to have in your life too that led you to this series of circumstances. Instead, you look at the world like it was – like in this weirdly sort of narcissistic way.

It's all just narcissistic. When you think of a personal god, it can't be anything but ultra-narcissist. And it's weird because it's narcissism that also strips you of your agency. Right. So it's not only narcissistic, but then it's also kind of self-defeating because you look at your world and you're like, yeah, I did great. But it was all just because, you know, I got a wish from a magic genie. Sure. You know, that's why I did good.

It has nothing to do. If it really had nothing to do with that, then why did you do all that work ahead of time? Yeah. Like, oh, yeah, I overprepared and I was, you know, I knew I was going to be on the world stage and doing this big thing. And so, you know, I had this massive crew of people behind me and I, you know, had the talents and energies of, of really literally the best that money could buy. Yeah.

Well, except for, except for the people who joined her on stage. I mean, Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott. I felt like I was in 2003. The third best that money can buy. That's demonic, everybody. It is absolutely demonic. But Cecil, not everybody agrees. No.

Because WorldTruth.tv says that Katy Perry promotes dark magic at the 2015 Super Bowl halftime show, saying that a great wave of spiritual darkness was settling in over America. And this is straight TimeCube crazy. This is nuts. Did you see some of the charts in here? The charts are outstanding. The Sam Hayne October 30 for the Gs,

the weird, I don't even know what this is. What is this? It's like a't even know what this is. What is this? It's like a crazy mobile is what it is. Right? Like if you hung it up over your bed, you would go insane by the morning. You wake up. Is what would happen. You're just like, eyes are bleeding and you're murmuring Cthulhu.

You're like, room 23, room 23. Rad, rad. All they're doing is looking for symbols that they can try to say, look at how bad she is. But you're just like, wait, didn't she just talk about God? I don't understand how we're going to black magic here. Because she has a song that is clearly about black magic. It's like a fucking song, man. Just because you say it doesn't mean it makes it so.

And like you said, the stuff they're trying to draw comparisons to, the symbols they're trying to find in the show. Trying to draw comparisons to the symbols they're trying to find in the show. First of all, if you're doing that, if you're that weird super symbol hunter, just stop. Take a step back from the walls you have clearly written on top to bottom in your own feces and blood. Take a step back from there. Recognize that you're fucking batshit insane and check yourself into all of the hospitals. Every hospital. If there was a fucking podiatry hospital, you'd need to be checked into it.

You're so crazy when you're one of these fucking symbol hunters. Yeah. I mean, isn't there? And it strikes me, too. Like, is there no limit? Like, when you're bagging symbols, because they go out and they're just like, they get their limit and then some. Right. They found a checkerboarded floor. Right.

Right? So there's a floor that looks like a chessboard. And they happen to find it in some other area. And they're just like, oh, this is clearly demonics. And the Freemasons. Yeah. They're like, it's from the Freemason Secret Society. Really?

It's from the Freemason Secret. A woman who could not possibly be a part of a fraternal organization dancing on a checkerboard pattern. Yeah. Is somehow promoting an or that's that's like that's like Kanye promoting the KKK. What I love. I'm gonna let you finish. But the KKK are the greatest organization no the uh the the uh the comment that Katy Perry has though about the Illuminati is awesome she says listen when she

was interviewed in Rolling Stone if the Illuminati exists I would want to be invited I see all that shit and I'm like come on let me in I want to be in the club I have no idea what it is it sounds crazy and I love that I love that that's love that. That's her. That's a reaction. Like fucking bring me to the Illuminati. And the best part is she's like, I don't know what it is, but I go to it. And they're like, well, she's clearly in the Illuminati. No, she doesn't. She doesn't know what it is.

She's not allowed to play. But she wants. Look, here's the thing. Yeah. I will allow Katy Perry into our club. Yeah. She can come to this clubhouse anytime. Yeah.

Glorial Studios. This is not a no to this clubhouse anytime. Yeah. Glorial Studios? This is not a no-girls allowed clubhouse. You can bring her purple hair and her dark magic and her checkerboard pattern. And her fucking owl. I don't care at this point. Bring the owl.

Bring the glove. I'll even let the owl play. I'll tell you what. We'll figure something out. I'll tag the fucking owl in once in a while. Are you kidding me? 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 dot 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. So this story comes from the Patheos blog's Progressive Secular Humanist. Pope Francis recommends violence against children. Sure. Well, he doesn't so much recommend it as he does expressly condone it.

And praise it. Right, yeah. So it's not like a Pat Robertson situation where somebody asked him like a Dear Maury question. Yeah, yeah. And he said, try beating your kids. Instead, he responded to a story where somebody spanked their kid. It was like, nailed it. That's exactly what he did too.

He basically was like, somebody said, hey, should I shake this baby? And he's like, fucking shake the shit out of it. Go ahead, do it. Shake that bitch. They're way more compliant after a good shaken. You know, before the shaken, total colicky baby. After the shaken, he goes right to sleep. Docile.

For a long. As the day is long. Long time. You know, Pope also said recently, which i thought was pretty funny was um he condemned child uh childless couples as being selfish i don't know if you saw this he was like as wait a minute as being shellfish shellfish yeah so we're allergic people are allergic to us it turns out we have tiny pictures he's swimming around in the sea. I don't think I want to have children.

You're like a robot under the sea. So he said we were selfish if you didn't have children. And I thought, you know, this is a really profound thing coming from a childless man. The entire organization demands childlessness first off who takes advice from a guy who doesn't have children whose organization has a long history of child abuse

when you put it like that it sounds a little maybe we should look for a different person to get our advice from. Right. Except for fucking Pope fucking. Like almost literally anybody else.

It's like Big Pope a right hook. You know what I mean? Big Pope spare the rod, spoil the child. It is rather shocking. Let me read some of the things he says. He says, one time I heard a father in a meeting with a married couple say, I sometimes have to smack my children a bit,

but never in the face, so as not to humiliate them. How beautiful. He knows the sense of dignity. He has to punish them. Wait. Dignity? Did he say dignity? He did. He did. He did. He did. He done did it. He done did say that no no no this

isn't barroom atheist come on he says he has to punish them but he does it justly and moves on as opposed to those uh parents who don't beat their children unjustly and then are hung up about it. Right. You know? I mean, why don't you smack your kids around? Move on. Sure. The day is long, man.

You got other things to do. Yeah. You got robes to wear. Funny little bubble cars to drive in. I think you should give people advice on how not to leave bruises on their kids. Oh, no. You know, if you just put the tomatoes in a sock and you beat them with it, they don't bruise, but it hurts like a motherfucker.

Oh, yeah. You know what I mean? Here's the thing. If you hit a kid in the face, then the kid loses dignity. Right. But if you just electrify their nipples. Oh, God. What is this guy?

Like, how many kids has Pope... Which Pope are we on now? Pope Francis. Which Pope are we on? Pope VI? I don't know. How many kids do I have? How many kids is this guy?

I wouldn't let this guy babysit. I will let... Seriously, I will let the neighbor girl's friend that I don't know babysit before I let this guy. If I knew a priest was around, I would actually have an armed guard around my child. You see, there are demons in the earth. Read Matthew, Mark's

Gospel, Chapter 5. There are demons all over where Jesus cast out demons when he walked the earth. This story comes from the Huffington Post. Pastors sexually assaulted women while performing exorcisms. Well, that sounds bad, but actually if you read this, it sounds like it's more than one

woman. So then that's... If you could spread out that damage among many people, then I think it's... What is that old phrase? It's like one dead person is a tragedy. You know, a thousand is a statistic. He's just looking to make it... One dead person is a tragedy. You know, a thousand is a statistic. So he just look at it. He just look at it.

One dead person is a tragedy. A thousand is a comedy. Oh, no. Yeah. This is sad. It turns out that people will manipulate other human beings and say that they're filled with spirits and then try to fill them with their own spirits. Yeah. That's not good.

He's got a biography, which is written on the United Spiritual Baptist Church website. He says that he's married with a vast number of spiritual children. And I guess spiritual children correlates directly to actual children produced as the result of exorcisms. Spiritual children. That's their call it of exorcisms. Spiritual children. That's their call it now. Bishop Dr. Wayne Jones. So wait, hold on a second.

Spiritual, that's what he calls it because it's made during an exorcism. What about like when you conceive a kid on a one night stand? Or is that like a bar child? Is that what that is? Or a car child? Or if you do it out in the middle of nowhere, it's a star child. Like, which is it? Up against the shower wall child.

This is my, I did a lot of crazy things in college child. This is my, I actually don't remember child. Bishop Dr. Wayne M. Jones. Just so we don't get it confused. Doctor? Right. Doctor. Bishop doctor. He's a bishop doctor. Is that like two pieces on a chest board? Is that what that is? You can move

diagonally and forward. He's like a queen. He's like, hey, wait a minute. Wait a minute. I don't want to insult the queens. Never mind. It says he's a man who believes in gratitude. And because of this, he always talks about how grateful he is to everyone who has touched his life in some way to get him where he is now. And I found that particularly surprising because he clearly wants to touch as many other people as possible. Yeah, yeah. Demons hate it when Dr. Wayne Bishop Fred Jones gives them a rubbing.

That's worse than holy water. Holy semen is way worse than holy water. Yeah. It's more powerful. It's more viscous. That's the thing. You can wash off the holy water. Wakefield is not just any researcher.

His 1998 study on autism and childhood vaccines literally changed the way many parents think about vaccines. The study was based on just 12 children. That's right, 12 children. But many parents desperate for answers around the world embraced Wakefield's claim that he'd found a link between autism and the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella. This story also comes from the progressive secular humanist blog from Patheos. Rand Paul, parents own their children. Vaccines cause mental disorders. Remember, this is a Republican presidential hopeful. Rand Paul claims parents own their children.

This is exactly what he said. Let me quote it. He said, I have heard many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines. And then he says, I'm not arguing vaccines are a bad idea. I think they're a good thing, but I think the parents should have some input. The state doesn't own the children. Parents own the children. That's why if I were to ever have children, I would make them work at five years old in like a sewing machine factory or something.

Because I own them. Broken glass factory. Yeah, like a dirty syringe factory. A tetanus factory? They just manufacture tetanus. Nobody even buys it. It just keeps them tough. Nobody buys it.

It's like a whole fucking bucket of tetanus at the grocery store nobody touches. Well, the nice thing is the kids can't complain because of the lockjaw. That's right. They're right. They just mumble a lot. We're talking back now, are you? Yeah. Oh, you starve to death.

What did he say? He said he's seen people, children after vaccines, have this. I wonder if they just don't understand the passage of time, so they're using that as like a marker in a child's life so you're saying instead of saying my two-year-old you're saying the child had his vaccine so that's the marker because clearly you know you're basically saying well he had his vaccine so that must be the cause no it just happens to be after his vaccines that he developed this thing okay well great point to the fucking studies that show that the vaccines are the problem yeah can't do it up sorry it can't just be that it happened subsequent to yeah right right there's more than that otherwise

it's correlation versus causation it'd be like saying like like my son just drank chocolate milk a few minutes ago yeah if 20 minutes from now you know he falls and hits his head and be like fucking chocolate milk makes kids fall down yeah like. Like, that's not how that works. Just because one thing happens subsequent to the ingestion of a fucking thing doesn't make the thing cause the other thing. That's not how things work. You're doing thinging wrong. This is Rand Paul. But is his dad a vaccine guy, I wonder? Isn't he a doctor?

Yeah, Ron is. Oh, Ron is, yes. Ron is. I don't know. Is his dad a vaccine nut i don't know he might be oh gosh the vaccine nuts cannot become i mean that's that's just just got to stop me it really does vaccine nuts cannot become major political they always fucking dance around and i think they dance around because i think all these people realize the effectiveness of vaccines

but they just don't want to lose a political base so they fucking dance around it because you heard what he says here he's like he says something like i'm not arguing that vaccines are a bad idea i think they're a good thing but i think the parents should have some input and you're basically saying look i kind of think that thing is good but i don't want to say some shit that's going to rile up my fucking mouth breathing base that's going to be like well i ain't gonna punch that ticket anymore. Go get it. So you're basically fucked. You have to dance this line as a politician to try to fucking placate the mouth breathers. Right.

It's like the federal government ain't going to poke my kids with no needles full of their fancy science medicines. We get all the medicine we need from the fucking catfish we go noodling for. I don't need no sassafrasin. Sassafrasin. We're going to get a little new. Like, okay. All right. There you go.

Do you vote? Are you over the age of 18 and not a felon in white? You're so short. Can you even reach the pole? You're so tiny, Yosemite Sam. How do you even get up there? Do you have to stand on something or what? It's got to be hard for all those web fingered inbreds to punch their tickets.

You know what I mean? I mean, I'm serious. No, I mean let's be serious. You gotta take a break from fucking your sister to get over to the polls. Absolutely, absolutely. That's normally Monday through Friday. It's exhausting, but you gotta tag in your other brother because you don't want to give her a break. And when you travel over there, you gotta go over in the pickup truck

with no doors, and that's dangerous, right? And who's gonna watch the Coon Dog? They can just run free! You don't want that to happen! over there, you got to go over in the pickup truck with no doors. And that's dangerous, right? Who's going to watch the coon dogs? Yeah, exactly. They can just run free. You don't want that to happen. Who's going to treat that raccoon? Who's going to make possum stew later? I mean, you have to make the possum stew.

It's not going to make itself. But let's be fair. It's not all just a bunch of dumbass redneck hillbillies that are going to the anti-vax. There's also like the far liberal side. Absolutely. That are super anti-vax nuts. Crazy, crunchy, weird people who are. The fucking granola nuts.

Absolutely. And that's actually kind of worse because those people tend to be like pretty well educated. Yeah. Yeah. You know, but obviously clearly not in science. Yeah. You know. Well, there's a lot of woo that those people believe though, the far left,

uh, the really far crazy left, that is equally crazy to the crazy conservative, equally crazy. And you get some of these, you get some of these people who believe in, in that they'll believe in medical conspiracies there. These are people who,

you know, push forward the nine one, nine 11 agenda forward. They, they're, you know, they, there they there's it's rife with people who don't think you landed on the moon right you have tons of conspiracy craziness from the other side yeah and it's it's it's weird to me that that any person can think that access

to google and you know playing around a little bit on the internet suddenly makes that person an expert on all scientific matters like it's like all of a sudden it's like, yeah, well, I've got the authority to question, you know, the entire established body of medical history. Like, really? Why? I, you know, look some things up. I check some shit out. Yeah.

Right. I can drop a few links on a Facebook argument. Right. You know, here's some links you haven't like, okay, great. None of, none of that. Like you're just a lay person. Yeah. What you don't understand like is all of the basis of science.

Like science is an incredibly narrow and difficult field for people to understand when they come at it as a layperson from the outside with neither the vocabulary, the training, the education, the background. They're just like, yeah, well, I can engage this conversation with an epidemiologist. Like, no, you can't. Yeah. You can't do it. You are ill qualified for this conversation. Yeah. You can't do it. You are ill-qualified for this conversation. Yeah. Shut your fucking trap. And, you know, there's another argument that people

make when they talk about, like, how there's no recent articles on this. I was just engaging in this the other day. And you're just like, fuck off. That's because the science is settled, ass fuck. Right? It's like somebody's like, well, that article's from all these safety and efficacy studies are from the 60s and 70s.

And they say that as if that's a problem. And it's like, well, yes, that is when you do them is when the vaccines are first being introduced into the system. And then you do your safety and efficacy studies. Why would you redo them? Would you just suddenly like – did we mutate? Did our humans suddenly – do I got a fucking third arm somewhere I don't know about? I wish I had an arm. All right.

Pinky finger. You know, whatever. I got a third grain of rice somewhere. Abortions for all. Very well. No abortions for anyone. Abortions for some. Miniature American flags for anyone. Abortions for some, miniature American flags

for others. This story comes from crooksandliars.com. Fox's Honig. Hainig. Honig. Mandatory vaccinations could lead to forced abortions. They could. They could, Cecil. What? They could.

What does that even mean? What's a forced abortion? It is a... Is that like when a SWAT team gives you an abortion? Is that what that is? It's a Fox News myth. That's what it is. It's a Fox News myth. But it starts...

First of all, it starts with a vaccination. Okay. And then... And then a forced abortion. What could it possibly be? Well, only Jonathan can explain. Yeah, absolutely. Forced.

I mean, in vaccines, immunizations, Eric, in my opinion, should never be forced, never be required by government, even for the so-called public good. Think about where this could lead if government gets involved in science and medicine. You know, forced sterilizations, forced abortion, forced pills, forced treatments. Government's job is to protect you from infectious diseases however so i think if someone has mumps if someone's contagious then they should be forcibly quarantined by government because they are a risk to the public at large what kind of weird logic is that so i think i think before you enter in this you have

to not know how vaccines work. I think that's I think that's the only way to get where he got. Wow. The number of things that are wrong with that. It's like you can have there are many diseases that you're asymptomatic, but you're still contagious. So waiting until you become symptomatic of for disease and then the disease is identified and then the government is notified. Then the government puts you in quarantine. You've already had how long to walk around spreading fucking diseases.

I mean, even if even if you bought into all the insane logic. Right. Or quasi pseudo logic that led up to that. At that point, it's the fucking cats out of the bag. You've been walking around fucking measling on everybody sure when and since when is it public health policy to give people like forced sterilizations like when is that when does that doesn't come into play it's a stupid fucking argument we're talking about public health policy we're talking about the necessity of vaccinating every person that you can so we keep that herd immunity as high as possible right so that people

who don't can't get the vaccine can fucking live and live a normal life. That's just that's just how vaccines work. You're not just like, well, we got to make sure we get as many abortions as possible so that people can have kids. I don't even what the fuck does that even mean? Well, as liberals, we have to hit our abortion quotients. We got to hit our quota. How many points per game do you have? We're like cops writing tickets, but we're just like writing abortions.

Oh, every time you go over one of those little things in the road that go ding, ding, a baby gets shot out. Ding, ding, ding, ding. The cops pull over pregnant women and they're like, oh. All right, radio it in. Yeah, we got a forced abortion. That's a 293. That's a 293. That's a 293. Like, really?

Instead of blowing in the breathalyzer, you get sucked in the suckalyzer. It's like a vacuumizer. It's like a roadside flow beam. Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, no. We can't talk about this anymore. Please delete the whole show.

Nuke it from orbit. Oh, so this story is just weird. It's from the raw story. Good Samaritan pastor arrested for lying to police about being shot and robbed by a black man. Okay. I love this story. I like his face.

This fucking giant fucking croissant headed man. With his weird flesh colored beard. He looks like a fat peach crayon. It seems reasonably obvious from the story that he shot himself twice. By accident. How do you shoot yourself twice? By being this doughy. You're sitting

in the car. You're like, bang, fuck, bang, fuck. I hurt so much. Why did I do it again? And then he calls somebody because he's so embarrassed that he shot himself that he has to make up a story. They're like, they stole my wallet. And then they look at beside him and they're like, is that the wallet you lost?

He makes up this whole story. Maybe. They robbed me of my things I still have. Because he tells the police they'd been shot after pulling over his car to help a couple who appeared to be having car trouble. The man, of course, is black in this story. Interestingly, it was an interracial imaginary couple. Yeah, right. If you're going to dream up a couple, you might as well go big.

Right. And so the guy evidently tried to rob him, and he fought back, and he gets shot twice. But the best part is that none of it happened. Like, none of it. I evidently tried to rob him and he, you know, fought back and, you know, he gets shot twice. But the best part is that none of it happened. Like none of it. He just wanted to make it. He's like, I shot myself. How can I totally look cool?

That's exactly what it is. Well, it's just how do I not look like an asshole for shooting myself? Right. How am I going to explain this to all the people I'm going to have a drink with or talk to or church when I'm limping around? Whatever it is. How am I going to explain this to all the people I'm going to have a drink with or talk to or on church when I'm limping around, whatever it is, how am I going to explain this to somebody? And so you got to make up a story. At least that's what it looks like to me. It looks like he made up a story about, you know, fucking a band of brigands that fucking struck out upon him and he had to pull out his falchion to fend them off.

And he accidentally fucking decapitated himself. They were robbing to me and giving it to the poor. I don't know. Little John attacked the poor staff. They were merry, that band of misfits. But I guess the reason

why we're talking about this is because he's a pastor and he lied. He's lying. He's blatantly lying to people. Aren't you people that the religious people go out of their way to say are their leaders and even self-stylize leaders, right? Aren't those people supposed to be paragons of your morality, right? Aren't they supposed to be someone you look to and say, hey, this is a person who we get our cues from.

They should be at least on a level of no not breaking the major tenets of their rules and lying clearly is a bad thing and then throwing the race thing in there the race thing is just it's just like he's just like how can i also make a weird political statement virginia well that's i know right makes sense i guess it's not surprising it's not surprising not surprising at all you want answers answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth.

So the story is just funny. It comes from Times of San Diego. Obama depicted as rape suspect in Fox 5 News graphic error. It's so bad. It's so bad. They do an over-the-shoulder photo in this story of the news. They got the newscaster and they do the over-the-shoulder photo. And they're talking about like a rape suspect not being charged.

And they got a picture of Obama and it says, no charges. And his hands up like, hey, what do you want from me? I just knew it. Look. They should have had a picture of the woman sitting there with the rape kit. And it just says, thanks, Obama. Now, to be entirely fair to Fox News, when asked why there was no on-air acknowledgement or apology for the error, they said they really don't do that when it's just a small thing. It's just a tiny thing.

I mean, come on. When all you do is call the president of the United States a rape suspect. Right. Yeah. That's a whoopsie. You see? That's a technical news term. It's called a whoopsie.

Oh, here at Fox, did we accidentally impugn the President? The black Democrat president. Was that an accident? Should we acknowledge? No. Moving on. Did he commit the rape, though? Well, no charges are filed.

God. It's just a stick figure. Like the Fox News. The graphic artist, like, will you please draw that? It's just a stick figure, and then the face is colored in black. Yeah, like, and that's the president. They use that. They use that when the president's talking.

They animate it just so it's like. That's how they actually dub over his State of the Union address with a peanut sound. Like, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah. Every Asian guy is Kim Jong-il, too. Everybody looks the same to them. They just play that Gangnam Style every time. That's a different guy! I know.

Like you're talking about North Korea, and it's just like they just show Psy every time. It's like, ah, whatever. Hunger style. Forced neighbor style. Prison camp style. That's terrible. Gosh, that section can't go in the fucking podcast. It's all in the podcast.

podcast all in the podcast so we want to thank our current patrons weston hugh buzz joe derrick chris and cody thank you all so much for your generous donations it's great that you people donate to the show it makes us feel great that people appreciate the show and donate to it so we want to thank everybody who does that we also want want to say that last week I tried to post a Patreon-specific, Patreon-only content, and I wound up – there was just a problem with it, but it did get reposted. So if you got a message initially that said that there was some content there and there wasn't any content there, it did actually get posted. So there is an extra – there is like one or two extras later on

that you can go ahead and download if you're a patron. So go check it out if you get a chance. And we thank you very much. The patron money helps ply us full of pizza and fill Cecil's car with gas when he needs to drive this fucking 60 miles round trip to get to Glory Hole Studios. We got a message, and this is from Danny. We got a message, and this is from Danny. And Danny just wanted to talk to us a little bit about the concept of marriage and whether or not marriage should be a right and should we call it marriage in civil unions.

Yeah. And so Danny said that he believes that marriage is not a religious right or a privilege. It should never be considered as such, even if it is for the semantics of it. Relating to his own marriage, he said they got married not out of practical reasons, nor to get married because we felt like we needed to. We got married because we wanted to celebrate our love by committing to each other in a ceremony that was made to celebrate love. And I, for one, would not have been pleased if I had been told the traditional way was not open to us because of my lack of religious

beliefs. And there were many other points that were made, but I kind of want to focus on that because I think that there's a distinction. So Cecil and I were arguing in an episode or two ago that you could get a civil union as a secular couple, go get a civil union, it bestows upon you all the rights and privileges that marriage bestows upon you, which here in the States are very important. Those are really significant. So whether or not that's the impetus for your marriage, it's still something that you have a right to as a couple if you so choose to pursue. And then just because you don't have a religious ceremony doesn't mean that you can't have a celebration. And you can call it whatever the fuck you want.

The thing is that because the state doesn't call it marriage doesn't mean you can't call it a marriage, right? You can call it whatever the fuck you want. The religious shit's all made up anyway. Yeah. The point is that the state itself, the state should not be in the business of deciding what marriage is and what marriage isn't. The state should be in the business of deciding who gets access to what privileges and rights. At that point, the state is out of it. Yeah.

And then it becomes. A personal decision. And a social decision. So whatever you want to do. And I think I really do think it's a semantics argument. I think that there's not. We can't argue about whether or not the religious get it or we don't. And you said something in your email about how the religious shouldn't have this option to all lord it over us, to say, I got a marriage and you didn't and yours is worth less.

Think about this. If someone were to say that to you, would it change anything about you with your partner? Would it make you feel like it's less? It certainly would make me feel less if I happen to get a civil union and somebody's like, well, yours is worthless. Well, I don't think so. I think mine is worth just as much as yours. I don't care what you think. As long as I have the same rights as somebody else, I don't care what they think.

So to me, it doesn't bother me that if there is a different name for it, it doesn't change how I feel about my wife. It's like when people say like, oh, you got an iPhone? Yeah. You should get it. It's like, well, then don't get one. If you don't like it, don't get the thing. It's like, you use a Machone yeah you should get it it's like well then don't get one if you don't like it don't get the thing it's like you use a mac yeah shut the fuck up like that shit only matters if you worry about what other people think of your choices right we got a message from max

and max says i've been listening to your podcast studying your words and taking notes for a long time although you are normal humans you seem to uh you seem dedicated to your fight for civil rights for people of all genders, race, color, sexual orientation and nationality. Yet you seem to ignore us, the plights of my people, the purifiers, friends of humanity and other hate groups have been speaking ill of us in the media, attacking us and marginalizing us. And and he also says the attack on Genosha led to millions of our lives being taken by militant zealots. And I'm I'm absolutely with you. The attack on Genosha led to millions of our lives being taken by militant zealots. And I'm absolutely with you. I think the mutants, they need to make sure they are represented. And I actually call my penis Professor X.

So I'm with you. I'm with you on this. He's bald, he's little, and he's kind of handicapped. So I think that it totally matches. I think it's... That's a great... That's a great analogy. I actually refer to mine as Wolverine. Although occasionally he will wilt.

Yeah. Back he will come. He will rise again. I thought you were talking about the hairdo. It's barbed like a duck's. It's like a twirly one that just explodes out of there. And it makes a snicked sound when it does it. You know somebody's going to send us an email like, a duck's penis is actually curly Q, not a barb.

That's a pig's penis. We're going to get that. We're going to get that email. We're going to get it. I recognize. Tom, we got an interesting message from David in Kentucky about suggesting they take books off a shelf in a bookstore. Yeah, so David said, I just had a disagreement with the Secular Student Alliance at UK, at least on their Facebook. I made a post asking people to call a local bookstore and ask if they pull Melanie's Marvelous Measles, an anti-vax propaganda book aimed at kids. I got a lot of opposition, somewhat surprisingly, consisting mostly of slippery slopes about how all curtailing of freedom of speech is bad and personal liberty and so on.

Mostly a bunch of arguments that both sides deserve a forum. I tried to explain that I said nothing about legal action, instead simply suggest a consumer action. But that didn't seem to get through. It had the personal liberty at all costs conviction of a 20-something. Am I way off base here? No, I don't think you're off base. I think it's entirely within your rights to call a private company as a private consumer and ask nicely that they do something. And they're entirely within their rights to tell you to go pound sand if that's what they want you to do.

Exactly. Yeah. You know, we get to vote with our feet. We get to vote with our dollars. We get to vote with our voices. Absolutely. What you can't do, what would be inappropriate to me is if, you know, the government stepped in and pulled that book. I would actually fight that. I think government should not be telling us what books we have access to or don't have access to. As a consumer, you have a right to politely ask if they not carry something. If they tell you to go fuck yourself, well, then you hang up the phone and move on with your life.

Sure. That's it. There's nothing wrong with asking nicely. And, you know, the other option is if people aren't responsive to taking it off the shelves, then what needs to happen is there needs to be either a book or some sort of website or something dedicated to debunking this piece of literature, whatever it is. There needs to be some set rules. If somebody goes through and just debunks the thing start to finish and works their

way through it, and there's plenty of qualified individuals to do that, and then you have a way in which to go on websites and other places and social media and say, when somebody quotes this book or points to this book as a good book, you could just point them to the rebuttal of this book. So there's ways in which to combat it. So I think that, you know, if they say no, there's other ways to do it too. And I think that there's plenty of ways to get the correct information out there about vaccines. You know, what you could do is you could create a pseudonym that's just like a letter or two different than the original author so that your book gets shelved next to it and call it, you know, measles are mostly miserable and write a book that debunks it so it'll get shelved at the bookstore next to Melanie's Marvelous Measles.

Yep. And then that's one way to actually get the book literally side by side with the bullshit. But you can't put that on your CV then. So that's a big deal. I know. I put like Catcher in the Rye on it. Nobody checks that shit. Tom, we got a message from Chris, and Chris sent a message to us and was talking about our – I mean, we did do this.

We really kind of fucked up about Idaho. We really, I think, messed up. We forgot some things. First of all, he says the potato joke is really old. I mean, you're forgetting some of the other things we're really well known for, too, like computer tech parts manufacturing and neo-Nazis. So, yeah, really sorry we forgot about your neo-Nazis. He says it doesn't matter if you're a Nazi. She.

She. I'm sorry. It's a name that is both genders. They said it doesn't matter. If you're a Nazi in northern Idaho or a bigoted religious nut in southern Idaho. You can't deny what Idaho is really all about. Hate and fear mongering. Not just potatoes.

No kidding, right? Get it fucking straight for crying out loud. We tend to focus, admittedly, on the starchy deliciousness. Yeah, absolutely. Whenever there's an opportunity to talk about, like, hate crimes or starch, we always go for the starch. Yeah, that's what I order off the menu. I never order the hate crimes. No, it's I don't want to fill up on hate crimes. I don't know if this is actually true, but someone by the name of Cora said, hey, guys, love the show. Just wanted to let you know that you cannot get polio from the polio vaccine as they use a dead virus in the vaccine. There is absolutely zero percent chance to contract polio from the vaccine.

Anyway, thanks for all you do. Yeah, I don't know. I suspect you're probably right. What I think Pat was talking about, though, when he was talking about that was probably maybe an older polio vaccine. That might be that they could have. I don't know if you've always couldn't get polio from the vaccine. I don't know where that came from. So it might not might be that he might not be.

He might not be telling a lie just or a story just to tell a story, make a point. It's just that was the past. You know what I mean? Like his experiences happened so long ago. They're outside of recorded. Right. And and justifiably so pointing this out is is good because i think he used that point to rebut the fact that vaccines aren't safe yeah and i think that that i think that's a justifiable point if they don't cause polio now

and there's no way they can that's a shitty thing to say because some people might not vaccinate their kid based on that terrible information it's true there's a possibility we're going to be on another podcast this upcoming week. There's a podcast called relevant nonsense that wanted to interview us right now. We're scheduled. So we're hopefully we're going to be on their podcast. We'll post the show notes in the, when that show posts and we'll keep you updated on it.

We wanted to thank Adrian, by the way, he says, love the glory, a love, the glory hole, cognitive dissonance, and the quiz nose demon

and he gave us a very large contribution to our paypal which you can find on uh dissonance pod.com it's right on the right hand side uh we want to thank him for his donation you know we thank everybody every week all the all the patron donors but you know the people who send in the individual donations we want to thank them too so thank you very much for sending in your donation someone asked about buttons that we sell and i think we had mentioned buttons a while back but i don't think we ever created a button i don't think we did either it i don't remember i'm certain that we didn't i don't have one i don't remember them so i would give them away if we had some i just don't think we do maybe i could contact our our guy at indie merch and see if they can create buttons the thing is though that i think with

buttons you have to buy them in pretty large numbers, like significant lots. That's true. I don't think that they'll do individual. But what we could, we might be able to do, maybe we can do it. We'll see if we have time between now and ReasonCon. We might be able to buy like 100 or 200 buttons

and walk down and hand them out. But we'd have 99 to 98 left. We'd have a lot left, but we could give them out on the flight. That's true. No, you can't bring buttons on an airplane. Probably too stabby. You're probably probably right we had a message from david and david said i'm a new listener and been introduced to your podcast via skeptics with a k i am a british guy and enjoy skeptics with a k because of the humor and the down-to-earth nature of the

host a few weeks ago i heard them read an email from a listener that was critical of their use of swear words they made no apologies for using a full range of the vocabulary. Good for fucking them. Yeah. And I, and I've heard them say that many times, like fucking, you don't fucking like it.

So long, bro. Yeah. And he, and he says, but they mentioned in their reply, we do, we do swear a lot,

but nothing like those blokes over at cognitive dissonance. I love that. We're the fucking bar. We're the level that people go to. Like, if you can somehow crawl under this podcast, you have failed utterly. Yeah. Yeah. We are the primordial soup.

It's really hollow. It's all things. Right. Yeah. Yeah. David from Kentucky sent in another email. David said, hey, there's a point about vaccines that we glossed over. Right.

We missed. We just missed. So when we were talking about vaccines, we were talking about immunocompromised people, allergic people. We were talking about kids as being susceptible groups of people that couldn't receive vaccinations and so had to rely on herd immunity. But the reality is, too, that, and David, it's kind of point this out, this is not the whole story. Vaccine effectiveness plots to a bell curve, which leads an outlying percentage of the population for which the vaccine doesn't

confer any immunity, and for a number of biological reasons. This percentage of the population is forced to rely on the herd immunity as well, and worse, they have to do so unknowingly. There is no practical way of testing for immunity that I know of aside from exposing that person to the disease in question. So thank you, David. That's an interesting point. So we are all relying on it, even those of us who are vaccinated. And I will say also, just as a personal aside, I actually got the MMR vaccine for the first time in my life yesterday, as a matter of fact, yesterday morning. I was allergic to eggs when I was a boy. So it was incubated in eggs. And so I wasn't able to get the MMR. But you know, I mean, money where your mouth is, right? Yeah, I'll get it. I went out and got it. Trouble is, I did develop autism. So I wanted to mention Jennifer sent us a message and said, just heard that you fuckers are going to NC. We're in NC.

I live in Virginia, but I'd hang out with you guys for a bit if it's within driving distance. I don't know if Hickory is. It's probably on the bottom of the state. So probably not in your driving distance. But we are going to be in Hickory, North Carolina, very soon in April for ReasonCon. And we're going to be down there for the entire weekend. And we're going to be hanging out and just chilling with all kinds of other podcasters that are gonna be down there.

And actually Cecil, I will point out that I found a reason to be excited. Another one about reason con. And that's that I was recently reading a list of, uh, some of the best, um, small beer cities in America,

Asheville, North Carolina, one hour from Hickory. I looked it up. It was named the number one best small beer city in America. Really? Yeah. So there actually might be something worthwhile there to drink.

Wow. Yeah. Well, if you're interested in going to ReasonCon, go to ReasonNC.com. That's where you can find out about all the tickets. It happens to be happening, I think think the exact same weekend of QED. It's April 25th, 2015. It's going to be in Hickory, North Carolina. And you can find out all the details about ReasonCon,

like I said, at reasonnc.com. We're going to be there. Skating Atheist is going to be there. Barroom Atheist is going to be there. It looks like Dogma Debate with David Smalley is going to be there. My Book of Mormon with David Michael is going to be there. There's going to be a lot of people there. It's going to be there. Barroom Atheist is going to be there. It looks like Dogma Debate with David Smalley is going to be there. My Book of Mormon with David Michael is going to be there. There's going to be a lot of people there. It's going to be fun.

No Religion Required is going to be there. I mean, you just start naming off all these people that are going to be there, and there's a lot of people. So it looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. We're just going to go down there and have a blast. So if you want to come hang out with us, go to ReasonCon, find us at the bar, and we'll buy you a drink. And if you don't want to hang out with us, Cecil just rattled off a list of much better people to hang out with us go to reason con uh find us at the bar and we'll buy you a drink and if you don't want to hang out with us cecil just rattled off a list of much better people to hang out with

more fun more intelligent right better looking people that will take up less seats in the bar that's the thing we each need our own booth we really do that's the problem that's it for this show yes it is we're gonna leave them like we always do with the skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy,

healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment, Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cars, 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. Prudential, 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. you