Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 213: The Burning Bush

Episode Date: March 12, 2015

 

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording from Glory Hole studios in chicago this is cognitive dissonance every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way we bring critical thinking skepticism and irreverence to any topic that makes the news makes it big or, or makes us mad. It's skeptical.

It's political. And there may or may not be a welcome mat at some point. This is episode 213 of Cognitive Dissonance. This is our lucky episode, Cecil. 213? Well, it's 13. Oh, come on. Right?

213. If you had, listen, I will tell you this. If you had a building that had 200 stories in it, it would not have a 213th. I wonder. I wonder. I don't know. Are there 113 story buildings? I have no idea.

Now I have to look that up. Yeah. 160. More than 160 stories in... Where the fuck is that it ain't idaho that's not a place burj khaf khaf yeah that dude that's got to be in dubai right is that dude that dubai is like the place where they build like they're like they're like we have so much money we built a skyscraper out of maseratis why i don't know we just don't care then we poured liquid golden baby teeth all over it what the fuck is going on over there where'd you get the ah don't you worry you're silly or pretty little head about the baby teeth you got to take the baby teeth out of those kids if you want to get a blowjob from your young wife.

Oh, shit. You know what I mean? Oh, God. They don't know any better, Tom. We're minutes into this thing. We're minutes in. This is why we can't have new listeners. Oh, just fucking edit the whole thing.

Just edit it all. The edits for this show should be very simple. Delete. See, we'll start our end point two seconds after Tom says 2.13, and we'll end it with, and that's it. We'll wrap up with the skeptics. The rest of it. We should release an ultra edited episode that's just like that, just to see what people

back on. I noticed that. Just to see what people. I noticed that last episode was a little short. Yeah. Still the same amount of laughing though. Right. They're like, I got the content actually improved. Can you believe what could be the world's most fearsome,

destructive weapon? Obama's third term. Not really. That's what Secretary of State John Kerry is saying about global warming. It's been so hot this winter. I don't know where Kerry has been spending his time, but maybe he's so wealthy they have a special house that all has tropical plants in it, so he feels like he's in the tropics but the rest of

us has been cold as the dickens so this first story comes from salon.com uh the twisted morality of climate denial how religion and american exceptionalism are undermining our future otherwise known as this is why we can't have nice things yeah so this basically is is a incredibly incredibly short article given the nature like you read that you read that uh title and it's like oh man i'm in for i'm in for a fucking treat like we're gonna get we are gonna get down and dirty into this thing and then you read the article and it's just like yeah well you know climate change challenges people's ideas about god and then they don't want to do the work and it doesn't fit with our image of ourself i'm like man salon you guys fucking nailed it again

way to report oh so insightful but anyway i'm drawing your attention to the article that I mock because despite its lack of insightful content, I do think that the three major points that they make are depressing enough to bring up. And the first one, the climate change challenges people's traditional beliefs about God. Senator Inhofe or Einhofe? Einhofe, I think. Einhofe. It's German for? Einhofe, I think. Einhofe. It's German for in the anus, I think. Yeah. You know, he's had some things.

This is the guy who showed up to the Senate or to the House. I don't know what he is. He showed up to Congress, I don't know which branch, with a fucking snowball. Yeah. He showed up to Congress, I don't know which branch, with a fucking snowball. And was like, look, snow means we don't have climate change. Also, I don't understand climate change. Maybe he wanted a slushie. He really wanted a slushie. I don't know.

Why would you show up to the fucking Senate floor with your snowball? And, and, and what kind of terrible rhetoric is that anyway? I mean, dude pulls out a fucking snowball and is like, Hey guys, there's still snow,

right? So therefore no climate change. Like, like that, that is imagining that climate change there's never ever ever ever going to be any more snow that's it it's done there's snow is over that's what people is that what is that the straw man he's creating for the other side i i actually do believe that it is the straw man that he's created because that's the that's the argument i mean you've heard that right like picking up your fucking phone and being like well i don't know my weather app says it's

cold like that's not climate you stupid motherfucker you like exactly what is predicted if climate like exactly what is predicted is happening right like severe droughts and like heat waves and cold snaps and severe person like this is exactly what we were told to expect i've been in some arguments uh based on climate change a few times here and there and one of the things that that people will say especially uh that that just sort of i don't know it just irks the hell out of me is they'll say something like you know uh well the scientists don't know this thing so they must not know anything else about climate change like one one one person recently said something like come on the scientists

don't even know why the global warming has sort of slowed, why it's slowed down. Why in the last 10 years, while they may have been the hottest on record, it hasn't increased. It hasn't gone up like the hockey stick graph. It hasn't gone up since then. That's just pointing at surface temperature of the earth. That's not looking at the entire global temperature of the earth which also includes the deep oceans and the deep oceans are we haven't really had any kind of ability to measure that you know we just never really did measure it and never really considered it when we talked about climate change and now they're starting to look at it and saying oh we're actually raising the

temperature of the ocean a lot oh so what do we say it hasn't actually raised, it actually has raised up. It's just doing it in the deep oceans and in the oceans rather than on the surface temperature. So, you know, even in that situation when people are trying to, they're trying to look at the situation that's happening and they're trying to justify their current position based on picking out little pieces and anomalies that are in the actual data. And what's happening is that people are misrepresenting what's happening on the climate scientist's side. And what happens here, especially in this article, is this person is saying that when the people who are against climate change, what they think is that there's some sort of conspiracy where all the scientists are in on it. All the scientists are in on this conspiracy. And that has not been my experience.

I'm not saying that there aren't people out there who believe that climate scientists aren't in some sort of weird cabal where I don't even know what they do, like worship Frosty the Snowman or something. I don't even know what you do in that weird cabal where I don't even know what they do, like worship Frosty the Snowman or something. I don't even know what you do in that weird cabal. But in any case, I don't know that there's a lot of people out there that have that sense of collusion with climate scientists. I think that more often people don't understand science and don't understand how scientists come to know what they know. And I don't think that they respect the science and i also think that they believe that scientists can be dogmatic and that scientists can look at data and automatically presume one thing and not pay attention to anything else and uh and reject data that doesn't fit into their worldview uh And that's been my experience.

That's been what most people I feel when I talk to them. That's what they say. And that's, I think, a little sadder than people believing in a conspiracy because in this case they're harder to convince because they don't think that science is really worth much. I get this feeling, and I'm just spitballing, but I get this feeling from what you just said that there is a sense out there that there is a thing like this monolith called science and science does things and science knows things. And there seems to be a lack of respect for the for the idea of science as a process for obtaining knowledge.

Right. And that's always been the thing that struck me as valuable. Like if we're going to say like, if we're going to say what is the value of this thing we call science? And then we divide into this thing that we call science. And we say, okay, on the one hand, there is science, the body of knowledge. And then on the other hand, we have science, this set of processes by which we get to knowledge. Far and away more important, I would think, to understand is science as a process. Right. Because science is a body of knowledge is subject to change.

Science as a body of knowledge, meaning like this is the list of things we understand about the world. That's actually the least important piece of the puzzle. And it's bound to change. Because it must change it. The process piece, which comes always in the forefront, dictates that the back end, which is the body, the body of information gathered, the data gathered, the conclusions offered. These are the pieces of science, the monolith that the public seems by and large to, I don't want to say understand, but to know. Like this is like how they think of science. I think this is and again, I'm spitballing. I have nothing to back this up except for my general opinion and experiences.

So I'm not I'm not saying this is necessarily applicable across all peoples. But but my experience has been that when people talk about science, they never talk about science as process, as the method by which we come to understand the world. They talk about science as the list of things that we understand. And if you think about it that way, yes, it would be dogmatic because it would say science has said X, period, rather than science has said X, ell know, science has posed the following question and suggested the following response or some other more accurate way to pose that information that's gathered within that body of knowledge. And I think when we do a disservice to the public, when we talk about science as this sort of monolithic thing rather than this set of processes by which we come to understand. Because when it is monolithic, Cecil, I think, man, you're absolutely right.

People look at it and say, well, fucking scientists don't. You can't even you can't even utter that sentence if what you're doing is respecting process. Right. Right. You can't even utter the sentence. Well, science doesn't know this. You're right. Science doesn't know things.

Yeah. Science isn't a thing that knows stuff. Yeah. And the fact that scientists are wrong or can be wrong is seen as a bad thing. Right. It's seen as a negative thing. It's like, oh, well, they don't even know. Well, of course they don't know.

You know, like that's the process of science to work themselves towards an answer, to try to find things out. To not know something is not a detriment not a detriment that's not a negative thing in fact it's the virtue of this process as opposed to other processes i i do want to talk a little bit about um the mindset though that goes into this about especially about god because this senator uh anal rape or whatever his name is. What's his name? Inhofe. Senator Inhofe is talking about, he says basically, I'm going to quote here. He says, God's still up there. The arrogance of people to think that we human beings would be able to change what he is doing in the climate to me is outrageous. And that speaks to an idea of like, God is here to provide for us.

And God is the one in control. We're not in control. If that's the case, then why exactly do we need to build a Keystone pipeline? If God wanted us to have that oil, he would have just given us the oil, right? He just would have put it someplace convenient. Yeah, I know. He would have just put it underneath Washington, D.C. so we could put it all in our taps or something, right? Right.

Why do you need that pipeline then what's the point and and the fact is is that we do things all the time to help ourselves and to change how we look at the world you know i mean like we're fucking flying goddamn airplanes for christ sakes we we build skyscrapers we you know tunnel under the ground and have public transportation etc etc the idea that like mana is gonna fall from heaven and that we don't have to do anything, it's only to poo-poo stuff you don't like. It's only to say no to things you don't want to do, to say, oh, well, God will provide here. But you're providing everywhere else. Yeah, and it's funny because I don't think that there's another issue that gets the same kind of backward glance that this kind of gets, where it's like they're walking away from it being like, yeah, fucking God will fix that. I mean, you think about like the oil spills.

the oil spills. I mean, if this were the case, and I say this with all honesty, but if it were the case that you simply could not affect change through the actions of man, why even cap them off? You know what I mean? When that fucking rig blew a couple

years ago, the BP oil spill, and it was just fucking spouting oil into the Gulf by the gergillions of gallons. And there was all these proposals to fix it and solutions. Why even bother? If it were really the case that we cannot do anything to harm the oceans or damage the air or affect the climate, then why make even the most modest efforts? Right.

Towards sustainability. Right. Then why make even the most modest efforts towards sustainability? I mean, why just throw our fucking garbage out our fucking window or empty our fucking chamber pot in the street like it's fucking Victorian London? Remember when Rush Limbaugh was like, the ocean just eats that up. I know. He was like, it'll just solve itself. It just gobbles it up. It tastes like blueberry muffins to the ocean what the fuck that is so great yeah i did you see that uh i saw the other day like san paulo brazil or something is like running out of water it's like a major population center

and oh no it's starting to run out of water to the point where they're only letting people get water like three days a week. Yeah. What? Because they deforested the rainforest down there so much that they just don't have the same water table that they used to have. So they changed, I mean, some climate down there. Yeah, right? Like, hey, we don't have water well God will provide we didn't fucking provide me any water maybe bring me a sprite like what the fuck

yeah that's horrible man yeah oh yeah it's a big population center too it's a huge population center um there's 11 million people yeah and there's tons of polluted rivers down there, and they, like, clear-cut all the forests around there and shit. So, like, they're, like, basically fucked. Like, they are essentially fucked. 11 million people are essentially fucked. I mean, I'm sure that there's... There's so many people to be fucked.

They'll figure something out, I'm sure, but it's not without its challenges, you know? That could be clearly avoided by uh you know i don't know just figuring some shit out ahead of time but you know just do a search for san paulo drought and you'll see this the things taps run dry in san paulo sal paulo i'm saying it wrong sal paulo uh drought but water company barely shrugs and there's just like you know you're talking about it says here it says in one of the articles it says four out of the five reservoirs interlink

system that supplies 6.5 million people more than a third of the metropolitan population were were vividly depleted caked red banks have exposed their show just how low the water levels have fallen and they just show like how tiny that is and it's a huge fucking population center we're talking about 11 million people i you know i have read a half a dozen articles or so that lead me to believe that fresh water availability of fresh water will be as big a deal as oil within my child's lifetime i i do believe that that is probably going to be the case. I actually have thought that, you know, here we live, Cecil, right by the Great Lakes, you know, some of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world.

Yeah. And I would be totally unsurprised if within my children's lifetime, if that water wasn't sent all across the world or across the country, at least via pipelines like we do oil. That would not surprise me in the least. A long black cock, long black cock, a long little story from the friendly atheist. In the footsteps of the prophet, Australian Muslim marries a child and pays the price for it. So, basically, a Lebanese dude was determined to marry a 12-year-old girl he saw in a mosque. And with the help of the relatives he organized a ceremony

to marry the 12 year old right got a cleric i don't know how he found one got a cleric to agree to marry the couple um to call them a couple is sort of horrifying um and then he impregnated her so there you go did she did she did she come to term with the baby tom no she miscarried oh well everything was going so well beforehand it was a match made in heaven what a shame you know there's a there's a reference here they say in the footsteps of the prophet and that actually actually references a poem. The footsteps. You know the footsteps poem, right?

I do. I do know the footsteps poem. Except for this is a Muslim version. And there's only one set of footprints. And that's because the prophet and his wife are walking and she's still being swaddled. So that's why there's only one set of footprints. Oh, no. So, yeah. I i mean what do you say about this other than what this is i don't know cecil i really don't know if if religion was the driving force that caused this but at the fucking very least, it was the justification that made this possible.

It's not like this guy is, you know, this guy, I'm sure, did not do this because he was religious. He did this because he's a creep. Right. Right. You do this. You don't do this because you're religious. You do this because you're a creep. But you justify it after the fact and you get other people to let you be a fucking creep. Right.

Because you're a religious person. He took advantage of the religious infrastructure to make this possible. Yep. Yep. Yeah. I mean, what they say in this in the thing that he pays the price for it. What did he wind up going to jail for several years? He paid the price for it.

But at the wedding shower, I think they all paid the Fisher price for it but at the wedding shower i think they all paid the fisher price for it and they gave her all this stuff you know like the little you can't give a kid like that a full kitchen you got to give her like the betty crocker kitchen one with like the little she's baking a wedding cake what is that thing called the the what is that kid a fucking betty whatever the fuck it is. You know what I'm talking about. Yeah, the fucking Easy Bake Oven. The Easy Bake Oven.

The Easy Bake Oven. That's what it's called. There you go. Yeah. It's pretty easy for her to point on the doll where the bad man touched her since she still has all of her dolls. All of her dolls. Yeah, I mean, like, pretty easy.

You'd just be like, well, I could show you in graphic detail where he touched me. Yeah. You know, the couple was registered at macy's and toys r us toys r us so it was pretty difficult to make a choice as to as to where to get them there you know they could they could use the you know multi-purpose the ceremony of the wedding for her mid-school graduation as well so so wow well you know they either that or i mean because she was what 12 yeah you know right yeah so she's a sixth grader yeah oh that's true this guy's not gonna wait who are we kidding yeah

this is a sixth grader so you don't want to the thing is that they're they're an old maid by the time they get to high school a little long in the tooth at that point you know what i mean in and by long in the tooth i think what you mean is they have lost all of their baby teeth and they very literally have their actual longer teeth just getting it in yeah when you're when your 12 year molars come in i mean then you really i mean you're second tier oh at that point right right is i wonder if that is one thing that they do if they if they look a goof bride in the mouth to see if she's actually got all of her teeth. Jesus.

Her new teeth, you know. Right, right. Well, you know, I mean, and that can be difficult because often the brides at this age, they still have their braces on. Oh, God. You know? But it's better now because the Invisalign makes it easier to see back. Oh, yeah, it totally does. It totally does. Make sure that they're still young enough to wed.

You don't want to wait until they fully mature, Cecil. That would be a horror. I mean, because then they might think a thought. You can't have that. I don't know. No, no, no. Uh-uh. Uh-uh man you know i just wonder i wonder cecil where oh where could this idea's genesis

have come from because in order for this to have occurred this creepy fucking pedophile dude right had to get the collusion of the relatives and then the the cleric So there was like a whole system of people. I mean, what possible justification could he have given? I don't know what code, what kind of cultural hero could he have? Oh, right. Muhammad the pedophile. I was going to say John Wayne, but okay. I guess we'll go with Muhammad.

The thing that bothers me about this story. Besides all. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Do not use the singular. I said besides all of it. OK, but this person, Tassawar, I think is how you say their name name pleaded guilty to the offense of solemnization of a marriage by an unauthorized person and was fined $500.

And his religious leader visa was canceled. This is the person who married them. Can we just, if you were to like supply, let's say I were to go to you, Tom, be like, Hey,

you got a young girl I could fuck. And you would say, yeah, I seem to kidnap young girls all the time. I would like you to come in and to my establishment and let me let you have sex with my young girls i could go into your establishment this fake establishment that i've created for you tom where i don't want this you're a child pimp i don't know what is happening in this scenario so you wind up letting me have sex with it do you think you would just be charged with like five hundred dollars for like solicitation with a minor or something like you would be really, really fucked for that?

I mean, you would like I would imagine that you would be completely throw the book at you. I can't imagine that this person doesn't face some more harsh penalty for facilitating this because he really was the one who facilitated it. Without his blessing, it would have never happened. I don't understand why all parties involved, like the relatives who allowed them contact, who were like, because everybody in their duty to protect this girl failed in their duty. Absolutely. this girl failed in their duty absolutely everybody who had an opportunity to stop this pedophile and i and the i have to really think that the only thing that could have induced them to to put aside their common fucking sense that says that a grown man should not be marrying that's a gross word to even use here because there was nothing.

This is not a marriage, right? She didn't consent to this marriage. Yeah, right, right. So to call this a marriage is really a bastardization of that word. Without consent, how can there be marriage? A marriage is a contract. So but the inducement here had to come from, had to come from this cultural bias that says that either women are property to be given away or I don't even know what's the second,

like what are the other options? Like women are property or that women at the age of 10, 11, 12, it's okay to sexualize them and pimp them out? Can you, I can't, I can't see how you look at this and say like, yes, that is the society we want to create. That is how we want to treat girls. That is how we protect the young people in our society. I don't know, man. This next story I found everywhere. This is just from the daily mail

just because there's a thousand fucking headlines for it so i can just read through them and give the highlights um we thought they would kill us they killed the family pet why arkansas state representative gave away his adopted daughter who was six and her sister to a friend who then raped her uh justin harris adopted the girls 2013, then gave them away after six months, handed them over to Eric Francis, who went on to rape the six-year-old. Francis was convicted of sex crimes in 2014 and given a 40-year sentence. Harris' role in giving the girls to a rapist only emerged this week. He attempted to justify the decision by saying that the girls were violent at home,

so victim blamed them. Said his family suffered death threats from the young girls and added that they had crushed to death the pet that was living there. And it's actually a little it's actually even a little crazier than that, Cecil.

Because this Francis ran a Christian school or I'm sorry, Harris ran a Christian school. I'm sorry. Harris ran a Christian school that Eric Francis was the head teacher of. Harris fired Francis and didn't ask for the kids back. Like, this is a guy who said, like, I don't want you working for me, but you can have my children for keepsies. Oh. Everything is wrong about this.

Why is it that you're rehoming children again? Like, what is it? Are you kidding me? Like, can you imagine going through the process? I mean, going through the process of becoming an adopted parent is a long, arduous process as it is. The process of becoming an adopted parent is a long, arduous process as it is. And to think that you're just going to be able to just hand that kid off indefinitely to whoever you like? How does that even work?

I don't understand this rehoming thing. I wouldn't treat a dog this way. And I mean that. Like, if I got a dog, if you commit, I mean, if you go through the process and you commit to bringing a living thing into your home and you say, I am going to make this thing part of my family, I am making a commitment to this other living thing. You make the fucking commitment. And if you're not ready to make the fucking commitment, then you don't do the thing. You don't provisionally bring somebody into your home as your son or daughter. That is insane.

I can't even understand the mindset that allows such a thing to be a possibility in your mind. And this justification that he gives Cecil that, oh, they were violent, so I gave them away. First of all, it's not like, it's not like when you go to adopt kids that there's not a lay, as you mentioned, like a long and arduous process, like there's psychological profile, there's all kinds of things that go into this thing. So you, you have to figure, you at least know a little bit what the history and the, and the, and the makeup of these children are that you're going to adopt. But even this were a surprise the fact that these that like an eight-year-old kid i'm afraid an eight-year-old kid is going to kill my fucking family really is there anything an eight-year-old can do that would scare you other than unless you were like giving a moosey lessons

or something like that is there anything anything that an 8-year-old could do that would possibly scare you? I can't think that there's anything an 8-year-old could do that could scare me that I couldn't find a way to control. So when I say that, I think, you know, like, yes, if I'm sleeping and they grabbed a knife, could an 8-year-old inflict damage on me in my sleep? Sure. That's certainly very possible. You know, an 8-year-old kid weighs, what, 70, 80 pounds, can swing a knife and put it in my sleep sure that's that's certainly very possible you know eight-year-old kid weighs

what 70 80 pounds can swing a knife and yeah yeah put it in my body and probably a little more strong a little stronger than chucky from the movie right but you know i i have to think that that there are options and the option is not like i don't want him anymore he's yours now yeah because it's your fucking responsibility he's violent or she's violent isn't that how responsibility works oh that you that you take on a responsibility and and i and the reason this makes the the show is because this is a guy who ran a christian school like these are the guys who will stand up and they will look you right in the eye, Cecil, and they will tell you about how their religion makes them a more moral person, how it builds their moral character, how it shapes their moral worldview, how they simply could not imagine living a moral life without it. These are people who gave away their children. And these are not people without resources.

This motherfucker was a fucking senator. What is this guy that he gave them to, too? You just, like, hand them off to your rapey friend? Like, what? How does that work? Like, how does that? I can't even wrap my head around how this tiny-headed guy, because look at the size of this guy.

He's huge, and his head is very small. I know, but his neck. He's like a triangle. His whole self is like a triangle. He's a crazy-looking dude. But this guy winds up handing off his kids because he's afraid of them i should say at one point it says like my wife and i had to barricade ourselves in the in a room with our kids our three boys because we were afraid of these other kids and i'm thinking man are you the biggest goddamn

pussy in the world what are you kidding me and i it's just a cop out. This is an after the fact bullshit cop out. He wasn't afraid of this person. He just wanted to get rid of him, wanted to offload him. Because you know what? He still collected the fucking money from them. So this story comes from Fox 19. Terrorist suspect Christopher Cornell. I'm so dedicated, I risked my whole life. In Cincinnati, Ohio, Christopher Cornell, 20 years old, said, quote, when asked if he would

have followed through with his threats to bomb the Capitol, he said, I would have released more bullets on the Senate and House of Representative members, and I would have attacked the Israeli embassy and various other buildings. I'm with the Islamic State, Cornell said. I'm very dedicated to establish the Sharia in America, to wage war on the kafir and raise the word of Allah above all. I'm so dedicated that I risked my whole life. I guess when you put it that way, it sounds sort of religiously motivated. Come on now.

Let's blame this on America somehow. I think he was doing this to end the drone strikes. Oh, is that why he was doing it? Yeah, that's why he said specifically, I am dedicated to establishing Sharia in America and waging war on unbelievers. Maybe what he wanted the drone for was like a Roomba for his beard. He's going to need one. That thing is awesome. His beard is indistinguishable from his hair, like on the back of his head.

Like so because he sort of pulls his ear, his hair behind his ears, sort of flows behind his ears. And in that picture, I can't tell where one stops and the other starts it's like party in the front front right you know like okay you know i gotta say like you look at this guy and the and the only thing i think is like i'm surprised in ohio he wasn't arrested earlier just for just for look i mean if he put on if he put on like an old timey uh suit and one of those top hats they think he's amish that's actually probably true that would be a pretty good disguise it would be um you know they busted this guy buying guns and like a like you know 600 rounds

of ammunition or something that's that's how they first caught this cat. And the reason I wanted to talk about this is because there is literally no way, there is no way Beardy McBearderson here could possibly be construed as having a motivation other than a religious motivation. I would legitimately love to hear C.J. Werleman spin this one. It would be amazing. And it doesn't mean that there aren't groups of people in this country that I have sympathy for. I do. And there are kids that were brought into this country by their parents unknowing that they were breaking the law. And they will say to me and others who defend the rule of law, we have to do something about the $11 million.

And some of them are valedictorians. Well, my answer to that is, and by the way, their parents brought them in. It wasn't their fault. It's true in some cases, but they aren't all valedictorians. They weren't all brought in by their parents. For everyone who's a valedictorian, there's another 100 out there that they weigh 130 pounds and they've got calves the size of cantaloupes because they're hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert well this story's all the sad things it's from thinkprogress.org faith groups are trying to block emergency contraception for raped migrant children

is that the is that the welcome to america prize is that what that is is that like get one of those. Oh, God. It's that way. You know, you're fucked when you read a story or if you're a migrant girl, when you read a story that starts off with estimates suggest that anywhere between 60 and 80 percent of migrant migrant women and girls are raped on their journey as they travel across the southern United States border. That is an astonishingly high number of people. I don't even know how to think about numbers like that. And horrifyingly, rape and sexual assault were major motivating factors for why the girls flee their homes in El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

These these fucking these poor human beings have fucking dirt, poor shit lives in the countries of their origin. They're afraid rightfully of being raped or sexually assaulted. They flee. They travel across hundreds, if not thousands of miles through desperate conditions. They're preyed upon by fucking awful human beings. And they finally make it to this country. And what do we do? Like, what are the religious organizations do that are there ostensibly Cecil to provide aid because they cannot be there for any other conceivable reason? They block emergency contraception for raped children. Right?

Right. Yeah. So, okay. I would be, here's the thing. I would be – here's the thing. If you had anything to say, if you were not – if you can hear those words and not be stunned into silence, then like all of the things in you are broken. And I actually got – I hate to reference this sort of shit, but I'm going to anyway. I got into it on our Facebook page with some dude. He was like, yeah, well, maybe we should just not

let them all into the country. That'll solve the problem. I'm just like, that is the worst. And then somebody's like, what, are you going to go on North Korea? He's like, we'll go on North Korea if we have to on them. And it's like, these are already people who have suffered every human indignity. And then they get here and we are going to heap upon them additional indignities because jesus well i first off i feel like the the emergency contraception thing is a

bullshit argument right that's just a bullshit argument when you're looking at it as a religious person anyway because you can't it's a fucking nothing man It's a it's a it's it could be a period for crying out loud. It's it's there's nothing there yet. It's not like it's not like it's got a degree. It's not like it's a you know, it owns a car and a house and a boat. It's a fucking nothing. It's not a thing. You can't. That's a that just that shit just drives me crazy because that's not, there's no argument to be had there. You could never convince me.

I don't care how hard you try. You know, anything I would say before the first 10 weeks is even remotely human. That's not a thing yet. And I just, I hate that argument. I hate it so much. So I just, that's a dumb argument as it stands. But the very fact that they're refusing this care

shows that I think the contempt in which they are caring for the people, right? There has to be, I think, when you're providing charity to someone else, you need to think about the dignity of that person. You need to think about their dignity as a human being and how best you can preserve that dignity. It's super important when you're handing out charity to anyone to not look down on them, to not be a dick to them, to not say, well, here's your fucking sandwich.

I hope you fucking choke on it. Nobody does that. nobody does that there's this i mean that seriously is one of the very first things you learn in charity work is how to treat other people like you would want to be treated it's a real simple way to do it but it's something that is very important um you can be an asshole and give people charity but it's not real charity it's just you being a dick and lording it over someone right and that's what this is they're just being dicks and lording it over someone right and that's what this is they're just being dicks and lording it over someone they're they're they're they're in name because they want to make look like they're actually helping but all they're really doing is fucking looking down their nose at

the people who show up and then deciding what care they get and treating them badly when they are clearly damaged none of those things are right None of those things are right. None of those things are right with your charity, period. Do you think part of this has to do, your first point about the religious people's nonsensical insistence that pregnancy, you know, automatically equates to life, you know, a human being. Do you think that that, do you think that that stems from their inability to understand exactly how small a cell or two cells are? I was thinking about that as we're talking, because when you said like, it's like a period. And I thought, well, it's even so much smaller than that in the first, you know, weeks of life. It is so, it is like, it's like, we're talking about,

we're talking about something so unutterably small. Do you think that they even really get that? Part of me thinks that they're like, this is like a group of people who, you know, by and large, like they don't, they're not real educated on the sciences often. And I wonder if they even understand what a clump of cells really even means, like objectively. Do you think that has anything to do with it at all? It might. It very well might. I don't know. It's hard to wrap my brain around what other people think about abortion. about abortion, I can get behind and can have a conversation, I think, with someone who talks about viability outside the womb and have a conversation with them about whether or not abortion should be allowed at that point.

And I think that there is some gray area there that we can go back and forth and talk about. But those abortions that happen where there's viability outside the womb womb are so few and far between that's not a fucking normal thing it's not like people you know party on down hey look i can eat whatever i want while i'm pregnant give me some chimichangas you know i'm gonna get i'm gonna shoot this baby out of here before it's ready to be born like nobody does that like nobody nobody like revs themselves up so they can have an abortion nobody nobody fucking psychs themselves out and like high fives their girlfriend because they're gonna go get boardies later you know what i mean like they're just not gonna go get we're gonna go

get boardies on the weekend that's nobody does that you know so this idea that this their idea and their straw man that they create just don't even exist as it stands but i think that i think that there is something to be said about somebody's ideas of what a potential life is and what its rights are and how they feel that they want to stand up for that. However, if they were in a similar situation, they might change their minds

because they don't realize that that freedom that they want to give to that child is impinging on someone else's freedoms to live their life you know in a different way especially in this case right you know you could argue about abortion as birth control in some ways but we're talking about rapes here this isn't this isn't something that these people are going to be happy and go i'll be like oh man remember when i crossed the border and you were born. I was raped.

Nobody nobody's going to look back on that wistfully. Right. It's not like it's not like you're like, oh, those old times when I was crossing the border and he raped me. Those were the good old days. Is that not only are you in the wrong place to be arguing that or fighting that fight about contraception as a form of birth control. And that's not contraception. The day after pill and as a form of birth control. You're in the wrong argument spot there. But I feel like you're really not taking care of these people that have been raped. That really do need your care

they really do need your sensitivity and you know your your ability to help mitigate any damage that has already been done to them uh this is such a horrible horrible horrible thing that's happening and the the like you say the the numbers in which they are being raped is so astounding as to leave everyone's jaw on the floor when you read this article. So far, there's a hilarious show. This is great. This is good stuff.

I hope we could talk about, you know, just like maybe before we finish, is there any way we could maybe talk about beheadings and or somebody who will say lights themselves on fire or maybe more dead children? Is there any way we can talk about all those things? I think we got off the track when we allowed our government to become a secular government. When we stopped realizing that God created this nation, that he wrote the Constitution, that it's based on biblical principles. He wrote the Constitution that is based on biblical principles. And we allowed those that don't believe in those things to keep pushing us, pushing us, and pushing us away from the government. This story comes from the Raw Story.

Angry conservative wishes beheading an Oregon City official who opposes In God We Trust display. Well, that pretty much says it all. I know. I know. Like, what else do you say? Well, I guess there's a video. Do you want to listen to it? Let's listen to it. Trish Seiler received the profanity-laced letter on Valentine's

Day. The writer said it would be a privilege to see Seiler beheaded by Muslims, which Seiler takes as a threat. Will you be my beheaded? The physical violence of beheading, that threat is not made by someone who is thinking rationally. The letter was sparked by an editorial opinion

Seiler had written in opposition to a proposal to display the words, In God We Trust, in the county commissioner's hearing room. That's what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights call for, separation of church and state. Seiler has since given the letter to police. Well, anytime we get anything like this going on with one of our city council people,

obviously, that raises some concerns for us. While the letter may be disturbing and offensive, police say it may not be criminal in nature. Wait. Oh, I guess she doesn't say, the person doesn't say that it's, I'm going to behead you. It's that I hope you get beheaded. Yeah. I just, going to behead you it's that i hope you get beheaded yeah i just i hope it's a the thing is that it's one thing to behead somebody yourself but it's an entirely separate thing to hope that it just happens by happenstance right so i think what they were hoping for was like an acme glass style like comic beheading like a roadrunner you know we like, I don't want to behead you. That's fucking awful. But I do hope that you still get beheaded. Right.

Maybe by an anvil or like a wacky series of hijinks or like a Final Destination style Rube Goldberg-esque series of nearly improbable events that ultimately culminate your head exploding from your body or scanners style. Sure, sure. You know, volcanic head popping. Right, right. Yeah. Any of these things are possible alternatives, Cecil.

I'm not here as somebody who wishes a beheading. I'm only specifying that I would like you beheaded. How you get there is your journey, man. Can we just go back to how Wile E. Coyote gets beheaded with an anvil? Because I'm just curious. I always thought that anvils had dull edges. I always thought that they just couldn't do that sort of thing. But I'm just really curious how that even would happen.

From a high enough distance, I think. I guess everything is a high enough distance. The blade of I guess everything is a... From enough distance. Yeah, high enough distance. You know, the blade of the guillotine becomes kind of irrelevant, you know? Because I'll tell you what, that anvil gets pushed from the top of one of those cliffs, your head's coming off your body, my friend. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right.

It's kind of an issue where we need to find the balance between what's said versus somebody's freedom of speech. Seiler notified her fellow council members about the letter Monday evening, and while she's still upset, Seiler says her opinions haven't changed. You will not get me to denounce my values and my beliefs. It's not going to happen. The letter was signed, American Citizen for for saving America for Americans. That's tremendous.

That is just fucking tremendous. Do you think that happens in Britain? God, that's amazing. Well, you know, like, that somebody signs something like British citizen who is angry that British, British, British, British, British, British, British. I don't think so. I got to hear it again. It was signed. It's so awesome.

Hold on. Let's hear what it says again. It's not going to happen. The letter was signed American citizen for saving America for Americans. It would have to be signed British citizen for saving Britain for Britons like that that sort of like gratuitous fucking use of America like I have to think that that

is a uniquely us thing God is it a po though like I always imagine this person because it's signed and it says right underneath it, God bless America. So in one sentence, they said America like three times. Four times. Four.

Four. That's awesome. They weren't satisfied with a fucking hat trick of America. That could be misconstrued as Canadian. Oh, they needed to add one. This is a person who is defending. I mean, she's right. She's like, yeah, it's fucking separation of church and state.

Like, you don't love America. Somebody cut your head off. That's not going to, like, we're not going to not. Oh, man, that fucking council person's head got cut off. Well, I guess now there's no separation of church and state. That was the only person. That was was it that was the whole separation the whole separation of church and state was you know this one person in klamath falls without without them the the entire religious organizations would run roughshod over america thank you very much klamath County, for saving America.

Saving American for Americans for America. Good for you. I do like that the arguments in favor of posting this in God we trust says,

Commissioner Malum said you're not anticipating posting the motto to be a problem since it doesn't say the God of the Bible. It's not Allah. It's not the God of the Jews. It's just acknowledging there's a higher power. He says, as for atheists, quote, they don't have to look at it. You wouldn't know to avoid looking at it until you'd already seen it. looking at it until you'd already seen it even if that even if that were a solution that in some crazy world made sense you would have to know it was there to avoid it right or

you would have to just have like a like a seeing eye offense dog right that only let it'll tell you like you walk in a room and if it barks twice there's nothing offensive and you can open your eyes otherwise you have to go through with one of those like fucking canes what's that lassie someone said in god we trust we lord we just asked it to be covered with the blood of jesus open hearts lord open hearts, Lord, open hearts. So this story comes from KSHB or whatever,.com, kebab.com, I don't know. Charged mom, God told son to abuse children. Everything about this story is crazy. A Kansas City woman is facing four counts of child abuse and her justification. Now, she's not actually the one who committed the abuse.

She allowed for some of the abuse, according to her. But she allowed it because her son claimed God told him to do it. So let me just throw that back out there. Sure, sure. She is allowing this because somebody said that God said, go ahead and do it. Oh, what are you doing? Why are you burning my three-year-old daughter with a hot knife and throwing my two-year-old daughter against the wall? Oh, no.

It's cool. God said I should do this. Oh, right. And here I thought you were behaving crazily. Can you imagine like just letting a you know this is this is the this is where you've got to look at at religion as a as a major negative this is where you've got to look at it and say religion is at fault here because it is it it is either the fact that she was negligent, right? And she's after the fact saying, oh, well, he said, God, let me do it.

And she thinks people will think that that's okay, right? That God, because God talked through my son or whatever it is that she's, whatever kind of cockamamie story she's coming up with after the fact. Right. That's insulting to everyone else because it's basically saying that we're we're stupid enough to believe that you know god is talking to your son saying it's okay to bounce him off the wall bounce the little kid off the wall until it dies it's okay either that or she really does believe she really does look at this and think it's okay because god talked through him god talked to him through i

mean what what other analog is there where's the other thing where we can look at and say oh well if she wasn't religious what would she do in this situation because i can't think of anything else that would give you authority to hurt another human other than otherworldly power yeah and it's it's interesting that um very frequently um we find these stories where people go fucking ape shit and they have a psychotic break or what have you. I'm obviously not familiar just from reading a news story with exactly what happened. But we read stories from time to time where people have some kind of a psychotic episode or a psychotic break.

to time where people have some kind of a psychotic episode or a psychotic break. And it's interesting how many times the sort of the rationale and the broken mind turns toward the fantastic. And when it turns toward the fantastic, it very frequently veers into the religious because it's this playground that exists you know that's sort of pre-programmed that's ready and waiting to accept the madness and to say like oh well we can do all this great like if we hear voices in our head maybe they're god rather than if you hear voices in your head maybe you need help maybe if i hear voices in my head telling me to do something maybe i'm maybe I'm like Abraham.

Maybe it's God calling to me like Abraham rather than, holy shit, I should fucking call 911 and get someone over here immediately. And I don't necessarily know that people could respond that lucidly in the midst of a break. But part of me wonders if that wasn't, if that wasn't sort of pre-programmed, you know, in the mindset to where you're, because there's a history of this revelatory bullshit that sort of feeds into that. But even if the kid, like, let's say it was the kid in this case, let's say it was a nine year old who had the psychotic break and you walk in, your nineyear-old's like fucking bouncing the kids off the wall and you're like what are you doing why are you murdering my child my child yeah no no no mom no i mean it looks bad i get it no right i mean i get wow i can really see how you'd misconstrue this.

But hang on. There's a good explanation for all of it. God said it's cool. Why does God want you to throw a kid into a wall? What's the end game there? Right? I got to prove that I love him by chucking kids into walls. That's how you do it.

Maybe he was just disappointed to have a daughter, like a girl. Instead, he wanted a bouncing baby boy. You know? Maybe that was the... You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth!

You can't handle the truth! So this story comes from the Raw story. A woman burning for Jesus sets hair on fire and climbs a tree where she demands drugs and a ride to Kentucky. I will say the first thing that I thought was with a story like this, I'm surprised she wasn't already in Kentucky. No, she was in Idaho and she was looking to go to Kentucky. Well, she was hilariously in Tennessee. I don't know how you would tell the difference between being in Tennessee.

And Kentucky? Right. Yeah, I don't know either. Do you think you'd just come up to her and be like, you're already in Kentucky? I think the difference is instead of marrying your sister, you marry your cousin. I think that's what the difference is. So a woman was arrested in Tennessee after police said she used the eternal flame at a war memorial to set her own hair on fire in a bizarre stunt to obtain drugs and possibly a ride out of state. I want to know the logistics of this i really just i want to know

one how you convince someone to be like look i will give you some oxycontin all you have to do is climb that tree over there and then light your hair on fire and then after i give you some oxycontin i will then take you to a place of your specification how do they what are the negotiations like on this funny idea you're like can you imagine being the officer yeah and you're cold and you just see a woman in a tree with her hair on fire drive me to kentucky and bring me some oxy on fire. Drive me to Kentucky and bring me some oxy.

You're like, Rush Limbaugh, get down from that tree. Part of me, Cecil, would be tempted to just be like, okay, let's do it. I want to see where this night goes. This is... It's so

crazy. So she climbs up the tree. Yeah, this is the best part. She claims she was burning for Jesus. Right. She demanded the ox cut and she has to return home. A police officer manages to convince her to climb down, but she falls. What do you mean by climb down?

Do you just mean come out of the tree? Is that what you mean? It says that she fell and broke several limbs from the tree. Is that what you mean? She fell and broke several limbs from the tree. And I was glad that she only broke the tree rather than herself because after your hair has already been set on fire. So hold on. So what you're saying is this lady fell out of the crazy tree and broke a bunch of limbs on the way down. Every branch on the way down.

That's what you're saying. Okay. What they didn't tell you in the article is that the officer treated her like a fucking errant cat and just shook the shit out of the tree. She's hissing. Flames licking everywhere. And in order to get her out of the tree, they left a little trail of Oxycontin on the ground. And that's why she jumped up. Like Pac-Man, she followed. It's like, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom, nom.

She's like James Woods. Ooh, piece of candy. Ooh, piece of candy. Brock told the officer she was addicted to the opiate. Oh, shocking. Really? Yeah. It's not a casual use?

Says the woman who set her hair on fire. And she starts cursing at everybody who gathers at the scene. And the officer says, I love this. Wait a minute. You're burning for Jesus and praying just a minute ago. And now you're cussing everybody, which is it? And she said, I'm kind of confused about that myself. And I think that's such a considered a polite response. It really is. It's like all of a sudden she has this moment of lucidity where her fucking hair is flying. She just fell out of a tree.

You know? Officer, it turns out this evening did not go the way I planned. did not go the way I planned. I really thought when I walked up to the eternal flame and set my head on fire and as I was climbing the tree, I thought, ah, this is the path to greatness.

This was my moment of clarity right there. That was it. She does have a great story for NA. Like, when did you hit rock bottom? Ironically. When I hit the bottom of the tree. My hair on fire. It's funny.

Did you cover the part where she stole things from a Masonic lodge? This story is great. So she gets arrested. She's charged with vandalism. She steals items from the Masonic Lodge, then sets her hair and her jacket on fire. She had asked by name for a Lodge member she met the day before at church, then took pictures of the walls and stole a medallion and an empty register book.

What are you going to do with the empty register book? She was going to light it on fire, I think. I can't understand a single step to her plan. Her plan is so delightfully batshit crazy. She's like, ah, I'll take this old register book, and then I'll light my hair on fire, and then the world will know. What will we know exactly? exactly well i think you'll know and i i you know it doesn't specify cecil um which of her hairs she set a fire

and i will say that there is a biblical precedent for a burning bush. So it is. Well, that wraps it up for this week, everyone. Good. It was fucking depressing. Oh, gosh. Yeah. I wish that, you know, next time can we have fewer dead children and more people lighting themselves on fire? Is that possible?

Can I order that up? can't control these people we'd really appreciate it if you would uh vote for us in the podcast awards or in the news and politics section uh you can vote for us every day we'd really appreciate a vote and uh and you can still vote for all your other favorite podcasts as well uh there's there's tons of other podcasts that are involved in the podcast awards and almost certainly none of them you listen to in the news and politics section, so you could almost certainly guarantee your vote for us there. And we

desperately appreciate it. So please, if you have some time, take a moment every day and go vote for us. We're going to have a regular show out on Monday and this wraps it up for this short show, but we're going to have a regular show out on Monday, and this wraps it up for this short show, but we're going to leave you, as we always do, with the Skeptic's Creed.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment, Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense.

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