Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 22: Attack of the Theocrats!

Episode Date: November 21, 2011

  Sean’s 10 point plan. Sean’s book:  Reviews: Shocking! Will keep you on the edge of your seat! Sean Faircloth is doing such important work. There’s not a doubt in my mind that if he was (suddenly, inexplicably) zapped back in time to meet Thomas Jefferson, that the Founding Father would clap him on the shoulder and say ‘Thanks.’” –Adam Savage, MythBusters co-host and executive producer. “Faircloth paints a sobering picture, but fortunately, as anyone who has heard his speeches knows, he also has an inspiring and invigorating vision to offer. . . . Readers will finish the book exercised, energized, and eager to join Faircloth in a bold rediscovery of the secular dream of the European Enlightenment and America’s enlightened Fathers.” – Richard Dawkins, from the foreword to Attack of the Theocrats! “I’ve devoted the last twenty years of my professional life to pointing out unscientific assertions that harm or swindle innocent people. It becomes particularly insidious when unsound reasoning is used to justify and apply unjust laws. This book describes this very real problem in American today, then offers a bold plan to do something about it.” –James Randi, Founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation “What does the erosion of America’s noble separation of church and state the basis of the first secular government in the world have to do with your everyday life? In this lively and historically grounded survey of the way we live now, the author explains why the thirty-year-old assault on church-state separation affects all of us from children who are not getting a world-class education in science because of fundamentalist interference with the teaching of biology to soldiers subjected to evangelical proselytizing on military bases. Nothing could be more timely than this reminder that the founders left God out of the Constitution to provide citizens of every faith and no faith the freedom to act on their consciences. We ignore this historic liberty, the gift of America’s founding generation, at our peril.” –Susan Jacoby, Author of Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism and The Age of American Unreason “Faircloth makes a compelling case for people everywhere to steadily reestablish Thomas Jefferson’s fundamental idea and keep religions out of politics. Read this, and you’ll become a Constitution thumper.” –Bill Nye the Science Guy

Hello, I'm Chuck Norris, and this is my wife, Gina. We're here to talk to you about the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. Chuck and I believe it's very important to have a Bible curriculum in every public school in America. Our forefathers founded this country on biblical principles, and they never intended the Bible to be removed from our schools. Here in America, religion forms the foundation of our way of life, and the Bible is part of that religious foundation. In fact, the Bible is currently being taught as history and literature in various school districts in 33 states, but the Bible as the textbook.

You may ask, is this legal? And the answer is yes. The Supreme Court has ruled that it is. I should also mention that 92% of the school boards approached with this idea have voted it in. We can change the course of our country, and God knows we need it. 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. 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, Matt.

This is episode 22 of Cognitive Dissonance. I know we've got a bunch of new listeners. Some of them have sent us emails griping at us. So we're glad to have you glad to have your gripes. And this is going to be a very interesting episode. We also have an interview and a story that we're discussing with former congressman from Maine, Sean Faircloth, who is now on the Richard Dawkins Foundation. Sean has written a book, Attack of the Theocrats. We're going to interview him a little later on in the show.

The first article that we want to discuss is from the Friendly Atheist blog, and this regards some new research. This research is sort of interesting. This is research that plays off of the conjunction fallacy, which I'll just describe very briefly. It's a way to phrase a question to expose a prejudice. And they phrase a certain question. They describe a gentleman named Richard in the question. Richard's kind of a dick, actually. He is a total cunt, that Richard.

Richard smashes somebody's car, then steals a wallet, all in the same day. It's a busy day for Richard. And they then phrase a question that exposes a bias. When they phrase the question, you know, how likely do you think that Richard is? And then, you know, the questions expose your bias to whether you think that he is a Christian, a Muslim, a rapist, or an atheist. And by a wide margin, people choose atheist. And I think, Sean, that this dovetails nicely into some of the things that you discuss in your book. Why do you think that people are so willing to believe that somebody who's obviously committing these immoral acts

is more likely to be an atheist than a Christian, a Muslim, even a rapist? Well, Joseph Stalin was one really ugly guy. He had a bad mustache and he killed a lot of people. I think that a lot of it, a lot of it has to do with what people perceive as godless communism from the 1950s. But yet, when you get down to what does that word actually mean, and this is where I'm very optimistic. Well, I'm very optimistic on several levels, but I'm very optimistic about what really is at play here because I think when you get down to what the word actually means, just like what the word agnostic actually means, that millions upon millions of people, including ones who would probably answer the question that it's probably most likely the atheist. In other words, I think there are people who are themselves atheists who would be prejudiced against atheists. are themselves atheists who would be prejudiced against atheists.

Because of the whole overlay, the cultural overlay that exists in relationship to that word, I have this quote from Eleanor Roosevelt, who I'd argue is probably, in my view, maybe the greatest woman in history. But certainly someone who, even if you don't agree with her, widely admired human beings, certainly in American history. And she did that old this I believe thing that was, they recently started it again on NPR, but it was back in the 50s they had this I believe. Oh.

She did one. And in one of these this I believes, she basically says, this is after FDR has been dead a while, but she basically says, yeah, he and I been dead a while but she basically says yeah he and I talked about it and he kind of said well implicitly just for cultural reasons maybe the kids should go to church but we're not really sure basically she was saying in a national radio broadcast that at a minimum the way she was phrasing it that she was agnostic this is the first lady probably the most prominent first lady in American history, wife of what some would say was the greatest president of the 20th century.

And she openly said this kind of thing. She didn't use words like atheist or agnostic or anything like that. She just kind of said, well, do I really have doubts about these ultimate questions? Yes, I do, but you just got to try your best in life. I'm paraphrasing, but that's basically what she said. And I think there are millions upon millions of people today who basically think like that. But when you raise that red flag of the word atheist, oh, well, got her head run the other direction. There are all those types of biases, which is something I hope to address in my book, because when you get to

specifics of what people really do, ironically enough, I am very proud of my work because my work is about being moral. I really believe it. And my work is based on a humanist, agnostic, atheist perspective. And it's ironic, but that's what I think is really true. And so we need to more tout what our positions are. And oh, by the way, they're deeply moral. It's interesting because in your work, according to this survey, you would probably have a better day at the office if you were a guy who was informing people on the block that a sexual predator was next door. It's remarkable what you're talking about, but I do think it has to do with the anti-communist era significantly. And there is a cultural overlay.

There's a couple thousand years head start here where I see – a lot of times I'll see people. They have a cross on a necklace. And what is it they're saying with that cross culturally really? They're saying, I'm a good person. It's wonderful. I've just labeled myself publicly. I'm a good person because they have this label on me. I mean,

maybe that's not what a Madonna meant when she had it, but something entirely different. But, but then in general, it's this label. And when you're taught this label from your little childhood, that the, you know, oft times in our culture it's the cross.

I'm a good person. And when you take what in some ways is the polar opposite of that, it takes a lot of getting over, especially when you've got theoretically Joseph Stalin or Mao hanging around your neck as well. So to some degree, it's the label. It's the word. It's that – it's the terminology atheist. Do you think if this was phrased secular, do you think this would have come out differently? Oh, yeah. In my book, I have a section where I create a poll. I mean, I'm a 10-year politician, and I've dealt a lot looking at polls and poll results. And even in the polls that have been done, there have been some decent polls on this topic,

but even then I think there's a bias. There's a really good book out not too long ago called American Grace. But even in that book, which is reasonably objective and a reasonably good history of sort of theological and religious viewpoints in America over the last, well, really since 1960, since the Kennedy election, they still have this little implicit bias. They call it like extreme. They use the word extreme, which of course, you know, you're not extreme. I know I'm not extreme. It's the other guy. That other guy's extreme. But they use that phrasing a couple of times to refer to atheism or non-theism. And I'm thinking, hmm, Warren Buffett, non-believer, whatever you

call Warren Buffett, not extreme. Bill Gates, not a believer, not extreme. But yet even with these academics, but meanwhile, in my book, I create a poll. I'm not saying it's the best crafted poll, but I go through a series of questions. And the point of it is, is I believe that if not necessarily my poll, but a similar type of poll were conducted, you'd, because I think most Americans, for example, if you start out with a religious right, the majority, the solid majority of Americans are annoyed by, threatened by, don't like the religious right. Rightfully so. If you go through those series of questions and then you start throwing in some other questions like really, you know, to yourself, do you ever sometimes question whether there's a devil, an actual devil?

And I bet you a lot of people really, you know, if you ask them at the bar, even once you say they're religious, is there an actual devil devil? No, they at least got doubts. And then you ease people into some of these other questions. And I think ultimately it's a far higher number, a far higher percentage of Americans who have our viewpoint. It's just allowing them the thinking time and the comfort level to admit what they really think. So do you think, no, no, I guess when I, when I, when I saw this, the first thing I thought is, um, okay, so here we've got Christian, clearly we're in a, we're in a, a, uh, uh, country which has a strong Christian majority. So that number, I expected it to be lower.

Muslim, one of the things that was interesting about this article is it, you know, it exposes this idea that religious people from religion A, you know, be a Christian or Muslim or what have you. Now, they will trust a person of a religion that is not their religion, much more than they would trust somebody of no religion. And I thought it was interesting that this article chose, or this study rather, chose rapist as the obviously immoral, rather than a person who commits one of these actual acts. So like Richard in this study, right? This fictional Richard.

Richard crashes into a van. He commits a little insurance fraud. He finds a wallet. He takes the money, throws the wallet in the trash can. Now, those are fundamentally acts of theft. And rather than juxtaposing this with thief, um, they choose a violent sexual criminal, um, the rapist to juxtapose against. I wonder if that even is an example of this sort of, now you mentioned this other book that uses extreme in conjunction with atheism. I wonder if choosing rapist is an example of that same thing.

Like, well, we have to have something to juxtapose against the atheist, right? So let's choose a rapist, not a thief, not a burglar, right? We're going to choose rapist. We're going to like somebody sitting there, you know, pondering what what other character in American society is so reviled. what other character in american society is so reviled and in formulating the question again they it feels to me like they expose this tremendous bias to say like well the only thing i can come i'm surprised it's not like pedophile or like you know mass murder it's because it's damn close it's's right fucking there with rapists. And I wonder if a lot of the problems that we have in these polls that you describe aren't part and parcel of a problem with being able to even form reasonable questions about people who don't believe in a way that doesn't have this extreme fucking snowboarding challenge associated with it.

You're exactly right. And then on top of that, it's a schizophrenic society because how many times – I know I've seen it where – and this could go in either gender. Let's say Angelina Jolie, we guys vote yes. Or women will talk about Brad Pitt. They vote yes. They're both atheists and they both like, I mean, you should like Brad Pitt. He's a good guy. He goes down to New Orleans all the time and helps with the people who got hurt by the flood. Everybody speaks kindly of him and they should he's a out and out atheist but yet widely admired by our fellow americans and should be so it's like people i think what it is is if you start to label yourself or talk about yourself institutionally or organizationally somehow as

atheist people don't know what humanist is or most people at the bar don't, that then it's bad. But if you just shut up about it, then it's okay. I think that's sort of the line that's been drawn. Whereas, as we saw just the night before this was recorded, the folks in the Republican primary in Iowa are allowed completely to go out and beat their chest about how not just religious they are, but Christian religious they are, and be extremely overt about that with the implicit message that if you're not one of us, apparently the

fundamentalist one of us, so sorry Jews, sorry Muslims, sorry agnostics, sorry atheists, you're allowed to be exclusionary when it comes to that. But if you simply say we should be inclusionary about people of non-belief, then you're not allowed to say that, despite some of those popular and admired people in our society being non-believers. And some of the most attractive. I mean, let's just throw that out there. You've got Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. There's not a lot of people who are like, hmm, no. We need to say anything more.

So if you want to hear more of Sean, you're going to want to stick around till the end of the show where we talk about his book, Attack of the Theocrats, how the religious right harms us all and what we can do about it. It's available now on hardcover from Amazon for $21.95. And if you have eight bucks, you can buy it for Kindle. And actually, I bought it for Kindle and it rocks. It's a great book. But we're going to talk about it later on. All you people that are listening, brand new listeners that Sean has brought over, you're going to be fast forwarding to the end of the show and you'll be hearing as you fast forward, you'll be hearing fuck, shit, fuck, shit, fuck, cocksucker. Once you get to the end of the show and you'll be hearing as you fast forward, you'll be hearing fuck, shit, fuck, shit, fuck, cocksucker. Once you get to the point where you hear Sean's

voice, just back it up a little and then you'll catch the rest of the Sean interview. If something seems calm and rational, that's not us. Yeah, it's definitely good. You want to wait until all of the dick jokes end and then we'll get right into that. Right into Sean, who

will make us look really fucking bad, basically. If it seems like the worst parts of Paul Blart Mall Cop, you're still listening to us. You're still with the two trolls. You've got to fast forward a little more. I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as, as they are, uh, over in, in Pakistan and in Israel and, and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth. So we've got some, uh, some horrifying stories to share with you this time. Uh, we're

going to lead off. Oh yeah. Tom. Why don't we just lead off into the fucking most depressing one? You got to go honor killings. What is honor? What the fuck does that even mean, honor? I think they should just, honestly, I thought about this.

They need to rephrase these. I think when the media even acknowledges that these things are honor killings, you're sort of giving credence to the idea that there's honor involved. Abso-fucking-lutely. You know, you've got to call this, like, batshit crazy murders. You know, or like, you know, just call it, you know, I don't know. What's the name? Like, I know it's like patricide when you kill your father and infanticide if you kill an infant.

What's it called when you fucking slaughter your daughters because you're an intolerant, intolerant religious shithead? It's called religious sacrifice. Phenomenal. That's what it's called. Fucking religious sacrifice. They should call it fucking religious sacrifice in Jordan. Now, these two stories are similar, but one of them is disturbing because it takes place in Canada, which you would not think would be the home for religious killings. In Jordan, man cuts his sister's throat to cleanse his family as honor.

Evidently, Cecil, to cleanse honor, you have to use elbow grease and blood. And you have to do the old seesaw with a knife whenever you get the opportunity. Can't you use like Formula 409 or something? Like an SOS app? Can't you just let her do what she's doing, you asshole? Right. Once in a while, I had a dog that used to shit on the rug. I didn't murder it when it shat on the rug.

I wasn't like, oh my God, I totally disapprove of you shitting on my rug. Let me fucking murder you. There's been a lot of times in my life that somebody in my family's done something I've been like, I wish you hadn't done that. I do some of the cooking in our house. If it's bad, that means I've usually done it. I've burned a dinner and nobody's taken

a fucking knife to me. I've got to cleanse the family culinary record. And that's more egregious than anything these people have done. Especially with the ingredients that I've burned, you know, like smoke alarms are going off. $20 on a chuck roast, you asshole. So the first story is from Jordan, a man cut sister's throat to cleanse family's honor. Basically, this guy kills his sister in public by slitting her throat for being involved in a romantic relation. It's a horrifying story.

It's a horrifying story. It's like fucking Braveheart. He kills her like he's a guy in Braveheart. Like it's a fucking prima nocta for Christ's sakes. What is happening here? In public? You know, one of the things in the story that's particularly egregious too is killers are often handed a sentence between six months to a year. Oh my God.

For the murder. You're doing murder punishment wrong. Oh man. It's murder. Murder punishment wrong. Oh, man. It's murder. Like you've got a group of people who are just like, I'm in a romantic relationship.

I love this person. Oh, that is bad. I disapprove of love. Disapprove of love. Kill, kill. What? This comes down to somebody who is offending. They think that they're offending God, right?

Like that's what it's about. It's not about, you know, some, you know, that they're offending God, right? Like that's what it's about. It's not about some – obviously it's about some culture, right? Because their religion and their actual culture and the politics and things over there all sort of are intertwined, right? In Jordan, it really is a theocracy. So you can't really separate these things. But you've got to look at it from the perspective of like this is a country where the government looks at somebody who just slit somebody's throat in public. It's like, you know what? They probably shouldn't do – why don't you just go and spend six months to a year in jail?

We understand that what you did was kind of wrong. So why don't you just spend a little time? I mean you get more time than that for having like weed in America. Yeah, I know. You have weed in your house in America. Yeah, you get a finger up your ass if you have weed in America. And you get to spend time in jail and you get massive fines. That's fucking weed for crying out loud.

You would get in more trouble for occupying Oakland, for example. Oh, no fucking kidding. occupying Oakland, for example. Oh, no fucking kidding. Yeah. UC Davis, like they spend more time, you know, getting maced than you spend, you know, fucking in jail in Georgia. You know, and also there's another story because, you know, honor killings travel in twos or I don't know.

There's another story in Canada. Canada. Canada. For God's sake. Where this guy kills. We store some crazy things in America's hat I mean that's we really just store the crazy up there

this guy, this father kills four family members including his former wife and three daughters how does it even work how is it any time you go from okay sir, here's your beautiful baby girl oh

look i gotta be and you're fucking killing her and he says that his conscience is clear cecil again honor killings um in fact you know you mentioned like well this is this is theocratic he says um you know he's got some some really quotable moments such as, they're gone now. Shit on their graves. He added the next day, I'm happy. Love, soft as an easy chair. Father of the year. I'm happy and my conscience is clear.

They haven't done good and God punished them. The Montreal Gazetteette reported what did he kill him for god didn't even kill him well what hold on though like what did this guy this guy killed him because they had boyfriends yeah i think like the one of them that's the answer you're looking for is yes they had a boyfriend the youngest was killed for wearing revealing attire despite having warned school officials and police of abuse in the home so she's she's going to the people that are supposed to protect her like i would like to not be beaten some more well just wait oh yeah that sounds really interesting please hold right Yeah, I've got some people to mace in the face here.

So I've got some priorities to cover. OK. Now, at least this guy is going to face life in prison, right? He's facing life in prison right now. He says, if convicted, the trio face a maximum sentence of life in prison. Gosh, I hope it's the fucking maximum sentence. If you're a judge and you're just like, we should give him a year. Like, you're a douchebag, OK? You need to fucking give him a maximum sentence of life in prison. Gosh, I hope it's the fucking maximum sentence. If you're a judge and you're just like, we should give him a year, like you're a douchebag, OK?

You need to fucking give him a maximum sentence here. But really, you know, three beautiful young girls and a wife, a former wife, murdered because this guy thinks they're, you know, having boyfriends or they're wearing clothes that are too revealing. He says that, I'm going to read directly from the article. Prosecutors told the Ontario court that their deaths were honor killings committed to remove the perceived shame the women have brought to their families such as having boyfriends. Unbelievable. Are you fucking serious?

For real? Like somebody is courting and you're like, you know what? I think I just got to die now. Right. What are you expecting from them eventually? You're living in a liberal Western society. There's no shame. People don't care.

Where's this? Where's the shame coming from? Nobody's judging you, man. Nobody's looking at your family and thinking less of you because your daughters who are teenagers are dating that shit's fucking standard in a western society yeah right nobody's judging them for you know walking with two legs or having arms because that shit just is normal man it's just normal one thing that makes me crazy is the trial which started late last, was expected to last up to three months. Really? Why?

Why? What's quoted from the dude? I am happy and my conscience is clear. Shit on their graves. Like, all you need to do is like, OK, jury, I submit what this guy said. Did you say this shit? Yeah. OK, what's the defense?

When done right, there is no defense. He really didn't want it. Yeah, like what is the defense are saying? He really didn't want it yeah like like what is the defense are saying he really didn't want to actually shit on their graves he was just it's like a metaphorical shit on their graves right it's i don't understand this at all not because i don't understand the honor killings that is not understandable yeah unless you're a fucking crazy person where's the shame come from where where's three-month trial come from? Makes no sense. Just go to jail.

Go to the jail. Do not pass go. I'm Raymond Massey, and I have a special message for senior citizens. Today's doctors, drugs, and medical devices truly work medical miracles for young and old alike. But there are some as phony as a $3 bill. Investigate before you invest in health services or products. Help stamp out quackery. So speaking of shit that does not make any fucking sense at all,

this is an article from freethoughtblogs.com. Air Force offers classes in psychic skills, homeopathy, and this is my favorite, angel healing. Do angels get sick? I guess so, because they need healing. I just think they just drink a mana potion. I've played a lot of games, and all you've got to to do is down the potion and you're, you're, there's no more healing needed. Um, what, what this is, this article is saying that, um, that they're allowing, the air force is allowing access to a, uh, it's like an

online learning service. And then they have along with the other, a bunch of other classes, they have this section on crazy right and the section on crazy is also available to the people that are in the air force and i don't i don't begrudge anybody in the air force getting this free opportunity to educate themselves i just prefer that they use the tax dollars after i pay them for the crazy classes not before i pay them like i don't i just don't want them to have access to the nutter classes through my money. I want them to do it on their own accord after I pay them money. I find so many things about this article at the very least mildly unsettling, right?

First of all, the angel healing blows my mind. Like they must have delicate wings. I don't know how that works. You've got to be very careful. The academic – they're just like crap. They don't have fucking air traffic control up there. That's the problem. We got a broken wing.

She's coming down. She's coming down. You're cleared for landing. Gabriel, you are cleared for landing. Oh, the humanity. But the academic institution that's mentioned here isn't even accredited. Why would you pay a money for an education where you're just like, yeah, I got a degree in fucking angel healing and voodoo. Really? I'd rather get a degree in Wikipedia.

You know what? I will start an institution right now. It's unaccredited. Send me your money. I'll send you an education. Yeah, I don't care. What I really want, though,. Yeah, I don't care. What I really want though, I was looking at some of these and my favorite is magic basics and magic is spelled

with a CK. And I think, I think if you're going to spell magic, you have to spell it this way. There's no other way to spell magic and get away with it. And there's like fucking like 40 Reiki classes. You know, it's hard to pick just one. Reiki first and second degree. Reiki first degree. Reiki second degree. Reiki essentials. Reiki hand placements. Don't you think that's part of the essentials?

What's in Reiki 1 if it's not Reiki essentials? I don't understand your prerequisites. This class schedule is very difficult. And if you're a first or second degree Reiki, can you take on a Tai Chi master? Like who would win in that fight? I'm just curious. Yeah, this is phenomenal. You know, the classes don't make any sense at all.

From their own site, open your intuition and stimulate your sixth sense. I do that privately, by the way. You know, that actually sounds like the beginning of, you know, a letter to the penthouse. I don't know about you. That's equally implausible. Well, here's some shit that didn't happen. We offer a potpourri of over 30 fascinating courses on meditation, chakras, reiki energy healing, paranormal investigation, and courses with a broad view of the new age approaches to holistic

healing at home. Taking self-paced courses at home is so easy. You won't have the hassle of finding parking, hiring babysitters, thinking, or re-arranging. I may have edited that a little bit. This is the

airport. These are the guys that fly around in airplanes and fucking shoot missiles at other airplanes and drop bombs on shit. And they're going to be like, well, I've got to drop a bomb at 3. Oh, wait, my chakras are misaligned. This is a terrible idea. They, like, shoot the bomb and then they land to give all their angel healing to people, you know. In the name of Jesus, we're going to go ahead and play a clip of him. He had some interesting views regarding our commander-in-chief's special requirements. But what the scriptures are anxious to say, it's far more important that we be

spiritually strong as a nation than that we be militarily strong. It's not enough to be militarily strong. If we are militarily strong, but we are spiritually weak as a nation, we are going to go down. And that's why it's critical, I believe, to have a commander in chief who is a Christian in chief first and then is our commander in chief. Absolutely critical, to have a commander-in-chief who is a Christian-in-chief first and then is our commander-in-chief. Absolutely critical that we have a man who is commander-in-chief, who sits in the Oval Office, who has a personal relationship with the God of the Bible. Not the God of the Book of Mormon, not the God of the Koran, but the God of the Old and New Testament. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!

Yeah, it's it's far more important, Cecil, that we be spiritually strong than militarily strong, because if somebody were to attack us, we could hold up our spirit. Well, if we're spiritually strong, our angel healing is fucking rocking socks at that point. You know what we should actually do is just defend our nation with cheerleaders because they've got spirit. Yes, they do. They've got spirit. How about you? You. Yes. Hey.

You. I fucking completely agree, Tom. I think I would love, absolutely adore to see an entire air force full of cheerleaders. That would be, you know. I'll be, I'll be in my bunk actually. I will sign up to be a drill sergeant. Oh yeah.

I'm joining the military. Are you kidding me? Uh, you know, I, one of the things he talks about too, though, Tom is he's like,

what we need is a Christian in chief, a Christian in chief. Don't we have one of those? Is he a Pope? Like, isn't he the fucking Christian in chief? I don't know. I always thought what we would do is structure our government the way it was structured you know you know like how it was you know structured i thought we'd follow the basic outline for the

formation of our fucking government when we were forming a fucking government yeah i also thought we'd continue that trend seeing as how it has worked pretty well for over 200 years. Up to this point. Yeah. He says, I love this, too. The commander in chief who sits in the Oval Office must have a personal relationship with the God of the Bible. Not the God of the Book of Mormon. Not the God of the Koran.

But the God of the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament is deeply immoral. I know. No kidding. You're talking about atheists being like rapists earlier. Jesus fucking. You want to talk about fucking like rapists just in general? Look at the Old Testament.

And the New Testament is bland platitudes when it's not immoral. So I don't understand. You're doing this wrong, man. I just don't get the Christian in chief. Like, but there are people out there, obviously, that – I mean this guy wouldn't have a show if people wouldn't watch him. You know what I mean? Like we'd still have a show if we don't have listeners. We've already proved that, right?

But like this guy has an actual television show. And unless he's getting some sort of either donations or advertising dollars, there's no reason to keep him there. So this fucking douchebag, there's people who listen to this guy and are like, yep, we need a fucking Christian in chief. Like, no, you don't need to vote. You need to stay away from

the voting booth because you don't understand the fucking assignment. Well, we talked about this on our last episode. You don don't need your politicians should just be politicians they should make political decisions economic decisions decisions regarding funding for uh you know education health care sciences defense that's their job their job isn't to pray for you man go to your praying guys for that if you want a praying guy to help you pray or to pray for you or for whom to listen to their prayers go to your pastor your priest your uh rabbi your uh imam whatever your your your thought i don't give a fuck but that's not how you elect a politician.

Unless you want really bad politicians. Yeah. Oh, yeah. And this is and that's exactly what you're going to get. You're going to get the people who are like the crazy religious right who want to introduce all of these these religious principles into politics. And it's just ridiculous. It's absolutely outrageous. And these are people like I'm telling you, people like this shouldn't be getting tax exemption. You know what I mean? Like you're out there saying what we need is somebody like this. So don't you know, that's bullshit.

You're meddling in politics. Fuck you. Pay your fair share then, douchebag. If you're going to meddle in politics, give me some tax money from that. Right. You shouldn't have a tax exemption and be able to just meddle in politics. Right. That's bullshit.

The White House is not a parsonage. It's not a fucking abbey. It is a place for politics. Aren't these guys supposed to not do this shit? Aren't they supposed to not do this shit? I think he's not supposed to endorse a particular candidate, but I think it should go both ways.

You shouldn't be taking away from somebody who's going to be running, right? Maybe you're not endorsing a particular candidate, but you're definitely endorsing the opposite of what you're talking about. Right. This guy, in one fell swoop, he's clearly anti-Romney, right? Because he know, he's he's clearly anti Romney.

Right. As he says, not from the Book of Mormon. Right. Right. He says he's clearly anti Romney. I think he's playing up to the the false idea that Barack Obama is a Muslim. You know, there's a lot of jackasses who still, for whatever reason, think that that's the case. You know, I think I think he's narrowing his field for the audience.

You know, and you can endorse a candidate without ever saying their name pretty fucking easily. And may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. Madam President, I hear the floor and suggest the admissive record. Clerk will call the roll. Expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted.

So Georgia, ever the bastion of free thought and good ideas, has decided to... Those are the first time. That's the first time in the history of America that those words have ever been said in that fucking order. That's all I'm saying. Oh, my God. So. So the state.

Take that, Georgia. Well, the peach trees, I guess, has decided Florida's. Florida's. Oh, my gosh. So they are going to put In God We Trust, or they're trying to, on every single license plate. You can already buy a sticker right now for a dollar, they were saying, that you can put on the license plate already to cover up the county where you live in, which is currently on there or something like that. And it covers it up and puts In God We Trust on there. But now they're going to make it standard.

One thing I don't like about In God We Trust, Tom, really quickly, I just want to say this. One thing I don't like about In God We Trust is that it's making a declaration for me. Like, I understand if you were to say, in God I trust. And I don't think I would have a problem with any license plate saying that. I don't think I'd have any problem with anybody wearing that on a shirt or whatever. But the moment you put something like this on money, you put something like this on a license plate that everybody has to buy, you're making a statement for me that I don't agree with.

a license plate that everybody has to buy, you're making a statement for me that I don't agree with. And you're saying that I have to agree with your trusting in God. And I don't trust in God. So now what? Like, I have to basically take my belief structure and, you know, there's other people too that don't, I'm sure don't believe the same things that are religious. They just happen to be religious to a different type of God. Those people don't agree either.

But you're forcing us all to say it together. And that's the thing I don't fucking like. Well, sure. Like, you know, I mean, can you get a Hindu version? So this is like in gods we trust. Right. You know, can you get like, you know, if I wanted to, could I get a Muslim version that says in Allah?

So it's more specific. Maybe a deist one that's like in the watchmaker I trust. You know, this is ridiculous. This is absurd. And really what this is is attacks on nonbelievers because if you don't want this, now you'd have to buy the sticker to cover it up. And they make that sticker available. But motorists would have to buy that sticker and they'd have to wait in line at the DMV. Fuck that.

I would just scratch it off. Like I'd fucking get a Sharpie. What are you kidding? I would rather move than wait in line at the DMV. Okay. I have moved twice since I've had my license. So your license in Illinois is good for, I think, four years or eight years or whatever. I've moved twice license, you know, so your license in Illinois is good for, I think, four years or eight years or whatever. I've moved twice since that time.

I've never updated my driver's license and I'm not going to update it until it expires because I will do anything to. I would rather get a ticket. Then go to the DMV. It's it is not worth my time ever to go to the DMV. It is never, ever worth your time to go to the DMV. It's just not. Especially in Illinois. I don't know what it's like anywhere else.

But in Illinois and especially in Chicagoland, it is the worst experience ever. I would rather go to the dentist than the DMV. You have to take like two weeks off of work. You got to occupy the fucking DMV just to get there. You don't have signs that say like we are the 99% just like I fucking wish I could get a license and get the fuck out of here. That's what your sign said. And the people that are so surly and angry and just like fucking exert their power over you, like that's the worst thing ever. And then you know there's going to be some cocksucker back there.

You're going to put your money on and be like, yeah, I waited in fucking this four and a half fucking hour line to get a little sticker for a dollar that says that covers up the NGW trust. And they're going to look at you and be like, really? Right. Hmm. Right. Hmm. Well, here's your sticker, sir. Yeah.

You know, I'd like to pay for this. Also, can I have some derision, please? Yeah. And now that you know my fucking license plate, I'll expect my car to be key. Why can't we have people's religious beliefs just be privately held? Look, I don't mind. Again, Tom, I wouldn't mind if it said I. Because I doesn't include fucking me, man. Unless

you're in the fucking carpool lane, that fucking sticker doesn't even apply if you're driving alone. We're going to stop here and take a quick break to give you all the information that you need to send us your messages, phone calls, hate us on Facebook. I don't know if there's a hate button, but I'm sure you can find one. There should be on our page at least. The second half of the show is also going to have our interview with Sean Faircloth, author of Attack of the Theocrats.

You're going to want to come back for the second half of the show to listen to that. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode, visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Like our show on Facebook to join in the conversation. Just search for Cognitive Dissonance in Facebook or go to our website for the link. You can converse with us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at dissonance underscore pod. Help us out by retweeting and reposting our shows.

You can call us and leave us a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. So this story, Cecil, I like very, very much. The Vatican is up in arms because the Italian clothing company Benetton, I don't know if I'm pronouncing that properly, is using an image of Pope Benedict kissing a imam on the mouth in its advertising campaign. I like this for a lot of reasons.

I like this because the advertising campaign says, like, un-hate. Yeah. I like that somebody would protest that. Like, whoa, whoa. No, we're pro-hate. Don't misconstrue this. We're pro-hate don't don't misconstrue this right yeah everybody's like everybody's like up and i was like no no no no look you cannot take away my fucking constitutional right to hate other people okay because i have that right this is uh you know the guy says it's

totally unacceptable it's a grave lack of respect for the pope, an offense against the sentiments of the faithful, and a clear example of how protesting can violate elementary rules of respect for people in order to attract attention through provocation. So I love all of the vehemence that's against this, you know, as if the idea of the pope and an imam just, you know, getting friendly. Just two guys, you know, maybe they had a beer afterwards or something. I don't know. What they're going to do to protect the safety of other imams is they're just going to relocate the pope to another Vatican somewhere else.

They've got a whole procedure in place for this. I really just I just don't't get the uproar. It's like, look, you don't get a choice. And I know that they kind of – didn't they retract this at some point? They started to pull it, but it was already on the tubes, so they couldn't really do anything about it. They put it up, and then they're like, oh, shit, Vatican's pissed off. Let's pull it down. And then at some point they're like, oh shit, Vatican's pissed off. Let's pull it down. And then at some point they're like, oh, we're fucked because it's – now it's out there.

And like there was a whole page. It was awesome because I was on Reddit and somebody is like, the Vatican wants to suppress this image. And there's just these giant – like it's like fucking – like 400 of them just on Google Images where this person has posted them all over. So I love it. I think it's great. But it's kind of a – it's a weird picture to look at.

Like I feel strange looking at it. I feel like – because it does kind of feel a little digitally manipulated but at the same time hilarious. I feel like I'm looking at LOL Cats, the pulp version. It's really ridiculous. You're a public figure, man. People are going to do shit with your image. And the best way to address it is just to laugh that shit off because the more noise you make, I wouldn't have known about this.

I don't pay attention to fucking Italian clothing ads. Right, right. Yeah. But instead, you made it, you know, you're trying to censor something. And a lot of times when you try to do any kind of censorship, the louder you talk about it, the more publicity it gets. That happens with all types of censorship. So, hey, way to fuck that up, dummy.

But only every time. Yeah, only every time it happens. Yeah, admittedly. Yeah. Well, never call Christian theologians unprepared, Cecil. This is an article from Wired. Christian theologians prepare for extraterrestrial life um vatican chief astronomer and papal science advisor what does he tell you no i don't even

understand how this works i don't what why do you have a chief astronomer do you have more than one astronomer how many astronomers do you have? The Catholic Church is not known for, like, its fucking deep bench of astronomers. I want that title. I'm not just the astronomer around here, motherfucker.

I'm the goddamn chief astronomer. No kidding, right? Like, they have a whole fucking – a whole group of them. They go to mass every Thursday. He said that the Catholic Church would welcome aliens as brothers. What? Yeah. What?

You'll do what? OK. And the article makes a great point right at the end. I think they get somebody from NASA who says, well, the Catholic Church and the Christian church has adapted every time scientific data has come forward to basically refute the entirety of what you've thought. So, you know, you look at evolution, you look at Copernicus, all those things that basically refuted the, all the ideas that are in the Bible, they've, they've sort of had a workaround. They're like, okay, well maybe, you know, maybe we were wrong about that, but we're still right about other things.

Once the aliens come in, I don't know, man. I think, I think it's kind of fucking game set and match at that point. I think your fucking argument is fucked. Yeah. At the very least, wouldn't you be annoyed that God failed to mention them? You know? Wouldn't you be like, really? Really? You wrote all this crazy shit about dragons and

fucking winged lions and shit and revelation. And the behemoth, which is a fucking, actually a fucking big giant dinosaur. And you went through all the trouble with the Ark. You couldn't have at least brought it up. You couldn't have just, like like just a brief fucking mention. You could have name dropped this a little bit.

You would have saved us a lot of fucking trouble. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what what I think it's great, though, that they do have a chief astronomer and he's on it. You know, I mean, like that's the best part is that he is on it he has already considered the possibilities and he's letting everyone else know this is it i like i like several of the quotes in here quite a bit um one of them that one of them that i like is uh religion hasn't gone away after copernican theory after darwin they found ways to adapt and they'll find a way if this happens too.

They haven't adapted to Darwin so much as they've generally rejected it. Well, not the Catholics. The Catholics have begrudgingly finally accepted it as a person. The Catholics will admit there is evolution, but they think it's divinely inspired. But there's people out there that are like, no, the world's 6,000 years old. Those fucking people, their fucking brain is going to shoot out their ears if they find out there's really aliens. They'll be like, oh, I don't know what to do. And they're going to die. That's what's going to happen.

But I've seen Mars attack, so it won't be an issue. They're just going to get zapped. They're just going to get zapped anyway. Turn into fucking ash skeletons. I can't wait until it happens and, like, the White House is like, fuck, who's the chief astronomer at the Vatican? I need some advice. Get him on the red phone. Oh, I have to be on my speed dial.

Get the bat pope signal. Bat pope. So today we're interviewing Sean Faircloth about his book, Attack of the Theocrats. Sean is a Maine attorney and politician. He served five terms in the Maine legislature. In 2009, he became the executive director of the Secular Coalition for America, advocating for separation of church and state and for greater acceptance of non-theistic viewpoints in American life. In 2011, he became the director of strategy and policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science and will be an opening speaker for the Dawkins book tour.

His first book has been published by Pitchstone Press. It's called Attack of the Theocrats, How the Religious Right Harms Us All and What We Can Do About It. And it's available on Amazon now. So, Sean, Tom and I have read your book. I think both of us are pretty impressed with the layout of this book. It really does. It really brings forward something I think that is that is really useful. And it's showing this theocratic America that could be on the rise. And it gives us a plan of action. But in one of these chapters, you talk about the fundamentalist 50.

And there's 50 different theocrats, as you call them. If you had to choose one of those theocrats, which one you think is the one that you would warn the audience about? You would say, hey, everybody, you really need to pay attention to this particular politician. Hey, you can't pick just one. That's a Lays potato chip. That's a Lays potato chip. The point of the fundamentalist 50, if I can just step back in it for a second, is frankly, it could have been the fundamentalist 100. I just took 50 that were just the greatest hits, if you will, of some of the more colorful statements from members of Congress. And one little point I'd add to something you said is you said the threat, or I forget your exact phrasing, of theocracy.

And I'm not saying we live in a theocracy now, but I want your listeners to know, and this is what I document in my book, both with the Fundamentalist 50 and with the laws that are on the books in Chapter 3, is that fundamentalism and theocracy have already risen. What I mean to say is, I'm the first to agree, the United States of America is not a theocracy today. And we look at it in terms of the threat of, say, a Rick Perry or, you know, and I would even argue Romney and others, that we are in danger of that at the tip top of American political power. But what we miss sometimes is how many laws are already on the books, in the legislatures, in Congress. This fundamentalist 50, these aren't candidates. These are sitting members of the United States Congress.

And the way the media works is a lot of times you focus on, oh, Newt Gingrich is the hot guy today. Let's do a story on him because he's running for president and we watch that horse race. But meanwhile, there are lots of these obscure members of Congress who are incredibly powerful and have been successful in passing laws. And media doesn't cover that horse race so much. And so it sort of goes under the radar. So I don't know if I'd pick one, but just, I'll give you an example of one that just kind of, for me, I call it the tinfoil hat award, just because he's no, people have usually not heard of, but he's, he's Congressman Steve Pierce. He's from New Mexico. And he really said this, he's, he's talking against gay marriage. A lot

of times I don't want your listeners to get the wrong impression. In this Fundamentalist 50 chapter, I talk about gay marriage a lot because the politicians are forced, because it's such a hot topic, to talk about gay marriage. But as I show in Chapter 3, there are many, many different types of laws with religious bias. That just happens to be the one that kind of most gets in popular culture. But in this one, he is talking about that issue. And he says there's serious downstream effects, his phrase, to gay marriage. And then he says, and I'm quoting him, they might think to themselves where they are.

I'm going to marry everyone in California with AIDS. Then suddenly they've got access to maybe the benefit program, the health insurance. Close quote. Now I want to break this logic down for you. Please do. Please do. I didn't know there was any logic in there to break down. I'm impressed that you're able to find something to begin with. You've got to

sort of think about what this guy's saying. So basically he's saying, if you allow for marriage equality for gay people, right, then somehow, lickety split, there's going to be polygamy. I mean, he's sort if you allow for for marriage equality for gay people right then somehow lickety split there's going to be polygamy i mean he's going to apply basically somehow if you say yes gay marriage you got to say yes polygamy you know which we're hearing this all this kind of talk on santorum i think he talked about you know gay marriage and analogize it to um you know men having sex with animals i mean these people are out there anyway back to pierce so he says okay

therefore gay marriage leads to polygamy. Then secondly, apparently, you know, he's perceiving that out in California they have too generous of health care benefits, and that when this person has this polygamous marriage, these darn liberals, they'd say, I'm going to marry a bunch of people with AIDS and give them health care. And I like that the disaster at the end of this logic chain is some people with AIDS would have health care. Well, to borrow a phrase, God forbid. I mean, he's actually serious that it seems like not only is it so awful that there'd be gay marriage and then there'd be polygamy and then you could marry everybody and give them health care, but that somehow giving people health care, ooh, that would be an awful

result that we wouldn't want to see. And this guy's sitting in Congress. The other one that I often mention is Congressman Shimkus from Illinois. Guy's a chair of a committee, by the way. And this fellow, yeah, Illinois, he's downstate. And he basically, in an official hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives, they were talking about the issue of the seas rising, resulting from global warming. And he said, well, you don't need to worry about that, because in the Bible, it says that there's one flood, Noah's flood, that's it. And so case closed kind of reasoning. And you're thinking, this is a member of the U.S. Congress, and he's talking in an official proceeding about a real serious scientific issue? But yes, he is.

And so my point is, this guy isn't somebody who might someday have power. He has power now. In fact, in his case, he's the chair of a committee. And so the one thing I hope folks would take home from the Fundamentalist 50 chapter is how real this is. Let's say – forget it. Let's say that Obama wins in 2012. Let's assume that. I still think even with that, that today there is a greater threat of real theocracy seeping into this country than ever before.

I mean, you look at Obama, this last decision you've seen, or last issue that's bubbled up about the Catholic Church saying their civil, their religious liberties are impeded because, and this is really what they say, they don't admit it, but this is what they're saying, in the trafficking cases, human trafficking, where they often bring in women, often girls, who are basically like slaves. And sometimes they're like sex slaves. I mean, it's pretty horrific, horrible stuff. And the Catholic Church says, we want to deny them contraception. That's what they want to do. And they say it's a denial of their religious liberty to deny these victims, some of the most vulnerable people on earth, deny them contraception. I mean, sometimes girls who've been beaten and raped, let's deny them

contraception. But yet they go through the looking glass in terms of their reasoning and say, that's denying us religious liberty. And what's scary is apparently the Obama administration, which should be thinking more along our lines, one would hope, is actually considering seriously deferring to the Catholic Church on these issues. I hope they don't. But it's concerning. So that's how bad it's gotten.

It's worse than ever since the founding of the republic. And you're talking about a few minutes ago, talking about sort of how government interacts with the church. And there's there's a lot of instances in your book where you talk about religious exemptions and how there's sort of this uneven playing field. Can you talk about that a little bit? I think it's one of the most important untold stories is it's not just that the politicians are there, it's that the laws are there as well. And even though the hot-button ones are sort of abortion, let's say, and gay marriage, and they're important issues, children's law, whether it's the so-called faith-healing exemption in child protection, whether it's some states that have religious exemptions in child care, religious exemptions in vaccines, states that have religious exemptions in childcare, religious exemptions in vaccines, religious exemptions in corporal punishment, you know, striking children for discipline in schools.

There's a whole range in the area of children's law that provide religious exemptions which are physically, in some cases, harmful to children, which I think is morally abhorrent. Which gets back to your, you know, the story from the study you told at the beginning. I'm so proud because of all the policy stands I talk about in my book opposing this religious bias. When it comes right down to it, we're on the side of people not getting hurt, of people being treated gently, and a lot of laws that people just aren't aware of. Of course, huge bias in tax law that enriches some of the wealthy mega ministers, lines their pockets for people who go out and preach hate. They get not only the exemption that everybody hears about, tax deductibility for contributions, but they get an exemption for their house that can really be for a palatial type of home, sometimes for multiple ministers within one megachurch. And you think about the hundreds and hundreds, the explosion in megachurches in this country since 1970.

There was just a handful of megachurches in 1970. Now they are a huge and growing business. Now they are a huge and growing business. Anything else you name, stem cell research, end of life situations, all being restricted by religious bias. In education, dramatic amounts of religious bias. The Texas textbooks that now are sent out all throughout the United States, thus affecting children all over America, unfortunately. Vouchers for religious bias in D.C. that you help subsidize, religious bias imposed on land use planning. A lot of people would not expect this, but it's actually getting more and more rampant. It's all over the place, and we really need to speak out about it. In the

United States military, scandal after scandal, where fundamentalism has creeped its way into the U.S. military. And if you're not of a fundamentalist perspective, you're really in large measure at a disadvantage in the United States military today. That's completely against what our founders would have believed. So it's a myriad set of laws. I list them in my book. And my hope is for you folks and for your listeners that it's kind of a toolkit. So when you talk to your neighbors and talk to your friends, you can bring these issues out. Another thing that I think your book outlines really well, and this is the beginning,

you talk about whether or not our nation had a Christian founding. Now, there's some people in the media today, especially on Fox News, especially on Glenn Beck's show, specifically Glenn Beck, who talk about how this nation is a Christian nation, how it was founded. Sarah Palin loves to say how it's a Christian nation. Actually, most of the people that are frontrunners in the GOP currently talk about a Christian nation. I know that there's a bit, you go into Ron Paul in your book. He's one of the fundamentalist 50, and you say that he even says that this is a Christian nation. What do you have to say to those people? They're wrong.

And the evidence is overwhelming that they are wrong. I'll just take Madison. I'm a real admirer of Madison. He designed the Constitution more than any other single person. He's called the father of the Constitution in the history books. And let me just give you some quotes from James Madison. One, in no instance have the churches been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Quote two, religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise. Quote three, religion has been much oftener a motive to repression than a restraint from it. There's no doubt when you look at particularly what Jefferson and Madison were about.

It is a seminal moment, not just in the history of the United States, a seminal moment in the history of the human race. When Jefferson in Virginia, in the state of Virginia, argued for separation of church and state, he actually proposed the concept in the Virginia legislature, and you see this a lot in the pattern in their lives. Madison, the less famous, the less hip, the less cool guy, he went and got it passed. And then nationally, somewhat the same thing. Jefferson is off in Europe, right, at the time of the forming of the Constitution.

Madison, who's his right-hand man, his best guy, has really been crafting the Constitution. Jefferson writes back and says, ah, no guarantee of separation of church and state, among other things. And Madison dutifully, after thinking about it, goes back and really works hard to get this Bill of Rights, which, number one, is the Establishment Clause prohibiting establishment of religion. This is unheard of. This is unheard of in the history of the world. It's always been, you know, the king is divine right by God and all the rest of it. And these guys came up with a new idea. And so it is so ironic when these right-wing ideologues start

talking about us as a Christian nation when it is not just an important aspect of our founding. It is in many ways, according to Jefferson, the important aspect of our founding. Jefferson, on his gravestone, did not include that he was the president of the United States. He picked three things. And one of them was the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom, which is the one providing for separation of church and state. He put that above being president of the United States. He's a pretty accomplished guy. Yeah, being president, not enough to make the list. But this, he thought was more important. That's how significant and in

some ways, he's got a strong argument because there's been over 40 presidents, but it was Jefferson with Madison that changed the entire world. And unfortunately, sadly, we're seeing that here, this nation was founded on this great step forward is allowing that wall of separation to crumble. And it's sad. So how does that happen? Like that's, I guess that's like, when did this shift occur? You know, is the thing that, that I keep thinking about, you know, clearly, it feels obviously political, you know, it feels to me, and I don't know this, but I, I feel like there, there was a, there had to come a point where the hyper-religious folks in this country were seen as a voting demographic. And if we see them, we mobilize them, we join them all together, we can appeal to them en masse. And so we can then get their votes.

But it seems like there's been a shift from this sort of like, hey, let's take advantage of this voting demographic to this voting demographic is now taking advantage of us. This voting demographic has taken control of an entire political party in this country. You cannot you cannot get elected to major Republican office. I don't think at all. And it's deeply unlikely to get elected to office as a Democrat. But I think it's impossible to get elected to office as a Republican and not hold these strong religious views, or at least espouse these strong religious views if you don't hold them. So when and how did this shift occur? Well, first of all, you're right. It's never happened like this in America where essentially a particular religious viewpoint has veto power over one of two major political parties.

It's huge. It's historic. And in some ways you've got to tip your hat to the religious right because despite the phrase moral majority, they've never been moral and they've never been the majority. They have bootstrapped their way and you got to give them credit. I mean, Barry Goldwater, the Mr. Conservative back in the 60s, in some people's minds, the founder of modern conservatism, couldn't get elected. He could not get the nomination because of the very directly hostile things that he says, and I quote in my book, because he represented the true libertarian perspective.

He couldn't get elected, certainly couldn't get the nomination today because he said so many directly hostile things that I quote in my book about the religious right. It is an unprecedented time. And I give credit to the religious right, because back in the 60s and 70s, I think they looked around, didn't like what they saw, and they organized. And they were successful, running people for the school board, the city council, and getting involved in Republican primaries. A key pivot point was 1980. August of 1980, Reagan had just secured the Republican nomination, and a group that had to that point been ignored or in recent years been ignored, they held a big convention in Dallas, Texas, and Jerry Falwell organized it of fundamentalist ministers. And Reagan goes before this group and cognizant of the law that the ministers can't endorse from the pulpit, Ronald Reagan says, and I'm paraphrasing but I'm pretty close to the accurate quote here, he said, I know you can't endorse me, but I can endorse you. And he specifically opened the doors of the Republican Party to religious right influence. And ultimately,

the point where we're at now, where essentially it's like a veto power. And one of the things that I see as critical in what I write about in my book is we need a business plan. Whatever else you say about the religious right, they had a plan, a grassroots plan, and they organized. It's not enough for secular people to say, well, I disagree. No, we need to organize and have a business plan. My book offers a business plan and offers a 10-point vision of a secular America. We need to organize and galvanize, and that's what those different chapters in my book do. You mentioned your 10-point vision., uh, just briefly what that means? I won't belabor people with each, uh, point in the 10 point vision, but the secular movement needs to have a real effect on society. And so in addition to the business plan, it's called

our secular decade that I lay out in the book and that I'm going to work for now as director of strategy and policy for the Richard Dawkins Foundation, we need a vision that can help unite, energize, and galvanize people. And I encourage your listeners, you can just go to YouTube or go to the Dawkins site, but there's a speech on YouTube. I think it says Sean Faircloth introduces Richard Dawkins. We'll get you to it. And I lay out the 10-point vision there. And the point is, in each of these 10 types of laws, not really laws, but sort of a vision of what America will be, they all demonstrate one uniting thread.

And that is that we are the ones being inclusive. We are the ones being compassionate, not just compassionate to ourselves, but compassion to children in fundamentalist homes that are human beings like anyone else, that don't deserve to suffer under faith healing, don't deserve to be beaten. We speak out for the human rights of all people uniformly. And that's what's so great about our vision. And the 10-point vision kind of crystallizes it. And so I'd encourage you to look for that. And I think it's something that we can use as another tool in the toolkit to sort of bring it out to our friends.

It's not just about, oh, there's the cranky atheist against the cross on public land on a hill. Now, as a lawyer, I'm against that because as a matter of constitutional principle, that's not an appropriate use of public land. But I'm a politician enough to know I don't think that's going to galvanize our neighbors and friends. The 10 point vision offers a positive and optimistic view of the future. And I encourage your listeners to check that out. So which step is to have a bitchy podcast? I guess that's, I didn't notice. That is critically important.

We're glad you endorse us here, Sean. So, uh, so Tom and I, I think I speak for Tom when I say we both really enjoyed the book. Uh, we thought it, we thought it really, uh, it really did a good job of outlining everything you talked about. You're going to be going on a book tour here. I know people can find out more information at richarddawkins.net. Is there any other place you want to send them on the web? Well, check out some of my talks. I do have a talk about the book on YouTube, Sean Faircloth, Attack of the Theocrats. Although, I'd say looking at my talk, Sean Faircloth introduces Richard Dawkins. I think it's at Lynchburg, Virginia, where I enjoy laying into Liberty University, by the way. Gives a quick overview of some of what I'm talking about.

And then I hope people will check out the book because it really is – it's a blueprint. It's a business plan for us. We can either sit by the sidelines or we can make America a better place. And I think not only should secular people make America a better place, we should lead making America a better place. And that's what Attack of the Theocrats is all about. Sean, we're going to actually link to your video. I see it directly on Richard Dawkins' site, so I'm actually going to put it directly in the show notes here. So if any of the listeners want to see it, it's going to be in the show notes for this particular episode.

Sean, thanks so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Great talking to you. We really appreciate it. Great talking to you. So we got some email and some comments for those who left comments on our blog. Our blog is DissonancePod.com. You can go there and leave comments about any of our shows.

We got some great comments. We're really appreciative for all of the people posting comments on our show and for the conversation that's beginning to develop more and more on that site. So I want to say thank you to all of the people who have posted there. We've also gotten some direct emails. Tim from the UK, he actually cut and pasted the review that is on our iTunes. I didn't even realize, Cecil, that iTunes had a different iTunes for the UK and for Japan. Yeah. I don't even know why that exists.

I can't tell what my rating is, though. Like, I'm like, oh. Like, I can't tell. I look at that. He did a great little screen cap of it, but I can't tell. Like, I want to go there and be like, well, how many fucking downvotes do I have? I know, right? We have no idea if this is the only one there.

Although he does say it's the only review there. So I guess we – Yeah, I've got to wait until I travel then. I've got to travel over there to go read my one review on iTunes Japan. That's it, Cecil. Fire up the cognitive dissonance corporate jet. Yeah. Yeah. What you mean is light the paper airplane on fire.

That's pretty much the same thing. Fire it up, baby. Also, I'll need to charge you for that paper airplane. Yeah. What you mean is light the paper airplane on fire. That's what you mean, right? That's pretty much the same thing. Fire it up, baby. Also, I'll need to charge you for that paper airplane. Yeah. Sorry. Paper isn't free, sir. We also got an email from Prescott. Prescott, you sent us an email with, I think, my favorite subject line.

Take a look at this ass twat. I love ass twats. That's awesome. That's awesome. He actually mentions a dipshit named Michael Crook. I agree this guy is a dipshit. In fact, we were considering covering this story, but the guy is such a dipshit. We decided not to really cover this story in detail, although we're really appreciative of the email and the story idea.

So thank you very much, Prescott. We're happy to have your email. Yeah, that's, I actually, when I read this, Prescott, I thought the guy was a troll. I was like, oh, this guy, he's just fucking around. Like, it's a satirical article. But he's, like, he's fucking serious. When I get through it, I read the first thing,

and I was like, oh, I see, he's kidding around. And then he's like, no, I'm not kidding around. I'm like, oh, he's not kidding around, because he just said he wasn't kidding around. Yeah, I watched his video and it's scary. It's abhorrent. It's disgusting. And it looks like he's got a black eye in the video.

He deserves every bit of that. Which I don't understand. It's like he's basically making an argument that like rape does not exist. It's fucking ridiculous. And then he's got a black eye. It looks like he got beat up by somebody, maybe for suggesting that rape does not exist. Right. Yeah, maybe.

We had somebody on Twitter, Brendan on Twitter, who has a handle which is long and involved. And if you want to see it, you can follow us, dissonance underscore pod on Twitter. And you could see that they sent us a note and said that they're another New Zealand fan for our expanding list. We're glad that you're on Australia's pool raft. We're very happy that we have to have all of those people listening to the show. You sound just like Australians. I just want you to know. So send us your hate mail because we love that.

I love that we've got a small demographic now of New Zealanders. New Zealand has a population less than Chicagoland. Like your population, the population of New Zealand is not as large as the county of Cook County. That Chicago is in. Yeah, that Chicago is in. It's crazy. So we're happy to have you. Are they Kiwis?

What's the – You know, here's something. I'm going to make fun of ourselves. Why do we have counties and no counts? We should have a count of the county. Well, we've got Count Chocula. He's like America's mascot, right? It's funny because we're fat.

We also got an email, Tom, from a person with an awesome name. Cecilia sent us an email. She's breaking my heart. From Argentina, which is awesome. I think it's the first time we've ever gotten email from South America. So that's great. Yeah, I think we've got almost all the continent. Do we have anyone in Africa at this point?

I don't think so. South Africa, are you listening? Send us an email. If you're listening from Antarctica. Because I know you're not listening in Egypt or in Libya. If you're bored and desperate down in Antarctica, you know, if you're like hanging out with Shackleton's ghost or whatever. The only way anybody down there would listen is if the thing jumped into their body and fucking subscribed. Cecilia makes a comment that when she went to the U.S. in the early 90s, she was surprised to find Bibles in every hotel room.

Oh, yeah. I don't even understand that. Why? I don't know. Michael sent us an email as well. His email says basically that he loves the show and he relates a story. This story is awesome. So I'm going to relate his story

where a buddy of his is sitting there watching TV. There's a happy Valentine's balloon in the closet. The balloon floats toward him where the guy is sitting on the couch watching Tube and then floats eventually away. And he used the floating balloon as proof that God exists. I use it as proof of the force. I don't know.

I think. Yeah. So that is proof of either air currents or God. Or the force. The force. I think the force is number three here. You're neglecting a very, very probable cause, which is the force. Maybe he was watching Star Wars.

We don't know the whole story. It could be. It could be. Maybe R2 threw it to him from the closet. Admittedly, this is compelling because it's difficult to move a helium-filled balloon. They don't move at the slightest touch or anything. No, they're very difficult to move. Absolutely.

I agree wholeheartedly. A lot of opposing forces. You need like a, yeah. Oh, absolutely. You need one of those fucking fans, one of those giant fans they use in fucking wind tunnels to move one of those things. You know, I actually heard that after Hurricane Katrina, all the balloons were still there. It was just sitting in the fucking, just sitting in New Orleans.

Everything else is gone. It's just a fucking field of balloons. You can actually, sometimes you can see where like a balloon vendor had blown away, but the balloons remained motionless. The balloons stayed. The housing around it was gone. It was proof of God

or something. Well, on that note, thank you for listening and we are going to leave you as always with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue it's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night

info docutainment leo pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death and towers tarot cars psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues temples dragons giant worms atlantis dolphins truthers bir wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double speak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. We'll see you next time. you