Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 240: The Skepticrat

Episode Date: July 27, 2015

  ? Thanks to Noah @Noah_Lugeons and Heath @HeathEnwright for joining us!   http://skepticrat.libsyn.com/ http://scathingatheist.com/  

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. It's Mike of California. I have to say, I am truly offended. It's all about in and out. You sick motherfuckers. White Castle, are you kidding me? White Castle? Oh my god. Terrible. Double double and the story. Hey guys, this is Joe, down here in Jacksonville, Florida. Been listening for a long time, since the beginning, actually.

I know, it's crazy I haven't killed myself yet, but anyway, just wanted to let you in on a little game that I play. Just finished the latest podcast and whenever somebody sneezes, I like to say, kind of under my breath, mumbling, just barely loud enough so they can tell that I said something, I'll either say, God blaspheme, or blaspheme. And you know, it's kind of like,

God blaspheme, or blaspheme. You know, it sounds like bless you, but just a little fun game I play to make myself chuckle. And they think I said something nice and they usually smile or something. I haven't gotten found out yet, but try it. It's kind of fun. Hi guys, it's Paul here. I just live just outside of ACT. And for your information, the Australian Capital Territory banned fireworks in 2009. Glory howl. Bye. I've just learned something from the show

that will change my life. Pastor Manning said that semen is the cream of the blood, and he said it's more powerful than the blood. So the next time someone asks me if I've been washed in the blood of the Lamb and covered by the blood of Jesus, I will say, no, I'm covered in something much, much more powerful.

Let me tell you, my son, about the glory hole. Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence to any topic that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical, it's political, and there is no welcome mat. This is episode number 240, I think.

It is! It is! I knew it all along. I said that with the surety of a man who checked. You misnamed the notes. You misnamed the notes. You misnamed the notes. I was waiting. When you didn't correct them.

I feel like if you didn't correct my errors, that is really your error. I was waiting for you to fuck it up. Fucking upper management, motherfucker. And we are joined by the scathing atheists. Because there's two of them, Noah and Heath. Also the skeptic rats. We've got a lot of plurals going here. Welcome, gentlemen.

Hello, everybody. Thanks for having us. Thank you for being on our show. We wanted to talk to you about this story from The Independent. This is a great story. It's really just a cheerful, heartwarming tale of youth and coming of age. So far, so good this is really like this is really like the like the the isis version of the dead poet society

we got the poets and you got it with with far more actual dead poets poets who were perfectly alive and well at the beginning of the movie. And there's plenty of suicide in this story too. So the story, ISIS forces Yazidi children to behead dolls as part of their re-education training.

It's pretty much what it sounds like. They took a whole bunch of boys hostage, captive, they abducted them, whatever you want to say. They're turning them into mutant soldiers. Teenage Mutant Ninja ISIS. I don't know exactly how that works. And part of their re-education program is to

behead a bunch of dolls, which, I don't know, man, I wasn't even part of ISIS, and I'd fucking cut the head off of, you know, random. Yeah, what's the big fucking deal? I know. Like, I read this, and I'm like, well, who didn't torture a G.I. Joe here and there? I mean, I call this vocational training. What are you going to teach a bunch of Yazidi kids in Iraq?

You can teach them philosophy and algebra. These kids are really going to grow up to be fucking philosophers and algebrists. They'd be lucky to find a job lick testing paint for lead at nine cents a week. Give them some life skills. Give him a practical education. I'm all for this. I like to see ISIS is turning over a new leaf kind of. They also have a suicide bomber training course, but only the 101.

You can't advance. It's a distance learning course. Yeah, exactly. You know, when I read this, I actually thought, you know, I read this and I thought, you know, the Chicago public schools are a little jealous because the student to teacher ratio is actually better. So it's like they're working down like a checklist of all the various types of evil and they just got to socially awkward big brother. All right. All you guys spin a cat around until he vomits.

Make your sister watch. It says in this article, it says anis video released last week a boy was shown beheading a syrian soldier under adult supervision i thought good for them they're at least practicing safe you know safe beheading they've got an adult there making sure everything goes right because it's like when we were kids and we used to watch mr wizard and he would like light some shit on fire and he'd be like hey make sure an adult's here yeah same thing right you know you got got the kid as the fucking scimitar whatever in his hand don't run with your scimitar yeah well i mean they don't tell you in the story but he only had his learner's permit for the beheading oh he's got to go to the bmv in order to doesn't even work bmv doesn't even work i'm

just saying like i threw it in there we all laughed it doesn't even work. I'm just saying. Like, I threw it in there. We all laughed. It doesn't even work. So I got to assume one of these kids that they're training is eventually going to make it into the big beheading video. Like, they're going to be the star. You know, like the Olsen twins of ISIS murder videos. It's going to be a big deal. I'm picturing, like, jihadist stage moms bothering the directors. Shoot him from below. Shoot him from below. He looks taller.

He doesn't cut left. He only cuts right. My son hasn't had any beheading time. He's been on the bench the whole season. We're going to play out the whole caliphate, and he won't have beheaded a single infidel. This is ridiculous. Hold on. Hold on.

Are you guys saying there's a woman talking in fucking ISIS land? You know, there's a woman talking in fucking isis land you know there's a quote in here he says then they taught me how to hold the sword and they taught me how to hit they told me it was the head of the infidels and i thought like well you kind of have to if you have to tell somebody to hit him in the head in order to fucking behead him then maybe the training is actually necessary these are fucking stupid kids. I'm just saying. Well, but here's the big question, because I feel like this is working against ISIS's purposes here. Like, how much do you stand to lose if you put an amateur beheader out there?

You know, like, I mean, it's not like if he fucks it up, it's going to be a big deal. The guy's going to still end up dead. And I'm thinking, if I want to intimidate people, I don't want some kid that was raised since he was six years old to know exactly how to lop off a fucking head. My decapitator-in-chief is going to be the most near-sighted, underweight, clutch-like, and fine. I'm going to arm him with one of those knives that they give disabled kids at Halloween or something, you know? Fucking John Cena with a goddamn scimitar.

That's Urkel with a fucking spork that's intimidating it's like the old man in Texas chainsaw massacre with the little hammer with the hammer yeah exactly hit him again grandpa it's death by a thousand insults that's all it is I'm really looking forward to

the apologists that come out and say like well this is just culturally how they teach CPR you know, the apologists that come out and say like, well, this is just culturally how they teach CPR. Come on now. They just do it differently. It's like when you fillet a fish. Sometimes you cut off the head. Sometimes you don't.

Like they just do CPR differently. Right, right. Yeah. Could go either way. This is a perfectly reasonable way to teach kids how to behave. I really don't see the problem with training child soldiers to behead infidels. I mean, how could that possibly have any kind of religious connotation? It's ridiculous. We'll have to get C.J. Worleyman on here to weigh in.

To plagiarize something about it. According to my brain. Hold on. According to my brain. Control V. I mean, wait. No, that's ridiculous. I have a Mac.

It's Command-V. Outrageous. How dare you abuse my character? So we're going to be back at the end of the show with Noah and Heath from The Skeptocrat and from Scathing Atheist. We're going to be talking about politics with them for a little while and also talking about their new show, The Skeptocrat, and what you can expect there. So you're going to want to stick around. If you're fans of that show and you want to hear them speak again,

you'll want to catch it at the end of the show. It was interesting. It was the first far-right-leaning Republicans we've had on our program in a long time, so it was a different perspective. So stay tuned. Yeah. Trump supporters, I was shocked. So it's a different perspective. So stay tuned. Yeah. Trump supporters. I was shocked.

I was really, really surprised. I mean, I actually, I hear that Noah's going to comb all of his hair over in one direction in support of Trump, you know, from here on out. It's going to look awesome. He's going to wear a side ponytail. He's going to rock a side ponytail. If anyone could pull it off, it'd be that sexy beast. Noah could pull it off, yeah.

He'll look like that chick from fucking Napoleon Dynamite. He's already got the frame of a 12-year-old girl. I caught you this delicious bass. Abortions for all. Very well. abortions for all very well no abortions for anyone abortions for some miniature american flags for others so this first story comes from the huffington post. Scott Walker signs 20-week abortion ban into law. So that's pretty much what it sounds like. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

Stout? Scott. Stout. Yeah, he's not even all that stout, though. Like, he's a wee little. Scott Walker signed a bill into law on Monday that bans abortions after 20 weeks. So, well done. That bans less than 1% of the abortions.

Fucking nailed it yay but you know on the upside but on the upside what he's winding up banning is those people who get a chance to find out that their kid's going to be really horribly fucking like a genetic defect right that can only be detected in late pregnancy yeah and he's going to ban them and sort of force them to have a child that is going to be a, you know, difficult or could have a short life or, you know, just make it really, really hard on them. Well, I think it's important, you know, especially like if you find out at the 20 week ultrasound or something, if you find out that you have a child that is going to die horribly, pretty much immediately upon birth, like it's got some like yeah you know chromosomal

defect or something it's important that you either have no time to process the information emotionally before you have to make a decision to have an abortion or or carry the child another 20 weeks in the womb until it's fully gestated so that you can really experience the true depth of human suffering and heartache while giving birth to something destined only to suffer and die. Thankfully. That's like the only way to truly appreciate country songs, though. Right? You just got to give birth in the back of a fucking pickup truck

with like the fucking midwife as a coon dog. It was another stillborn. You're like, oh, yeah, break out the jug. We got ourselves another lady pregnant. Oh, man, look at her giving birth in the back of this here Chevy. Oh. Good, good, good, good, good. You know, thankfully, the bill doesn't contain any exceptions for rape victims.

Oh, yeah. No, goodness gracious. So, you know, you certainly, again, you want to make sure. This is how you properly pro-life. You know, right? Like if you're like, if you're really somebody who values life, you want to make sure that you value it so little that people who are sexually assaulted don't have options. I mean, well done. You know what I don't get is they constantly are throwing away what I think is sort of a medical miracle.

You know, I mean, if we're going to talk about medical miracles, let's talk about the fact that you can kind of Gattaca your kid nowadays in some way. Yeah. You know what I mean? you can kind of Gattaca your kid nowadays in some levels. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like in a way though where we're talking about like, no, he's not going to be like fucking,

he's not going to have brown hair and he's not gonna be a fucking like a, like a short dumpy kid. But the fact that you can, what do you have against short, dumpy, brown haired people? Look, I'm just looking across the fucking table and I can't stop throwing up in my

mouth. No, but, but seriously, you know, we have an opportunity to look at these children, these unborn children, whatever you want to call them, fetuses, zygotes, whatever it is you want to use your terminology, and you get to say, this kid is going to have a horrible life.

We don't have to fucking crack a rooster egg and fucking run our nail through it and look up to God. We don't have to do any of that stuff. Yeah. Right. But it helps. We have ways now to fucking take a look into the future and be like, this kid is going to have a horrible life or this kid is going to die immediately. This kid is going to die real young.

Right. It's going to live a life of just pure suffering because we have case after case after case of someone with this exact ailment and they die horribly die young etc right right so we have this this data and we don't pay attention to it or what we do is we say no you shouldn't be able to look at that sort of thing it's almost like condemning a pants or cancer patient that has know, like you're not able to get or you can give them an MRI so that they know they have the cancer, but you're just not going to treat it.

It's like we have like a we have a medical crystal ball. Sure. I mean, that's that's I mean, I hear exactly what you're saying. It's an excellent point. I hadn't considered that before. Like we have a medical crystal ball and there's so many things that can go wrong in the development of a of a human being how many i mean i don't know what the answer is but i think it's a it's it's a percentage that is not negligible of regular births to just wind up miscarrying oh yeah i think it's i think

again i i'm i'm i'm misremembering i'm probably misremembering from when my wife was pregnant we took birth classes and things but i i i want to. But I want to say it was more births end up – or more births. More pregnancies end up in miscarriage than end up in fully carried, gestated, birthed humans. That's a lot. That's a lot. If that's the case. If you're remembering correctly. And I could be mistaken.

I would type it into Google, but ugh, exhausting. I thought I heard something. Again, it'd just be speculation if I said it, so who cares what the number is? But I know it's not a negligible number. Here's the nice thing. We will be emailed at least 100 times with people that will send us the statistics. And it's an interesting statistic, so I would be interested to know what that statistic is. But regardless, I know it's not a negligible number.

I know that there are plenty of miscarriages. And the reason they even mention it in your birth class is so that they can get all the people on the fucking same page to say, look, this is not 100 percent thing. So you could fucking wind up with a fucking, you know, a toilet full of kid later. That's not good. You're not going to be happy about it. And it's going to suck. You know what I mean? Like there's going gonna be there's a fucking real consequence to this right and the fact is is that is that you know we have the ability to to say those sorts of things and

to let people know that and we have this ability to control our reproduction through all these other means but this one mean which is you know know, again, we've covered this. It's bullshit. 1% after 20 weeks. So the rest of them, the bulk of them, are happening way earlier than that. Way earlier than that. First trimester. And it's a fucking fingernail at that point. It's nothing. It's a tiny

little thing. Cell division takes a long time to fucking take hold and start really multiplying. So it's a tiny little thing when most of the time when it's it's aborted it's not a it's not a yeah it's difficult procedure at all this it the false argument is this late-term abortion stuff right like the the people who are aggressively anti-abortion are like you're aborting a fucking eight month and 28 day old you're aborting a kid who graduated high school right you're aborting a fucking eight-month and 28-day-old. You're aborting a kid who graduated high school.

Right. You're aborting preschoolers. Exactly. Okay. All right. That's not really happening. Nobody's – if there is a late-term abortion, it is because of medical necessity. Exactly.

It's medical necessity. And the thing is, is like I'm with you if somebody just willy-nilly wants to be at eight months and say, I'm with them. I'm with the pro-life people. I'm with the pro-life people saying, look, no. You can't just fucking say no now. You're eight months in for Christ's sakes. Let's get this thing fucking out of you. Let's figure this out.

Because you know what I mean? I know that there's going to be people who will say, a woman has every right to choose all the way up until – I get it. I understand where you're coming from at a certain point but i also say you know one of my things is like if it's viable outside the womb we need to consider that as something else but if the if the mother's in danger or if it's rape or incest i'm not i'm like okay you know what like this is something that you just can't kind of outside. I'm outside your moral decision, right? Like, I might have a decision I would make, but I'm outside your moral decision-making.

Look, one of my kids didn't even make it to eight months. Seven and a half months, the youngest one I have. He was six weeks, almost seven weeks early. So he didn't even make it to the eight-month mark. Like, sure, I get it. That would be weird if somebody was like, we should that like i don't see why really i mean he was fine like he popped out there and we fed him food and sure yeah he but you know he had to go in the little microwaves yeah we put him in the fry cooker for a few days to you know toast him up

but whatever that's fine yeah so like I get don't believe me like I understand the like but that's not a thing it's a myth it's just like it's just like the welfare queen right it's a myth it's a myth that somebody made up so that they could have a villain so that they could

they could attack this fucking procedure right and it's just it's stupid it's like look I'm with you if that fucking thing existed. It's like, yeah, I'd go hunt Bigfoot if he was around. Exactly. Right. It's like, well, what about if Bigfoot raped your wife? Be like, well, then fucking we have a different conversation.

Okay. That's fine. But, you know, there's no fucking Bigfoot. Nobody. So it, but, you know, I will tell you, like, if, if it's seven or eight months, you find out that your kids got, you know, trisisomy 13 or one of these major chromosomal defects that means that they have 0% chance of living more than two or three days. Do I think it's any different between birthing them and then watching them die outside the womb or aborting them? I don't think that there's a substantive difference.

Or giving birth to a dead baby because that happens on occasion, dead babies. Right. Those are like, oh, sorry, baby died right before you fucking gave birth to it. Right. Oh, sorry. Enjoy that unbelievable emotional and psychological pain and stress. Yeah, you still, oh, don't worry. You still have to go through the agony of childbirth, though.

So, you know, don't worry. Oh, and it's not risk-free just because the baby's dead. So, you know, you might still hemorrhage out and die. But anyway, God loves you. Yeah, and Scott Walker is a presidential candidate. How are you – there's no way this guy – this is not a centrist idea. This is not a centrist platform. But I don't think any Republican, though, can stand on the, you know.

In the primary, they can't. It's so funny because the primary pulls them all to the right and then the general pulls them back all to the center. So they, I mean, they have to. They simply have to. They have to pull to the right to motivate the base to get them excited. So they're all like, I fucking don't think we should kill babies. We should only hunt every other animal like they're just like guns for everybody babies for everybody pay for

nothing like and then as soon as the primary is over like all right that was awesome i was like i was just kidding around what i really mean what i really mean is load them into the trap gun and it's like it's always been the little women that caught the vision of giving beginning with jesus himself out of their private means some of you little precious ones have that little grocery money some of that little money set aside assure tonight the blessings of god on your family by giving it to god and speaking that say it god this is for blessings on my family amazing i don't have a lot to say about this one i'm just flabbergasted by this this comes from the patheos Blogs, progressive secular humanist. Florida church bills single mom $1,000 for failing to tithe. So this woman, Candace Peterson, she got a $1,000 collection notice from the Greater Mount Moriah Primitive Baptist Church.

What? What? That's what, right? Let me read that again. That sounds like a layer of bedrock. Where did you find the velociraptor oh we found in the greater mount moriah primitive fucking shale deposit the greater mount moriah as opposed to the lesser of the mount moriah primitive baptister or because there's so many adjectives you can just keep fucking with it right like it's it's either the greater or the lesser mount moriah but it's definitely a mount moriah and then is it a baptist church well it's a

primitive baptist church not like your modern baptist churches what do they ride don't exist do they ride in buggies no they just believe in backward ideas they don't have zippers they have like hats and if the fucking They have the The uh Sideburn beards They just like They all wear monocles They just dangled Yeah So they

They get together in the drawing room Oh that's Let's get together We have monocles Have you paid your dues this month? Let us see our tithing records Let's take a look Right right

Snifter of Brandiotta sets us right Yes jolly good old fellow. Oh, I see you're behind on your time. No, we're not like that primitive Baptist church down the street. No, no, no. We are the refined, lesser Mount Moriah. Lesser. Advanced Baptist church, you see.

Yes. So she basically got $1,000. It wasn't a fine. It was more just like, here's your bill. Right. They sent her a bill for going to church. The thing that kind of shocks me about this, and maybe this is naive because I'm not a church-going dude, but when I was a kid, i went to a methodist church and i've come to discover

that the methodist churches maybe are a little more progressive or maybe if not more progressive not the right word but lazy they're just lazy which is why we as a family fit in okay sure yeah you know but like they just passed around a collection plate they didn't keep track of who put money in it so whether you put money in or didn't keep track of who put money in it. So whether you put money in it or didn't put money, nobody knew. It was anonymous. It was, you know, whether you tithed or not, nobody was keeping track. Nobody was taking a roll call of your attendance.

You came and you went as you pleased. You pledged or tithed as you pleased, as to your means. And it was all voluntary. So the idea that you would go to a church and they'd be like, yeah, we have, we have this mission from God to save your soul, but it's going to cost you. That's like a Scientology-esque idea. Really is. And you know, the other thing too is, you know, as a non-believer, the first thing I thought is like, okay, we'll send them a message that says, I want a refund because my prayers weren't answered. Yeah. Right. Like I want, like you're

sending me a thousand dollars. I want the $30,000 I gave over the, you know, the amount of time that I went to your church because they didn't answer my prayers or something. Failure to provide services. Exactly. It's like, but instead it's, it, there's this weird thing though, that I think that, you know, people will get strong armed into this. They'll though, that I think that people will get strong-armed into this. They'll get – because the church is their community, right? And you don't want to be ostracized from your community because when you belong to that community, you don't want to be like kicked out of that community. Yeah. Because that's where a lot of your friends are.

It's just – because it's such a tight-knit community, you're going to be stuck. And this sort of thing probably works a lot. You were Catholic growing up, right? I was, yeah. Did they pass a collection plate? Yeah, in the Catholic Church, yeah, they passed a collection plate. So nobody knows who gives what? No, I don't think anybody notices who gives what, although there are many people who give checks.

So those sorts of things are records. Yeah, but I remember my dad always got out a ten dollar bill and he always put a ten dollar bill in the collection plate i mean i just i don't know if that was the right amount or the wrong amount or whatever but that's what he did he always put a ten dollar bill in the collection plate you know i i will tell you this you see the catholic passed the they passed the thing around it should be if you're given ten percent of your income right let's say you're you're an average what what's an average income? $50,000? Yeah. For a family of like four or five, I think. Yeah. $50,000. $50,000. So if you're pulling home,

let's say, you know, after taxes, you know, something like, let's say $1,300 every two weeks or something. I'm just making up a number. Let's say it's like $1,300 every two weeks. And you go to church every week. That's what, what are you looking at you're looking at 65 bucks yeah 65 bucks a week yeah am i seeing people drop 65 bucks a week in there and i don't remember that you know i don't remember that either i don't remember seeing that i don't remember seeing even back when i was a kid so this is you know years and years ago when the income was lower i don't remember seeing a lot of money i remember seeing a lot of ones in there sure you know right but i don't remember seeing a lot of money. I remember seeing a lot of ones in there. Sure, right? But I don't remember seeing a lot of people being like,

I'm putting 10% of my income into this thing. But isn't the whole idea that in order for the church to be a charity, then the giving can't be compulsory. And if it's compulsory, then you can't bill me for something that's not compulsory. Right. That changes the whole idea of charity. That does change the whole thing, right? Like you're a charity.

I'm supposed to support you because you've told me that that's part of my responsibility as a member of your religious community or whatever. Fine. But if I decide not to do it, it's like if I want to go to the goddamn Shedd Aquarium or something, right? And it's like, yeah, the suggested donation is $20. You can tell them, cool. And then just walk in. And go in.

Yeah. I'm not, you know, that's a suggested donation. Great story, bro. Yeah. Let me look at a fish. Or you could just say like, okay, well, here's your dollar. Yeah. You know, like I'll give a donation.

Right. Here's your dollar. Yeah. I mean, that's it. Like, so there's the social pressure of i've never done that like i'm go fuck i'll pay you to look at your fish or whatever you know sure yeah i was just gonna say like the suggested donation at like the art institute right art institute is a is the same thing you walk in and there's a there's a money that they ask for and then it says on their

suggested donation yeah so they'll tell you when you walk up to the counter they'll be like 12 bucks or whatever it is yeah but you look and it says suggested donation. You could just say, no, I'm just going to go in and you can do it. Sure. I'm sure you can. Yeah. As a poor student, you know, you could do that or something like that. I'm sure.

Or just as an asshole who likes to be pedantic about the meaning of words, you know, right? Like, I mean, there's people out there that have the money that don't, that are just like, I'm not paying because it says donation. You know, you know, it's out there. But, you know, suggested donation, this could be the same thing. They're just sending you a bill. Yeah. And you don't have to pay it.

But here's your suggested donation of $1,000. But, like, the thing is, like, I'm sure they can't send her to collections. No, they can't. Of course they can't. But they can shun her. Yeah. But that's the funny thing is, like like they can't send her to collections they can't like ding her credit report right oh i got shitty credit because i didn't donate greater

lesser jumping jehovah witness primitive baptist amish church of christ or whatever the fuck like it doesn't love me anymore yeah you know so they can't they can't fucking wail on her for that but be an awful collections call to take, though, wouldn't it? It would be great if Hillbilly God did the collections. Oh, no. That would be. Hey, y'all. I just want to let you know that you're behind a little in your payments.

And the thing about us at this primordial Baptist church is we try to work with you. So we want to make sure that you are the first of our concerns. So we want to make sure we work with you to get the right payments on you. Now, look, I'm not saying we're going to withhold salvation, but for four easy payments at $250, I can almost guarantee, guarantee, a place for you at the right, maybe left hand because you know that right hand get dirty of god i mean it's ridiculous yeah it's ridiculous it's a it's why would you not just shred this bill i shred my regular bills oh it's the gas bill whatever i produce enough of that for

free what would i pay for it for it's happened to me right yeah i'm just fucking i just i just they already have to have one of those things that lights on fire over my house that like lets off gas stuff out. One of the methane off gas things that they're burning like by landfill. They're like, there's cows that don't produce this much. What's wrong with you? There's whole herds of cows. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.

Sister, it comes from Jacksonville.com. sister it comes from jacksonville.com petition to ban new books prompts a new debate on censorship uh in some fucking county no one cares about so two elementary schools um two elementary books i'm sorry um set in afghanistan and iraq are causing problems there's a bunch of uh christian groups or christian parents that are all fucking worked up about these books um the the ironic part is that the books have kind of this message like if you if you go through the books that the idea of banning these particular books is antithetical to the message of the books themselves so it's sort of hilarious yeah it's it's like it's like there's books about like about like educational freedom

and then you're just like we should have less educational freedom as a result of our religious intolerance. That's the exact thing. The book that gives you this insight. Right. It'd be like banning a book on the history of book banning.

You know? Hey, do you have anything on the history of book banning? You know? Hey, do you have anything on the history of book banning? I'm sorry, sir, that book's been banned. God damn it! Fuck! We burnt it earlier. We danced around the fucking garbage can while it was lit on fire. When has there ever been

a benefit to anyone when someone's like, we're gonna ban a book, right? Can we just get that? Can we remove these ideas from the library? There's plenty of stupid books out there. Didn't Jenny McCarthy write a book? Dude, there's books. The Twilight series is available. Yeah.

There are. Kevin Trudeau has like four books. Sure. Joel Osteen can write all the books he wants and people don't ban that shit. But some books about like, and all of a sudden, what am I worried about? Like as a parent of kids and be like oh my god what if they find out there's muslims that's so weird isn't it right like i'll i'll tell my kid there's muslims that's the thing is like these people though they're so

afraid that their kid is not going to believe the exact same thing that they believe and that there's just going to be like an argument with their kid or something i don't know what the deal is but they're just super afraid right that their kid is not going to be like an argument with their kid or something. I don't know what the deal is, but they're just super afraid. Right. That their kid is not going to believe the same things they believe. But it would be so hard to have a young child choose a different religion than your family. Like I have a second grader going into third grade. Even if we were religious.

It's not like he could be like, well, fuck you. I'm going to the mosque like a motherfucker you don't have a car what do you mean you're going to the mosque you can't go across the street unless I give you permission

what do you mean I mean I don't control his ideas he can think whatever he'd like to think but the idea that all of a sudden my kid is going to switch and begin some other religious practice outside of my supervision. And these are kids. These are little kid books. These are little kid books.

These are like fucking – I mean you're almost right now at like fucking spot one up the hill. Right. You know what I mean? Like these are – you look at these images and you're images these are little kid books and it's and it's about tolerance like that's the thing is like you're banning something that's about tolerance and and some of the concerns here's one i like we're a military town she said some of our children have parents who've been to iraq so what i can't even, I mean, like, what does that have to do with anything?

We're a military town. We're not known for our tolerance. Yeah, and you say that. What? Well, they've been to Iraq, and you're like, well, then they should know that there's humans over there. And you know, it's so funny that you say that,

because, like, the vets that I know that have been to Iraq and Afghanistan, they come back, and they're not just like, well, turns out I hate everybody in these two countries. Instead, they have because they've actually met people and they've talked to people. They have a more nuanced understanding that like, yeah, maybe they have a religious or cultural difference from myself. And maybe that's even a gulf we'll never cross together. But I recognize their shared humanity. Want to contact the guys?

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on a per episode basis. If you can't spare any money, take a second to give us a five-star review on iTunes or Stitcher, or spread the word about the show. We want to send a big heartfelt glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. This story comes from Right Wing Watch. God needs to get the glory and the praise if we manage to stop the Iran deal.

Yeah, because you'd have to go back in time, Gohmert. You'd have to go back in time. Well, this was on 720, so, right? Maybe it was the deal then. The deal was the deal by then. This is it. Like, it's done. Why don't you play? Why don't you just play all right louis oh god

because i have to press play on louis fucking bald ass head hang on i'm telling you this deal is so bad and what makes it even tougher now though since the senate and the house passed a bill that the president signed this is insanity but it took the requirement from being two thirds have to vote for a treaty in order to ratify it. It changed it to be only one third have to vote for it to ratify it. And it added the House. So the House and Senate have to have a third. So I'm telling you, maybe it's like Gideon's army being winnowed down to make it more likely God will get the credit. What? Yeah, maybe that's more, it's just like Gideon's army.

God. It's just like Gideon. The thing is, though, he is talking to a Hagee hotline, so everybody who's watching probably knows that reference. Sure. I don't know that reference. I'm just like, what? We should have gotten Thomas back on. Yeah.

He would know that reference. I'm sure it's in the first seven pages of the Bible. But we have made it next to impossible to stop this Iranian deal. So if it gets stopped as it should, God needs to get the glory and praise. And everybody that's here with Citizens United for Israel will be the hands and praise and everybody that's here with citizens united for israel will be the hands and feet to make that happen but this is a horrible deal and and i know a lot of people think well the united states is the sole superpower we're going to be here forever but you know no country lasts forever and we have betrayed israel so. Fucking these guys and their fucking global hard-on for Israel is unbelievable to me.

They don't have this fucking love for any other competing religion. They really don't. It's kind of weird. But then again, in the Bible, it talks about the Jews are the chosen people, so you can't fuck with the Jews. You can't say anything about the Jews. You've got to be nice to the israelites whatever and so i think that's what they just they just bring that with them because it says it in the old part of their book it's a one would one would find this constant support of israel exhausting wouldn't it i mean it'd be like i'll tell you

what you know it's interesting this is total conspiracy theory but it'd be hilarious if the jews planned all this out. That they gave out their book to all these people, convinced them that there was a Christ, convinced them that they're going to be the saved ones, et cetera, et cetera. All you have to do is treat the Jews really, really nicely throughout the rest of eternity.

Throughout all of history? Yeah. We'll hide under the table. No one will know this you'll be fine they're that this like like well if if we can fucking fix the iran deal fucking give all the glory to god well you know what good luck because it's signed into law so it's fucking game it's over it's over you're not going back in time motherfucker he's god ain't gonna fucking soup down in his fucking space DeLorean or whatever

and spin the earth backwards. 1.27 gigawatts. Now, the concern, obviously, is if this isn't bottled up in San Francisco, this kind of nonsense, then it's going to be spreading across the entire fruited plain, and you're going to be going to your Burger King in Des Moines, Iowa, and you're going to have a rainbow-colored wrapper for your Whopper. Sister, it comes from Right Wing Watch. Huckleberry Hound.

Very upset. Very red-faced, Mike Huckabee. Look at him. Look at this. Look at this guy. Hawking and puffing. No, that's ridiculous. His name is really Huckabee. Look at him. Look at this. Look at this guy. Hucking and puffing. No, that's ridiculous. His name is really Huckleberry Finn.

He's terribly upset because he got screwed into whitewashing the fence. Gay marriage violates nature and nature's God. I am the God of nature. We sort of assumed you were God, not just like specifically just one God of like one thing.

Are they still doing this? They're going to do this forever, aren't they? You know, it's funny that you say that because there has to come a time where this peters out, right? Like you can only stay fucking hard for this boring passed over idea for so long i say that and i thought that and then i realized like well they're still fighting the abortion fight and that's 50 or 60 years yeah at this point they're not fighting the segregation fight they're not fighting the you know but it's not sex dude fucking weird old white dudes hate sex i don't know why because when i'm a weird old white dude because i'm already a white dude and and i'm already pretty weird so when i get old i'm gonna be like i'm a weird old white

dude that loves weird sex like let's do some shit some shit. Like, that sounds good. I've seen some shit and I want to do some shit. Right? Like, I'm not saying no to a lot of things. Here we go. My options are limited. Right? Yeah. I say literally yes.

That's it. That's fine. Like, if there's enough grease, we're getting this done. But, like, I think that it's about, I think there's something about sex in these guys that just they can't – they just can't. They can't get over it. It's so – I mean it's just such a – he's talking – do we want to play him? It's only three minutes long. I think we need to play him.

I want to ask you another question about gay marriage and religious liberty. Will you marry me? President Mike – I already hate him. I already hate the interviewer. Like he's super annoying. I want to ask him. You know, do you have to?

Just open your fucking mouth. Well, that's right before he started talking. That's where Huckabee put the peanut butter in the pill. Yeah, right. So that's when he's trying to get off the top. Just fucking put it in the back of the dog's throat and call it a day. You don't need the peanut butter. Put it in bread. It's fine. It's fine. Put it in a back of the dog's throat and call it a day. You don't need the peanut butter. Just put it in bread.

It's fine. It's fine. Put in a little bit of string cheese. You ever do that, though? You ever do that? Like, when I have my dog, we used to have to do the peanut butter thing, because my dog, you'd stuff it in bread, and he'd be like, here you go, and he'd be like, oh, and then he'd be like, and he'd, like, eat all around the bread, and then he'd be like,

and the pill would come out, and you're like, you little prick. You know, I used to, like, so I had a dog that got sick. So Murray, you remember the dog? Yeah, yeah. I had a dog that got sick, and we had to give him pills every day and shots and all kinds of shit. And then we just killed him because that was exhausting. Yeah, sure, yeah.

But, like, when I went to the vet. You gave him one final shot. I would do that. I remember going to the vet, and the vet was, like, showing us. He's like, yeah, we should probably give him this pill or that pill or whatever. And I'm like, it's such a pain in the ass to give him a pill. Because we put it in cheese or whatever. And I'm like, he fucking eats all the cheese.

He's like, we don't put it in anything. And he just grabs the dog, opens the dog's mouth with one hand, takes the pill, puts it on the back of his tongue, closes the dog's mouth. The dog's like, fuck, what? And it swallows it. You're like, so ever since then, I would just open the dog's mouth and pitch it in there, and you're just like, you got, I would get so be like, fucking grab the dog's mouth, rip it open, woo! You could throw anything back there.

You could, like, throw your keys back there. Just like, whatever. The remote's down there. And the dog always had this look of like super surprised, like, why are you throwing shit down my throat? I remember when I was a kid, though, somebody showed us that. But it was like fucking holding a fucking alligator's mouth closed.

And it starts like bucking and bouncing, and you're like, what the fuck? And then you let it go, and the pill's like, woo, woo, woo, woo, out of its mouth, so it's just, it's impossible. And you're chasing down this saliva-soaked, nasty dog slobber pill. Disgusting pill. And you're like, just take the medicine.

I'm trying to help you. The dog's like, fuck you. And it runs away. Thankfully, at that point, my dog was only operating on three legs. So it couldn't run for shit. What would that 100 days look like under a President Mike Huckabee administration as it relates to gay marriage? Because a lot of people say, hey, the train's leaving the station. Oh, well, good luck to you in the future.

What does a President Huckabee do? When people say the train left the station, it's the law of the land, there's nothing we can do, let's move on. I want to say, have you guys read the Constitution? Did you pass ninth grade civics? You didn't. The court can't make law. They didn't make a law. They ruled on a case.

Right. They do this from time to time as judges that rule on cases. He didn't say this when the Hobby Lobby decision came. Right. When Citizens United or Hobby Lobby or anything that these guys typically like, it's not legislating from the bench. Right. It's only when it's something that they don't like. Right. When Citizens United or Hobby Lobby or anything that these guys typically like, it's not legislating from the bench. It's only when it's something that they don't like. Right. Then all of a sudden it's legislating from the bench. We pretend that it can, and I'm convinced that a lot of people give that sort of response because they don't want to have to deal with the complexities of the Constitution, which says that there are checks and balances.

If we surrender to the judicial branch as if it is the last, final, and ultimate word. It's the last word in the courts. There's no court. It is the last word. It's the last word. You can't take it to another court. Then we have surrendered to judicial tyranny, which is what Jefferson warned us about. And the reason that he rejected some Supreme Court arguments as simply being something he couldn't accept. And he didn't. As did Jackson. As did Lincoln. This notion that the Supreme Court ruled it and therefore it's the law of the land bypasses the only entity in our government that can make the law of the land, the legislative branch. And it's not even a law until the president signs it and agrees to enforce it.

So why even let anything go to the Supreme Court? Right. You know, if it's the case that you're just going to ignore it, then why even have a Supreme Court? If the idea of the Supreme Court is that issues within the courts, the idea of the Supreme Court, as I understand it, is that issues within the court system that get raised to a level of constitutionality, is this a constitutionally acceptable yay or nay? Those things get raised and then the Supreme Court decides whether they're going to hear it or not hear it and then they rule on it or not depending on whether they heard the case.

Why even bother having a Supreme Court if you're going to be like, well, I don't like that ruling. So we're just going to go ahead and skip that one. Why even bother having it? I don't know. I don't know. I mean, at this point, what he's saying is that he doesn't like it, so it shouldn't exist. Right. And so the only people that should be able to make laws are the Republican-controlled

House and Senate. Yeah. Those are the things that he wants to make laws. If those were democratically controlled that he wants to make laws. If those were democratically controlled, he wouldn't say that. And he wouldn't say that because this was a 5-4 decision. He wouldn't have said that if it went 5-4 in his favor. Sure.

He'd have been like, yeah, they made the right call. Yeah. Right? And first of all, a president, if he's not going to uphold that part of the Constitution, get out of the race. He's not in a race. There's no race. He's already won the fucking position. Right.

Don't even because you're going to be lying when you take the oath and say you'll uphold and defend the Constitution, because on its face, you're not defending it. Neither are you upholding it when you surrender to the God of judicial supremacy. What does it even mean, the god of judicial supremacy? It sounds like you're fucking what you have to call your dominatrix, you know, when you're getting whipped on your lunch hour. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am. Don't call me that. Call me the god of—that's a really awkward thing to call you. It's kind of weird.

I always kind of pictured god as a dude anyway. You're kind of weird. I always kind of pictured God as a dude anyway. You're weirding me out. So we've got to start there, and I certainly would start there. Can you do something as it relates to some executive orders? Are there certain things you can do? Absolutely. You can reverse the executive orders as it relates to how the president has said, you know, you're going to make this a mandatory issue throughout federal government.

how the president has said, you know, you're going to make this a mandatory issue throughout federal government. But you also instruct the attorney general to defend religious liberty and the rights of people of faith and conscience, whether they're business owners acting as individuals, whether they're hospitals, churches, schools,ion agencies. The marriage question is a separate question from the questions about whether or not sexual identity or whatever is a protected class. It's a totally different issue. I shouldn't have said sexual identity, but whatever, whether you're gay or not. Yeah. And the other thing too is there's plenty of places we can discriminate against gays as it is. There's no protections for gay people in large swaths of this country. I don't think there's federal protections, right?

No, and there's no protection at all in certain states for them. So they just get fucked. They just be like, yeah, we found out you're gay and we can fire you. So there's already little bigot laws already working their way in.

That no one's religious liberty would be trampled upon because they refuse to bow to something that violates nature and nature's God. Words that, by the way, I've borrowed right out of the Declaration of Independence. There we are. Nature and nature's God. You know, stop thinking about him fucking. Can you just stop thinking about him fucking? Because that's what's making you so uptight.

Right. That's what's making you so uptight. Right. I would also order the Secretary of Defense on day one that you will empower chaplains to perform their religious duties according to their conscience. And you will further make sure that no military member is prohibited from the free exercise of their religious faith so long as it does not impose itself as a hazard to their duty, are in imposition to their fellow military members. Which means if the chaplain wants to put a Bible on his desk, do it. If the chaplain wants to pray in Jesus' name or the name of Allah, he does it. If the chaplain wants to counsel according to his conscience and to what he believes about sexual behavior,

then he's free to do it. Otherwise, you have told him what the limitations of his belief can be. Then why do we even have chaplains? You know, if the – why do we even have chaplains in the military? I don't know. You know, like if a chaplain – Well, I think, you know, you're dealing with in the military death a lot. So I think that the reason why you have it is because it's a coping mechanism for the

people who are religious because they substitute that for a psychiatrist. Yeah, I think that's probably why we had it. But now that it's 2015, maybe we should have psychologists and psychiatrists. And therapists. Yeah. And then if people want to go to like is there something that prevents people from going to right like that why not change the chaplaincy to a therapist i mean i again though i'm not a military guy so i don't know what the chaplain did i don't either

but like are they the drummer boy right yeah like do they do they get a gun and go fight if things get salty like i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know anything about the chaplaincy though again i i 100 don't know but it seems to me like it's just like an outdated weird it seems like a thing that is used in lieu of real therapy and real help and that's the problem right like if i'm a soldier and i've seen some shit and i and i need someone to talk is there any reason? I guess maybe if you're like stationed overseas and you're Christian and you need to go talk to somebody, then maybe – and you're surrounded mostly by mosques. Like maybe there's not a place. But I don know is that is that the job the military should be providing maybe just provide fucking mental health services yeah you think right i think

that would be more valuable than some counseling over my sexual preferences what good would that be be like i saw my buddy joe blow up it was real shitty well you didn't fuck him, did you? Well, I mean, not when he blew up. It was real messy. That shit's not in my bag. I mean, you could put it in a bag, and then I could probably sleep. So we're back with Noah and Heath from Scathing Atheists and also from a new show they have. Well, not super new, but relatively new. We haven't had them on since they started it relatively new um we haven't had them on since they started it actually we haven't had them on since they released it i will i will i will

reiterate right because they were still not telling us the name they were they were still in the right you know very early stages of planning before but now the new show is called the skeptocrat uh tell tell our listeners a little bit about the show well you know i gotta say honestly our podcasting career for the last couple of years has just been like a series of realizations that you guys had it right the first go around, and we probably should have just done what you did. Everything, like, you know, we write basically everything for our shows. Your way is way better. But also when it comes to like subject matter, you know, you guys cast a really wide net, insert fat joke here, so that you can talk about whatever makes it big, makes the news, makes you mad, whatever. But with the skating atheists, we're really limited to just sounding off about religious topics.

Sure. You know, and don't get me wrong. There's plenty of religious shit to bitch about every week. But once in a while, you just want to make fun of Donald Trump. Yeah. Regardless of what his faith is. Sure. We would have started this show regardless this month had we not already because of just Donald Trump. Yeah.

Oh, God. Donald Trump is a fucking gift. He is a straight ass gift. I love him so much. I think he's just trying to keep John at the Daily Show for a little bit longer, you know? I feel like sending him thank you letters. I mean, at this point, I owe a certain amount of Patreon dollars directly to Donald. I like Donald.

I think Donald is good. And I think his dopey sort of accent that he has is probably the best part about him because he sounds like extra dumb. But I will say that Sarah Palin, we were covering stuff back then. Sarah Palin was just an absolute joy, an absolute wonderful joy to work with. I mean, top to bottom. She's read all the books. She knows exactly what's going on. She's read literally everything. She read all the newspapers. All the words.

And then she transcribed which ones onto her hand so she could remember later. It was amazing back then. So you guys are covering more politics now. Now, one thing that we found about covering politics is that sometimes people get a little pissy about it. Do you find that you guys are getting more disagreeing mail and things like that now that you're doing a show that has more politics in it?

Absolutely. I mean, honestly, the Scathing Atheist, we say fuck Jesus pretty much from start to finish on that show. We've been doing it for 127 episodes. We've been doing The Skeptocrat for 21 episodes. I think we already have more than twice as many one-star reviews on The Skeptocrat as we have on The Scathing Atheist. They've actually turned into a few segments on The Skeptocrat. Yeah, we actually do a regular segment translating ideological butthurt into everyday English for the sake of the audience. That's awesome.

But I think, you know, like we – all of our negative reactions basically boil down to the same thing. People say, well, you're not really moderates or centrists. You're a bunch of left-o, pinky, commie – pinko? Pinky? No, we're not pinkies. You're a bunch of left-o, pinky, commie. I'm not judging. Yeah, exactly, exactly. But, like, basically, they take us to task for saying that we come from the far center when we're really on the left. Well, yes, we're on the left.

We say that all the time. But that doesn't mean that we can't also opine on things that are on the right and in every other direction. Yeah, and by the way, we're in, like like the center of the entire european continent politically yeah right right exactly which is way left if you're an american yeah i was gonna say no matter how far left you lean as a typical american you're you're pretty much in the center in most of europe at that point so it's yeah yeah it but it blows people's minds to think about that like the idea that that their way of thinking is not is not the only way of thinking, that somebody far left is like, well, they're fucking so socialist. Like, what?

Big parts of the world are socialist. Right. You know, huge, massive swaths of the world. And that's not an insult. Including the United States. Yeah, exactly. I tend to think that a lot of those people who say socialism, though, don't really know what socialism is. They'll say it.

No idea. But I don't think they really know. Well, right, because they're saying it on a socialist Internet. Yeah. You know. So. So now do you have a variety of segments like you do with this with the scathing atheist? I know that you do. You do poetry in the scathing atheist. You have a segment for for your wife, Lucinda. You do. You wind up having interviews and then you you do songs sometimes. Do you do the same? Do you bring that same kind of variety to The Skeptocrat? Yeah, I mean The Skeptocrat is still kind of like learning.

We're still kind of learning what that show is all about. But absolutely, we're trying to bring – it's not an interview-driven show because it's only a 30-minute show and we're trying to sound off on 25 topics. So we actually haven't had any guests on the show. We may change that. But primarily, yeah, we're trying to bring the same concept that we brought to atheism with the skating atheist to the larger political world with a skeptocrat. So no songs yet, but a couple of poems here and there. And, you know, Lucinda still makes her way in as our roving reporter.

So what are your goals for a skeptocrat? Like, what do you I mean, other than just to talk about Donald Trump, you know what I mean? Cause that's, and when I say just, I don't mean it in a, in a, in a derisive way. Yeah. I said, do we need more?

And if that's it, that's, you know, I'm perfectly okay with that too. But what are your goals of skeptocrat? Like, what are you guys hoping to, to accomplish other than just beefing up your Patreon dollars?

Oh, nice. You took the boat, the two best answers off the board. What the fuck? I mean, well, for me, with the scathing atheist, one of the biggest things that bothers me, one of the biggest reasons I'm an anti theist is because Christian people vote wrong. In my opinion, they not only vote against what Jesus tells them they're supposed to do, but they vote against their own self-interest because they're idiots. You know, if everybody voted for policies that would make their life better, every country would look like Sweden or something like that. With an actual progressive tax system and the average person being better off.

But, you know, that's not the case here. And so the skeptocrat kind of let us talk about all the reasons people vote wrong. And those all bother me. Right. Well, and two, with the name atheist in the title, that brings a certain group of people, and it also keeps a certain group of people away. So we feel like we can reach a much larger audience with the skeptocrat. We're not doing that yet, but we could theoretically reach a much larger audience with the skeptocrat as well. And it's also like if I'm ever going to get hired by Colbert to do some writing for him, I'm going to need some shit that doesn't say, fuck God, he's a Catholic.

Now, do you guys cover skeptical topics as well? Is that a plan or is it all politics? No, yeah. I mean I feel like basically we have – we cast as wide a net as we can with that show. And so, yeah, absolutely. We talk about vaccine denialism. as wide in that as we can with that show. And so, yeah, absolutely. We talk about, you know, vaccine denialism.

We talk about all the weird pseudoscientific nonsense that winds up in the news. But also we just talk about scientific topics as well, you know. I like the fact that the humans have nothing to do with global climate change. No, but yeah, but you know, like, but I think it's really important that like, you know, when you start to delve into skeptical topics,

I think it's really important that you hit all the pseudoscientific topics, but then you're also kind of obligated to hit the real science shit so that you can show how much cooler that is than the than the pseudoscience so so you guys have a show on religion and a show on politics is it your is it your hope to ruin every thanksgiving dinner possible at this point or every family gathering is there well yeah i'm hoping to continue yeah absolutely that's an experience with that kind of iced it for me what uh what now let's talk a little bit about politics since we you know we figure you know you guys are experts as well

uh what what i can't even say that without laughing um what what do you guys think of the republican uh primary shape up here that's happening because there's you know there's several republicans that are you know revving their engines what do you think about them and do you like any of them or do you like like one one of them more than others you mean the uh the sweet 16 tournament right now yeah it's gonna be uh sweet i feel like somebody should have queued yakety sax as soon as you said gop primary holy Holy crap. You know, honestly, the scary thing about the field isn't the nutballs, because the nutballs are always there, the Santorum

and the Rick Perrys and the Mike Huckabees and whatnot. Wait a minute, Rick Perry has glasses now. We need to take him more seriously. So you take that back, sir. He can remember all three branches of the government he wants to dismantle now. I can't remember which ones, Ron.

Should I shut down? Education. That's one. That's for sure. Executive branch. What is the third one? People. Democracy.

I forget. But like I say, it's not so much those guys because they're always there in the background, Saturday Night Live fodder or whatever. The scary thing about this one is that the people that are actually the frontrunners are still fucking crazy. Right. Yeah. Right. There's nobody on the top end of that. That's the thing that worries me, too, about the mere 21 folks that have entered the uh i think they're

i think every republican at some point is going to enter the primary pretty much every like everybody registered as a republican i'd be fine with it as long as they treated it like the running man of the 21 i can't think of a single one in that group that doesn't strike me as fucking uh-oh spaghettios like in a big way you're just like the most the most moderate is is jeb bush how am i saying that out loud how am i saying a sentence where i say the most moderate in a group of people is jeb bush and it's not a fucking like kkk rally well kind of is but yeah yeah but i feel like right now i think the goal for most of these guys is just to hang back and not do anything too stupid so that you know a lot of voters won't find out what they're all about you know if you look at like rand paul i don't think anyone has seen him in two and a half fucking months he's hiding in a coffin buried in a basement somewhere so that

he doesn't say something too stupid and and ruin his his his run before it even gets started. You see, well, Jeb Bush has been doing pretty much the same thing. Marco Rubio not talking about a damn thing. I think a lot of them are just saying, like, you know, let everybody like engage with Trump and do the whole silly Trumpy Trump Trump thing. And then we'll be the only ones left not looking like complete idiots by the time the debates start i wonder how that's going to play though because you know so much of voting especially in those in those areas is about getting in front of people and sort of putting yourself out there and letting people know you're there um i wonder how that's i mean i'm really

curious how that's going to play out for them to sort of hide in their little like you like you say like they're fucking vampire coffins or whatever you know but but is that important anymore though is that important post citizens united you do not need support from massive numbers of people to stay in the race anymore you know you could theoretically i feel like at this point you could theoretically win a primary without ever stumping i feel like that that's gonna backfire on them because crazily, there comes a point, and I think we've reached that point with Trump, where you cannot be more farcical. Trump at this point cannot say anything more farcical. He cannot be any more ridiculous.

And he's winning the polls. He is leading the polls. This is guy who i mean he said it it's it's almost like he's daring people like what's fucking crazy unsettling bizarre racist sexist rants can i possibly and people are just like he speaks the truth i like the way he's yeah i like they sit there and they're like i like that guy he's a straight shooter let me tell you let me tell you he ain't one of those career politicians. He's just an everyday normal billionaire like me. Everyday normal billionaire. He's just, you know, I feel connected because he's not one of them slick, rich politicians.

He's one of them slick, rich billionaires. And I can connect because I'm a pig farmer in Oklahoma. And you're like fucking what haven't we all bankrupted four casinos before everybody's been there joe plumber so what about what about the other side now there's not as much uh moving forward in that there's not like a not like a 800 person race going on on the other side but you know in the democrat party like what do you guys think of the way that's shaping up? Go Bernie Sanders is how I feel about this.

Yeah, absolutely. Love that guy. I did the I Stand With website, and I worked my way all the way through it, and I got down to – I want to say it was like 89 percent for Bernie Sanders, and Hillary was much lower for me. So I'm hoping for Bernie Sanders, but he reminds me of how we talked about this a while ago. He reminds me of how Ron Paul did on, you know, with the Internet, loved him for a while. And then but that didn't translate into any votes in the primary. And he wound up getting like very like a tiny percentage of votes in the primary because of it. And I wonder if this is going to be the same thing where his name's plastered all over Reddit

and all these other places where there's a lot of progressives and people are really excited about him, but it just doesn't translate into votes eventually. I mean, I think that there's a real possibility of that because the honest truth is that the billionaires who make presidents are scared shitless of Bernie Sanders.

So I don't think there's a whole lot of chance of him actually winning the primary. I think the point of him even being in there, because I don't think, at least when he first moved, you know, started running, I don't think he felt like he could win. I think he just wanted to try to pull Hillary to the left. But the fact of the matter is, is you look at what's shaping up on the right. And yes, I like Bernie Sanders a lot. But whoever the fuck is on the other side of the ticket from whoever winds up as the GOP frontrunner, you know, they've got my vote. So, you know, I really like Bernie

Sanders, but I don't even, I almost don't even care because I know that all of these other people scare the crap out of me. So I'm almost locked in at this point, you know? Yeah. Man, I find that so frustrating about voting because i never feel like i even have the opportunity to vote for somebody that i'm excited about instead i vote for the person that scares me the least you know like the candidates are terrifying on the right and they've been terrifying for years for years they've just been i mean and and what happens is you know like the primary pulls everybody to the right so if you had somebody who, like McCain, was more of a centrist guy for the entirety of his career, as soon as he ran, he got pulled to the right. And you're just like, well, fucking even if I wanted to support you, which I don't.

even come close because your fucking lunatic party has been hijacked by the Christian nutjobs who are grabbing you and fucking dragging you toward the burning cross. Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, you bring up the exact right example because I think John McCain is actually, you know, like if we had to have a Republican president out of the last nine they've run or so, like that would be probably the top of my list of ones that probably wouldn't have fucked things up too bad. Sure. the top of my list of ones that probably wouldn't have fucked things up too bad.

Sure. But even he, in order to make a move at all in the primaries, had to abandon everything that made him the kind of guy you want to vote for. Maybe if he'd been a war hero, he would have had a chance. Hey, he just got captured. Maybe if he'd been a better one. Maybe if he'd fly better, yeah. It worked really well for John Kerry. Well, I'll tell you what, looking at the Iran deal

I'm just thinking, man, we fucked 2004 up Oh my god, did we fuck 2004 up I don't get it John Kerry John Kerry's probably going to be winning a Nobel Peace Prize over his work in the He lost to George Bush after we knew what George Bush would do for four years

Oh my god, I still don't know how the hell that happened. I like to just put my fingers in my ears and pretend. I should have voted. I should start voting one of these days. That'll help. But honestly, it is kind of funny that we're all sitting here talking about the presidential election in 2016. I live in Georgia.

I'm going to make a fucking difference on uh you know where georgia the problem i think that you know the well you know we can get started on the electoral college and i could go all night your vote doesn't count in illinois either mine wouldn't know i was in new york either no no there's like five your vote only counts yeah exactly exactly and those are becoming rarer and rarer so you've got five states basically making the decisions right and they're all weird fucking states like ohio and florida florida where it's legal to just shoot people for looking at you

funny that's one of the five states that matters let me ask you this question i'm curious because you hear all the time from people who are like kind of disaffected and they feel like like we're talking about now like frustrated by the system frustrated that in illinois it's got blue state no matter what like if i fucking show up and vote, it makes no difference. You're Georgia. That's a red state. If you show up and vote, your vote really doesn't make any fucking difference. You know which way your vote is going to swing.

People all the time feel very disconnected to the process as a result of that. And they say, fuck it, I'm not even going to vote. There's this tremendous amount of voter apathy in the United States. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on that. Like, is it because of the Electoral College? Do you think getting rid of the Electoral College would result in fairer elections or greater voter participation? I think it's – I can't imagine how you'd argue that it doesn't lead to fairer elections. I don't know if that translates necessarily to greater participation, but I think for sure it would lead to fairer elections.

And we should have mandatory voting, and that would probably increase the voter turnout. At least they could put it on a fucking weekend or make it a holiday. Or spread it out to a month, whatever. Sure, yeah, why do we even need it to be a day? What is that about? You can make it the last day.

Because everybody has to take their buggies all to the very same county seat. It takes several days to get there. But those are the laws that we're still using. We're still using the system that was designed for that. And, of course, because at any point in history, if we change that system, it would have benefited one party or the other. We've never changed that fucking system. We'll never have compulsory voting.

We'll never have mandatory voting. Because, first of all, the Republicans already want to limit voting. Right. They've come out and said that that's a strategy. Yeah, democracy doesn't work for that party too well. Right. Smart move on their part. And plus, America doesn't want mandatory anything.

Like, when we were just like, hey, everybody should have health insurance, people were like, you're fucking going to hell. Everyone should not have rubella. Fuck you. I can have rubella if I want. It's my goddamn right. Tell me what to do, you city slicker. You and your ivory tower.

Look at you. You don't have scabies. Whatever. We itched out here and we like it. It's good enough for my granddaddy. It's good enough for me. Well, guys, if people were going to find your show, where would they look? Oh, that's a great question. It's good enough for my granddaddy. It's good enough for me. Well, guys, if people were going to find your show, where would they look?

Oh, that's a great question. Holy crap. Where would they look? I guess iTunes would be a good start, Stitcher, or you could go to skatingatheist.com or skeptocrat.com. Let's see. You could also check. No, I think that's pretty much it. Well, guys, thanks so much for joining us tonight.

We appreciate it. Thanks a lot, guys. Thank you. So we want to thank our most recent patrons, Hans, Paul, Harley, Spencer, Vineth, and TheDavid. Thank you also very much for your generous donations. Your donations go to things like, last week, Tom and I went out to a very nice dinner to celebrate a download milestone. And we were very excited to go out and we want to thank the patrons for buying us a very nice meal.

Absolutely. So thank you very much. It also gives us a chance to donate to several charities. So we want to thank everybody who donates to the show. Tom, there was a few one-time donations as well. Yeah, we got PayPal donations from Jason, from Matt, and from Asmung. Asmung? I can't pronounce it.

Thank you also very much for your donations. We really appreciate it. One of them was specifically earmarked for donuts. So I appreciate that. Can't wait. So we got a message from Autumn and Autumn said, I think it would be awesome if you guys review the Ray Comfort film

Audacity when it comes out. Then later the movie God is Not Dead 2. Yes, it's happening. I just wanted to mention to Autumn that the guests on this show tonight noah and heath got together with uh another guy by the name of eli and they just most very recently i want to say it was either the last episode of the previous episode they just reviewed uh the audacity movie we got a message from Don, and Don said that the Statesboro Food Bank wrapped up and they wound up giving away – it wound up being $59.75. So that wound up being quite a bit of money that was given to the food bank.

So we want to thank everybody who donated, who wound up giving him some money based on that. I know a lot of our listeners donated, so we want to thank you all for putting in and bringing him to that goal. I mean, very close. $59.75, his goal was $6K. Right. And I want to say many people in our audience helped bring that to fruition. So thank you all. You fed some people.

Right. You did a great job. And I know that as a result of this show, of that $59.75, I know that we were well over half of that ultimate donation. And I'm just very proud of our listeners for donating. Thank you so much. We got a message from Emily. And Emily says, you discussed how to handle Bless You. When I was working at a corporate library, I found one of my coworkers was a fellow non-believer.

And in the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, we used to say Parmesan after one of his names. I think that's great. That would be hilarious. So thanks, Emily, for sending that in. Tom, Joel Osteen, we got a post. This is from Julio. And he sent us a fucking Facebook post that Joel Osteen said. God, Joel Osteen is such a bag of dicks.

Listen to this. Before you were formed in your mother's womb, God not only knew you, but he put you in destiny genes. He put in you destiny genes. Destiny genes. He's already pre-programmed in your DNA. Gifts, talents, favor, opportunities, ideas. De favor opportunities ideas defects right it's like i'm not even gonna read the rest it says those genes are lying through fucking whatever yeah

unless you're like that four-year-old with fucking brain cancer just like every day of my life is suffering oh great oh look and look at the genes that god gave you that's tremendous it's like or like those people to get the fucking locked in disease. Or even just the people with just like one tiny arm. Even just those people. Right, or like the crab claw people that end up at the freak show. Like, are you kidding?

Now we're going to get email from people like, there's people with crab claws. But it takes them so long to type it. They're typing it on their keyboard and the keys are enormous. They just press one big one. It's text to speech.

It's like the movie Big. Where it's got a chip on the keys. They're dancing it up. You guys suck. As a person with crab claws. It's actually, it's actually lobstrocity-itis. Little gunslinger reference there.

That's awesome. Good for you. That's a very literary show. Lobstrocity. So this message is from laser donkey okay yeah that's awesome i don't know why but sure great uh and this person says laser donkey which is matt actually because it says at the bottom matt the laser donkey so laser donkey is the name of the the the name on the, and then it's also Matt the Laser Donkey. I like that.

Matt says, I realized a good response. This is in response to having a blessed day. It says, I realized that a good response to say something that is equally ridiculous to back them – back at them. When people say something ridiculous to you, what popped into my head was may the force be with you. I think that's great. Oh my gosh. It's a,

it's kind of a dick move. I will say, you know, growing up Catholic, whenever anybody says, may the force be with you. I also say, and also with you,

and also with you, right? It's just instinctive. We got a message from Will and Will says that being in Utah, there is no bless You, evidently. So we grew up in Utah, and they just didn't have that there. It's sort of a regional thing, and I guess in California they did, but then he went back to Utah and they didn't. Yeah, that's – I mean it's so – I didn't – I kind of thought it was like a regional thing, but I didn't know what region. But I kind of figured that the sort of awkward silence that you hear at the end of a sneeze is not awkward in other places.

I had no idea. I just assumed because I just assumed that my experience universalizes out to everybody because I'm incredibly xenophobic and narcissistic. We got a really great message from Tyler, Tom. Yeah, so Tyler was terribly ill. He's been listening to the show. He has Crohn's disease. He was terribly ill. My gosh, what he's gone through is just absolutely incredible.

And he says that our goofy show brought him some laughter and some joy during some times that look much, much rougher than anything I've ever experienced. Yeah, those pictures are like right out of Hellraiser, man. Dude, bully for you. Good for you, dude. Thanks for listening. Happy you listen. Wow. I know you say your girlfriend hates the show, but she secretly listens.

She does listen. She loves the show. She secretly listens, and then she tells you that she doesn't like it. But trust me, she likes it. If she tells you all the specific things she doesn't like about it, it's only because she's heard it so many times. So, Tom, we got a message, a great, really hyper-detailed message here about the Canada and the Queen. Yeah, so this is from Bart. He says, Canada received the right to self-governance on July 1st, 1867, despite the—

See, so I can't read three whole paragraphs about Canada. Canada, I just, I can't do it. I know. There's nothing Canada could do that would merit three actual paragraphs. I mean, I appreciate the time, the energy, the effort that went into this. I really do. But the idea of reading three paragraphs about Canada? And, you know, I checked the bottom and there's not a TLDR or whatever it is.

Man, I'm just going to decide that Canada has a queen because I know that I could read this. Right. You could read it. But what I think you can glean from this just by – I just skimmed it real quick. Okay. Okay. Because I don't want you to spend too much time on Canada. I skimmed it.

And what I got out of this is that the – you're right. Canada has a queen and she rides a moose. That's what – now, that's what I gleaned out of this. I'm not saying that's true. And I'm not even saying Bart wrote that. I'm just saying that's what I think. That's the takeaway. Yeah.

That's the takeaway from that. Canada is a delightful town. I think it's great. I think everybody should go visit once and, you know, fish or something. I'm not sure. Eat things that they catch out of yeah i mean like put mayonnaise on your fries and i think everybody should go to the tar sands once it's beautiful this time oh it's great yeah i like it in the winter because you can actually

step on it well it's it's you know it's a it's a i went up to canada once and i went fishing and the sun didn't even bother to set like that's that's how boring the place was the sun was like oh we're not even gonna do we're not even gonna do sunset didn't you say it was like it was like 11 o'clock before the sun went down no it was later i mean this i quit for the day and there's still light out like i stayed on the dock because i was stupid i stayed on the dock and i was gonna wait and see if i could see the northern lights because it was the furthest north i'd ever been. And Canada won. Like, I did not have the patience to wait for it to get dark.

Wow. It got dusky. And that's the best that it got. It got kind of dusky. And I was like, well, fucking, I've been up for like 16 hours. I don't care anymore. Somebody's going to wake me up at like 5 in the morning, the old fish. Right.

That's exactly what it was. It was like, I got to get up in like five hours and go sit in a boat somewhere. So I got to sleep for that. So we want to thank Noah and Heath, the hosts of The Skeptocrat and Scathing Atheist for joining us today. It was super awesome to have them on the show.

We should also be on The Scathing Atheist this week, this upcoming week on Thursday. We did a segment with them that was just a really raunchy 30 seconds on the clock. It was bad. It tested the explicit tag like you would not

believe. So if you want to check that out, we will probably put it in next week's show notes, but this week's show notes won't have it yet because it won't be released until Thursday. But you should check it out. And their show's great. They're funny guys. They're probably some of the hardest working guys in podcasting. They spend hours

and hours and hours on their show every week. They're so busy. That sounds exhausting. I know, Tom. Tom nearly fainted when I said hours and hours. He had to reach for the table. And he also reached for his heart, too, at the same time because it went a flutter. I think that's probably just normal. That's just my heart trying desperately to die. But we want to thank him for joining us, and you can check them out at skeptocrat.com and scathingatheist.com.

So that's going to wrap it up for this week. We are going to be back next week with another whole show. But until then, we're going to leave you 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, acu-punctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls,

Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues. Temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts. Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive.

Doubt even this. and express notions do not represent those of our wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Bye.