Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 31: God Hates Women

Episode Date: January 23, 2012

Notes for week 1/ 21/ 12 U.K. Men On Trial For 'Death Penalty' Leaflets Suggesting Gay People Should Be Punished, Saudi boy faces death after killing man who raped him, Atheist faces jail after Facebook remark, The Sins of Eve: Baptist preacher thinks women should suffer during childbirth because God planned it that way, Secular humanists flunk 2011 Congress, Princess Diana's Ghost? (VIDEO, PHOTO) Footage Taken In A Scotland Church, Virginia lawmaker: Children with disabilities are God’s punishment to women who previously had abortions., Tenn. GOP Rep. stands by threat to ‘stomp a mudhole’ in transgender people, Dad killed daughter in brutal axe murder, Student-organised talk on Sharia law at the University of London cancelled following threats of violence, Afghan boy suicide bombers tell how they are brainwashed into believing they will survive, Purity Bear Link Visit our Website at http://dissonancepod.com for all the links.

Let's hear a response from Mr. Hitchens. Look, I've known Dinesh for a long time. I know him to be a very humane and courteous and considerate and decent man. And I don't think he understands how wicked he sounds to so many people in this hall tonight. When he says, look, you've made a perfectly fair offer. We can torture you to death if we want, for the crime only of being born. But all you have to do is throw yourself on our mercy,

and it'll be okay. Why don't you just do it? My dear, my dear Ginesh, my dear Ginesh, do you not know what you sound like when you say that? I can hardly bear, I can hardly bear to look at you. You're implying that it's worse. That you can say something so evil, so evil, so stupid, so nasty, and so intolerant. It is what Fult Greville says in this wonderful verse.

It says, here is the order. You are created sick, and you are ordered to recover. And you're ordered on pain of death and torture forever. This is totalitarianism to the nth degree. No, it isn't. It is the most refinement of cruelty and stupidity that's possible to picture. It's really not. And you don't get it when people ask, does it seem okay to you? You say, you always have the chance to sprawl and grovel and beg and plead, and you might get off. 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 mat episode 31 of cognitive dissonance cecil we've got some stories here that are uh about as horrifying as last week actually nothing has really fucking changed we had to call the good ones yeah we took any you know we actually should should mention to people that we did do that like we went through the stories and we're

like oh that's good news. Yeah. Who wants fucking good news? You know what I mean? When there's anything is that there's this much bad news. The good news doesn't matter anyway. Well, you know, let's let's all stop fucking around. Nobody listens to cognitive dissonance for the good news.

Right. Have you heard the good news? Yeah. You don't hear that a lot. What are they going to hear? The good news. What? They got canceled?

In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it. This is from Huffington Post. UK men on trial for death penalty leaflets suggesting gay people should be punished. This is actually a little bit of good news, but it's couched, thankfully, in some awful shit that had to happen first. I'm very pleased, actually, that the UK is pursuing this as a hate crime.

There is a group of five men in Britain who were distributing leaflets basically calling for violence against the gay community, saying that they needed to be punished for their homosexuality. And it's not going to work out for these five men in Britain because now they're facing criminal charges for hate crimes. When have you ever been convinced

to commit violence from a fucking leaflet? I've never been walking down the street and somebody's like, you should punch this woman in the face. Here's a leaflet for it. That would be – it would actually be kind of awesome to have like a sandwich board and like be handing out leaflets extolling the virtues of violence. Yeah.

But not even specific violence. Just like random. Yeah, just random acts of violence. I don't understand. Like who are you hoping to convince to commit violence with a leaflet? It better be a damn well-written leaflet, too. It's got to be fucking really convincing. Like the ghost of Thomas Paine came back and wrote it?

This is for all those people who are on the fence about committing acts of, you know, committing hate crimes. Like, ah, that's to get a sandwich. Get a sandwich. Hey, a leaflet. I'm going to fuck a man up. Man. Oh, man. Yeah, I just – I don't know what the purpose of this is other than just to passively, aggressively

be a bigot, I guess. I am annoyed. Because you're actively handing out the leaflet, but you're not willing to say the words. So it's just like a passive-aggressive act of being a bigot, I guess. Right. It's like writing a letter to your dad because you're afraid to talk to him. Afraid to talk to him, yeah. Shut up.

You're talking to the mediator. Yeah, exactly. This is the way that I feel. Yeah. You fuckwits. Well, enjoy feeling something else when you're in prison. Yeah, I'm kidding. Because it doesn't matter what kind of bigotry it is.

They could have been saying, you know, acts of violence against women, acts of violence against a race, you know, whether it's like Asian or Hispanic or whatever. Acts of violence against – there's all these different things that you could have acts of violence against and they chose the one that is against – it's obviously they're Muslim. I think it's pretty obvious in the article reading their names and I think it even says that they're Muslim. It does. It says they're Muslim, yeah. Yeah. So they're Muslims and so they're using – again, they're using their book. This wouldn't be a story if they weren't using their book to justify the hate, right?

Of course not. But the hate wouldn't really have a justification without the book. There's no logical reason to hate homosexuals. No. If you don't think that there's some sort of magical sky monster that's going to fucking smite you. I have yet to meet an atheist that had been like, yeah, man, I hate the homos. Same here, man. Like the secular community does not – I mean they just don't care.

Right. They're just like people want to have the sex with somebody? What do I care? Yeah. About who you're having sex with. It's ridiculous. Yeah, I've never met an atheist that is – you know, maybe there are atheists out there that might be uncomfortable around homosexuals maybe because they haven't – they don't know how to act around them or something. You know what I mean?

Maybe that's the case. But I've never met anybody that actively like God hates fags sort of hates the – hates gays like, you know, like fucking Westboro does or like the Muslims do. Well, the thing is that that has to have some kind of a religious justification. Yeah, it requires it. It does. have some kind of a religious justification. Yeah, it requires it. It does. Yeah, it's a prerequisite. Yeah. It's right on the leaflet.

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. them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan and in Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth. So this next story is from Emirates 24-7, which who doesn't read, right? Let me tell you what I want to stay out of is the Emirates 24-7. That's not where I'm headed. But this is a story about a Saudi boy who was raped by some dude. Some dude just fucking raped him and met him again. Then he promised not to do it again.

This is the part of the story that kind of blows my mind. Then the teenager is like, you can't do that shit. And he's like, all right, all right. I, you know, I won't rape you again. And then he raped him again or tried to, and the teenager killed this guy. And now he's going to go to jail. The teenager is going to go to jail for killing this guy. Unless he pays blood money as prescribed by islamic law 1.8 million dollars in blood money if he pays the family blood money that's his get out of jail free card so sharia law has a mechanism in place to buy your way out of jail man just bought my way out. I bought justice. Nice fucking sure. Nice, nice law. Nice, nice moral system you got there. There's so many things, Tom, when I was reading

this that just are fucking, you know, that just bring cognitive dissonance into play when you read this. The first is the obvious one that you point out, right? Like being able to buy your way out of murdering someone because you're paying money to get out of a crime. So it's almost like letting one of your servants serve for you. Right. Yep. It seems just so backwards and so like fucking Bronze Age. It's ridiculous.

But, you know, let's be honest. Let's be brutally honest. We covered a story a while back, and it might have been on this show. Let's be honest. Let's be brutally honest. We covered a story a while back, and it might have been on this show. It might have been on Everyone's a Critic where a guy was driving around in fucking Florida, and he fucking smacked fucking two UK people, killed them. He had something like 50 counts of crazy vehicle fucking driving recklessly, driving drunk, driving like a nut that he had bought off here.

So buying off crime is not something that doesn't happen. It happens all the time. People pay fines to get out of, you know, but you don't normally hear it for murder. Like this is where this is where it opens up. Right. It's like you don't normally hear that you could pay it off for murder. The second thing that got me about this was don't they hate homosexuals anyway? Like don't they like really dislike? And I I mean didn't they murder homosexuals in Iran? Like don't they already hate homosexuals as it is? Wouldn't they be happy that this guy is dead?

Yeah, you would think so because he is – wouldn't the guy who got killed here be the lowest of the low? He is a homosexual, which as you said, that's reviled culturally. And he's a rapist. Well, that's not totally reviled in their culture. Yeah, I guess it's not. I mean, after reading some of the stories that we've read. I know. Rape is not one of those things that they seem to take that seriously.

I immediately thought that like, well, that's sort of like shoplifting. Yeah. You know, for some of these. To hire the shoplifter. But, you know, immediately my first thought is like, good God, Warren Buffett could kill everyone. No kidding, right? It's $1.8 million. Just walk into a small country and just slaughter people.

What was that for? I just felt like doing it. Just starts throwing money around. You know, I just thought, hey, what the fuck? You know, I just read the most dangerous most dangerous game want to go shoot some people in the face you got a first you got a 13 second head start go well that's you know i mean really like if your law if your system of laws puts into place you know saying you can you can buy them off you can just buy them you just buy them off and why is it it $1.8 million for a homosexual rapist in your culture?

That seems like a lot of money. I'm just saying you're not getting a good value. I know that this is like a bargaining culture. You probably should have gone back and forth a little more. They're talking each other down. No, no, I will not pay more than $1.7 million. It's a seller's market. So, you know, what the fuck?

I say it's like, they're like magic cards because they're really rare. Like, you know, the homosexual rapist there, that's like your, you know, that's like your ultra rare card. That's like your Black Lotus. So you're never going to have that one. The other ones that are like, just like the regular rapist, those go, I mean, those are like a dime a dozen. That's like your land card. The only difference is this card taps you. Yeah. that are like just like the regular rapists, those go, I mean, those are like a dime a dozen. That's like your land card. That's like your card. The only difference is this card taps you.

Yeah. Wrong as fuck. There it is. Oh, God. Oh, man. Nice fucking system of laws. I'll just buy my way out of this little problem. You're an atheist.

Give me a fucking break, Michael. All right, you know what? We need to start going to church every week. An Indonesian civil servant who declared himself an atheist on Facebook was arrested and is now facing blasphemy charges and jail time just for declaring, just for putting on Facebook. I wonder if there would be people in our country that would think that it should be a crime to pronounce yourself an atheist. I wonder if they actually exist. What do you think? Do you think that there are people out there right now in our country that think you should be jailed if you're an atheist? Well, you remember that guy that passed to recover not too long ago who wanted atheists to have to register like sex offenders. Right, right. You have to be a –

So I don't think it's a far cry to think that there's probably a significant number of people that would say, hey, atheists should have their rights taken and be put in jail until they convert. And let's be honest. A lot of people convert in jail. You hear that all the time, right? I went to jail and I found Jesus. He was in the cell right across the block. Jesus, his name is.

He likes to pronounce it Jesus. He protects me here. Because I give him cigarettes. Yeah, I guess – this is the kind of story though. This is the same thing as like going to a punk rock concert and shaving off kids hair and you know making them go to a fucking bible camp for six weeks you know this is the culture that you live in well you know the first thing that occurs to me when i read this is what an insecure world what an insecure worldview um that you're that that one guy's facebook page so uh enrages people

that they want to throw them in jail. They're willing, I mean, think about how much money they're willing to spend to do this. There's an insecurity there that's belied by this that's significant.

You know, these people of faith, oh, I have such great, unshakable faith. If you really had a strong and unshakable faith, your faith, you would be as unconcerned with atheists and folks who believe in other religions as you would, you know, anything else that doesn't matter to you, any other tiny inconsequential detail. But I think that what this really says is that this is an insecure faith.

And really, let's call a spade a spade here. It's an insecure God. Your God is insecure. If your God was more secure, you know, these gods wouldn't have all these pronouncements about, you know, in the Muslim faith, apostasy, you know, moving from Muslim to another faith, that is a crime punishable by death. That's an insecure position. That's a position that says, you know, I am the one true God. I really, really need you to believe that. I need that so much. So Cecil, this next story, this is from goddiscussion.com. And this is about a Baptist preacher who thinks that women should suffer during childbirth because God wanted it that way. God planned it.

You know, there was that whole original sin. Eve ate a food she wasn't supposed to eat. And so when she got cast out of Eden, you know, she was told that she's going to procreate and suffer. This is the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. I'm not making this shit up, man. Every time I hear somebody recount this tale,

you know, you're just like, that's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard in my life. I mean, the Bible is only ridiculous when you read it or say it out loud. Or paraphrase it. Or paraphrase it or mention it. Right. That's the only time it sounds silly.

The rest of the time it's just like spot on. This is another example of religious misogyny, right? It's another example of because this is, and this is fucking, this is rife in the religious world.

You could go anywhere in the world and find religion bashing women, in some way bashing women. And in this case, you know, saying that childbirth is painful because women are sinners, you know, why isn't it painful for men then too? Why don't we have sympathetic pains? I don't know. Because, you know why isn't it painful for men then too why don't we have sympathetic pains

I don't know because you know when God cast even out of Eden she said you know you're gonna bring forth children in sorrow so you know that's why Cecil I don't know why this is so hard for you right I mean when when there were two people let me just let me just let me just get so we understand this okay sure yeah go if you when there were two people in paradise sure two people i'm with you the wrong food wrong foods okay we're supposed to eat so like it's like a yogurt that's out of date right expiration date is always it's like is this still good no you know what that's never actually been good man but the snake said it was good. The snake.

The snake is like, hello. Would you like to eat this food? Well, I wasn't going to because God said no. And there's a giant expiration date stamped on the side that says always. So I didn't want to eat it. See, my God said no, but then the snake made a compelling counter argument. It said yes. Don't you have to think that Adam and Eve were religious doubters?

Because really, if you're 100% convinced and God said something to you directly not to do. And then you know he exists because he fucking came and hung out with you. If he fucking chatted with you, you're like you would be like, whoa that's the thing I'm not gonna do.

Yeah, we should actually like you should actually, I think the atheist movement should latch on to Adam and Eve as the first skeptics. You really could not generate a more ridiculous tale. Oh, I know. I mean, really, can you come up with something more absurd? What about the guy

who got swallowed by the whale? I don't know, man. At least he didn't eat the wrong food. He lived in a whale. He did live in a whale. How long did he live in a whale? Is that a real story? Is that a biblical story? I know people that are fucking like are biblical that listen to this show that know the Bible. They're going to beat us up. They're going to beat the shit out of us.

They're fucking twisting right now. They're like, they don't know their Bible. It wasn't really a snake. I don't want to know the Bible. It wasn't. I know. Yeah. I don't want to know the Bible. Fuck the Bible because it's fucking nonsense.

I could read any other fucking nonsense book from back then and it would just be equal fucking nonsense. I could read Aesop's fucking fables and get the same fucking thing as I would out of the Bible. No, you'd get much more out of it. You're right. You're right. Yeah. You would get much more out of it. Okay.

So let's quickly cover this, though. Well, you know, this is another example of misogyny in the church. Like this is just yet another example of this. And this happens constantly. I have no idea why women agree even to be involved in religion most of the time. It's not good for you to I mean, what woman is sitting in church listening to this fuckwit tell them that they should, you know, maybe not get an epidural when they're, and maybe not take pain medication or of any kind when they're delivering a child into the world because that's what God wants it to hurt. Man, as soon as you look somebody in the eye and say, you know, you should hurt more. You don't hurt enough.

Like your religion of peace, you're doing everything wrong. Your wonderful, peaceful, gentle, loving religion can suck my dick. As soon as you look at me and say, you know, I think your wife needs to hurt more. You remember that

time that she was hurting real bad and we could totally have fixed that? Well, we didn't. Somebody needs to ball tap this guy. Just walk up and be like, whack. Just, you know, one of those quick sort of raps with the back of the knuckles right on the old junk killer region of this guy. Be like, how's that feel? How's that fucking original sin feel, douchebag?

What a fool. What a fool of a man. Yeah. Would you listen to this guy? Probably. I wonder if this is one of those younger Earth creationists we were talking about last time. Younger Earth. Yeah, right. Like Earth was created 45 minutes ago. Yeah. It was. It's like we preheated the oven and then it was just done right after that.

It was like a Gino's pizza roll. It was fucking out of there in no time. And may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. Madam President, I hear the floor and suggest the admins of the quorum. Clerk will call the roll. Expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted. This is an article from Journal Sentinel online. This is a paper publication out of Milwaukee. They published something, Secular Humanist Flunk 2011 Congress. This did not surprise me at all, seeing how Congress is neither secular nor humanist. Right.

In any way. Yeah. Big fucking surprise. They basically rank all of the – you can look up by district, by state, who your representatives are, and you can take a look and see their scorecards. They had several bills that were sort of the basis for their scoring. And you can see who did well and who didn't do well and what they voted yay or nay on.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think the most interesting thing about this article is being able to click on your own state. And you click on, if you go to the article, there's a link inside of this article that's embedded in the regular text that just says 2011 Congressional Report Card. And when you click on it, it'll list your states on the left.

And Tom pointed out that on the right is a guide to the actual legislation that they graded on. So if we go to Illinois, which is where Tom and I are both from, Chicagoland area, although Tom's representative guy is different than mine, my guy got a C. And I was pretty sad. I was like, well, I live in a major metropolitan area, and my guy got a C, and I was pretty sad. I was like, well, I live in a major metropolitan area, and my guy got a C, and some of the stuff he voted against, one of the things he voted for Tom was like, we should make fucking

in God we trust our fucking national motto. Why wouldn't you just not vote? That's such a worthless, meaningless proposition anyhow. My guy got a fucking F. Well, you live rurally, a little more rurally than I do. An F.

That's not the good grade. And he's a Republican, so you kind of got to expect him to be an F. Because their party's been hijacked. It just makes me so crazy to look and see, like, oh, if there's an R next to their name, they're probably going to have to vote fuckwit.

Whenever something pops up, they're like, oh, what's the fuckwit position? Vote it up. I will say that, you know, if you look, there's a couple of R's on here that are just as good of grades as mine, though, the one that I had. Although there are several R's that are just straight up F's. I mean, you just look at like F, F. Yeah, but look at the A's. There's an F, F.

Yeah, well, they said even at the beginning, if you stay on the first page, it says the results, grade A, 17 Democrats, zero Republicans. Grade B, 55 Democrats, zero Republicans. The highest Republicans, there was only six C's. That's really fucking depressing. Yeah. 110 Democrats. But then you look at it. Actually, it flips.

It's pretty funny. The C's are the biggest portion for the Democrats, right? The biggest portion for Republicans, F's, 230 of them. That's people in this country that want a nation that, like we talked about, a nation that is religious. Because all of these things have to do with that sort of thing. Either they're anti-science or they're straight up religious. Right. And the only – again, we talked about it.

It's a prerequisite. If you're anti-science, 100 percent of the time you are religious. Yeah. Yeah. They don't – there's no anti-science atheists. How would that even work? How would that – I mean how would that even work how would that you know i mean how would that even work what would the opposition to a systemized way to learn where would that come from

it only comes from religiosity there's it does not exist in the other direction if the ionization rate is constant for all ectoplasmic entities we could really bust some heads in a spiritual sense, of course. So... This is a fucking face-palming article right here. This really is. This is from the Post Chronicle. This...

Is this even a real paper? I don't know. This is a terrible website. Oh yeah, this is fucking like 2001 technology here. God, it's just got ads right in the middle of it. It's just a fucking clusterfuck of a website. This is an article from the Post Chronicle. Princess Diana's ghost?

Footage taken in a Scotland church. Wow. You know what you got to do, Tom? If you're going to get footage of any ghost, here's what you got to do. Zoom in and out as much as fucking possible. I can't get it in focus. Just be like fucking zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out, zoom in, zoom out, zoom out. Oh, there's a ghost.

A ghost. There has never, ever been a straight up, straight up shot of anything that's been a ghost ever. It's always been like, oh, there's a fucking. And they said they didn't even notice it. And I'm like, Jesus, do you even know how to work your camera after watching this clip i was just like what did you just fucking open the wrapper like you look at it just like he's zooming in he's zooming i can't fucking get anything in focus it's all fucking jiggly cam and you're like of course somebody's gonna fuck with something like that right it doesn't look like if you watch

just the video it doesn't look like anything it doesn't look like anything at all he's going to fuck with something like that. Right. It doesn't look like – if you watch just the video, it doesn't look like anything. It doesn't look like anything at all. He's taking picture. First of all, he's taking video footage of stained glass, and then you can see an image in the stained glass. Well, churches have fucking images of people in the stained glass, and it's only when somebody, like, stops the frame and then zooms in and photoshops it that it looks at all like anything at all look at the photo that they choose for the very cover of

this drawing um or this it's a draw i say it's drawing right away for this video and everything else is blurry except for that right like when you think it's photoshop like when you think that you know like and what is Diana doing? Like, let's just presume that this is Diana, okay? She's like, you know where I got, where do I got to go? Let's see. Do I want to go back to the palace and haunt there? Because I kind of live there.

Do I want to go, you know, where my sons are? You know, do I want to maybe go see my ex-husband? Maybe my mom? No, you know where I'm going to go? Some fucking place in Scotland. I'm going to go some fucking place in Scotland I'm going to go there and you know what I'm going to do is I'm not going to like show myself to anybody I'm just going to fucking make myself visible in a fucking on a mirror on a

window and only when you're zooming in and out fucking randomly will I show up so it's like a fucking magic incantation in a fucking special magical place for her to actually come forward. Like it's the most ridiculous thing. Why here?

Why that way? Yeah, you can show up anywhere. You show up in a stained glass window. Yeah. So you're less likely to be properly perceived. I would like to confuse as many people as possible. It's crazy. It's like dressing as the Mona Lisa and standing in front of the fucking

Mona Lisa, right? And then again... What? What? I don't understand. Why is this causing confusion? You know, fuck you. Stand in a park at noon. Stand in the fucking middle of the park at noon and play fucking frisbee with a Labrador. Then I'll buy it, right?

Then I'll be like, wow. that woman looks a lot like Diana. Man, that Diana impersonator sure playing frisbee with a dog. And isn't this kind of an iconic image of her anyway? Sort of her like, you know, like it almost like everybody recognizes her as that because I think this is sort of a feeling like an iconic image. So what she's doing is she's thinking, okay, what's my most iconic pose? I've always liked that picture of me. That's how I'll come back from the dead.

Yeah. As that photo. Yeah. Photoshopping it. You know, I actually have heard that that's what happens though, is that when you die, you get like a photo album and it's all your pictures and that's what you get to look like so you get to find the one where it's like oh i don't look so fat in that one i don't take good pictures fuck yeah and that's actually what sucks so bad about like that you know people often will will note that um you know people have existed for

a very very long time billions of of people have come and gone. But we have very few ghosts relative to the number of people who have died. And that's actually because they didn't have a photo album. They're like indigenous people. So they get up there and just like, well, where's your photo album? Like, I don't, pictures hadn't been invented. Too bad for you, stupid. And as time goes on, those pictures are going to get better and better.

And the ghosts are becoming more become more and more real. Right. Sharper focus, man. Sharper. Once 3D pictures come in and 3D images like really get – we're just going to – the ghosts – we won't be able to tell the ghosts from real people. It will be like fucking American Horror Story. You'll just be like, I don't know what a real – is it a real person or a ghost? Who knows?

Yeah. Well, high-definition ghosts are coming. Yeah. It's like we're on the cusp of that technology. And that's why all those ghosts from like the 1800s are all fucking blurry and like fucking they look like Casper. They're all like fucking – because they never – they didn't have good photographing equipment back then. Right. Well, they're all sepia ghosts.

That's the thing. They're all sepia ghosts. They sepia through the walls. And you have to – the thing is too like the ghosts don't move a lot because they have to pose for a really long time. Yeah, absolutely. They have to stay still. But I have a fly on my face. That's cool.

Just let it be. Let it be. I just pray over this equipment. We speak over the PowerPoint presentations, all of the video projectors, and we'll say, devil, we know what you love to do in meetings like this. And we say, you will not, in Jesus' name, you will not prevent this message from going out. No microphone problems, in Jesus' name. So this next story is from Think Progress. This is actually, I don't even know how to, I'm just going to read it. Virginia Lawmaker, children with disabilities are God's punishment to women who previously had abortions.

Why is this guy making laws? He's not a – this is not a man who is qualified to have a thought. And he is a lawmaker. Really? You're insulting everyone with this comment. Now, just correct me if I'm wrong here, Tom. Does it require a man to get pregnant? Does a man required to get pregnant? Isn't he like part of the process of pregnancy? I've always thought so. That's how I've done it. I mean, that's how I learned it, right? It's been a lot of trial and error, let's just say,

I didn't – I mean it's been a lot of trial and error let's just say. But I've learned it that way. That's sort of like how I've come to know that that's how sex works. I watched a lot of Bonobo Monkeys. So I know this. But really – Hey, there's some tips. Yeah. No, but – okay.

So it requires a man in order to get pregnant first off, right? Okay, so it requires a man in order to get pregnant first off, right? And then secondly, like is the man no longer involved in the woman's reproduction once he's planted his seed? Like he just moves on. He's like, oh, that's done. Right. That's impregnated. I've sown the field and now it's time for me to move on and when that fucking thing sprouts it just sprouts. What does this say

about men? Obviously it says something about women. It says a horrible thing about women. That women's sins cause them to have and it is. This is just exactly like women's sins make childbirth painful. Women's sins make their kids come out retarded. That's what he's saying

basically. So he is obviously being a misogynist douchebag. But what does it say about men? It says, you know, first off, it's giving you a get out of jail free card because it's not our fault that the kids come out retarded. It's the woman's fault exclusively that kids come out retarded. That's number one. But number two, it says that, you know, men are absentee.

They're absentee from the decision-making that comes in childbirth. And I think it's such an insult to men when you say shit like this and women. It's an insult to fucking human beings when you say shit like this. Don't exclude children, right? Because imagine looking at a kid and being like, you, you're a punishment. Oh, yeah. I guess that's something I hadn't considered. You're absolutely right. you're a punishment oh yeah i guess there's something i hadn't considered you're absolutely you are a punishment that's why you exist you exist the way you exist you are

punishment to your mother that's what you are god is mad at your mommy and so now you you are the fucking cosmic punishment from god never mind that and it's just as children with disabilities. It could be like, yeah, I got a funky leg. Mom had an abortion. Yeah. But I – otherwise, yeah, well, fuck you. Well, and then what about – he's saying this. He's saying that it's a punishment.

He's not saying the other way around that only people who have prior abortions have uh you know kids with disabilities he's not saying it the other way around but you could easily infer that and be like sure you know like like if you have a normal kid you're a good person if you don't if you have because there's obviously something else that the that nature is he's saying nature but he means god oh he's punishing you for yeah so. So there's obviously if you – so that means that you having a child with disabilities means you did something fucked up in your life. Maybe your wife never had an abortion. But you did something fucked up in your life to make sure that – that woman did something fucked up in her life to make sure because it's not the man's fault. And what kind of a cruel fucking God creates a whole person with a disability as a punishment for another person? I'm going to fucking ruin your life.

Yeah. So that your presence, so that the very existence of you can serve as a punishment to somebody else. Wow. You are a dick, dude. Well, and then here's another part of the article. It's the meanest thing I've ever heard. He's an asshole. Here's another part of the article. That's the meanest thing I've ever heard. He's an asshole. Here's another part of the article that I really like.

It's like, Marshall is fighting against healthcare reform, saying Obamacare is trying to take, and in quotes, your soul. Let me tell you something, Marshall. I will trade my soul for permanent healthcare right now. I will trade it. I'll fucking write my soul out on a piece of fucking paper like Bart Simpson and I will fucking trade it for health care for the rest of my life right now. I want Obamacare to take my soul. As long as I fucking have health care for the rest of my life, I'm fine with it. That's an awesome trade. I think that's a good deal. I think that's a good. How does Obamacare take your soul?

Yeah. And there's a vacuum cleaner type medical bills, so now I went to hell. No, it's a vacuum. They just walk up when you sign and they just hold the soul vacuum. It's like the fucking Egon gun. You know, just like suck your soul out of you and then basically get healthcare, I guess. I would trade my soul for a fucking tuna melt.

I don't give a shit. I'm holding out for a tuna melt with fries. I get a tuna melt out of it? Okay, great. Here you go. I wasn't fucking using it. This guy's an idiot. It's a terrible human being. Trying to take your soul.

Cecil, the South, I'm sorry. The South is fucking embarrassing. So now that we've embarrassed everybody and made everyone terribly uncomfortable, we're going to pause and give you an opportunity to write us, to find us on Facebook, to find us on Twitter, to call us and leave us hate-filled invective, and we'll return to ruin the rest of your day shortly. 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, dis 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. 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 next story is from the Raw story. Tennessee GOP representative stands by threat, stands by his threat to stomp a mud hole in transgendered people. That's appalling. That's a terrible, appalling, awful thing to say to threaten violence on a group of people because you think they're not using the bathroom you want them to use. Right.

Transgendered people – he wants to make sure that transgendered people don't go in – like if I'm a guy dressed like a girl, I shouldn't be able to go into the girl's washroom. And the thing that I come back to in this is there's nothing to see in the girl's washroom. The girl's washroom is in the girls' washroom. The girls' washroom is stalls from fucking ceiling to floor. You walk in and it's just stall, stall, stall, stall, stall, and a fucking place to wash up. And then they must have like an arcade in there and like a fucking big comfy sofa because the women all go there and hang out there forever. So they all go together and then they hang out. So there's got to be some sort of special room that the guys don't know about. But what I've seen of the women's washroom is it's all stalls. So there's nothing to see in there. There's,

I mean, first off, and then there's no way for this person to expose themselves because if they're going to expose themselves in the women's washroom out in the middle of the open, they're going to expose themselves outside of the women's washroom. Right. Right. Not being allowed in the middle of the open, they're going to expose themselves outside of the women's washroom. Right. Right. Not being allowed in the bathroom was never going. If you're I think I think the concern is that sexual predators would use this rule as an excuse to, like, dress as women and then assault women in the bathroom. But that's nonsense. If you're a sexual predator, you've already transgressed

all social rules and mores. So you're not going to be halted by a sign that says women, you know, you're just going to waltz right in there. Bathrooms by and large, don't have fucking bathroom attendants doing a genital check to make sure that everybody who walks in the, in the women's room or the men's room is the right sex. But beyond the irrationality of the law, Tom, this guy thinks it's OK to hurt other people because they are transgendered. He thinks it's OK to stomp a mud hole, so to speak, because that's what he spoke.

Right. In someone else. He thinks it's OK to kick someone's ass if they're a transgender person coming into a washroom. Who the fuck? Like you're not allowed to physically assault somebody. That's ridiculous. And if you're a fucking person of authority who fucking makes laws, fuck you, dude. You shouldn't have a job.

You can't just threaten violence on people. His actual words, just so you don't think we're taking him out of context. I don't care if he thinks he's a woman and tries on clothes with them in there. I just try to stomp a mud hole in him and then stomp him dry. Good. He wouldn't stop at just the mud hole. Iomp a mud hole in him and then stomp him dry. Good. It wouldn't stop at just the mud hole. I got the mud hole going. Dry it out.

Keep stomping. Got to keep stomping that guy. I mean this is really thinly veiled homophobia is what it is. It's gay bashing. It's a guy who says he would gay bash and he's proud of it. This is somebody who's afraid of any transgressive gender norms at all. Right. Anything that pushes a boundary that he's uncomfortable with.

And isn't that the whole point? There are people who are uncomfortable with virtually every stop on the spectrum of human sexuality. You can't just decide that where the place that you are uncomfortable is the place where violence is okay. You have to look at it and say, look, violence is never okay. No matter where somebody fits on the spectrum of human sexuality, you don't get to, you don't get to commit acts of violence against them because you're personally made uncomfortable by it.

That's not – that's never OK. That's just fucking never, ever OK. And when that becomes OK, then what you're basically saying is I'm the one who gets to decide how far sexuality gets pushed. Yeah. As human animals. And when you reach past the point where I'm uncomfortable, then I get to act out violently against you. And if you're going to allow this, then, I mean, really, there's no justification for not allowing violence against anybody for any sexual act at all or any sexual preference or orientation. You know, you find, oh, you like missionary? Well, I fucking like doggy.

Let's do this thing. Let's fucking start fighting them. Yeah. That's crazy. I'd like to see that war, though. I'll be honest. Yeah. That would be.

That's a sexy war. What you want to say this to. I want to just mention this, too, is that this guy should be held accountable for what he says, because he has a job speaking to people. You know, his job is to stand up and basically debate. He's debating these laws. He's standing up to tell people whether or not a law is correct or not. And people are looking to him as somebody who is a person in our society that is a model. as somebody who is a person in our society that is a model.

And if you are a role model for other people and a model citizen and you say something like this, you should be held accountable for what you say. It's like saying something like, well, you know all blacks are lazy. It's the exact same type of speech. It's like saying it's okay to hit a woman. It's like saying it's okay to hit a woman. It's like saying, you know, it's fine to beat your kids. All those things, you know, you would look at somebody and be shocked if they said it in our society, right? All those other things that I just said, Tom, those would get a jaw drop, but this is okay. And that's the society we live in where this sort of thing just gets passed over.

It's okay to say you'll beat up a transgendered person, but it's not OK to say you'd beat up a woman or a child. And I think that's ridiculous. I think that's a silly way. It's not OK to say I would beat up somebody of a different race. Sure. But it's OK to say I would beat up a transgendered person. And that is, you know, he's not thrown out of office for that.

I think that's ridiculous. You know, I do real quick want to just read one of the comments from this article because I think it's awesome. This guy is like, what, 70? I doubt he could stomp a hole in his own bedpan. And that's the other thing, too, you got to realize is that, like, somebody is not just going to lay there and let you beat them up. And let me tell you something. You know what I mean? Like you're going to try to beat up some transgender dude and you're 70 years old.

My money's on the transgender dude. Right. Yeah. You're going to break a hip. That's what's going to happen. I see. So I look at these guys and all I can think a lot of times is I can't wait for you to die of old age.

Yeah. You're so irrelevant to the world as it is now. Just die already. Yeah yeah you're uninteresting you're unable you're clearly not able to keep up we lord we just asked it to be covered with the blood of jesus open hearts lord open hearts so this next story is from the local um and this story is pretty unbelievably awful um this is a uh story about a man who murdered with an axe his 16-year-old daughter because he believed, again, this is another honor killing, that his daughter had tarnished his family's honor by dating somebody outside of their religious preference.

Yeah, this person was a Muslim and wanted to make sure that their daughter didn't marry or didn't date this Christian. I was thinking about this story today when I was coming here. And this is the one that – like of all the stories you find during the week, Tom, some of them just resonate. you find during the week, Tom, some of them just resonate. You know, some of them are just like, like you're thinking about them and you're like, this one just resonated with me and made me think about it on my walk here. And one of the things that a lot of people will argue, and this is an argument that we catch all the time. I remember getting an argument with an old listener from Everyone's a Critic about this,

is that, yeah, but that's just like a kook. Like he's just like a kook and you can't, you know, um, you can't, you can't say that it, you know, he's a Muslim and that's what made him do it. It's, you know, the guy was just crazy and he was going to kill somebody anyway. And he's just a crazy person. And now you're blaming the religion for, you know, this person who did some fucking horrific act. And, you know, there is some truth to some of that, right? To some of the, sometimes there's some truth to that. And, you know, there is some truth to some of that, right? Sometimes there's some truth to that. And then there's also that no true Scotsman fallacy, right? Like people will be like, yeah, well, he says he's a Muslim, but he's not a Muslim. No true Muslim would do this, right?

And I say bullshit on both accounts. You have to be so indoctrinated in your religion and in your religious beliefs to think that you are doing someone a favor and you are doing yourself a favor by killing your own offspring rather than having them marry somebody else that is out of your religion. You have to be thinking you're getting some sort of benefit for that in order for it to happen because you wouldn't do it otherwise. There's no reason to do it otherwise. And to say that this person was crazy and would have killed this person anyway, this kid lived to be 16 before he took the ax to her. So evidently there has been some trials in this kid's life growing up, right? There had to have been some

moments where he, she disappointed him in some way. And he did not choose at that point to take the ax to her because you can't, you can't make the statement that, oh, well, he was crazy and was going to kill her. If she lived to be 16 and then he killed her. Right. He would have drowned her at birth if he was a crazy person. He was an indoctrinated brainwashed person who thought that his god needed some sort of retribution for this. Yeah. I mean, he felt like he needed to appease his God, I would think, you know, and cleanse his family's honor. You know, and his family's honor is only besmirched

when she dates outside of his religion if he is religious. Right. It doesn't work without it. This story cannot happen without it. You know, I will note, I will note in the interest of fairness that he did suspect that she had been smoking marijuana and tried to electrocute her. That's also in the story. Pushed her in a bathtub and threw a hairdryer at it. So clearly the man is a violent fuckwit.

Yeah. But he's getting his justification from his religion. Right. That's where it stems from. That's where the anger, that's where the initial offense comes in, right? The offense that she commits is, in his eyes, a religious offense. The offense that she commits is in his eyes a religious offense. This story, it's required that he be religious in order for this to happen.

And he fucking murdered her, man. He hit her 19 times with a fucking axe. This had to be a fucking unbelievably awful way to die, to be murdered. She wasn't dead instantly. She wasn't dead instantly either. read this article right he fucking whacked her with the axe 19 times and she died afterwards yeah so he hit some shit that was vital but not completely vital where you die instantly he didn't fucking like lop her head off fucking jason vorhees style with the axe. He like hit her multiple times in different places and she fucking bled to death is what it sounds like. And truthfully, what greater betrayal can there be than for a parent to kill their own child?

That's your parent. So to be murdered by your father, I mean your father, that's such a betrayal of of trust of love of the of the natural order of things you know and i say that meaning it the natural order of things is that parents tend to not eat children or destroy their children or kill their children that is a fucking pretty universal sort of standard so to transgress that standard means that, you know, you have to have something in your life, which overrides that urge, that natural urge to not destroy your own offspring. And it's that religious fundamentalism bullshit. It's that, you know, you, you, you disgraced my honor, which is more important than you.

In the name of Jesus, Secularism and Humanism Society, Queen Mary, University of London. And it had to be canceled after threats of violence because some complete fucking lunatic rolled in with his camera and started taking pictures of people in the audience and then threatening them with violence if anything was said to offend islam what yep well you know the thing that's upsetting the two things that are upsetting is this guy went in and said if anything was said about Mohammed, he knew where they lived and would murder them and their families. I have a hard time thinking about how he leaves with that camera. Right. You know, I mean, that's a genuine threat.

I'm taking your picture to store it for later so that I know the people I need to track down and murder. Because I fucking said I was going to track you down and murder you and your family. Yeah. I think it's very disappointing, reasonable but disappointing, that the talk had to be canceled. I mean, again, this is part of that incredibly insecure, babyish religion that is Islam. That you're so worried that somebody's going to say something you don't like, that somebody's going to string together a series of words in an order that offends your God, that you're going to threaten to murder them and their families.

You're going to end their fucking lives because somebody might offend your silly little god. And that a talk has to be canceled at a university, at a location that's designed for these sorts of things, that's built. Universities are made for the enterprise of free speech and open thought and consideration and to be – And to have discourse and debates on things, right? And they're held hostage to this sort of violent extremism. Yeah, and I just – it feels a lot like what happened with those Dutch cartoonists, right? Right. Like you do something that is – that the Dutch cartoonist draws something and then it's just like this immediately like all who oppose Islam should die sort of feeling. Like if you mock Islam, you should die.

And that is just like you said, the baby. It's like a child. Like, don't you say that. Don't you say that. Like holding your hands over your ears and like screaming said, the baby. It's like a child. Like, don't you say that. Don't you say that. Like holding your hands over your ears and like screaming la, la, la. And then like – but this is violence though too. It's not just ignoring it. It's violence.

Like I would be fine if they were just like I'm never going to pay attention to whatever anybody says about this fantastic belief I have. I would be almost fine with them just ignoring it as long as they weren't vocal in politics or something. I would be fine. You want to believe some crazy shit? Believe some crazy shit on your own and don't affect anybody else and it's fine. Believe fucking – unicorns and care bears exist. I don't fucking care. But the moment it starts affecting other people and you start – you're so upset that somebody would make fun of your fucking unicorn that they're willing to injure you.

They're willing to injure your family, kill your family, hurt you. This is just something that – and I almost feel like you just want to say like this has got to stop. You've got to give – you've got to stop giving these people rights. It almost should be like a pariah if you believe this stuff. Yeah. I mean I think there should be – this is part of my no quarter for bullshit policy. I mean people who put forth ideas like this, they should be rejected from polite society. They really should. They should find themselves unable to

go places and be treated as an intellectual equal, as a member of polite society. Because this sort of nonsense does not earn you a place in polite society. Right. Absolutely not. It destroys polite society. So I think it's a real detriment that we give religious preference such a point of pride and a point of honor. And we say, oh, I don't want to offend anybody. I'm so fucking afraid all the time of offending anybody, of making anybody fucking uncomfortable based on their religious beliefs. I got to make sure that I'm respectful all the time. Well, fuck you in the ear. They're not being respectful at all. This is not a respectful, thoughtful, considered position. This is a violent, extreme position.

And people who have violent, extreme views, they shouldn't be part of our social clubs. They shouldn't be part of our school boards. They shouldn't be part of any of the features of polite society. They should be made to feel outcast. And until we are comfortable saying your religious beliefs are so fucking crazy that I cannot spend five minutes with you. I won't look you in the eye. You can't come to my party. I'm not sharing a food. We are not going to be, we are not going to engage each other culturally on the same level. You can't play here. Until we're comfortable doing that, then these people can walk around with relative impunity, making everybody terrified that if they speak out, that they're going to be subject to reprisals and violence. And as like a Muslim or something, I would be embarrassed by this person.

They should be. And that's the thing that I never get, right? It almost always feels like – like I understand – I guess I get if like somebody was an atheist and being an outspoken douchebag. I will call them a douchebag. If you're a misogynist and an atheist and there are outspoken douchebag i will call them a douchebag if you're a misogynist and an atheist and there are those people exist oh my god i think you're a douchebag i wouldn't talk to you i wouldn't i wouldn't fucking have a conversation with you i wouldn't even want to fucking associate with you if i was having a conference and i had people that were coming and you asked to fucking speak or attend i wouldn't invite you i wouldn't have

you there i would fucking make you an outcast wouldn't invite you. I wouldn't have you there. I would fucking make you an outcast in my own fucking group. Why don't fucking people that are religious do the exact same goddamn thing? No. You know what? We believe in the same fucking sky monster, so guess what? We're brothers. Well, you know what you want?

Fucking Islamic people need to look at this guy and be like, you're a douchebag. You can't come to our church anymore. Stay the fuck out. You want to fucking believe in Allah? You believe in a different Allah than I do. Go fuck yourself. But they don't do that. Instead, they're just like, well, I guess you fucking sit on the same prayer mat and have the same fucking prayer beads and wear the same fucking sash so you're the same guy. Well, your fucking religion is fucking stupid then.

And fuck all of you. I completely agree, man. Fuck you. And all religions need to do this with their extreme elements. They all need to do this with their, I mean, there should be no quarter for these people. Know where they can go to feel

at home. I don't fucking, I don't put I don't put on my schedule somebody from my own group, an atheist group, because I mean, let's it fucking call a spell. We are atheists, right? Sure. So we have a group of people that also don't believe. Now, we don't have traditions or church or any of that stuff.

But I would never consider part of my group a misogynist or a homophobe or it would never be part of my group and I would never fucking accept them. So you start doing the same fucking thing, religious people. Or if you don't, then you're intellectually fucking dishonest and you're bullshitters and you're worthless. I'm here to be trained. I'm here for an education. I'm willing, God. I'll do what you want me to do.

I'll do what you want me to do. I'll say what you want me to say. I'll say what you want me to say. In'll say what you want me to say. I'll say what you want me to say. In Jesus' name. In Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. So, we don't have a hilarious story to end on.

No, we have a very sick story. This whole episode's full of shit that just makes me so mad. I know. The only other stuff was like, yeah, I mean, we really just didn't have a good funny story help us out listeners if you find a funny story post it to the facebook page and we'll we probably should have ended with the fucking die one the princess die one but we should have but we did not instead we're gonna end on a story from the telegraph afghan boy suicide bombers tell how they are brainwashed into believing they will survive fuck you read this thing and it just it's it just it hurts it hurts you look at this boy you

look at the photo of this boy and you know what he looks like he looks like a little boy yeah he looks like a kid because that's what he is and his his handlers, who teach him how to be a walking bomb, tell him that when the bomb goes off, that his God will protect them and that the bomb will only kill Christians. It will only kill the enemy. And it will spare Muslims. And it will spare his own life. The bomb that is fucking strapped to his body that he is going to use to commit murder and suicide. They brainwash him into believing

that he and righteous people and his townspeople and the others, because there's so much collateral damage when these go off. Right. There's so many people of the faith that get destroyed by these reprehensible devices. These are not

surgical strikes, so to speak. But these kids don't know that, and they don't get to find out they're wrong, because they get blown the fuck up. Yeah, one of the things that you see, though, is that they're lying to the adults, too.

Right. They're saying like, yeah, well, you know, in heaven you're going to have, you know, ninety nine like golden raisins or virgins or whatever it is. And, you know, like so they're going to have these these these pleasures of heaven. So they're lying about heaven because there's no fucking you know, there's no proof heaven exists. So they're doing the same thing with the people who are adults doing this. It's just a different kind of brainwashing. The kid at least is smart enough to realize, well, fuck, I kind of don't hate living here. And living is kind of cool.

So you're going to have to trick me some other way. You're not going to be able to say, well, you know, heaven's better. So, you know, you're going to, you know, you're going to have this great time in heaven. You can't trick the kids with that. You got to be like, well, you're not heaven's better. So, you know, you're going to have this great time in heaven. You can't trick the kids with that. You got to be like, well, you're just not going to die. Don't worry.

You're not going to die. We've, you know, Allah came down and made this bomb himself. I mean, how do you convince this kid that a bomb that's like basically a fucking sack of nails with a gunpowder fucking thing is somehow going to spare him? You know, it says in the article that these kids are largely illiterate. They're brainwashed with anti-Western pro-Islam propaganda. And then they're given a fucking amulet with Quranic verses written on it. Yeah.

And told that it's going to protect them from the explosion and the fire and that their parents will go to paradise. Wow. There's no fucking downside, right? Your, your whole life and your whole life is short. You're 10, 11, 12 years old. Your whole life is short. And you're, you're, you're at a stage in your fucking psychological development where you believe you trust authority figures. What they tell you, you believe that shit is fucking true. And they're telling you that

these other people are evil fucking people, that they are there to destroy you, your family, your way of life. Yeah. And you can help and it doesn't cost you anything. And you buy your parents whom you love a ticket into paradise. I don't know if you heard it. I think it was a This American Life where this Afghani guy goes out and buys an amulet that's supposed to protect him from gunfire. And he takes it out into the mountains and he puts it on a chicken. And they're trying to shoot the chicken. And the chicken's not dying. And they're thinking it's the amulets protecting him.

And then finally somebody just grabs a gun and shoots the shit out of the chicken and it dies. And the guy is like, oh, it's a fake or whatever. But this is a culture that believes in magic. You know what I mean? Like this is your culture where a grown-up – now we're not talking about a kid now. We're talking about a grown-up who spent a lot of money. And this is not a guy who is a guy you'd want to fuck with, so to speak, from the way that they tell this story on This American Life. This is not a guy who you would walk up and, you know, play a scam on.

You certainly wouldn't want to try to sell this guy homeopathy. You wouldn't do it twice. Yeah, you certainly wouldn't do it twice. Exactly. So but this guy gets scammed out of money in a culture because this culture doesn't – they feel like this is the truth and that's your culture. So there is danger to living in a society where magical thinking is prevalent and that's – this is an example of one of those dangers.

You live in a society where they think they can make magic amulets and the kids are taught to believe this. Yeah. Magic is not – I mean obviously it's not a fucking real thing but it's a really devastating thing to believe in. And it's very, very unfortunate that they're preying on kids now. Because I have to think, Cecil, that the moolahs know better. Because they see the other kids blow up.

I think so too. They don't think that they're handing an amulet that's going to let them come back. Fucking experience would show you that doesn't happen. Well, he gave the last amulet to the last kid. He fucking exploded. He didn't come back because he blew up. I think you're probably right. And just like I can't tell sometimes whether or not somebody who's a fucking nutrition scammer in our country is a nutrition scammer because they believe it or if they're a nutrition scammer because they don't.

It's like that – we'll talk a little later about some of the email we got in Poe's Law where sometimes you just can't tell the difference between a parody of a fundamentalist or a fundamentalist. Sometimes you can't tell whether or not somebody is a scam artist in a quack or just a quack and ready to fucking pull the money out of your pockets. So it's hard to tell. And I don't think that the people who are giving them the amulets believe it. But I don't know that the people who make the amulets don't know. You know what I mean? Because you're steeped in that culture. And the only way to change that is to change the culture.

Change the ideas that are set on there. Whether or not magic is a fucking functional thing. Once you start believing magic isn't a functional thing thing then it's harder to tell your kids that magic works because then they just hear the adults being like well magic doesn't work so we want to start our email section by thanking all the people who have rated us on itunes and who have subscribed through itunes i want to thank you guys because in one week's time, we have shot up in the ratings from like literally like 50 spots, Tom. Just in like one week, we have shot up an amazing amount. I just want to implore the people who are listening last time.

We're thinking, ah, it's not going to do anything. It will do something. So please go to iTunes, rate us, and then subscribe through iTunes instead of the normal way you get it because it really does change our ratings. We have seen it happen in one week's time, and I know that not everybody did it. So if we could just get a moment of your time to do it, give us a quick rating, give us a click on the subscribe button, and that's all we'd ask. And it really does help us. So thank you very much for all the people who've done it. We had to get 98 ratings now

in the United States. And we're very happy for that. Now, arbitrarily, we're excited to hit 100. Yeah, I know it's an arbitrary thing. Yeah, but we'd love to get well over 100. So please, please feel free

to come in and leave a comment. We'd love to hear what you guys have to say about the show. So we got an email from Lois. Lois tried to go on iTunes and rate us, but she didn't know how to do it. Let me just give Lois a quick little bit of instruction. Lois, go to DissonancePod.com. That's the website.

On DissonancePod.com, if you scroll down just a bit in the middle, it says rate us on iTunes. If you hover over that, that's a mouse link. Click on that, and that will take you to an iTunes page, and it will ask you if you'd like to launch the application. Hit yes, and it will take you to our iTunes rating system, and then you could just sign in directly. It will take you to our page on iTunes, and you could just sign in and rate us right there. This email kind of made my day. It made my week. What are you kidding me of made my day. It made my week. What are you kidding me?

What's that? It made my week. Lois describes herself as a 70-year-old white female, a yellow dog Democrat who did a hard time on a religious commune. I'm sort of blown away that our demographic would extend to someone like Lois, and I'm so happy to hear that she's listening to the show. She says, I love the way you two stand up for women. Never give up.

Never give in. We got an email from Nate. Nate sent us an email that described an interaction that he had with someone at an evangelical church camp. My condolences, Nate. Yeah, you did some hard time too, huh? My God. I can't think of anything I'd like to do less than go to evangelical church camp.

Yeah. Jeez. But Nate evidently was getting into a discussion about reality versus this nonsensical fiction. reality versus this nonsensical fiction. And the person told him that he has a story about global warming which would rip his face off. Evidence. I didn't get that argument though. I don't think Nate got that argument. Yeah, he said something about – he's like he was making fun of a 500-year-old man even existing.

Yeah, he said something about – he's like he was making fun of a 500-year-old man even existing and this guy using science to say, well, they say that there was more oxygen back then, which is why they could live – like somehow more oxygen in the air leads to people's lives being much, much, much longer. That's why people die. Why don't people in Denver die much earlier than I do? A lot of people don't know this, but that's actually the cause of death. That's why you age, is because you're using up all the oxygen. Yeah. That's not true.

That's not true. No, that's not actually the truth at all. There's more oxygen, so people lived five to eight to ten times longer than they live now. I love it. It's ten times longer than they live i love it's ten times longer and you know like the life expectancy back in the bronze age is fucking so brutish and short it's like you're 14 you just reproduced and then you died you know like it's like like you live to be 14 and die or whatever it's like some ridiculous. And it's not a real number, people. Don't correct me. I don't care what the

real number is. But just to think that they lived that many more times. Like, oh yeah, they lived to be 500, not 21. Like your council of elders in the Bronze Age wouldn't even be able to buy a beer right now.

A council of elders! That's awesome. You're ripe old age, like a fucking old man at like 29. Right. All my teeth are falling out, so it's time to die of starvation.

Yeah. That's good. That's the way to be. But Nate, we thank you very much for your email. And remember, you can post these sorts of things

on our Facebook page as well. You can go to Facebook and like us. We have a fan page well. You can go to Facebook and like us. We have a fan page there. You can interact with us there. So we also got an email from Andy. Andy sent us a very nice email that he's just getting into the world of podcasting. And he's unfortunate enough to stumble upon us.

Of all the podcasts, Andy. In all the world. You had to stumble into ours. He mentions down here at the bottom. He says, keep the good work and I'd like to make a suggestion for your reading pleasure if you haven't discovered them already. Sir Ken Robinson has written some amazing books on creativity and changing the educational paradigm in schools. He's a father. And this listener is a father of five. He says he's found this work to be invaluable.

So I'll take a look at this. I'll see if I can find some of this, Tom. I'm sure you're going to be interested in this too. Absolutely. I'm going to put it on my queue to listen to. So thank you very much for the suggestion. He also asked where we're located. We're in the Chicagoland area.

Cecil specifically in Chicago. Me more in We're in the Chicagoland area. Cecil's specifically in Chicago. Me more in the land portion of Chicagoland. We're about 30 miles outside of Chicago. And that would be America, by the way. In the great state of America. America. He just dropped the A in tires. America. So we got an A in tires. America.

So we got an email, a very long email from Matthew. Matthew titled this just Americans, which I love. And that's how you have to read it too. Right. Americans. Americans. Americans. The email is quite long, so I'm not going to read you the email.

But he's just totally baffled by our entire culture is what I'm getting. Yeah, baffled by our health care mostly. I'm baffled by our health care too. Yeah, so are we. I mean there's no fucking surprise. So are we. We don't get it. We don't understand it.

We grew in a way that is – and it's funny too because you even say it. All the rest of the other countries laugh at you for your idiocy. And I fucking, we laugh at us. We, we have, we have no idea what we're doing. Um, the thing is, is that the doctors in this country, you know, make a lot of money and they want to keep making a lot of money and insurance companies make a lot of money and they want to keep making a lot of money. And there's really nothing I think that anybody can really do about it. We've gotten some protections with the Obama plan, but a lot of money. And there's really nothing I think that anybody can really do about it. We've gotten some protections with the Obama plan, but a lot of the teeth was ripped out of that when it was ran through, it ran through legislation. So there's really no hope for us. No, none at all. Yeah. We don't have a system. I mean, it's not a system. It's if you can afford

it, you get it. And if you can't afford it, you don't get it. That's a monetary system. That's not a healthcare system. There's no, we have no healthcare system in this country. If you have money, then you get it. And if you can't afford it, you don't get it. That's a monetary system. That's not a healthcare system. We have no healthcare system in this country. If you have money, then you get healthcare. And if you don't, then you probably just don't. And that's the healthcare system. And the reason you can't make any sense of it, Matthew, is because there's nothing to make sense of. How do you point your analytical muscle at a system that's non-system? You can't do it. So we thank you very much for the email. We find our country baffling too. That's why we have this podcast.

It's to express our fucking befuddlement. Thank you again, Matthew2, for sending us a ton of pictures. I'm probably going to use that tiny URL one for our... I thought that one was really funny. So the Large Hadron Collider finally finds the tiny URL.

We'll probably put that as our picture for this time. Thanks for sending the pictures. We appreciate all the Photoshop stuff. And that Dr. Pepper one was disturbing and hilarious. Really? It was very, very funny. So thank you. I did not feel good looking at that at all.

And it was my joke, I think. I know. I still felt uncomfortable. Yeah. Oh, man. So we got an email from Kevin. Kevin found our podcast via the Sean Faircloth book. Kevin, you're the only one who found us that way.

You're kidding, right? I think that's it. Now we can just put the checkbox in, like, successful marketing. Because everybody else that found that book, they were just like, they listened to us and they're like, what the fuck is happening? This is not. Yeah. Eject, eject, eject. There's like a slew of people spiking their iPods against the ground and stomping them.

I'm glad we captured one, though. I'm glad at least one stuck around. Thanks for sticking around, Kevin. Al sends us a lot of great pictures. I love the blasphemy one he sent us. It looks like it's Jesus on the cross, and then there's a bunch of people doing the YMCA afterwards. It's so funny. It's fucking awesome. I love that.

Because Jesus totally looks like he's doing the Y from YMCA. It's fucking awesome. So thanks, Al, for sending us a ton of stuff. I wanted to mention quickly that there was a problem with our Libsyn app for the iPod. Now, if you get the Libsyn app for your iPod, iPhone, you have to download what's called

Podcast Box. And then you have to search for us in their Podcast Box under News and Events. We are also under Religion. You'll have to find our portion. Then you have to pay $1.99 for the app for our app to actually download our show. Well, before, it was just loading forever. It just wasn't even working. But we fixed it with the people.

So if you're interested on using your iPhone to find us and get our app, we have an app for the iPhone, but it's sort of in another app. So it's the Libsyn podcast boxes, which you have to download first. That's free. And then $1.99 for our app. And you can basically stream our show. So it's really useful for iPhone. Not so useful for our iPod Touch you can basically stream our show. So it's really useful for iPhone. Not so useful

for our iPod Touch, it turns out. Yeah, I have an iPod Touch and I'm like, oh, I'll get my own app. Well, it doesn't work unless you're sitting somewhere where you've got Wi-Fi.

Right, where you're walking home with your 3G. Right. And you want to stream the show. That's the only way it's useful. Otherwise, you know, you can easily just download our show any other way.

But you can stream the show with our apps, which is what's useful on iPhones and Android phones. So if you want to get an app, we'd encourage it. We get a buck out of it. So if you buy an app, we'd appreciate it. We got an email from Zachary. Zachary just came over and started listening to the show. And he wanted us to talk about SOPA and the SOPA protest. I mean, SOPA thankfully was defeated. SOPA and PIPA have now been defeated, and I think pretty roundly. Yeah.

And I think that's a terrific success. We had posted some things on our Facebook page and otherwise, you know, try to get everybody who would listen to sign the petition as well. you know try to get everybody who would listen to sign the petition as well I think it's no secret Cecil and I would not promote or support SOPA or PIPA those are just terrible laws and we talked about SOPA in the past like it's not a good it's not a good thing so so we're happy that they've been defeated although there's a brand new law that I just saw today that starts with an a that they're starting to try to pass now too just remember that it's really only the media conglomerates that care and want to do this sort of thing.

And another example of why we don't need these is Mega Upload just got taken down over the week. They shut the website down, went to New Zealand and arrested like a Danish citizen there for U.S. copyright infringement. So to pretend that we even need a law that would even do any of this stuff is ridiculous because they can clearly already have all the power that they need to go after people, shut down sites. with the United States so that they don't get busted too. So, you know, things like this, the FBI, they're worried about the FBI. So they've stopped doing it. So they've already got the strong arm to fucking stop this stuff. And they've already, in my opinion, got too much power. Cause I think that's ridiculous to arrest somebody, another, somebody from another country for us copyright infringement to go to their country to do that. I know that there's extradition and shit like that, but if we can't get fucking roman polanski back here what the fuck yeah i'm not even sure how that works like you're in another

country violating this country's laws well i'm violating a lot of laws yeah right now yeah in other countries you know i'm sure the saudis wouldn't appreciate this show yeah exactly fly over and arrest me yeah we're gonna get extradited to fucking indonesia now because we put on our facebook page that we're atheists right i'm gonna show up and be like well that's illegal here well fucking i'm not there yeah idiots um he also references homeopathy says he doesn't think that we understand the depths of the stupidity that is homeopathy he then goes on to describe the depths of the stupidity that is homeopathy and you were right yeah i did not realize how shockingly stupid homeopathy is i'm so happy

season the one like shining skeptical light in the states is that homeopathy does not have the traction it has yeah you know in the uk give it time what's that give it time. What's that? Give it time. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure it probably will. But homeopathy is, of course, just magic water. That's all it is. It's just fucking magic water. We got an email from Amber.

Amber sent us a very long email where she talked about some problems that she had monetarily because of health concerns for her child and a moving email, Amber. We were both, I think I can speak for Tom when I say we were both touched by this email and we both felt for you and realized that the system in which we have in this country is fucking ridiculous. And for you to have to go through all the things that you wrote in this email just to try to get health care for your son, uh, is outrageous. I mean, it's just outrageous that we live in a system like this. So, uh, so our hearts go out to you for sure. And this is another thing, you know, when people say stuff like, uh, you know, uh, who cares about the poor? Uh,

sometimes you get to be poor, not because you're because you're lazy and you choose to be poor. Sometimes you get to be poor because of bad luck, and that happens a lot more often than you would think. And bad luck isn't something someone should be punished for. Well, it's bad luck compounded by lack of access to resources and care. Yeah. lack of access to resources and care. Because we don't have a properly functioning medical system in this country at all. So socialized medicine would be wonderful

for someone like Amber and probably would have saved her family's financial status. And I just was heartbroken when I read your email and realized what you had to go through. So we got an email from Al. Al, I don't even know what to say here. You sent us a link to the Purity Bear. What? The Purity Bear is so confusing to me. It looks like an SNL skit. It does. It looks to me like an SNL skit. I don't know if it is. I can't tell if this is real. Right. I told Tom when I saw this this morning, I said, I don't know if this is Poe's law or not in action. And if you're unfamiliar with what Poe's law is, Poe's law, to paraphrase, is basically that religious fundamentalism is so ridiculous you cannot tell a parody from an actual religious fundamentalist because the parody sometimes makes more sense and is like would totally fit in with what the religious fundamentalists believe that you can't actually tell the difference.

But I got to post this video because it's fucking a riot. It's so funny. This video cracked me up when the bear pops up. He's looking at this girl. This girl is like basically inviting this guy in at the door she's like my parents aren't home you want to come in for a little while and uh like a teddy bear pops up over his shoulder and is like she's cuddly but i'm cuddly too it doesn't have Does this bear have a hole in it? I don't know. What is he doing with this bear?

He's laying the hump on it, dude. The first thing is like, look, I don't want to cuddle the girl. Maybe you misunderstand, bear. You might be fine to give a squeeze to while I'm falling asleep at night. Yeah. But that ain't how it works. You see, I'm going to have sex with her yeah you're the ideas of your reproduction too it's just like oh i hugged him i'm pregnant right like this abstinence only is so confusing like yeah like all the kids who don't

have no idea what sex is they watch this like holy shit I could impregnate my bears. Oh my fucking god. Dan's gonna be so mad when he sees the offspring. All these little teddy bears running around the house. Another litter of teddy bears. I told you to leave that thing alone. Jason, what have you been doing with that? You're gonna be afraid to hug your mom.

If you think cuddling a teddy bear is analogous in any way to having sex stop fighting with your sister now hug right oh this isn't kentucky and so we leave you with another insult to the south uh thanks for listening and as always we'll 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 Acupunctuating pressurized Stereogram pyramidal free energy Healing water downward spiral Brain dead pan sales pitch Late night info docutainment Stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing Water downward spiral, brain deadpan 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 Birues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy,

double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. Council. you