Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 36: Skeptics with a K

Episode Date: February 27, 2012

Thanks to our Guest this time, Mike Hall from Skeptics with a K. TWiC #5: Sally Morgan and other frauds Child Drowns In Church Baptismal Pool In Indianapolis Indiana lawmaker urges state Republicans to oppose resolution honoring 'radicalized' Girl Scouts Kids turned away from church Time to bar Saudi Arabia from Olympic competition In Georgia, a School Board President Faces Opposition Simply Because He Won’t Reveal His Religious Preference CNN Contributor Dana Loesch Defends Virginia ‘State-Sponsored Rape’ Bill As No Different Than Consensual Sex Afghan anger over Quran burning an emblem of nation’s culture war Clips: Ricky Gervais, Jesus camp, Bill O'Reilly, Saudi Arabian National Anthem, The Simpsons. Visit our Website at http://dissonancepod.com for all the links.

You get very intense on Twitter. I mean, you get into proper battles with people. Yeah. Why do you take it so personally? But at home I'm smiling. Are you always? Oh, God, when someone's arguing with me that the Earth is 5,000 years old, yes, I'm smiling. Yeah, of course I'm smiling. You know, the fundamentalist view of the creation of the Earth is rather like an episode of the Flintstones.

So I have to laugh at those sort of things. How does your atheism, which you're passionate about, how does that play with your American audience, given that so many people in America are God-fearing people and probably take exception to it? Well, they shouldn't. We talked about this last time. Why should they take offence that I don't believe in their God or any other God? And I'd say to them, you know, tell me the reasons why you don't believe in all the

other gods and that's the reason i don't believe in yours and i've got nothing against people believing god at all you know um in fact if if it you know did make you a kind of person if you only did good things in his name then great i know but there's the rub. It's when I see some of these religious fundamentalists saying that they've told their five-year-old children that if they turn out gay, they will burn in hell. That to me is child abuse. That's nothing to do with religion or spirituality. That's child abuse. Even though I don't believe in God and I don't believe, you know, unlike most religions, I treat all religions the same. I think they're all wrong, not morally wrong,

but I don't think there is or could be a God. But if someone said we're banning religion, I'd march to not have it banned because it's your right to believe what you want and it's your right to be wrong and I'll fight for that right. 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. So for this first story, we've got a special guest. We've got Mike from the Merseyside Skeptics. His podcast is Skeptics with a K.

And he's come all the way, you know, he flew just for this show. I have to say, I really appreciate the hell out of this. Because, you know, we're a big goddamn deal here. We are. Huge fucking deal. And we were able to use some of our expense account occasionally to bring in guests. And we were able to get Mike in from the UK, and we flew him over to the States so that he could sit in a different room

and record this podcast. Via Skype. Well, you gotta use Skype. It's just how this shit is done. I mean, I'm fucking appreciative as hell. We want to go over a story here. This is a story from The Beast, which I love. They mark themselves as the world's only website that cracks me up this is uh this is a story about sally morgan um or as they

put it sally morgan and other frauds sally morgan for those not in the know is a psychic um psychic it means that she knows shit she has no way to know. And it turns out she doesn't know shit and uses the pop-off method of fraud. Allegedly. Can I put that in allegedly? I guess you can, but, you know. I like to make blanket statements without anything to back them up, Mike. I mean, that's... Libel laws are still a big deal here.

This is something that you have to be very careful about. She's already suing one person over this. Yeah, I know. We got to say allegedly, at least you have to say allegedly. I don't have to over here because fuck her. But, you know, like you have to say allegedly. And that's really, I think,

this is one of the things that I think I want to talk to you most about is how afraid are you to sort of expose these people because of the libel laws are so delicate over there in the UK. Sally Morgan, something that we tackled on the Merseyside Skeptics, when this whole thing kicked off, when she did the show in Ireland and there were some people on the back row of the theater, said that they could hear somebody apparently feeding her information. So there was an open window behind them leading to a projection booth or some sort of thing like that. And they could hear a man's voice saying things like, oh, Dave, and he passed quickly and he was quite old.

And then Sally, five seconds later on stage, would say, yeah, I'm getting a Dave and he was quite old and he passed over quite quickly. So it is the pop-off method is what it seems to be being described there. And Anosha noticed that this window was open and that you could hear this voice and closed the window and said this person then called up Irish radio

and said, I've got a feeling that this woman might actually be full of shit because how did this guy, why was he feeding her information and that sort of thing so what we did at the mercy side skeptics we worked with um uh with simon singh and professor cringe french from um goldsmiths university and we um uh goldsmiths college at university of london rather and we we came up with this idea of a of a test we you you can't just outright say well sally Sally, you're a fraud, and thank you, because that is libelous. And the UK libel laws

are such a state that the burden of proof is kind of backwards. If Sally would... I would have to prove that Sally was a fraud. It wouldn't be the case that Sally would have to prove that she could do the claims,

could do the thing that she's saying. I would have to prove that she couldn't do the claims i would have could do the thing that she's saying i would have to prove that she couldn't if you see what i mean right right which of course is impossible to do i was gonna say that's that's a hell of a burden of proof to live up to it is i mean in a court sense it works because i'm the one making the claim i'm saying you can't do that so i'm the one making the claim so from a legal of view, I can see why they've put the burden of proof on this side. But just from a practical point of view, when you're criticizing claims like this, the burden of proof is then ridiculously high.

And so people use the libel laws to kind of beat back criticism because they know that you're going to back down because you have to meet this burden of proof. That's obscene. You're not going to meet. So rather than say, right, Sally, you're going to back down because you have to meet this burden of proof that's obscene you're not going to meet so rather than say right sally you're you're full of shit because you know we can't say that and maybe she isn't maybe she does have magic brain powers who knows maybe she invited god and god was back there in the projector room exactly yeah he was feeding her you know it could be that that sally's just a front for the act the real

psychics just sits at the back he doesn't like like the publicity. He doesn't like the fuss. Oh, I like that. I like that. That explains why she needs the earpieces then. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, she needs the earpieces so she can hear the actual psychic. Maybe it's a mute psychic. Maybe it's one of those like,

get a sense, give up a sense sort of things, right? Like you're going to have some ESP, that's the plus, but you lose the ability to speak. So, you know, it's a win-? Like, you're going to have some ESP, that's the plus, but you lose the ability to speak. So, you know, it's a win-lose, you know. So we figured that we would challenge Sally on this by coming up with this thing called Challenge Sally, where we said, okay, well, on stage, as part of a stage act, she pulls photographs out of them.

She has people to bring photographs, and she pulls photographs out of the box and makes this instant psychic connection with the person in the photograph and says oh and I'm getting that there's something head and chest, something head chest area something like that, yeah you had a heart attack ah you see I knew it was a heart attack

um something to do with your head and chest that only leaves out my legs and arms if I'm going to have a fucking malady it's unlikely to not occur right i don't know the person who had like something wrong with their arms most of the time that died you know yeah sure anyway um so we got 10 photographs um of people who were deceased um and said uh we we we like anonymized them all we put a code to it um and i had half of the code and the other half of the code was marsh who's my co-presenter on skeptics

right um he had the other half of the code um and we we set up this this this thing called challenge sally we we got the james randy educational foundation they got involved they put the million behind it and we said right sally're in Liverpool doing a show on on this date we're in Liverpool as well because Liverpool's in Merseyside and that's where we live so we'll be here there'll be a chair there there'll be a test waiting it's what you do on stage all the time come down take the test all you have to do is pull the envelope out and go oh that's janet and oh that's simone or whatever just tell us the name of each person the photograph you get seven out of ten which is the the figures that the jrf worked out there's a one in a million shot of getting seven out of ten and that's the

the odds they like to use is one in a million shot get seven out of ten and you know that's it you're passed and you'll you'll have a respectable psychologist saying, you know, this person does seem to have genuine psychic powers. You'll have Simon Singh, respectable science writer, and you'll have me, some dickhead from Merseyside, saying, yeah, she's up for it as well. And so I'm sure, I know how this story ends. She showed up, and she was on time, maybe a little early, and she took the test, and everything went great.

So she's a million dollars richer, so okay, go on. She's a million dollars richer now. So she's a million dollars richer. So, okay, go on. She's a million dollars. So she's got her million. Was that paid in cash or? Well, oddly enough, instead of doing that, she didn't show up. She informed us via her lawyer that she wouldn't be attending. Right. Sure, of course.

And instead, she is now suing Paul Zenon, who's a magician from the UK, who wrote an article called What a Load of Crystal Balls. Oh, clever bastard. Okay, so I got to ask you a question here, Mike. We saw in the past that Peter Popoff, and if people aren't familiar with Peter Popoff, he did this, he did, they're suspecting, there's allegedly a connection, right, between what they're, the similar actions between the two. Basically, he would have – and this was actually proven by Randy.

So he would have his wife collect cards from a bunch of people, and then she would read them to him, and he had a hidden earpiece. So he gets called out on Carson. Basically, everybody sees that he's a fraud. He loses everything, goes bankrupt, all that. But he's back now. And he's selling Miracle Get Out of fucking Debt Water right now. And I wonder, do you think it's even going to matter even if she does get proven as a fraud? She's going to come back in 20 years selling fucking mood rings, right?

Yeah, I'm sure she is. You know, if it turns out that that she's making it up she gets completely busted on it uh it causes her career to collapse 20 years later she'll well maybe not 20 years she's 60 years old now maybe she doesn't have another 20 years but she's gonna she will come back and you know that happens it's it's a never-ending fight you know on on on our side of the fence where we have to fight this. We're going to be fighting this forever. We just have to accept that.

You just want to grab people and shake them awake and be like, did you realize this guy was a huckster back then? Oh, but now he's fine. It's good. Oh, yeah. Now he totally has a connection to God for his miracle to get out of that water. You know what I mean? Because what God is doing is spending his time instilling his energy into water to get you out of debt. That's what God is doing right now.

Couldn't God just erase my debt anyway? First, you don't know anything about magic debt relief, Cecil. I got to say, like, your magic debt relief. This is embarrassing to our listeners. Your magic debt relief knowledge is low. You don't do your research. That's the problem. There's your problem. Typical closed-minded skeptic. I know. So she't do your research. That's the problem. There's your problem. Typical

closed-minded skeptic. I know. So she bailed on you. She never did this. Are you guys going to try to challenge her again, or is the legal injunction enough to keep you guys away? Well, we're looking at doing something. We'll talk about doing something annually, and it's probably not going to involve Sally every

time, but it'll be around. We're looking at this idea at the moment of doing something annually every halloween of kind of you know we'll pull a challenge out there and if if you're a psychic you can come along you can take the test you pass you go on to the the jref million challenge nice nice that's the kind of thing we're looking at the moment but it's still kind of up in the air and things like that the other interesting thing about the sally case is that um uh simon singh wrote a blog post recently where he went back and um uh looked at the reviews of sally show now this kind of all happened this this this business in ireland happened around the end of august started september last year um no i think it was mid-september i

think mid-september it was um when when all this kicked off and um so simon went back and looked at uh looked at the reviews now if sally was using the the pop-off technique if i have to stress if in case sally's lawyers are listening absolutely if sally was using the pop-off technique obviously the first thing she was doing when she was busted on it is stop using that technique straight away so every show subsequent to that she's got her hair brushed back over her ears it's really obvious look there's no earpieces here and the audience will be able to see that and what you would do then i would imagine if i was doing this um is you'd fall back out on on your standard cold reading techniques instead of using the kind of semi-hot reading stuff of

being fed information by an earpiece so simon looked at the reviews of sally shows and she's getting four or five star reviews until mid-september when right she stops using the earpiece if that was what she was doing when suddenly her reviews collapsed down to about two stars where people coming out going actually that was a bit rubbish. And she wasn't very good. And she got a lot of stuff wrong. And suddenly her reviews are terrible at the point where she would have stopped using the earpiece if that's what she was using in the first place.

Don't sue me. Please, please, please don't sue me. Now, isn't it possible? No, I'm just, just to play devil's advocate here. Isn't it possible that those weren't really earpieces that they were like psychic plugs so that the psychic energy doesn't leak out of the head you know because maybe it takes maybe you have to contain that shit you know like you gotta have a high pressure situation so you gotta really plug up the ears and it looks bad right it looks like an earpiece that's dam. I'll admit it looks real bad. But maybe they're just psychic earplugs that are crammed into the old ear hole, you know, to keep the psychic vibrations from leaking out willy nilly.

And then she takes those out and all of a sudden, like, you know, she just doesn't have the pressure to be psychic. It's like she's not able to to build up that same kind of internal viscosity. Yeah, the psychic power leaking all over the floor. It's running off. The guys in the front row are covered in it. They're going home saying, I didn't know you thought that about me. Yeah, this shit's messy.

It's like a Gallagher show. It's just flying all over the fucking audience. Gallagher show, right? Next thing you know, she's going to be trepanning herself on stage just to get it out of there. There's going to be, there's like poncho seats when you go there.

It's like, oh, fucking show I'm covered in psychic goo. This is, it's like Slimer runs out there. So if you want to hear more of Mike Hall from Skeptics with a K, if like, let's say that you somehow stumbled upon this podcast because you had seen Skeptics in the K somewhere in the notes and you're thinking, man, I really want to hear more of my call. You're going to have to deal with us being really, really American and really, really foul for the next 40 or so minutes. And then we're going to have Mike on at the end of the show. So you have to bear with us here.

I'm so glad they haven't invented any kind of fast forward feature. I know it was a fast forward for podcast. Man, it'd be fucked. That would work out completely out of luck. Fast forward for podcast, man. We'd be fucked. That wouldn't work out. Completely out of luck.

Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord. Open hearts. All right, so the first story we're going to cover is from Huffington Post. I fucking hate this story, Cecil. This story is ridiculous. This story calls to mind an interview that we did with Sean Faircloth a while back. He wrote a book called Attack of the requirements, the sort of health and safety requirements that govern private daycare institutions and public daycare institutions.

And as a result, you have a story like this. Child drowns in church baptismal pool in Indianapolis. This story is fucking awful. It's awful for every fucking reason. A one-year-old kid wanders off. They can't find him. They have to send a team of searchers, emergency workers, to search the fucking place until they found the kid dead, drowned in a pool, in a baptismal pool. The only upside is at least he was baptized. Well, he's definitely going to heaven.

He's going to heaven. Yeah, going to heaven. The thing is, if you aspirate holy water. Oh, shit. Oh, God. God, how did you even say that? Terrible human being. Holy fuck.

Oh, my God. You have brought us. Tom, that's a new low for this program. Bravo. Well done. Well done. Okay, so. I actually wouldn't have thought it would kill him.

I thought it would just make him like a superhero. It's like that shit from the abyss. You can just breathe that shit. It's like just remember when you were in your mother's womb or whatever. It was only a year ago. Jesus was feeding you water. What the fuck? What I thought when I was thinking about this story – OK. OK, so they don't have the same religious institutions don't have the same oversight that other daycare institutions do when it comes to inspections and being qualified to actually watch children.

There's all of these these little bits of ways in which they can jump across and skip ahead from all these all the regulations that really, you know, are, are I think a necessity in daycare. You got to understand. I am not a parent but I know that parents are fond of children. I mean I'm not a parent but I recognize their fondness. Yeah, I recognize their fondness, OK? So here they are. You have the thing in the world that I think is probably the most important thing in your world. You know, maybe maybe it's maybe it's top three.

It's still very important. You know, it's your job, your car, then your kid or something like that. Your car. I got a sweet Camaro. Seriously, wouldn't you check out ahead of time and think, you know, I really want the best care possible for this – for my child? It's like owning a Ferrari and being like, you know what? I could go to fucking Joe's fucking garage down the road where it looks like everything is parked outside and everybody parks really close to you and there's no gate. Or you could park it in an indoor lot you know what i mean like like if you have a child and you have the ability to get daycare wouldn't you shop around at detriment to your even your fucking food budget right to get

the best daycare possible because this is the thing you care about most in the world it's just it's baffling that you would be like well the reason i'm going to the you know to fucking the parish is either i believe the same things that I want them instilled with these values that I'm too lazy to instill with them with at home or it's cheap. Those, I think, are the only two options you would go to the fucking, you know, the church for. Well, I think the thing is that people don't know that churches aren't subject to the same rules and regulations of private institutions. I think that's little known. Maybe that's, maybe that's the case.

So, and I think also that there's a, there's a level of trust that people have with their church that they don't have with private organizations, you know, and there is a certain amount of trepidation that one experiences when dropping your kid off for the first time and being like, well,

here you go, strangers. Yeah. Here's this thing I like, I get. And being like, well, here you go, strangers. Yeah. Here's this thing I like. I get a big tax break, so don't wreck it, you know? I get a big tax break? Daddy's little tax return. Come on over here.

There's a lot of fear that goes with that, but I think that the church necessarily, because of the nature of the institution, it sort of exists to belay those fears. And I think the real tragedy here, besides the fact that this fucking family now has to grieve and mourn the loss of their child, which is awful beyond reckoning. But the real tragedy is that the church gets to reap the benefits of that trust while at the same time skirting the regulations that would make it a place that you could actually trust, that would make it a place where you could say, I feel comfortable having dropped my child off in daycare because I know, for example, that there's a sight and sound rule.

You know, and this story mentions it. Most daycares operate with a sight and sound rule, which means that all children have to be within sight and hearing distance of an adult at all times. There can never be a kid where you can't hear or see them. That's fucking standard shit, right? Right. Well, that obviously didn't work here because when they realized the kid was missing, they had a call in a team of rescuers. How big is this church?

It's a fucking parachute. It's a one-year-old. It's not like the kid, like, fucking is a, is not a cheetah, right? It's not like, what the? Oh, fuck, he's moving so fast. He's a blur, you know? It's a fucking one-year-old. Right, right.

You know? And also, who puts a baptismal font in a place where a one-year-old can get to it? I mean, are you walking at one? Yeah, some kids are walking at one. Yeah, most kids are. Not all, but yeah, there's variation. But that's what I'm saying. It's not like the kid is walking with a swiftness at one.

He's not power walking at the mall here. I can understand. As a parent, your kid gets away from you. You're like, wait, where the fuck? But then you find them pretty fucking readily because it's been, you know, while you might panic, what you, what you realize when you find the kid is it's really been 10 seconds, 15 seconds. So they've been out of your sight. Right. And that's enough to get your heart racing. You're like, what the fuck? Where'd that kid go? I thought I had one, you know, but this kid's missing to the point where they have to call in a team of rescuers.

Yeah, I know, man. This is a real tragedy. I hope that more people pay attention to this and don't go to – until they get regulated. I don't mind that kids are going to these daycares if they're regulated. Like that's fine if they get regulated the exact same way that the rest of the daycares get regulated. But these are these are children. And this is a really important thing to be able to take care of children properly. It's not a fucking willy nilly thing.

It's not just like, well, we got fucking Bill's church on the front. So that means you can bring any kid in here and it doesn't matter. You know, you've got to have this oversight. There's a reason why the government should be able to step in and say, this is what the fucking kibosh to this thing. This place is out of control. And to not have those abilities to get in there and check these things out and make these checks to make sure that these places are safe, it's, you know, the public should

know so that they can actually make an informed decision when they're deciding on daycare. Right. It's not like Jesus is watching over you. Liberal Utopian Vision. This story is from Fox News. So you know it's reliable. Indiana lawmaker urges state Republicans to oppose resolution

honoring radicalized Girl Scouts. Alright. As a man who just ate a box of Samoas yesterday, I will honoring radicalized Girl Scouts. All right. As a man who just ate a box of Samoas yesterday, I will say that that was radical. I mean, man, I didn't even use milk. There's enough fat and oil in those things, they just slide right down the gullet without extra lubrication.

Yeah, you could just put your mouth at one end of the counter and just have your wife sort of slide them across. We line them up like dominoes is what we do. We have like a whole Rube Goldberg Samoas delivery system. That's awesome. It's like a bowling ball that gets hit by a shoe and a candle that burns a string. Whenever they say radicalized Girl Scout, I can't help but think of like the Black Panthers.

You know what I mean? I don't know why, but it's the image of them sitting around. Or like one of those communist organizations, those radical communist organizations that were in the United States back in like the 60s. They're all sitting around with their berets and automatic guns and boxes and boxes of ammunition next to boxes and boxes of cookies. You know, this is the radicalized Girl Scouts. You've got to watch out for these people. A lot of people don't know it, but Thin Mints are actually Semtex. It's how they get that specific flaky, crunchy.

We need to get this door open. Get those Thin Mints over here. If you were to mix like a thin mint with like one of those do-si-dos, the whole fucking planet would go right up. That's actually how they did the Oklahoma City bombing. They packed those two sets of cookies too close

to one another. Radicalized girl scouts. Can you imagine the fucking badges are like bomb making badge. There's like an IED badge. You know, there's like a sharpshooter's badge like bad poetry badge you know like it's like the whole that's fantastic the Girl Scouts aren't radicalized I know well you know they are radicalized if you're a fucking you got a giant fucking Jesus stick up your ass right they're ridiculously radicalized then because they, you know, the thing is, is that I think

people don't understand when they hear about the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, they think that somehow they're intertwined. The only thing they really have in common is the name Scout. Like that's it. The Boy Scouts really do focus on faith. They have an anti-homosexual agenda. There's a lot of things about the Boy Scouts that are in some ways bad. And especially to some people, there are some people that won't

even deal with the Boy Scouts. The Girl Scouts, however, are not on the same wavelength. They are not on the same wavelength at all. I think they're a really progressive and cool institution. If I had a girl, I would encourage her to be a Girl Scout. I have a boy and I'm unfortunately not going to allow him to be a Boy Scout because of the problems of the organization. Just get him a cross dress. Then he could just, you know, jump right into the Girl Scouts. Boom.

Done. Well, they would accept him. Here's the thing. They would. They would. It's not being radical to be nonjudgmental of other people. If that's radical, like you're such a fucktard. I can't even – we can't have a conversation.

This is a guy too who admits – this is his quote. After talking to some well-informed constituents, I did a small amount of web-based research. We know that that's got to be – I mean that's fucking – that is I think the pinnacle of research. Because that's what we do. Yeah, right? A small amount of web-based research. I do a small amount of, let me tell you something. I did a small amount of web-based research on this article.

I read it. Yeah, exactly. On the web. That's not a way to make a decision. I am hardly informed, sir. Come on. To admit, to admit, too, that like, well, I talked to a couple of people and then i googled for 15 minutes and now i'm gonna oppose this bill to honor the girl scouts like wow you're the

fucking worst lawmaker possible this guy's such an uptight dick too you know what i mean like these guys are this is this is again i think um there is a sense in this country, though, that feminism is a horrifying thing. There's still – I mean listen to Rush Limbaugh. He still calls people feminazis. You know what I mean? Like are you serious? That's insane. Dude, fucking I can barely hear you back in the 50s.

Can you speak up, you fucking idiot? Really, I think the idea that women are equal is a terrifying thing to some of these fucking uptight fucking douche wads that are still in government and still in power. It terrifies the fuck out of them that somebody is telling little girls that it's okay, you guys are equal. Like, this is a fucking terrifying thing to him. It's making him fucking piss his sheets at night. Girls? Girls that can tie knots? Oh, my God.

What's next? Load and load. Send this guy a samosa bomb. This freaking story. I don't even understand this. This story is the pinnacle of bad decision making on every level. How the fuck does this work? This is from, I like this, news4jacks.com. It's for Jacksonville, Florida news.

So a Northside church in Jacksonville, Florida has got a pastor problem. The problem is their pastor's a kiddie diddler. Right, sure, yeah. And they know it, right? They know he's a kiddie diddler. And he's been barred from having contact with children because he molests them. Sure, he likes to dip in the young end of the pond. So the church did the only reasonable thing.

They banned kids from the church, but not the pastor from the church. Sorry, sir, you're not allowed to come around children, so we won't bring children around you. Right? You guys do have this backwards. Oh, man. You don't say, well, geez. This guy is. I mean, I can't even. Look, in my house.

Okay. Okay. Bears. Okay. There was a grizzly bear in my house. Okay. I'm in with this thought experiment. Go ahead. That grizzly bear would my house. Okay, I'm in with this thought experiment. Go ahead.

That grizzly bear would be dangerous to me. Right, absolutely. So I have a no grizzly bears rule in my house. I don't allow any free roaming grizzly bears. But admittedly, if a grizzly bear came in, you would leave. But I would not consider the problem solved. Right. Right?

I wouldn't say, well, I got out of the fucking house. Done and fucking done. Can somebody nuke this fucker for more? I would get the goddamn grizzly bear up out my house. What the fuck? Oh, man. You've got a predator, man. You don't just say, well, get rid of the prey.

That's a, what? I can't even get rid of a predator, man. You don't just say, well, get rid of the prey. That's a – what? I can't even – get rid of a predator, you stupid sons of bitches. What I don't get, Tom, is – OK, now, I'm not a religious person, but I used to be, right? I used to be a religious person and I look at – I used to think when I was a religious person that there was some closer connection to the person who was on the the dais up there on the stage, whatever they call it, the altar, whatever the fuck that thing is. Right. Standing in front of the group, the congregation. He is closer to God than I am. How do you possibly look at that person who I think should be in some ways revered?

And if you look at the word reverend, I think there's something in there about being revered, right? Something in the fucking root of the word that indicates being revered. There's a root word in there. So this guy is a reverend and you see him up there, you're thinking, how do you possibly revere someone who is fucking, you know, diddling kids? who is fucking, you know, diddling kids. This is not a good person. How do you sit in the pews and say, well, I got to leave little Timmy at home this week with grandma and just come in and listen to my pastor who is a child molester? Or, you know, even if it's just statutory. I don't know how young these children are.

No, I don't either. So I don't know how young the children were in comparison. Could have been, you know, man, could have been a 17-year-old girl. You don't know. young the children were in comparison. Could have been a 17-year-old girl. You don't know. Whatever the age of consent is there. Could have been one year younger. No idea how old the people are.

But at the same time, how do you have respect for this person? Isn't that respect a necessary thing? I can't even imagine how you write the church bulletin saying, you know, attention congregants, don't bring your kids to church anymore. Our pastor likes to fuck them. There is in this story, there's a woman who came with a two year old kid that she that she babysits and tried to go to the church and she was turned away. Well, good. But really? I mean, that's, I can't even understand. The thought process is so fucking bass-ackward. I can't, I can't possibly understand. And then, like you said, how do you,

how do you sit in the pew and look at this guy and think, well, there's my moral authority. Right. That's the guy, you know, I'm really curious to hear what he has to say about fucking First Corinthians this week. I've really been mulling it over. Yeah. I want to hear what the molester has to say. Yeah. You know, if only there was somebody who diddled kids to tell me how to live my life. Right.

That I could be using an example. Right. That would, you know, somehow distill this book down for me. Man, this language in this whole book is. I don't know that I wanted to go through that. I don't know that I wanted to go through that filter. Right. That would, you know, somehow distill this book down for me. Man, this language in this whole book is. I don't know that I wanted to go through that filter, right? You wouldn't filter coffee with an oil filter. Right. You wouldn't filter it through this douche bag.

It's like wiping your ass and using that and be like, just throw that in the coffee machine. Oh, man, my coffee tastes like shit. What's in it? Shit. There's shit in your coffee, stupid. Just because it's brown water don't mean it's the same thing for sure that's for sure you learned that one the hard way never go camping with cecil what you said go in the pot This is from Bancroft This Week.

So it might not be available next week if you try to find this story. Only this week. Only available this week. This is an editorial. I like this editorial. The title of it is Time to Bar Saudi Arabia from Olympic Competition. The thrust of this is that Saudi Arabia doesn't allow women to compete. They don't have women athletes in their Olympic athletics.

Sure. And so the idea is like, well, you know, the Olympics has barred other organizations, racist organizations such as South Africa during apartheid. They were barred from participating in the Olympics. So Saudi Arabia should be barred. Fucking of course they should be barred. Where's the counter argument? I don't know, Tom. It makes sense, right?

What I don't see is if you don't field a team for both sexes, how do you even get in anyway? I don't know. Like you're not even playing by the rules everybody else is playing by. What, you're just fucking omitting an entire half of your population? They don't even have, talking in here, like how they don't even have like real sports, the ability to even really get into sports for a lot of people over there. If you're a girl, what are you talking about? For real? That's what you just fucking ban them.

You know what I mean? Like we're mad about we get mad about a lot of other things, but it seems like we gloss right over this sort of idea. No, man, that's a fucking misogynistic culture that doesn't want their women participating in any sport, any sports. There are so many sports that women are way better than men at. I would like to see the Berkham Beach Volleyball Tournament. That's hot. That would be.

I mean, it's hot because they're wearing a lot of clothes. It's very hot. Very difficult. Difficult thing to do. They probably would not win too much. The idea here is simple, right? I mean, you're a backward fucking culture. You're a backward country.

You have backward ideas. You don't get to play on the world stage then. Sure. If you want to play with the grown-ups, you have to start acting like a goddamn grown-up. Absolutely. And I think this is one of those steps, you have to start acting like a goddamn grownup. Absolutely. And, you know, I think this is this is one of those steps, one of those first steps that needs to be made because it's all symbolic. Right. Right.

The Olympics are all fucking symbolic. They're fucking utterly meaningless in every way. So they only exist as a symbolic set of games. So great. Like, let's send a fucking message as an international community. Let's send a message that like, if you're going to be a fucking misogynist asshole, you don't get to come and play at our games. No reindeer games for you. Stupid. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. In Georgia, a school board president faces opposition simply because he won't reveal his religious preference.

This is a story we found on the Friendly Atheist blog. This is kind of incredible. School board president, he's just not saying what his religious views are. He's not saying like, well, you know, I'm a baby-eating devil worshiper or, you know, I'm a whatever. He's just not going to say. He's not saying. He won't reveal it. And because they can't confirm that he's, you know, God-fearing Christian,

he's getting all kinds of shit. Yeah, and the guy who's—this guy who gives an address here to the board says in his address, and I'm quoting from the Friendly Atheist blog here, it says, as a born-again, spirit-filled Christian, I was alarmed that anyone would participate in such activities. And the activities he's referring to is that this guy belongs to a free thinkers society or free think. There's a free thinkers website that this guy is connected to that would participate in such activities, much less our new chairman. Because these views can't help but spill over into the direction you may take the education of our county's children. What the fuck is he going to do? Like, the direction you would go is actually illegal, fucker.

It's actually not fucking legal the way you would take them, you fucking uptight douchebag. Like, it's actually not fucking legal the way you would take them, you fucking uptight douchebag. So the fact is, is that your spirit-filled Christian way is not the fucking right way either, fucker. So what? These people want to—Tom, this is—we talk about this every fucking week. There's some jackass out there who wants to make his religion the fucking school religion. And then when somebody finally comes up and says, hey, why don't we fucking sing a Muslim song, this guy's fucking underwear shoots right up his ass and he's flipping the fuck out.

But as soon as it's like, oh, we want to fucking have prayer in school, we want to have him sing fucking hymns, and we want to fucking have him praise Jesus in fucking biology class, that's fine. The moment you start saying any other religion, though, fuck that, that's off limits.

Well, just keep religion out of school. Right. And that's what this guy is. He is the fucking perfect person to have on your school board. The perfect person. You know? I mean you want to have somebody on your school board who's going to look at all religious views and say, no, none of those belong here. Right.

No, none of that. That shit has nothing to do with history, biology, you know, English education. None of that. None of that shit. That's not what the school is for. That's what your church is for. That's what, look, here's the thing, Stu. If you want your kids to be indoctrinated into your religious beliefs in school, send them to private school.

There's plenty of them. It's not my problem that you can't afford it. You don't get to say, well, I can't afford private school, so I'm going to send my kids to public school and then change the public school so that it acts like a private religious school. That's horseshit. You can't do that. That's it's so far outside the realm of reality and reason and good sense. You know, this guy is going to get shit because he belongs to this secular organization that wants separation of church and state, that wants removing religion from school. That's the guy you want on your school board.

It protects all of you. Right. This guy says, this guy even admits, he says, because over 70% of, is it Fayette, I guess? I don't know. Fayette County citizens worship Jesus Christ. You know, 70 percent of us worship Jesus Christ is what he's saying. So therefore, this guy isn't representing us. It's like bullshit. You're forgetting about the 30 percent of people that don't.

You're saying that's cool. All their kids get to learn about fucking Jesus because 70 percent of us believe in it. Right. Even though there's no curriculum in the United States that should be teaching fucking Jesus, period. Right. It shouldn't fucking happen. And isn't the whole idea of religious freedom centered around the notion that your religious beliefs are yours alone and that you get to hold them personally sacred without anybody from the top down coming in and imposing an ideal upon you. Isn't that the heart of religious freedom? Right. So if you've got somebody who's said,

you know, that, and this is a quote from, you know, he says that he does not seek through his office to impose his beliefs on children or anyone else and that his beliefs are his and his alone. on children or anyone else and that his beliefs are his and his alone. That's the heart of religious freedom. Right. You want it. I want it. We all want it.

So this idea that this guy is going to face opposition because he doesn't want to indoctrinate kids your way. What the fuck? That's not good for you. Yeah. They just don't get it. They don't get it until – I really hope that other religions start to make a push in this country to try to get their religions in school. I really hope that people try to push – and there's the joke movement, which is the flying spaghetti monster, right? There's that joke that like, well, let's put the flying spaghetti monster in school. The problem is, is that people know that's a joke.

Exactly. People recognize that as a joke. You've got to get people to push Muslim, Hindu, Jewish. Scientology, whatever you can into these schools to get them to try to push it in there and see the pushback you're going to get as the Christians start to see their kids come home with, you know, well, you know, maybe evolution isn't true. Maybe we fucking are Thetans and fucking we were dropped into fucking volcanoes by fucking Xenic, you know. Right.

Maybe that's the way the shit works. Then you'll see a fucking bunch of people with their fucking panties in a wad running and screaming to school, begging that they fucking pull religion out of there. That's what really needs to happen. So we're going to take a quick break and give you all the ways that you can find our show. You can contact us on Facebook, on Twitter. You can call us. We've got a Google voicemail set up for you.

We'll return in just a few minutes for the interview with Mike from Skeptics with a K and to ruin the rest of your day. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode, visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Like our show on Facebook to join in the conversation. Just search for Cognitive Dissonance in Facebook or go to our website for the link. You can converse with us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at dissonance underscore pod. Help us out by retweeting and reposting our shows.

You can call us and leave us a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. Um, basically there's been riots and protests and, uh, at least two dozen people, two dozen people killed, um, because at Bagram international airport, some, uh, Korans and, uh, other holy texts were accidentally burned. It was evidently not an intentional thing. It wasn't like they were having a fucking Koran burning, but some Quran's made it into the pile.

I don't know why they were burning books and shit. That seems like always a bad idea. There's, has there ever been a story that started off with book burning gone? Well, you know, like what was the best of times? It was the worst of time.

We were burning a fucking load of books. Then it was suddenly the best of times. How many people died? At least two dozen. They're saying two dozen. Holy shit. That's a huge fucking of books, then it was suddenly the best of times. How many people died? At least two dozen. They're saying two dozen. Holy shit, that's a huge fucking omelet, Tom. That's an enormous omelet. This is the most delicious riot ever.

No, but seriously, two dozen people, that's a lot of fucking people to die over what could be. You know, even if it was a fucking purposeful burning, I still don't see a reason to fucking murder someone over it. Right. Now, you had an interesting analogy earlier, and you brought it up, and I thought it was very interesting. It had to do with a love letter. What was that analogy? Sure, like, just, you know, imagine the most sacred object in your life. Like, imagine

that you had a love letter from your wife, or, you know... Maybe a deceased, let's say you had a letter from a deceased. Sure. Make the letter as as important in your life as you could possibly imagine a fucking right written down thing to be right it's it's the fucking dying words transcribed from your mother on her deathbed right you know and your mother was a saint that raised you by herself, you know, and six bears at your birth.

A lot of bears in this show. Come on. I mean, so this would be a significant fucking letter. Okay. Right. Now copy it again. Okay. Now copy it again.

Okay. Do that about a jillion times. Can I copy the copy? Is that allowed? You can do that. Yeah. I've copied it a jillion times and I have a jillion copies, which is not a real number. So now it is – yeah, a jillion is hard to get to.

It takes a long time. It's an imaginary number. It's I. It's just I. It's a small J. It's a one J. Now – so, OK, this is a very important letter, but you've got a lot of copies of it. A lot of them.

Yeah, a jillion of them, it turns out. So if you ever want to refer back to it, not a worry. I have a jillion copies. You've got a lot of copies of it. A lot of them. Yeah, a jillion of them, it turns out. So if you ever want to refer back to it, not a worry. I have a jillion copies. You've got one jillion copies. I am fucking set on the copies of this. Not two jillion, don't get crazy. Okay, no, we're not getting crazy. There's not enough copies. All right, now Cecil, I'm taking one of these letters, I'm burning it right in front of you.

Burn it, burn it. Look at it go up. You see that? That's horrifying. That's fire. Here's the deal. I'll give you half a jillion. You could burn off. I'll burn a half a jillion of them. How do you feel? You're going to kill me?

Not any different at all. You're not murderous. You're not filled with murderous, hateful rage. I am not going to kill two dozen of your loved ones. Huh. Yeah, I kind of feel the same way, right? Like, I'd just be like, I could just read another copy of it. Sure. You didn't kill my... Like, I'd just be like, I could just read another copy of it. Sure.

You didn't kill my, like, here's the thing, guys. It's not like we killed Mohammed. Yeah. It's not like. It's not like they burned the original manuscript. Right. Right. Even if they burned the original one, right?

Like, that's the thing is, like, you made a bunch of copies of it, but let's say you took the original. That might piss me off. Sure. They're not burning the original Quran. If they are, shame on them because that's an important book obviously. You knew that wasn't an accident then. Seriously though, this is – it's ludicrous that people flip the fuck out over this stuff. I think it obviously is very culturally insensitive.

You know, I think it's, you know, there is something to be said as much as we're going to mock these people for flipping the fuck out and actually murdering someone for burning a book. I think that it's a, it's a, you know, I mean, it's just a fucking, a giant gaffe to not realize that something like this would happen. You gotta be, you know, you missed the fucking foreign policy dinner. You know, you really just did not understand what the fuck you were doing. It's in the pamphlet, like, so you're going to Afghanistan, right?

Please do not burn any of the following things. And the only thing listed is Koran, right? So what's the shit not to burn? It's again, I go back to this idea that unfortunately in the west there's a lot of people have this idea that the islamic world is on a hair trigger all the time that any insult to islam is going to result in reprisals and and recrimination and violence. And I think a lot of people have that feeling because if you burn a book, 24 people get killed for it. Imagine, Cecil, if people put together 100 copies of Demon Haunted World and burned it.

That has happened. Yeah. It's almost certainly happened. I don't think there would be any real outcry. There's a lot of copies of that book. I'm not really terribly worried about it. You just wasted a lot of paper. This, though, I think leads you to,

you know, you have to have a magical worldview to feel like this book has some sort of inherent value other than it just being a fucking piece of paper with some shit written on it. It's a magic book. Yeah, absolutely. It's a fucking wizard book because there's no way that you could look at this book in any other way without a magical worldview to see – I mean you go to a place every week to pretend there's a god.

You know what I mean? So you obviously – this is not a big stretch of the imagination that you're going to sit there and think that somehow this book is imbued by your creator. So it makes sense that these people are going to flip the fuck out because they're already they already have a magical world every quran is like a voodoo doll to muhammad he's like oh god stop putting pins in this could you take the bookmark out of my ass every time you open it it feels like i'm being ripped apart it's so fucking ridiculous right on my anus and again i want to point out that csl and i both

understand that this is also very largely a cultural issue between the east and the west like we we fucking get it yeah we do get it but there's all you know there's there's that there's that whole thing though that we go back to all the time. Yeah, is there a lot of cultural differences? Is there a lot of things that happen that are cultural differences? Yeah, but you know what? Magical worldviews lead to a lot of crazy shit. And this is one of those things that helps fuel this fire, so to speak.

It doesn't put the fire out. Let's say that. It's not a fucking fire extinguisher. It's like somebody runs over with religion. Yeah. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah, calms the situation down. You never heard them calm a situation down with religion. That's for sure.

Right? No kidding. Whoa, whoa. This is getting out of control. Call Jesus over. Bring me a preacher. That's who we need. Get Jesus in here.

He's a hell of a moderator. Bring me a preacher. Get all the kids out of the room. Call a moderator. Bring me a preacher. Get all the kids out of the room. Abortions for all. Very well.

No abortions for anyone. Abortions for some. Miniature American flags for others. The Virginia State House Committee overwhelmingly approved a bill requiring women to have an ultrasound before they can have an abortion. This is a story that you can find at thinkprogress.org. The thing is that overwhelmingly, most abortions are before 12 weeks, which means that the only ultrasound that can be done prior to 12 weeks is an intravaginal ultrasound, which basically requires that a woman seeking to have an abortion would have to be penetrated because the state said so in order to have this ultrasound before she could have

an abortion. And the rationale for this is so stomach churningly awful. It's basically that, hey, she didn't mind being penetrated in order to get pregnant. So she shouldn't mind being penetrated now. I am fucking shocked at this. This is another way for people that are against abortion to shame women. Right. This is another way that they can use to shame women. This is created, obviously, by some male who thinks it's no big deal. Hey, man, they had a dick up there before.

So we should be able to fist fuck and find out out if they have a fucking baby up there, right? They should have to see the baby. Again, it's also this, you know, I'm going to make you recognize that what you're doing is you're – there's a potential, some potential for a human life there. And I want you to recognize that potential before you terminate this pregnancy. And what really it is is a fucking lump of cells at that point. It's 12 weeks. There's really nothing there. It's completely unviable outside of the womb.

There's never been a fucking 12-week-old fucking baby that has fucking survived. And I haven't even researched this. And I'm going to tell you this flat away. I haven't even researched this at all. But I'm going to tell you flat away. The thing's got to be, what, the size of a quarter at that point? It's got to be a tiny little thing. So

the idea that somehow this is going to make women change their mind, and that's what they're hoping, right? That's what this bill is even there for. So that they somehow will change their mind because one, they don't want to get fucking penetrated by fucking Dr. Jones with his fucking fist and this fucking wand.

Or two, they don't they're not interested in, you know, having to go through all this thought experiment bullshit that you're going to force them to go through. You know, there's already a lot of fucking a lot of shame in our society already on getting an abortion. There's already a lot of fucking decision making and heart rending decision making that goes into an abortion already. Why do you have to complicate shit for people? Why do you have to fucking make them feel like that?

This is a shame law. This is a for-fucking-shame law. You know, and that it's a way to control women's bodies, control their reproductive systems. It doesn't address the issue of, you know, rape and incest. Because, you know, the whole rationale, well, you consented to being penetrated in order to get pregnant. Fucking, I didn't consent if I was raped. Right. And now you're going to rape me again. So we have Mike back here at the end of the show to talk about his endeavors over in the UK.

Mike, you run a show with two others. We couldn't get you all on, obviously, because it would have just been fucking bedlam on here to have five people on. But you run a show. The other two are shite as well. Oh, that's awesome. The other two are shite as well. Oh, that's awesome. So you wrote a show with Marsh and Colin called Skeptics with a K. What's your show about?

It was about 2009, February 2009. I decided to set up Merseyside Skeptics. It was my New Year's resolution, actually. I thought, you know what, I'm going to knuckle down, I'm going to do something about this whole fucking bullshit in society i'm gonna set up a like a skeptic society and we'll get on with it so i put a a note up and on on uh meetup.com and said hey we're setting up the first guy to get in touch was marsh and so marsh and i first met a few weeks after that. And we just hit it off. You know, we had a rapport. We would bounce off each other and things like that.

And that was fun. I would start a stupid joke. He would finish the stupid joke. We'd bounce the stupid joke around. And it was kind of good. And we thought we should stick a fucking microphone on the front of this, you know, because this is actually quite entertaining.

And Colin's there. Colin's kind of like a moderation rod in a nuclear reactor. That's what Colin's there for. We just lower Colin in to stop the reaction going out of control. That's a great visual. I have this image of you guys standing in front of a microphone just laughing. He's coming down lower from above. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Yeah, we have to winch him in so that that's what the show is about it's it's it's the conversations that marsh and i have anyway uh we just throw a microphone in front of them uh and and have colin there to calm us the fuck down when we go insane and off onto some crazy tangents that's like our show without the moderator you we just don't have the moderator yeah you guys need a moderator get a moderator in there just calm the whole thing down third party so the Merseyside Skeptics

how many people are involved in this in this group oh blimey well we run Liverpool Skeptics in the pub as well which is kind of a model

that I stole from being a Doctor Who fan because I'm massive into Doctor Who and I was involved in Doctor Who fan. Because I'm massive into Doctor Who and I was involved in Doctor Who fan community for years and years. Wait, hold on a second. People in the UK like Doctor Who?

Oh, it's... Doctor Who's so big over here. It's brilliant. It's the biggest show on TV. It's magnificent. When I was involved in Doctor Who fandom and what we did in Doctor Who fandom was we had

a group, like an organisation, and that organisation would put on events, so we'd put on conventions and we'd put on smaller monthly meetings and things like that and in the UK, scepticism at the time was more sceptics in the pub based sceptics in the pub was the point of the organisation, there wasn't a separate organisation

which also did sceptics in the pub so I kind of took the model I was used to from from doctor who fandom and applied that to skepticism oh okay yeah and so we set up a society a skeptic society and one of the things we do is organize liverpool skeptics in the pub and we do other things as well like the 1023 campaign and uh qed and the podcast and all this kind of comes under the auspices of most of our skeptics and other skeptics groups around the country kind of picking up on that model

and doing that as well, which is cool and fantastic. And I sit here going, oh, you're really setting up Doctor Who fan clubs and you don't know. I have no idea what they're doing. I think we get about 150 people turn up at a good skeptics in the pub.

But in terms of people actually hands-on involved, it's probably more in the region of 20 people who are actually pitching and do the hard work, but people who actually come along to our events and know who we are and turn up regularly. Maybe 150 people. So you mentioned QED. You have QED coming up.

Thanks for taking the time, by the way, to meet with us, especially with this big event that's coming up. Can you tell us what QED. You have QED coming up. Thanks for taking the time, by the way, to meet with us, especially with this big event that's coming up. Can you tell us what QED is? I think we have maybe like four British listeners, so they may show up. So if you could just tell them what QED is. Yeah, QED, again, it comes from Doctor Who fandom.

I was... I find that shocking. When I was in Doctor Who fandom, I used to organize Doctor Who conventions. I had three or four Doctor Who conventions. And then I stopped doing them and then got involved in scepticism. And I thought, you know what?

I want to do a Doctor Who convention again, but I can't really get away with it in scepticism. So I've done a science fiction convention without the fiction. So it's just a science convention. That's how it's pitched in my head. That's the tone of what we try to do. So it's kind of like a Skeptics in the Pub

that lasts all weekend. And so we've got a dozen or so speakers coming down and we'll have talks going on over the weekend. There's two parallel tracks run along. So if you think, you know what, I don't fancy hearing about ghosts ghosts you can go in the other room and and here's someone talking about you know some something that's more hard science if you want to do that so it's a weekend event kind of structured like a science fiction convention except instead of inviting you know

like david tenant will invite richard saunders or DJ Grothy or whatever. And so it's this big weekend-long event. The bar is a really central area of the event there. Nice, nice. So what I have in my head is that going to the bar is the default. And something has to be really good on the main stage to drag you away from the bar to go and see it, but otherwise it's kind of be, let's just spend most of the time at the bar right and yes it goes on for like two days and it's in in a hotel

in manchester what hotel it's the uh mercure piccadilly hotel um in in central manchester um which we've we've got like the the whole thing's there for us oh except which is brilliant because this happened last year on the floor below us every Sunday, there's a load of big happy, clappy Christians come in. Oh, nice. And you guys have like, sort of like, it's like, it's almost like when Manchester United plays another team and you guys get into a big fight then, right?

So there's like a riot, like a little riot, mini riot in the hotel then at that point? No, we did all go down and peer through the window to watch them clap. Oh, look at the Christians, aren't they sweet? Oh, look at them there. Do you find that there's a lot of atheist skeptic crossover over there? Because over here, we find that there's a lot of crossover over here where most of the time the skeptic community is also atheist.

What about over there? Yeah, massive. I don't think I know of a religious skeptic personally. I don't know. I mean, maybe there are some and they just haven't told me. But I don't know anybody who is, who believes in God. Sometimes you get people who say, oh, I'm an agnostic. And I say, well, so am I technically.

But yeah, right. I'm still an atheist. I'm not going to pretend those things are mutually exclusive. Yeah, you can't act on agnosticism. Is it as much a topic of conversation over there? The atheist sort of – I guess the atheist conversation that comes up over here all the time is sort of the secularization. We want to keep religion out of politics as much as possible. Yeah, separation of church and state, that whole business. Yeah.

Yeah, it's an odd thing that religion in the UK, because we have an official state religion. Church of England is our official state religion, and the Queen is head of state and head of the church. So technically we have this like kind of official ingrained state religion but because of that you look at it from a free market economics perspective the church doesn't have to try because it's the official state religion whereas like over in the states you've got um no official state religion there's wall the separation between churches so

there's churches compete with each other and the best church is right so then you get this kind of capitalism free market economic system so religion is massive over there where where where you don't have a religion and it's pathetic over here where we have a state one because kind of withered on the vine because it's it's kind of grown complacent um so but so a lot of what we face over here when dealing with atheist topics is partly we have the case that there are bishops in the House of Lords. So the UK political system, we have the House of Commons and the House of Lords, and both houses have to pass the bill for it to become law.

And there's bishops in the House of Lords that are just, they're not elected, they're just bishops. They're in there because they're bishops. Oh, they just get appointed, huh? Yeah, they're just appointed bishops. We'll just put some bishops in. And it's something that half the House of Lords is bishops, which is fucking insane. What? To be fair, they can only move diagonally. That's true. So that's

it's difficult for them to zigzag their way around the issues. Technically, that's all they do is zigzag. But most of what we face over here is people going, well, what's the big deal? Religion does no harm. It's tea and cake with the, because that's what Christianity is over here,

is having tea and cake with the vicar. And that's it. And so trying to get over to people that actually there are wider issues here is quite difficult. The other thing that's a problem over here is you guys are fucking exporting your evangelists. Your evangelists are getting rich. Oh, dude, you can't fucking pin that on us.

I can. I can and have. You have gullible people over there, too, and they latch on to that shit. So that's not just us. But you're getting the big US megachurches are starting to fund outreach programs in the UK. So we're getting the

Pentecost list suddenly turning up and snake handling in the streets or whatever the fuck they want to do. Good fucking luck, man. Well, I mean, you gotta, the thing is that I think they feel, you know, like they've got to look out at, you know, the third world like the UK. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and branch out.

I don't know how they could possibly think that, like, that's the place we're going to set up a mission, right? A place that seems like utterly uninterested in religion. Let's go over there and see if we can set up. I think they're pretty much uninterested in this nonsense. Let's go over there and see if we can set up. I think they're pretty much uninterested in this nonsense. There's much more low-hanging fruit in the world. Like, you could easily... I don't understand that either.

I don't know why they're going over there either. But are they getting a popular following? Fundamentalism is on the rise in the UK. I mean, I'm not going to pretend that it's massive. And most people still think religion is a bit of a joke. I mean, we just had a census here last year and the results have not been published of that yet but the the previous census showed that I think was 79 percent of the population identified

as Christian and um recently um they've just done another census, but the week after, Richard Dawkins did his own census as well and said to people, what did you say on the census? You know, if you did the census, or if you didn't do the census, what would you have said? And he got the figure out to be 54%. Holy cow. It identifies as Christian, because a lot of people are kind of moving over and saying,

well, I'm not Christian, but I'm spiritual. And they go over to that kind of bullshit instead of the the god-based bullshit they go over to the kind of deepak chopra fucking bullshit instead so a lot of people are kind of porting over to that one but um the government liked to use that 79 figure to justify things like bishops in the house of lords oh we're a christian country of course we have 79 of the countries christian why wouldn't we have bishops in the house of lords oh we're a christian country of course we have 79% of the country's christian why wouldn't we have bishops in the house of lords um and also mandate a school prayer because i know prayer in schools is a a big issue in the u.s um oh yeah it's fucking massive then we had a we had a poll you're talking about a poll recently there was a they pulled a bunch of people to find out if uh if they believe the bible is literally true over here

and it's like there was a staggering amount of people over 70 percent of people believe that the Bible is literally true in this one part of South Carolina. And it just I just fucking baffled by that. Literally true that you actually stuffed a fucking arc. Are you fucking serious? People think it's literally true. So so I did until just a minute ago. Thanks Cecil. Destroying dreams.

That's me. When you say it out loud, it sounds so stupid. I wanted to talk a little bit about your show. Recently, you had a bit on mechanically separated chicken on your show. And I just found this absolutely delightful. And I think, Tom, I'm pretty sure you did, too. Oh, I fucking loved it. We thought it was absolutely wonderful.

And it turns out that you were not 100 percent correct on your assessment. But you guys had, I thought, a very convincing argument about this image. Now, what we're talking about is there's an image that's been passed around on Facebook, which is, it looks like strawberry shake coming out of this thing. And it's like a, it's like a grinder press sort of thing that's shooting some sort of substance out that looks a lot like strawberry ice cream or strawberry shake mix or something. And underneath it, the comment is something like, this is a McDonald's product. Can you guess which one? And the article or the ranting that follows normally shows that it's, it normally tries to show that it's mechanically separated chicken, which they turn into chicken nuggets. And you guys did a segment on this that was absolutely delightful, where you debunked

the entire photo. And then you started talking, we actually debunked the entire, all the text that followed the photo. And then you started talking about the photo. And you guys had, you guys had said that it didn't, you didn't seem like mechanically separated chicken you because of these factors. You wound up being incorrect.

But what I love the best, what I think is the best part about this is that even though you were wrong, you can still feel really good about the process that got you there, which was being skeptical. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

And it's something that people need to get the fuck over is it's okay to be wrong as long as you hold your hand up and say, yeah, we fucked that up. Yeah. That's okay. You know, that's fine. That's how science works. You do something, you get it wrong. You say, oh, yeah, I fucked that up, didn't I?

Never mind. And no better now. But doesn't that make it difficult to be rigidly dogmatic? It does, oddly. It turns out you guys technically weren't wrong because it was mechanically separated turkey that was in there instead of mechanically separated chicken. It does. I actually love the bit in that episode where you're talking about Jamie Oliver's experiment where he takes chicken and, shows it to all these kids and they're all like, oh, that's disgusting. And then he goes back and separates it and breads it and fries it and brings it back.

And it's like, well, now would you eat it? The kids are like, well, fuck yeah. You cook it. Because now it looks like a food. Yeah. It's a food. I don't eat fucking raw chicken. Nobody does.

That's disgusting. What the fuck? You bring it back and you fucking cook it and bread it and spice it yeah yeah all right man it's a different goddamn ball game i love what you guys like yeah that's cookery that's great that's great stuff i mean it just points out how stupid that comparison is this was a uh um a win-win situation for jamie oliver as well when he did that little experiment because if the kids had gone, ooh, that's gross, he would have gone, see, when they see what it is,

they don't want to eat it. And then when the kids said, oh yeah, great, I'll eat that, he said, look how brainwashed our kids are. So how do you fucking lose then, Jamie? What's the fucking point in this experiment? Yeah, totally. So you guys have a show that's similar to ours

where you guys are explicit. You say some naughty words on occasion. Do you find that your tone and the way in which you approach skepticism and sort of with a little bit of irreverence and a little bit of where you kid around and you also swear, does that turn people off, some people off? Yeah, sometimes we get reviews that come in and say these guys are great but you know they would reach more people if they you know didn't use foul language it's like we put a fucking explicit tag up what do you want um some people do get put off but there's a million shows out there with with like no bad language in go go listen to those you don't

have to listen to my show the fact is this is how i fucking how I fucking talk. I'm not putting something on for the show. I'm not being explicit for the sake of it. This is just me. This is the way I talk. Some people say that swearing is a sign of a limited vocabulary, but I say that's fucking bullshit. What I say is if you're offended by language, you really need to reconsider. Because language is just, I mean, there's nothing offensive.

You're not offended when I, if you're offended when I say fuck, are you offended when I say sex? Like, it's the same thing here. You know, like, what's nothing offensive. You're not offended when I... If you're offended when I say fuck, are you offended when I say sex? Like, it's the same thing here. You know, like, what's the big deal? So if people were going to find your show, where would they go to find it? You can find our website, which is mercysowskeptics.org.uk,

or you can find us on iTunes. Search for Skeptics with a Car on iTunes, and you'll find us up on there. Mike, we want to thank you for coming on the show today. We really appreciate it. Taking your time out of your busy schedule for planning QED and also working on your podcast

and being involved in the Skeptic Society over there. Thanks for putting on a great podcast and we really appreciate you coming on our show. It's a great show, Mike. Thank you. That's no problem. You're welcome, guys. Appreciate you coming on our show. It's a great show, Mike. Thank you.

That's no problem. You're welcome, guys. So we got a couple of Google voices here. We're going to play them for you right now. And two different people had called in. So here they are. Yeah, I'm calling. I'd like to apologize about my wife sending you the email. Now, now is how she signed her name.

But really, this is the best she could type. She's an old cunt. I'm sorry about the email. I think you guys are hilarious. Back in my day, you and I would have smoked Reaper and had sex with lots of pussies. Boy, I tell you, that old cunt, he smells like a fish out of water. Theo Rudy. Sorry, I was inspiration for Bill Cosby's stand-up.

My name is Theo, but you can call me Dada. Well, once again, I'd like to apologize for that old cunt. I think you guys are fucking hilarious, and your vocabulary is all right with me and my old man wrinkly balls that in the water when I take a shit. Science bless you. Good morning, gentlemen. This is Andy Campbell. I've sent you guys a few emails here and there.

Just wanted to let you know. Enjoy the show. Also interested in seeing how jack the Google Voice is going to get my message. The reason I called is I was listening to a few of your past episodes. Perhaps I'm a glutton for punishment. But I do remember one of the episodes you guys were making a big deal about the lady in Oklahoma who sold $31 worth of marijuana and got 12 years in jail. Curiously, you guys did a little bit of research on it to note that that was her third offense, and the reason that the judge gave her 12 years other than that being her third offense

was because she sold the marijuana in front of all four of her children. I really don't care if somebody smokes a little weed or not. Just thought that, you know, if you know it's a crime and you do it once, you know, yeah, you deserve to kind of get off. You do it again, yeah, you're kind of taking your life into your own hands in your third strike. Well, I don't know. hands in your third strike.

Well, I don't know. I wanted to get your guys' opinion on what you thought of the three strikes rule and not necessarily marijuana in general. You guys are clearly not against that, but I figured I'd ask to see what your guys' opinion was and also see how totally fucked up

Google Voice is going to get my message. Anyway, you guys have a nice week. So those are the recordings of the Google Voices we got. We're going to talk about them in a second. But before we do, Tom, we would like to tell you what Google Translate has said, that one of the people had said. So can you go ahead and read one of those voicemails for us?

Hey, good morning, gentlemen. This is And If You Have A Lot. So if you get a few emails here and there, I just want to let you know, enjoy the show. Also interested in seeing the house jacked up a little bit. Voice is going to get my best. The reason I called it. This is Mrs. Moved in with you of your past episodes. I have some a lot. Bye-bye. But I can't remember what I got.

So if you guys are making a big deal, lady in Oklahoma, hassle. Thirty one dollar with at least one hundred and twelve jail. Hot. This is there. If you guys did a little bit of research on it. It's awesome that it got that right. I know we didn't get the research. The note that that was for her defense.

Hey, read in the subject paper. Twelve years other than that. Being Arthur's Facebook because she spoke about water. I thought of all forever job. I really hope that somebody most of the we not about the who you know, if you know what the crime you do, one you know, you know, you'd love to kind of do it again. Yeah, it's kind of taken. Well. That sounds like a beat pole.

That's fucking awesome to read. Well, I think that you're all man of your third strike. Fucking A we are. Hey, hey. Well, hey. Wanted to get your dad. And you know. And you know what product.

Oh, that's awesome. Three strikes rule. Not necessarily marijuana. And send it to you guys. We'll do that. Figure it out. Ask. See what your guys' opinion world.

And also to see how. Hello up. People, voices, messages. Anyway, if that I can. I love that. That's awesome. So firstly, we want to say thanks to Bill Cosby for calling in. We appreciate Bill Cosby doing the yellow pudding pop thing.

I can hear your sweater from here. With the flippity flop, shibbity dop, doop dop. Yep. Thanks for calling in. Riffing on our joke. We're happy that you guys thought it was funny. I was actually, I will be honest. I actually, when I was mixing last show and I was talking about all the things that I was making fun of that woman for being old for, I was cringing.

I was cringing and I was like, I don't know that I'm going to include this. But I did. I wound up including it. I held my nose and I put it on there. So if you were offended by it and you stopped listening, you're not hearing this now. But if you are a hateful person and you enjoy when I make fun of other people, you're still here and thank you for listening. I want to talk about the other voicemail we

got. Thank you again for calling. I just want to say, you mentioned the reason why she got put away is because she was selling pot in front of her kids and it was her third strike rule. One, I think the three strikes rule is stupid because first off, I don't think the drugs are that big a deal. She's selling pot. Who cares? And if it's three strikes for selling pot, who cares? Again, I don't think the drugs are that big a deal. She's selling pot. Who cares?

And if it's three strikes for selling pot, who cares? Again, I'm not really that interested in the fact that she was caught three times or 300 times. You know, I don't think that pot should be illegal anyway. I think it should actually be sold by the fucking government, not by a single person. But then I also – you said, well, she was selling it in front of her kids. You know, it's not illegal to bring a kid into a fucking liquor store either. Right. And, you know, those are that's a place where you're going to go buy something to alter your state. It's not illegal to walk into your grocery store and buy a pack of cigarettes in front of your kid. Like that's not illegal. She had her fucking one month old in her arm while she was fucking dealing out the baggie.

It doesn't bother me because I don't think pot should be. I don't think it's that dangerous a drug. I really don't think it's a dangerous drug. That's just me. Obviously, you felt differently about it. I'm glad you called, though, and told us the background of the story. Well, it's like there's this like supposed seedy underbelly, but there's no seedy underbelly in selling pot like. Right.

That's not it's not like she's selling fucking black tar heroin to the Mexican cartel, you know, with her kid in tow. That's a different fucking ball game. She's hiding the heroin in the kid's ass or something. I get it. I understand. That's an awful thing. But she's, you know, she's selling pot in front of her kid.

I don't think it's that big a deal. I really don't feel like it's a big deal. Some kid in a VW drove up and was like, yeah, like, hey, man, going to the fucking fish show. Is fish still a thing? I don't think so. We got an email from Lois who just lays into Nana. We're happy that you'd stand up for us, Lois.

Thank you very much for listening. We're always happy to get an email from Grandma Lois. Thank you very much for listening. We got an email from Ryan from Converts. Theconvertsdoc.com is a website you should check out. They've also got a Facebook page. They've got some funny videos on there. I think their videos are check out. They've also got a Facebook page. They've got some funny videos on there.

I think their videos are very funny. They've got one funny video. Yeah, admittedly, they don't have a lot. But they have introductions. I think that they've already created, I think might be an entire season on YouTube already. Because I watched introductions to each one of the people on their website. So they have a lot of clips that they've already done. And it's a beautiful website. I mean, it's just. It is. I think have a lot of clips that they've already done. And it's a beautiful website.

I mean, it's just – It is. I think that the camera work and stuff in this is great. I think this is a professionally done like video cast or whatever they're going to call it, a video series I think on YouTube. It's professionally done though. It looks great. And it's delightfully mean-spirited. You guys will like it.

It is absolutely mean-spirited. And it's delightfully mean-spirited. You guys will like it. It is absolutely mean-spirited. It's in the flavor of sort of the Colbert sort of making fun of, sarcastically pretending you're somebody who believes while making fun of them. It's actually a very funny thing. I think the guy on here – there's a guy on here who reminds me so much of Michael Scott. I was laughing my ass off when this guy was – at one point they introduce him and he's gonna get baptized and he takes off his

towel and he's standing there buck ass naked and everybody's just like oh no! It's really funny. Like this is actually a genuinely funny show. So I'm looking forward to this web series coming out and we're happy, Ryan, that you listen to the show. He's the director of this. We're happy to plug it

because we think it's very funny. So it's www.theconvertsdoc.com. We got an email from Andy. I'm going to go ahead and read it. It's short. It's sweet. It's perfect. I'm at the grocery store last night to grab a couple of things. Standing in line, the lady in front of me plops down a big bag

of cucumbers, an industrial bucket of Vaseline, a giant can of coffee, and some other random shit. All I could think of was gay cocks dipped in coffee with a side of Vaseline salad. The only thing missing was a bottle of Santorum. Holy God, who is bottling that? I haven't had my appetite all night, assholes.

That, uh, you should have gotten her number. You know, I'm just saying. I know, she. I know. She probably is lonely. So Andy, the original Andy from our previous show, Everyone's a Critic, obviously once in a while listens to this show. And when he's probably done listening to Skeptics of the K and other people that are interesting, he turns us on. But he wants to say, and I wish I – Andy, I would implore you to post this picture on Facebook, on our Facebook page, just so people could see it, because it's absolutely funny.

I don't want to post your private pictures. It is fucking hilarious. He says, he says, fuck Martin and Carlos. I am the number one Mexican-American, I don't know how he's American fan. I love that. I love that. He's neither Mexican nor American. Mexican-American fan of the show. And he has an American fan. I love that. Mexican-American fan of the show.

And he has been since 1969. Please find the evidence to attach to email. And it's Andy in a little sombrero sitting on like a little like a little hassock, I guess. And he's got a poncho on. It's so awesome. This is the greatest picture.

Andy, if you happen to listen to this show, I say you post this on our Facebook page because it is a fucking riot. It's pretty spectacular. It really is. So thanks to some of our listeners, I had posted on our Facebook page a reader's choice from about.com. They had a poll a while back that you could suggest your favorite agnostic or atheist podcast. And I posted it on our Facebook page. And we got some snarky remarks.

And we also got a couple people who said, hey, sure, I'll post for you. So some people suggested our podcast for this poll. What's awesome is that evidently they ran out of entries and they had to choose us as one of the entries. They had five finalists. They had five contenders. They needed five really, really bad. They had four, and they're like, fuck, where do we get the fifth one? Oh, somebody accidentally posted this one.

Let's put it on there. So we are actually, if you go to our site, dissonancepod.com, in the corner, the lower left we are a, I put it proudly on our site, a Reader's Choice 2012 About.com finalist for the Atheist and Agnostic podcast of 2011. You can click that image. And if you click that image, it will take you to a poll. And that poll will list us at the bottom. We are the last one, cognitive dissonance at the bottom. And you can submit a vote. Here's the thing. The voting

goes on until March 21st. It is currently the end of February. The problem is, is that it's not a one vote thing. And now I know this is, you know, I understand if people don't want to vote multiple times, I get it. I'm going to vote every day because it's my podcast. But if you would help us out to go to our site, click on this link, go there. And when you remember, once in a while that you remember, please just vote for us on this poll. Just click. All you have to do is either sign in with an email.

You have to sign into about.com. Or if you have a Facebook account, you can log in with your Facebook account and just click Cognitive Dissonance. Vote for us. We'd really appreciate it. You know, right now we're in second place in this poll against a podcast right now that is a very big, very large podcast. And we feel good about that. But we'd love it if some of our listeners would just chip in, take a moment, go to this website, click on Cognitive Dissonance.

It's a couple seconds out of your day. You know, maybe you do it 10 or 15 times or at this point 21 times before the next time. If you do it for us, we'd really appreciate it. It's just a way to show that you really like the show and that we have a good listener base and you guys are involved. And it's just a little bit of an ego boost for us. But still, it would be nice if we had a good showing in this poll. It'd be nice if we had a good showing in this poll. So last episode we put out there that we were hoping for entries to our posthumous resignation contest.

It turns out that everybody is making this joke. This is not an original. You stole Michelle O'Bachman. I didn't realize that. You unwittingly stole Michelle O'Bachman from David. Who the fuck watches David Letterman? I have no idea. I don't know. I don't know. Anyway, so David Letterman –

I don't even think he watches his own show. Yeah, he doesn't even – he puts that shit out in the world. He's like, Conan, look at – Yeah. But no, evidently we were late to the joke. We thought we were going to come up with something interesting. But Colbert this week turned all dead Mormons into Jews. By circumcising a hot dog with a cigar cutter.

It was genius. Which is awesome. So we thought it would be funny to do this. But somebody did actually play. And we'd like to read you. Tom, why don't you read the resignation letter? Absolutely. This letter is my formal resignation from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

For and in behalf of Joseph Smith, who is dead. It is to be effective immediately. I hereby withdraw my consent to being treated as a member, and I withdraw my consent to being subject to church rules, policies, beliefs, and discipline for and in behalf of Joseph Smith, who is dead. As he is no longer a member, his name will be permanently and completely removed from the membership roles of the church. This resignation should be processed immediately without any

waiting periods. After today, the only contact I want for the church is a single letter of confirmation to let me know that Joseph Smith is no longer listed as a member of the church. Thanks, Joseph, for sending that in. You know, the thing is now we're going to get into an it-not-it

war with them. So it's going to be like you're it, not it, you're it, not it, you're it, not it, because they're going to keep on baptizing him now. So they're going to baptize him. We're going to have to reread this letter. And then it's just going to be this sort of war over Joseph Smith's spirit. It's like a tug of war, like a spiritual tug of war. We keep pulling him out of the light. They keep pulling him into the light. Yeah. Just by virtue of you having written this letter, you know, you could hear he's in the celestial kingdom. You can hear him. No.

No. He's like pulled out. He's like down in the telestial kingdom with the whoremongers and adulterers and what have you. And us. And us. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome.

So we'll hang out with you. I actually, you know, when I die, I want to be posthumously converted to all the religions in a sort of grand Pascal's wager. Right. Like, I don't want to have to convert while I'm alive and I don't want to have to choose a religion. Right. I just want to be converted to all of the religions. All of them. I love that grand Pascal's wager. It's going to take a while or you could just recruit a lot of people to help you. It's true, but I don't know a lot of people that like me, you know, so that's the real.

No, that's true. That's the crux of the matter. Admittedly, admittedly. Well, we've wasted a lot of your time here. We want to thank again Mike from Skeptics with a K. Remember, you can find his podcast at Mercyside Skeptics. That's one word, mercysideskeptics.org.uk. And until next time, we will leave you, as always, with the Skeptics' Creed.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy

healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info

docutainment leo pisces cancer cures detox reflex foot massage death in towers

tarot cards psychic healing crystal balls bigfoot yeti aliens churches mosques and synagogues temples 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, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. speak stigmata nonsense.

Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers,

friends, families, or of the local dairy council. We'll see you next time.