Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 38: The Friendly Atheist (and us)

Episode Date: March 12, 2012

Thanks to Hemant Mehta - The Friendly Atheist Christian Pastor Knows Exactly Why Those Tornadoes Devastated Indiana Rush Limbaugh wrong about 'inhuman' LRA, says victim Iraqi teens stoned to death for wearing 'emo' clothes ‘Honor killings’ require tougher laws, say Iraqi women Baby Dies From Herpes After Controversial Circumcision Ritual, Report Says Legislature passes bill to let schools drop sex education Visit our Website at http://dissonancepod.com for all the links.

Cecil, before we start the show, we got to talk. We got a problem. Okay, Tom, what's up? So, I'm perusing around the intratubes the other day. Wait, you didn't see me with the clown, did you? That is another show. Okay, all right, fair enough. Okay, yeah.

Because it was his idea. That's all I'm saying, his idea. There's a good thing this is an audio podcast for a lot of reasons, right? That is chief among them. So I'm perusing about the Intratubes and I'm on just Googling about and what do I find?

I find you on the Intratubes, specifically on the SGU forums, the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe forums for about five years back. This, dear audience, is Cecil.

Gosh. The short of it, he's talking about Dawkins right now. The short of it is that he's an abrasive prick. I don't mean that in an entirely bad way. Right, that could be misinterpreted. Right, because abrasive prick you can misinterpret it.

But I think that he projects a lot of condescension and arrogance when he talks about this stuff. He's very intolerant. And I find that position really annoying. I don't like the way this is headed, Tom. Yeah, you shouldn't. Yeah, you shouldn't.

For example, the way I see it is when people think this about believers, they are just using their own life experiences to judge other people's lives. Some people have religious experiences that they can't explain. I'm not saying that the experiences can't be explained, but just they can't explain them, or they don't want to. Some people have had experiences that, for them, proved the existence of God. Who am I to say that this is bullshit?

Who am I, Tom, to say that? Who are you? Who am I? Or to say that they are stupid for believing. Maybe they just aren't looking at things as critically as they should. But someone could say that about me and some of the decisions I've made in my life. Yeah, like to hang out with Tom. I just think that they have contempt for believers,

which is probably a symptom of combating militant believers for so long. Cecil! Maybe sympathy isn't the answer, but I lean that way over contempt. Can I just say that my account was hacked? Yeah. I have to say, I'm appalled that you're not consistent. You can't change over time.

I'm not allowed to change my mind over time. Rockins doesn't believe in change over time. I'm not allowed to change my mind over time. Rockins doesn't believe in change over time. So you're saying my opinion cannot have evolved? No. You know, Cecil, I like to think that over the course of the years that we did Everyone's a Critic that I damaged you somehow. You know, that's really what I was doing. Kind of like the clown that we were talking about earlier. There's been some things that cannot be undone.

And that is one of them. I like to think this is irreparable. You know, I'm just saying, right? You started off so kind. Tom, I just want to say that maybe sympathy isn't the answer, but I lean that way over contempt. Right, that's... Unlike you. I don't know that I ever started off sympathetic.

I don't think that's been my take on things. You definitely don't have the sympathy gene, as Dawkins would say. 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.

For this episode, this is episode 38 of Cognitive Dissonance, and we actually have author and blogger Hemant Mehta on from the Friendly Atheist blog, and also the author of I Sold My Soul on eBay. Welcome to the show. Thank you, guys. Thank you for coming on. So the first story that we want to talk about is actually from your blog. This is a blog post from March 5th. Christian Pastor knows exactly why those tornadoes devastated Indiana. Well, yeah, I'm sure that when he discussed in detail

why the tornadoes devastated Indiana, he discussed the wind and the weather factors that were involved and had a very reasoned meteorological explanation for why the tornadoes devastated it. This seems like what I would expect from a Christian pastor explaining a tragic natural disaster. That's about where he went with this, right? You know, the weird thing about this, yeah, you expect a few crazy people to say something like God caused those natural disasters. I think what really bothered me about this particular piece is John

Piper is a pretty well-respected pastor. He's not known as one of the crazy guys. But the upside to this is after he posted that, there were a lot of Christian bloggers who went right after him. They attacked him really quickly and said, basically, this guy is crazy, which is nice to see. Doesn't happen often. It doesn't happen nearly enough. Do you think that some of these pastors who are more well-respected are couching or sort of moderating their their real feelings?

They're more radical sort of because, you know, because these guys do slip up from time to time. Yeah. And he accidentally said what he really believes. Exactly. Right. You know, it's like, well, I'm never going to gain the kind of accolades and the kind of popularity that I want within this community if I'm not, you know, if I don't sort of couch my language in lowest common denominator terms and appeal to everybody.

Very true. And I've seen a lot of Christian, younger Christian pastors who you would think get it a little more at least. And even, you know, when it comes to issues like, say, gay marriage, they know they can't, you know, for their livelihood, come out and say, I totally support gay marriage. But what they'll do is they'll try to just avoid the question altogether or say something like, well, you know, Jesus never really talked about it. It's not really a huge, I mean, even they can't come out and just say like, it doesn't matter because they know they're going to like piss off one side or the other. Isn't it kind of funny too? Like what I, what I see is I would love to see more of what happened here with the Christian moderates. It seems like the, the moderates always take a back seat to the more extreme viewpoint. They always say, oh, well, you know, this guy wants to stone gays.

I'm not going to speak out against that. I'm so happy that something like this happened where the moderates stand up and say, hey, fuckhead, I'm not I'm not going to I don't agree with your dumb ass. Stop speaking. You know what? I have seen them do more of that, especially when it's really out there. But it's like, you know, if Pattson says something stupid that's impossible first of all i know i know that's a shocking statement you've offended me on the real occasion it happened it's like i don't know it's like taking candy from a baby it's too easy to go after him that's that's not something i don't like i don don't care if you attack Pat Robertson because that's too easy.

But when it's these respected pastors, these ones like I'm just throwing some names out there, Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren, when people who have these huge followings to this day and by a lot of young people say something crazy. Yeah. You hope that more moderate Christians are going to say this guy's crazy. And there are pockets of sanity in that world where people will say what this guy's saying is absolutely stupid. This guy says a woman should act like this in a marriage. And that's ridiculous. And I mean, they'll call him out in a good way. And it's a way that, you know, for them, it's still Christian in their manner. They're not a full-throated assault against, you know, Christianity, but it's saying, look,

within the Christian belief system, they're still wrong. I mean, give them credit for that, I guess. You mentioned here, Pat Robertson, you know what I would kill to have is like a Pat Robertson unplugged where he doesn't know he's being recorded because that has got to be the most misogynistic ranting dude I've ever heard in my life. The guy is crazy. He's literally insane. And the thing you actually have in this blog post, you have a clip of him where he sort of has this moment of clarity where he's like, oh, you know, wind and there's all these meteorological reasons why, you know, he says God's the cause, but he also says God created the meteorological systems in which tornadoes happen. So at least there's sort of this moment of clarity going on.

And then he just out of nowhere, it's just like, like it's saying, oh, well, you shouldn't live where a tornado happens. Not, not to mention the fact that tornadoes happen in half the United States. And then all of a sudden he'll say, oh, yeah, pot's totally fine. It's like, is that a mistake or do you really believe that? It would be great to get that guy when he thinks the microphone. Part of me wonders if the opposite isn't true. If all of a sudden he doesn't take off the mic and wipe his bra like,

oh, I'm so tired of spewing that crazy bullshit. That is exhausting. What if he's just a really good actor? He's the best actor of our time then. That is the best Poe I've ever seen. Wow, you got us good. You should see him in Hamlet. He's phenomenal.

He's holding his own skull, though. So be sure to stick around and stay tuned for the end of the show when we interview the friendly atheist about his blog and his other work. Until then, you're just going to have to deal with us. So strap yourself in. Here we go. Our sincerest

condolences. Yeah, I know. Especially to all the friendly atheists out there. Because this is not as friendly. No, not nearly as friendly as the friendly atheists. Although it is as atheists. So, like, we're halfway. Right, sure. There's only so much a zero you can have, though. If this show is anything, it's a compromise.

You know? I mean, really, let's call this shit what it is. Compromise between friendly and non-friendly atheists. We're building bridges to the non-friendly ones to make... We're building bridges to the friendly ones to make them non-friendly. That's what're building bridges to the non-friendly ones to make, we're building bridges to the friendly ones to make them non-friendly. That's what we're trying to do. That's a bridge to nowhere.

Yeah. I'm just throwing that out there for you. Lord, we just asked it to be covered with the blood of Jesus. Open hearts, Lord. Open hearts. This story is from the Telegraph, although I think you could find this story elsewhere. Rush Limbaugh wrong about inhuman LRA, says victim. This is a pretty incredible story.

So there's been a lot of a lot going around the the old intra tubes and the Facebooks and what have you regarding Kony and Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army. And I think when Rush Limbaugh hears Lord's Resistance Army, he just immediately is like, well, I like the Lord. So why wouldn't I like his resistance army? I like the Lord, too. Right. I just like I'm pro the Lord and I'm pro armies. The resistance seems, you know, I'm okay. You have to think that Rush Limbaugh just did no research. Yeah.

Well, Rush listens to our show. So he knows the virtue of no research. Right. It's like, hey, fantastic. We actually built our show's model on the Rush Limbaugh model of broadcasting. And it's worked so far. Right. I know I'm making Rush Limbaugh kind of money off of this.

As long as we make no money, have no sponsors, and are not subject to the FCC, I think we're doing better than him. Well, we're actually kind of tying at this point because he's almost out of sponsors. He's almost out of sponsors. He's got like two left, like a cigar sponsor and like, I don't even know, golden microphone sponsor. I don't know. Don't you have to wonder, you know, when you're the only guy, like when you're the last man standing, when you're the last guy supporting Rush Limbaugh, don't you kind of look around that big empty fucking room and say, oh boy, we fucking picked the wrong pony.

Like we are back in the wrong pony on this one. Or what you think to yourself is, man, we did the right thing. Right. All those libs have fucking bailed ship at this point. All those wishy-washy previously sponsoring Rush Limbaugh libs. Yeah. wishy-washy, previously sponsoring Rush Limbaugh libs. Yeah.

Well, they're worried now that they mentioned that this Coney guy, they're worried that he might go into hiding. I wonder, Tom, and let me ask you this. I wonder if he travels. Let's say he travels and keeps traveling and gets to Madagascar and takes it over. Will it be called Coney Island then? Nice. Very nice. The hot dogs are made of human meat, though.

They're not nearly as delicious. But you have plenty of children to ride the rides. Oh, no. Oh, no. I don't know if that was a proper joke, but it's really, really mean. That's awful in every way a thing can be awful. I loved it. Seriously, though, like child soldiers, when you're talking about the sort of ruin your life Olympics, that really is competing for the gold with pedophilia. And recruiting them as a child soldier is really, it's equally just as bad as being

victimized as a child by an adult in a sexual manner or a violent manner. Being a child soldier is a horror beyond belief. It really truly is. It's mind-bogglingly evil. It really truly is the most evil thing I think you can do to a child. It's hard for me to, you know, really compete with some of the other awful shit that we do to children, but that's got to be up there. I mean, it's, you know, it's a high silver, you know what I mean?

Maybe it's not the gold. Maybe it's the high silver. You know what I mean? But it's not – maybe it's not the gold. Maybe it's the high silver. It's getting the 4.9 from France rather than the 5. But still horrifyingly fucking evil. And to have this guy I think – this guy nowadays like running around over there like recruiting child soldiers. And now we're – he gets noticed. There's some way in which to notice him. And then people are bitching about the way in which you notice him.

Or specifically what Limbaugh is saying is like, hey, man, he's a Christian. Yeah. So what he's doing is the Lord's work. God's work. It's God's work. You know, from this article. And this is, I just want to add one more quick thing. This is clearly anti-Muslim.

You know, because what he's saying in this is he's over there fighting the Muslims. Right. So it's clearly that, you know, that Russia is falling on the side of the anti-Muslims. So you got this Kony guy who, according to this article, is a self-styled mystic and religious prophet, claims to be fighting on divine orders to establish theocratic rule based on the biblical Ten Commandments. And you read that and you think, wow, there's a lot of people over here who are real interested in promoting the Ten Commandments. Yeah. Am I saying that we're going to start recruiting child soldiers and waging a holy war against Islam? Well, there's nothing against it in the Ten Commandments. Yeah. It's not prescribed directly against. It's not Commandment 8, no child soldiers. Yeah. I mean, that's not prescribed directly against. It's not. Commandment 8, no child soldiers.

I mean, that's not in there. Wouldn't that be great? Like, wouldn't you look at the Ten Commandments a little more seriously if they had something in them that was of use to a fucking modern society? If it didn't make sense for 2,000 years, if for 2,000 years everybody's scratching their fucking head about Commandment 11, right? Like, in Uganda, don't do this. Like, what the fuck is a Uganda? But there's nothing in there. It's just fucking utter nonsense.

This guy wants to establish theocratic rule, and that's the pretext that he is using to destroy millions of lives. And the idea that you could look at this guy and be like, well, he's fighting the Muslims. I mean, you're fucking insane. You're fucking insane if you could possibly consider supporting that. I mean, and it's clearly just that he didn't do his research. I think that's probably pretty evident. I don't think he cared. No. He's saying something anti-Obama. He's a provocateur. We got some shit last time for saying like, you know, we kind of called him out. We were calling Rush out for his faulty logic on birth control. We were saying, you don't understand how birth control works.

He didn't understand how birth control works. He didn't understand what the word pimp means because he uses it in a sentence and obviously clearly has no idea what it means. We are – it's pimp. We are the pimp of people because we give them birth control. How does it – is that what a pimp's job is? They just walk around and like, honey, do you need your birth control? Are you OK? No, I don't want any of your money.

I'm not going to turn you out for tricks. I just want to make sure you got enough birth control because that's what a pimp's job is. Right. Like, no, you don't understand what a pimp is. That's what we were calling Rush out for last time. We got some email bags like, oh, hey, you guys calling out Rush for calling people names. No, he could call whoever he wants, any name he wants. He answers to his public and his and the people who pay him money to advertise.

He doesn't answer to me. I don't give a fuck what he calls people. He could call them the meanest names ever because that's what I do. And I don't care. I call him out for faulty logic, as in he doesn't care as long as he's being inflammatory, as long as he's provoking his audience because that's his job. Well, it was. When you put it that way. It was that's his job. Well, it was. When you put it that way.

It was. Now his job is to backpedal. Yeah, now his job is to try to make sure that his audience realizes that he's a wishy-washy provocateur. Right, right, that he doesn't – and you have to look at this guy and say like, well, he obviously doesn't believe this shit because he is just a provocateur, right?

He's just like Ann Coulter. It's like, what's the most inflammatory thing I can say right now? Like, what is something I can say that's just fucking insane? Like, what is the craziest fucking nuttiest fucking thing I can come up with at any given moment? Like, what can I say? Okay, I'm pro LRA. Like, that's a group that's hated by all of the peoples. Sure. There's not many

people that think they're awesome. You cannot be a brain-headed person, right? And be like, well, I think the LRAs probably do. No, fuck that noise. Like, there is nobody who supports that organization. There's just it's mind

bogglingly evil. So when you're like, well, what if I did, let's see, I've said some crazy shit in the past, but I'm going to support these guys. Fuck it, I'm throwing my substantial, substantial weight behind these guys. Substantial weight? My girth. My enormous

girth. Bring me another poor person. My hippo-like water-displacing fucking weight. That's what I'm going to throw behind the I mean, really? Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar.

Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. So there's a story that's coming out, and I've seen it in a couple of different places. The numbers are a little different, so I'm hesitant to quote a number. I saw this on Al Akbar English. And then, Cecil, you also sent me a copy of this story from MSNBC. This is a story about Iraqi teens being stoned to death for wearing emo-style clothing. Basically, kids just dressing in a Western style.

That's all it is. Like, I don't know what they would do to you if you had a fucking Bieber cut. Like, if they'll stone you to death for fucking tight jeans, good Lord, if you get a fucking Bieber cut. I don't know, man. I don't know. And what they say is that if they're labeling it Satanism, they're saying that these clothes and the way in which these people are dressing is Satanist, and that's why they're going after it.

Your fucking backward-ass culture is terrifying. One of the articles that I read, the Al Akbar one, and that one I think is a little sketchy. There's some details in there that are a little sketchy. But they said that they are throwing cinder blocks at these kids' arms and then their legs and then their heads. They basically fucking immobilize them by breaking their arms, then their legs, and they smash their heads in with cinder blocks. So they have a method? Yeah.

It's not just like, well, like a wild stoning occurred. It's like you've got a fucking method to murder, to murdering these people because you're nervous about the way they dress. Yeah. even in the MSNBC article, it's funny because the interior ministry says this has not happened. They basically flatly denied that this occurred. But then Shiite clerics within the same country condemned the killings. And then the morality police basically said, you had it coming. So you've got a country which is totally just, you know, out of one side of their mouth, they're saying it's not happening. Then they're condemning it. And then, you know, another group in that same country is saying, well, fuck them. You know, they had it coming. that you have a fucking morality police strikes me as so fucking absolutely insane. It's your this has never worked out well since when the morality police that that's a thing

that they have in Afghanistan where they, you know, they ride around in the pickup trucks and they beat women for not being covered properly. Right. That's fucking morality police. This is what happens when you have a theocratic society. This is what happens when you allow religious ideas to so heavily pervade your government that your government cedes power and control

over what's right and wrong to religious nutjobs. And we got kids just like, I would like to have a weird haircut and walk around in skinny jeans. Okay, cool. You're a teenager. You're going to dress like an asshole. Every teenager has always dressed like an asshole throughout all of history.

That's what, that's what they do. I did. You did. We all do. Yeah, absolutely. I was still an asshole. We all did. Yeah, absolutely. Can you imagine these?

I was still an asshole in my mid-20s. What are you kidding me? I can barely dress myself in my 30s. Well, another thing too, Tom. Here's the thing. It doesn't stop there. It doesn't stop at you are a child dressed in a different way and so therefore you can be stoned. Also, we've talked about Islam being the culture of misogyny, the religion of misogyny before. And there's an article again

that clearly defines it as such. This is from El Arabiya News. And it's it's a father kills his two daughters and he kills them. Pardon me. His father doused his three teenage daughters with boiling water and shot them because he told the court he suspected they were having sex. The thing is, is like in that culture, they don't prosecute people who kill their daughters. Most of the time they go, they flying under the radar because it's culturally accepted to honor kill people. accepted to honor kill people. And later on in the article, they talk about a girl who saw her father committing adultery, killed him and got 15 years for that. And you're like, oh, it's totally cool for the man to mutilate and kill his daughters.

That's fine. Two years maximum or something for that. But if we switch the roles around and the man is doing the exact same thing that the woman is doing, well, that's a lot more time. Suddenly your religion that is taking over your government there is completely misogynistic. How do you stand behind that? You have to stand behind it by standing behind a religious ideal that promotes the subjugation of women. It's unbelievable that you would have a culture that's so fucking obsessed with sex and sexuality. But, you know, look at our country. I mean, I hate to keep bringing it back, but, I mean, for fuck's sake,

you look at somebody like Santorum, you look at some of the things that are being said now. Yeah. You know, here, you look at these religious nuts who are so fucking obsessed with fucking abstinence and purity and these fucking insane ideals. And they're only applied to women. Right. They're never applied to men.

You know, I don't care if this guy found fucking a porn stash and all of their where they're having the fucking most depraved sex with the everybody. It makes no difference. Right. It has it has no bearing on whether or not you should douse them in boiling water and shoot them. I can't even believe. It's impossible to get behind any of this. I can't understand why there isn't more of an outcry about this sort of thing. But this is not.

And the thing is, is like they even said in the article, there's a part where he's like, well, you know, a lot of these things don't even get reported. So the things that we find out about are the ones that actually get reported. A lot of times they get reported as suicides. So they kill their daughter and say, oh, well, she killed herself because she was in so much shame. It is seriously, it's like an occupational hazard to be a woman over there. Yeah, no kidding. No kidding.

You wake up, you know, born a woman in that culture and you're just automatically less than. Yeah. You're just like, well, your life is fucking forfeit. What? But I didn't do anything. Well, it doesn't matter. Whether you did or didn't isn't really relevant. So we're going to take a break from this unbelievably depressing episode and give you a chance to cry into your beer.

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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. This is from the Huffington Post. This is a story about a baby who died.

I know, right? Hey, we're lightening it up. Yeah. This is a story about a baby who died. I know, right? Hey, we're lightening it up. Yeah. A baby who died after a circumcision ritual. The circumcision ritual is this. The mole cuts off the foreskin of the penis, which causes the penis to, of course, bleed. Sure, yeah. So he does the only thing, the only rational 21st century sort of response,

which is to put the penis in his mouth and suck the blood off of the penis. Because that's what doctors, you know, that's a standard medical procedure. But, of course, this guy ends up having fucking herpes of the face and gives this, you know, immunized... Babies are all immune compromised. They're not born with a fully functioning robust immune system.

So he gives this kid herpes and this kid dies. Fucking dies. Right. And the Jewish community is defending this practice. What father first off stands next to his newborn child, watches someone

pull a knife out, then cut around the penis area of their child while without, you know, probably any real anesthetic. Certainly they're not a doctor, right? So they probably can't prescribe any sort of medical anesthetic anyway. And then proceed to put his mouth on their penis.

You know, like you would think, you would think that a father's job is to protect their children. That was mother's job too. I'm not saying it's not the mother's job or the father's job. But as a man, and I know sort of my sort of propensity for violence, but the first reaction of me would be to knock the man out. First, when he touched your child like that, you know, you're giving him permission to cut your kid's penis and then you're allowing him to suck the penis. Suck on a child's penis. Listen to yourself when you say that. Just listen to yourself. Just take 10 seconds and read it aloud. Just write down what you're going to do.

Look yourself in the mirror and be like, I am going to let a man cut my child's penis. And I'm going to let a man suck my child's penis. When is the story ever turned out well that ends with grown man puts child penis in mouth? Like when that happens, you know there's no happy ending there. Because he probably, in the best case scenario, the kid just got bit in the cock by a cobra. Right. I don't know what other situation you could possibly think that that would be a good idea. I don't know of any situation.

Do you remember, Cecil, you took first aid, right, at some point in your life? Sure. Yeah. Do you remember when they told you, like, any open wound, stick your face on it? Remember that? Like, that's – I know that that's standard ER procedure. Sure, absolutely. face on it. Remember that? Like that's, I know that that's standard ER procedure. Absolutely. You know, like I know that actually what, what happens, like if you have like a massive,

like if you get shot or something, you know, or like in a car accident and when you go to the ER, what actually happens is a team of doctors descend upon you and just suck all your blood. That's, that's what they do. That's a standard. Nurse, I'm losing him. Can you remove my mask so I could suck his wound? I'm losing him, nurse. I'm losing him. If you're responsible about it, you'll gargle with some Listerine to sterilize your mouth. Sure, yeah.

Because, I mean, it's the 21st century. This guy's got herp in the mouth, too. And you know you've got that, right? That doesn't sneak up on you. Fine. Like, guy kissed the wrong person or, you know. Well, no, I mean, you could get it from anything. You know what I mean?

Herpes simplex one, I think you could probably just get from anything. But still, you know, let's just make sure we just remove the threat of it. Yeah. You know, let's just say you want to mutilate your child's penis. You know what? In this country, you can mutilate your child's penis if you want. If you think that's a good idea, I don't want to get into the circumcision argument, okay, because I don't really care. I don't have a kid.

I'm not even fucking – I'm not mandating circumcising or not. I don't care. I think it's dumb. I think it's religious and dumb and probably not a good idea, and you're cutting a penis. It really just doesn't seem like it does anything anymore. But, you know, I don't really care, and I don't want to get into that argument. But you can do it under circumstances where the kid doesn't get an infection. It's almost as if we invented sterilized procedures for surgery for a fucking good reason.

I'm surprised they don't, like, dab it with, like, camel urine or something. You know what I mean? Like, really, you're talking about a Bronze Age practice. I'm surprised they don't pull out, like, a hot poker hot poker and like stick them in the belly button with it afterwards. You're really saying, you know, hey, my God demands a blood sacrifice of my male children. So I'm willing to give my God a blood sacrifice. And part of that involves allowing my rabbi, after I give the blood sacrifice, allowing my rabbi to put this kid's penis in his mouth and suck on it because my god demands infant fellatio? What?

Yeah. You're already giving him the blood sacrifice. I don't get it. This is a practice. This is a practice that, you know, like was –'t get it. This is a practice. This is a practice that, you know, like, again, it's prescribed from a book. I don't know how this ever gets written in. Right? Like, who's the sick fuck

who's sitting there going, you know what, it'd be awesome. You know it's bad when your rabbi's on Team Edward. You know what I mean? Yeah. Gets all excited, like, he cuts, makes the cut, and he's just like, ah, uh-oh. Fuck that. Team Jacob definitely should have done this one.

And may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. Madam President and I hear the floor and suggest the admins of the quorum. The clerk will call the roll. Expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted. So this story is from the Salt Lake Tribune. Legislature passes a bill to let schools drop sex education. Senators supported House Bill 363.

Say it's not the school's job to teach sex education. The bill's gone to the governor. So if the governor signs it into law, schools will not be required to teach sex ed in Utah. I think that would be confusing on your your wedding night with your like nine wives in Utah. And, you know, they're all lined up for you and, you know, it's been arranged and taken care of. And like, well, I've got I've got my nine child brides and I really want to know how to do this right. If only there was some kind of educational system which would allow me to disappoint all nine of these women properly. Well, it really is only going to disappoint one.

I mean, hey, if it's your first time, the refractory period is low. It's pretty low. So maybe you'll get to three or four that night. What you want to say is, you know, sure. I think figuring out how to fuck isn't that hard. I mean, come on. People do it all the time. And when you don't teach them about precautions like condoms or ways in which to prevent sexual transmitted diseases like, say, herpes or other things, and you're teaching them abstinence is the only way but you're not telling them how to prevent pregnancy, that's a little harder, I think. telling them how to prevent pregnancy, that's a little harder, I think. I think figuring out how to fuck is pretty easy because you can look at all the abstinence-only programs and find out that

when you don't tell them how to do stuff and tell them not to do it, they still do it. Right. Yeah. Abstinence-only programs don't lead to more abstinence. They lead to more STDs and pregnancies. Yeah. That's what they lead to. That's what they lead to. And they always lead to that. They never lead to the other thing. It never happened. There's never been that case where they've been like, oh, man, we told those horny teenagers not to screw around. And so those horny teenagers didn't screw around. You can't even say that with a straight face.

I know. You can't even pretend to say that. You can't reliably tell horny teenagers not to do anything, right? Like when you're a teenager your brain just does not work you're just like ah i gotta do something with this you will rub that shit up against a door frame to get off i mean are you kidding me you will do whatever it takes you'll just you'll just lay in bed and think about it it'll explode are you kidding me you know like teenagers are are on a hair fucking sexual trigger absolutely and to pretend

otherwise is just to deny reality it's just it's just like this is like a reality isn't real bill that's what this is this is a fucking wishful thinking bill and you know this wouldn't be you wouldn't have to have sex education in in the classroom if every child had the benefit of you know a family structure that was open and honest about sex and sex education you wouldn't have to have it but that's not the case right that's like saying like well we wouldn't have to have gym class if everybody was a triathlete right and know, you wouldn't have to have physics if your fucking dad was Neil deGrasse Tyson. Sure. Right.

But that's not the fucking case. Right. Right. Well, and then, you know, the other thing, too, is sex is a huge taboo in our country. Right. Much more taboo than other places in the world. So in order to make sure, you know, and the thing is, is sex has repercussions. That's the problem.

It's not that sex is taboo and we don't want to talk about sex and we don't want to talk about, you know, what happens in your, like, the weird feelings you get and all that stuff and how good it feels when you, you know, you finally get it in there and all that stuff. You don't want to talk about that stuff because it's so taboo. But the problem is that there are

real repercussions. Are there repercussions to not knowing, you know, the fucking terminal velocity? Probably not. Right. But there certainly are repercussions. Are there repercussions to not knowing, you know, the fucking terminal velocity? Probably not. Right. But there certainly are repercussions to not knowing that if I put some fucking baby batter in there, there's going to be a baby. Cecil, do you remember the time when not knowing how stuff worked was better for you? It's never been.

Remember that time? Remember that subject where you were like, hey, you don't work out great for me. Ignorance. I was thinking just the other day. You know where that's worked out is every religion class. Although I will say that's worked out for me with the podcast. Admittedly. Admittedly, yeah.

I mean, for fuck's sake. It's like owning a car and being like, well, I don't know how to drive it. I mean, that fuck's sake, it's like owning a car and being like, well, I don't know how to drive it. I mean, that would be ridiculous. It's like not teaching them how to drive a car in Driver's Ed. You know, it's really taboo to learn how to drive a car. Or just running over people on the sidewalk. Everybody gets a car, right? Because everybody gets a sexy, right?

Everybody's like, oh, man man do i want some of the sexy so everybody gets a car everybody gets drivers ed right yeah at all bad idea just like okay go death race yeah and there's a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow yeah the fuck welcome to teen motherhood utah oh my. MTV is going to love these idiots. So we want to welcome Hemant back from the Friendly Atheist blog. He's also the author of I Sold My Soul on eBay. How exactly did you start this blog and start? First off, I guess I should ask you, how did you sort of become an atheist?

You know, the short version of it is, you know, my family moved right as I entered high school. And that got me questioning God's existence because I didn't think a good God would let this awful, awful move and, you know, taking away, taking me away from my friends happen. And that got me questioning and, you know, how questioning is never a good thing. And yeah, I mean, long story short, I became an atheist not long after that. But it wasn't until then, you know, middle of college, really, that, you know, I met someone, a friend of mine in a class who I found out was also an atheist. And we said, why don't we why don't we start a group? And so we did. And she actually told me about things like Camp Quest that she volunteered for that, you know, I had no idea something like that, like a summer camp for children of atheist parents even existed. children of atheist parents even existed. And I found out about the Secular Student Alliance and all these other amazing organizations. And, you know, after I finished college, I really started working closely with some of those national groups. You see, we see your book, I Sold My Soul on eBay. You didn't technically like write out your soul

like Bart Simpson did on The Simpsons and put it up on eBay. You did something a little different. What is the premise for the book? Yeah, if I sold my soul for real, I don't think it would have gone as much. In fact, I heard this later. If I actually tried to sell my soul on eBay, they would have yanked the auction, and the reason is they would consider a soul a body part. You've got to be kidding me.

You've broken the terms of service by selling a body part. I can't sell a kidney on eBay? You cannot. Well, that's part. I can't sell a kidney on eBay. You cannot. And well, that's bullshit. Since body part either. I said, look, I was raised in an I'm an Indian from an Indian family. So I was raised in a faith native to India. But like I wasn't raised Christian.

And so I've never really been to church. I mean, I never had a reason to go to church. And, you know, when you start meeting a lot of other atheists, they'll tell you church was awful, or you can't, you won't believe the things my pastor said. Well, okay, I mean, I don't know whether to just accept that at face value because, you know, I trust these people, or do I actually look into it myself? Because, you know, there's a good chance that they're just so disillusioned with the church that they have nothing good to say about it. So I offered this opportunity.

Look, I've never been to any Christian or a mosque or a synagogue. I've never been anywhere really. So you can bid on eBay for where I go, and if you win the auction, you can tell me I'm going to this mosque or this church for this amount of time. And basically a Christian pastor. And by the way, all that money was donated to the secular student alliance. But the Christian pastor won and said, you know, I'm actually a former pastor, still a Christian. And he said, I would be really intrigued if you would go to a bunch of Christian churches and write about your experiences on my ministry's

website. And so he still had a ministry, even though he wasn't part of a formal like pastoring church or something. But yeah, he said, why don't you go to like this evangelical church and this mega church and this black church and this church that takes place in a guy's living room. And, you know, it was it was an amazing experience because you really got to see this spectrum of Christianity I didn't know existed. So it was kind of neat. I mean, I would I would tell every atheist you should give that a shot if you haven't. Just because I think you hear a lot about the megachurches and like the the fire, hell, brimstone, what all that stuff, brimstone and fire churches. You don't really hear about those little pockets of Christianity where they talk about social justice and they talk about what's wrong with the Christian church. And, you know, we hate the way those other churches do it.

Let's try it our own way. It's kind of eye opening to see some of that. On the show, sometimes we talk about how how different different sects of Christianity are with each other. And that that seems like there's a push in our country to make it this Christian nation where we live in this Christian country. But Christianity, there's so many different denominations of Christianity that they can't even agree amongst themselves. And, you know, that's a good thing for everybody because, you know, as much as we know there are

people who want to turn this into a Christian nation or revise history to say it's a Christian nation, there are a growing number of Christians who are pushing back against that. You still don't hear them as much. I mean, I get a lot of stories about religion and I still don't hear from them as much, but there's a lot of them. I mean, the fact that a lot of younger Christians really don't see as much of a problem with gay marriage as their parents do, that's a good sign for, you know, even if you can't eradicate all the stuff the church believes, they're at least moving in a better direction. That's refreshing.

Now, your blog is called The Friendly Atheist. You're probably actually doing yourself a little bit of harm coming on our show because we are probably the most unfriendly people you could meet. What made you name it The Friendly Atheist? What's behind that? I mean, the main reason is at the time, you know, this is around when the book was coming out and I knew that I had a couple interviews to go on and I wanted to direct people to a website, but I didn't have one.

So I had like a little bit of time to put together a website really quickly and you know i was bouncing around names with a friend and uh you know every time you hear the word atheist and i knew i wanted that to be a part of the name but every time you hear the word atheist it's always preceded by you know angry atheist militant atheist you know uh pissed off you know you furious fucking atheist about the smiling happy atheist yeah which is weird because i'm sure you guys feel the same way most of the atheists i know are pretty light-hearted happy people um so i don't know where that stereotype really comes from you know it's like every time they tell the truth people take that as being angry but um that's where the kind of

the name friendly came from it's like oh well that doesn't sound dickish let's go with that you know in retrospect i don't know if I would have kept the same name or something, but I think it's it worked for for what I wanted it to do, which is just to say, you know, every time I do an interview with someone with some media personality who doesn't really participate in our movement, I guess that's one of their questions. Why do you use that name? And it's fun because i get a chance to explain it every time and say oh that's awesome this is the truth about atheists it's not like we're if we go to a conference or we meet for say like the reason rally it's not like we're getting together to be like to sit down and be angry it's not the hateful rally right it's notKK rally. Right. It's not some giant hate speech,

hate mongering group of people. These are people who are like, how do I live life better? And how can I pass along my views and challenge politicians because we don't get our voices heard as much? You know, there's frustration, certainly, but it's not like outright anger at just life. You have this blog, Friendly Atheist. You probably get a lot of comments. I'm sure believers come and come at you a little bit on occasion. Do you think that the name Friendly will sort of keep certain people away from you so that maybe they won't come at you? We use, on our show, we use a lot of swear words, and that seems to keep a lot of people at bay. People just don't

show up. They're like, you know what? Fuck these guys. I'm not even going to talk to them. They can't get to us on a certain level. Do you think that you're sort of softening the blow of attacks when you use that language? When you say friendly atheists, they're not going to jump at you as much as they would say Dawkins? I mean, I don't think the name of the site does it. I think they see my tone. I think they realize I'm not just going after Christianity for the sake of going after it because that's a battle – I'm less interested in that battle than specific – let's get more Christians to call out the crazy Christians. I'm way more interested in that than debating the existence of God. And so I think I get less of the philosophical rants from crazy people. I get less of the philosophical rants from crazy people. I get occasional emails from people who are religious and who want to ask me something, but I actually don't get a lot of mail from crazy

like fundamentalists or anything like that. I actually get invited by churches who are like, we really are interested in what you have to say about the church culture and Christianity at large. Like not to say like, oh, here's why you're wrong, but to say, look, here's why so many people are turned off by the things you say in your church. A lot of Christians are really interested in that conversation. And I've actually spoken to a number of churches about that sort of thing. Well, one thing I appreciate about the blog when I when I read through it is the focus, the focus, as you mentioned, isn't on the philosophical. It's not on the, let's sit down and have that great debate about whether this is real or true.

But it's more like, well, what are the effects? There are these belief structures that are out there in the world and these people who speak on behalf of these belief structures and who politicians are influenced by and schools are influenced by. And so there's real world legitimate – and that's what – I think that's what our show worries about too. It's not the individual faith of the believer. It's, hey, these beliefs exist. They have real world implications. What are those implications?

And sometimes they're extraordinarily negative and sometimes they're not. You know, sometimes sometimes they're very much not. But this happens all the time. Like, I can't read blogs that just talk about the philosophy or their arguments against God's existence. I can't watch debates where they're talking about that stuff. I get too bored. I will fall asleep. And, you know, a lot of other atheist bloggers are like, hey, you should check out this book by this person or that person because, oh, they just dismantle the Christian argument.

Well, that's nice for other people. I have no desire to read any of that stuff. I'm way more interested in like the human stories. And, you know, I'll tell you something. I don't I have, you know, Google alerts for different things and I pay attention to different stories. I've never once searched or like looked up the term atheism because that's a boring conversation if anyone's talking about that. But if it has the word atheist, that's a story I want to read because that's about somebody. That's about what they're doing or what they're saying.

And there is a serious difference between blogs that are about atheism and blogs that are about atheists. And, you know, I'm just I'm more interested in the latter. That's a really interesting distinction that I, you know, until you had just said it had not even occurred to me. But when you say it, it makes complete sense. You're absolutely right. I think a lot of people, when they think about atheists, you're talking about it earlier, like they always sort of equate us as anti-theists. They say, well, if they're atheists, they have to be anti-theists. And then they also think that what we do is just sit around and smoke cigarettes and read Nietzsche all day.

You know, like that's what we do. We just try to figure out the best way in which to dismantle their religion. It's not that at all. There are some people who love reading those books and there are people who love doing those debates. And, you know, I have friends who do those debates. Sure. They get huge crowds. All I know is like, yeah, you could go there and I'm sure the atheist would – any atheist in that position would do a really nice job.

But, yeah, I don't know. Like, you know, there's a philosopher, Alain de Botton, who's gotten a lot of shit lately because he said this. He said the truth is boring. And he talks about how we ought to do things that kind of resemble churches, even though it's not religious. And he's gotten a lot of crap for that. But the thing he says that I think a lot of people either are misinterpreting or just don't like is he's saying the truth is boring. Not that it's not important.'s saying the truth is boring. Not that it's not important. Obviously, the truth is important. But, you know, for atheists who are atheists,

and they're not questioning, they really are atheists, we know the truth. We know God doesn't exist. So that's a boring conversation to have. We're not going to sit around and talk about why we don't, I mean, I've never been around a group of atheists where we talk about why God doesn't exist. That's a boring conversation. The more interesting conversation is what do you do with that? What are you challenging? And how does this come into play in your regular life? And I think that's what he's talking about. Like talking about the truth, that's not a conversation that's really that interesting because for us, we already figured it out.

I'm sure debates are fun and arguments with your friends, they can be fun. But it's more interesting to hear, okay, now that you're an atheist, what are you going to do with that? And to me, that's a more interesting conversation. It's a theory versus practice argument. You know, I mean, and I hear I hear everything you're saying. And that's, you know, what we do on our show is, you know, we look at news stories. Yeah. Awesome. Because those are going to be interesting. And if you're there's a place to have those philosophical debates about atheism. But it's a lot less interesting for me to listen to. And I feel like sometimes I'm there's not a lot of people who agree with me on that, that it's not interesting. But, you know, sometimes you'll

hear interviews with like Penn Jillette or Bill Maher on some of these big media podcasts or shows. And they talk about why they're atheists. And I totally zone out every time I talk about it. Not because I've heard it before, but like not from them. But like, yeah, I've heard that story. There's nothing new here. Well, right, because it doesn't matter. It's like, well, that's what, you know, I mean, who, so what do you, like you said, what are you going to do with it? Tell me about the high school student who's challenging,

you know, their administration because of prayer in public schools. Tell me about someone running for office. Tell me about what a college group is doing, even if they're working with religious groups to, to raise money for charity. That's awesome. I'm way more interested in that. Right. And we, you know, a recurring theme that we we've come back to a lot is, you know, these religious ideas have an effect on the world, you know, and they and they permeate all aspects of, you know, politics and education and, you know, treatment of women. And those are the stories like those are the legitimate stories. That's the reason. I think when you, you know, when you, I'm going to allude back to when you said, you know, a lot of times when you see people as, you know, I'm angry or I'm some, you know, negative adjective before atheist. And I think the reason that you see that a lot is because people are consciously or subconsciously, they're taking in all this information about, you know, banners held at their schools and prayers in front of, you know, before every football game.

And, you know, senators that don't know science from a hole in the ground, but are still commenting on climate change. And they take all this information in and it makes them angry. No doubt. And look, when I know why people think we're always angry, because if you hear a news story about atheists, it's rarely about a charity function that they're doing. It's always about a challenge that they're doing or a lawsuit that they're filing or a billboard that comes off the wrong way. I mean, it's not like when you hear stories about atheists, they're in a positive light. Very rarely does that happen.

when you hear stories about atheists, they're in a positive light. Very rarely does that happen. So, I mean, one of the things we have to be conscious of is that, you know, most people don't see the whole breadth of kind of atheist activism that we might see. So, you know, you want to kind of push those stories and tell people about those stories because they never hear about them. Now, that's good news. We don't do good news on this show. We don't ever do good news. Well, I think that we do. I think that we don't we don't cover positive stories so much as we cover negative stories and bemoan the lack of positivity. Sure. And you know what? And good. And you should. And I'm glad people are doing that. And I'm glad you're doing that. And that's I mean, believe me, there is a benefit to getting worked up and getting angry

about this stuff. But at the same time, you can take that anger and channel it in a way that's not always off putting to people who disagree with you. You know, I'm thinking of Neil deGrasse Tyson right now. I just saw a video of him speaking to Congress about the NASA budget. And here's someone who's so frustrated at how like NASA has been chipped away at over the decades. And, you know, I'm sure he's really, really angry about the status of science education in our country. But every time you hear him speak, he puts it in a way that even if you disagree with the science, even if you don't think NASA deserves more money, you can't help but listen to what he has to say. He just knows how to channel that frustration in a productive way. And I think – I mean I know we're not all Neil deGrasse Tysons. I'm certainly not. But there is a benefit to knowing how to use that anger and put it out there so that the people who need to hear it can hear it.

Yeah, we're actually testifying in front of Congress next week. So they got us booked. We're already on there. If only we're actually testifying in front of Congress next week. So they got they got us. They got us booked. We're already on there. If only we were so lucky. Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah, we might have been jailed for that one. So the Reason Rally is coming up here in a couple of weeks. What's going on with the Reason Rally? You know, we're bringing together a couple dozen speakers from the atheist spectrum. A lot of really interesting people listen to. We're asking people from all over the country to come there. And, you know, it's going to be probably, arguably, the largest ever gathering of atheists, openly atheist people in one place at one time.

Never been done this big before. So we'll see how many people show up. But I'm expecting a ton of people to be there. So it's really exciting. Where and when? This is going to be in Washington, D.C., on the National Mall, right by the Washington Monument, and it's on March 24th. It's a Saturday. One of the things I mentioned is, you know, trying to spin that positive light on atheism, because there are a lot of atheists doing good things. You just never hear about them. I work with an organization called Foundation Beyond Belief, which encourages atheists to give to charity. And these are not atheist charities, just secular, regular charities that do good work, but kind of with the giant group of atheists. And it's been around for a

couple of years, and we've raised over a quarter million dollars for different charities around the world. So if anyone's interested in checking them out, it's foundationbeyondbelief.org. Wonderful. Thanks so much for coming on. We really appreciate it. You can find the blog at friendlyatheist.com. We're going to put the link on our episode page. We thank you again, Hemant, for coming on and talking with us and keep up the good fight. Thank you. Thank you, guys. You too. and keep up the good fight. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

You too. So, Tom, we got a little bit of email this time. We're going to try to burn through this email section, but we wound up getting something from Ali that I thought you and I really adored. It was Mitt Romney versus Mr. Burns, and I will try to put this as an image for our show this time. You have to decide who said it, Mr. Burns or Mitt Romney, and it's hard. It's really hard to do.

It's so funny because we talked about the Grand Ayatollah versus Santorum, who said the craziest shit. And of course that was religiously based because Santorum is insane in that regard. Mitt Romney is just, I mean, he's old man Mr. Burns crazy. I love the very first one on there, who said, it's time for an old-fashioned tax revolt.

It's not Mr. Burns. What? Oh, man. I love it. Alright, number 13. I'm running for office for Pete's sake. I love it. All right, number 13. I'm running for office for Pete's sake. I can't have illegals. I have some great friends that are NASCAR team owners.

Yeah, this is great. This is very funny. So we'll post it as the picture for this time. Thanks, Al, for sending it in. We appreciate it. We got an email from Jack. Jack sent us an email. You know, he'll –

I can't even talk about this. Jack, we appreciate you listening. Jack, it turns out, listens to this show with his 11-year-old, which I think that that is the – by far the youngest demographic we've ever reached. I'm sure there's pregnant women out there putting the headphones on their baby. Right, yes. I'm sure that's happening. They just self-abort. As soon as they hear the cognitive dissonance, it's like, fuck that.

I'm fucking out. That's what the world's like? Fuck that. I'm out. They get halfway through an episode, they're like, uh-uh, I'm not being born in a world without hope. Oh, no. No honor killings for me, thank you. Oh, that's fucking terrible.

So, Jack, thank you for listening, and thank you for playing this show to your 11-year-old. I just want to say to your 11-year-old, Jack's son, I think you should definitely your and try to that. On a Stairmaster? We also got an email from Emmett. We also got an email from Emmett. Emmett sent us an email and said that he found us on Stitcher, looking at podcasts. I don't know how this even happens on Stitcher. Somehow they miscategorized us and put us and said that are similar to skeptics' guide to the universe.

I don't know how that – what colossal fuck-up did that. But then somebody put it on there and he said – and he stumbled on a cognitive dissonance. And I used a clip for Neil deGrasse Tyson in the beginning and he was like, oh. And then he heard the disclaimer. He was like, wait, what? And then he actually liked the show. So lucky enough, we found the one person who listens to that show that likes this show. I also like that he describes himself as a recovering evangelical Christian. Yeah.

That's amusing to me. Yeah. He mentions the About.com Reader's Choice Awards in his email. And I would like to say thank you again to all those people who are voting daily on the Reader's Choice Awards. You can find it on our page, Dissonancepod.com, in the lower left-hand corner. Click on the image or on the link, and you can then sign in with your Facebook account or About.com account, and you can vote for us as your favorite atheist or agnostic podcast of last year. We are currently in the lead, and we would be just tickled if we won this thing. It would be

amazing for a show this short out of the gate to win. But, you know, it'd be wonderful. So if you keep voting, we would love it. So thank you again for voting. We really appreciate it. Well, and the prize is a really nice bottle of bourbon that I buy for myself. That we buy and share. Yes. So the prize is Tom and I will get fucking properly snookered on a bottle of fucking bourbon that we buy for ourselves. And then Religion Poisons sent us a tweet. This is a story. This is just outrageous. About a U.S. senator claiming that the global warming is a hoax because of some passage from Genesis.

Basically, there's a passage from Genesis is like, yeah, there's some seasons. And that's like, yeah, there's some seasons. And that's like the – he's using that. There is a season. Turn, turn, turn. Right? Like, well, the presence of seasons 2,000 years ago in one part of the world is definitely evidence that global warming is not real. This guy wrote a book, also is a senator. warming is not real. This guy wrote a book, also is a senator.

I am glad that what we're doing, instead of looking at data or like testing and experimenting and working off a hypothesis and then, you know, going back into the lab and figuring out whether global warming is a good idea, we're looking at a, you know, a centuries old, at this point, millennia old book, millenniums old book to decide whether or not global warming is a real phenomenon. I'm actually going to consult the Millennium Falcon to find out. You'd get a better answer. You'd get a more scientific answer from science fiction at this point than you would from the Bible. At least science fiction uses the word science. Yeah, at least there's part of it is in there.

And it's honest about the fact that it's fiction. So actually science fiction is leap years ahead of this guy. You would get a better answer from a regular falcon than you would from the mole. You know what I mean? Like, than you would from the Bible at this point. You could ask a bird, an actual bird, and say, bird, is global warming real?

They would have a more coherent answer than, there is a season turned. You know, like, fuck you, dude. You're looking at a book that was written that long ago and you're making a decision. And then what he says is like, he's like, God's still up there. God's still up there. And he's looking down on us. He looks through his little binoculars at us from his cloud perch. He's got opera glasses. He's like down on us. He looks through his little binoculars at us from his cloud perch. He's got opera glasses.

He's like, you know, yeah, and a big fucking horn he puts in his ear so he could hear us. But he's sitting up there thinking, you know, I'm not going to fuck the world up because, you know, these humans still look up to me. Now, when we stop looking at them, that's when he's really going to fuck us up.

That's when you've got problems. You really do have some problems. Tornado problems. Tornado problems. That's when he's really going to fuck us up. That's when you've got problems. You really do have some problems. Tornado problems. Tornado problems. That's the worst. Another thing, too, that we got plenty of emails for stories that we used. We wound up tweeting some of the same stories or Facebooking some of the same stories. So we used some of the stories for some of the emails that we used.

So if we used your story, understand that we thank you for sending it to us and we appreciate it. And the more you send us stories, the less work we have to do. What Tom is really saying is the less work he has to do. Actually, your workload doesn't change at all. My workload changes exactly not for any of the stories. So you should actually send Tom false stories. You should. You should really fuck with me and send me Onion articles.

Send him the ones that he thinks are real and then he'll tweet them and it'll look like an asshole and I'll be able to laugh maniacally while I slave away. We'd like to thank the Friendly Atheist again for coming on our show and dealing with us and being so unbelievably friendly. And if you wanted to visit his site, you could always go to patheos.com slash blogs slash Friendly Atheist. Wonderful resource for the atheist community. We'll put a link on our site. Thanks again for coming on. And as always, we will leave you with the skeptics' creed. Credulity is not a virtue.

It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Leo Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespeak, stigmata, nonsense. stigmata, nonsense. Expose your signs. 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. Thank you.