Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 409: Women v. Religion

Episode Date: April 16, 2018

Thank you to Dr. Abby Hafer and Karen Garst for joining us this week. Their links are below. Stories from the Week   Karen Garst Abby Hafer

This episode of Cognitive Dissonance is brought to you by our patrons. You fucking rock. Hey, Tom. Hey, Cecil. Just listening to you guys rag on Nine Inch Nails. And you know what? I get it. I do. But I'll tell you what, that song, Heresy, God is dead and no one cares if there's a hell, I'll see you there. That got me through my Jehovah's Witness deconversion.

So, big props to Trent Reznor for that one. Glory hole. Hello, chaps. Humble pie time. I'm the person that said you should have done a Be Reasonable with Johan Hari. And yeah, I take that back because actually you did do a fair interview and you didn't need to do a marsh on him. But I'm actually calling about Dave Dacoach, not a coach, Dobmeier and his bizarre anal

fixation. It looks like what he's done is picked up literally the first Freud book on the shelf, and he's gone straight to a page called Masturbatory Sexual Manifestations. I'm just saying that to me, that looks like the equivalent of opening up the dictionary just to see all the naughty words. Anyway, to answer your question, every time a gay masturbates, God kills a kitten. Glory hole, motherfuckers. Hey, Tom and Cecil, this is Brian in San Diego.

I just finished listening to show number 408, and I just wanted to thank you because without your show, I don't think I would have learned today that duck coach Dave Dobmeier is into assgasms. Glory hole. You guys rule. Hey, guys, I think I figured out what the coach was talking about. If you masturbate, you're getting pleasure from a man's hand, which makes you gay. But if you poop, you're getting pleasure from a man's anus, which makes you really gay.

I think that's where he was going with that. So, spoil! Be advised that this show is not for children, the faint of heart, or the easily offended. The explicit tag is there for a reason. recording live from glory Hole Studios in Chicago, this is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast anyone who gets in our way. We bring critical thinking, skepticism, and irreverence. Too many topics that makes the news, makes it big, or makes us mad. It's skeptical. It's political.

And there is no welcome mat this is episode 409 of cognitive potentially part of 410 or 11 you don't know it's and i like that here we go yeah we're doing some work tonight later on tonight we're going to be talking to karen garst and abby hoffer karen just recently put together several essays for her new book, Women v. Religion. And Abby is one of those essayists, so we'll be talking to both of them later on. See, so before we start, I want to relay a quick story. It's more of an affirmation of our previously noted convictions. Today, I did a little bit of driving. I drove from my home in Illinois up to

Grand Rapids, Michigan, then Grand Rapids back to the studio. And that means that I had to do something that was pretty deeply unfortunate. My friend, I had to drive through Indiana. It was horrible. I just want to say like, it still smells like meth. I just, in case anyone's fucking wondering, there is an actual smell when you cross the border. I just, in case anyone's fucking wondering, there is an actual smell when you cross the border. It was a beautiful day. It was the first beautiful spring day that we've had, right? So it's been, spring has been a total piece of shit.

In fact, it hailed and sleeted on me the other day. It was a fucking horror shit. I want to talk about that after it's gone. So it was beautiful today. It was like 75 and sunny. I'm driving along. I roll down my windows. I was like 75 and sunny. I'm driving along. I rolled down my windows. I'm cruising. No shit.

I crossed the border. I see crazy Kaplans and the fucking state. And you know what I'm talking about? It's gunpowder smoke because crazy Kaplans is a firework store. And it is, it is, it is for 10 miles. When you cross the border from Illinois to Indiana, it's fucking, it smells like a paper factory. Yeah.

when you cross the border from Illinois to Indiana. It smells like a paper factory. Yeah, it's 10 miles of a weird meth and body odor stench that signals that you've crossed the border. It's Gary. It's fireworks and strip clubs.

What the fuck do you think those strip clubs smell like? Can you imagine if that's what it smells like outside? They smell like fireworks. Put. Can you imagine? I can't. If that's what it smells like outside. I can't. They smell like fireworks. Put a sparkler in that thing. So today, I checked the weather and it said it was 52 or 53

when I left the house this morning. And I was like, I'm going to grab my winter coat. So I grabbed my winter coat. And when I left my house with the winter coat this morning, I felt like an asshole because it was warm enough to walk without a coat. So I grabbed my winter coat. And when I left my house with the winter coat this morning, I felt like an asshole because it was warm enough to walk without a coat. When I left the office

later on today, I felt warm because it was 45 degrees out. The temperature had dropped. And I figured out what you call this part of spring. It's fool's cold. It's this weird part of spring where it's either warm in the afternoon or warm in the morning and you feel like an asshole and then you feel smart. But you don't know which order that's going to work in. You cannot dress for this weather,

which is why I just don't even wear pants for like two and a half months. I haven't been meaning to talk to you about that. I should probably wear pants. We're getting a lot of letters from the people in this building. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. we're getting a lot of letters from the people in this building. In the name of Jesus,

we speak that. I'm hooked on a feeling I'm high on believing All right, this story is from the Patheos Blog's Friendly Atheist. Priest who was arrested twice for child sex crimes says teen boy seduced him. This is a Michigan priest. Now, he's out on bail after sexually assaulting two people. And basically, he's like, look, the police, this was entrapment. They sent this teenage boy out to seduce me with his boyish wiles or whatever his fucking excuses. And it's like, you know what?

I was really seduced by the crystal meth. It's illegal man i was seduced into killing that person by the knife that i found you know the police officer gave me the knife i don't know you know yeah i was like it's you know it's it's like it struck me it's it's just like all those uh the like the the homophobe priests that are all obviously or pastors or religious figures that are just obviously closeted because their language is just like well you don't want to give in to the temptation it's like you know we're not tempted no nobody over here in like like comfortably heterosexual land which is where you say you are yeah i'm not tempted there's no temptation yeah it's the same thing here like there's no 17-year-old boy that could possibly seduce

me because I don't have sex with 17-year-olds. That's not a thing where I'm like, oh, I would. One more bite. Just one more bite. I shouldn't. Oh. Don't cut that pie. Bring me a lube. I mean a spoon. I mean a 17-year-old

boy. Nobody, like unless you're the kind of person who wants to fuck teenagers. You're not the kind of person that fucks teenagers. One of the sources for this article, I looked up one of the sources, and literally all they have is this guy defended himself with this statement. That's the entire article is this guy's,

the lawyer's statement, which is like this is entrapment. And, you know, this person, a teenager and his family jumped at the opportunity to have you. This is a payday. Do you think that they're just like talking their son up to is like, this is entrapment. And, you know, this person, a teenager and his family jumped at the opportunity to have you. This is a payday. Do you think that they're just like talking their son up to be like, look, all you got to do is be sexually assaulted

and then we're in the money, right? You just got to sacrifice. Look, it's just going to be one or two bad hours. But think about how great it's going to be afterwards. Get the fuck out of here. It's like what's that movie with Demi Moore? Like where it's like she's going to go sleep with that indecent proposal. Trading Places.

G.I. Jane. I don't know what else she's in. That's it. I'm spent. I'm spent. Demi Moore, those two. I'm not. But it's like, that does it.

It presumes that the family set up some sort of like, like pederasty, indecent proposal with a priest like, oh, we'll lure him in. Like, well, he has to be the kind of guy who bites on that. He's got to be a bad person. Right. It's like it's like a bad person test. And you fail. You cannot.

One, I don't know. I don't know which metric you can't catch a polar bear with lettuce, right? Because they don't eat lettuce. So it's just like the lure has to be appealing to the thing. Absolutely. Oh, my God. I love this story so much. This comes from the Indian Express. They don't deliver, by the way.

It's a bummer. You can't. The garlic naan. That guy has to throw that paper really far. He has to have an arm on him, you know? It's like one of those, they have to stop and do a dance before he throws it. Bollywood dance?

Bollywood dance. He's got to do like a whole Bollywood. There has to be a Bollywood fight scene and a dance before he winds up and throws it. Is there really a difference between a Bollywood fight scene and a dance? I think so. They kind of look the same to me.

Do they? What's that song? I don't know. It's that Slumdog Millionaire song, right? No, I was thinking that sped up song. Oh, Tunak Tunak, the guy who got busted for drugs or whatever. Trouble for Aru Adar

love, whatever that is. Two Hyderabad residents move say, winking, SC is like the Supreme Court, say winking is blasphemy in Islam. Blasphemy! Winking! And they're not kidding. Just so that you guys

know, I want to read to you what the actual issue here is. Quote. This is an actual quote. I could not believe this. I thought this was like one of those... I thought it was a joke too. I was like, are you kidding? Come on, this is like a fucking like a click hole. Right. But no. Quote,

the 30 second clip shows a school girl and school boy exchanging smiles, eyebrow wiggles, and winks from across the way. Gotta watch out for those eyebrow wiggles. Winking itself is prohibited in Islam and in a case where the act of winking is superimposed on the sacred song

written in the praise of Prophet Muhammad and his first wife, the same act becomes an act of blasphemy! The fucking it's closing one eye and not the other eye! When I was a kid, my dad was working with this guy. He looked like

Kenny Rogers. Yeah, I knew Kenny Rogers. But a fatter Kenny Rogers. And so I remember going over to his house But a fatter Kenny Rogers. That's... And so, I remember going over to his house because my dad used to have beers with him on occasion. Did you call him Fatty Rogers? I wish I did.

So, I wound up going over to his house several times. They had a pool and so my parents used to go over there and we would play in the pool. The kids would play in the pool

and then we'd come out and all his kids were grown so he didn't have any like buddy to hang out with or whatever. Sure. So, I'd sit at the table with the parents,

you know, I'd sit at the table and eat hot, you know, I'd sit at the table and eat hot dogs or whatever they were eating. Sure. And he had a twitch. He had a thing where his eye,

one eye closed once in a while. It was like a spasm thing. Oh, yeah, yeah. He constantly looked like he was winking at you. And so I'd look. He'd be strung up. I'd look over at him

and be like, is he winking at me? Did you wink back? And so like five or six times go by and he keeps doing it. And I'm like, I don't know. And so I be like, is he winking at me? Did you wink back? And so like five or six times go by and he keeps doing it. And I'm like, I don't know. And so I was like. He didn't say anything.

I think he looked away. But he constantly was closing one eye. And I think it was a nervous twitch. That person would be like beat up in this culture. Are you kidding me? Because he couldn't be able to control it. They're just like constantly like. beat up in this culture. Are you kidding me? You could be able to control it.

They're just constantly like... You know, like, if you can't wink at people, every fucking... How is that blasphemous? What if a piece of dust goes in your eye and you're like... Because if he has one eye closed... Right? What if you're a pirate? You're just like,

oh, god damn it. Son of a bitch. What if you just have one lazy eye? Your culture is... I'm sorry. I'm just going to say, oh, God damn it. Son of a bitch. We just have one lazy eye. Your culture is, I'm sorry, I'm just going to say like, if you write that down and you mean it, your fucking culture is ridiculous. Well, it's another instance

of someone being very afraid of sex, right? Right. To the point where you're just like, like, and let's be real honest if you're covered in one of those headscarf things that's like the only and especially if the face is covered like the only expression is the eye yeah so that would make sense that they would they would ban this because it's the only way that a female can communicate let's talk about this in the sense that you know that it's real and that this is the only way that a female can communicate. Let's talk about this in the sense that it's real. This is the only way that a female can communicate.

It's the only way a female can do... I mean, sure, she can talk to you, but any other body facial expression is completely lost. Are these like... I mean, honestly, are these the original fucking snowflakes?

Because that is some fucking sensitive shit. That is some scared, shitless, that is some scared shitless sensitive shit. When you're just like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. I got to make everything blasphemous so that, so that anything that makes me nervous,

I can decide is blasphemy. Not just like have to say out loud, look, I'm kind of a fucking weird sexual prude. And I, you know, I'm scared of women and the vagina makes me feel fucking cramped in my pants. Women can't drive because they'll get pregnant.

Instead of saying that shit out loud, which is like what it is, I don't want to relinquish my hold on my social powers and privileges. We're not going to say that. Instead, everything's blasphemous. You offended Muhammad and his magic horse or whatever.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that they're turning to... you offended Muhammad and his magic horse or like whatever. Like, yeah, I think, I think you're right. I think that they're, they're turning to, you know, it makes sense because it's the one thing that you can't argue with. Right.

There's, there's no, because it would be blasphemous to argue about blasphemy. No. Right. Because you're talking to the guy who supposedly is the one who's interpreting this rule. And like when you,

when you get busted for blasphemy, and like this is in India, but in Pakistan, we've seen it in other places, and in parts of India. Like they drag your ass out into the street and fucking kill you. It's not. It is certainly not taken lightly. It's not a traffic ticket, man. No, it's not. And there's places in

that part of the world where they beat you. There's places in that part of the world where they've gone off and killed people. They machete the fuck out of some people occasionally. They fuck some people up. Well, shouldn't our religious ideas stand up, even under a scientific approach? I mean, either thing is true

or it isn't. Well, certainly, but listen, Joe, there's some things we just have to accept on faith. I love this story. It's from Friendly Atheist Blog as well. Christian host evangelicals back Trump because his Oval Office is scandal free. Fox and Friends this morning, David Brody and Jenna Crowder, and they're part of CBN. Here's what they said. Quote, it really does come down to grace and the fact that this president continues to, for the most part, keep it clean in office.

We're not hearing about scandals coming out of the Oval Office. We're not hearing about. Well, I mean, he's not fucking someone on the desk. And I think that's what they're saying, right? They're not saying he didn't fuck somebody in the Oval Office. And so that's OK. Are they really suggesting that, like, if it doesn't happen in that office? Because right now, the

main comments that people have about Stormy Daniels is that he's a flawed man, and I don't even think people are really even denying the fact. That makes me laugh. People are just like, yeah,

we know what's up. I don't think anybody's I don't think i don't think i've said i mean sure there's probably some people out there that are like i don't believe it happened this is deep state stuff or whatever um but there is a group of people that are especially the the evangelical christian right that is saying look it's okay he's a flawed guy but that's okay. It's okay. He stands for good values. Yeah, he did some stuff. And they keep on saying in the past, and it's not a big deal because he's not doing it now. And that's how they're separating it because they're trying to remain logically consistent. They're saying that what happened with Clinton happened in office, and that's the important thing. But what they're missing when they talk about

things like this and when they bring it up to things like this this person is clearly on fucking you're you're not even you're not even in fucking the the real realm if this is what you think right if you think you know he's keeping it clean in office this is a guy who calls people's names on twitter he calls them names on twitter talks about people um you know he's he's he's uh you all you have to do is hear that pussy comment. I mean, he threatens on Twitter. He threatens other nations with missile strikes on fucking Twitter. Yeah.

Like this is a guy who when does when when defending Trump still can't say without the qualifier for the most part. Yeah. Right. Exactly. Like the only thing I can think is that you really think it's comes down to that physical location of the oval office. It's like, it's like cause there's plenty of scandals in an oval orifice at this point. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's, that's a whole thing. Yeah. So it's like,

Oh look, all right. It's in the hallway. I don't know what I'm talking about the hallway and in the bedroom and then Lincoln bedroom, that's fucked up. And then, but like, but I'll tell you what and Marla goes out in the Trump tower. Okay. All those things. But in the actual oval office from the hours of nine to four, yeah,

he hasn't fucked anybody on the desk and came on his fucking calendar. That's it. But what I, what I, what you want to say though, to those people is the most obvious comment, which is, it's not about the sex.

It's not about the fucking, like, I don't care. Like I genuinely don't care. Like, I genuinely don't care. Like, yeah, does that make him a hypocrite when he talks about, you know, things like traditional marriage? Yeah, it does.

It makes him a giant fucking hypocrite. When he talks about how, you know, he loves the evangelical right and he's out there, you know, cheating on his wife supposedly while she's pregnant with Barron or whatever. Like, that's just a horrible shitty thing to do. Um,

but it's not up to me. It's not my promise. I didn't make it with her. It's, you know, it's up to them. It's their relationship. It's,

it's how they handle it. It's not my, it's not my choice, right? What matters is, is that he's, he is dirty. He is paying this,

these off. If this is true, right? If it's, if all these things come out to be true, if the, you know, the, the, the non-dis all these things come out to be true, if the non-disclosure agreement that they're

talking about and all the other hush monies that he's paid out, at this point they're counting up to three right now, different hush monies that have been paid out. If all that's true, then he's dirty. He's dirty in a way that is way worse than just a random sexual affair. He's dirty

in a way that he's trying to stop people from talking about something while he's in the process of trying to get elected. Well, yeah, and I also think it matters that he is courting the evangelical vote. He's accepting that vote. He's standing in front of these people. He's pretending to be a man that holds these values

while at the same time living something entirely different, right? Like that matters. That matters a lot. I think like there's a, there's, there's a hypocrisy to that, which, you know, at the very least people who are on that side of the equation should know about, right? Like, cause these are, these are people who many of them, we're not talking about the evangelical leaders, right? Those people are assholes. And I don't actually care about them. But like, I'm talking about like

the random Joe, right? Who's like, yeah, that's my guy. That's my guy. And you know, is he still your guy if all this information comes out? Well, he doesn't want this information to come out because what he wants to do is trick you

into thinking he's someone that he's fucking not so that you can, so he can manipulate you into voting for him based on a false understanding of who he is. That's a problem. Yeah. That's a real fucking problem. We should care about that part, right? Because like people go out and they vote. Most people vote in good faith. I think most people vote in good faith. I think there's a lot of power brokers that attempt to manipulate people's good faith by trying to control the narrative that's fed to the people who actually show up and punch their fucking ticket. Do you remember when Bush was in office and the comment came up?

I don't remember if he said it or if someone in his administration said it, but somebody said that if you're not with us, you're against us. Yeah, that's Bush, yeah. And I remember feeling back then like, that's a stupid fucking thing to say. And I still feel like I stand by it, but this feels very reminiscent of that. It feels like there's still a very...

People are still willing to stand by someone and willing to fight against the other person under such false pretenses. Because Bush was I mean, that entire war that he was doing was all under false pretenses. It came out that it was all under false pretenses. Yeah, all under false pretenses. And they still stood by him. They still said, you know, like, this is something that we should you know, we should have done, et cetera, et cetera. And they still stood by him. They still said, you know, like this is something that we should,

you know, we should have done, et cetera, et cetera. And I feel the same way here. It's just like, they're still standing by this guy and it feels like nothing matters. It feels like none of it matters.

You know? You can't be the party that stands on a soapbox and talks about, you know, how the morality of this country is, you know, the most important thing that we have. Sure. And here's what's right. And here's what's wrong. And traditional values and, you know, gay people are shitty and, you know, all of this, all the

rest of it. And that's the big fucking screaming megaphone bullshit that that's being used to mobilize people. And then at the same time, have this guy who doesn't live any portion of that. You can't be consistent about that. You have to... If we don't call that shit out on the carpet, then it is... I mean, and I think you and I both agree, or at least I will say, like, none of that shit was true anyway, right?

All of that shit was always a manipulation. We always knew. It seemed like it was always. But we knew it on our side, right? Clearly not everybody knows it because there's fucking plenty of people that are showing up punching that fucking ticket sure and singing that fucking song yeah so like if you're gonna sing a song make sure you know the fucking words well it's interesting too because i try to think that i'd be logically consistent if this were my guy right because he's not my guy he's never going to be my guy i don't think that there's many things i will agree with what trump does i think that he's, I think he's genuinely either a bad or stupid person, one or the other, right?

I think there's some real problems with him. But can it be both? Maybe. I think it could be. I feel like, I feel like there's, but if, if something like this happened where, and I'm not, I'm not talking about the sex. I don't care about the sex. Where somebody was actually paying someone money to silence them, I would hope that I would be appalled by it and say this isn't my guy anymore. I remember when Anthony Weiner

tweeted out, you know, pics to a young girl or whatever, an underage girl, etc. And like those, I don't know if he tweeted them out or he texted them or whatever. But like, he was caught. And I was not I don't know if he tweeted them out or he texted them or whatever, but like he was caught and I was not like, cool. Oh man, it's a, he's a good, he's a real good representative though. Or whatever. I didn't fucking say that. I was just like, good, go away, get out, you're garbage. Like you're, you're not worthy to be in that position. Go away, go, go die in obscurity. And I hope that I, I know that he's not,

certainly not the president, you know, that sort of thing. And I realized that there was some weight to that position, but I hope I'm logically consistent enough to call this out when this is my guy. You know, I, I didn't,

we didn't, we had a pretty scandal free Obama, but like beyond the Stormy Daniels thing, there's a whole Russia thing. I know there's, there's so many scandals. I read, I read off that one list of scandals

a couple weeks ago, and it's still growing. The list of scandals is still growing. The idea that anybody could with a straight face say like, well, our guy's in there, and like, for the most part,

I still can't even say it completely. For the most part, there's no scandals coming out of the Oval Office. We're not hearing about scandals coming out of the Oval Office. Bullshit, he's a scandal machine. It's all we hear about.

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Stitcher or tell your buddies in the drunk tank about the show. We want to send a big sloppy glory hole to all the patrons and people who rate us. You fucking rock. This story is upsetting. This is from Fox News news uh biblical prophecy claims the rapture is coming april 23rd numerologist says that's a problem for me that's the first day of my honeymoon i have plans you know busy you're busy if the fucking pilot gets i hope i have a sinner sinner pilot yeah i'm just saying yeah or a sinner sinner co-pilot. Somebody in there's gotta be able to take the plane. Better not. If they get fucking raptured and my plane goes down.

And it's only just you? I'm gonna be. Yeah, right. Everybody else gets raptured. I'm just sitting there alone like, I guess I'm not going. Fine. I didn't want to go anyway. Stupid place. Just looking around like, free airplane. You're searching on the internet the free Wi-Fi how-to fly an airplane.

So I'm looking at it, it's like, $4.99 for Wi-Fi? Fuck that. Please be a how-to video. Please be a how-to video. I've seen the movie Airplane often enough that I feel reasonably kind. And I speak Jive. And you sweat like that guy. There's an interesting part

of this article because it says David Mead tells the UK daily express newspaper that on April 23rd, the sun and the moon will be in Virgo. And if the sun and the moon are double penetrating you, let me tell you, you are not in Virgo anymore. You have stopped being in Virgo. Right.

And it doesn't count if it's the butt. It's still, you're still, it does. Yeah. You can't go like, okay, there's one in the mouth and one in the ass. Right? And it doesn't count if it's the butt. It's still, you're still. It does. Yeah. You can't go like, okay, there's one in the mouth and one in the ass. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, technically. If you're going double, double. Yeah. You're not a Virgo. Right? Like, come on. Fourth base is not. And also.

That's the next more base. Exactly. Right. No. Can I read the passage? Are you stealing home at that point? I guess. Oh, not after. No. Can I read the passage? Are you stealing home at that point? I guess you are. Oh, not after.

No, you got to wash up. You got to wash it. That's not. You don't go fourth base then home. No, no. Not twice. That's a UTI. All right.

So for a certain branch of evangelical Christians, according to this article, Revelation 12, 1 and 2, describes the beginning of what is known as the rapture and the second coming of Christ. I want to say for the record, I feel like I'm about to read it. This passage is crystal clear. So I don't see how there could be any confusion or misinterpretation. I also just want to point out if there's a second coming of Christ, you're not a Virgo. Go ahead.

And a great sign appeared in heaven. A woman closed with the sun, with the moon under her feet. Closed or clothed? Clothed. Clothed with the sun. With the sun. Got it. Okay.

With the moon under her feet. All right. That makes sense. And on her head, a crown of 12 stars. Her head had stars on it. Now, that's a sentence. That seems warm. That feels like a clause, but that's a sentence.

12 stars. It's not a a sentence. That seems warm. That feels like a clause, but that's a sentence. 12 stars. It's not a complete sentence. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pains and the agony of giving birth. Also, possibly the agony of being covered in the sun. Poor clothes.

That would be... 12 stars too. That would be a little uncomfortable. Which would be 12 suns on your head. We've got 13 right now. We're 13 suns nearby. It's... Yeah. We don't have 13 suns anymore. Used to be like fucking Tatooine on this place.

There's a sunrise in every few minutes. It's fucking crazy. Just all over. Super hot. So there's then a numerologist who interprets that to mean, hey, it's all going down. Rapture.

It's on the 23rd. Very soon. I want to point out that there's an all going down. Rapture. Rapture's going to happen very soon. I want to point out that there's an author who disputes this. No. However, author Jonathan Safadi remains skeptical. I will point out that Jonathan Safadi wrote the book Refuting Evolution. So him remaining skeptical.

I don't know. Well, here's what he said. It's funny though if he's skeptical of this. Well, here's what he said. It's funny, though, if he's skeptical of this. Well, here's what he said. As usual with any astrology or Christian adaptations of it, one cherry picks the stars that fit the desired conclusions. Cherry picking, huh? There's nothing to suggest that April 23rd is a momentous date for biblical prophecy, and Christians need to be careful about being drawn into such sensationalist claims. He says, we won't know the day or the hour,

so we should be prepared at all times. But it's, it didn't happen. Didn't camping talk about that? I want to say in October, but he moved his around twice though. I thought one of them was in April. It was in May. It wasn't in April. It was in May. So the yeah, yeah. So the first one was in May, and then you're right. I think the second one was in October. Yeah, October 21st. They're both till 21st, so this guy's going a little different. He's throwing a curveball, Tom.

He is. It's the 23rd. Well, I mean, you don't want to rush these things. It's the rapture. We'll be talking about it a little later, but maybe Twitter and Russia gets us at the 23rd. I don't know. Who knows, right?

That's unsettling and possible. So that's good. Now, the concern, obviously, is if this isn't bottled up in San Francisco, this kind of nonsense, then it's going to be spreading across the entire fruited plain. And you're going to be going to your Burger King in Des Moines, Iowa,

and you're going to have a rainbow-colored wrapper for your Whopper. All right, this is from Right Wing Watch. Harry Jackson says Black Lives Matter can never achieve true justice because there's a few lesbians in leadership positions. Let's hear about these lesbian positions.

We can't have social justice. We need biblical justice. Yes. We should stone all adulterers. No, I'm right there with him. Let's stone all the adulterers, Tom. Okay.

No, that's terrible. Let's stone all adulterers. Let's kill all the farmers that put two types of crop in the same row. Now, that I can get behind. Anybody who wears mixed fabrics, we got to kill them too. Shellfish eaters. Isn't it funny? Because it's like, if the Bible is like worth anything,

shouldn't biblical justice be synonymous with social justice? Absolutely. Why would there be a gap? Like why would there ever be a gap between the things we know are good for people and the things that your book about how good people behave? Like when there's a gap, like something's missing there. Yeah.

That's why social justice exists. Right. It's because there's a gap, right's missing there that's why social justice exists it's because there's a gap it's not a thigh gap he's going to be talking about a gap here in a minute now you got to hear this final word okay the superheroes it's all about vigilantism

why are we talking about superheroes oh because this is how we conceive of the world when we're fucking children, Cecil. When you have a child's view of good and evil and right and wrong. It's funny because I know you and I have always been against vigilantism. It's funny that they're against vigilantism.

Because your book doesn't feel like it is. You know what I mean? The thing that you look to when it says, it doesn't say, call the police, have the person arrested, try them for their crimes, and then if they're guilty,

then punish them. Instead, it says, stone the adulterers, right? There's very little fucking nuance in there about how that's supposed to be done, but it's in there, right? It's in there. Anything that's an abomination to the Lord

needs to be taken care of. And by taken care of, I mean like fucking old-timey whack it, like a fucking 40s movie. You know what I mean? So I feel like they should be for vigilanteism. Well, unless they're positing that these are a system, this is a series of rules

which should be codified into a sort of Christian Sharia law, right? I have a feeling what they're talking about is Mueller. No. What? Yeah. Ah, so. Right? What a leap that is.

Well, it's not a vigilante because he's working for the government. No, he is. No, he's going rogue. No, he's by himself. He's just like, it's just Mueller investigations. He puts it on his car. He's got a little decal that he put on there. And the light you get from Home Depot that's yellow. He puts it on his car. He's got a little decal that he put on there. And the light you get from Home Depot,

there's yellow and it goes on your car. He just yells it out his window because he doesn't have a siren. He doesn't have a siren. He rents the Home Depot thing and he just goes backwards. You think about it this way. Batman was a vigilante.

They had to run when the police came, right? They're enforcing law according to their standards. Hold on to your seat. The KKK was a vigilante group. So it matters whose allegiance or whose definition of justice you're going to use

to bring justice to the culture. Okay, Batman or the KKK. That is our, those are our options. Is that just two ends of the spectrum? Both wear hoods. They're pretty much the same guy. They tie people up. It matters that Black Lives Matter

has at the head a few lesbians who are against the patriarchal society. You see, black people can say this. White folks, you have a hard time saying this about Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is true. The fact that there does need to be a value of human life. The fact that there does need to be a value of human life, but by destroying biblical foundations, you can never arrive at God's justice. That's it.

You got to do it God's way. It's got to have a dick, Tom. That's why. That makes sense. Okay. The thrust of his whole argument is that the lesbians want to destroy the patriarchy. And the patriarchy is pretty cool.

The patriarchy rocks. That's another shirt we were going to do. The patriarchy rocks. Patriarchy has been good to me. I don't know. We've got to figure it out. The patriarchy has been good to me. Oh my God. Who's going to wear it? Send us your patriarchy slogans.

Your pro-patriarchy slogans. Send them to us and maybe we'll make a shirt with one of them. Your pro-patriarchy slogans. And then tell us if you'd buy that shirt. Yeah, definitely say like,

I would buy this, especially, I would love to see a girl in a patriarchy rock shirt. That would be hilarious. If she had a YouTube channel, she'd make millions. Yeah. If she had a YouTube channel, she'd make millions. So we are joined by Karen Garst and Abby Hafer.

They are both authors in the new book, Women v. Religion, The Case Against Faith and for Freedom. Ladies, thank you for joining us tonight. Thanks for having us. Thank you. So we wanted to get started. One of the things that I've been sort of excited about about this interview is Tom and I very often for secular reasons, we'll have conversations about abortion because it comes up quite a bit, especially with tons of legislation that happens in the United States over this issue. And we've never really had anybody on who's like a biologist and a feminist. And so, Abby, I wanted to ask you a question. Is there a moment that you think that life starts, that there is life at, like life at what? Because the Republicans like to say life at conception,

which Tom and I think is ridiculous. Life starts at what? Okay. There are actually a whole bunch of things that i want to say about that not surprisingly um but let's get down to the real basic that i think you will like which is that god is the world's busiest abortionist let's just start with that right right Right, right. Because during human gestation, it is often the case that a fertilized embryo, a fertilized egg, does not implant on the uterine lining. That happened to about... That's because it's not over easy to do, right? It's not really easy. Come on.

It was right there. It was right there. That's a soft-boiled joke. I know. About 25% of all fertilized eggs manage to not implant on the uterine lining. So they simply wash out with menstrual fluid. And then there is another small percentage that then do not manage to gestate fully for a whole bunch of other reasons. The upshot being that about 31% of all fertilized eggs never make it to birth. What it actually shows is that the female reproductive system is actually really bad. I mean, it's really not optimally designed. So anyway, the point is, so about 31% of all fertilized eggs do not make it to birth, which if you do the numbers, if you count up the number of people who are born and you do the numbers, therefore, about the ones who were not born, that means that God

is by far the world's busiest abortionist. He gets a sale on coat hangers, though. So again, like I don't feel like he gets them free at the dry. That's what I mean. And I turn mine in for recycling. Yeah, absolutely. I hadn't thought of that. That's a good point. But anyway, but if but if you just look at things that way, then, you know, you really need to get back to the God folks and simply ask, so, you know, what is this with creating, you know, divinely creating all of these so-called human lives only to snuff them out a few days later before they have had any human experience at all and haven't even come anywhere near to having a nervous system or anything like that.

When do you think it is unethical to have an abortion? At what stage of pregnancy is it or is it all the way through the entirety of pregnancy? OK, and for that one, the answer is, of course, that depends. Because I would say there's a certain point at which you can simply terminate a pregnancy

because you want to. You don't have to have a good reason or a bad reason, and you don't have to state your reason to anybody. Sure, sure. There's actually a story this week. It's so funny.

There's a story this week where they're requiring women in one weird state that is going to require women to tell them why. Like you need a permission slip or something. I know. It's nuts. They're going to start collecting data. Yeah. I'm sorry. Anyway, I interrupted.

You actually have to post it on Facebook and then Cambridge Analytica will grab it for you. Then there are those. And this is one where, you know, this is worth having a good ethical question about, but not because it's a question of when does life begin, but essentially of who gets priority when. And if it is ever a matter between the woman and the zygote or embryo or whatever you want to call it, I'm going to vote for the woman and the zygote or embryo or whatever you want to call it, I'm going to vote for the woman every time. Me too.

There's a hashtag in front of that. And this is something where I know people who have made some member of their family who they trusted go to the hospital with them so that if in the hospital, if they were unconscious for any reason and the decision had to be made, somebody would be there to stick up for the woman and not have her die in favor of having the baby live. And here in Boston, there are Catholic hospitals that smart women just won't go to for that very reason. Catholic hospitals are notorious for that. Right, right.

Is when does life begin the wrong question? I was thinking about this today. I had a ridiculously long drive today. Is when does life begin the wrong question? Is perhaps a better question, is when does a meaningful life begin a better question? I think that that is a far more interesting question. And you can just kind of start whenever anybody says something like that.

You can, first of all, quote my thing about life beginning a billion or so years ago with self-replicating molecules. But the other thing to say is that zygotes are not human. And I feel perfectly comfortable in saying that. They may have human genes, but frankly, so do all your skin cells. So it is a far more interesting question to ask. When is there a meaningful life that may manage to develop? So, I mean, you're talking like 13, 14 years old.

Yeah, gosh. Right. You know, because I don't know about that. I'm a voting age, maybe. Yeah. Right. I'd say the twenties. I mean, I met some 30 year olds where I'm like, I don't think you've given it a world yet. It's just meaningful life yet. We'll just go ahead. Yeah, that's true. Well, and, and there are those who will simply say that, you know, life begins when there's a, or that meaningful life begins when there's an air gap between the mother and the baby. So, um, you know, as I said, there's, there's an air gap between the mother and the baby. So, you know, as I said, there's plenty of room for interesting discussion around that. But it is a very different discussion from zygotes are complete human beings and you don't dare do anything to them.

Well, and I think the historical issue is really relevant here because in the 19th century, they allowed abortion up until quickening. And quickening is an antiquated term that means when you can feel the fetus inside you, like it's kicking the piss out of you. Or when you cut the Highlander's head off. That's another time that the quickening happened. It's one or the other. A lot of the prohibition on abortion that started in the 19th century was political. Gee, big surprise. Hold on. Another political prohibition.

Let me write. Right. Well, Dr. Horatio Storr, he was head of the American Medical Association. You have to understand that prior to this time, there were a lot of midwives. There were a lot of abortionists who advertised, etc., etc., and they wanted to control medicine. So here's a way to control medicine. We'll make abortion illegal, so we'll get rid of all of those women who do that and will assume the high road. And that really continued. And what's interesting is when you get in a time like the Depression in the 30s in the United States, they were much more lenient. 16% of the medical students at that time said, yeah, 16% of the medical students at that time said, yeah, I would perform an abortion. And then you get to the 50s where after World War II and you want people to come back and start repopulating because you got all these people killed in the war, et cetera, then it got more

conservative. Well, and after the Second World War, they were also heavily trying to promote the cozy nuclear family. Well, exactly. And, you know, I'm sorry you had that Rosie the Riveter. You had that great job doing, you know, welding and stuff like that. But you're toast. Let's give it to a man. And what really happened in the 70s is the moral majority movement led by Jerry Falwell. He brought together all of this stuff for this kind of pro-family agenda. And there was one quote I found that said, before that time, Jerry Falwell wouldn't have been able to spell abortion. So what they found was they could get the Catholics who were Democrats and divide them. And there was this local race and they had the Catholics handout flyers about,

oh, this Democrat running is anti-abortion. And he was kind of a shoo-in and he lost. So they went, aha, this is a strategy to break up Democrats. So it's always been political, period. So let's talk about the book. You've written, you've collected a bunch of stories again, Karen, for a second time. What made you write the second one? I'm having trouble retiring. I retired in 2008 and I spent five years tracing my genealogy back to a couple, a Reverend Ralph and Rebecca Wheelock, Massachusetts Bay Colony. Yep.

Yep. Back to the pastor. And then when I was done, I was having lunch with a friend of mine who who was a writer and she said, you should write a book. And it happened to be right after the Supreme Court. I mean, literally the day after the Supreme Court issued its decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, where in a private court decision they said, oh, well, we decided previously that a corporation is a person, and so the corporation can contribute

to political campaigns. And then, oh, I guess if a corporation is a person and Hobby Lobby has religious views because it's a person, it doesn't have to provide certain forms of birth control to its female employees. Oh, yeah, that's a given five to four. And she said, you need to write a book, Karen. And I said, the only thing I can get pissed about is religion. So the first book was. I love it. I love it.

The idea of writing a book was predicated i'm being pissed about genuinely like that it's like i'm gonna write a book but i'm not mad enough about other things well it's i've never written a book you know i have my dissertation but oh god it's sitting on the shelf getting dust and um so that book was 22 personal stories people who grew up in zimbabwe peru i reached out on social media. And it's really good, I think, for people to read, to say, she can do it, I can do it. And that is Women Beyond Belief, Discovering Life Without Religion. And thank you so much for having me on the show earlier to talk about that. And then I went to a lot of events and met all these great

women like Abby Hafer, who were very active in the movement, had already written books, and you have to read Abby's book, The Not-So-Intelligent Designer. It is so funny. If you've ever liked science and evolution, this is the book to read. And I can assure you, God is not an intelligent designer because it hurts like hell to have a kid. I'm sorry. If I would have had two kids, I would have got that epidural in my house before I left. So I contacted these people and I asked them to write about their area of expertise. And we ended up with a volume of 13 essays, Women, The Religion. It covers everything. essays, Women, The Religion. It covers everything. There's Candace Gorham, who's a mental health counselor, talks about shame and guilt. And then Alexis Record talks about this, oh my God, it's this childhood education called Accelerated Christian Education. And it's amazing. She went

through eight, 12 years of that, and nobody would accept it as a diploma. Like this is ridiculous. Um, and we have a number of other essays. I have two women who are African-Americans. I have two women who are Hispanic. There's a transgender woman. There's a woman who's an atheist minister. Um, really a wide variety. If a woman can read this book cover to cover and not read religion, don't talk to her anymore. Just give up.

You mentioned that you went to some events and one event that you went to last year was MythCon, which is near us. MythCon is near us. It's in Milwaukee, which is just north of us. We didn't go. Well, we kind of didn't go. Tom kind of went to the after party and then got thrown out.

But you are going again this year. And there was a lot of pushback against MythCon last year. Pushback on your own blog about, you know, when I was reading through your blog about MythCon. Yeah. You seemed reticent, you knowent to perhaps go again, and you're a speaker this time, or going to be on stage. Well, okay, here's what happened. So you have to understand

I was in grad school in the 70s in Madison, and I have a really good friend who lives in Oshkosh. So the first conference I went to a year ago, they said we'll give you a free ticket and a guest guest and you come on over and advertise it. Well, that's okay with me. Sure. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm going to Wisconsin. So my

friend Gene came with me and then I heard all the people who were coming and the people who pulled out and I thought, well, this is going to be a shit show. Yeah, it was. But I thought, I'm going to see my friend Gene. I'm not going to bail out. No. So I went and there were some really good presentations. There was that movie, Batman and Jesus, which was cool. There was Melissa Chan, who talked about the enlightenment and how we're going backwards. There was the person who founded the Church of Scientology and he left and his son is still there. Yeah, Ron Miskovich?

Yeah, exactly. He's an interesting guy. I said that so well, I couldn't have said that. And then there was Sargon of Akkad, and he was kind of a substitute, because Thomas Smith was supposed to, and I could say he's a social justice warrior who would not be offended and he was supposed to interview david rubin and david didn't uh david bailed on it yeah so then they put in sargon of a cod so the topic of this this uh discussion and there wasn't a moderator okay which you know it's going to be a shit show oh yeah and they were talking about feminism and totally lost it so i was you know i kind of eased

my way up there and i asked the first question i said okay i'm the faithless feminist my goal is for women to leave religion because it's the last cultural barrier to gender equality and uh you're not going to get there with two men talking about feminism, right? Yay. There were three claps. My friend clapped. Anyway, and so this year, and I've been— And Sargon made fun of the question.

Sargon, if— Oh, of course he did. Sargon mocked your question. Yeah. Openly mocked it. Yeah, and I couldn't engage in a conversation because it was supposed to be Q&A anyway. So I had been on their podcast. I had done a Skype presentation to their membership. I had met them at Reason Rally and Sean Frazier said his mother liked my book. So, hey, I adopted him, right? they called me and they did kind of gang up on me.

They had two people call me and ask if I wanted to enter a debate about gender equality. And I went, shit, yes, I do. And then I thought I knew, I kind of knew who was going to be against. And so I did find out it was Karen Strawn, who's a woman who's a men's rights activist. She has like 200,000 followers on her YouTube channel, yada, yada, yada. a men's rights activist. She has like 200,000 followers on her YouTube channel, yada, yada, yada. And some people on my subscribers to Faithless Feminist, my blog said, oh, you shouldn't go. That's terrible, blah, blah, blah. And I said, look, if that audience is like it was last year, which were a lot of white young men, they're the people I need to talk to. They're the people we need to have a conversation with about

why is there gender equality and what's the basis for it? Why does it exist and what can we do? So I did get some pushback, but I'm very pleased to go because I think you have to talk in a place where people disagree with you. And I've really had a great time. I, you know, I always called myself a feminist. I was active in the sixties and seventies, but I've just been reading and updating myself and watching the news. So it's been a real learning experience for me. And I'm excited about it. And my friend Jean's coming again. Well, that's awesome. I can't, can I ask a question? And I, and I mean it genuinely, so I don't want it to come off as snarky. Okay, I will interpret anything you say now as genuine. My genuine hats are. Okay, go ahead.

Do you think those people in that audience can really be reached? I'm thinking of the audience and the way that they reacted to some of the things that were said in last year's event. And I understand the impulse and the desire to go out and say, hey, you know, this is the audience we should be reaching with this message. But, you know, is it possible to reach those folks? You know what I'm saying? Yeah, I think, and I have been listening to a lot of her videos. And there are clearly issues where men are at a disadvantage. If you want to get child custody, guess what? The whole system that we have identifies with gender stereotypes. We've had those gender stereotypes in our culture for thousands of years, thousands of years. And the religion is one of those institutions

that supports our society. And it's a huge, huge impact. I do not believe we'll get gender equality until religion's gone. You can't have a book that you believe in that says, you've committed original sin and think that you're going to get gender equality. So we have a stereotype. So men are known as aggressive, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, is a justice system that's part of that society going to say, oh, let's give the children to men. They're aggressive. No, they're going to say we have this women and they're so nurturing and they're so empathetic. Every woman. So every time we're going to really default in favor of the woman. So I think she doesn't unpack the why. I think she goes through, you know, why do men get longer prison sentence?

I think she goes through, you know, why do men get longer prison sentence, those kind of things. And she totally dismisses pay equity. It's women's choice, blah, blah, blah. But if you unpack it and look behind it, why? Why? This is a legacy of patriarchy and you can't just dismiss it and you can't blame it on feminists. That's not going to work. So, yeah, I'm totally psyched about doing it. Good. Well, I'd be interested to see if the audience, how you message this information and how well the audience is sort of primed to receive or not receive it. I'll admit I'm a little skeptical based on last year's audience that the audience themselves would be sort of primed against you. I hope that that's not the case.

I think it's brave that you're going. Um, I think, you know, one thing I will say too, is like, I kind of hate that idea that you, that,

that we shouldn't, that a conversation is going to happen. And that the response to shitheads being a part of the conversation is for all people that aren't shitheads to disengage that conversation. I kind of hate that idea. I think because then what happens is there's a shithead convention. Yeah.

It's not like they don't hold the convention. Exactly. And they want controversy. I totally understand that because it brings more people in and they did a lot of stuff about the historical Jesus and the barbara and all of that. Once you run through that a few times, you go, we got to move to something else. We have to have something more controversial to attract something interesting.

Who gives a shit? Right. So I I think there's a discussion to be had. I think she's done her research. I think she raises some very good issues. But men's rights activist is not the way forward. OK, they're going to have a grandmother speaking to this crowd. And I used to post my blog on my each week on a lot of atheist groups. And I always got I got this pushback because it's always about women. Right. With a faithless feminist blog is always about my.

I used to post it on 30 or 40 Facebook groups. Let me tell you how boring that was. Anyway, and I would get I felt responsible to respond. So I'd respond to all these 40 that pop up, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, and I got a lot of pushback from men. And my first response if they were really bad I would say what would your mother think of what you just now last year they had to send people around I think that's send like ushers around in the audience to quiet people down so they may be trying to shout you down while you're speaking too. So that might also happen. It's like, I'm 67. What can you do to hurt me? I got my pension. I got social security. I'm not doing this for money. So, uh, Abby, uh, let's talk a little bit about your article. Um, the, uh, the article that's in the book. Um, you spent a lot of time

in that article, uh, talking about intelligent design uh you clearly you think that intelligent design is not a thing that happened oh it's definitely not a thing that happened yeah i mean what i do is in in my chapter i talk about biology and then i talk about uh abrahamic religions and all the ways in which they just get biology utterly wrong. And one of those ways is the idea of intelligent design that God, you know, sat down with a whiteboard and a bunch of specs and tried to figure out how to make people. The idea that, you know, God is this engineer slash designer who just made humans as well as absolutely divinely possible because, after all, we were made in his image and all this kind of thing. It's just not true. good way to wind up becoming intimately acquainted with many of the problems of the human body

because my students would raise their hands and ask questions like, why is it that way? My shitty body is the way I become intimately acquainted with the shitty body. I'm just like, this thing shouldn't do this. Why does it do this? Why does everything hurt? That's why this is the perfect argument against intelligent design, because people actually care about their bodies. It's like you can talk about the fossil record and even people who love fossils can really only pay attention for about 10 minutes. But you start talking about men's testicles and suddenly everybody's paying attention. Well, it would be nice if people did pay a little attention, but I'm just saying overlooked.

Overlooked. You know, you tweet a few pictures and all of a sudden you're like, whatever. Unsolicited testicle pic. That didn't work again. What the? That's hilarious. Anyway, so yeah, intelligent design in the human body. Now, I don't actually go into testicles in this book because this is about women. I talk about testicles in my other book, but in this one, I talk about the bad design of the human female reproductive system, which Karen alluded to, which basically comes down to this.

That birth canal is way too small. Got that right. It's like, can we just pop this baby out now? Oh, no, we have to wait 12 hours. Oh, not only that, you have to, I mean, you have to wait nine months. What I posit, for instance, is that, you know, if we had been designed by a good engineer, there are a bunch of things that could have been done differently. First of all, we could have had a reproductive system like kangaroos, where the baby pops out when it's a little embryo, and then you stick it in a pouch on the outside of the body. Like a little fleshy sidecar for that thing to pop around in, right? Great idea. I would have loved that.

A little Joey in a bag you could carry it around with you. Right. Get a designer bag, you know? An intelligent designer bag. Michael Kors is Jesus. I would never have had to have that tummy tuck. Exactly. No, I mean, you know, your marsupial pouch might have gotten a little baggy after a while, but, you know, you could get that.

Yeah, well, you know. But anyway, it would just be so much better all the way around. I mean, those pouches come complete with a nipple for nursing. I mean, they're terrific. But did we get that? No. No. We didn't get wings either, so I just want to point that out. Oh, wings would have been cool. that? No. No. We didn't get wings either.

So I just want to point that out. Oh, wings would have been cool. Right? Exactly. Like there's so many modifications to the human body that would have been amazing. I feel like an eight-year-old with a crayon could draw a way better human. It would have horns and wings and shit. Maybe scales and stuff.

And I want to tell you one other thing about that. Okay. So it's like, it would be nice to have wings or, you know, another way around the, the birthing problem would be if we were made like centaurs where we had four legs on the ground and two hands and a head,

because then you could have wider hips and it would not be such a big problem. So many more limbs for me to be clumsy with. Jesus. You're like a centaur in a china shop. That's what I'm saying. Well, I don't know. I had my nails done today.

Now I would, as a centaur, I had my nails and more hooves done. And you could have your hooves done. If you wanted to have feet and hands and wings, it would mean having extra appendages. Guess what? You don't get to have that. And the reason is because we have the tetrapod body map that we have been stuck with since fish first walked out of the ocean. We have fish to blame. Those four limbs is what we're stuck with.

Tonight, Cecil, we're having sushi. We're going to have fish tonight. That's it. You know what? Fuck those guys. Fuck those fish. Okay, but she's going to talk, and I'm going to learn about this new word now. It's eukaryotic.

Is that right? Okay. You got to tell us, because this is the best story ever. Guys, listen up to what it could have been, what it could have been for you. Okay, yes. Well, in the book, I talk about all kinds of different gender roles and transsexual fish and all kinds of other things that happen in nature. Short version is there's this whole sort of theological idea, this whole branch of theology

called natural theology, which basically says, behold nature, we are going to make up a bunch of stuff about it and then claim that this proves that we're right about religion. That's roughly what it does. So they talk about nature as if they knew something about it, which they don't. I'm the biologist, I can tell you about nature. And so one of the things that I talk about in the book is, as I said, all of these different sexes and gender roles and things that you see in nature, including male emus, who are the ones that take care of the eggs and take care of the chicks and this kind of thing. And I talk about fish that transition

from being male to being female or from female to being male, or sometimes back and forth, depending upon circumstances. But what Karen is getting at is that I also talk about the organism with the most creative sex life that I know about. And its name is Tetrahymena thermophila. And it is a single-celled organism that has seven sexes. That's a lot to keep up with. I find that intimidating. Can it me to itself? No, no. Wait until she talks about choice. Think about the options you would have this way. I mean, as it is, I'm scared of the options I have the way I have it now. I have choice anxiety every time. What do I do with all that? Yeah, but the point is that, you know, if you go into a bar right now, there's only a 50% chance, assuming that there are men and women in the bar in equal proportions,

there's only a 50% chance that somebody you meet is actually the sex you're interested in. I'm assuming that you're a straight male here. But anyway, so there you are. Only 50% of the people there are likely to be people that you're going to have any possibility with. That's a higher percentage than I'd give myself, but all right. Some of you may be a little lower than 50%. Keep going. It's an outside number.

But the point is that if there were seven sexes and you could have sex with any of the six that were not your sex, that would mean that 85% of all the people out there would be potential partners. So, I mean, it definitely helps the odds. That's a higher rate of rejection than I'm comfortable dealing with. It sounds very, very interesting and fascinating. Thank you so much for joining us today. Tell the audience about your other book. What's the name of your other book, Abby? Okay, my other book is called The Not-So-Intelligent Designer,

Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not. We will include a link on this week's show notes to that book, as well as your book, Karen. Karen and Abby, thanks so much for joining us. This is a lot of fun. And good luck at Myth and Sis Milwaukee. Absolutely.

I would go, but they'll probably not let me. They'll throw you out again. Yeah, there you go. There you go. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers? I want the truth.

You can't handle the truth. This is from Huffington Post. Arizona House passes bill requiring women seeking abortions to say why. I'm only going to give you an abortion if you tell me the secret password. And they're like, independence. No, no, that's wrong. That's wrong.

Career? No, that's wrong. That's wrong. Because babies are fucking annoying. How about like, because I don't want this kid. How about vacations? Because 11 a.m on a saturday sounds like a really nice time to still have my eyes shut because i don't want my house to smell like peanut butter yeah right all the time because

i never want to own a hamster like you know there's like a like it would be great to just write down like all the fucking trifling inconveniences of having a child? Yeah, absolutely. I get another income in my family that I don't have to spend on a child's education. The legislation passed on Monday would force

women to answer questions including whether the abortion is elective for economic reasons. If the pregnancy was from a rape or incest, the government is making these women answer this question. If the woman does not want children at this time, every time there's an abortion,

she doesn't want this child at the very least at this time. It seems like that's a really self-evident answer. That's what I mean. That box should come pre-checked. At what point? How is that box should come pre-checked. At what point?

Who is, how is that ever not the answer? That's like a checkbox. It's like, are you filling out this test? Right. Check yes or no. I would really like this child one abortion, please. What? Please don't send me an email about how many women have to have abortions for medical reasons.

We're making jokes. If the abortion is due to fetal or maternal health, and if the patient is having relationship issues such as domestic abuse or an extramarital affair. What the fuck is happening, Arizona? The bill passed 35 to 22. It's been approved by the Senate. It now has to go to the House for amendments. This is like, a state representative said this is about getting information. No, this is about intimidating women. Yeah, that's all it is. You know, I remember when I was going to get a vasectomy,

and a lot of people had said to me, you might get some pushback. There might be some pushback from the doctor about you getting a vasectomy. Now, there wasn't when I went to go get a vasectomy. I was old enough at that time where I think the doctor, but I've read stories of people on the internet that get asked questions or pushed back. And doctors have a lot of sway over another person. So if they push you back, I actually, I know a guy who's in his early 60s now that went back in his 30s to get his vasectomy,

but he wanted to get a vasectomy when he was 21. He went in to go see a doctor, and the doctor convinced him not to because a doctor has a lot of sway over whether or not you're going to do something, right? And so even just as something as slight as asking questions about it might get you to feel self-conscious enough

not to do it. It's another barrier in the way for women who have to bear all the fucking, every single weight of pregnancy. All the risk. All the risk. All the weight. Everything. I understand that men who are involved

in the pregnancies afterwards have to bear that weight too, but all the stuff leading up to the baby getting ejected from the body, that's all the lady, man. Right. That's all on her. This is the, this is, it's so funny because it's like, you want to talk about big government?

Yeah. Like having to answer intrusive fucking questions. Fucking, what is this? Are you having like relationship issues? How do you feel about it? Do you feel okay about getting rid of this pregnancy? Do you realize that maybe it might have been a normal kid who fucking cares why like there's some shit it's so

funny it's like it's like you know a couple of fucking hillbillies get in trouble for like raising cattle on government land and these fucking dipshits will flood to them you know and be like we don't need the government all up in our business and it's like well i want to know i am the government i want to know what's going on in your fucking interpersonal relationships i want to know what the result of your sex life however that plays out i want to be a part of that tell me some things did you fuck you with all that shit also fuck you with all that and also just like you know we talked about the poverty. You know, a lot of people that have abortions, they can't afford to have the child anyway. And they probably can't afford to even have the contraception to prevent the child from even coming on in the first place.

Look, we don't ask anybody to justify anything else that's legal. Yeah. Right? Anything else that's legal. Like if I want to go buy milk. Yeah. I don't have to fill out a fucking questionnaire about like, well, I'm thirsty and I'd like the vitamin D. I don't have to fucking do that shit.

It's either fucking legal or it's not legal. If it's legal, then shut your fucking mouth and give me my fucking abortion or whatever it is. These women are going to have a child and they might have to be on assistance, but you hate the people that are on assistance.

You don't like those people. You try to take that assistance away from those people. You're trying to, you know, make them fucking eat the fucking blue apron of fucking the poverty, poverty, health, poverty, food production or whatever, where we're going to send them fucking canned goods and fucking like irradiated bread or whatever. But you know, like the fucking thing is, is like, we don't want to take care of those people anyway. We don't like those people.

We don't want those people. I mean, I'm not saying we, but I'm saying like the government, they, a lot of these people in power, they don't want to take care of those people. They want to constantly cut that budget,

constantly low, raise that threshold for people to actually get that welfare. Well, having a child is huge economic stress, man. It's enormous economic stress on people that can't, that might not be able to handle it, but you're going to force them to have that child because you're going to force them away from abortions. But then you're also going to force them deeper and deeper into poverty. You're creating a cycle of poverty that some people can never get out of because you're

regulating when they can reproduce. And then you're stopping any kind of assistance they could possibly get it's like this awful shitty cycle well i mean to further exacerbate the problem when when the representatives were debating the issue democrat uh daniel hernandez suggested the questionnaire because one guy's like oh this bill is about getting information he said well let's ask some questions about whether women had access to affordable health care and access to a comprehensive sex education program. And this fucking dude, this fucking Senator Farnsworth, Republican shocking, said,

sex education is not a health care issue. Having access to contraception, he says, is not a health care issue. It tells you exactly what they care about. How is this not a health care issue? This is a guy who doesn't know how biology works. If I have to go to a fucking doctor to get contraception, it is literally impossible that that is not a healthcare issue. How the fuck is that not a healthcare issue?

Then you know what? Make all that fucking prescription fucking contraceptive medications. Make them available. It's not a healthcare issue. We should be able to buy it without a prescription. Oh, no, I got to go talk to my doctor for everything but a fucking rubber? Oh, all right. Turns out that is

a fucking healthcare issue. Sex education is a healthcare issue. Either that or sex and health aren't linked in any way. Well, and the fact that you're right, I remember when Sarah and I were in college and we were first starting out and we didn't have a lot of money,

she would go to Planned Parenthood to get her pills. She had to have a screening all the time and she had to buy them from them. Like that's like a prescription. Like you can't just walk into the store and buy birth control pills. It's not on the shelf at Walmart. You can't just walk in and buy it.

And it's also prohibitively expensive if you're not on insurance. Like it's not a cheap thing. It is if you go to Planned Parenthood because they're subsidized. But the rest of the world, like it's not fucking cheap to get on a birth control pill.

Like you said, like condoms are kind of it, man. Like condoms and like spermicide inserts. Like I can't really think of anything else that's like super effective that is like worthwhile. It's like super effective. That is like worthwhile. It's a, it's,

it's just shitty. It's just a shitty, shitty way to make sure that they can control how women's fucking reproduction works. And it's, and it's just shitty. And, and fucking Arizona should be ashamed about this. So we want to thank our patrons. Of course, we want to thank our patrons.

Of course, we want to thank all our patrons. We want to thank our newest patrons. Tor Ann. Tor Arn. Tor Arn. Tor Anus. Tor Anus. Sorry.

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Calf, PivotalSolutionsConsulting.com. Love them. I feel like I just did an ad for you. You need to pay me more money, PivotalSolutionsConsulting.com. I'll keep saying that for more money. And Paul, thanks so much for your generous donations. We really do truly appreciate all you patrons. You patrons make Glory Hole Studios possible.

You make it possible for us to produce as many shows as we do and also make sure that we can bring you quality guests. So thank you so much. So, Tom, we got an interesting message from Aaron about last week's show on Da Coach. I love this. He says, my grandpa once said to me, quote, you know, sometimes having a good

shit is better than sex. I told him, quote, Grandpa, you're having the wrong kind of sex. Or the right kind. Having a good shit is better. Better? We normally play messages at the

beginning of the show, but we saw this message and we want to play it here now instead. Hey, Cecil and Tom. Isaac Collin here from Ontario, Canada. Just on my lunch break, listening to you guys like I do every day and just wanted to call in and say thanks for the great work. It's amazing what you guys do. I'm Canadian, so we're either rednecks or snowflakes up here,

and it's nice to have kind of a middle ground on that option. I wanted to correct one thing because I hear this brought up on your show a lot and it's a really common uh common misconception that uh when the second amendment was written they only had muskets and and you know things like that um there were fully automatic guns there were you know there were the the flintlock rifles that could shoot 20 rounds in five seconds so it's it's not a new issue um but people keep bringing it up so i just wanted to correct that and uh and correct and that can shoot 20 rounds in five seconds. So it's not a new issue, but people keep bringing it up. So I just wanted to correct that and congratulate you guys.

Keep up the great work, motherfuckers. Well, I want to thank you for calling in. Thank you so much for calling in. And thanks for listening. We thank everybody who listens. I do want to say, the one thing that people send is the Puckle Gun, I think it's called.

And Tom and I watched that being fired, and it's not very fast. And it's also prohibitively large. Like, the Puckle Gun was a gun that was a matchlock, and you had to turn a crank each time and then load priming

powder and then touch the match to it, and then it would shoot. We actually didn't come up with uh with cartridge ammunition until i want to say it was like the civil war was when we first started coming up with actual cartridges that went and that was like very rare i think in the civil war where they had a a gun that would have a you know a primer a primer that's built in. Most of that stuff was all, you know, they, they came up with Flint locks later on, but it was match locks early on,

which were just little wicks that they used to dive into stuff. Yeah. And it's not true. It's not true that a Flint lock rifle shoots 20 rounds in five seconds. That's, that's just not, I don't know of any, I'm looking at it right now.

And here's the thing, like I'm happy to be, to be corrected on this, but I know of any, I'm looking at it right now. And here's the thing, like I'm happy to be, to be corrected on this, but I just need something, need you to send me a source. So, so if you're listening and you know of a source, send it to dissonance.podcast.gmail.com.

I'm happy to look at anything. The one thing that I've seen that does this is the puckle gun. Like I said, it's prohibitively large. It required a couple of guys to use it. And as I saw it being operated, it was a prime powder with a match, and that did not go fast.

Now, it was faster than loading an entire new round with pulling off the fucking paper and stuffing it in there and all that stuff. It was clearly faster than that, but it was not fucking as fast as, say, an AR-15 could shoot. Last week, when we talked about Yakov, the ant,

Matt sends in, you guys really missed the racist bit. He declared the ant Jewish before killing her. We didn't gas it. Oh, yeah. I mean, he definitely... And he brought it back to life. I mean, let's be real honest. He did kill that ant.

The other one shot into space. We're not sure about the one that was over there. I know, I love it. We're not sure about the other one that flew off into the distance, but it's light. Ants don't really hurt themselves when they fall. So I'm confident that other ant is okay. He really like pulled a full Pontius Pilate, like killed a Jew that came back to life. It's like a whole thing.

It's crazy we got a long message from Nicholas Nicholas is from Australia and he sent us a very long message we're sorry we didn't run into you in Skepticon either he talks a lot about Johan Hari

in this message we want to thank you for listening and thank you for being a patron I'm sorry we missed you maybe if we ever travel back again we'll get a want to thank you for listening and thank you for being a patron. I'm sorry we missed you. Maybe if we ever travel back again, we'll get a chance to meet you, Nicholas. Absolutely. I want to thank Abby Hafer and Karen Garst. Abby

is an author in Karen's book. Karen is the editor and writer and collector of all the essays for Women v. Religion, The Case Against Faith and for Freedom. Abby Hafer was one of the essayists and she also joined us. She wrote a book called

The Not-So-Intelligent Designer, Why Evolution Explains the Human Body and Intelligent Design Does Not. We want to thank them for coming on our show. They were a lot of fun to talk to and we'll put links in the show notes to all of their work. That's going to wrap it up for today. We're going to leave you like we always do with the Skeptic's Creed.

Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo,

Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death and towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, big foot, yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, 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.

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