Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 41: The Year of the Bible

Episode Date: April 1, 2012

Atheist Symbol Rejected By Capital One, But Jesus Is Preapproved Atheists sue Pennsylvania for declaring 2012 'Year of the Bible' House gives preliminary OK to bill that supporters say preserves religious freedom, but opponents say allows discrimination Rick Santorum Calls Obama a Nig New York City Department of Education Bans References To Dinosaurs To Avoid Insulting Creationists Hapless MPs defend faith healers Nottingham Imam jailed for sex attack on two boys Church fakes teens' kidnapping using real gun Apocalypse 2012: France's Bugarach Peak Draws Believers Who Await Alien Rescuers Visit our Website at http://dissonancepod.com for all the links.

Do you want to get Cognitive Dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we calmly and with balance and intellectual precision politely challenge beloved religious figureheads, complementary medicine, and politicians. We believe you deserve the benefit of the doubt and that you should be taken at your word as a citizen of the world. It's polite. It's erudite. Come in and have a cup of tea. It's polite. It's erudite. Come in and have a cup of tea.

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. I hope you guys enjoyed our April Fool's joke. We are recording on April Fool's.

Yeah. You are not listening on April Fool's. Yeah, probably not on the second and the third. They're like, what the fuck is this? What the fuck does this even mean? But I like to think of every one of our episodes as a little April Fool's joke. And the joke is on you. And the fools are here all the time.

I mean, fucking, we are stocked full of fools. But this is episode 41 of Cognitive Dismissed. I noticed, hold on a second. It's 4-1 and it's episode 41. Whoa. I don't, I mean, I don't want to fucking freak you out this early in the morning. You just blew my mind. Because I know you're not a morning person. At the same time.

I figure if I throw this at you this early, it could just fucking have to, you just might have to reset for the whole day. I'm going to have to record later. I just. I just filled my pants. I can't handle the coincidence. It's almost like numbers recur in patterns sometimes.

It's crazy. Over the course of time. It's crazy. I'm going to play the lotto. Make sure your powerball number is 41. That's so funny because I don't know where people are listening, but in Illinois the lotto was was up to, like, $80 gurgillion. It was up to almost half a billion. And everybody was playing.

Like, everybody was playing the lotto. And I'm thinking, now is the wrong time to play. You've got the most people in the pool. Your chances are the worst for winning right now. Was $50 million not enough incentive before? Yeah, 50 million is not enough. The thing is that the government – look, the government is going to take it all, Tom. You're going to wind up with like a fucking two pence when you come out of there.

I'm just – God, it all. I wonder how you get your odds down to like one in – I don't know, like one in a thousand or a hundred thousand or you know because even one in a thousand is a ridiculous fucking odds one in a thousand is fucking redonkulous odds but even if you could I don't think to get it down that that far you'd have to spend

so much money I don't even know that it'd be worth it oh yeah if you're just gonna buy lotto tickets yeah enough enough numbers in order to guarantee a win. There was a group that tried to do that. I thought they did, yeah. The thing is that you can't buy, there's not enough

time to buy as many numerical sequences as you need to buy. They weren't able to buy all the tickets. And then you get that poor person who's filling out those little dots, that little scantron sheet, their hand is cramping at a certain point. They hired a whole team of people to try to do it.

It was a group of investors, pooled their money, they hired a whole team of people. But you just run out of time when you're talking about numbers that large. It's like you can't do it. It doesn't work. I do believe that atheists are parasites in the sense they're benefiting from everything that religious culture is built in America, but they're doing nothing to add energy into the system. See, so the first story we've got to talk about is from the consumerist. This is Capital One. Capital One, you know, when you get your credit card, so whenever you pull out your credit card and think about how you're swimming in an ocean of debt and despair,

and you're swiping your card, you can get various inspirational images on there, you know. I have a waterproof card, so I don't, because I cry every time I pull it out. I just start weeping. So mine is definitely smudge proof. Mine is actually made of mothballs because I won't open my fucking wallet for anybody. It's crowbar and dent proof because prying that motherfucker open takes some effort. Oh, that's awesome. But the Capital One card, you can pick various images.

And you can pick them from food and hobbies. And then they eat the food. Who the fuck wants a fucking hot dog on their credit card? A giant gelatinous person with a fucking big hot dog on there. I love my food. Jabba the Hutt's credit card just has a big frog on it. It's like, ah. Oh, charge it.

That's awesome. But you get spiritual images on there, too, so that you can think of like Peter Popoff and Jesus and whatever. Whenever you're, let's get out of that holy water. Right, sure. That's why mine is waterproof, too. Yeah, you just dunk your, that actually prevents you from accumulating interest. Yeah, oh yeah. You just take your credit card and dunk it and get out of that holy water before you swipe it.

It's like dunking an Oreo. It's the perfect match really. You know what? I wanted to get – I actually tried to do this time. I tried to get an atheist symbol. I wanted to get Stalin on mine and they wouldn't let me. Hey, a mustache. He's got a mustache.

That's fucking awesome. In a nutshell, you can get all these various religious icons on there, and those are all pre-approved. But the atheist symbol, the A, they just rejected it. They're just like, yeah, no. Yeah. You can't have an A. It's violently anti-religious. Yeah, we're not going to go with an A.

What if it was an adulterer? Right? It's like the Scarlet Letter. You're just like, oh, no, no, no, you misunderstand. I fuck other women. Yeah. No, no, no. It's cool.

No, I believe in God. Yeah, no, I'm fucking religious. Of course I do. Otherwise, who would forgive me? Because I'll tell you this much. My wife sure isn't. Hey, oh. Yeah, no kidding.

No kidding. The thing is that there's like 40 religious things, and there's a specific religious section where you can fucking mock your card up with the religious shit. But the other – the atheist symbol is rejected. You know, it's a company that lets you do this sort of thing. My suggestion is just don't use the company. You know, vote with your dollar here. They're taking your – I mean, first off, you know, credit cards should be used in moderation as it is. But secondly, you shouldn't be considering a company like this if they're going to do this.

You know, it's real easy as an atheist just to be like, well, fuck you. I don't have to give Capital One my money. There's plenty of other companies out there that are just as good, if not better. You know, the atheist symbol I would want would just be like a blank space. Just like cut the corner of the card right off of there. Yeah. Just be like, it's not a thing. Like, atheism isn't a thing. I don't need a symbol. Well, they say it's anti-theism of there. Just be like, it's not a thing. Like, atheism isn't a thing.

I don't need a symbol. Well, they say it's anti-theism on there. I mean, I don't know if you saw that. It's anti-religion. And you're like, well, no, it doesn't necessarily have to be. It's not like it's like a fucking Christian cross or a crescent, like an international no symbol across it. Right, right.

Well, that would be kind of awesome, too. That would be funny, too. I'm thinking I'm going to get, like, goatsy on mine with a guy, like, holding his own asshole open or something like that. Because that's a great way not to use it because you don't want to look at it. You're just like, well, I don't want to take it out of my wallet. I don't want to have to look at it. I want to make sure I offend every clerk at every shop.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. So when I hand it over, I can be like, be like hey just so you know this pre-printed credit card from a major corporation represents me i'm a fucking individual and you can tell how much of an individual i am because i selected from a pre-approved list of images when i got this credit card. I sent a picture of my own junk and they put it on there. Can I see your three digit security code, sir? It's actually only two digits. And may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. Madam President, I hear the floor and suggest the admins of the quorum.

Clerk will call the roll. Expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted. So Pennsylvania, Cecil, this is a story from Fox News. Pennsylvania has declared 2012 the year of the Bible. I know we're like four months late to the party, right? And getting this out. But when it first happened, I was just like, well, that's fucking irrelevant and weird. Sure.

Yeah. Why would you do that? And now atheists are suing. National Atheist and Agnostic Group is suing the Pennsylvania lawmakers for passing a resolution that declares 2012 the year of the Bible. I actually think that that's the wrong way to go about this. First of all, declaring the year of the Bible is so unbelievably asinine and meaningless. There's better ways, I think, to spend time and money. But fine, if you object to it, object to it.

I think the better way, though, to object to it is to just embrace the Bible. I think so, too. I think you're right. Just be like, ah, you're the Bible, and just start promoting all the biblical passages, which is the many, many, many of them, which are filled with genocide and misogyny and rape and torture and slavery. Just be like, hey, you're the Bible. And just start quoting that fucking hateful ass thing. You know what I think they should do is take the money that they're spending on these lawyers and they should hire a helicopter and buy a bunch of frogs and just drop them from the sky.

I think that's a better way to show people, hey, this is the fucking year of the Bible, man. Let's fucking rock this thing. Die a couple rivers red. Right. I think, you know, we can bring the plagues back. Release thousands of locusts into the air. We have the technology. Let's have the year of the fucking Bible.

Right. I agree with you. Just tell people, look, I'm pro-plagues. Right? I am a biblical literalist. I love the pl i'm pro plagues yeah right i am i am a biblical literalist i love the plagues the plagues were right yeah they were righteous and if they were if they were good for the egyptians when they didn't happen the first time they're good i have a t-shirt marking each day of the plagues you know like it just like says famine on one of

them and it's just like says famine on one of them. And it's just like fucking like two fucking devil horns like what's up famine bitches? Seriously, like this is this is a dumb idea. But you're right. I don't know. I don't know if this is the right thing to do. And I think this is one of those things, one of those moments on our show, Tom, where people will have contention with what we say. I mean, I think I think you've got to stand up to these people

because they just keep pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing to try to get this to become, they're trying to make this revisionist history like, hey, it's a Christian nation. Hey, we're all Christians. Hey, let's fucking have the year of the Bible. I mean, there's got to be some pushback to this. I don't know.

I mean, I don't know if taking them to court is the best course of action, but I don't know what other course of action to do other than be ridiculous like us. What blows my mind is that lawmakers thought this was a valuable use of their fucking time. That's what would offend me if I was Pennsylvania, right? True, true, true. Be like, wait a minute. You did this shit on my fucking dime. Yeah.

Like we just went through the hellacious recession that we went through. We're barely coming out the other side of this thing. Yeah. Jobs are still in the fucking toilet. And you're spending my money in session talking about this. For real. It's that onion thing where there's like having figured out all the other world's problems, Congress finally attacks baseball steroid use. You know what I mean? Like it's ridiculous. There's so many things that they could be working on that they're not working on. I also feel too it's like this sort of thing doesn't need to be said.

If you're a religious state, you're going to be a religious state. Nothing is stopping you from being a religious state. Nothing's preventing you from being religious. It's a year of the Bible. Well, I mean, if you're fucking religious, isn't every year the year of the Bible? I would hope so. Is it like Lent where you can be like, whoa, I'm glad that's over. Man, year of the rat. That's awesome. I love the year of the rat. Let's bring the fucking year of the chicken. Year of the Bible. That's awesome. I love the Year of the Rat. Let's bring the fucking Year of the Chicken. Year of the Bible, that's a tough year. I mean, are they declaring it like Year of Every Book?

Like next year it's going to be like Year of Lord of the Flies. That would be a shitty book to live under. This sucks. I don't like this. I'm sick of pig heads. I don't want to eat any more pig heads. All we ever eat is pig heads around here. Year of the Lord of the flies.

Year of Sound and Fury. Wait, I don't understand. I don't understand what's happening this year. It's just the first six months of the year of Sound and Fury is just utter confusion and chaos. People bouncing into one another. It's like, ah ah i am a man child oh be nice oh my son doesn't stand a chance the whole world's gone gay oh my god what's happening now we work hard we play hard The Kansas House recently passed the no place like home law in that they advanced legislation that would allow a religious defense to discrimination based on a religious hatred, bigotry.

Yeah. Yeah. of gays. So basically if you own an apartment building or a business of some kind, you just don't have to serve homosexuals if you can claim that you have some kind of religious objection to homosexuality. So when they did this to black people, it's called redlining. You know, when they did this to black people, it's called redlining. When banks would refuse to lend money in certain neighborhoods to certain racial groups and artificially draw these sort of segregated racial borders, we got rid of that shit because we recognize it as fucking wrong. And we don't have a religious exemption for it. We don't have a religious exemption that says, well, you can discriminate against any other group of people.

Right. The only exception is gays. They should put in polygamy, shouldn't they? Like if you're a polygamist, you can't do that sort of thing. I guess maybe it might be illegal in certain places. So you can't – I don't know why that's illegal. Why would that be illegal? Why would polygamy be illegal?

If it's all fucking consenting, who cares? If it wants to be like one girl and six dudes, like, hey, man, there you go. It's fucking a Bukkake marriage. You know what I mean? Like, good. You know, who cares? Same thing goes the other way around. If it's one dude and six girls, it's like, cool. You want to get married to six girls?

And those six girls want to get married to you. I'm not talking about fucking like marrying them off when they're fucking six or seven or whatever it is. That's the problem. But, you know, if people really wanted to have like a marriage that was more than just two people and they're all adults and they're all consenting, who cares? I have no idea. Yeah, I don't know. I think that this is obviously a step in the wrong direction here. We're talking about discrimination. I have no idea. And my religion sort of entwines with my racism. I can't say, well, my religion now says that I shouldn't be – I shouldn't treat blacks as equals, so I'm not going to run a place to them. That's fucking bullshit.

You can't do that. There's nothing wrong with – and I mean what else do you object to I guess is what I'm wondering. Like how far can this go? It really only can go to homosexuals. So again, it's just you're segregating out a single group. And it really, I, this is the only place that, that homosexual, that homophobia comes from. The only place that homophobia can come from, I think, is a religious standpoint. We've talked about this in the past. The only thing you can think as a secular person, if you're against it, is like, well, it just kind of grosses me out.

Like the idea of two dudes or two women having sex grosses me out. So I don't want to I don't want it to happen because there's no moral problem. No, I mean, you can't come up with a rational framework that denies consenting adults an ability to do what they want with their own bodies. You just can't do it. I've never seen one put forth yet. I would challenge anybody to come up with a rational framework that says, you know, the closest they get is like, well, they can't have kids. And it's like, well, there's no prescription toward having kids.

Right. That's not something that is necessary. Yeah. That's as close as they get to moving away from a religious argument. And it's a non-argument. It's a nonsense argument. It doesn't have any basis in reality it's not a social good to have kids so that's fucking nonsense you know you look

at this and you know the first thing i think is like okay great so these assholes can now discriminate against homosexuals you know because they can they can cite Religious grounds if you can cite Religious grounds to To do anything If anytime that you want to Ignore a law All you have to do is cite religious Belief and you've got a book

Like the bible or the quran You can kind of do whatever The fuck you want right You're just you're just giving people a fucking ticket to anarchy. And that's clearly not the intention, right? That's clearly not the intention. The intention here, like you said, is to focus on a single group of people. And how much more discriminatory can you get?

And these people come back and they say, well, you know, you've got to respect our religious freedoms. Well, no, I don't respect your religious freedoms when they infringe upon other people's rights. We know we know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like, the anti-war government, the America was a source for division around the world. So Cecil Santorum has a history of the half gaff. Half gaff? The half gaff. I love it.

I love it. Half gaff Santorum. I love it. That actually, I don't know, that might actually be a sex act now that I think about it. The half gaff Santorum might be. Full gainer half gaff Santorum. Full gainer? Oh, no.

Fucking – that's a varsity move all the time. It really is. You've got to be a flexible person. You just got to have that sort of young, limber frame in order to do that. I'm just saying put a few drinks in you before you give that one a shot, right? Because you got to – And be okay with waking up sore. Just be okay with that.

Yeah. There's a price to be paid, kids. I mean, nothing comes free. Freedom ain't free, and neither is the full gainer half-gaff Santorum. Santorum's done this a couple of times. You've got to do it in a hushed tone, like you're one of the announcers. It looks like he's going to try the full gainer half-gaff Santorum. Actually, when you perform that act, you have to do it in front of an audience so they can hold up little placards with your numerical value.

Little numbers on them. West Germany always gives you a four. No matter what you do, you cannot please the French judge. It's just impossible. Although, let's be honest. Like, if I got a four, I'd be like, hey, improvement. Anything over negatives for me is a fucking improvement. Wake up.

So Santorum keeps, he's done this a couple of times where he'll start off saying something and he'll do that thing. Everybody does it, right? You start off saying something and you kind of get your words mixed up, and you're about to say, like, nigger, for example. And you catch yourself, because you realize that you're an unbelievably racist asshole. Right. And you shouldn't be saying shit like that,

because you're a terrible fucking human being. Sure. And Santorum, it sounds very much like he was going in that direction recently in his speech talking about President Obama. What could he have possibly been saying? And I want to quote here from somebody on my feed. He says he was trying to say niggling socialist or my favorite nigger Roth, the Sleeper in the Depths. I think that's the way you got to go, Niggeroth the Sleeper in the Depths.

I think he thinks that Obama is actually part of the Lovecraftian mythology and is part of the sort of the Cthulhu, you know, Cthulhu, dark Cthulhu rising sort of thing that's going on in our country. What could he have possibly be saying? I mean, he's he's clearly this is how this man talks. This is how when he's in company that knows that he's not being fucking recorded, he is he is a guy who's going to drop the fucking N-word. Well, I mean, the problem is that he said this before when he was talking about welfare recipients. And instead of talking about welfare recipients, he started talking about blah people.

Yeah, right. Blah people. Blah people. Yeah. So, I mean, this is the second time that something, that he's half done this, the half gaffe. that's something that he's half done this, the half gaffe. And, you know, I will say it's not possible to know what exactly he was going to say. But it's awfully damning.

It really, it doesn't look good for Santorum. And Santorum usually looks so good. Santorum normally has a very nice sheen to him. What I, I mean, I really just don't know if you're somebody who's out there thinking, Santorum's my guy. This is my guy. He's the guy who has my— How is that possible? I don't know, dude.

I don't know. You're fucking Kang or Kodos, and you're thinking, Santorum is my guy. What does this new development bring to the table for you? What does this, you know, because each little thing that Santorum does is one more bit on the scale that pulls him down. You know what I mean? Like there's one more piece, one more ounce every time he opens his mouth, every time he's hateful, every time he's bigoted against homosexuals.

And now, as it seems, he's a bigoted person racially too. He doesn't feel like a person who is a thoughtful person. He feels like a person. You said it to me the other night. He feels like a person, Tom, who's figured it all out. Yeah, I think he's a guy who thinks he knows the world, you know. And he is not open to new thoughts or new ideas. And he knows he's got your number is the feeling I get from this guy.

I mean this is just a feeling that I get from him. But I look at this guy speaking and I think you're so absolute. You're so sure in all of your convictions about everything. If this was a racial slur that was going to come out, I mean, the first thing I think is, what more does a man have to do to impress you? I mean, if going to Harvard, if being a constitutional scholar, elected to state senate, made president of the United States, first black president. If those things don't – I mean if – I don't care where you stand on the political issues, but if you're not impressed by the man's credentials and you still just see color, wow. Yeah.

I mean that's an impressive – I mean at that point you almost have to clap and be like, bravo. Yeah. Way to stick to your guns there, man. Yeah. I mean, what the fuck? And it says so much about you and nothing about Obama. No, that's the

thing. It says so much about you. Absolutely. This is not a thoughtful, well-reasoned, considered guy at all. No, no. I don't understand how you vote for this sweater-vested asshole. So we're going to take a break and give you all the information that you need to find us on Facebook, Google+. We're going to be using Google+, maybe.

We'll see. Possibly. We'll be throwing a tumbleweed or two out in there. If it's not a pain in my ass, I'll be using Google+. You can find us on Facebook, maybe Google+, Twitter. You can email us and you can leave us voicemail messages if you'd like. We'll give you all that information and then come back for the rest of the show in just a moment. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com.

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Long distance rates apply. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated. So Cecil, this story is just mind-numbing to me. New York City Department of Education, you know, when they're putting tests together, they have to be very careful about how they phrase their questions, right? Because you're putting a test together in New York City for a large number of people, and you want to make sure that your test questions don't inadvertently admit to any kind of bias or cause the students any kind of undue harm. So certain words are omitted from the test taking or test creation process.

Words like dinosaur. Why would dinosaur be taken out, Tom? Because it might upset students emotionally who are creationist. You know what I say to that? You know what I say to that, though? Yes, I want to know. Good. I hope you're upset. I hope you're so upset. If hearing the word dinosaur or reading the word dinosaur causes an emotional reaction in you that you simply are like, ah, fucking short circuit in my brain.

I can't take the test. Somebody said dinosaur. What the fuck? Get out of – don't – you don't – school is not for you. Aren't those kids homeschooled anyway? I don't know. I mean really? Really?

Come on now. Those kids aren't fucking going to regular school. And what is it? Do you have a fucking, like, the parents go in on fucking Comcast and parental lock the Flintstones? Like, what the fuck? I mean, like, you can't go through

a, you can't pretend there's not dinosaurs. Yeah, I know, right? Come on. I understand if you're, even the Creationist Museum has dinosaurs. It does. It does. You can ride one. You can ride one. They have a saddle on one of them.

And you can do just like Jesus when he rode in. We rode on his dinosaur. On a triceratops. Yeah. During the Mesozoic era. Yeah. That didn't happen. The idea that you would just be like, yeah can't use that word dinosaur would what what wait this is education that's the thing that's

baffling i mean i remember a unit on dinosaur my kid is in preschool he just had a unit on dinosaurs and here's why. Because there were used to be dinosaurs. Right. Right. I am kind of flabbergasted. There's some things on this list that, I mean, I kind of, like, there's part of me that understands that they don't want to make people feel uncomfortable or weird. You know, like, I see on here that they're not allowed to talk about like vermin, like

roaches or anything like that. And you think, you know, maybe that's a way in which to protect students that might have to live in a place like that. So some of these are, I can see, but, you know, rock and roll music? Really? You can't talk about rock music? You can't talk about rock music? You can't talk about rap music? You can't talk about politics? What are we raising then? What kind of child are we raising where we can't talk about politics at all? I don't – there's so many things in here that I'm just like I don't understand how you don't – how you not talk about something like this.

How do you not talk about dinosaurs in biology class? How do you not talk about politics in a social studies class? How do you not talk about nuclear weapons in history class? Right. What the fuck was the Cold War about? Actual cold? Yeah. Like it was like Mr. Freeze?

Yeah, it was a weather machine. That's insane. Well, death and disease, how do you talk about you not talk about death and disease in history class? You know, the fucking plague? Can't talk about that. There's an entire—you're just basically omitting things that are uncomfortable. All the wars were fought with Nerf guns. Yeah, totally. Oh, I'm out.

Nerf swords. I'm out. They just hold their hands up and, like, walk off the field. Fucking France won again, man. Fuck! Fucking Normans! Slavery is in here. That's ridiculous.

Hey, remember the Civil War? Yeah, no, that's fucking. No, I don't because we couldn't fucking talk about slavery. Here's one I can get behind. Here's one I can get behind. Celebrities. Yeah, right. That has no place in the fucking education.

Get rid of that one. That's cool. Celebrities. Yeah, right. That has no place in the fucking education. Let's get rid of that one. That's cool. This is kind of completely fucking out of control. Yeah.

And granted, this is just test questions. So this isn't like units or anything. Right. It's not like they can't have like a unit about like war and terrorism or whatever. I know, but how do you – a death and disease is on here, Tom. How do you have a quiz about that era in Europe about the fucking plague times? How do you have a test on that

if you can't mention death and disease? Well, yeah, right. I mean, or slavery. What caused... List some of the causes of the Civil War. Well, we're just going to skip over that one. Yeah, can't put slavery on there as a fucking multiple choice. World War I, you know, what was the precipitating event of World War I?

Well, fuck, it was an assassination. No, it wasn't. You can't talk about that. Can't talk about that. Oh, fuck. I guess it was just bad gas. Somebody had bad gas. I don't know.

I mean, what do you do? You just make up alternate versions of reality. Right. Now, in order to, this is just, it's so fucking absurd, but dinosaurs? order to this is just it's so fucking absurd but dinosaurs i mean the fact of an animal like imagine if like any other animal was on here right like well zebras just we just can't talk about zebras anymore i mean this is embarrassing do you think do you think england has this i don't know sweden has this do you think they're just like? I don't know. Do you think Sweden has this?

Do you think they're just like, well, we don't. Here's a list of animals that make us feel afraid inside. Yeah, yeah. Here's a list of fauna that I fear. Yeah. Yeah. You know what I noticed isn't on here? Like Noah's Ark isn't on here.

Let's leave that one on here. Like let's leave fucking stupid – well, I guess that would be under witchcraft or sorcery. Oh, yeah. Oh, give it to him, Tom. Give it to him. You can't mention – you can't even mention like religious holidays or festivals. So how do you do social studies without talking about religion? The birthdays because the Jehovah's Witness too.

You can't mention those. Yeah, like, well, it's President's Day. What's that mean? I'm not allowed to know. I don't know. What's a president? Yeah, well, yeah. What about what do you do for fucking Lincoln's birthday?

Right? Oh, I know. There's so many conflicting things going on there. You've got slavery, birthdays, politics, war and bloodshed. The teacher's just standing up front waving their arms going, warning, warning, warning. Yeah, history books are going to be easy. It'll be like one thing happened. God made us. Yeah, and then we're just easy. It's going to be like one thing happened. God made us. Yeah.

And then we're just here. Actually, it was yesterday. He just made us yesterday. 6,000 years. Shit. I'm a super – I'm an ultra young earth creationist. I think the earth was just made in about an hour and a half ago. When I made my coffee is when the earth was made.

Right. Well, here's the thing. When I made my coffee is when the earth was made. Right. Well, here's the thing. Like, if God can create, you know, the earth and create everything exactly as it is now, poof, why couldn't he create it exactly as it is now now? Right. With Chick-fil-A's and everything.

Yeah. No, absolutely. And implant all those memories in everyone that they actually have a life. No, I think you're onto something here. Why not? We're going to start the fucking ultra-young Earth creationists. That's going to be our new group. We should be neo-young Earth creationists because we believe it's constantly being re...

We're neocrees. Re-neocrees. That's awesome. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. So this is a story, we kind of talked about this story, the faith healers were taken to task for, I don't know, promoting faith healing. Which isn't a thing. And now this is a story from The Guardian. A cross-party group of MPs has attempted to bully the Advertising Standards Authority over its ruling against faith healers, attacking the suggestion that people who make health claims should be required to provide evidence for them. What? What evidence?

It's awesome. I had no idea that the UK had military police that were so involved in there. I had no idea. I thought the same thing. I was like, wow. Those military police are really politically active. Those military police are all up on us. And, you know, like, look, this is evident, right? God cannot heal people.

The guy goes into this big, long thing in this article, and this is an evident, right? God cannot heal people. The guy goes into this big long thing in this article and this is an editorial, right? Because you can tell it's an editorial because he says, fuck God's plan. He's our bitch right here in the middle of the article. So you know it's an editorial. But at one point he's going on and saying, you know, like God – how could God be a healer? God – how can he heal people? You're basically commanding him. And I agree.

I mean God can't heal people. He can only give like Christopher Hitchens cancer. Like, that's really all he can do is just give people cancers and hurt people. He hasn't really been known for creating anything since his early career. Like, his early career, he's like, yeah, I created a few things. But then he really got into what his forte was, which was destruction. And I think, really, if you're going to pray to God, you got to ask him to do what he's really, really good at.

Yeah. We should be asking him to smite. Absolutely. We should just instead of let's go the other way. Absolutely. Because that's where he's got. That's where, you know, like, look, you got to play to your strengths. You can't just forever be known as a guy who can do everything.

I mean, he's not omnipotent. Let's go. Let's be real here. He's really, really, really good at fucking things up. He's good at destroying the entire world. He's good at, you know, giving people fucking plagues. He's good at turning shit to blood. He's good at giving people fucking boils and shit on their skin.

He's good at turning shit into salt. Let's fucking play to his strengths. Let's play to his strengths, Tom. I think that's how we got to work this. Yeah, it's the only rational thing to do, right? It's just I'm going to call on God. I'm going to pray every night for smitings. Yeah, pick your people.

That's what I'm going to do. Get your little death book out. I'm just going to think of him as a cosmic sniper. Pew. I hope. It would be great if I did that. I woke up tomorrow and, like, the following people have been mysteriously struck by lightning. You know, that's God's giant hand buzzer.

Yeah. Just reach down. No shake. Really? No, I won't. I won't buzz you. I swear I won't shock you. I swear.

I swear. No. How in the world do you promote a standard that says that when you make a medical claim, you should not have to provide evidence of that claim? Yeah. In all seriousness, I think this is ridiculous. cases where people have to walk on eggshells because they're afraid that someone's going to take them to court in a system that allows people to make really audacious claims and not have to back it up. And I feel like, you know, if you're going to say something like this and you can't back it up with actual proof, then you shouldn't be able to say something like this. I mean you shouldn't be able to say God can heal you. Stop taking your medication.

That's – that you're basically causing someone to injure themselves. So I understand. I mean I get – I understand that there's an outrage here and I think that there should be. I just don't even understand the objection, right? Like, well, I don't think people should have to prove what they say. Yeah. What? When they're talking about medical claims?

Like, I mean, we don't prove what we say, but we're not telling people to stop taking their medicine. Right. Sure. No. Those military police are way off. They are. They are. They're all at bonds, though.

I mean, it's great that they're still. I mean, I don't think there's a war going on. I don't know why they would need military police. So this story is from This Is Nottingham, which I love. And this guy, this picture is of the Sheriff of Nottingham. This picture is spectacular. This guy looks so wiggy. He looks awesome. He looks like he hunted down like an albino version of Pluto and

scalped it and then took its head. He's wearing Pluto's scalp. Pluto's scalp. That's what I think. But an albino Pluto because it's ultra white. How do you take somebody seriously? He's the carpet court. Like, look at that. How do you take this guy seriously? He looks like a cat tree.

Is that gonna have like a kitten hanging from it? I couldn't get it out this morning. His claws are really stuck in there. Somebody totally has to Photoshop a kitten on this guy's head on one of his big floppy ears that comes down. That is the most – He looks like a fucking basset hound. This is a job I seriously would not want just because of the wardrobe. Yeah, the outfit.

He's got a fucking like kerchief on. This is less dignified than stripper. It really is. I can't even imagine. You show up for work, like, okay, time to put your carpet hat on. Wait, what? Fuck you. I don't want to wear that. That's asinine. Oh, man.

The people who jerk off pigs to make them come in a jar. It's like a better job than this. At least I have my dignity. And look at his necktie. It looks like a fucking lobster pin. Yeah, he's got a crunchy bun. You turn it over, it's got the lobster looking at a pen with a smile and the two claws like, hey,

eat me. Oh, man. It's awesome. He's got his little purple cape on up here. He looks fucking great. He looks like it's awesome. He's got his little purple cape on up here. He looks fucking great. He looks like he just graduated. Like, he's wearing, like, his graduation robe, and they're celebrating at Red Lobster. He's all tucked in for some fucking claws. Mom said I could have all you can eat crab if I graduated. Oh, my God. So this is a story about an imam

who sexually assaulted two boys. He's been thrown in jail for a couple of years. The imam, not the imam, but the imam who reported the assault has been harassed in her community for reporting the assault. Yeah, a couple of like, they said that her car may have

been vandalized and that she's sort of had some threats from people because they it's I don't know that it's it's so religious as much as they say that you're going against our culture is one of the things I think they quote her as saying to think I'm going against the culture. Now, admittedly, people in the church and even higher up people are like, yeah, you should you should, you know, definitely call these people out if they're doing some wrongdoing. I think what's happening now at this point is all the people from all the other religions that are fucking known for diddling kids are kind of breathing a sigh of relief. They're just like, other religions do it too.

Right. One thing that's particularly encouraging actually is that this kid screwed around with some kids and where's he at? He's in fucking jail. Like, why don't we ever read that with some of the other religious groups? I will say that's refreshing. You know, it's like, well, this person's accused of, you know, diddling 29 kids over the course of 15 years. And, you know, and it's never like and is now rotting in fucking prison right instead it's like well it's still a priest actually and right or they just transferred

me to a fucking bookkeeper right you know now he's a fucking bookkeeper or now he's uh now he's you know involved in uh youth ministry in another state right you know i watched this uh documentary about this irish you know priest who was in the States and like they did that thing where they moved them all over the place and he fucking diddled his way across the country. Sure. Yeah. He's on the diddling tour.

And they just shipped him back. They were like, well, we'll solve this problem. Sure. And they put him on a plane back to Ireland. Because Ireland doesn't have any young children. They don't have kids in Ireland. They don't have kids in Ireland. Turns out.

Yeah. That's not true. So. children. They don't have kids in Ireland. They don't have kids in Ireland. Turns out, that's not true. So, that worked out for nobody. Did it happen again? Probably. Sure. We shipped this terrible human being to a different place to be fucking terrible. So at least this guy's in fucking prison. Yeah, you've got it. I mean, you've got it. Hats off.

That's great. And again, the leadership coming forward and saying, if this shit happens, we should fucking call it out. That's exactly what needs to happen. Absolutely. I think it's depressing that the mom was, that the mom feels vilified by her community. Right. That's bad.

But I, you know, it's a very small part of the article. You know what I mean? So they're not stressing it as much. I don't know how vilified it is. You know, it might just be a couple of people. So, but still, that's a bad thing. But I think that the way the church leadership's handling it is a good thing. So, Cesar, this story is from MSNBC, and I've seen this in several places.

I fucking love this story. A southeastern Pennsylvania church, year of the Bible. Just throwing that out there. This makes sense then. This makes so much more sense now. This is the year to do it. They basically subjected members of their congregation, youth members, to a mock kidnapping

that the kids were not privy to the mock portion of. Right. Right. Using real guns. Safe. Definitely. Well advised. Right, right. Safe. Definitely. Hope the safety was on. Well advised. Well advised.

Please let them be unloaded. Sounds good. Oh, just Christian missionaries. See, I thought this was Navy SEAL training.aries. Oh, just Christian missionaries. See, I thought this was Navy SEAL training. No. Oh, okay. All right. All right.

Fair enough. Well, now I was under the impression it was Navy SEAL training and I was going to be like, oh, that's cool. You know, that sounds like an adventure. See the world. Be tortured across the area. I think that, you know, obviously this is a ridiculously bad idea. And one of the things that pops up in my head first off is I think, well, what does this really prepare you for?

Because let's say that you've had this done by people that you know and you find out it's a joke. Well, what happens when it's for real? What did it prepare you for? It's not like you're giving them sensitive information they need to protect. These are people who are going there to tell people about God. It's not like you're protecting the secret of God. Experiencing something here. Here's the, here's, I have so many problems with this. First, if you're, if you're worried that your missionary work is going to be so poorly received that as a missionary you will be kidnapped and interrogated, those people don't fucking want you there. Right, right.

Keep your fucking religion at home. Sure. You're not doing any good, missionary. Like, they don't fucking want you. What bigger message do they have to send you if you're worried that showing up in that country and preaching your fucking word to them is gonna get you fucking kidnapped or beaten or killed or interrogated this is i mean you're not a fucking loved house guest at that point you know they're not offering you fucking eggplant Parmesan. Get the fuck out of there.

But the other thing is these kids, these kids go through this experience that they don't know until after the fact isn't real. So this is a traumatic experience. enough, you know, it's very possible for these kids to develop problems like post-traumatic stress disorder problems from a dramatic and stressful and traumatic event where they thought they were legitimately being kidnapped and interrogated. So let's say that this works. Okay, great. Now you send them overseas and what happens? The same thing occurs.

They're not more prepared for it. They're just triggered by it. They're just like, wow, that was fucking awful the first time it happened. They're either triggered or they're not sure if it's real. How does this prepare you in any way? That's not how you prepare people for a potentially traumatic event is to simulate the event without their prior knowledge and without giving them tools on how to understand and interpret it. I mean, that's like we don't teach people how to survive plane crashes by crashing planes. Well, now with people on them, at least, you know what I mean?

Like maybe we'll put some fucking crash test dummies. They're not using interrogation dummies here. You know what I mean? Like, maybe we'll put some fucking crash test dummies. They're not using interrogation dummies here. You know what I mean? Like, these are real people that you're kidnapping. I don't understand why you would even do this.

It doesn't even make any sense. Baffling! December 21st, 2012. Daybreak doesn't come. All remains dark. The world has come to an end. And finally...

I don't know what's... In Apocalypse News... Wait, what is this about? Ah... This is a story from Huffington Post. I love that it's in their religion section. Take that. Right, right.

Apocalypse 2012. France's Bugarac Peak. I'm sure I mis in the religion section. Take that. Right, right. Apocalypse 2012. Francis Bugarac-Peake. I'm sure I mispronounced that. I'm going to call it Baguette-Peake because that's the only French word I know. Francis Baguette-Peake draws believers who await alien rescuers. It's difficult to summarize this story. It really is. it really is it really is i feel like all the best way i could summarize this for our listeners is just to

i think that that probably summarizes it this is the craziest fucking thing i've ever read right it so there's a group of doomsday believers that have started descending upon this location because they believe that it's the only place that is going to survive the apocalypse. The apocalypse, of course, is coming in 2012. Not actually going to arrive at all. My first question there is, if the rest of the earth is destroyed except for this one remote location in France and you survive, what do you do the next day? They go with the aliens. The aliens are there to pick them up.

Oh, my God. Yeah, dude. No, it's fucking it's crazier than you thought. Like you thought you thought it was going to be like fucking walking dead. They're like in a city and everything else is dead. And they're like, oh, now we got to figure out how. No, no, no. The aliens then come. Because the mountain has

aliens in it. That's what they think, is this mountain is inhabited by aliens. It's even worse than I thought then. And this place is an alien garage. That's what they call it. Right. An alien garage. Because you got to park your spaceship it. Right. An alien garage.

Because you gotta park your spaceship somewhere. Sure. No, yeah. You gotta refuel. We need to fucking give them their dilithium crystals so they can fly off into the other space. You know where I'm going in a fucking apocalypse? NORAD. There's a good place. It's got a mountain too.

It also can survive a direct nuclear blast. So I think I'll be fine. Unless also can survive like a direct nuclear blast. So I think I'll be fine. You know, unless it's a fucking world killing fucking asteroid. Everything's fine. I'm going to vaporize. Yeah. You're fucking dead.

This is the really this poor town is going to be overrun by schmucks for a long time. And you got the rest of the year here. It's March. Oh, yeah. I mean, this is crazy. This is, they're talking about a population increase of 100,000 lunatics descending upon this place. Oh, man.

Because it's an alien garage? How do you know? Like, here's the thing. Well, they have the ticket. They bought the ticket. They parked there and they got the ticket. Right. You got the golden ticket. They parked there and they got the ticket. Right, yeah.

In the alien. Why don't I get my alien candy bars? You got your golden ticket. You get your golden ticket. Well, no, when I parked in the alien garage, I went in and you have to get your ticket when you pull in and then when you leave, you have to make sure you take it with you so you could pay at the thing and then you drive out. What if the alien couldn't remember where he parked?

Like, he's like, B4. I think it's B4. I thought I parked by Goofy. What the fuck? I think I'm in Polar Bear 11, but I can't fucking find it. Polar Bear 11? God damn it. Where did I put that spaceship?

Why do aliens care about the world ending? Why do they only want to take people from a mountain in France? Why are they living in a mountain? How do you live in a thing made of rock? All of these questions on the next Cognitive Dispense. So baffling. So we asked a question last time, Tom. We were asking the question, what happens when you're going nuts and you don't have any sort of religious indoctrination that brings you along? We were saying that people, when they flip out and they're religious, they go after the demons.

What happens when you're not religious? Well, we actually got an answer from Brandy. She said that actually they go for other things like CIA and aliens. So instead of the evil thing being a demon, they pick up something else from popular culture that makes it evil. I wonder what – when I finally completely fucking lose it, I wonder where – what delusion will capture my imagination. You're going to be chased around by a club sandwich. Oh, God. It's like the old school fucking Tom and Jerry where like the hot dogs running around after, and you're like, I don't want to get eaten by a hot dog. Right, right.

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. A listener will be chasing you. You know, I wonder if I wouldn't think that there was a religious conspiracy of religious nutjobs. There is. The Pope. The Pope is sending his shock troops of Poposity at me.

Pope's already got a tinfoil hat. He does. He's a fucking lunatic. We got an email from David, and David sends us a long email about how he's kind of being sued right now for slander. So he kind of gave us the details a little bit. He said, last April, I blogged about Sai Baba being a fraud with links to evidence. A commenter posts a comment about some Canadian guru being a similar fraud. And he gets a bizarre email from a Hotmail account complaining about an illegal hyperlink

and a demand. I reveal who the commenter was or else they would sue. And it was signed Simone Singh. Yep. Almost the same name as the famous science writer here in the UK sued for libel. He basically replied with question marks. They replied, do it or else. And he blogged the whole thing.

Seems relatively innocuous. Right. But it's not at all innocuous when you've got insane fucking libel laws. Yeah, libel laws that can really fuck you up. You know, it's just a sad story. I see that, you know, if you wanted to put any of that blog exchange, I don't know if it came down or not. If you want to put that on our page or on Facebook, feel free to link to it.

If you want to put that on our page or on Facebook, feel free to link to it. I don't know if there's any way we can mobilize people to give you a hand in some way. Let us know. This is just awful, though. This is, again, laws gone wrong. And this is awful that it's happening to somebody who just – you didn't even do anything. Somebody put a comment there, and now you're liable for it. Yeah, I can't imagine being pretty guilty of something, having to prove that you did not in fact lie.

And the idea that you could be sued for something somebody else said on a page that you happened to run. Yeah, I don't get that at all. That's just baffling. I would think that that would be thrown out of hand. It's not – It seems ridiculous. It seems outrageous. I don't know how that's even possible. It made me nervous.

It made me Google about what my protections here in the States were. Thankfully, you can say all kinds of crazy shit here in the United States. And also, thankfully, I don't have anything to give them. You know what I mean? Just be like, what are you going to get? We got an email from Francoise, also known as Frankie. Frankie sent us an email, a long email about Canadian politics. But Frankie, I just want to say that we love the image.

We're going to use it for this week's podcast. We thought it was hilarious. It's a good pulp palpatine. I think someone else posted it on our Facebook page too, but we're going to use it as the image this week. Thanks for sending it in and thanks for being a listener, Frankie. Michael, Tom, and a lot of people, Tom, we're not happy with our Trevon Martin analysis. A lot of people were sending us messages. We got called out by a couple different people.

And I think right now we're going to do a little circle into the wagons and talk about what we said and what we think. Yeah. You know, here's the problem that I have, the primary problem. And perhaps I overspoke on the last podcast, but- I may have too. I know I overspoke. I speak a lot. Yeah. So my problem is that Zimmerman wasn't arrested. People in conversations that we've had about this, I hear a lot. Well, you know, it'll all sort itself out in court. There'll be, you know, the attorney for one will, you know, present arguments. The attorney, that's not going to happen. Right. He didn't get arrested. It's done. It's over without without additional public outcry, which is happening, which might cause maybe there to be additional investigation.

There is no judicial process here. It's it's over. It's done. That's why people are so upset. Right. I think that's primarily why why I was so upset. And I think why you were so upset. This kid was unarmed. Reason alone will tell you that it doesn't make a lot of sense for somebody with no criminal history to just attack somebody out of the blue. to just attack somebody out of the blue, unarmed, with a bottle of fucking Arizona iced tea and some Skittles. The idea that George Zimmerman was attacked in an unprovoked way and was forced to defend himself using lethal force, it doesn't hold up to reason.

And I would be fine. I would be totally—this would be a non-issue. If Zimmerman was arrested and it went to grand jury and grand jury said there was nothing here. Or if he was arrested and went to trial and he was acquitted. Okay. Right, he went through the legal process. Both sides got their say. Yeah, that's the legal process. That's how it works.

But that's not what happened. He's not being arrested because Florida has a stand your ground law, which a rule or whatever, which doesn't make any fucking sense to me at all. That basically says that as long as you say it was self-defense, the police then have to prove a negative and prove that it wasn't self-defense. And this in this case, Tom, it almost feels like that might be something that you could do with the evidence that's come out. Now, obviously, they haven't chosen to do that. So there might be something that we're missing. And, you know, this is a perfectly valid criticism of us. But I feel, too, when you're saying, like, you need to be skeptical, I think we are being skeptical.

We're being skeptical of this law. We think this law is a bad idea. You know, here's a guy who got out of his vehicle. Now, this is fucking fact. This is fucking absolute fact. He got out of his vehicle to go after this person. He had a fucking loaded weapon on him. He confronted this person. Now, whether that person confronted him or he confronted it, he still got out of his car to follow him when he was told not to do it. So there's all these things that lead to how are you standing your ground? How is it that you were just standing there and somebody came at you and then you attack

them? Like you put yourself in the situation. Now, I understand that there's some things there that we don't understand and that we're not privy to, but we've got, you know – the thing is that there wasn't even a trial. There's not going to be a trial and that's the sad part. That's the part that we think maybe – I'm not going to try to demonize this guy, but I am going to say that the law is stupid. Yeah, I agree with you.

It doesn't make any sense. I don't think it's being unskeptical to say, does this sound like it could have reasonably happened this way? So the story being, you know, that Trevon, that he was getting back in his car, Zimmerman was getting back in his car, and that Trevon came out of the blue and attacked him. Well, that doesn't really hold water. Like, here's a kid with no history of violence or criminality, with no motivation or reason,

just comes out of the blue and attacks somebody that weighs 100 pounds more than he does. That doesn't, nobody does that. People don't do that. There's something missing here. And somebody's dead. And I think that the reason people are upset is because it feels like a really incomplete analysis of what happened. And you've got a dead person. You've got a kid, a child, a 17-year-old person, unarmed, got shot.

Yeah. And people want to know what the fuck happened. And the Zimmerman story does not make any sense. I'm sorry. It just doesn't. I'm being skeptical of that story. It doesn't work for me. Sure. It doesn't hold water at all. But we got a lot of flack about this. We did. We did get a lot of flack. And that's great. If you if you disagree with us, that's fine. Please send us your email, put it on Facebook. You know, we'll talk to you about it. Uh, I think that we were upset with the law. Maybe we didn't express ourselves as clearly as we should, but, uh, but we definitely are upset with the laws with, you know, it's also a jumping off point for Tom and I about gun control, which is something that we're kind of passionate about. So I think that there's a lot of things that we jump off with on this story like this. But really, it's really all about how shitty the law is. Well, that about wraps it up for another episode of Cognitive

Dissonance. Thanks for sticking around and listening and bearing with us the entire time. We'll be back next week. And until then, here is 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,

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