Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 46: Imaginary Friends Show

Episode Date: May 5, 2012

Thanks to Jake from The Imaginary Friends Show Podcast. You can check out his show here, and his book here. Video: Amendment 1 pastor gives parents 'special dispensation' to use violence against LGBT kids!!! Cardinal Brady will not resign over 'abuse failure' For Catholics, a Door to Absolution Is Reopened http://harmlessmovie.com/ Religious blogs have a higher malware risk than porn, study finds Tennessee Passes Abstinence-Based “Gateway Sexual Activity” Bill Religious Beliefs Killed Boy, Kept Parents From Seeking Care Report: Fifteen Percent Of Earth’s Population Believes the World Is Coming To An End In Their Lifetime and Ten Percent Believe The Time Is Now Jesus lives: altar wine prevents goat sacrifice Check out all the links at our website: http://dissonancepod.com

Do you want to get Cognitive Dissonance streamed to your iPhone or Blackberry? If so, download Stitcher free today at Stitcher.com. So last time I had thought I was putting on the skeptic's creed at the end of the show, but what I really did was not put it on. So instead of going back and fixing that file, I thought it'd be like one of those, you know, really rare uncut stamps that in like 10 years would be worth millions and millions of dollars. And just so the people that didn't get the skeptics creed fix last time, they can actually get their skeptics creed fix this time from our guest who's going to be on our show, Jake from the Imaginary Friends show. So I'm going to play Jake's skeptics creed right now.

Graduality is not a virtue it's fortune cookie cutter mommy issue hypno babylon bullshit couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudai quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing, water downward spiral brain deadpan sales pitch light night info docutainment Leo Pisces cancer cures, detox

reflex foot massage death and towers, tarot cards, psychic healing crystal balls, big foot yeti, aliens, church mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms,

Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, devil speak, stigmata nonsense. Expose your sides.

Take off your pants. Thrust your hands. Inside me. Bloody evidential conclusive. I like your boobies. Doubt. Even this. That's cognitive decimals.

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. This is episode 46 of Cognitive Dissonance, and for this episode, we have a very special guest. We have Jake coming to us all the way from Austria from the Imaginary Friends show. Let it not be said that I do not do my research. Jake from Austria, thank you for being on. Was it difficult to get the lederhosen? No, it was not difficult at all.

It was not difficult at all, Tom. Thank you for asking. He's got that little fucking Ricola hat on. You know, big ol' horn. Occasionally I have to put on some form of powder or some form of lubrication to get on the lighter person, but it's okay today. It's okay today.

You kind of sound, you actually kind of sound like you're I don't know, like, you kind of sound almost Spanish with that accent. No, no, he's not Spanish. He's most definitely Austrian. Look, listen, all foreigners sound fine. He's most definitely Austrian. Look, listen, all foreigners sound fine. They really do.

Can we just agree on that? Admittedly, they totally sound fine. No matter where you're from, all foreigners just are hilarious. Does not matter. I agree. Actually, you know, the funniest accent in the world

is American. What the fuck are you talking about? Accent. What the fuck does that mean? Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I'd be offended if that wasn't obviously but you know i can keep up this austinian it's no problem no no you can't it turns out no that's not actually a true so so the first

story that we're going to go over with uh jake from austria uh imaginary friends podcast is uh from good as you.org because who doesn't read that all the time me uh this is uh amendment one pastor gives parents special dispensation to use violence against lgbt kids specifically this fucking lunatic, Pastor Sean Harris, speaking during his Marriage Sunday sermon, well played, sir, advocates that if your kids are limp-wristed, you should just hit them. Yes, fist them. Right. Nothing will get rid of the gay like a good old-fashioned fisting. Yeah, that's true. You just fist them right in the face

right I have seen that before actually now hold on in Austria do you guys beat the fuck out of your gay kids too? we try to but you know let's be serious here for a second in Australia

that's not our forte. In Australia, we have some of the most deadly and dangerous animals in the world, right? Admittedly, yes. Okay, so we learn to run very fast at a very young age. So, you know, if you have any sort of vulnerability, then you need to learn how to run, you know, faster than anybody else

so that you can outrun anybody. So our gays, they are fast. Our gays are extremely fast. So if you have any latent homosexual tendencies, you've got to learn to get the fuck out of anywhere. I've actually heard about the Australian speed gays. Speed gay? That's going to be a limbic.

They can run across water. They just wave their hands, run as fast as they can. a limb. They can run across water. They just, you know, they just wave their hands, run as fast as they can. They can actually skim right across water. I'm pretty sure that's how Jesus did it, too. Yeah. Hold on now. Are you calling Jesus gay? Hold on a second.

Yeah, well, you know. Little known fact. Jesus was an Australian guy. Who else is going to hang out with 12 bachelors? Admittedly. Admittedly. And a bunch of prostitutes as well. No, that makes sense.

I mean, you don't want to get Steve Irwin, you know? I mean, like, that's a bad deal. Too soon. That's true. Too soon. That's true. So specifically, this pastor says, dads, and I like this because he addresses specifically the fathers. The second you see your son dropping the limp wrist you walk over there and crack that

wrist man up yep give him a good punch okay you're not gonna act like that yeah i mean so this seems like a reasonable uh rational well thought out sort of a sermon a sermon that could not possibly be misinterpreted by crazy is the world over. Yeah. The cool thing here is, doesn't he mention something like your four-year-old boy, if your four-year-old boy is doing something? Yeah. Yeah, here we go. So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he's four years old,

and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch because that is what boys do. Well, you know, these things that they say have consequences. And here we go. I've just found an interesting little article. It's in newsobserver.com.

The headline reads, Boy 4 shot to death for being gay because he slapped a boy's behind. What? Well, that's horrible. Yeah, it is. That is the worst fucking thing I've... Wow. But these things...

Four! Yeah, these things have consequences. Like, there's moronic pastors out there saying, you know, if your boy looks like he's being a little gay, you know, if he's drinking some tea and manages to lift his pinky, then you need to just crack him, you know, with a baseball bat or something like that. Correct the behaviour.

Well, somebody has taken that sort of talk seriously and shot his kid because he touched another boy on the behind. So, you know, these things have consequences. You can't let these morons say this without being challenged here's what strikes me about that story too is you know you think of a gun as kind of an equalizer right you know if i want to if i want to damage mike tyson in some way i'm not going to go up and smack him in the head that's not going to work out for me i i i'm gonna bring a gun to that okay right because he's the only way that i'm gonna win that fight this man brought a gun to his four-year-old he's like oh i've got

to stop that where's my gun because otherwise that four-year-old gonna whoop my ass the story is actually even worse than that basically it was a few days after the boy had touched this other boy or smacked the other boy on the bottom. The man who shot his son said to a couple of girls in this particular commune that he's in to set up some computers and some speakers in his garage and to play religious music and prayers over and over again while this little boy sat on a piece of carpet in the garage and then eventually he shot him. Where did this happen? In the US, in North Carolina. Only in North Carolina.

Okay, so I've got to ask you a question here, Jake. I'm not familiar sort of with – I'm really not familiar at all with Australian politics. I'm also really not familiar at all with Australian politics. I'm also really not familiar with Australian society, but I want to ask you a question. Are gay rights just as big an issue in your country as they are here? Because here they're so fucking volatile. You are either a homophobe or you're a gay lover. What is it down there? Is it just as divisive? It is, absolutely. So I campaigned for the Greens party here in Australia, and I'll be running for them later on, well, next year, I believe, when the next federal election is held. And the head of my daughter's school at

which I was campaigning for the Greens, I happened to bring up the issue of homosexuality getting married. And my view is basically that I know plenty of gay people who don't want to get married, right? I know plenty of gay people who I'm, you know, very close friends with who just, you know, are not interested in getting married. But my view is that if we don't legalise gay marriage, then the bigots have a place to hide. They've always got this place that says, well, we're different in this one particular way. We might have exactly the same physiology,

but the government recognises my ability, my right, my legal right to get married and doesn't recognize yours. So clearly the government says that we are different, right? So I was having this conversation, this very conversation, basically raising the exact same points with this guy, with the head of my daughter's parents and children, parents and children's association, parents and teachers type association thing that we have here and he said well you know i don't mind the gays right and you know that yeah you're cocking the gun at that point all right i'm just cocking the fist there

cocking the fist so yeah okay i think that maybe came out wrong so anyway i'm at uh i'm at my daughter's school and i've got my cock in my fist he's upset he's not allowed by that school anymore and that's the punchline yeah uh no so i'm standing there i'm having this conversation with this guy and he says so you know i don't mind the gays but what i have the problem with is them doing this stuff in front of in front of me like you know they they're out there having their parades and throwing their junk about there they want to kiss and hold hands and all that sort of shit and you know my comment was basically i go

on public transport quite regularly and i i feel a little bit uncomfortable when two teenagers of opposite sex you know are getting it on and grinding against each other. You know, it's perfectly fine to feel uncomfortable with people getting it on in front of you. But, you know, for crap's sake, these are people. They're exactly the same. They have the same blood and everything else. But, yeah, sorry, to answer your question in a very extremely long-winded way, yes, it is a divisive issue in Australia. Yeah, I'm with you.

I actually – yesterday I was down by the lakefront here. We have – the lakefront is a place where all the teenagers go to grope each other. And I was driving my bike and nearly everybody is walking where like the guy is standing there and the girl has got her ass on his crotch and they're walking as they're – and they're, like, making out. And you're like – and I felt the exact same way. I'm like, okay, yeah. You know, can you get a room? Did you just say that the girl has her ass on his crotch and they're walking? Like, how does that work?

It's really fucking awkward, dude. It looks ridiculous. I mean, it really looks – There's a level of coordination I find at one point. Actually, you know what? They should be trying out for the circus. You know what I mean? Because it looks— There's a level of coordination I find admirable at that point. Actually, you know what? They should be trying out for the circus, you know what I mean? Because it's really pretty amazing.

But no, it's constantly like you just see this, that people are just making out down there. But it's like, look, what the fuck? These people want to feel some sort of companionship with each other? Who am I to say they can't do that? Whether they're gay or straight, it's not up to me. I don't want to see anybody really with a lot of PDA, but you know, what the fuck? You know, my rights end at my nose. You know what I mean? Your rights start

right there too. So I don't want to be the one to enforce my rules on somebody else. And that's why when somebody says it, you just got to tell them shut the fuck up and grow up. I like that. It's like, hey, let's go for a fucking walk. Okay, let's go for a fucking walk. Let's go for a fucking walk.

I've got to take a picture of this just so people could see. It's absolutely ridiculous. It sounds hilarious. Are you sure they're not mentally compromised? Because we could be making fun of a bunch of people. I hadn't considered that. That's fine for the show. I don't know if you knew, but that's sort of

par for the course on this show. That's totally fine. You know, I think anybody who makes me uncomfortable, that shit should be illegal. I'm just saying. I mean, anything that makes me personally uncomfortable should be illegal. Particularly warm days. Illegal. How do you enforce that?

Particularly cold days. How do you enforce that, though? Illegal. Too much rain. Too little rain. You enforce that, though. Illegal. Too much rain. Too little rain. All things that make me uncomfortable. Yeah. And being a grouchy fuck, that's most stuff.

Just fucking illegal. Outlawed all. Hey, look, I don't mind as long as I'm not made uncomfortable. Because the moment I'm uncomfortable, you should have less rights. I think that's pretty much the central tenet of all religions. So if you're a visitor from Jake's show who's just dying to get more and more of that handsome devil

from Australia and you just gotta follow him wherever he goes and you're on you happen to pick up our shitty show and you listen to it for a few minutes just so you can hear his beautiful, beautiful voice, you're gonna have to wait until the end of the show. You're going to have to deal with us until then. Right now, we've got him strapped up in the back, and the U.S. is interrogating him, trying to figure out how to get better sound out of our podcast.

I think we actually got – we flew Hillary Rodham Clinton in, and she's pegging him back there right now. Don't worry. He actually requested all this. Yeah. He had his way to say, hey. This is all by request. Yeah, he said, you know, if I can, can I get a menage a trois with her and Martha Stewart? I'd really be down.

And so, you know, we arranged it. It's real hot. Because, you know, we're kind of big deals. So if you were looking for Jake, he will be on at the end of the show. I thought that the point of the church was to worship God and the boy fucking was just incidental. No, it's just the other way around. The point of the church is the boy fucking. All the other stuff is just busy work.

So see, so we would be remiss if we did not cover this story from the BBC. This is from BBC Northern Ireland. Cardinal Brady will not resign over abuse failure. I have to note that abuse failure is in quotes, so take that with a grain of salt. He did not consider this a failure, according to Cardinal Brady. He said when he found out about the horrific pedophilic abuse, he reported it. Not to the police, mind you. No, no, no, no.

He reported it. Not to the police, mind you. No, no, no, no. But to somebody else within his domineering organization of cover-ups and abuse. Right. What did he just, did he fucking tell the janitor? Like, who the fuck did he tell that didn't do anything? And you're the cardinal.

Like, aren't you supposed to be the one who does something about it? Like, instead you're just like, well, I'll pass this shit up the chain. You know? Somebody raped somebody in the break room. Well, I got to pass shit up the chain. You know? Somebody raped somebody in the break room. Well, I got to pass that up the chain. Wow, man, that's terrible news. I guess I'll tell my boss about that rape. I got to tell the district manager now. We got to move that up the chain.

I can't. As the assistant to the regional manager, I've got to call. I've got to tell the regional manager. Listen, I don't know how it is in Ireland, but here in the States we have a little thing called 911. Yeah, no kidding. You hit nine, then one, then one. A series of two ones. Even the religious can remember this, right? It's not that tough.

So if you know that, I don't know, children are being raped, for example, just chucking an example out there and you wanted to get an authority involved, like a real authority, not a fake authority, like a church member, for example. You could just dial those numbers. Sure. He didn't do that. No. What would he do, Tom? What do you think he would do if he was like a kid caught on fire? He'd just be like, oh, there's a fucking kid on fire.

I better call my boss. Tell him there's a fucking kid on fire. I better call my boss. No, I mean – Tell him there's a fucking kid on fire at my church. I'm sorry. Bad example. Holy water cures all fires. So, yeah, you're going to have to try. I got to try a little harder than that.

That's why they have holy water fire extinguishers. I got stumped again. You didn't know that. Yeah. A kid having a cardiac arrest? I better pass that on to my bosses. You know, this fucking – the way they treat this shit. Actually, what they would do is just rape the kid.

Hey, he's fucking incapacitated. Free kid. Free kid. Kid's here. I got kids here. They're like, I got flailing kids here. That's terrible. But what you have to say is that they treat the way they treat us, the way they treat the public is this fucking first estate, second estate, third estate bullshit where they feel like they're above us. They feel like it's almost like it's a feudal time where they're like, I don't have to report this shit because we are the ones in power.

Like these people are like fucking medieval times. They have no idea that, you know, you're the when you fucking rape kids, that's against the law of the land, not against the law of the church. It's against the law of the land. And you happen to have your church in our fucking land, dude. You may have noticed you don't have a hovering cloud church. This is in Vatican City. I'm sure you could rape any fucking kid you want in Vatican City.

But you can't, you know, you could fucking, they just hang them upside down over there and you just walk by and drop your dick in them, I'm sure. Let me tell you, when you're somewhere else, you can't do it. You just can't do it. And, you know, you're not fucking reporting it. You're just as somewhere else, you can't do it. You just can't do it. And, you know, you're not fucking reporting it. You're just as fucking guilty as the person who did. Only technically. Yeah.

Now I got real panties in my pantyhose. It's sheer indulgence. Now we got real panties in our pantyhose. It's sheer Indulgence. But Cecil, it's good news. It's good news for the Catholics. Because indulgences are back. You all remember indulgences.

The fucking incredibly awful idea that you could perform some action on Earth as a get-out-of get out of jail free card to buy yourself some good heaven karma those are back so if you're like let's say oh well you gotta search for an example let's say you're a car doll who was complicit in the sexual abuse of children right you might want an indulgence could Could you stock up on those? It's like a pre-indulgence sale. Here's what I like about it. I even like the name indulgence, right?

Because it's like, yeah, I indulged. You know, it's like, oh, man, I had a pint of ice cream and a five-year-old boy. Yeah, I ate a chocolate cake and I fucked a kid. I'm really going to have to open my wallet for that one. Yeah, right, right. I just wonder about the logistics of these things. Like how do they work? Can I buy them before I do it?

And then it's like a coin purse where you just like you pull out your coin. You're like, okay, well, I did that today and here's that indulgence and here's that indulgence and here's that. Or do you actually do it first and then you go ask? Because after you do a sin, don't you just ask for forgiveness and then you're forgiven? Like what's the point of the indulgence? It seems to me like the indulgence is a prepaid sort of system. It's like a cell phone that doesn't have its minutes on its own. You've got to buy a card for it.

Well, yeah. The thing is that your credit with Jeebus might not be any good. That's how that works. It's exactly like a cell phone. You go to get a heaven, and they pull your credit. And they're like, ooh, sorry. 30 days later, I'm not being an asshole. Do you have any indulgences?

And then you like fiddle around in your fucking pockets, and then, you know, hopefully you didn't leave your wallet at home when you died. And then you're like, oh, I got these indulgences. Because I indulged in sins. But I'm okay with it. Last time these were popular, by the way, Crusades. Very big. Very big in the Crusades.

Very big during the Crusades. Yeah, this is a good idea. Let's roll the fucking clocks back to the Crusades. Sure. No, I mean, that's a progressive. The problem is I know that i know the catholic church is having a hard time selling itself recently you know they're trying to share a hard time appealing to the young folks and i think this is a smart move this is how

this is how you appeal to the young people hey listen i say young people it's like a virgin mobile card that's right i mean it's just a fucking virgin indulgence it's actually a holy virgin mobile card it's a mother virgin it's a virgin indulgence card. It's actually a holy virgin mobile card. It's a mother virgin. It's a virgin birth mobile card. So Kickstarter is no end of fun recently. It really is the fucking greatest site in the universe. If you've got a terrible idea

and you want someone to ship money at you, Kickstarter is the way to go. This is – I found out about this movie called Harmless coming out in October 2012 starring, by the way, Richard Preyton. So that's not a person. This is a story about – this is a story of – I'm surprised. I'm surprised it's not Kirk Cameron. Yeah, I thought he would be in this, but it turns out he had other obligations, eating bananas.

Right. Yeah. This movie, Harmless, this is about a box of porn, which is haunted. Right. It's a metaphor. I don't know if you're catching it. Sure. It's pretty deep.

No, I don't get it. Is it a deep, sexy metaphor? You know, I see this as the first thought. My fucking first thought is, really, a box of porn? A box of fucking porn? What is it, in my treehouse? What am I going to – is it next to my Boys Life magazine? Hang on a minute.

I got to take my fucking kerchief off. Where's Beaver? If this is a box of porn, it's hiding underneath a box of floppy disks. Right? I know. And it's like, there's like a cabbage patch

kit on top of it. Seriously. Oh, where's my box of gigabytes? Yeah, like, what the fuck? Come on. Nobody keeps their porn in a box anymore.

Are you kidding me? A porn in a box? Who would keep their porn? And when I was a kid, when I was a kid, my dad had dirty magazines and I remember I got into them at like when I was seven kid, when I was a kid, my dad had dirty magazines. And I remember I got into them at like when I was seven.

And the worst thing that happened was I saw boobies. And I was like, I mean, admittedly, it changed my life. I will admit. It changed my life for the better. But I was like, man, those are awesome. And then I looked at boobies. And then I closed the magazine and I played with G.I. Joe for a while. Like that's the – like what could possibly happen that is so damning that you have a box of porn somewhere? Well, you know, you could – you got to think about it, right?

So you have a box of porn. Admittedly, I didn't do that. No, because – and that's because your little G.I. Joe there was all at attention. So you've got your – Hey, look at what i could climb joe he's got a kung fu grip knowing's half the battle that's for sure uh someday i'm gonna get past half the battle That's my, that'd actually be the full battle for me.

I'd be like, holy shit. I will be. Yeah, you have a box of porn, and then your marriage is ruined. Right? That's how that works. I guess I hadn't considered that. Because I know. I saw the trailer.

You have a box of porn, and then your kids don't love you anymore. Here's what you shouldn't. Okay, you're demonizing the porn, but maybe what you should be demonizing is our fucking Victorian ideals about sex. Maybe that's something you should be thinking about. That, you know, maybe sex isn't this dirty, nasty act that everybody's got to fucking shun and keep in their closet. Maybe that's the fucking moral of the movie, you douchebag. No, it's a dirty, nasty act that we should celebrate.

Exactly. Celebrate it. Box of scary, scary porn. Box of porn. That's so funny. It's so fucking funny. You're so scared. I know.

I mean, while we're talking, I'm watching two women fist each other right now. My whole house is covered in monitors that display nothing. They're actually, at this point, they're load-bearing monitors that just display ongoing porn. Ongoing prons. So this is a great lead-in for the next story. It's from New York Daily News. Religious blogs have a higher malware risk than the porn. So it turns out that big box of scary porn, which, by the way, is now in 2012 called a laptop.

That big box of scary porn, which by the way is now in 2012 called a laptop. Your religion is actually worse for your laptop. It's crazy. You know what? What I was thinking, the first thing that went through my mind was maybe the people are targeting it to an older audience and they think that the older people are going to go to the religious blogs and like these religious sites. And the people that are fapping away are a little too slick. They're like, no, no, no. I got fucking some shit installed that blocks your viruses. I'm good.

They also said in the article, too, that it makes more fun. Porn makes way more money. So they don't want to fuck the industry. I mean, here's the thing. Like the porn industry has an incentive to please the customer, right? So it's to their advantage not to do crazy shit and ruin. You know, if you go to the porn site and you get your computers all fucked up, you're not going to go back to the porn site. Right.

But if you go to a religious site and your computer gets fucked up, that was Satan. People should seriously – like that would actually be a great way for somebody to get followers is if they actually coded malware that was like – that did satanic shit, made their computer freak out like that, and then they come to the religious site so you could get the cure for it, so they could exercise your computer, so to speak. That would actually be clever marketing on their part. When I go to the porn sites, that's not what I'm exercising. Something is throwing up though. And you do need a lot of tissue. You know what I mean?

Like whether the girl is throwing up on the bed or you're at a porthole, there's just a lot of tissue. We have got to move on. This is not working. So from Time's news feed, Tennessee passes abstinence-based gateway sexual activity bill. I love the name of this bill so much. I love this thing so much. I love the name of this bill so much. I love this thing so much. This basically, they actually passed a bill that is based around the fear of, you know, you heard of that nonsense, the gateway drugs.

Like, that's just sort of nonsense. We've all heard the gateway drug nonsense. Now there's gateway sexual activity, such as general affection, hugging, kissing. That's not a gateway to sex. That's foreplay. That's foreplay. This is like Tennessee, land of angry women. You're just getting rid of foreplay.

I think that this is again, people so afraid of sexuality that they want to ban touching. You want to ban touching another human being. Suddenly the most alien place on the planet is Tennessee. That's the most alien place to live

because you can't even express basic human emotions. It's so spectacular. It's like, Tennessee, because a dry vagina is a good vagina. Like, really? I know. What's going on here? KY sales are through the roof there. Gateway sexual abstinence only.

Way to go. Take a look at Mississippi, Tennessee. Abstinence only is the stupidest thing you could do. It's the worst way to teach your, to not teach your children to pretend that sex doesn't exist. That's really what it is. It's the way in which to pretend sexual intercourse doesn't exist. And that, and that's it. And, and to never tell your children about life. You know, at the high school that I went to, we had a rule against PDA, public displays of affection. And they took it really far. Like if you like if somebody was upset and you gave them a hug because somebody was upset, you would get detention for giving that person a hug because the school is so fucking hyper paranoid that a hug was immediately going to lead to thrusting.

Did you give him a Christian side hug? I don't. That was not tested. That's I don't know. I mean, you're so fucking bent out of shape about sex that you're outlawing the hug. Right. You know, I hug my dad. I've yet to fuck the man.

It doesn't lead to sex. It leads to comfort. Yeah, this is another bad call for abstinence-only peeps. This is another notch. They're doing the spinal tap, turn it up to 11, so to speak. They're just cranking it up to try to stop all kinds of sexual touching and activity. It's not even sexual, just touching. They're just trying to stop fucking human contact.

Next thing you know, they're going to ban breastfeeding and like mothers comforting children when they fall down. Your boy is crying. Hey, I'm not a pedophile. I'm not picking him up. Yeah. So we're going to take a break and give you an opportunity to find us on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google+.

We'll give you our email account. We'll give you our Google Voice account. If that doesn't make you happy, nothing will. Nothing will. Damn you. And we'll come back in a few moments to ruin the rest of the show. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode, visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode,

visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Like our show on Facebook to join in the conversation. Just search for Cognitive Dissonance on Facebook or go to our website for the link. You can converse with us on Twitter. Our Twitter handle is at dissonance underscore pod. Help us out by retweeting and reposting our shows. You can call us and leave us a message at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. Your help is fucking greatly appreciated.

So this next story I got from the Atheist Underworld blog, religious beliefs killed boy, kept parents from seeking care. Parents of a four-year-old boy named Troy, kid had a fever for about a week. It's a long time to have a fever. So they did the only reasonable thing that parents of a four-year-old to do with a kid with a fever is they prayed at him. And it did not work. He died instead. Turns out God's divine plan was to take their beloved four-year-old child away from them and turn him into maggot food.

Hey, God loves everybody. Unless you're a four-year-old boy named Troy. He does. He does. God really didn't like Troy, turns out. Maybe he loved him. Maybe he just wanted him there. He wants him back.

I made a mistake. Yeah, I made a mistake. I Troy, it turns out. Oh, maybe he loved him. Maybe he just wanted him there. He wants him back. I made a mistake. He wants him back. Yeah, I made a mistake. I just, praying is fine. Praying is fucking wonderful. If you want to pray over your kid, great. Pray over your kid. But you know what?

Take him to the fucking hospital too. Do both. Don't do and or. Just do both. Take your kid to the hospital and pray on the way there. Pray when you fucking get there. Pray when he's still in the hospital bed because little kids shouldn't have

fevers that long. And if you are that stupid, you shouldn't be a parent. The problem is people don't understand that God is an Indian giver. I shouldn't say that. That's racially insensitive. Indian is not what you want to use there. But nonetheless, it's true.

He gives and then he takes it right back. He takes it right back. These folks went to the Church of the Firstborn. That was the name of the church that they went to. They're going to have to move their membership over to the Church of the Secondborn. Oh.

Man. It's not good, man. Yeah. Man. Yeah. It's not good, man. It's just not good. I don't know what else to say, Cecil. Like, what else can you do but just— Well, I don't know if they didn't put the fucking right proper blood on their door, evidently. I don't know if they anointed him with the right oils. No, they didn't have the proper oils.

They didn't put the right blood on the door. You got to use extra virgin olive oil or it doesn't work. All you need to do is go to Tennessee for that. Ooh, this oil hugged other oil. We can't. Lord, the day is at hand. We are in the last days. You are Jehovah God.

So this next story is from Jonathan Turley's blog. This is a report. 15% of Earth's population believes the world is coming to an end in their lifetime. And 10% believe that that time is now. What, like right as he wrote this blog? Right now. Right now. Is the world coming to an end?

It's coming to an end right now. And the world ends. And the world ends. And it's going to end. Give it one. And it ends going to end. Give it one. And it ends. Hold up. Wait for it.

The one thing I wanted to talk about with this story, Tom, you know, it's not a lot to say. There's a lot to be bewildered by, obviously, right? You could just fucking look at this article with your fucking mouth agape, wondering how it's possible people could actually think this. But the one thing I want to wonder about is how do these people, one, treat each other, treat other people because you think the world's ending. And then why do they work? You know, like that's another thing that I think about. And I guess I just wonder like how you function when you think I'm, you know, I'm going to

die tomorrow or the next day or the next week or next year? Like what do you – do your priorities change? Like how does this work? I would have to think that you would be, I don't know, radically unenvironmental, for example. Why would you bother worrying about the 50-year long term when you have no faith that there's going to be a 50 years? When you have no faith that there's going to be a 50 years. You know, this is part of that short-sighted burn it all now mentality that's part and parcel of the – in America, the religious right-wing nutters. You know, they have this idea that like – you know, that they can't possibly do any wrong as far as, you know, the environment is concerned and as far as a lot of other issues are concerned.

You know, they're worried about the here and now. Let's get, because there is no tomorrow. You know, that whole, you know, saying, you know, live for today. They're working on that shit. But that's because they're crazy. You know, I can empathize with these people. I do think, you know, when I look at how things are going in our world, I think, you know, the end times could come. You know, we could easily have an environmental end times the way that we're going.

We could easily have an economic end times. And end times doesn't mean a decimation of the species, but a certain decimation of everyday life as we know it. That sort of thing could happen. Nuclear end times could happen still. There's still plenty of nuclear powers in the world. So I think there's plenty of real threats that we should be concerned with, real things that could damage the entire ecosystem, real things that could wipe human beings off the planet instead of made up fucking mythology, fucking sit around a bunch of stones and worship the sky bullshit. That is never going to happen. But Cecil, the Mayans.

Shut up. You haven't considered the Mayans. Just shut up. Just shut up. You know, I think about this and what immediately occurs to me is this is the safest, least violent period in all of world history. Human lifespans have never been longer than they are now. You're not. There's never been more people who've had a quality of life that we experienced, that this has never been better in all of human history. It's never been better yet. This continual pessimism about the future.

To me, it's baffling. It's like, yeah, things aren't perfect, but this is the, this is the most peaceful the world has ever been. This is the longest people have ever lived. This is the longest people have ever lived.

This is the safest people have ever experienced lives. And we're going to get fucking bent out of shape about that? I'll roll my dice. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers! I want the truth! You can't handle the truth!

So Cecil, this next story is from The Local, Norway's news in English. This story makes no sense and I love it for it. And it's only here because of the conflation of Jesus and Jesus. I mean, really, this story made so little sense. I stopped reading it in the middle and just stared blankly at the screen and looked at the picture. And I was like, what is happening? Like, it really is just like it's translated. I mean, it is completely translated from another language and you are transplanted into a land

that makes no sense. It's fucking bizarre. Yeah. I'm just going to read parts of this article. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to read it and we're going to laugh. Fair enough. Go for it.

Jesus may not have to die for his sins after all, as the owner of a goat who attacked a police officer last weekend pledges to sell him for a canister of altar wine rather than throwing him on the grill. Can we define a pronoun in our sentences, please? What I love is the next line, which is horny Jesus hits cop with massive butts. Which is horny Jesus hits cop with massive butts. When Jesus chased a mother and child up a tree on Saturday evening before aiming a powerful butt at an officer of the law, the animal's owner said he had little choice but to sacrifice the billy goat in the interests of public safety. What I think is happening is there is a goat named Jesus.

I think. I don't know. I think it's Jesus dressed up like a goat. Yeah, and I'm not sure. This guy wanted to trade him for a canister of altar wine. Why altar wine? I have no idea. I don't understand that at all. Because it gives you the superpowers

to rape children. Oh, yeah. See. I don't understand that at all. Because it gives you the superpowers to rape children. Oh, yeah. See, I hadn't thought of it that way. Because that's nuts. I'm just telling you, like, you know, there's nothing that gets kids more loose than Alter One. Yeah, I like that he says, one woman who called gets him as loose as Alter One. That's terrible. They already opened their mouth to receive the wafer.

Oh, no. I need an adult. One woman who called wanted me as part of the deal. She saw it as a personal ad. See, so I don't know what else to say about this story. I guess, you know, I feel like there needs to be some sort of scale where you could say, is something worth less or more than a canister of Alter Wine? Yeah, the Alterwine scale. I've heard of it.

You know, like we arbitrarily choose gold as a value system, right? We arbitrarily say the dollar is worth X. This doesn't seem arbitrary at all. This seems like, you know, like, look, I am willing to trade you this goat for Alterwine. Will you accept the deal? It's almost like he's Monty fucking Hall. You can either have the goat or what's behind door number one.

And behind door number one is another goat. Jesus. I want a whole herd of goats named after deities. I do too. Jesus and Thor and Zeus. I also like that he wants a canister of wine for it. A canister is the thing.

A canister, not a bottle of wine? How big is a canister? It's a canister of wine. A canister? I keep on thinking like a canister. It's like an oil can. It's like a giant oil can full. And that's not a tasty wine.

It's like a box of wine. All the best wines come in canisters. Yeah, it's a box of wines. Nice 76 canister of wine. That's good. So we're joined again by Jake from the Imaginary Friends Show podcast. Jake, you have you announced your podcast. You call it the one true podcast of science, skepticism, religion, current affairs and politics.

Could you fit any more fucking things in your show? Yes. All right. Question answered. Thanks, Jake. Thanks for coming on. We appreciate it do you ever get into fights with people

about the one true podcast thing because irreligiosophy yeah I ripped it off them oh yeah okay alright fair enough because I thought the irreligiosophy

fights were going to come after you man no no no they're a they're a benign bunch they talk a big game but you know tiny penises every single one of them and let's not forget you live on an island yeah so i mean really there's a fucking geographical barrier which is to your advantage right i've

played risk yeah okay australia is the place to be aust Australia is the place to be. That's for sure. So, Jake, we want to ask you a few questions here. What is – first off, I've heard you on your show. I'm going to talk about your show here in a few minutes. Sure. But I want to ask you a question. and you seem to really know quite a bit about geology and about anthropology. Do you have an advanced degree of some kind? No.

Are you just born a genius? Is that what happens? Yeah, I mean basically I'm an idiot savant. No, I am an actual genius. I have a membership to Mensa, which I got when I was only four, which is actually the youngest in all of Australia. So, I mean, I've got that going for me. Right, sure. No, I'm just kidding, of course. Well, that gives you like a free bowl of soup with that. Is that what you get?

You do, yeah. As a four-year-old, you get a free bowl of soup with that? Is that what you get? You do, yeah. As a four-year-old, you get a free bowl of soup. Right, right. Actually, they go to McDonald's and get you a McDonald's plate. You don't have McDonald's down there. Who are you kidding? I just have good friends, basically. I've got a friend who has a PhD in geology.

I'm currently studying anthropology. I see. I'm doing a post-grad degree, which is taking a very long time. But, yeah, no, I'm well-studied, and I've spent plenty of time researching the topics. But, I mean, most of all, when you get these people on the show, you know what they like to talk about. So you do sort of your best to research what they're going to talk about,

what you perceive that they're going to pick on. I see. Do your best to counter it. Research? Yeah. Don't even try, Tom. Just don't even try. going to talk about what what you think perceive that they're going to pick on i see research yeah don't even try don't even try tom just don't even try well the thing is educated people generally you know refuse to speak to me and for good reason so you know i i don't have the same you know the same advantage there i mean hey bravo to you So tell us about your show, Jake. Yeah, so, well, as you said, it is the one true podcast on science, skepticism, religion, politics, and current affairs. We do our best to much the same as you guys. In fact, I might say that we do a very similar job, except I do it ever so slightly, if not significantly better.

So basically, yeah, we do a very similar thing. We look at the news from around the world, various different things, plenty of religious stuff, plenty of skeptical stuff, plenty of politics. Again, very similar to you guys, except just, I suppose, a different sort of spin. We try to have a panel of three to four to five people on each week with different backgrounds, et cetera. And it's sort of like just a panel type show at the best of times. And then we also do interviews. We also like to have a nice little comedic spin. We do a few skits every episode as well. I've written a few songs and I drop them in there as well. It's basically just a good fun podcast centered around science and skepticism and atheism, etc. Why did you get started in it and how long have you been doing it?

So I've been doing it for just under two years now. I started it after, in Australia, we had the very first global atheist convention in 2010 in Melbourne. And I went to that. And for me, as an ex-religious person, I had a lot of problems when I came out of my religion. I was really freaking out. I didn't know that anybody else had questioned their religion. I didn't even think that you were allowed to question your religion, but I did question it and it ended up falling over like a nice big house of, you know, metaphorical cards. And when that did happen, I thought, you know, I'm completely freaking alone here.

You know, who can I turn to to, you know, find similarly minded individuals that I can hang out with? And so it ended up that there is actually an atheist community and they're fucking awesome. So I went to the convention and, you know, I came back just with complete awe, you know, filled with awe and, and wonder and wanting to do something to, to help people that were similar to me who went through similar types of experiences, who went through, you know, the depression, the post-traumatic stress disorder and, and all of that hairy crap. Um, and, and who got out the other side and, you know, try to be sort of a bastion for hope, if you will, at the same time as being somewhat

funny. But yeah, I just got a group of people who had also been to the convention together, who live in the same state as I do and uh we started it but it's awesome it's good fun you know i have to ask you this question i heard your interview with uh ray comfort yes um and i was disappointed like you were that the mustache is not dwelling alone yeah but is now sidekicked by the beard yes that that i think is fucking tragic so I gotta ask you, are you intimidated by bananas at all? only large bananas

and it's for another reason no I thought he came after you there with the banana thing it was an almost undodgeable bullet your matrix skills were impressive at that moment there were a couple of things firstly I was a little bit disappointed with myself after that interview almost undodgeable bullet your matrix skills were impressive yeah at that moment i have to say there

were a couple of things firstly i was a little bit disappointed with myself uh after that interview i i unfortunately i i didn't you were talking earlier about how you prepare sort of for these interviews like i didn't prepare as much as i would have liked to on on evolution so when he asked as creationists invariably always do you know give me some evidence for evolution unfortunately i i had so many different things in my head i went for the one that i'm perhaps least prepared to defend which is phylogenetics now it's going back to the banana i've had i've had uh the ancient style bananas in the philippines and they are fucking abhorrent like they are so disgusting they're they're so bitter and gross and they're full of seeds they are abhorrent things um so you know

there is absolutely difference yeah but look he was he was on his game he's a master salesman is fucking good at what he does he's is. He's a great rhetorician. And I'll tell you, I was on the train on the L here. I was going to teach a class, and on my way, I'm sitting there listening, and I'm kind of like letting out these little bursts where I'm like, oh, you should have said this. Oh, you should have said this. And it's so easy to Monday morning quarterback somebody when, you know,

after they've already done this interview. When you're in the moment, it's a lot harder. But there's this one moment too, where he, he asks you a question. He says something about, um, is it okay then, uh, for, for a person to marry their dog or something? He says, cause he's trying to like say that gay marriage is bad. And, and, and the one thing that, that I was, I was screaming, I was like, it's not a consensual relationship. It's not a consensual relationship.

It's not a consensual relationship. And you kind of got there, but I was like, I wanted to give you a push, you know? You just have that sort of empathy where you're like, no, no, no, I know he knows it. I know he knows it. He's going to say it soon. But he's so on his game. He just gets you. He just has such a great rhetorician it's hard to

argue with that guy no well i appreciate uh patronizing me in such a way no i mean i mean you sucked at it you really sucked at it but hats off i did i did get one win we're doing this interview for i just get this one win in though in the very beginning right i started off the off the conversation by I can't remember the guy who I quoted, but I said, if you can fake sincerity, you've made it. And I'd like to introduce Ray Comfort. That was awesome. That was beautiful.

That was awesome. You know, because you recognize, look, I was a salesman many, many years ago, and I studied for a really long time to get really good at it. And there was this guy that I used to work with. I can't even remember his name, but he was an absolute master. He would sell the best and the most expensive cars any time a family walked in there. And he used to do this guilt thing that I recognize every time I hear Ray Comfort talk, right? And he says, well, look.

So he gets this family together and he'd say, look, I could sell you this car. I really could. It has all of the needs that you could ever possibly want, right? But, you know, I sold a car like this to a family a few weeks ago. And then later on that week I saw this news item and a family had died because there wasn't enough airbags in the car. And it just got me thinking I really should have sold the car with all of the airbags for all of the passengers to those people. And I've got to tell you, while this car here could absolutely meet your needs, this car over here that, look, it's $10,000 more expensive,

but it is so much safer. And I don't think that with a good conscience I could sell you this cheaper car. You know, it's funny that you say that because that's actually all my cars I fill, top to bottom, with styrofoam packing peanuts. It's a much cheaper solution. It's hard as hell to see out the windshield. I'll say that.

You've got to brush the kid off, too, when he gets out. It's a pain in the ass. Static electricity is a son of a bitch. It's ridiculous. I've got to ask you, though, Jake. We're talking about the creationists you've had on. You pointed me when we first started talking. This was months ago.

Jake, by the way, listeners, Jake is one of the nicest guys ever. He sends us an email out of the blue just telling us, hey, I saw you're on that poll and you're doing great and congratulations. Like out of fucking nowhere. Like what the fuck is up with you people in Australia? Well, we're nice people. So anyway, we're getting to talking and I start listening to your show and then you point me to the Westboro guy. You had a Westboro guy on your show. That was so good.

And you made me laugh out loud when you did the designer comment about God. You said God is a – he's this amazing designer. Do you think it's a case of thou dost protest too much? It was just an amazing – it was a hilarious joke. And you just got stunned silence from the Westboro guy. I got to ask you though. You got Ray Comfort on. I heard recently another episode that you had another creationist who was really into geology.

And then you've had this Westboro guy on. What do you hope to accomplish when you have these people on your show? What's your goal? Really just to make the – see, the cool thing is when you have anybody like this on, they promote your show for you, right? Their name alone promotes your show. You post that show that you've just produced Their name alone promotes your show. You post that show that you've just produced with their name in the title. You post that onto Google, whatever it is, plus thing or Facebook or Twitter. And those keywords get picked up by people and people

will listen to your show. But also if you send those links to the people that you interview, they send those links out to their friends who listen along and, you know, just to see, to critique, to see how well they went. And I suppose my goal, aside from, you know, showing the friends of these fundamentalist nutbags that, you know, this stuff needs to be questioned and it does in fact have answers that are different to the dogma that they're purporting. Aside from that, for me as an ex-religious person, I've been through that similar mindset that they constantly go through. I've felt what they feel. I've felt the burning in the bosom, so to speak, that they speak of. I've felt Jesus inside me, deep, deep inside me.

I hope he lubed up for you, buddy. Unfortunately, no. I wish he did. I wish he did. A prolapsed anus ago, I really wish he did. No, when you look back and you look at these emotions that they feel and they're emotions that you've felt yourself, you just hope that there's somebody out there that is similar to you

that might be going through experiences similar to what you went through and you're able to show them that there are other answers out there and they are far better than the dogma ones, the dogmatic ones. That's, I suppose, part of the aim. Sure, sure. The other aim is, of course, to promote my book. Hey, Jake, you have a book? Yes.

Tell us about your book. Sure. Why not? Yes, I wrote this book. It's called Letters to Christian Leaders, Hollow Be Thy Claims, which is modelled after the Our Father prayer for those Catholics or ex-Catholics in your audience. And basically, very similar to the show,

basically we take claims made by religious leaders and we counter them using facts, science, logic, comedy, all of that sort of stuff. And there's a huge section in there about Kurt Cameron and Ray Comfort as well about the banana, which I go into a great deal more depth to what I did on the interview. What depth with the banana? Okay. Yes.

Fair enough. Fair enough. Very deep. We go very deep. And your book's an e-book, right? It's available on Amazon? Yeah, it's an e-book and it's a hard copy book too, yes. Okay.

On Amazon, yes, absolutely. So I got to ask you, you cover in your show American politics. It's something we don't, you know, we're fucking such xenophobes. We don't even pay attention to people that are living here, let alone outside of the United States, right? But you cover American politics on your show. I got to ask you a question. Now, recently, I don't know how in-depth you cover American politics, but you seem like you know quite a bit.

The Republican primary ran recently, and we're still sort of in the midst of it, although really Romney, it looks like, is going to be the one who pulls ahead. Who do you think? Right, yeah, I don't think Ron Paul's going to surge forward and take the... Ron Paul's not doing a thing. He's kind of dead in the water at this point. Of all the people

that ran, we're talking about Bachman, Perry, Newt Gingrich. Herman Cain. Don't forget Herman Cain. Who's your favorite of all those people who ran? You know, I don't know.

Look, the cool thing is you've got Mitt Romney right now who is effectively an analog of Obama. of Obama. You've got a Republican on one side who is a centrist, who has pretty social policy, who has basically exactly the same policy as Obama, except he's ever so slightly more transparently funded by people like the Koch brothers, et cetera. So probably he is my my most favorite candidate in that it's just hilarious that you've got two clones of each other one's black one's

white running against each other one's not exactly and i think that that that will be the defining factor i mean look you guys you guys had you you guys have the most awesome candidates, seriously. Like they are so hilarious. I watched a bunch of interviews a few weeks ago where people were going through evangelical churches and they were interviewing all of the parishioners who were about to go out to vote on the primaries. And they were asking the parishioners, you know, what do you consider more important at this election,

social issues like gay marriage and abortion or the economy? And every single person that they interviewed in this, you know, in these multitudes of churches that they were interviewing in said social policy. And that freaks me out. That is crazy. That is really crazy shit. Person after person was saying that they care more that people can't have abortions even though they will anyway. They'll just die from it. Or they care that gays can't marry over fixing a few trillion dollars – what is it? $13 trillion of debt. It's ridiculous. Yeah, try living here, pal. $13 trillion of debt. It's ridiculous. Yeah, try living here, pal.

Look, as to the abortion question, I mean, that's easy, right? It's like, well, that'll teach them. So, you know, problem solved. And then, you know, the economy is so strong right now, we don't have to worry about it. That's why we have kids and grandkids, so they can deal with the burden of our errors. Of course, of course. And they can drink that water that of our errors of course right i mean

they can drink that water that you've poisoned and the air that you've poisoned and why do you think i'm poisoning it so what the fuck of course yeah now we have to we have our crazies here as well this this guy clive palmer who's a huge mining magnate, announced this week that he would be building a replica of the Titanic. In fact, a fleet of the Titanic. And then literally half an hour after that press conference, he announced that he's running for politics. Awesome. That's fantastic. I can't wait for his political campaign to go down.

Oh, zing! As if it were a ship. personally i want him when he's built this titanic i want him to in the memory of the original titanic just to be on that maiden voyage by himself i want him to i want him to go out and actively fight icebergs hand-to-hand iceberg combat i love the idea that we've romanticized the Titanic. It's like, really? Are you fucking kidding me? It was just 1,500 people. Just 1,500 people.

Yeah, it just died. It's a small amount. Horrible death. Just like, hey, was it quick? No, it was really aggressively awful. That was just fucking unbelievable. Yeah, well, how about this? We'll make a movie out of it. Then we'll make boats and we'll call them all.

Yeah, no. Really? Yeah. The Titanic? I got one more question here. Sure. Now, we know, living here in the United States, that everything is kind of reversed in Australia. You guys, the toilet bowl water swirls the wrong way.

Yeah. We know that you're hanging upside down currently. Correct. You drive on the wrong side of the road. Absolutely correct. You also have a fucking liberal party that is not liberal? Yeah. How the fuck does that even work?

I know. It's the biggest oxymoron ever. It's absolutely awesome. Yeah, the liberal party is, in fact, the conservative party. Did they do it to trick you? Did they do it like, shh, we're really conservative. We want to trick everyone. Like, how the fuck did that even happen? Well, it's historical. So very, a very long time ago, the Labour Party sprung up, right? And the Labour Party is basically the

people concerned, or at least they were in the past, concerned with social justice issues, you know, like giving workers rights and stuff. So it's just any sort of opposition to that radical idea that workers deserve not to die while they're on the job and to have sort of rights would be liberal, right? Right. I mean, that makes sense. So it's just one of those really stupid historical things.

Oh, man. It's a joke. To be fair, though, half of them are koalas. They need to name it the anger party or something, you know? What was that? Half of them are what? Are koalas. So, you know, it's...

Do you want to know something funny about koalas? I do. It's a matter of fact. If you ever come to Australia, okay, if you ever come to Australia, don't have sex with the koalas because they all have chlamydia what yeah you can't do not have sex for the advice with the koalas yes they all have chlamydia they do there goes my summer vacation the sex tourism trade in australia is fucked up i gotta tell you next thing you know all the kangaroos will have VD. What the fuck?

Actually, you want to know something funny about kangaroos? Oh, God. Here we go. Here we go. So kangaroos have this really, really cool quality, right? Because they're constantly bouncing, et cetera. The males of the kangaroos, they actually have retractable nutsacks. They can retract their balls up inside themselves.

So, you know know if you're ever fighting a kangaroo and i really recommend this to any any uh any non-australian person you come to australia you got to fight a kangaroo you have to it's like it's a rite of fucking passage exactly but don't try the low blows don't kick them in the nuts because they will have retracted it it just doesn't work when you go down to to Australia, you have to fight a kangaroo, you have to fuck a koala, and you have to rub a jellyfish on your face. I think those are the three things you have to do when you go to Australia.

Do you want to know something funny about jellyfish? It was great having you on, Jake. You should buy Jake's book on Amazon. You should listen to Jake's podcast, the imaginaryfriendshow.com podcast. Jake, the Imaginary Friends Show dot com podcast. Jake, it was an absolute blast having you on. It was an absolute pleasure talking to you guys. Thanks so much. Thanks for coming on all the way from

Austria. We really appreciate it. Thank you. No, thank you guys. It was so lovely. I really appreciate it. So we got a little bit of email. First email was from Randy. Randy sent an email, a nice short email that I thought was pretty funny. He said, think those people should have used the holy water to keep Ted Nugent out of Michigan and Detroit instead of blessing purses. I can't think of a better reason. I think you should fill up a fucking fire truck full of holy water and just shoot it in his face.

I think that's the best use of holy water yet. I'm surprised they haven't just bored holes to the center of the earth to put out hell's fires. Yeah. You know we're only inches away from that. Well, there was that one group that was like fucking blessing mosques, putting fucking stakes in the ground and shit. Oh, I remember that.

Yeah. Those people are fucking wacky, man. So we got an email from Christian. Christian wrote a very nice email and asked in the email, I was wondering what the name of the atheist TV show slash documentary by the BBC that you guys mentioned many weeks ago. I'll be honest, I don't know.

You got to be a little more specific, but we did mention in recent podcasts, we almost always mention Jesus Camp, which is not made by the BBC, but is a documentary that you should watch if you haven't seen it. And then the other one is Deliver Us From Evil. But I don't know that that's an atheist one. So we're not sure exactly what you're getting at, Christian. Do you know what just occurred to me is there's the atheist tapes, which is on Netflix on demand. I do know that that was a BBC documentary, and I did watch those. Those are interesting. So there's a couple of suggestions. If you could be a little more specific, maybe we can help you out.

But we appreciate you listening, Christian. Thank you for listening. Matt or Matthew sends us a video, and I'm going to post this video because it's fucking outrageously funny. I don't want to play the song. There's a girl who sings a song. I don't want to outrageously funny. I don't want to play the song. There's a girl who sings a song. I don't want to play the song because I don't want to steal her song. It's on YouTube.

She should be getting the views for this, not us. So I'm just going to post the – embed the video in our website. Go and listen to this song. It's very funny. It's about you being pregnant two weeks before you've actually conceived in Arizona, and it's about her wanting to move to Arizona because of it. It's clever and funny, and you should check it out. So come to our site and check out this video. Tom, we got a little bit of pushback last time because we mentioned abortion, and we mentioned how you really can't have a conversation with it about it. One of the things that I had said was I had given out two pieces of hyperbole that on one side, the people are, you know, so far this way. And on the other side, they're so

far this way. And I kind of got a little called out by it. I will say that I was I was they were both pieces of hyperbole. I was not pretending that one was real and one wasn't. I know one's closer to reality, but that still doesn't make it real. So I understand that it's a it's a false equivalence argument, Rick. But but I was just making a joke more than anything else. very difficult, at least in the States, to have a reasonable, rational conversation about what abortion is, about what when personhood becomes a thing of concern. Those questions have become so politicized that I do think it's impossible to have a reasonable, rational conversation with most people. Most people want to declare a side for right or wrong.

And I have a side. I do. I've got a side. I've got some thoughts on that subject. But most people are more concerned with declaring a side and defending their position against attack than they are about sitting down and having a reasonable conversation about the complexities, moral and otherwise, of the issue. And that's really what I meant when I was saying that it's impossible to have a conversation about this topic. And I do think that's true. I think any conversation revolving around this topic is well nigh impossible.

It just escalates. It just gets out of control too fast, right? It just escalates too fast and turns into is my rhetoric better than your rhetoric? It's not – it's no longer going to be about any sort of objective data. Now it's going to be about emotion and it's almost always appealing to emotion. Right, and both sides feel so under attack that they feel a position to defend rather than to consider. And if you're not in a position to consider, you're not having a real conversation. And I want to thank Katie. She sent a nice long email to us. Katie has been a listener for quite some time. I want to say that I got a lot out of this email and I really do

appreciate you sending it in. I agree with you. I think, you know, the statistics say and they show that, you know, it's really only a very small percentage of women that get it after 20 weeks after an abortion, after 20 weeks, a tiny sliver of women do it. And it's mainly for health concerns. So really, there's no argument to be made. But people are making a big stink about it. And I know that. But the problem is, is that is that they are using appeals to emotion to get voters behind them, and that's really what we're talking about.

We got an email, Tom, from Carlos, who sent us a nice long email who said that he started a joke rap group called Da Street Preachers. I love it. I love it. I think it's great. I hope it's all in caps, too, Carlos. You better keep it all in caps, because it looks great on the page. I mean it really does open up on the page. It looks brilliant.

But you're thinking maybe you could do this, take a real serious look at being a Christian rap band, and you're kind of on the fence. You're not sure if you can do it. I will tell you right now that you can do this. The Christian Side Hug is a perfect example of this. If you don't know what I'm talking about, can do it. I will tell you right now that you can do this. The Christian side hug is a perfect example of this. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just Google it. The Christian side hug, people still don't know if it's fake or not. They have no idea. They are clueless. You will have Christians on one side saying it's real. And on the other side, you'll have, you know, us on the other side being like, well, it looks real. But then you have people on both sides saying, well, fucking that's fake. That's not a real thing.

So people don't even know. They're so clueless. The Poe's Law is such a big, you know, it's such a real thing that it is impossible to discern someone who is making fun of Christianity to a crazy extreme from a fundamentalist anymore. And you can fucking run with this. I think this show has proven from the stories we've covered, there's no level of hyperbole you can take this to that doesn't match an existing level of actual belief. So you can't, you have an inability to satirize this nonsense. The nonsense self-satirizes.

I say, if you can make a buck mocking these people, onion that shit up, my man. They totally should. So, we want to finish out the show by talking about another Scottish listener.

Looks like we got a couple of Scotland listeners here. I had no idea. They probably opened up the yard. Opened up the yard. This is from June. June listens faithfully every week. Thank you, June, for listening from Scotland. And if you listen from a place that is a real place, not a place like fucking Narnia,

and you want to send us an email and tell you where to listen from, feel free. If we have any Narnian listeners, I fucking want to know about it. No one from Narnia, and you want to send us an email and tell you where to listen from. If we have any Narnia listeners, I fucking want to know about it. No one from Narnia listens. There isn't Narnia, not a single. They all hate us there. They hate us. Even the Talking Lions? Yeah.

No, but I think they like us in that other book series, though, the one about that atheist book series that fucking went nowhere. Oh, yeah, the Golden Compass books? Yeah, I'm sure they listen to us in the Golden Compass like crazy. But when you go to Narnia, they fucking hate us. We're not big fans. Not big fans. So we want to thank

what turned out to be an awesome interview, Jake, from Imaginary Friends Show podcast. You can search for him on Google. You can find him online. You can find him on iTunes. It's a great podcast. You should listen to it.

You should also, if you have a couple bucks, buy his book. It's Letters to Christian Leaders, Hallowed, Be Thy Claims. You can get it on Amazon. And for Kindle, it's six bucks. I know. I'll be getting a torrent of it soon.

I'm going to try to pirate it from your copy because I don't want to give this guy any more confidence than he already has. Yeah, he was awesome to have on this show. I just want to make sure I financially devastate him. Absolutely. Whenever we get an opportunity. But we want to thank Jake for coming on. And if you get a chance, check out his projects. He's a great guy.

And as usual, this time I mean it. We will leave you with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water downward spiral, brain dead pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. 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 bigfoot yeti aliens

churches mosques and synagogues temples dragons giant worms atlantis dolphins truthers birthers witches wizards vaccine nuts shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our wives, employers,

friends, families, or of the local dairy council. Thank you.