Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 49: Veritable Bacchanalia of Regret

Episode Date: May 28, 2012

Pastor Charles Worley's Anti-Gay Rant Goes Viral, Says Homosexuals Should "Die Out" Anderson Cooper Does Not Take Pity on Woman Who Tries to Defend Gay-Bashing Pastor Obama spending binge never happened Tortured Afghan teen on attackers: 'The same should be done to them' Official: 122 girls, 3 teachers poisoned at Afghan school Rep. Walter Jones likens church tax rule to Communism A Year After the Non-Apocalypse: Where Are They Now? One Million Moms targets DC, Marvel over gay storylines "Unorthodox" priest still practising after sexually abusing woman Beginning clip: Pastor Charles Worley Clips: Anderson Cooper, Obama Audiobook, Allahu Akbar, Michelle Bachmann, Ellen vs. 1M Moms, Jesus Camp + Blue Suade 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. Of our president getting up and saying that it was all right for two women to marry or two men to marry, I'll tell you right now, I was disappointed bad, but I'll tell you right there, as sorry as you can get, the Bible's a gannet, God's a gannet,

I'm a gannet, and if you've got any sense, you're a gannet. I had a way, I figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers, but I couldn't get it past the cone. Build a great big large fence, hundred, fifty or a hundred mile long, put all the lesbians

in there, fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals up some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified so they can't get out. Feed them. And you know what? In a few years they'll die out. Do you know why they can't reproduce? If a man ever has a young'un, praise God, he'll if a man ever has a young'un, praise God, he'll be the first one. All of these. You can just weld amen. I'm going to preach the hell out of all of us.

Hey, I'll tell you right now, somebody said, who are you going to vote for? I ain't going to vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover. You said, did you mean to say that? You better believe I did. God have mercy. It makes me puke and sick to think about. I don't even know whether you ought to say say this in the pulpit or not. Could you imagine kissing some man? My God, I love you fellas. 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 49 of Cognitive Dissonance, and we are recording this from inside an electrified fence. We got picked up in North Carolina in error in a raid by a lunatic, it turns out. The fucking Gestapo came and fucking got us. The fucking anti-gay Gestapo that's down there.

Can you imagine a less educated sounding individual? A less interesting, a less well-informed, a less reasonable person? I mean, honestly. Can you even – if you had to come up with something, if you had to design like a superhero of ignorance. If you were making a fictional character. Right. You could do no worse. All my fictional dumbasses say again.

Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. Again. I'm again it. You're again it. Again it.

You got any sense? You're again it. Again it. Like, are you saying I should do it again, you fucking mumble-mouthed prick? Is that what you're saying? The fuck is wrong with you? What the fuck is wrong with this guy? How much of that do you think is just, is this guy just like playing up to the – like playing up to the crowd?

Like, well, I'm going to say it again because that sounds very down home and like it connects me to you. Or is he just that unable to speak and enunciate? You're telling me that the thought process went through his head. That was how should I pronounce against it? And he chose out of the myriad ways in which you could pronounce against it. He decided to say, I'm going to choose again because that'll get these guys behind me. I call fucking shenanigans, Tom. I'm sorry.

That's a long shot there. That's a fucking million to one fucking lotto ticket right there. There's no way that guy thought that. That guy doesn't even, like, there's a guy who the only, like, the only thing, other words he knows is, like, chicken fried stick. Like, that's the only other words he knows. This guy

is, uh, he's not a bright man. Um, what strikes me is, like, you know, we've put all the gays and queers. That's confusing. I'm not sure if you know, sir, but whatever. But we're going to put all the gays and queers in one electrified fence. The homosexuals and queers, yeah, they have separate pride parades, it turns out. I like, too, that he talks about putting the lesbians in one and the gays in the other.

It's like, well, what are you afraid of here, sir? Like usually people get a little worried about co-ed mingling. But what are you nervous about here? Like maybe you're misunderstanding how this whole – but he wants a separate electrified fence area for lesbians and a separate one for gays and queers. What I love the idea too because he's – what they'll do is that they will shed their gayness just to fucking have gay kids. I mean that's what he's saying basically is that they will not be gay for a little while so that they can be gay again and have gay kids afterwards after they've had sex the the homosexual men have had sex with the homosexual women to have gay kids so that they could then be not gay when they want to reproduce because we all know and this is like love this is like the part that he

just is so fucking unbelievably stupid he doesn't understand that like does he not understand that that gay kids come from straight relationships do you really think that all gay kids like that that the genesis of all gayness like comes from prior gayness that it's like i think that's what they inherited like what that's an that's what they think. What? That's an evolutionary dead end if that's the case. There would never have been any gay people ever if you had to have – what? This man is so spectacularly stupid. And then we're going to airlift them food? We're so afraid of contact with the homosexuals. You can't even have a door.

You can't just drive it in a truck. You can't even have a door. It's like, whoa. Why build an electrical fence? I can look through it. They should build a wall. Exactly. So nobody Because I'm going to be able to see them having butt sex, and that's going to ruin me. They all appear to be having a great time, sir.

What do we do now? Quick, airlift them food. What a fuckwit this man is. And it's not like this is a small church. This is a huge church. This is one of those, like, nut-hut mega-churches. Like, where everybody just gathers together and is crazy in mass. At a mass.

And people are hooting and hollering out there, too. Oh, yeah, they're saying amen constantly. Kill them gays! Amen! Kill them fags! Amen! And what he says, like, is, you know what? They wouldn't reproduce. There's like a rumble from the crowd, like, oh, I hadn't thought of that. Oh, yeah, because that's not a thing.

That's not how that works. Yeah, a hushed murmur goes across the crowd. They're like, oh, they're looking at each other. Oh, man, because that's not a thing. That's not how that works. Yeah, hushed murmur goes across the crowd. They're just like, oh, they're looking at each other. Oh, man, Billy Bob, I ain't done thought of that myself. This here thinking man up top, he done did said it. You know, I can't imagine the fucking audience doing anything except for throwing a fucking stick at an obelisk. Like, that's what, when I think of the audience, I'm like, they're either throwing their own shit, they're eating a fucking banana, or they're fucking throwing a stick at a novel.

Slapping their palms against the ground. Exactly. Fucking beating their chest and slapping and fucking ooking. Like that's all I see them doing. They're like – they're set up strategically so they can pick the lice from each other's hair during the sermon. You know what we should do? They're set up strategically so they can pick the lice from each other's hair during the sermon. You know what we should do? Let me play a clip of the—because Anderson Cooper, Tom, fucking tore into one of these fucking parishioners.

So let me play a clip of Anderson Cooper talking to one of the parishioners that was in the crowd. I know you're a defender of Pastor Worley, and I appreciate you coming on the program. Do you agree with his statements that he said on the pulpit that gays and lesbians should be put behind electrified fences until they die out? I believe that that was taken. I mean, yes, he said that. But, of course, he would never want that to be done. Of course, people are going to take it and make it their own way and make it into what they want to. But I agree with what the sermon was and what it was about. But you're saying he doesn't want it done, but he said he wanted it done on the set up from the pulpit.

How do you why do you interpret that's not what he wants? I say, OK, let me let me try to say it a different way. Maybe that's what he felt like should be done. I mean, it can be said either way. Okay, just to make the short of it, yes, I agree with him. If they can't get the message that that's wrong, then they can't reproduce and eventually they would die so you believe only that gay people are only born of other gay people you're saying they can't you're saying they can't reproduce so therefore they would all die off but aren't gay people

born and gay people get born to straight parents all the time, no? No, that's not what I meant. If man and man were in the same fence and women were in the same fence, they can't reproduce together. That's what I mean. Right, but that wouldn't eliminate all gay people. There would be more gay people born outside the fence to straight people, wouldn't there? Exactly, but we were meeting the ones in there. See, it's all taken out of context and

twisted. The main point is always the same. And Anderson Cooper doesn't fucking pull any punches either. He's not letting this woman off. Like, first off, she's a nasty little subhuman. Like, you can just tell. Yes, she is. She's a fucking nasty little person.

And again, you could, you know how you made fun of the guy who was talking earlier? You could not choose an accent that would make her sound dumber than the accent she has. Like, there's like a Southern Belle accent, which can be kind of, you know, sultry and sexy. And think back to if you've ever seen the movie Maverick with Jodie Foster. Like that's a sexy Southern Belle sort of accent. This is like a fucking, this is fucking Forrest Gump.

I mean, this is what this is, is fucking Forrest Gump. And this woman is, she is about as stupid as you can be. And she's their fucking spokesperson. She's the one that everybody looked at and was like, well, who's going to go out there and talk to that mayor and reporters? Who are we going to put? Let's bring in Kathy. She's the smart one. We got ourselves another one of them goddamn liberal reporters out there.

Who's again? Nail us down with the facts about what was said and what we think. We ought to send out the big guns. Shout out the big show Who here finished grade school? Who here's got a large imposing mass? What's in her house? She's volunteering

She's like I finished 8th grade They just think she's smart because she has glasses That's the only reason they sent her out She looks like one of them there sexy librarians. Minus all the sexy. We just lost all of our Southern listeners, by the way. Whatever. Look, you can be smart and from the South.

It's just harder. It's just harder? Well, you know, I have to say, I actually tend to agree with you, generally speaking speaking because it's almost like they intentionally introduce legislation on a weekly basis to make kids stupider down there. And they also spend less on education. They have less money to spend on education because a lot of the population, the taxes are smaller because there's a lower income. It's just a cycle of unintellectualism. That's what it is. It's just a cycle of unintellectualism. That's what it is. For the most part, yeah.

And I mean obviously there's – I know we have listeners from like North Carolina that are smart people. So I'm not saying that if you're from the south, you're stupid. I'm just saying this woman is from the south and she's stupid. My anecdotal evidence here. I love too the way Anderson Cooper kind of traps her as just being like, wait a minute, wait a minute. But that's what was said. Yeah. People are just trying to hold him to what he was said.

She's like, there we go again. There we go again. Yeah. This guy stood in front of everybody and he even made a point of saying, like, and I am actually saying this. Like, he like, yeah, he pauses and makes sure everybody understands that he means what he says. And then people come after and are like, wait a minute. Did you mean what you said? Well, I'd like to equivocate because it sounds bad when I'm away from my sort of bigot circle.

Exactly. When I'm not when I'm not here having my my bigot views, you know, when I'm out of the KKK rally, all of a sudden, you know, these things seem a little less reasonable in the light of day. Once you leave the porn expo, everything's, you know, like you bring your, you start talking about that stuff in normal circles and it feels weird.

You know what I mean? Like that's the same exact feeling here. And this woman, this woman keeps on saying the same thing she keeps on saying something like um like well if you're gonna take it yeah i guess that's what he said yeah and you're just like he's trying to say like it's out of context she keeps on wanting to say it's out of context but he even clarifies he's like like no he has a moment of realization that he will be a fucking news bite he even has it on the stage you could see it fucking flashes in his

eyes he's like am i saying this is this a good idea i mean he like almost says it does this sound be a fucking news bite. He even has it on the stage. You can see it fucking flashes in his eyes. He's like, am I saying this? Is this a good idea? I mean, he almost says, does this sound like a good idea to say? Right. And then he says it. He's like, no, I really mean it. I fucking hate the gays.

Fucking put him in a fucking concentration camp that isn't a concentration camp. What a fucking subhuman. And thousands of people. I mean, a thousand. His church is like 1,200 people. God. Well, and you have followers who will come out and defend your beliefs even though they are completely indefensible. They are indefensible. And this person goes out and is murdered by Anderson because all he does is just say, well, you know, like, what if you change that to Jews?

Right. Oh, well, you know. Ain't nobody going to really do it. Because they won't let us. Hold on a second. Somebody did that. Yeah, but nobody's going to do it tomorrow. Yeah, they're not going to do it again.

I mean, it's not like this is how this sort of shit starts. Gosh. Whoa, oh, fuck. Wait. You know, it's almost sometimes like when you find these supporters, like these people in the crowds that are hooting and hollering and fucking slapping their palms on the ground or whatever and enjoy at this nonsense. And then you try to get them to say it out loud. Yeah.

Like, well, yeah, I just want you to say out loud. And then you can kind of see in her face that she's getting very upset. Oh, yeah. She's rolling her eyes. She's like leaning her head sideways. I think she's mad because she's not currently eating cookies. I think that's why she's mad. To be fair, I mean, I'm mad because I'm not currently eating cookies.

Hey, I'm mad all the time. What the fuck? But you get this impression watching her that she's getting very frustrated because she has to verbalize these absurd viewpoints. Right. That are so easy to be, like, it's so easy for Anderson Cooper just to be like, well, that's fucking horrible and unreasonable. He doesn't even have to use those terms. He just has to ask her questions about her own stance.

And it's like, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't want to say it out loud. I just want to hate in the privacy of my own megachurch. Right. And be able to turn to, you know, another parishioner at the salon or wherever, you know, the fucking pigs die, wherever they get their fucking hair done, and look at the other one and say,

oh, don't you just hate those gays? Yeah, I hate those gays too. And just have a little bit of camaraderie with another fellow parishioner about hatred. To just be able to be like, you know what? I just want to have my beliefs. My beliefs are sacred. My beliefs about basically treating other people as less than are sacred. That's sacred.

You can't fuck with that. Well, you know what? You're a fucking subhuman. And yes, I can fuck with that. That's a ridiculous belief system. And we are breaking our own rule to Tom by making fun of somebody whose whose neck is bigger than their head. We said we weren't going to do that. But we are currently so I think we have to change our rule set. So now you know that guy ain't shit. Sorry, I was motherfucking got nothing on me, right? Nothing. So Cecil, this next story is

from Market Watch. It's part of the Wall Street street journal um the wall street journal as we all know a bastion of liberal politics by the way you know when when i think liberal dirty damn godless commie liberal and i think that a lot right i think the wall street fucking journal. Yeah. Market Watch. Obama spending binge never happened. Oh. Government outlays rising at the slowest pace since the 1950s. Now, you know, obviously it's an election year and you're hearing a lot of yammering about, you know, how we've got to stop the spending of Obama. Except for he has spent less money than virtually everyone. And all it goes to show is nobody's paying attention to what is happening.

Right. All we're paying attention to is, well, this is what I expect to have happened. Sure. This is the narrative that I want to tell about the way my world works and who the villains are and who the good guys are. And never mind. Never mind if it doesn't, if it's not a real, like we don't care about that. That did not occur.

So yeah, fucking whatever. That doesn't fit my narrative. It's like we're in this confirmation bias loop as far as politics is concerned that we just are completely unable to break out of. Absolutely. And Tom, let's not make the mistake of thinking that Obama isn't spending a lot of money. I mean, obviously, I think everybody agrees he's spending money because it costs money to run the government. And he's cutting programs, I think, that don't deserve cuts. NASA is a big one.

I think that there are some programs that never get touched. The military, which is ridiculous. We have such a fucking huge military budget. It's outrageous. We spend so much money on the military, and that is fucking off the table, completely off the table. And you're like, that's the one I think that should be most susceptible to being cut is the military budget. Because one, it's so fucking huge. And two, it's so un-fucking-necessary.

There's – you know, it's the two – it's the biggest fucking ripest fucking tomato in the fucking garden. And you're just not even paying attention to it. You're just like, oh, look at these fucking small little green ones over here. That's what we want to pluck. That's what they do. And the idea to, I mean, there's a lot of things I think that we can get down on Obama for. I think this president has, I think in the idea of being a hawk, he has been more of a hawk than I would have wanted him to be. He's assassinated people that I think, you know, when we want to step back and be like,

whoa, wait a minute. There's ideas that he can assassinate people. Some of the stuff that's gone through while he's been president that he can assassinate people on just fucking command alone. At least fucking – at least Bush would just put you in Guantanamo and fucking waterboard you. You know what I mean? But Obama's just like, well, that guy gets his eyes dotted. Even American citizens. It doesn't matter. Exactly.

It's like whatever. When the government can just say you're a threat. Yep. We're going to kill you. I mean, that's just how do you have any rights at that point? Absolutely. Any rights. Once your right to life has been extinguished, all your other rights sort of fall behind that pretty quickly. Yeah. And we have a president now that has that power. It's you know, there's a lot of things, a lot of things we can be criticizing Obama for. It just turns out that what we want to criticize him for is exactly what you said, things that fit our narrative. So we have a narrative in this country that the liberals will spend more and the conservatives will not spend as much. But when you really look at it, all the

conservatives have been are socially conservative and that's it. And we talked about this time. We fucking, this is a horse that has been beat to death that there is nothing left of it

at this point. The small bits of flesh that we could possibly hit are gone because we have beat this horse into fucking oblivion. The Republican Party is not a conservative party

when it comes to spending. They are not fiscally conservative. Look at the last fiscally conservative candidate I can think of was in 92 and he was an independent, Ross Perot. That was the last fiscally conservative candidate I can remember. You're going back into the 70s to get people that are fiscally conservative. So the idea that they're our party of being fiscally conservative is a lie. They're both the same party when it comes to economic policies. They really are.

Yep. From an economic standpoint, I don't think – I mean how could the republicans possibly claim after the eight years of W? Right. How could you possibly make a claim that that was a fiscally conservative near decade how that isn't that is a fucking functional impossibility um but they'll do it you know they'll do it because it's not about what whether things are right or wrong like you know it's about i've got a story to tell because my story that i'm telling is what gets me votes and votes make jobs my job yeah so

it is my job to tell the story the way I want it to be told and that's that's all that is you know it's it's it's just fucking ridiculous this the partisan nature of the political system has gotten so grossly out of control so out of control that there I really don't think that there is a reasonable way any longer to have good conversations about, you know, it's devolves every time into, you know, whose side are you on? Are you left or right? Are you Republican or Democrat? Who are you voting for? You know, yes or no. Yeah. It's this sort of false dichotomy that, you know, the numbers don't bear out. And it's very frustrating. It's very fucking frustrating, you know, because it leads people to be less educated at the voting – at the polls and at the voting box.

Because they're voting based on a narrative rather than based on the truth. And you know, the other thing too, Tom, is you can never get a politician before they get elected to give it to you straight. Nobody ever does it. Nobody ever says, this is what I'm going to do and then does it.

Nobody fucking does that. Everybody's like, this is what I'm going to do. And then they get in office and they say, well, and I changed my mind about this and I can only get this passed. And the other stuff that I was really adamant about, that shit gets stalled. So really all I'm doing is kind of what the other side will let me and what I've changed my mind about. Like that's all that really happens.

So it's, you know, we have a system of, we have a, we have a fucking political game that is all liars. They're all, it's a liar's game at this point. So there's no point. I mean, you know, there's obviously a point. There's a point in voting. I mean, you should vote. You should try to, you know, try to find the person who's going to lie the least, I guess. But it's a very frustrating system we have in this country. And it's more frustrated. It's compounded by the fact that people will say things like, oh,

here's a blatant falsehood that I think fits my narrative. So I'll fucking keep on saying it. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar. Well, Cecil, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about this next story, despite the fact that I don't want to talk about this next story. This is from CNN. Tortured Afghan teen on attackers. The same should be done to them. This story is fucking awful. This is about an Afghan teen that was married off at the age of 13.

an Afghan teen that was married off at the age of 13. Because, you know, 13-year-old girls can consent to being married and fucking sexual activity and the... Oh, God. Her husband

was a member of the Afghan army. He raped her, you know, because she's fucking 13. And when she didn't become pregnant, she was tortured for the crime of not being pregnant fast enough. Like you didn't become impregnated fast enough. So the family locked her in a basement and tortured her for a very long time. And thankfully, these people are finally going to face some kind of justice. How can you live?

I don't care where you live. I don't care where you live at this point. How can you live in this 2012 world and not be like a Bushman, right, and not have any contact with anyone outside of your community basically? Like be a – you know, we're talking about somebody who thinks it's like fucking that guns don't even exist in the middle of fucking Nowheresville, South America or something. How can you live and be part of any kind of community in this day and age and think that somebody could will themselves not to be pregnant? How is that possible?

You could possibly blame someone, physically blame someone for not becoming pregnant. How does your brain function to put that together in this time? I mean, we're not talking about a, you know, it's not a backwards country because they have rocket launchers. You know? Right. I mean, like, they have guns. They have tanks. They fucking, they can kill each other on a fucking grand scale and do.

So they obviously have some technology. They're not banging rocks together. So they have some, I mean, you're part of the modern world when you can fire a gun. You should at least be part of the modern world enough to realize that you can't just fucking, like, meditate for a few minutes and blow up all incoming sperm. How is she controlling it? I don't know. How do you fucking put that in the abacus that is your brain and have something come out the end that says we should fucking pull her fingernails out?

It's impossible to consider that this would – and these people got 10 years. And the girl is right. She says they should have gotten 50 years. Yeah. I mean I don't agree with her saying – Yes, they should have gotten all the time. Yeah. I mean she says they should have the same thing happen to them.

No. I'm not for that normally. I'm one of the cruel and unusual punishment is not a good thing guys. But I agree that they should have gotten way more time. Yeah. Oh, yeah. They should have gotten... They should spend the rest of their lives. I mean, you can't just fucking torture people, and you can't torture

people for fucking imagined crimes. Imagined crimes. You can't torture a 13-year-old girl for anything. For fucking any reason. There's never been a reason where you could say, that torture of that 13-year-old girl was justified. There's... I've got a reason where you could say that torture of that 13 year old girl was justified there's i've got a yeah maybe you haven't considered my laundry list of

reasons to torture 13 year old girl let me go through uh paragraph two subsection b sure i mean fuck you you can't this is horrific it's just it's it really horrific. Any system that promotes the selling, and that's really what it is. You're not marrying. But the selling of girls at the age of 13 into marriage, that's unjustifiable. It is – that is – it's not culturally different. It's not, you know, well, that's just the way things work over there. Fuck that noise. I agree.

That is rape. It's the selling of little girls. That is unjustifiable. You can't come up with a worldview that is reasonable, that is compassionate, that is kind, that allows 13-year-old girls to be sold against their will to a husband. It can't be done. Fuck that noise. This is not even up for fucking debate. And then to have this poor girl experience this horror,

and because she didn't get impregnated fast enough, she's going to be tortured by the family? First, how is that even supposed to help the situation? At one point you're like, oh, she didn't get pregnant fast enough. Well, have we tried torturing her? Maybe that will get her pregnant. What? Can you imagine her thought process?

Wait, hold on a second. Hold on, hold on. Now you fucked her, right? You fucked her once. Yeah, I fucked her, right? You fucked her once. Yeah, I fucked her, and she didn't become pregnant. Okay, well, what's the next thing we can do? We could, you know, maybe have you fuck her. No, you know what?

Let's just torture her. Yeah, right? Oh, man. How do you get from A to Z there? And the other thing I want to know, Tom, is what's their endgame? Like, what's the endgame portion of this? Because you've got the point where you're like, okay, she didn't produce a child,

so we've got to torture her. Are you expecting the guy to come back and rape her again so that she can get pregnant and then is all, like, are you removing her from torture at that point? Like, do you expect to have a good relationship with her after that? Do you expect to have a good relationship

with your grandchildren after that? Like, what goes through your head? What's the end game here? Because the only end game I could see is why didn't you just kill her? I know. I have to admit, I thought the same thing. It's, it's because there's obviously an element of sadism involved here. Yeah, absolutely.

You know, and there's, there's a complete disregard for the value of women. Oh yeah, absolutely. Because it's, you, you can't, you can't possibly, you can't possibly – you said like you want to have a good relationship. It's like they don't give a fuck if there's a real relationship. She's a fucking piece of property. Yeah. She'll have the relationship we fucking tell her to have. You wouldn't do this to a dog.

No. Right. You wouldn't go out and – let's say a cow. Let's not say a dog, right? Because people – humans have sympathy for dogs. Most people have no sympathy for a cow and they'll tell you by eating a burger. Okay. So I have no sympathy because I've eaten a lot of burgers. I have no sympathy for cows. If you were to take a cow, let's say they were to buy a cow and bring it back to their place. And

then their bull mounts it and it doesn't get pregnant. They wouldn't take it to the basement and pull its hooves off. Right. They wouldn't do that. They wouldn't pull its, you know, pull its ears off. They'd be like, oh, it didn't get pregnant. So we have to let it sit in the fucking field a little longer. You know, maybe there isn't even grass on the field. She's only a 13 year old girl here. Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's, it's, you make a great point is that there's no people, you know, people are rational enough about animals, about animal breeding. Because we've been doing animal breeding for fucking generation and generation and generation. And we understand how, we seem to have this understanding of how that works. You know, animal A has sex with animal B.

And you want animal C, you got to give them more than one shot at that. Sure. And nobody would look at a valuable commodity like a live, like a piece of livestock. And you would not take that valuable commodity and beat it and torture it and damage it. Right. Because you're damaging your commodity. And what what what that means to me, by by extension is this girl is less than cattle. Absolutely.

She's less than any other animal that you would breed. She is not a commodity to be valued. She doesn't provide milk or meat. Yep. All she does in this community or to this family – I shouldn't say this community because the neighbors did rescue her. Absolutely. Clearly this wasn't condoned by the neighbors. But at least to this family, this girl was just a baby factory.

She was less than a cow. And you can't say – I mean I would say right away that this is not the type of thing that would be an isolated incident. If there is a system in which your daughters get given away at such a young age, there is some, there's, there's something to say about that. There's something in that inherently that makes women less than. It absolutely makes women less than. And by extension, it allows this to happen. Well, Cecil, it fucking happened again.

Oh, man. CNN.com. CNN has not been very friendly lately, by the way. Well, CNN isn't poisoning the girls. Yeah, that's true. But every time I look at CNN to troll around for stories for this show, it's just fucking the most depressing stories seem to come from it. More than 120 girls and three teachers admitted to an Afghan hospital Wednesday after again being poisoned. Don't know what else to say except for why are you poisoning these people?

It's against the Taliban law that they had for women to be educated. Again, this is reflecting on the last story. They don't want women to be educated because they still want to use them as currency. So you can't use somebody for currency when they suddenly realize they're being used for currency. They're like, wait, what the fuck? I'm a what? You're going to do a what? And then that's the end of it. So they don't want that to happen. They still want to be able to hold people in fucking – in the basement and fucking pluck their fucking fingernails off. They want that to happen. So they're going to fucking – they're going to make sure that it happens by fucking destroying the chance of it not happening by educating girls and making them realize that this is a fucked up system. The idea that education is bad for half of your population should tell you that you're doing it wrong.

You're doing civilization wrong. Sure. It's half the people. It's a lot. Same number as you. Because clearly when I say you, it's the men who are in charge of this nonsense. The very idea that you could look at half of your population and be like we really can't have them doing anything right we got to make sure because i mean like you said

as soon as you get people thinking reading writing um you've got an education i mean that was remember i mean just just look at the the the history of slavery in the United States, African slavery in the United States. One of the big crimes was teaching slaves to read. Yep. You do not want the people you own to be educated. Right. This is all about ownership. Yep.

This has nothing to do with what's right or wrong. This has to do with protecting your property. I can't, if my fucking car learned to read tomorrow, I'd be shit out of luck because it might be like, wait a minute, I've been reading around and you drive me like a goddamn car. Like, fuck. What do I get out of this relationship?

I'd be like, ah, you know, all of a sudden there would be like a fucking moral quandary here. Exactly, exactly. So you can't continue to treat, but the idea that you would treat fucking women, women, mothers and sisters like fucking property and poison them for the crime of learning. If you're a society, a country, a people that want to move ahead, you don't stifle half your population and think you're going to move ahead. You don't stifle, you know, you wouldn't go up into your brain and clip off the left hemisphere and say, you're not going to work anymore. I just want the right hemisphere to work. And that's it. You wouldn't do that. You wouldn't, and you wouldn't lop off one of

your arms and be like, I'm going to be just as productive now. You're not going to be. You have to have your entire society working together to make you a better people. And if you're cutting out half the population by saying they don't deserve to learn, you're basically fucking self-lobotomizing. You're taking away a great deal of intelligence from your people as a collective by not allowing half of your population to learn at the same rate. You're self-stifling. You're self-retarding. Why would you do that? The only reason to do that is to keep a system of power, a patriarchy in check.

That's the only reason to do it. I have to think that the reason you would think that's a good idea is because your religion tells you so. Because you're the one in power. Right. The only reason you would ever think that. It's no surprise, right? The girls aren't poisoning themselves.

They're not like reading a book and being like, fuck, this sucks. Where's that poison? You know what we hadn't considered the value of? Poisoning ourselves. Exactly. Let's go ahead and do that. Yeah. So we're going to take a break from all of this joyous news to give you an opportunity to find us on email, to find us on Facebook, on Twitter, to leave us voicemail messages.

And hopefully Google Translate will actually translate the fucking things if you leave one. I know we were begging for them last time, and this time Google Translate has a surprise for us. We'll give you all that information and return to ruin the rest of the show in just a moment. You can email these assholes at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. For more information on this or any other episode, visit the Cognitive Dissonance website, dissonancepod.com. Like our show on Facebook to join in the conversation. Just search for Cognitive Dissonance 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, Cecil, this story comes from Secular News Daily.

And the story is about a representative from North Carolina, ever home of the thoughtful individual. It likens the church tax rule to communism. Basically, the church tax rule means that churches that engage in canvassing for votes or supporting a political party, being partisan in any way from the pulpit, those churches, if convicted, found guilty, whatever, if they found out of doing that, they will lose their tax-exempt status. I don't really get why we have to subsidize our churches anyway. What a great way to put it. I love that. I love the idea that we're subsidizing our church because it's so true, Tom. It's to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. I'd go billions on this one.

Yeah, it's it's it's a massive amount of money of tax revenue that's being lost. And you have to stop and think, wait a minute. We're not in the best financial shape right now. And churches violate this rule all the fucking time. We heard at the beginning of the show that fucking total yutz from his megachurch talking about, well, if you ask me who I'm voting for. So he's clearly engaging in political rhetoric from the pulpit. The Catholic Church is constantly engaged in political rhetoric from the pulpit because anything an official of the church says in an official capacity is kind of from the pulpit. Yeah.

And we're allowing these assholes to exist, to own property, to have employees, to have homes, secondary homes, you know, a parsonages and what have you. And all of this goes on tax exempt. Yeah. And it's funny because it really, it really makes me think about how religions operate in this country when we say, you know, oh, we're not a Christian nation. No, we're not a Christian nation. We're a religious nation, though, because we're able to subsidize all religions. What about Scientology? There's a church that gets away with, you know, a ton of scam. The money that you have to pay for Scientology bullshit is ridiculous anyway.

Somebody posted something on Reddit the other day, the amount of money that you have to go through for, like, that fucking reformatting the hard drive or whatever the fuck they do. Whatever they call it. It's like fucking, we're talking tens of thousands of dollars you have to go through for the fucking rebuffering process. Right. The amount of money you have to go through.

Defrag your fucking mental hard drive or whatever. Yeah, exactly. The amount of money you have to go through for that is fucking out the fucking door-rageous. It's fucking nuts. But, you know, they're tax exempt. They're collecting all that money from you. The money is passing. You know, when money passes hands, you know, in secular

situations, when I go to buy a fucking car, I gotta pay a tax on that. Everybody, every business has to pay taxes. Somehow we have this idea that churches aren't businesses. Yet they engage in all the acts of business. Because they have no product. Right. Well, doesn't that the acts of business. Because they have no product.

Right. Doesn't that tell you that we're saying they have no product? They're selling you nothing? That's a good point. Like they're really – it's like, well, they're not a business. They've got nothing for fucking sale. Like, well, booyah. They got nothing to use there.

That's a tough hurdle to jump over. It certainly is. Wow. Lord, the certainly is. Wow. Lord, the day is at hand. We are in the last days. You are Jehovah God. So Cecil, we covered, and by covered I mean laughed uproariously, the Herald camping apocalypse, which did not fucking happen and then it was gonna happen

again it didn't fucking happen again um because it's not a thing yeah that's stupid it's just not a thing the fucking apocalypse is not nigh there are no four horsemen who are gonna swing around and fucking bring pestilence and disease. And fucking Revelation is a fever dream written by maniacs. It's not a real fucking thing. So it's been a year since the apocalypse. Yeah, a year almost exactly. A little over. I don't know where you guys are at, but right now it's a beautiful sunny day.

Yeah. A year after the apocalypse. It's a little hotter so maybe we are in hell i'm not sure yeah if if if all hell's got is like 84 degrees and sunshine yeah i'm okay with that yeah i'm like hell yeah suddenly hell is grand cayman you know what i mean like what the fuck like you're in hell kind of nice actually i to go for a swim. So if one of your demons could bring me a margarita poolside, that'd be swell. Just bring a towel. Yeah.

I want to rest my iPad on something. I'm about to displace a lot of water. That's a lot. What I love the most about this story, and this is a well-written story from religiondispatches.org, most about this story, and this is a well-written story from religiondispatches.org, I really liked the way the reporter said that they were involved with these people

before and then tried to talk to them afterwards. Some of them were so embarrassed that they did not want to speak to them. They wound up not wanting to speak to this person afterwards, but some of them did. And when they found out, like, Harold Camping had this, used his fucking TI-85 calculator to come up with the equation that is God is going to come back at this time.

And when it didn't happen, there was a lot of backpedaling that happened on the part of the people who were listening. They were like, well, maybe it's going to be three days extra because of the crucifixion. Maybe it's going to be seven days extra because of this. Maybe it's going to be 40 days extra because of Noah. And then there's all these things that they had to add. And then suddenly they get to the other day that he's like, oh, I messed up. So let's go with this day. Instead, October comes around.

You notice that there was not the fervor that there was for the May date. Instead, the October date was kind of like a party popper in comparison to a firecracker. It was just like, well, okay, it didn't happen. And then you suddenly see all these people, at least some of the people in this article are like, wait a minute, fuck, was I duped? Was I part of a cult? And they wind up, because he said something that could be falsified, it had them start questioning their own belief. And I think that in the end, it might have been a good thing.

Well, I think they're – you hit the nail on the head with it can be falsified, right? Finally, we have something of a religious nature that is subject to all of the rules of evidence. You know, somebody has a hypothesis. There will be an apocalypse. There's a period of observation. We test our evidence. We can retest our evidence because you fucking did it again. Yeah.

Repeat the experiment. Yeah. Okay. you fucking did it again yeah repeat the experiment absolutely yeah okay i mean all evidence now points to there's no apocalypse yeah and at some point that becomes valuable for people at some point there's only a you know there's a finite amount of bullshit most minds can can can wrap themselves around before finally saying well shit as much as i dislike saying so i was just wrong right and there's people in here who are like yeah i was part of a cult um and i don't think that that's terribly inaccurate because the people who were a part of

the particularly the herald camping uh crowd there were some people, as we covered, that had done some kind of awful shit and some really extreme shit. People who had hurt loved ones, people who had sold all of their belongings, people who had spent all of their money in their kids' college funds and money that would have been otherwise used for sustaining their everyday lives, taking extravagant vacations and otherwise kind of going bonkers because, of course, money is not going to be valuable after the apocalypse. Live off my savings until it comes and now, fuck, I'm out of a job. Right. Yeah. And so a lot of people were hurt, were hurt very badly by this delusion. Part of me says good. Not individually, but on a macro level. Lives may be emotionally in turmoil now. Their lives may be – they may have a lot of embarrassment about their situation.

They may also have a lot of monetary distress in their life. They weren't the Hale-Bopp people. That's true. They weren't the Waco people. They were part of a cult that at least that they can recover from. The other cults that happen like the fucking H Hale-Bops, they're fucking dead. There ain't no recovering from that. There is no recovering from

Waco when you get a tank shoved up your ass. That doesn't happen. You're just like, well, I'm a dead person. And suddenly this guy got me killed. So Harold Camping, in a sense, is more, is just better at not putting people's, you know, mortal lives in danger.

While their lives may be, you know, in turmoil, they're at least not in danger of dying so directly. Right. Right. At least it didn't kill them. Yeah, exactly. At least they didn't die. So there's a hope for them.

So there's a hope for them. I still think he's a despicable human being who used his charisma, if you can even call it that, to convince people of something that was completely false and made up by him. I think that he's despicable for that reason. But at least he's not as bad as somebody giving somebody some fucking cyanide pills like a fucking Jim Jones or something. Exactly, yeah. Your cult could be worse is what I'm saying. Your cult could be worse? Nobody committed mass suicide.

Exactly. So fucking bravo. Exactly. Well played by being fucking vertical still. Spectacular. When that's your best endgame? That's your door prize is that you're still standing up. Wow.

How to turn out? Who's vertical? That tells you something about cults. That's all I'm saying. I would like to read just a few comments from the Million Moms Facebook page.

This is on their page. And not that there's anyone counting, but for a group that calls themselves the Million Moms, they only have 40,000 members on their page. So they're rounding to the nearest million, and I get that. So I can't even believe where we're getting this next story from.

ComicBookResources.com. Fantastic. From ComicBookResources.com, one millionoms targets DC and Marvel over gay storylines. And it's got a picture of the astonishing X-Men, I think, getting married? A couple of them are maybe getting married here. It looks like there's two dudes getting ready to kiss. Yeah, yeah. And the 1 Million Moms are going to make a huge impact.

Absolutely. Again. Last time they fought something. They fought the Archie comics, which were displayed at Toys R Us. The Archie comics had two characters getting married. They were gay. And the One Million Moms mobilized, and then the comics were sold out faster than expected.

So they're basically putting – you know what they are? I think these One Million M moms are actually in secret. They're comic book collectors. That's probably it. They're driving the value of these things. Exactly. They're driving the value of these things up and they're like playing the stock market. It's like those insider traders.

You know what I mean? They've got this figured out, these comic book guys. They created a 1 million mom site and there's only like 40,000 of them, right? So it makes sense. 1 million moms. They there's only like 40,000 of them, right? So it makes sense. 1 million moms. They all want to make 1 million dollars. That's all it is. What does this say about you?

And they're saying that kids are going to read this and think, well, I want to be a gay superhero one day too. Right. Right. Kids read fucking Batman and they don't become Batman later on in life. That's not true. All kids are now Batman.

I don't care how hard they want to be Batman. The best they could do is wear a suit and go to a Comic-Con. That's the best they can do later on in life. Well, being gay is attainable if you're gay. I guess it's true. If you're gay, you can be gay, it turns out. If you're gay. I guess it's true.

If you're gay, you can be gay, it turns out. Again, it comes back to this idea that people just – that like they have to make a choice between two things which they have no natural drive toward one way or the other. Right. Right? This idea that is floated around that at some point people are going to say, I don't know whether I'm attracted to men or women. Let me read a comic book and find out. Who am I? I mean, that's not how sexuality works. Sure.

There's just such a fundamental misunderstanding of how basic sexuality works. And these are moms. They've had the sex. Yeah. Yeah. You would think that they would understand at least on a basic level that they're not attracted to women. Right. At least on a basic level that they're not attracted to women, right? I mean I'm presuming that most of the women from the One Million Moms are not lesbian.

Unless they're repressing something. Yeah, probably right. So I'm making an assumption here but still – so if you know you're not attracted to women and you're not therefore going to have sex with women, don't you think the same is true of all other people? Why are you the exception? Why are you the only one who only has this sort of unilateral sexual feeling? It's baffling to me. There was an interesting thing I saw this week. It was a YouTube video. And there was a woman who was talking, and it's something that hadn't even occurred to me. She was saying that this century probably is one of the first centuries for a long time at least wherein people who actually love each other are getting married instead of sort of bartered away as gifts because, you know, we've lived in a patriarchy for, you know, thousands of years. So there's this feeling like women were, were bartering tools

back then. So there was no, you know, there was no homosexual marriage because there was no, you marry who you love a lot of the time. It was more, you marry who I tell you you're going to marry and then you make a marriage out of it. Uh, it's a marriage of, you know, you're going to get married and you're going to produce some offspring and here you go. You're going to make me grandkids and, you know, that sort of thing. And I get a money for you. A lot of times that's how it worked. They would trade away the woman, the girl for money or for other things. So this is the first time when, you know, people really get to marry who they want to marry. It's, you know, you're giving the girls a choice. You're giving the guys a choice who they want to marry. And we are fucking dropping the ball so tragically because we were against, you know, racial

marriage earlier this century. We are against gay marriage now. We're not. We're so against this idea. And it really does flow back into the idea of the patriarchy. Right. And where else could it come from? You know, there's not a choice for that to come from another source.

Right. It's, I mean, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that, like the historical precedent, you know, as far as who's responsible for what. And that's an interesting point that people hadn't been married for love. Right. Maybe that's why this gay marriage thing is just coming up now. Sure. There's no reason for it to occur before.

Right. Yeah. Right. You can't have an argument about who's allowed to have – who's allowed to be married to who. Yeah. When it's – yeah, that's an interesting point. I hadn't considered that. And also there was another thing I saw too

where somebody was saying that even just saying the term gay marriage is a slander because you don't say, well, I'm going to go get interracially married later this week. I saw that. I was like, there you go.

Exactly. It's just a fucking marriage. It's just people who love each other are getting married. What the fuck do you fucking do? Right. No, that's it. And I think words in that regard

are very important. Yeah. Because they do isolate and they do create difference where no real difference exists. Right. In the name of Jesus, we speak that. So we're going to end on an up note. By up note, I mean a very, very down note. Wandsworthguardian.co.uk. Just rolls, very down note. WandsworthGuardian.co.uk. Just rolls right off the tongue.

Wandsworth. Unorthodox priest. Still practicing after sexually abusing a woman. An Ethiopian Orthodox priest sexually abused a parishioner. What he basically did is he had her over Or he went to her home To do a baptism Told her she had to be naked in order to be baptized She was uncomfortable because that's insane You know I've been to baptisms

Pastor and I haven't seen them being naked No no no trust me on this one This is a special baptism Yeah and by special I mean Then I will sexually assault you I'll be baptizing you with my special scepter. Right. I've got – it's right on your forehead there.

I'll be shooting you full of holy water later. God blessed my dick, so it's cool. I don't know. It's all good. That's terrible. That's fucking terrible. So this guy is a terrible fucking human being with an unpronounceable name. Gibrahana Semre, I think.

Say it again. Gibrahana Semre? I think that's right. I think that's absolutely how he says it. I think I'm probably right on. You're probably perfect. You're perfect. I'm a fat guy in the Midwest.

How could I be wrong speaking an Ethiopian name? It's impossible. Boom. Done. His sentence was a 12-month prison sentence suspended for 18 months. That's fine. And he's back in church as a pastor. Sure.

Giving more baptisms. I cannot imagine how you attack a vulnerable member of your community. And then you get a suspended sentence and then you get your job back doing the same thing you were doing when you raped somebody i can't even understand who's standing there like oh man when's fucking father gibra hana gonna be back i fucking miss that guy. Well, he's having some legal problems due to the fact that he fucking raped a woman instead of baptizing her. Oh, no kidding. So he'll be back soon then?

Because that's not like a crime. Yeah, because I've got to get my kid baptized. I was just going to send him on over to his house because that's what he said. Look, I need someone to tell me what's right and wrong. So when's he going to be back? My wife needs a good baptism. That's all I'm saying. Oh, no.

Oh, no. What a deplorable human being. But even more baffling. Why is he still a priest? Yeah. There's no there's really no there's no excuse for that. I mean, obviously, it's you're putting somebody in a position where you're in a position of power and you're saying, trust me, trust me, trust me as you know, Oh no, no, you're really supposed to know while you're

naked, you're supposed to bend over the table. That's how we do the baptism. You're supposed to, you're supposed to just grab your ankles. It's time to go. You know what I mean? Like what the fuck this guy's, you know, abusing a situation, abusing his power. And then there's no repercussion. So might as well just do it again. And there's, you know, what's going to stop him from doing it again? The guy obviously likes to, you know, abuse the old power, so to speak. And by abuse the old power, I mean rape people. And let me ask you a question, Cecil.

If you were convicted of— No, I wouldn't let him baptize me, if that's what you're asking. You're not. I wouldn't let him baptize me. Because I was going to pay for the plane ticket. Yeah, no. I'm not interested in it. I thought you would like that.

Not really there. I don't really know anything. If you were convicted – let's say this weekend you went a little crazy. Sure. And you got arrested for stealing. OK. And your work found out. Yeah.

And you were convicted. Yeah. And you were given no real sentence. Would you be fired, do you think? Let's pretend that even better. I was stealing from my work. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's say you were using your position at work to do the stealing. To get money from people that I work with. Yeah. You'd be fired, right? There is a very good chance. I can guarantee it. The union isn't saving my ass, I think, at that point. You know, I write a lot of checks every day.

If I were to just write a check to myself, you know, and I got caught doing that, and I got convicted, I mean, I would be fucking fired. Right. Because I was doing something criminal and immoral. I don't understand how priests can engage in criminal and immoral behavior and they don't get fucking fired. I don't understand why the community doesn't fire them. Let's put it in another context. Pretend that you're going to a college and you find out your professor raped a student.

Would you go to that class again? Or would you demand a new professor? Right. You would demand a new professor. Right. Why isn't the community demanding a new priest? One less rapey. A little less rapey.

Could you give us the less rapey kind? And this isn't happening in Ethiopia. You said he was an Ethiopian Orthodox priest. One less rapey. Could you give us the less rapey kind? And this isn't happening in Ethiopia. You said he was an Ethiopian Orthodox priest. This is happening in Battersea, which is in London, I think. Yeah, this is in the UK. That's why it's from wandsworth.co.uk guardianorg.com

or whatever the fuck that website was. They're reporting on Ethiopia here. They're reporting on their own country. You know, you're getting off scot-free here with a suspended sentence like that. I mean, you might as well. And he's still practicing. Give me a break. What the fuck?

You got to fucking drop the hammer on this dude because he was going to drop the hammer on her. Right. Well, he's still practicing. You know, he hasn't gotten it right yet. Yeah. That's terrible. So we got a couple of emails and some voicemail.

I want to play the voicemail for you now. So because the person took so much time to actually call us, and we really appreciate it, so here's the voicemail that the person left. It's Carter. Sounded like you guys wanted to get some type of phone responses, so I thought I'd oblige. I'm also an atheist like you guys. I've been listening to the podcast, really enjoy it.

One of the things I thought was interesting was when you were talking about the acupuncture and whatnot, was the fact that I think people have a misunderstanding about atheism, is that we would love for any of these things to be true, but we can see the evidence, and that's what we can lean towards. Quick example, I found out the other day that cesarean births were not named after Julius Caesar, like somebody once told me, and I didn't sit there and keep telling them, no, I'm sorry, but it was named after Julius Caesar. I was presented with the facts and my viewpoints changed. I think that's kind of the difference between us and everybody

else is once presented with facts, we change our viewpoints changed. I think that's kind of the difference between us and everybody else is once presented with facts, we change our viewpoints. We don't keep them going on blindly. So, anyways, hopefully Google Voice will totally screw that up and I look forward to listening. See you guys more. Bye. So, Tom, what does the Google Voice translator say about this message? It says, unable to transcribe this message.

Fuck. Fucking Google. Maybe they're on to us. They are on to us. It's probably somebody paying attention and whenever we mention Google Voice, they're just like, oh, no, no, we can't try to even transcribe this message

because our system is so fucked anyway. What's words that make no sense? So the Google Translate team specifically turned it off for our account. So we can't transcribe the message. But we can talk about what you say. In your message, you say that a lot of people confuse atheists with being dogmatic in a way because you said that there was a moment when you thought Caesarian births actually came from the root of the word Caesar and you found out differently and it changed your opinion. Use the word atheist when I think you might mean skeptics.

I don't think the two are interchangeable, although many times they are. You can be, and this has been hammered on a lot of different shows, you could be an atheist and not be a skeptic. You could think that, say, we were planted here by an alien race. You know, and we all know that cesarean birth actually comes from the salad. And that's where toaster salad comes from. That's not delicious at all. That's not delicious at all.

Throw a little placenta in there. That's a good food. Remember that if you would like to call us up and leave your own voicemail, you can do so at 740-74-DOUBT. You can leave us a message and we will play it on the air if it's not really, really, really long.

So we got some email here, Tom, that we want to talk about. Somebody posted this on our Facebook page as well as sent it to us in an email. This is Matthew and Matthew made us this very funny image of a sheik standing there with a woman and there's a bunch of goats on the other side

of a scale and it says your daughter's clitoris is too heavy. Cut it off or the deal is over. Very, very funny. I am going to use this as one of the images for this time. Thank you very much. I love this image. Hilarious image. Thank you for putting it. It's really awesome. It's really funny. I am going to use this as one of the images for this time thank you very much hilarious image thank you for putting it it's really funny very funny

you should post that shit on reddit because I think I think that shit would get upvoted to the moon I think it's hilarious I love how stern the guy looks and the girl's just looking off to the side like wait what what's being said here what the fuck it's a funny photoshop Thank you for sending it. We got an email from Fred.

Fred is from Auckland. Is that how you say it? Auckland? Auckland? I don't know. He's from New Zealand. I know that. I can pronounce New Zealand. Auckland?

Auckland? Auckland I'm going to mispronounce. I'm going to call it Auckland and it's probably not. I think it's Uck. I think it's like, I think you, there's the A is silent. So it's Auckland. I don't understand why an A would ever be silent. It's uck. I think it's like, I think you, there's the A is silent. So it's uckland. I don't understand why an A would ever be silent. It's a vowel. You know what also is funny too is I, and this is going to make people laugh. I don't

think, I can't distinguish between New Zealanders and Australia, people from Australia with their accents. And I know that they can, but I can't distinguish at all. It's probably how they think we all talk like southerners. Right. Yeah. There's no difference between. Yeah, there's no difference at all. So thank you for sending your email in. It's a very nice email that you sent. He also says at the bottom, he says, P.S. sorry

for Ray Comfort. He is by no means a typical Kiwi. I think that you don't have to apologize for Ray. We have produced plenty of fuck knuckles over here. Way more fuck knuckles than you possibly could produce in New Zealand. Do not apologize for Ray. You sent him over here where he belongs, really. He's in the land of crazy. The only thing he can't do is run for

president. Our crazies try to gain political office. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You never apologized for Ray Comfort when we just had Santorum. Yeah, exactly. There's nothing to apologize for. Right. Also, Ray Comfort thinks that the kiwi was created by God because it's perfect. It's furry. It's the atheist nightmare.

It's the atheist nightmare. I had a nightmare about a kiwi yesterday. A kiwi is an atheist nightmare. We got a comment on our blog, Tom. The comment was from Who Knew? And Who Knew says, love you guys. I'll be in Chicago for the taste this year. We'd love to bump into you.

Every year, Chicago, one of the fattest cities in our nation, puts on a thing called Taste of Chicago, wherein a bunch of restaurants give you sample sizes of their foods for extravagant amounts of money. And there's bees around the garbage can. And it's basically an unfun event that I don't go to. Yeah. I have a strong no bees around the garbage can rule. Great rule. Which so far has served me well.

If I suspect the garbage cans will be swarmed by bees, I'm unlikely to enjoy myself at this event. Sure. And so I don't go. Sure, you don't go. Most of the time. I mean, you probably go to a carnival with your kids so you could fly it on the slide or whatever. But there's no – that's not even a slide at the Taste of Chicago. The only thing you could do is just slather yourself in bacon fat.

Right. It's a fucking veritable bacchanalia of regret is all it is. That's what the fucking – that should be the slogan. Taste of Chicago. Oh, yeah. I love it. So that should be the fucking slogan. I'm creating fucking business cards and handing them out there this year.

That's awesome. I did have it to taste a few years back. I went to see what it was all about and I ate goat, which is meat bubble gum yeah it's just the worst thing i ever had i'm like this is a terrible experience they just slaughtered it behind there and it's like a fucking old ass goat that goat is like fucking as old as the person who slaughtered it and is like i'm old goat you can't chew me that's good apocalypse meal because it just stays and stays and stays. But you don't want to – It's anger meat is what it is.

It's furious. So we got an email from Stu. Stu sent us an email which had this really funny story. Stu sends us stuff from Emirates 24-7 all the time. I guess it's one of his favorite papers that he reads, news online. And this one is a donkey rape sparks tribal massacre in Yemen. It's a hilarious story. I will post it on our site.

It's uncomprehensible, too. Oh, yeah. There's no way to – it starts off with donkey rape. Yeah, I know. What else could you possibly – Donkey rape. I love that. What the – yeah.

I can't even form complete sentences when thinking about this story. We damn near covered it. We almost did, but we didn't have enough time, but we'll put it on our website as well as a couple of the images from this time. We got another email from Matthew who sent the image. Tom, he was talking, I think, directly to you in this message. He had a good point. Matthew said that psychologically speaking,

one of the things that we do is we build models of other people's minds within our minds in order to try to understand other people. And I think that's an interesting and valuable concept. And when I had mentioned on the last show that I had recently lost a friend of mine and that I had done what I thought was a pretty universal thing, which is where you sort of have this sort of internal dialogue. And I said that I knew that that dialogue was was only internal. It's a dialogue with myself. He brought up the point that that really that dialogue is with the with the mental model of this other person. And so it was.

It was still a valuable dialogue. It was still a dialogue between myself and this other person. It's just now that they're dead, that model will cease to change. That model will become static. I think that's a really interesting way to look at the relationships we have with other people and the way that we understand and predict other people's motives and reactions. And I just really appreciated that email a lot. I thought it was very interesting and I thank you.

Yeah, and who isn't, I think, surprised sometimes by their friends and close relatives? You know, they do things that are surprising, that aren't in character. Right. And you add that to the list of things that they've done, and then it updates the model in your head. But once they die, there is no more model to update. So it's always, it's a static model. I think it's brilliant. I actually think that's a great way to look at it. We got an email from Robert who was talking about existential anxiety. He talked to us about, he just said, thank you for, you know, a lot of times there's some, you know, there's a

lot of levity on your show, but this is a very serious moment. We were talking to Talana last time about existential anxiety and such, and he thanked us for it. I go back to one of the guests we had, Hemant, who pointed this out to me, which I didn't even – it really didn't even occur to me until he said it, that our podcast is more atheist than atheism. We cover – we don't cover the big questions. We don't cover the way in which we think people should think about stuff. We just make the jokes about the things that are happening. So we don't normally do that. We normally don't venture into those waters.

But it's fun to do. We just don't do it every week. We got an email from Bruce. He's a young man from Adelaide, I guess. I don't know. Australia. He wants to thank us for the podcast. He says he's been listening to a lot of them lately while studying for his mid-year exams for university.

So great. I'm glad you enjoy them. He says that he really enjoys it and he thanked us for producing it. So we're happy that you're listening all the way from Australia. Please only introduce it to people who you don't value as a friend. We got an email from, this is great. We got an email from Peter. I'm going to use this image too, Tom. It's the Sabbath elevator. I love this image. This is spectacular. It's a Sabbath elevator. I'm going to read it the jewish on jewish sabbath and holidays this elevator stops automatically on each floor that's the shittiest elevator to be into that's

a what's a fucking local train you know what i mean it's just like fuck this one's stopping at all of them i want the express it's uh because And I think that's because they can't press the button to choose a floor. Can they walk upstairs? Does that work? I don't know. I would have to think you could walk upstairs. Otherwise, on the Sabbath, you can't walk up inclines. If you had a two-story home, you have to stay on a

plane. Everything has to be... What you have to do is actually water will self... So you just have to float. You fill your house up with water? Yeah, just float on a raft. That way you know that you're perfectly level. Sure, yeah, but when you have to go, when you have to get a drink, you know, from the fountain or whatever,

you got to fucking paddle, which is work. I don't know. I don't know what they do. It's fucking baffling. It's a shitty elevator, though. That's all I'm saying. That's the shitty one. The anti-express elevator. Yeah, that's a shitty elevator, though. That's all I'm saying. That's the shitty one. The anti-express elevator.

Yeah, that's a bad elevator. We got an email from Lana, another one that said thank you for reading their email. And also it said that they wanted to make sure that we knew that they're 100% in the atheist camp. It might not have come across clear last time. We want to make sure that you're interpreted how you want to be interpreted. to come across clear last time. We want to make sure that you're interpreted how you want to be interpreted. So yes, we're mentioning that you are an atheist even though we might have

made it so it didn't look like you were. We apologize if you came off that way. And it was a great email and it got us talking. So thank you again for sending it, Lon. You're part of the club. Don't worry. You get your membership badge and your decoder ring. Sure. Doesn't actually decode anything, though.

It's the Bible code. Turns out. That is bullshit. Yeah. There should be an atheist decoder ring. That would be fantastic. It's just like glass. Yeah.

It's just a fucking magnifying glass. You just look through and you're like, oh, I just see the other side. Yeah, that's funny. What's all that's there? Yeah. Fuck. We got an email from Eric who just sent us a thank you. Sort of said that they like the show, they laugh a lot, and they appreciate it.

So thank you again. Spoonie sent us an email, Tom. Now, Spoonie sent us a nice long email talking mainly about two things that we got wrong last time. And I think they were both my points. I don't remember. One of them is that the appendix— If they were wrong, let's say they were your points. Yeah, sure. Might as well. Let's go there. Let's just stack that were both my points. I don't remember. One of them is that the appendix— If they were wrong, let's say they were your points. Yeah, sure.

Might as well. Let's go there. Let's just stack that shit on my side. So wrong about the appendix being useless. Spoonie says that maybe there's some possibility that it can help prevent gut infections. Then other people have had it removed, so it's not completely useless. And then also that sometimes female circumcision isn't as severe or as bad

as male circumcision. I just want to say to Spoonie, like, look, okay, I understand that maybe it might not be as bad, but it's hard enough to play a fucking tune on the tuba. Let's not fucking take away the mouthpiece. You know what I mean? I mean, come on, fucking help us out here.

Well, we appreciate your email, Spoonie. You clearly put a lot of time and thought into them, and we are very appreciative for the feedback. So thank you. Rob from Portugal rated us five stars on iTunes, Tom, and then actually left it in English so we could read it. And we wouldn't mistake certain things for being five stars, which is very nice. It's our first rating from Portugal. Yeah, yeah.

I was kind of pumped up. I was like, wow. We encourage everybody to rate us if they can from on iTunes. I know that a lot of people don't use iTunes. We got one from France. The person from France put us up there. Thank you very much. It's all in French and I can't run it through Google Translate, so I have no fucking idea what it says. I think assholes is in there, so I understand that word.

That's a cognate. It doesn't let you copy and paste the text. You can't even copy and paste the text to write it through Translate, so I have no idea what our French review says. It could be like, these guys are fucking giant cocksuckers, and they don't understand anything. They're assholes. Because assholes is in English, and they don't understand anything. They're assholes, you know, because assholes is in English. And so the rest of it, I think there might only be

one more English word there, but the rest of it is all in French. So I don't understand it. But thank you. Everybody who rates us on iTunes, it actually pushes, if you didn't know, it will push us up

on the ranking structure of religion other. So if you rate us, it bumps us up on religion other so that if you rate us, it bumps us up on religion other so that more people see us. We're closer to the top. So people don't have to listen to us through iTunes. The more they rate us,

that brings us up too. So if you rate us on iTunes, it actually helps us out and we appreciate every one we get. So thank you. And it strokes my personal ego. Isn't that what's really most important? And Tom's ego needs a lot of stroking, a ton of stroking, more than most priests.

I have nothing else in my life. Robert sent an email. Tom Robert used to be a pastor. Long email about how they used to be Christian and they've sort of turned it around and have really become an atheist as of late and thanked us for the podcast. Yeah, this was kind of a cool email to get. Robert clearly has gone through a lot in the last few years and it looks like he's happy. He's on the other side of some personal turmoil and we're really grateful for the email. Thank you. So that wraps it up for another episode of Cognitive Dissonance.

We're really grateful for the email. Thank you. So that wraps it up for another episode of Cognitive Dissonance. We will be back at the normal time, normal schedule next time, probably producing again on Monday. And we leave you, as usual, with the Skeptic's Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Thank you. cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques, and synagogues, temples, dragons,

giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts, shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, doublespespeak 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. Outro Music