Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 51: Payments for Pedophiles Program

Episode Date: June 10, 2012

Hagee Tells Atheists To Leave The Country b/c They Are Not Wanted & Won't Be Missed Senate Republicans block pay equity bill At a Texas High School, Saying ‘Atheist’ Could Disrupt the Learning Process Millennials Losing Faith In God: Survey We don't teach hate, says church where anti-homosexual song filmed Opponents Block Washington State Gay Marriage Catholic Cardinal authorized $20K to pay priests who raped children, then railed against ‘immorality’ of gay marriage Christian Pastor Gets Arrested for Beating Daughter… Commenters Defend Him on News Website NC Considers Making Sea Level Rise Illegal Bigfoot sighted locally? Watch the video Sacrilegious or just a harmless classroom assignment? Al-Qaeda statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri's wife released Terry Jones, Quran-Burning Pastor, Hangs Barack Obama Effigy Outside Florida Church (PHOTO) Clips: Rev. Hagee, CSPAN from the floor of the senate, You’re an atheist!?, Fox News vs. Atheists, Ain’t no homo, Simpsons, Louis CK, Ghost Busters, Jesus Camp, Call to Prayer, A Few Good Men. 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. They're saying that the Ten Commandments have been taken out of the courtrooms and out of the schoolhouses, lest we offend the atheists. Let me be very clear. This country was not built for atheists nor by atheists. It was built by Christian people who believed in the Word of God. To the atheist watching this telecast, if our belief in

God offends you, move. There are planes leaving every hour on the hour, going every place on planet Earth. Get on one. We don't want you, and we won't miss you. I promise you. Our coins say, in God we trust. President Obama, you recently told the foreign media that America is not a Christian nation. You're absolutely wrong.

We were, we are, and always shall be a Bible-reading, praying Christian people. praying Christian people. Several years ago witchcraft and Satanism were officially approved by the US military at the direction of the US Congress. We have officially chosen to recognize another God. I call upon the members of Congress to outlaw the practice of witchcraft and Satanism in the U.S. military, lest we offend the God of heaven. I don't care about the atheists. 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 51 of Cognitive Dissonance. It's a little sad that it's not a denomination of 10. As usual, Tom, we're one card short on the deck.

Yes. One card short. Story of my life. I'm sick of being short. That's not going to get better. At 34, for me, that's like this is it. I'm going to need help reaching the cookie jar for the rest of my life. You've got to wear those platforms around the house.

Whatever. My wife's taller than I am. So we have got to talk about this Hagee nut. This guy is kind of all over the place. Right Wing Watch has a pretty good story about this. Hagee tells the atheists they can leave the country. Thanks for your fucking permission. I love the fact that we could just leave the country.

Just go. You don't believe in the right God. Get out. Right. I love when he's like, this country. You know, you can kind of hear him through those fucking giant droopy cheeks he has. He's kind of got that fucking, like, you could stick your thumbs underneath there and find things he stuck there from last year.

Oh, yeah. He's chipmunk hoarding them. Oh, absolutely. So he's sitting. I'm sorry. He's like, and he's talking like a fucking douchebag. One of the things he says is something like, this country was not founded by atheists. It was not made by atheists. And you can leave.

And you're like, this country was founded by deists, you dumb fuck. It wasn't founded by fucking evangelicals. It certainly was not founded by an evangelical. Exactly. You hear that and you're like, your knowledge of history, not so good. You know, Thomas Jefferson had a Bible where he took out all the supernatural bits. He took out all the magic. Right, right. And, you know, it was a lot smaller when he was done.

You know, I don't think that if we had a current political leader who said, you know, what I'm going to do is I'm going to propose that we edit the Bible down to get rid of all the supernatural shit. That wouldn't fucking play well. But Thomas Jefferson did that. Yeah. He's a founder of this country. You're going to tell me it's not fun. supernatural shit okay would that wouldn't that wouldn't fucking play well but thomas jefferson did that yeah it's a founder of this country you're gonna tell me it's not fun maybe he's going back further maybe he's going back you know sure like you know pilgrims and what have you but that's not the founding of the country that's colonization well that's a different fucking thing that is and you know to be to be, they were escaping religious persecution. So that they could start up their own religious fucking –

So they could persecute religiously. I hate the way you do it. I want to do it. You're not doing it well. That's the – maybe they just felt like, you know, I can fucking do this better. Yeah. England's doing an okay job. Let's all be fair.

Props to England. Well played. But I Let's all be fair. Good props to England. Well played. But I think we can be more puritanically big in it. You know, one of the things, too, he talks about is the money. He's like, we have in God, in God we trust. He sounds like fucking Jabba the Hutt. That's the problem. He's got those frogs.

Fucking, they're all hanging out of his mouth. But he's sitting up there fucking, you know, yammering on. And one of the things he says is that we have on our money and God we trust. And you're like, okay, yeah, that was put on there in the 50s. You know, you have, he really has no historical perspective on religion in this country at all. No. He really has no clue. And that's his job.

Like, that's what he does for a living is religion. You would think that you would at least know the history of the religion. That's like me being an internet professional and being like, well, Al Gore invented the internet. Right. It's a series of tubes. Yeah, it's just a series of tubes. It's not a dump truck. Don't think of it as a dump truck.

It's not a dump truck. Come on. It's a series of tubes. It's like that. Like if it's your job to know something, somehow in this country we just don't fucking know it. This guy is an idiot. He has no historical perspective on religion in the United States. I watch this and I have to wonder, why are you so worried about the atheists?

I mean, if you're a specific sect of Christian and you have a monopoly on truth, because that's the belief. You have a monopoly on truth. You should be worried about every's the belief. You have a monopoly on truth. You should be worried about, you know, every other religious belief. You should be worried about Christian sects that don't conform to your Christian sect. They should be as unwelcome. Absolutely. My not believing in anything. But that's, you know, that's a trend. It's like to some religious people, it's like, look, I just want you to believe in something. And we've seen this. Poll numbers indicate the same thing that, you know, it's like, look, I just want you to believe in something. And we've seen this.

Poll numbers indicate the same thing, that, you know, it's as long as you believe in something, you've got a leg up on somebody who believes in nothing. You've all, Christian, Jew, Muslim, hey, we'll all respect your faith. No faith at all? Ooh, now we've got a problem. That doesn't make any fucking sense. Well, this guy doesn't, he doesn't make any sense either because he's conflating atheists with Satanists.

Yeah, the Satanist witchcraft thing. It's like, you're conflating two things that have nothing to do with it. Hagee, I don't care what religion people practice anywhere. That's the thing he doesn't get, right? I'm not an anti-theist. I am just against you bringing your religion into the public sphere and forcing other people to live by your code, which is a subjective code that you decide amongst yourselves to live by. You decide based on a 4,000-year-old text made by goat herds what to believe and how to act. That's fine. year old text made by goat herds what to believe and how to act.

That's fine. You're welcome to do it as long as you don't injure anyone else or force anyone else to live by that code. But the moment you step out of that little box that fucking that little fucking, you know, crystal fucking podium you're standing behind and start saying to the rest of the world that you're doing it wrong and we're going to change how government works and we're going to insult like how government works and we're going to institute our religion as law. Now I've got a problem with as an atheist.

Now as an atheist, I'm standing up and saying you are wrong. You giant fucking pink basketball headed motherfucker. You're wrong. Pink basketball headed motherfucker. You sound just like a Satanist. I do. I sound like a Satanist. You're just, your speech is influenced by your witchcraftery.

Folks, Cecil doesn't tell people this because he doesn't like people to know. But, you know, he records this show directly into a cauldron. He uses a bat as a microphone. That's why we have to do that incantation at the end of every show. That's what it is. It's incantation. I'm going to call all my writing incantations now. Yeah, that's what you should from now on.

And may we somehow recapture the vision which for the present eludes us. Madam President, I hear the floor and suggest the admittance of a quorum. Clerk will call the roll. Expressions of approval or disapproval are not permitted. So this next story, I'm just kind of blown away that this isn't already law. In laws that you thought already were laws. I have to admit, I did. Exactly.

I really did. CNN.com has this story, but you can find it virtually anywhere. Senate Republicans block pay equality bill. I am baffled that this would be controversial in any way. It's like the most basic bill. It would basically mandate pay equality between men and women. I thought this was a thing. Yeah, yeah.

Isn't it like women make 77 cents or something like that to every dollar men make? Yeah, the reality is it's 70 or 70 some cents on the dollar. Yeah. But I thought that was illegal. I thought if you got caught doing that, that that shit was illegal. That shit makes me furious too because my wife makes more than me. So she's making not only more than me, but she's actually making less than she should. Like you're cheating us. Right. Come on now. What the fuck? Right. You should you should.

What all women should do when they get a job is they should accept the job offer and then say, and I want a 30 percent raise in order to be, you know, I want 28 cents on the dollar. I want 28 cents on the dollar. Yeah. The Republicans were against this, right? So there's this fight. The Republicans say no. The Democrats all say yes. And what you feel is they say, well, we're not against women.

We just don't like this legislation. We're not against women. We love women. We love it when they're in the kitchen, at least. We love women. We just want to make sure in the kitchen, at least. We love women. We just want to make sure that, you know, we're getting everybody's getting a fair shake. And what this really is, is an open door for them to be misogynist and hide behind the fact that they don't like the legislation. Right. So you can be and they do this with gay. We're going to see

this later on. They do this with homosexual bills all the time. They say, oh, well, we're not against the gays. It's just we don't like this legislation. We don't like what this does. It's like, no, you're being an asshole based on your politics and you're hiding behind the fact that you think it should be right but you just don't agree with how this legislation particularly works. Yeah, it's baffling to call this a bill that is motivated by politics. Right. And this is motivated by equality. Right. How is it not motivated by equality? You know, they say, you know, some Republican is quoted as saying that this is the trial lawyers

lawyers bonanza bill. It has nothing to do with women. They will get very little out of it. What it allows is huge class action suits with very little defense by any employer. That's not the case. Like if you look at what this bill does, it would require that employers prove that differences in pay were related to job performance, not gender, would prevent employers from forbidding employees from sharing salary information with each other. And it would allow women who believe they were discriminated against to sue for damages. How do women get nothing out of that? Well, and how is it how are you protecting businesses?

Why would you protect a business that does that anyway? Right. Why would you protect a business that does that anyway? Right. Why would you – and the idea that you're saying, oh, well, it's the trial lawyer's bonanza. That's how shit gets changed. If there's a threat that my business can lose a shit ton of money by me being a gigantic douchebag, I'm going to stop my gigantic douchebag policies and start doing the non douchebag policies because it's, it's in my best interest. Businesses are not motivated by laws. They're motivated by the penalties that laws incur. They're not motivated like, Oh, they changed the law. So therefore I'm going to do it. No, they're, they changed the law and that can also get fined. Or I can also

fucking lose a shit ton of money or my business can close because I'm being an asshole because I'm breaking the law. That's how you motivate the business. They're motivated by profit. And if their profit is cut to nothing or they lose a big suit, that's the motivation. That's specifically what you're trying to do. Why would you make a bill and be like, well, I don't want it to do that. Well, then you want to build a do nothing. Well, I mean, a bill without teeth, you know, that's what we should definitely be passing. Why do they have to, Tom? Why is it that there's always this one group of people? I guess it's a rhetorical question because we both know why it exists, but there's always this one group of people who sits on the sidelines in politics, votes bills down that are completely business-based and just be like, oh, we've got to just be like oh We've got to protect the businessman we've got to protect

The businessman the businessman is the one Who's making all the money the Other people are subjected to his fucking Rule in Illinois You don't even have to have a reason to Fire anybody it's true like you just I can look at somebody be like you know what today's your Last day it's it

This is it and they'd be like why because I Want it to be your last day yeah right Yeah because. This is it. And they'd be like, why? Because I want it to be your last day. Yeah, right. That's why. Did you not hear the words I was saying? I said it when I had my scepter in my hand. I don't think he was fucking. Did you see the scepter? I was waving it when I said it. Yeah. I mean, it's funny that you say that because, you know, I mean, I think most states now are at will states. And what that means is that you serve at the will of your employer. And if they decide to let you go, then they just let you go. And that's the end of it.

It's crazy that the last part of this bill, last part of one of the effects of this bill, to allow women who believe they were discriminated against to sue for damages. Why do we have to have a bill that allows them to sue for damages for wage discrimination in 2012? Why do we have to even address this? I mean, why do we even have to? It should be something that, you know, your company should be going bankrupt if people find out that that happens in your company. Because you are an asshole.

Because you're an asshole. Because, you know, I and and to think, you know, there are a ton of fucking misogynists in the world. I mean, let's just fucking not pretend that that doesn't exist. There's a shit ton of misogynists. Half our Senate is misogynist. But but you have a bunch of people in this world that think that women are less than. Women are not as, you know, they're not as fit to be in the workplace. It's like, nowadays, in the nowadays workplace, we're not talking about fucking women pushing a plow anymore,

okay? We're talking about women sitting at a desk, women using the telephone, women typing, women, you know, making sales calls, women making decisions as, you know, as far as, you know, a business is concerned. They're just as capable as everybody else at doing all those things. Like there's nothing that they can't do in the today's modern world that men can do. They just, it's impossible for us to find anything. If you think that, you know, like, oh, I work construction. It's like, yeah, you fucking use a nail gun and a crane and all kinds of other stuff. Like women can do all that

stuff. It's not like they can't do that stuff. They can and they do do that stuff just as well as you do it. Why do we live in a time where it's like, people are like, oh, well, fucking women can't do all the same stuff. I fucking challenge you to find something that a woman can't do just as

well as you. Most women are better at everything than me. You're an atheist. Give me a fucking break, Michael. All right, you know what? We need to start going to church every week. So this next story comes from Friendly Atheist Blog. And this is at a Texas high school saying atheists could disrupt the learning process. You're not doing learning right.

Oh, my gosh. If you avoid learning things. Right. This is a this comes from the Secular Student Alliance group at LaPorte High School. It had a sign-up that said, Atheist, colon. It's not a bad word. It is someone who either believes there is no God or gods or has a lack of belief in a God or gods. And underneath it, it says this controversial statement.

America was founded on equality, respect, and tolerance. Man, that is controversial. I cannot believe. And then the school shot it down, saying it was disruptive to the learning process to have atheists. And you know what's crazy is they let the sign for Ass Fuckers Anonymous go up. No problem. It was right on there. No problems.

I love this too because the guy says something. He posts on the top or the girl. I don't know who the principal is, right? A principal. I don't know that it's a guy or a girl. But anyway, they post on the top. They write on the top that it's disruptive to the educational process like you said earlier. It's like no, censorship's disruptive to the educational process, like you said earlier.

It's like, no, censorship is disruptive to the educational process. Small mindedness is disruptive to the education. Ignorance is disruptive to the educational process. Those are things that you were exhibiting in one statement. I would like to educate people about this subject. I'm sorry. That's disruptive to the educational process. Wait, wait, wait. I don't think you understood. I was trying

to provide education on a subject. Yeah, listen, no. I get what you're going after, but we're really going to have to say no because that is disruptive. What it is, it's disruptive to the indoctrination process. Sure, sure. That's what it is.

It's disruptive to your personal belief system that you want to make sure has top-down authority as an administrator of a school. That's exactly it. I can't see this as anything but a personal religious statement to the person. Right. I mean that's all you can – you can't look at this and see this any other way. can't look at this and see this any other way. The only thing I could think is maybe even maybe it's not the personal religious preference of that principal, but it might be the religious inclination of that school district or something like this person is trying not to step on the toes of the majority of parents or something in that school district. Yeah, maybe they've got a

boss and they know their boss won't put up with that shit. They know that shit's gonna roll downhill, so I better nip this in the bud sort of thing. But I still feel like, I feel like this is again, people who don't understand. This guy listens to Hagee. They don't understand what an atheist is. And it's even fucking, here's a fucking

clue, it's right on the paper. It's on the flyer. You're being subversive. We're actually being really open about this. It's just a belief system. It's in conflict with your belief system, but it's a belief system. It still is. Yeah, it still is a belief system. Without actual belief. Yeah. No belief implied. Yeah. Belief not included. I do believe that atheists are parasites in the sense they're benefiting from everything that religious culture is built in America, but they're doing nothing to add energy into the system. So this next story is from Huffington Post. And this is an interesting story.

It comes from polling information from young people primarily. It's a recent Pew survey. Millennials, that's the generation of folks born 1981 or after, are less religious than their counterparts, than prior generations. And I think you're seeing, starting to see a swing away in the States from this sort of blanket acceptance of religiosity. Yeah. And I, I, Tom, you and I were talking about this earlier and the question I had was, is it harder to believe in God today than it was a while ago? Is it harder, like specifically harder to do? I think it's harder to believe. It's a good question. Is it

harder to be religious? Um, my feeling is, is yes. Um, and. And my very first thought goes to the internet. Yeah. I was thinking that too. Does technology make it harder? I think technology makes it hella hard because I think what religion needs in order to really thrive, now it can exist, but to thrive, to have a near total stranglehold on truth or ideas about truth. It needs to exist within an ideological vacuum. It's got to isolate itself from other knowledge. Right. And that's simply not possible anymore.

Yeah, I think you this proliferation of good quality information about not just atheist ideas, but just other religious ideas. Let's say you're Catholic or you're Baptist and all you've been exposed to is Catholicism and baptism. You only get till you're 11 or 12. Right. And now you've got the intranets. Yeah. And you're going to be curious about, you know, other Christian sects. And you're going to be curious about, you know, I just how can it continue to thrive? And that's and that's a really good point, Tom. I think that there's a lot of times that when you see these cults, like when cults pop up, don't they isolate themselves?

Don't they pull themselves away from everybody? Look at Jim Jones. Look at the Hale-Bopp people. Look at David Karash and his group. They always seclude themselves away from the rest of the world to indoctrinate the people that are involved. And even look at things like Jehovah's Witness, look at the Mormons, look at Scientology, look at all those places in the world where people, they discredit everything that isn't them. I remember one time I was reading a book on

Buddhism when I was sort of in a searching part of my life, which was, you know, a couple years of my life after I realized that I didn't believe in God, but I didn't know what I believed in. You know, I still was kind of like, it's that spiritual thing you go through. I went through, I'm not going to say you go through, cause I know you didn't go through it, Tom, but other people do go through. Um, it's, it's an, it's a common path, not a universal path, uh, where people will lose the religion and then start to think about the spirit and the soul as maybe still existing, but maybe not the religious dogma is real. And I was in that stage where I was like,

what is, you know, what is this? I feel this, what is this? And I was reading a Buddhist book, a long way to get to this fucking subject that I was going to say, but there I am reading this Buddhist book. And a guy came up to me and said, you know, you shouldn't be reading that or something. And I was like, why not? And he's like, he's like, cause it's the devil. And I was like, it's the devil. And he's like, you bet. Anything that isn't Jesus Christ is the devil is what he told me.

And I was like, anything that isn't Jesus Christ. I'm like, most of the Bible isn't Jesus Christ. Yeah. But it's endorsed. He signed it. So it's all good. It's like, you, he fucking – he signed it. So it's all good. It's like kid-tested, mom-approved. You know what I mean?

It's like the Bible is untested and unapproved, but still it's – I think Thomas in the Bible, when we had him on the show, he solved that problem by saying Jesus wrote the Bible. That was pretty funny. He said that. So that's – I think it's true. That's accurate. We have to trust. Thomas is a well-researched guy, so we have to trust him.

So we've got to do a little follow-up. This is from the CNN Belief Blog. Belief Blog. The church, there's a church in Indiana. A week or so ago, it was a big story. Had some little kids getting up and singing a delightful little ditty. Wherein the refrain was, ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven. I love it.

Ain't no homos gonna make it to heaven. People objected and not to the use of the word ain't, although that's egregious enough. People did object to the use of children to spew hateful fucking vitriolic shit. Right, right. Sure, like a little fucking human puppet. Right. And the church has come back, Cecil. The church has come back and said, we don't teach hate.

We don't teach it. We just make sure that the kids say it so they know not to say it again. Right. Yeah, okay. Fair enough. We don't teach it. We just make sure that the kids say it so they know not to say it again. Right. Yeah. OK. Fair enough. We don't teach it. We just explicitly endorse it.

That's it's not so much taught as it is just sort of surrounded them with hate. It's like a hate force field. Yeah. You know, the hate isn't really a part of them, but it's really all around them. Yeah. You know, it's you know, it's awesome about this is I I is I know somebody who's a PhD in theology, and we talk a lot. And we started talking about this subject, and I mentioned to him, you know, it was in this kind of the system of pick and choose. You know, it was in this pick and choose.

And he came right out. This is a PhD in theology, he said to me. He's like, well, you have to pick and choose at the Bible. in theology said to me, he's like, well, you have to pick and choose at the Bible. He's like, you have to pick and choose verses that match your belief system. He's like, but why on earth would anybody pick this? He's like, of the things you could pick in the Bible, you chose the worst things to pick. And I'm like, well, I can't disagree.

What this really shows me more than anything else is the Bible is a pick and choose thing. It has a spectrum of morality in it. It's got this big spectrum where on the one side you have all this hateful shit and on the other side you have love and equality and, you know, there's all that stuff exists in the Bible. And what it shows me on you is where you fall in morality. And what it shows me on you is where you fall in morality. I think using a pick and choose Bible actually outs the person as the real person that they are. As the true – it gives it a chance to see them as they truly are because they will use the passages that reinforce their belief structure and you get a chance to see them for what they really are. That's a good point, man. I think it's – I think that's very interesting.

It's the idea that it's like – that it's a tool for confirmation bias, that it's reflective of the individual, not the belief structure. Right. Yeah. That you're – that's an interesting idea and I can't say that I – I can't disagree with it. You know, it's a shame that this is part and parcel of the education of children. Yeah. Because like those kids, they don't

know what they believe yet. We said it last time, they could be gay. They could be gay in saying that. We have no idea. Ain't no me gonna Oh man, that really sucks. Well, I think about watching that when they're finally hit puberty and they think oh my gosh that was me but i'm gay right right no that's you know i like to you know a little more self-hate that's what that's a you know a a kid

who grows up in that kind of you know family is gonna need that's what they do they need loathing they need as much loathing as because that there's no way to get to cutting if you don't have the loathing. Oh, no. Hey, remember that time when zero out of ten psychologists recommend self-loathing? Yeah. It's like the worst toothpaste, right? It's like zero out of ten dentists recommend brushing with just dirt from the ground.

Side effects may include death. Yeah. Beatings. Horrible, horrible childhoods. Yeah. Fucking ongoing trauma. Disowing from parents. That's fucking awful.

You know, I will say, though, in their defense that the pastor's son told CNN that there was much more to the video than we were being told. So it's the taken out of context excuse. Yeah. And the pastor's son, in his defense, also said, I'm going to need you to shut the camera off. Can you move off our property? In his defense, he said that. Yeah.

So. And there's more to that video. So it sounds, you know, we don't know the whole story. It just looks bad. Sure. When little kids sing hateful songs about homosexuals and then the church fucking ooks and ocks. You know what you need is that female Jabba the Hutt

from the other church to come up and fucking ook and aww and be like well y'all just taking it out of context. Yeah, you're just taking this all out of context. Fine, that's what we meant. Fine. You can't hold us to our words just because they came out of our face holes. Yeah, you can't do that.

That's a bad thing. You're all dead. Oh, be nice. Oh, my son doesn't stand a chance. The whole world's gone gay. Oh, my God, what's happening now? We work hard. We play hard.

Everybody dance now. So, see, so this story is from NPR. Opponents block Washington State gay marriage. I was pretty surprised by this, actually. I'll admit, I was pretty surprised by this. You know, Washington State tends to be a reasonably liberal state. Seattle is certainly a very liberal city. It's a pretty gay-friendly city. It's one

of the larger population centers in the Washington state. So when Washington state couldn't get gay marriage through, I was kind of shocked. I'll admit, I was kind of shocked. I have hope for the coasts.

I know. I really do. Like, yeah, I have hope for the coast. It's like, you know, you get coasts, you've got, you know, intercoastal trade and travel. As a result of years and years of diverse opinions and ideas and peoples flooding in and out of those areas for ongoing successive generations. It's like I was hoping that we would ring the heartland and then just press in on the middle like a game of gay marriage risk. You got to make sure you set up all your pieces in Delaware. That's the best place to. But, you know, Tom, the one thing that sort of pokes a little hole in your plan there, North Carolina and South Carolina.

But I don't consider those states. You know, not in a useful know, not right. Right. Useful definitional. Sure. You know what? I want to read directly from this article really quick. He says, now this is from the NPR article. I just want to read what this guy says.

This person, his name is back home. Meanwhile, raised the specter of polygamy and marriage within families while making his case against gay marriage. He said the law would redefine marriage as it's been known for generations and suggested a possible slippery slope for other types of marriage. We have to think about the precedent we're creating, he said. What I got to say is, okay, let's say that what you're saying is true. You want to make sure that you don't set a precedent for other types of marriage. Why not just ban those other types of marriage? Why are you saying, well, we don't want to start a slippery slope. Well, fuck the slope.

Just ban marriage within families and ban polygamy. I don't know why fucking polygamy isn't allowed anyway. Fucking consenting adults, who gives a fuck? What is it, a tax break? They get to claim your wife four times? What's the big deal? Like, I don't understand why that would even be, why anybody would even bother. We're human beings.

If we decide we want to fucking, we'd rather have a fucking, instead of a monogamous relationship, we'd rather have a tribe. Who cares? Why would you care? Why do you care what five other people do as long as they're consensual? I mean, I understand that polygamy, the roots of that is you're marrying daughters off when they're fucking 12. I get that that's a bad thing, right? But if you're fucking of the age of consent and you go in with fucking clear eyes and be like, I don't know, fucking I want to marry into this. I want to be a sister wife with four other wives, or I want to be a fucking brother husband

with four other husbands. Who cares? Why would it matter? Because I'm judgmental. Yeah, because I got to fucking decide for you what's best for you. But the thing is, is that he's saying these other things. He's saying, oh, we don't want fucking polygamy. Oh, we don't want marriage within family.

And this is exactly what we're talking about earlier when they're like, oh, well, we're not against women. No, you're anti-gay. You're just hiding against this legislation saying, look, look, look, I don't care about the gays marrying. I just don't want to set a precedent that's bad for the future. And you're like, no, no, no, you're a fucking bigot. And you want to make sure that this doesn't get passed. And you're using the other stuff as a shield to hide your bigotry. Right. Imagine if we treated other laws the same way. You know, imagine if when considering another law, we said, OK, well, how does this affect other tangential issues? Right. We don't do that. Instead, we say, well, that's a different fucking issue. And we'll make a different decision based

on the benefits or lack of benefits to our society on the other issue. You don't say, well, you know, I'm all for what would be an analogous situation. You know, like I'm all for making stealing illegal. But if we make stealing illegal, then we've got to address the issue of all the other crimes possible. Like, no, you don't. What? No.

You address them all individually and you have individual laws for individual situations. It's not like people are saying, you know, well, we want gay marriage, comma, and all other possible forms of union. You know, nobody is saying that. It's a very specific request that should be treated specifically. But to treat a specific request as if it comments on general, on the sort of general welfare of other possibilities of unions is dishonest. It's totally dishonest. And you know what occurs to me is like, wait, maybe the government just needs to get the

fuck out of the business of marriage. Right. Just completely like just fucking fine. There's no marriage. Just throw your hands up and be like, you know what? Nobody gets married. Yeah. Nobody gets married.

We can't have nice things. 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 this next story I got from Boing Boing, Catholic cardinal authorized $20,000 to pay priests who rape children, then railed against immorality of gay marriage. This is about Cardinal Timothy Dolan.

He led the charge against same-sex marriage. He was an outspoken opponent of same-sex marriage. He also made sure to participate in the Payments for Pedophiles program, a very successful program of the Catholic Church, where they pay pedophiles, move them around, make sure to give them a little bit of money. Right, right. It's fucking awful. Yeah, it's kind of resoundingly awful. That's kind of not a thing you should do.

How is this guy a moral authority on anything? you walking into, I don't know, let's say the fucking Big Brothers and Big Sisters, which is an organization in the United States where, you know, kids that are that are lower income families that don't have big brothers and big sisters can have somebody who's, you know, going to be able to, you know, take them to a ball game or sort of be their sort of surrogate big brother or big sister and just hang out with them. Imagine walking into that place and the guy who's going to be your mentor is like John Wayne Gacy. Like that's the guy who's going to be like, oh, I'm going to show you how to dress like

a clown and entertain the kids. Yeah. It's the same moral authority. You're like, well, this guy is a degenerate. He is a degenerate and he's a scumbag and he somehow has something to say about gay marriage. Everything you say is suspect after you pay off fucking pedophiles. You know what I mean?

Like after you pay to protect pedophiles, I don't believe anything you have to say about morality. Hell, I don't believe anything you have to say about where to get to fucking May Street from here. No kidding. You know, it's like you've sacrificed any high ground you once could have claimed. Now, I don't think the claim of high ground based on a religious principle would have been a legitimate claim. But it would have been a socially acceptable claim. The idea that this guy is still part of an organization that bills itself as having a stranglehold on truth. As having, you know, we've got something

to say about what's right and wrong. And we're going to say it loudly and publicly because that's our job, because that's what the pulpit exists for, because that's what religious ideas, religious ideas are just, you know, it's like lazy man's morality. You know, it's that's all it's about. It's all about rules and regulations on how to live your life in order to get this final reward, in order to be good in the eyes of the almighty and what have you. And this guy who paid payments up to $20,000 to encourage pedophiles to voluntarily leave the priesthood, that's unconscionable. It's unconscionable. They should have been kicked out of the priesthood. That's unconscionable. It's unconscionable.

They should have been kicked out of the priesthood. They shouldn't have had to be paid off to leave. Yeah, you're going to leave. You're just going to leave in cuffs. Right. You're no longer a priest. I got bad news. You're no longer a priest.

You're going to jail. I got bad news and bad news. Which do you want first? Right. You know, because, and we've talked about this so many times, but if this happened in any other workplace. Sure, right. You know, like, your boss finds out you're a pedophile. You've been fucking kids in the break room again.

Right. That's the good analogy, right? Because it happens like, it sometimes happens in the church. Yeah. So it's like, well, you know, yeah, I've been fucking kids in the break room. I know that's bad form. I get it. So we're going to take a break and give you all the information that you need to find us on Facebook, to follow us on Twitter.

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and you can leave us voicemails and we'll return in just 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, 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 next story is great. Not for the story itself. Story itself is sad. Sure. Story is the Christian pastor gets arrested for beating his daughter. That's sad.

Sad news. It is a sad news, yes. But this guy's followers, his parishioners, they are rallying behind him. Yeah, I guess. But aren't they idiots? Well, admittedly. Admittedly, they're fucking fools. They typically, if you look at some of these comments, they're blaming the daughter for being beaten.

Yeah, and let's clarify, Tom, because I read the CNN article that – this is from the Friendly Atheist blog where he has – Hemant went out and got all of the Facebook comments that were offensive and put them in a JPEG and put them on his blog. So that's on the Friendly Atheist blog. But he links to the CNN article. So I read the CNN article about what happened. And I was like, well, what happened? Because all these people are fucking on here being like, yeah, you should fucking whip up on your kids. You should be able to fucking beat your kids, whatever.

And I don't really care what a parent does to their child as long as it's not ridiculous. So I was like, well, what did he do? Did he fucking swat her on the ass? What did he do? Did he fucking swat her on the ass? What did he do? And it turns out that she and other people corroborated that her father basically put his hands around her throat and began to choke her. According to the police report, she said and other people corroborated that he then slammed her on the ground, punched her, and beat her with his shoe. That's a standard punishment in almost any home. Okay.

I mean I'm not one of these guys that's like, oh, you should never hit your – I don't have kids, so I don't have a fucking – I don't have a horse in this race, so to speak. Because I don't care whether people do it or not. It doesn't bother me. But it feels to me that at a certain point, there's really no reason to go on corporally punishing your teenager. Because at a certain point, your teenager – you're not going to – you know, you could scare, I think, your kid, your young child with beatings. You can scare them into doing things correctly. But strictness to a teenager, I think as time goes on, you are teaching that, at least you should be teaching that teenager to be independent because that's kind of your role as a parent. At least that's how I see

it. I don't know. It's just a guess. But I see it as like, OK, you're teaching your child to be an independent person. And as they do things that defy your will as a parent, it's more them showing that they're independent creatures rather than just sort of an automaton that you decide how they act. So the corporal punishment doesn't do anything but reinforce the bad behavior. At least that's my fucking limited intellect says that that's the case. You know, there are no good studies that show that the corporal punishment is an effective way of teaching kids how to behave. Kids who are are smacked and hit and what have you.

That's that's not an effective way of disciplining children. At no point particularly, you know, you make a good point with teenagers, at no point is it like, whack, whack, whack, you've convinced me of the merits of your argument. Whack, whack, whack. If that was the case, you'd use that in the real world. Right. That's not how we settle disagreements. And really, when you've got teenage kids, you're at a point where you need to have, if you want to effectively have an influence on the behavior of that young person,

you need to be a person in their life that they respect and whose opinion they value and whose authority they value. And I think that as soon as you start whacking people around physically, first of all, you, you lose any kind of, um, argument. You know,

you've, you've basically said, I don't know. I don't know how to effectively express my feelings or my thoughts on this subject. So what I'm going to do is just beat you. Right. Second,

is there any, is there ever a time where something deserves a choking? Like, you put your hands around somebody's neck, shit has gotten serious. Sure, well, if they're trying to mug you, I guess. Yeah, but I mean, like, from a, like, from a disciplinary standpoint. No, I mean, like, in a normal

situation, like, I'm going out to buy coffee? No, I don't think so. I don't think that that would happen. And the comments on this is like, those darn kids these days. He was trying to discipline her and she called the police. She needs her ass beat. But does not. Now I got to ask you an honest question. You have people that are in this church that this pastor is part of. They are reading a 4000 year old text basing their their ideals on a barbaric Bronze Age text. Do you really think that it's that big a stretch that they would live their life in a way that is barbaric or Bronze Age?

No, not at all. It's not a surprise to me. No, not at all. When I read this, I'm like, OK, well, these people already – they've already checked out of modern society. They've already said that's not for me by deciding that this and mean streak that they have and justify it on their book. It doesn't surprise me that they would be that these Facebook posts would even pop up. Yeah, you make a good point.

It's like, you know, when as a parent, I try to I try to read and I try to look at what the most effective ways are to to discipline and to discipline and to – and I don't say that I do it perfectly by any stretch of the imagination. But I try to make sure that my decision-making process is influenced by rationality and evidence because it's possible in today's world to look at studies and say, what is an effective way to discipline a child? That's an answerable question. But you're right. Like, if that's not what you value most, if what you value most isn't what is going to be safest, most effective, you know, what do the studies say?

What does the data point to? If instead you're saying, well, what's this this book say? So spare the rod, spoil the child. There we go. Yeah. Where's my rod? Whack him. You know, I couldn't find my rod. So I just choked her.

Is that OK, God? Yes. I was just all I was doing was choking my 15 year old. I couldn't find my rod. So I beat her with my shoe. Is that is that OK? Or I threw my 15 year old daughter against the wall and started punching her was i within the bounds of levitical law by beating my child with my shoe or should i have

actually used you know a fucking shellfish like what should i have done should have stoned her right i should have beat her with a gay is what i should have done picked up a gay it's win-win win. Good news for North Carolinians. Good news. It's the butt of every joke lately. I feel so sorry. Listeners that live in North Carolina, before I apologize, I want to just say move. That's all I want to do.

Just move. Move out of that state. Get out of that place. This is a story from Scientific American. North Carolina, you can't from Scientific American. North Carolina. You can't make this up. North Carolina considers making sea level rise illegal. What are you really? What are you?

What? Yeah. Sea level rise illegal? How are you going to enforce that one? You can't make illegal the processes of nature. The Coast Guard. Right. The Coast Guard is going to be out there like putting the water in jail.

Right. Like finding Poseidon. Poseidon is like, I don't have any more money. Also, I don't exist. I'm not a real thing. Do you accept tridents as payment? I will pay you with the fish from the sea. We've all killed the fish from the sea.

Yeah. Actually, the fish from the sea are going to be on land soon, turns out. Well, this is the ostrich, right? It's like fucking bury your head in the sand. Pretend that statistics don't happen, that like climate change isn't happening. statistics don't happen, that like climate change isn't happening. Don't pay attention to current climate records. Instead, just pay attention to models that were made before like people understood climate.

Like that's ridiculous. And it's not really – you're not banning the sea rise. What you're banning is reporting the sea rise. Right. So you live on the coast, right? Yeah. And the sea level is beginning to rise. Right. So, so you live on the coast, right? Yeah. And the sea level is beginning to rise. And you're wondering, shouldn't I have heard something about this? Right.

I, you know, it appears that there's more ocean than there was before. Right. Let me crack open the North Carolinian statesman and read through it and see if there's a, no, no reports of sea level rise. So I'm mowing less lawn these days. I don't remember having a waterbed. This is surprising. There are ducks in my living room.

Yeah, right. Like, honey, didn't we always have sharks where the TV was? Is it shark week again? Every week is Shark Week. Oh, North Carolina, you're ridiculous. It's the greatest thing ever. Get out of that place. Yeah, you got to leave, man.

Just leave it as a fucking smoldering husk. It will be. Do you believe in UFOs, astral projections, mental telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, spirit photography, telekinetic movement, full trance mediums, the Loch Ness Monster, and the theory of Atlantis? If there's a steady paycheck in it, I'll believe anything you say. Well, I've got to eat my hat and I've got to revise the skeptics' creed, it turns out. Delicious hats. Just, what can you do? got to eat my hat and i've got to revise the uh skeptics creed it turns out delicious hats just what can you do this is from the idaho state journal bigfoot cited locally watch the video and i watched this video it's short it's five seconds long yeah um it does show a brown

brown i thought it was it looks it looks fucking on my screen it looks grayscale it does not look like there's a any color um well you know actually you can you can look at a larger image of this um no that's not helpful nope nope look at a larger nah it's still a pixelated grainy nothing that's what it is. What is? There's nothing in that. I mean, that's like those idiots on those television shows, those fucking ghost fucking hunters or whatever, or ghost adventures or whatever. My wife watches every one of those shows, by the way.

So there's like a million of these fucking fake ass, I'm running around, I got this fucking goofy little contraption that records things. And I got this fucking camera. And I have a heat sensor thing. My thing on Detective Kit. Because fucking ghosts give off heat for some reason. And then they also can like. They have this fucking speaking spell. Have you seen the speaking spell they have for that?

No. Have you seen that thing? Oh, it's the fucking dumbest machine you've ever seen. Basically, it's like a speaking spell that just randomly shouts out things that they're saying the ghost says. What? No, dude, you've got to watch these shows because they're the dumbest thing ever. It's like a speak and spell that they say, oh, the electricity in the air will make it go off.

And it's got all these like little sayings. So they'll say something and then you'll hear the thing go off and it'll be like, so they know that the ghost is there or whatever. But anyway, there's never any proof. They spend, you know, they spend hours and hours. You could watch these shows for hours on end and there's never a moment of proof in any of these shows. It's all just speculation. Something fell.

I heard a sound. Did you feel that cold air? None of it is fucking substantial at all. Right. And that's what I see when I see this. I'm like, OK, I look at a thing. I see six pixels move as they move across. I have no idea what that is.

Nobody else. I will say with certainty that no one else knows what it is either. But somehow these students saw it and they're like, oh, I took a picture of a Bigfoot. And now we're going to just believe it? And then they're talking in this article. They have the audacity to talk about the scientific method in this article. Like somehow like, oh, well, we're going to take this in as evidence. This isn't evidence of anything.

No. No. And they're talking about, wow, look at the arm swing. It's just like in the other video. Oh, come on. The arm swing. You can't identify a part from the video. All you can see is something vague and shit.

Is it a floating arm? Is that what we're seeing, a floating arm? It is seriously some of the worst video. You could actually set out into the woods with a video camera with the express intent of taking a worse video and not take a worse video than this. This is, it's nothing. It's nothing.

And this is getting reported in the news. Yeah. You know, like, here's the thing. Find the fucking breeding population. Find a fucking set of bones that has, you know, find a piece of fucking fur that has different DNA than fucking other fur in the world. And now we're talking. Now we have a fucking conversation. But show me six pixels moving on a video and that's on a fucking camera phone from a mile

away. You know, Jesus, why don't you fucking, you know, that's like, that's like all those people who get the fucking EVP things. Like, did you hear that thing with EVP? No, I didn't hear it. And neither did you. Because every time you subtitle that shit and I close my eyes and I listen to it again on TV, I can't hear what you just subtitled. What you subtitled is your own imagination and what you're seeing here is your own imagination.

Prove it to me and I'll believe it. I'm willing to believe that there's Bigfoots if there's proof. You got to fucking prove it. Don't you think we would have run over one by now? Harry and the Hendersons. Fucking forgot about that. That's the most realistic way to like. Absolutely.

People have hit with their cars. This is America, goddammit. Yeah, fucking A. We've hit everything with our cars. We have run over fucking bobcats and deer and bear and moose. And if it fucking lives in America, somebody hit it with a car. That's just don't even think that if somebody hit a fucking ape in Oregon with their car, they'd be like, oh, fucking I hit an ape. Wasn't expecting that.

Holy shit. You would think that that would be big news. Like, oh, fucking 8 and 8? I wasn't expecting that. 8 and 8? Holy shit. Yeah, you would think that that would be big news. They'd be like, well, where did it escape from? Right. Or somebody would have shot it. We're like an incredibly armed nation. That's true, too.

These things live in rural communities where everybody carries a gun everywhere always. That may be an exaggeration. It's just it makes so little sense that it would be a different species running around in the woods. We have plenty of logical explanations for this. Why are we assuming it's a Bigfoot? It's, it looks like a, that's the thing is I don't even see it in there. I don't see it either. You have to want to believe it's like, well, people are like, I want to believe, well, you want to believe, well, fucking, I don't care whether it's true or false. I just want to see some proof. Yeah. I want to believe. Well, you're automatically less credible. Sure. You're automatically giving it the benefit

of the doubt. I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the gospel as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine and all those different places, you know, because we have, excuse me, but we have the truth. I love this story. This is from an ABC affiliate, ABC 30. Dun, dun, dun. Shannon Handy reporting. That's a tough name, Shannon Handy. That is a tough name.

Wow, I just noticed that. You grow up with a thick skin with a name like Shannon Handy. She and Bridget Blowjob used to hang out quite a bit. Turns out. The title of this is Sacrilegious or Just a Harmless Classroom Assignment. Sacrilegious or just a harmless classroom assignment. Sacrilegious. That's hilarious. So basically this kid in Fresno, California,

was given just a shockingly stupid assignment. You know, you have to be a pretty bad teacher to assign this. They were assigned to create a Help Wanted poster for soldiers needed to fight in the Crusades. Okay. So this kid creates a Help Wanted poster for soldiers needed to fight in the Crusades. Okay. So this kid creates a Help Wanted poster. And it is fucking terrific. Nailed it.

Yeah, right? What it is is a picture of Jesus pointing his finger a la, like, Uncle Sam from, like, the World War II recruitment posters. Pointing his finger right out at you, the viewer. And it says, I want you to kill all infidels. I love it so much. I think it's great. What I love about this is that, you know, I mean, I think while Jesus is a good spokesperson,

I think he could have done one step better by having God as a spokesperson. But, you know, you just draw like a burning bush. Or, Tom, alternatively, he could have just drawn a big rain cloud with rain being like, don't worry guys, I got this. I got this handled. I'll flood the earth again.

No worries. Just like a bolt of lightning. Yeah. That's Thor, isn't it? Zeus? I don't know. None of that shit's real. Yeah, it's one of those. Pick a god. Who cares?

Well, the best part about this, though, is there's a rabbi in this article. And this is directly from, as Tom said, ABC 30 HD news, blah, blah, blah. But it's directly from their website. And this guy, his name's Rabbi Rick Wiener. Is it Wiener or Weiner? I don't know. I'm going Rabbi Rick Weiner. Is it Weiner or Weiner? I don't know. I'm going to say Weiner. I'll go Weiner just to split the difference.

Oh, nice. Weiner. That's a good one. Weiner. Let's use Weiner. Rabbi Rick Weiner, who has a degree in comparative religious studies, says despite the intended lesson behind the assignment, it crosses a fine line. behind the assignment, it crosses a fine line. Rick Wiener with the Temple Beth Israel said,

if we want to encourage people to learn the lessons of post-crusade or post-Holocaust, I generally find it more effective to do it through the images of peace as opposed to the images of horror. And he's right because when I was in school, how I learned about the Holocaust was there was just a bunch of Jews and Nazis hugging each other. That's how it happened. That's how I learned about it. There was just a big group hug that happened in Poland and in the middle of – there's a big group hug place in Germany called Auschwitz I think where they had like a really tight hug. It was a hug festival.

It was like a suffocating hug that they had there. They did a lot of mass hugging. Mass hugging. Mass hugging. Yeah, it was involved for sure. Sometimes you can't breathe so well because you're hugging so tight. Sometimes you care about something so much it dies. That's just – how do you teach somebody about the Crusades or the Holocaust without teaching them about the Crusades and Holocaust.

Or the Holocaust. How are you supposed to create a Help Wanted poster for the Crusades that isn't like that? I actually can't imagine. The only other thing that occurred to me was like a gun sight over a Muslim, right? Because you're trying to get – you're trying to create a recruitment poster for a time period where Christians went on crusades against the Muslims. Right. Which I think is what people are objecting to enter into that assignment when the assignment focuses specifically on a violent religious history. I don't know. I mean maybe you could have the pope in there being like, I got your indulgences for all the murdered Muslims.

Indulgences his. They're like rape and pillage. What? I don't – If you pay me enough, it's fucking fine. You can do it. Good God. What a mess. I don't – sacrileg me enough, it's fucking fine. You can do it. Good God. What a mess.

I don't. Sacrilegious. It's the greatest picture, though. It's the greatest picture. It is hilarious. It's hilarious. Allahu Akbar. Allahu Akbar. So this next story is from The Telegraph. Al-Qaeda statement by Ayman al-Zawari's wife was released.

Now, the wife of Ayman al-Zawari has a rare recruitment appeal by a prominent female, and she makes some very good points, such as, I advise you to raise your children in the cult of jihad and martyrdom and to instill in them a love for religion and death. Well, when you put it that way. Cuckoo. Yeah. Wow. That's a compelling argument. Yeah. Wow. That's a compelling argument. Yeah.

This lady's got a big beard. I don't know why it's a picture of Al Zawari. I don't know either. I just, when I heard that, I was like, aren't you talking about the wife? Like, why would you show a picture of this bearded dude? What I love, I think the best part about this article, this is directly from The Telegraph. And what I love about this article is at the bottom it says, the first part I want to quote, she says, each woman would raise her child to be a new Saladin, which is a 12th century Kurdish general,

by telling him you basically restore grandeur of the Islamic nation and will liberate Jerusalem. You know, you've got to find some new role models if you're looking at a 12th century Kurdish general as your role model. You need some new role models. And the other part of this that I think is hilarious, the end, it says that she urged Muslim women to keep wearing the veil. You're right. The veil is urged Muslim women to keep wearing the veil. You're right. The veil is the Muslim women's identity. And the West wants to remove this identity so you will be without an identity. You got to understand that when you hide your face, you have no identity.

Don't you understand that? That's why criminals hide their faces so that they have no identity. You know what drives me crazy, Tom? In our country, you'll find statues. There's one at Starved Rock, which is in Illinois. Sarah and I hiked our way up to this statue. And it's a really nice statue. It's on the middle of this big fucking bluff out there.

It's like the only place in Illinois with hills. And you go out there and beautiful statue up there. And you read who the statue was made by. And the statue, I'm just going to, you know, I don't know what the names were, but it was all Mrs. Jonathan White, Mrs. Rich Davis, Mrs. And you go through, none of the women had names. They're all Mrs. My husband, Mrs. My husband. And you look through American history and that happens all the time. Women didn't have an identity because they didn't have a name. They didn't have a name to show who they were.

This idea that you're going to hide your face and somehow that's your identity, that's not your identity. That's the identity of maybe Muslim women as a group. But it's not your identity as you personally. Well, it's your identity as in the sense of I'm identifying that I belong to a culture. So it identifies you as a cog in a wheel. Right. But it doesn't identify you as an individual. And I think also it's mistaken that it says the West wants to take it from you.

The West don't give a shit what you wear in your own country. Yeah, I don't care. I don't care what they wear here. It's – well, but that's a fair point for like Muslim women in France because the certain veils and head coverings are illegal there. No, yeah, but that's France and that's their deal. So it's like, OK, but you came to a Western nation and this nation has a certain set of mores. You came to France. Yeah. Right?

Come on. Nobody gives a shit. Everybody who is asked will tell you we think it's a fucking just it's a horrible idea. It's a bad idea to cover up your face and be faceless. I mean, right. What the fuck? But it's not like anyone is saying, like, I think we should go there and strip all these women of their face coverings. It's aulous idea.

And you're just trying to rile up people so they'll fucking raise their kids to be wanting to die for some unknown reason. I don't care that your face is covered. You know what I care about? That your kids aren't getting – that you're not marrying off your daughters at 12 to people that they don't want to be with. That are beating and raping them because they're not having children fast enough. I'm worried about you stoning women for having an opinion. I'm worried about you poisoning women for trying to learn. That's what I'm worried about. I don't give a fiddler's fuck that you're wearing a fucking veil. I worry that they can't put anything into your goddamn head. That's what I worry about. I'm fucking more concerned about you than you are.

Right? I'm more outraged that your girls are being poisoned for the crime of learning. Yeah. I want to instill in them a love of religion and death. You're an idiot. Terrible human being. Yeah.

Glad you're in charge. How is that a recruitment video? And shave your beard. Jesus, woman. I think the recruitment poster made by the young man in Fresno was actually more effective. Yeah. I want you to kill all the UFOs. She had Muhammad on there.

It's kind of bad, though. You get stoned for that. Yeah, you'd get immediately. Yeah. And not stoned in a good way. Not delightfully stoned, it turns out. Not like Doritos stoned. Yeah, not vaporizer stoned.

You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. So this last story is from Huffington Post. Oh, God. The leader in news.

Terry Jones, Koran burning pastor, hangs Barack Obama effigy outside Florida church. For those who aren't familiar with Terry Jones, Terry Jones is the asshat who a while back in Florida at his church had a Koran burning.

That Koran burning resulted in unrest, a lot of anger and unrest, and the deaths of 22 people. Oh. So your little stunt turned out to be a murderous stunt. That's good. So now he's got a new stunt. I'm sorry, it was the death of 21 people.

I apologize. But his new stunt is to hang Barack Obama in effigy. Are you so unaware of the lynching of black people history that America has or are you just indifferent to it? No. There is a reason why they're hanging him. Yeah, I know. There is a reason. And it's not the first time, right? You read this article and they say this is not the first time an effigy of the country's first black president has been hanged.

And they list two or three other times that it's happened. You know, we hang people. When we hang a black person in this country, we understand why we hang that black person. There's no fucking – there's no mystery. This is not ancient history. This is not pre-revolutionary. This is fucking earlier this century, this century you know what i mean like it's earlier yeah it's it's it's old enough that i know about it and i wasn't alive then but it's you know i know i know quite a bit

about it so this sort of thing there's people alive plenty of people alive that were alive when they were doing this right so this is not something that has died out. This is an oral tradition at this point. This guy's doing this for a reason. And it's a it's a it is a white supremacist mean fucking reason to do something like there's no reason to do this. There's no reason to do this other than you're a jackass. And I just want to say about the image just really quickly. Worst haunted house ever.

That's all I want to say. That's the worst one I've ever seen. It's like it's the shortest one too. I mean you're over it in a second. There's no – you're just right through it. You know, it's funny that you look at it. You talk about the image. The image is so – like it's so bad it looks shopped.

It does. It really looks shopped. It looks awful. It's terrible. Yeah. This guy, all I can think is like this guy is bad it looks shopped. It does. It really looks shopped. It looks awful. It's terrible. Yeah. This guy, all I can think is like this guy is just an attention whore. Sure. That's all he is.

He just wants – he's like, well, I did that crayon burning. That was fucking outrageous and I got to be in part of the news. Yeah. So what other crazy shit can I do? Yeah. So people will fucking pay attention to me. How are you going to preach your religion of tolerance and love and acceptance and compassion and and hang a man? You can't. Those are incompatible, incompatible and fucking compatible.

And it says on the sign behind him, it says Obama is killing America. I'll tell you what. Keep doing this sort of thing. Obama could label you a domestic terrorist and then Obama could kill you. Yeah, no kidding, right? It's like, are you unaware that you basically have no right to life to live at all? Obama could just kill you.

Yeah. And you know what? The thing is, just what we just did is a perfect rational reason to be down on this administration. There are plenty of things that you could say that are not hyperbole, that are not hanging a black man, that don't have Uncle Sam without a face and a flag. flag. You know, there's plenty of things that you could do to talk about this administration in a rational way to dig, to, to point out the mistakes that this administration has made, to point out the abuses of power that this administration has put forth, to point out the, uh, the, the lackluster performance and the lying on campaign promises and the, you know,

the millions of things that you could talk about, about this last three and a half years. promises and the, you know, the millions of things that you could talk about about this last three and a half years. Let's talk about it. But instead, it's just hyperbole and a fucking gallows and I'm an attention whore. You know, you just why don't you just fucking put out a giant picture of your cock out there while you're at it? Well, it'd be a smaller picture, like a tiny picture. Maybe that is one in the background.

I can't tell. We'll get the Bigfoot people on this. It all looks shocked to see. I see a pixel moving back there. All right. So, Tom, we got some emails. But before we get into that, I just want to say thank you to everybody who has rated us. US iTunes right now, we have 200 reviews. us, US iTunes right now, we have 200 reviews. I think that's a great milestone. And I know you, Tom, and I both, we really appreciate all the reviews we get on there. And really, this helps our show in a great way because the more reviews we have, the more iTunes recognizes us on their listings. So we go up higher and higher on the religion other portion of the board

and we can stay up higher for a longer period of time depending on our downloads and the amount of reviews we get. So every review we cherish and we love and we're very happy that people have taken the time out of their day to go to the iTunes board, to go to the iTunes program,

enter in their ID and just rate us, you know, whatever they rate us. And we've gotten a lot of five-star reviews and people have been very gracious and we're both appreciative of it. Absolutely. And, you know, if you think it doesn't matter to us, we would be chatting during the week and be like, hey, did you check out the new iTunes review? Like we generally get excited about these.

So thank you. Yeah. So thank you. Thanks for taking your time out. Over a thousand Facebook followers now too, Tom. This is largely because Tom has been posting, and Tom has been pretty diligent. Not very diligent. We'll just say pretty.

Somewhat diligent. Somewhat diligent about posting. But he's been doing a great job with it, and he's been posting. Almost all the time when we get stories, Tom finds the stories, puts little funny little lines on them and sends them out there. And people have been communicating with us on Facebook, uh, talking to each other too about these stories that get posted. And if you want to know what we're going to talk about in the next week, most of the stuff

we talk about winds up on Facebook or Twitter before we ever talk about it. So, uh, so you get a chance to voice your opinion and talk about it before we ever even get a chance to mention it on the show. So it would be great if you wanted to like us on Facebook. You can find us there pretty easily through our site or just search for Cognitive Dissonance on Facebook and on Twitter. All the stuff goes through Twitter and Google+. So we're trying to do that in conjunction now so that all three get the same treatment because I know people – some people do Twitter. Some people do Facebook. Some people do Google+.

And we want to make sure we reach all the audiences. So Tom has been doing a great job with that. It really is only fucking job. That's all I do. He should – I mean that's it. He should fucking excel at it. I barely even record the show.

You should fucking excel at it, Tom. That's all I'm saying. You can barely even record the show. You should fucking excel at it, Tom. That's all I'm saying. A person by the name, and I'm going to use your last name here because he actually calls us to call him out. His name is Ed Guzman. And Ed says that he dares us.

We don't have the balls to do it. Turns out we do. To out him as an atheist on the area. He's from San Antonio, Texas. Isn't San Antonio a big atheist community down there? Isn't that where Texas actually is full of? Well, no atheist experiences from there, I think. So they actually have a pretty big community down there.

But Ed, you are an atheist. We want people to know that you're an atheist. He said that we should try to do this as a weekly thing or whenever we hear it, people send us their name and we'd out him as an atheist on our show. Our show is not fucking, you know, got that great, huge reach anyway. So, you know, you're only telling this to like six other people, Ed. I hope you know. But in any case, we are outing Ed.

It's a one time only deal. So you don't have to send us your things and tell us to out you. There's a lot of other shows I think that would really love to do this. I would mention it to other shows, especially the shows where people are trying to convert the people that are Christians, I think would be a great place for this. He does also mention, is it Mike and Tom? And is it Tom or Tom with an H? No, it's Ted and Mike. That's what it is. You missed it earlier. We were talking about it. We were trying to decide if we wanted to do an About Us page.

A lot of people have told us we're going to do it. And we're thinking about doing it, but we want to kind of make it light and funny. We don't want to – we're not too serious about the show, as you can tell. So we're not going to try to put on there and be like, Cecil studied at – we're not going to do that. So we're going to make something probably eventually. But we never introduce ourselves because we don't think that our names really matter that much. No, it's about the show. I mean that's what you're here to listen to.

You're not here to bask in the undeniable glory that is Tom. Tom without an H. When is it ever with an H? It's Ted with a D really. Ted with a D. So we got another email. We got another email here. This is from Pierre.

And Pierre Lacan from Australia has sent us an email. And he just says many thanks for the podcast. We got a lot of letters from Australia this time. Thanks for listening to us down there. You have to listen to us upside down, which is probably difficult. It's much harder. Yeah. To fast forward, they have to us down there. You have to listen to us upside down, which is probably difficult. It's much harder. Yeah. To fast forward, they have to rewind.

Yeah. It's a son of a bitch. It's a pain in the ass. I always forget when I'm down there. It's tough. But thank you for listening. And this person said they were a young Earth creationist for a while. So they're a recovering creationist.

Glad you're listening. So thank you very much. I'm glad you're listening, P.A., so thank you very much. An email from Toby. Toby, again, from the fine land of Australia, and just wanted to say hello and say that they're listening. So thank you, Toby, for listening and sending us an email. Our condolences. Yeah, we're sorry that you wound up listening to most of our podcast. We hope you continue.

But we got an email. We got a comment on our blog, Tom, about last week. And this is something you and I didn't know, that the people who handle steaks also cook them. The people who handle snakes also drink strychnine. Yeah, that's crazy. I didn't think they did because there's still some around. Because that's crazy. Because it's really crazy.

I'm actually completely just flabbergasted that they actually drink strychnine, although I'm certain that they drink an extremely dilute solution. It's the fucking homeopathic strychnine, right? They wave a vial over a glass. Because let's face it, you know, like, you believe in God, but it's watered down. Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you're not gonna fucking, you're not chugging the Drano. You know what I mean? Like, you're not drinking something that

will kill you. I have a feeling like there's gotta be, I mean, unless, and again, this is something we don't know, so if you know, and you've, you know these people, or you know and you've you know these people or you know about this stuff let us know are they fucking drinking a straight up maybe even strychnine doesn't kill you i don't know but um but that's fucked up that's some fucked up shit right there and you know way to fuck your liver up you know you're just you might as well just fucking just cut that thing in half. Yeah, like, how you feeling? Not so good. I went to church. Yeah, not so good.

My liver is falling out of my ass at this point. You need to try going to a Catholic church. At least they give you some wine. Yeah, they give you fucking cracker. It's good. Yeah, it's better. You're doing it wrong. We got two emails. We got an email and a comment on our blog, I should

say. The first email was from Harry and Harry said that he disagreed with our characterizations of DJ Growth. Is that his name, Growth? I believe it's Growth, yeah. DJ Growth posts about Tam, and he sort of talks about it a little bit, but one of the things he says is, can you provide anyone that was harassed and reported it to the organizers. I will say that from Rebecca Watson's blog, there is a link to another blog where I guess a guy was getting handsy with a girl and DJ was one of the people that escorted this guy out.

And the girl saying that you were one of the people and then he's now he's saying, oh, you're misremembering it. But a bunch of people corroborated that he helped her help this guy out of the place to basically be like, don't be fucking handsy, dude. So there is an example right there. So I feel like I feel like at some point you've got to believe the people that are saying it, because if you don't, you're just victim blaming. Yeah. You know, I have to say that if they tell you if a woman tells you that she feels uncomfortable or harassed or, you know, that's at the very least you take it seriously. Right.

You know, that's all I think anybody is asking is, you know, take it seriously, be vocal about it, have real transparent, aggressive anti-harassment policies. It's good for everybody. Sure. Nobody, nobody's, the only people that benefit now are the creepers. Yeah. They're the only people that and they're a tiny subsect. We're not saying that the entire audience is all male creepers. No, we're saying that we're saying that there's a tiny subsect of creepers that get to flourish here because there's no policy to stop them from being creepers, man.

You know, any organization that you get handsy with somebody without their fucking permission, you should be fucking ejected from that place. You should just be – you don't get to do that. I would be upset if a woman got handsy with me. I'm a married man. I show up to fucking Tam and some girl grabs my ass, I'm going to feel violated. And I will tell the person, don't fucking touch me. Don't sit on my lap. Don't fucking touch me. Don't sit on my lap. Don't be by me. Get away from me. So I would have the exact same reaction that these

women would be having to unwanted advances. It's an unwanted advance. I don't want you doing it. And, you know, just don't fucking do it. If somebody says, no, I'm not interested, that doesn't mean it's time to rubber shoulders. Yeah rub her shoulders. I would stop that shit after 20 or 30 minutes myself. Do you need 20 or 30 minutes, Tom? Did I say minutes? I meant seconds. She grabs your ass, you ejaculate. I'm done. Thank you.

Thank you. I just came again. There you go. Really, the idea that these posts were putting out is that women feel unsafe at these. I don't I don't like the word unsafe here because I don't know that I think unsafe is an escalation that I don't know. I feel from the reports I'm getting. I will say uncomfortable, though, and uncomfortable is just as valid in my opinion. You know, I think these women are feeling uncomfortable and when they're feeling uncomfortable, you're not going to have them come back. So you've got to create a place that is safe enough and comfortable enough to be welcoming for all the genders. And if you don't, then what you have is a sausage fest, which is

what's going to happen this year when they only have 18 percent women that are showing up. And that's down from 40 percent. From 40 percent. Clearly something has happened. So – and it's not – and to have an idea that people are saying this for no reason. And we're not just picking on you, Harry. I know that you didn't say all this in your email. So I'm not just picking on you.

I know that you just had one question. We addressed it earlier. So I'm not saying this directly about your email. I'm saying this is the stuff I'm gathering off the internet from people talking about this thing that went down. I don't feel like somebody would say, I feel unsafe and not mean it. Why would you say that and not mean it? I feel uncomfortable and not mean it. There's no reason. There's nothing to be gained here from being somebody who is making things up. There's no reason to say's nothing to be gained here from being somebody who is making things up. There's no reason to say it. Yeah, I agree.

Just address it openly and honestly and aggressively and everybody wins. Yeah, exactly. There was somebody who sent us – Tom sent us – posted on our blog and said that they're going this year and they hope that it's going to be fun. Tom says he's bringing his daughter and they're both paid up and they're hoping it's not going to be a sausage fest and they hope that a bunch of people, a bunch of women show up. I hope so too. I hope that the organizers of that event pay attention to this backlash and say, you know what, we're going to put something. We're going to say something.

We're going to make sure that this doesn't blow out of proportion. Don't blow it off and say, oh, fucking, you know, those people are attention whores or they're just trying to get a rise out of us or whatever you're going to pass it off as. Treat it seriously and everybody will come. They'll be like, okay, well, you're treating it seriously. Another Australian sends us an email. This is Steve. Steve sent us an email with a video link on why you should come to Australia about the tourism there.

And there was a tourism song. I'm going to post the video on our site. It's actually very funny. So go to our site, dissonancepod.com for this episode, and you'll be able to see the video that Steve sent. Steve, thank you for sending it. Last email, Tom, we got an email from Christina and this is one of us. One of those emails that we get probably once a month, we'll get an email thanking us for

our feminism. Yeah, this email was at turns very sad and it was very heartfelt email. Meant a lot. Thank you for sending email. It meant a lot. Thank you for sending this. It meant a lot that you sent this to us. She relays a personal story that she sent us to an email, so I don't feel comfortable re-relaying that information or making public some of the information that she sent us.

But, you know, we do this show. It's an atheist and skeptical show, and I don't think either one of us set out to have a show that also had initially when we first spoke, you know, hey, let's also make it a feminist show. But I don't think that you can bring critical thinking to the table and not end up on the side of equality. If you bring critical thinking to the table at all, even if you do it as poorly as we do sometimes. Exactly, yeah. If you don't end up seeing the inequalities between the genders and decrying those things,

then you're not thinking very hard. Yeah. Well, and not just that. We also didn't start the show thinking it was going to be about gay rights either. Well, and not just that. We also didn't start the show thinking it was going to be about gay rights either. But these are one of those – this is one of those things that Bronze Age ideals based on biblical ideals, they are suppressive to women. They are also injurious to innocents and children.

You know what I mean? Like we didn't set out this show thinking that it was going to be about, you know, protecting children from child abuse, but it turns out that there's so many things, so many bad things that people do in the name of religion that you've got to stand up and be like, well, I am for gay rights. I am for feminism. I am for stopping people from abusing children. I am for to stop people from, you know, destroying the environment because their book says that it's fine and God will make more. You know, there's all these things that we wind up being for, and it all stems from our rejection of common theology. Yeah. And, you know, you reject these theologies and then you're left, you know, you have to put together a moral scope, like you have to put together a moral scope.

Like you have to put together some kind of compass and that compass I think necessarily turns toward humanism. Sure, absolutely. And if you cannot see discrimination as being antithetical to humanism, again, you're just doing it wrong. You're just doing it wrong. You're just doing it wrong. Yeah. And both Tom and I think for a long time have been, you know, before we ever started the podcast, we were for women's rights. I know I have been for many, many years. I've called myself a

feminist for many years because I just think that it's it's the right thing to be. I think that I stand with everybody whose rights are fucking trampled on constantly. I stand with all those people because I want to make sure I really do. I mean I'm a sucker for the fucking American ideology that we are all created equal. I'm a fucking sucker for that. I think we are. We are created equal. So let's stop pretending that we're not and start really acting like we are. We are created equal. So let's stop pretending, you know, that we're not and start really acting like we are. And we, you know, that's what I hope this show does. So thank you

for listening and thanks for pointing it out. It makes us feel good to get some of these messages from people that say, hey, you guys do a good job. So thank you again for sending it. Yeah, absolutely. I was very, very pleased to receive that email. Well, this wraps it up for another exciting and very long episode of Cognitive Dissonance. Please check us out on the web. Please send us your comments and please interact with us in all the ways that we put out there for you to interact with us. And as usual, we shall leave you with the skeptics creed. Skeptics incantation, we shall leave you with the skeptics creed skeptics incantation.

We'll call it this time. 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 pan, sales pitch, late night info docutainment. Leo, Pisces, cancer cures, detox, reflex, foot massage, death in towers, tarot cards, psychic healing, crystal balls, Bigfoot, Yeti, aliens, churches, mosques and synagogues, temples, dragons, giant worms, Atlantis, dolphins, truthers, birthers, witches, wizards, vaccine nuts.

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