Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 62: Rock, Paper, Girl

Episode Date: August 26, 2012

Todd Akin: It's Not a War on Women, It's a War on Critical Thinking and Democracy  Akin's "Legitimate Rape" Comment Latest Declaration That Women Are Liars Or Sluts Missouri Republican official: ‘God chose to bless’ women with pregnancies from rape Quackery and Mumbo-Jumbo in the U.S. Military Controversial preacher Todd Bentley refused entry into the UK Tony Nicklinson's right to die: Change the law Ruled innocent by judge 2 years ago, Los Angeles man remains in prison Ramadan fasting dilemma when sun never sets Girl, 11, Could Face Death in Pakistan for 'Blasphemy' This week in bronze age ethics: Joshua 6:21 Clips: , allahu akbar, The simposonsVisit our Website at for more info.

Want to stream Cognitive Dissonance to your Android or iPhone? Buy the app! Go to DissonancePod.com and click on the link on the right-hand side of the page. Each purchase helps support the show. Okay, so if an abortion could be considered in a case of say a tubal pregnancy or something like that, what about in the case of rape? Should it be legal or not? Well you know, people always want to try and make that as one of those things, well how

do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question? It seems to me first of all, from what I understand from doctors, that's really rare. If it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that maybe that didn't work or something. You know, I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be in the rapist and not attacking the child. 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 legitimately episode 62. No welcome, Matt. This is legitimately episode 62. Do not confuse this with an illegitimate episode of Cognitive Dissonance. No, no. This is definitively a legitimate episode.

And you can tell it's a legitimate episode because your body is trying to fight against this episode right now as we're having it. Your body is revolting against this episode. I'm not pregnant. That's how I know that this is really an episode of cognitive dissonance. Your body has basically shut off all the juices, so to speak. All of a sudden, one of these days I'm going to be recording and be like fucking Arnold Schwarzenegger Jr. I'll be like, what is going on with my body? My nipples are leaking.

Oh, man. Oh. Well, I guess that's the segue. Yeah, really, it is. Yeah. It doesn't get any better than that, Tom. The story that is dominating this week, absolutely dominating this week. I would tell you this story is from Huffington Post or from Reuters or from AP, but it's really from Earth.

Yeah, it's from anywhere on the planet right now. It's Todd Akin. Oh. Good God, man. Just shut the trap. You're making it worse. You're making it worse. Todd Akin is a Republican congressman, and he basically went on record saying that, hey, you know, abortion's wrong.

And when questioned about, you know, well, what about in cases of rape? And it says, well, you know, if it's rape, legitimate rape, you know, then you're very unlikely to get pregnant because your body basically like, I don't know, like poops out the sperm or something. His mechanism, he didn't have a whole lot of mechanism involved. No, he didn't really think this one through. What I love is there's an article that's linked to. So there's like Huffington Post linked to an article and the article they're linking to is from a website called RH Reality Check because Aiken had a gaffe. But this other Pennsylvania Republican said that rape victims secrete a certain secretion

during an attack that will kill an attacker's sperm. Another Republican, this time in North Carolina, said the opposite, that a woman's juices don't flow and that prevents the pregnancy. What? You know, you ask yourself, you're like, OK, wait, are all of these old men that ignorant of the reproductive system? I feel like every single one of these old men is like the guy from 40-Year-Old Virgin who's just like, is it true if you don't use it, you lose it? Like the juices don't flow.

So they're like, are you serious? The fucking juices don't flow? She's not a steak you asshole well the thing is you gotta let her rest yeah okay yeah before you cut her open you know that's terrible what the fuck it's like you walk into a room like the police like burst into a room there's like a woman like tented and foil like just resting she's almost ready she's not nearly there yet yeah her juices weren't flowing. Trying to keep her warm there.

Are they that – they are obviously very ignorant of the female reproductive system. Oh, yeah. I mean this is an astoundingly ignorant thing to say. You would even use the words legitimate rape together as a qualifier as if to suggest that there are illegitimate rapes. Well, that was a less rapey – it's like when Whoopi Goldberg was like, well, it's not rape rape. Yeah, exactly. Rape rape? Yeah.

Like what is this idea? I mean we have different notions of rape, right? Like there's statutory rape and there's marital rape. But they all have one thing in common. Rape. Yeah. You know, it's like, whether it's a fucking Caesar salad or a Cobb salad, it's still a fucking salad. You know, it didn't become a different fucking thing. It's still, you know, it all revolves around the issue of consent.

It's still, you know, it all revolves around the issue of consent. You know, this idea that there can be such a thing as an illegitimate rape basically is a way for him to rhetorically remove agency from women by saying, you know, if I illegitimize certain rapes, then I basically get to say that the idea of consent for a woman is not important. So I can remove your agency, your sexual agency, and then it's easier for me to make decisions about your body because you no longer have agency. Every one of these guys has this, they have this ulterior motive and it's, it's, they want to make sure that they let you know that rape really doesn't happen a lot. And when it does happen, it doesn't result in a lot of pregnancies. Therefore, abortion is wrong because rape doesn't happen as much and it certainly doesn't produce as much children, as many babies. That's why they're arguing something and they're starting at a premise that doesn't even finish – it doesn't even finish the same – with the same product at the conclusion.

It's almost like they're starting with apples and ending with oranges. Well, yeah. I mean it's definitely a ridiculous argument, right? It's basically a way for them to get away from – these folks want to make abortion into a black and white issue, which it's just not. No matter what side of the aisle you're on, it's just – it's an incredibly complex gray area issue. And one of the biggest difficulties in dealing with the issue of abortion for the – abortion for, you know, the, I hate using the term, but I'm using it, the pro-life folks, you know, one of their biggest difficulties is this question of, well, what about in cases of rape and incest? Because there's clearly, you know, they don't get to be judgmental then, right? Because a lot of abortion has to do with slut

shaming, like a lot of abortion opposition has to do with slut shaming so if you take away a woman's uh choice by you know invoking an instance of rape you know then all of a sudden we have this this new and difficult conundrum so this seems to me like a cheap and ridiculous way to try to back out of that basically say like well that doesn't count yeah like rape doesn't really like if it it's a legitimate rape, it doesn't really work. One of the first things that occurs to me when I hear this is like, would it be a legitimate rape if you had a 13-year-old daughter who was statutorily raped? She consented, but of course she cannot consent because she's not of an age of consent.

But if it was Todd Akin's daughter, if he had a daughter. Sure. 13-year-old impregnated by a 14-year-old. Right. Is now all of a sudden do we have a conversation here, Todd? I mean it's – this is ridiculous, this idea. This is like those idiots who talk about you know well you know marital rape isn't really rape you know there's this constant um seeking to redefine

rape in order to um make it harder for women to um push the issue of consent because that's that's what's involved here is you know is there consent is there mutual consent it's an easy yes or fucking no you know but there's all these qualifiers you know to try to illegitimize you know these these instances of uh sexual assault there's a there's a part where huckabee this week tom pulled out a list of a bunch of people to say, well, here's a bunch of people that were products of rape and look at how great they turned out. And he's got this big, long list of people. They grew up into these great people, you know, these people that you should admire. And what if they got an abortion? And I fucking cannot stand when people compare a fucking fully lived, actualized human being who has lived up to, you know, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s to a zygote.

You cannot make that comparison. You can't say, you know, well, if you would have aborted him, you would have missed out on something great. Right. Yeah. Who cares? You might have missed out on something awful. You might have missed out on something great. Right. Yeah. Who cares? You might have missed out on something awful. You might have missed out on something mediocre. You don't know what you missed out on.

And you're not aborting, you know, the future person. You're aborting a tiny little spot of blood in most cases. Something that doesn't have, you know, that is not a baby as we would know it. But it's certainly not a human that has lived years and years and years. And that that comparison drives me up the fucking wall. Well, yeah, because it's a nonsense comparison. You know, it's it's compared. It's and plus it asks you to predict the future.

Right. You know, when you're it's it's it's a crystal ball comparison you know well you know you're you're pregnant now with a with a you know the the uh the the child of the person who raped you but you you know you never know maybe that's going to turn out great you know look here's some here's some people that turned out pretty great oh well great i guess i'll just fucking crystal ball that shit and decide that they're going to turn out to be really great people and my life will be rewarding and wonderful

because I was impregnated by that fucking beatific rapist. Yeah. That's not really a true. You can't do that. This has to be the choice of the woman who was attacked. That's it. There is no middle ground on this. You know.

Whether. Whether she chooses. Whatever choice she makes. It's got to be. Her choice. We've. You know. Just by the act of having been raped.

She's already been denied. A basic fucking human right. And a basic fucking choice. You know. That is over her. Her. Her sexual self. self so that's been stripped from her now the state is going to come in and take away you know her ability to to have

reproductive uh decisions made fuck that noise you know he's saying okay well all these all these people uh were wound up being you know successful and useful and you and people you should look up to, that's great. Their parents found a way to get past that very damaging experience and raise this child like their own. And I'll be honest, Tom, I think they should be commended. I think that is something that you look at and you say, you got past a very difficult time in your life and you were able to raise a child and not have contempt for that child. And to really raise this child to be somebody who is, like they say, somebody you should look up to. That's great. But you can't legislate that.

No. It's really cool that somebody did it. It's admirable that someone did it. But just because somebody did something admirable doesn't mean that we're all required to do something admirable by law. Abortions for all. Very well. No abortions for anyone. Abortions for some.

Miniature American flags for others you know and cecil this this next story is from uh the raw story um adding insult to insult to injury um a missouri republican official quote god chose to bless women with pregnancies from rape. Your God sucks. Like, you have the worst God. Your God's like, hey, hey, I got, hey, knock, knock. Oh, who's there? It's me.

It's God. Oh, hey, God. What's going on? I got a blessing for you. Oh, really? What is it? Ha, rape. Rape. What?

Yeah. You suck. Look, we've talked about Kill Billy God before. We know. We know that he just does not know that people don't like droughts, and he has no idea that people do not like rape. He's like, I thought

y'all liked to be raped. Mary liked it. I don't know. I mean, I sent the Holy Ghost down, and then you know, she it. I don't know. I mean, I sent the Holy Ghost down. And then, you know, she had a nice little young'un. I mean, they done stuck him to a stick or two. But, I mean, that's what we're going to do, you know. What does she say here? This is awesome.

She says, this woman, Barnes, echoed Mr. Aiken's statement that very few rapes resulted in pregnancy, according to the Times. And then she added that at that point, if God has chosen to bless this person with a life, you don't kill it. That's more what I believe he was trying to say, she insisted. He just phrased it badly. And you phrased it well well you dumb fucking yokel that's phrasing it well you know i read that and i'm like well you you made it worse you actually made it worse that's like if somebody like came up and was like huh house fire huh oh yeah all my shit burned down well guess i'll stab you in the face like you just made it worse so your house burned down huh well i guess i'll just have to douse you in gasoline

and light you on fire. Yeah. Oh, by the way, I ran over your dog on the way over. So good, good times. And then I raped it. Legitimately. This is, I mean, God has chosen to bless. This is, this is a whole way of thinking, Cecil, I simply like I can't get there from here, right? I can't get the idea that somebody would actually look at somebody and be like, I think you've been blessed. You've been blessed with that little baby. Tom, I think I can get there. And the easiest way to get there is you look at these people and you think nothing in your life has ever gone fucking totally wrong. Nothing in your life has ever been fucking awful.

You've never been hungry. You've never been poor. You've never been the victim of an assault or the victim of a robbery or whatever because the only way you can look at all fucking babies are a blessing, because the only way you can look at all fucking babies are a blessing, the only way you could look at the world like that is if you have never, ever, ever had to worry about feeding your child or any of that stuff. The people who have been raped in the world would never say that.

This woman is not a victim of a rape because there's no way she would say that. I think that this person lived a charmed life and they're like, oh, well, every baby is a blessing. What? They're babies. They're fucking cute. What the fuck? Yeah, and you also have to think like hopefully the pregnancy goes well because they don't always.

So I mean there's so many other ways to be like, well, the state said that you've been raped. So that's a blessing. So congratulations on your blessing. Yeah. And, you know, I hope everything goes well with the pregnancy. They don't always. So there's a possibility you could die from that and have complications. Certainly that happens.

Yeah. We'll try to save the baby before we save you. Right. Yeah. I mean, the baby will get a, you know, we don't want to be rude. Referential treatment. So we'll definitely try to, you know, if you have if you have cancer or something, we can't treat that. You're pregnant and all with the rapist baby. Yeah, rapist baby.

That's fucking crazy, right? Yep. And who's going to pay for that pregnancy, right? Is the state going to say, oh, well, we forced you to carry that child against your will. So we'll go ahead and pay for the medical care and treatment, the delivery. No, of course not. They're not going to offer shit they're just going to basically be like you got an extra blessing you got a fucking pocketbook blessing now

yeah well and that's the thing that really burns my ass is that you have all these people that are so against socialized medicine they're so against welfare and that sort of thing, social programs in general. But they're the type of people who are like, nope, every fucking baby gets born. Every goddamn baby that gets fucking put there. Every fucking speck of zygote gets fucking fully

actualized. That's the way we roll here. And I don't give a fiddlers. Fuck what happens to it. The moment it gets born, it's your fucking problem. But until then, goddammit, it's gonna get born. Pardon me while I go blow up a fucking Middle Eastern nation. Fuck you guys. You know, fucking carrying the

fucking cross on your back. Oh, look at how pro-life we are. Look at how pro-life we are. Except for the moment that that life is born or it's fucking too brown or it lives around the other fucking side of the fucking world, nobody cares about it anymore. I'm Raymond Massey, and I have a special message for senior citizens. Today's doctors, drugs, and medical devices truly work medical miracles for young and old alike, but there are some as phony as a $3 bill. Investigate before you invest in health services or products. Help stamp out quackery.

This story is from slate.com. I like the title of this story. Quackery and mumbo jumbo. Mumbo jumbo. In jumbo in the u.s military cupping moxie bustion and battlefield acupuncture are endangering troops first i gotta say battlefield acupuncture aren't you already worried about being punctured on the battlefield maybe you can find a different place for the acupuncture like some guys running out you're Aren't you already worried about being punctured on the battlefield? Maybe you can find a different place for the acupuncture. Some guy's running out. You're like, oh, fuck. Just fucking roadside bomb just blew up.

People are shooting. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. I got to stick some needles in you. Be like, I need the blood in my body. I need less holes in me. I am not in a place right now where on this battlefield, I need more holes in my body. I also want to point out Cecil that cupping looks hilarious because it makes you look like an old

timey radio. It totally does. You know how you tune in Tokyo. You know what I mean? That's what you got to worry about. Hey, turn over. It's time for the happy ending. This is a good story because I really like the way it's written. And there's a great quote from this article that I want to read. It says, it can't be stressed enough that the plural of anecdote is not data. Uncontrolled observations usually lead us astray. Observing that some number out of 1,000 patients improved with acupuncture is meaningless unless we know how many would have improved without it. And I love that.

The plural of anecdote is not data. I love that. That is pretty awesome. That's pretty spectacular. You know, it's funny because I – this is – I probably shouldn't even say this. My wife worked for a traditional Chinese medicine doctor years ago, back when we were in college. And she had the cupping and the – I've had acupuncture because I was curious about it. She's had acupuncture, the moxibustion, all that stuff.

What the fuck is moxibustion? Yeah, I don't remember offhand. I know the term though. I think that's where they like – Let me look it up. They light some stinky shit. They light some stinky shit. Well, don't they offhand. I know the term, though. I think that's where they light some stinky shit. They light some stinky shit. Well, don't they do that anyway?

It's a medicine therapy using mugwort herb. Plays an important role in medical systems of China. They basically just light stinky shit and run it around the room. Burn the fluff or process it further in a cigar-safe stick. It can be used indirectly with acupuncture needles or burn it into the patient's skin. Ooh. Yeah. That doesn't sound good.

No. You know, it's so funny. It's like you go to the doctor. He's like, hold on. I've got to fucking dye a cigarette. Hey, I went to the doctor. He just started throwing matches at me. What the fuck?

So you've had acupuncture done? I have, yeah. And did it do anything for you? No, it just feels kind of weird because you have needles in your face and what have you. That's the thing. They put needles kind of all over you. At least this guy, you put dozens, probably two dozen. I don't want to exaggerate.

It was more than 20 Needles all over you I mean your face and like in your nose And your arms and chest And legs and I mean just fucking everywhere You're just like a pincushion But they don't really hurt, they're these really really small Needles, they don't really hurt, they don't go in very

Deep at all, they just kind of sit There And then the rest of the time you're in this very calm And relaxing environment with low music. And they put things in. And then they leave for 45 minutes. So if you're in a place in your life where it's like, wait a minute. I have 45 minutes in a room that's nice and quiet with soft music playing.

There's no way you walk out of there and don't feel relaxed. You just don't need the needles in your face. Sure, just lay down somewhere. Right. Give them a couch. It's like you basically just took a nap. Like somebody power napped you and you paid them for it. Now, you can get damaged from acupuncture.

You can get damaged from it. Inexperienced people can put the needle too far in, especially in like sensitive areas like the spine and places. So you can actually get damaged from acupuncture. Did you see in this article too, this would be the last thing we say about this. The idea is that, by the way, the idea is that the US military is paying a lot of money for this.

And this person basically just goes through this long list of why it's not useful. But one of the things here, it says, and now it is hiring acupuncturists, and the it is the army, for its pain clinic at Fort Sam Houston at an annual salary of $68,000 to $89,000 a year. array of the most current and emerging evidence-based approaches to integrative medicine for patients with acute and chronic pain who have not responded well to conventional treatment modalities. So you're going to be shoveling them bullshit for 90K a year. I don't even know how they're going to fill that position, right? How do you fill the position where it's like, well, we want to know what your experience with evidence-based bullshit. I don't have any evidence.

Because bullshit is necessarily not evidence-based. Oh, well, I can carry on then. 90K though. That's a good amount of money. And really it's not – it's just helping people as much as placebo is helping people. helping people as much as placebo is helping people. And it's a waste of money because there could be more money spent on resources to help these people with these things that they're trying to help them with. They're not able to go to the real treatment.

They're going to these other alternative treatments. It's a waste of time and money. And I will say the cupping leaves incredible bruising. Yeah, it's like fucking getting attacked by like six giant leeches. Maybe that's what they should do. They should just fucking bloodletting us. You know, why not at this point? Why not? I'm sure there's people that do it.

Well, I know we're going to get an email now that people are like, well, they really do use leeches. I know they use leeches. You don't have to tell me. I know they use leeches and maggots. I know. But we don't just drain people of their blood that was the joke so we're going to take a break and give you all the information that you need to find us on Facebook

on Twitter send us emails voicemails Google Plus messages and don't forget we are Cecil right now at $940 raised for the apocalypse without borders so if you have a moment, you can go to our website, dissonancepod.com and chip in. There's a chip in widget there and you can donate

to Doctors Without Borders through cognitive dissonance. So if you have any inclination to do that, now is the time. Want to contact cognitive dissonance? Visit them on Facebook. You can find the link at the website dissonancepod.com or type it in the Facebook search bar. Be sure to follow the guys on Twitter. Their handle is at dissonance underscore pod. The guys also post to Google Plus now too, so check them out there. And if you'd like to email them, you can do so at dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. You can also leave a comment on the

blog at their webpage or give them a call at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Long distance rates apply. And to everyone who listens, shares, retweets, or rates the show, Cognitive Dissonance would like to cordially thank you for all of your fucking support. So this next story is, I'm actually going to reference the petition because I think the petition is something that should be signed. So there's a petition at change.org. We'll put a link to it up on our website, dissonancepod.com. And it refers to the story of Tony Nicklinson. Now, Tony Nicklinson is a gentleman who's recently deceased who had petitioned for the right to die. He wanted to die with some dignity. He wanted to not have a horrible, unbelievably painful exit from this world.

Unfortunately, Cecil, his right to die with dignity, euthanasia, was denied. Yeah. He wound up starving to death, basically went on a hunger strike, not taking any food and not taking anything intravenously and died. And it's a sad thing, Tom, that the only way that this guy – you know, like other people that actually have agency of their own body, right? Right. They can end it. Like I can walk, I can walk over to my, my, if I really wanted to end it, I could walk into my bathtub, fill it with hot water or whatever, and cut my wrists or cut my arms or whatever you do to kill yourself. I don't know like what the most efficient cut is, but I'll tell you what, I would research that. And then I would figure out most efficient cut, figure it out,

kill myself. I can do that. I can end my life and end my pain and end my suffering right now. Um, it's kind of a gruesome death, but it's not, it's not so bad. Uh,

it's not as bad as what this guy had to do, because if anybody were to do that to him, they would be considered a murderer. They would be considered – they would get – they would have charges of murder. But instead, he basically has to let himself waste away and die, eventually die to pneumonia I think was what somebody had said. Right. And that's a fucking shitty, horrible thing. This guy wanted to die, didn't have much to live for,

couldn't move his body, and yet, for some reason, just like we were talking about earlier, pro-life, gotta stay alive. You know, doesn't it just remind you that this idea that, you know, just being alive is more important than any quality of life at all.

That there's no, in this conversation on the other side, there's no recognition that sometimes for some people in certain circumstances, living is not a good thing. Living is not an inherent good. Everything is contextual, right? You know, even being fucking alive is contextual when, when you've reached a point in your life. Um, and you know, also let's recognize that this is, um, this is a modern problem and it demands a modern solution because, you know, in a bygone age, and I don't mean that far gone. I mean 100, 150, 200 years ago or more. So for the vast majority of human history, this individual would never have survived without tremendous amounts of medical intervention, caretakers. So we have a modern problem. That modern problem is that there are people who are alive when they don't want to be

and because we have a system set up which is sort of as at least in the states it's it's almost it's almost hilariously hypocritical right it's like well you have to be alive well fucking i don't want to be alive yeah well you didn, you didn't kill anybody. I mean if you killed somebody, we might take your life because capital punishment. Oh, well, yeah, I'm not a terrible human being. Oh, well, then you have to be alive. Well, it's fucking horrible for me. Well, we're going to keep you alive against your will. Well, will you at least pay for that?

No, no. You're footing the bill. Like what? Yeah, it is. It's insane. It's stupid. Like what? Yeah, it is. That's insane.

It's stupid. And there's going to be somebody who's an adult who's in his own right mind or her own right mind and is going to say, you know what? I want to end it. Not because I'm depressed. Not because, you know, my fucking boyfriend or my girlfriend broke up with me. But for a real legitimate reason, like I have fucking pancreatic cancer or I have stage four colon cancer and I'm puking up like diarrhea out of my mouth or something. You know what I mean? Like some awful shit that nobody should have to live through. And we're going to look at them and be

like, you know what? Sorry. Got to tough that shit out. That's a fucking rough goal, but you know what? Tough it out. That is fucking ridiculous. Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it's like, well, you have to suffer. Why? Well, because I love you because i love you what well yeah i don't really love you i just love life you know unless you're poor and brown and overseas then you know because that's just funny you know you know and and they throw up these roadblocks cecil as if they're these insurmountable problems right you know and the counter arguments are always so weak. There are things like, well, you know, how do you make sure the system isn't abused to force people who are, you know, who need a lot of care or who are particularly vulnerable or susceptible, you know,

so that the system doesn't, you know, basically suggesting that there's going to be abuse that's going to turn people towards suicide that otherwise would have chosen to live that you know they'll be but but the the problem with that argument to me is a it's it's easy to set up a minor bureaucracy which skirts that issue see holland right you know they've they've done it there's a model for it oregon has it there's a model for it um it's not terribly difficult to create a model which will prevent abuse. Suicide is also not terribly attractive to most people. And again, there's ways to make sure that people for whom suicide might be attractive in the moment don't avail themselves of this particular method for ending their lives. But I also want to point out that it

is the height of governmental hubris. There is no larger governmental interference than saying that we want to make sure that somebody who wants to end their own suffering, who wants to end their own life, they can't do that because the government won't let them. That is an overreach and it is an overstep. If you have any control of your life, you need to have control over the end of your life. And I think it's entirely reasonable for people to make – if this was available, I would make estate planning and death planning decisions today right while i'm i'm here and i'm hearty and hail and healthy and you know but i have strong feelings on how i want to go out of this world and the way i want

to go out of this world isn't fucking writhing in pain shitting myself in front of my fucking family members as they close their eyes and silently wait for me to die. That's not, you know, that's not for me. I'll pass on that if I can. There's a lot of people that don't want that. And I think as time goes on, we're going to see more and more states open up to this sort of thing. The conservatives in this country, you would think you would want to, if you're a conservative, you would say, I want the government to be as small as possible. I want the government to be out of my life as much as possible. Okay, well, then why are you telling people when they need to have a kid? Why are you telling people that they need to stay alive?

Your party is saying one thing and doing another all the time. How do you fucking – I mean, that is cognitive dissonance, right? And now, this week in Bronze Age Ethics. Dateline, Jericho, April 20th, 1400 BCE. This week on the front, we gave the dirty Canaanites a taste of some new experimental weaponry. A horn developed by Joshua, one of the 12 spies of Israel, has the city reeling. This new horn has the power to knock down even the most fortified city wall. It also comes in two colors, bone white or this stylish black. The horn has been used on the front with arousing

success. One of the witnesses had this to say. When the people been used on the front with a rousing success. One of the witnesses had this to say. When the people heard the sound of the horns, they shouted as loud as they could. Suddenly, the walls of Jericho collapsed, and the Israelites charged straight into the city from every side and captured it. They completely destroyed everything in it. Men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep, donkeys, everything. Take that, you filthy Canaanites. Next time you'll know better and surrender. And if you see us coming to take over and slaughter another one of your cities,

a word of advice, hide your donkeys. This has been This Week in Bronze Age Ethics. Well, Cecil, it turns out this show is the heavy subject show. This story is from usnews.nbcnews.com forward slash news. Ruled innocent by judge

two years ago, Los Angeles man remains in prison. This is really a truly awful story. This is a story about a man who was ruled innocent in 1999. He was convicted of possession of a concealed weapon. He was sentenced to 27 years to life. It was in California. California has a three strikes law. This was his third strike. His two strikes prior were burglary, burglary. I want to point that out. Not armed robbery, but burglary. Um, his last conviction, um, has since been overturned. His, his conviction has been, he's been ruled innocent, not just,

not, not just thrown out on a technicality, but he was ruled innocent by a judge. He remains in prison two years later because they didn't innocent him enough quick enough. Like he wasn't innocent fast enough. Of course, playing here, but two fucking years. Two fucking years. Now, you look at this and you think, well, that's an egregious example of the justice system failing, completely failing. And how is the three strikes law benefiting this man or the or the California or American populace at all? It doesn't even feel like it's three strikes either. It feels like two strikes and a foul ball because he should have one more at bat here, I think. Because the fact is, is that the third one wasn't even a strike. The third one he was found innocent of. I don't understand. This is all just bureaucracy. I don't

understand how we've got to this point in this country where bureaucracy can keep you in a fucking jail cell. We have overdone and overthought some things. And the three strikes rule does not stop criminals from doing shit. Like it's not a, it's not an effective way to stop people from doing stuff. We know that criminals don't think about the punishment when they do the crime. Cause no, a lot of criminals don't think they're going to get caught. That's why the death penalty doesn't work because criminals don't look at that and be like, well, fuck, I don't want to kill another person because I don't want to perhaps die. Nobody thinks about that when they're killing someone else. It's, you know, so the idea that that the three strikes rule does anything, you know, what it's doing is it's putting away career criminals.

Right. That's that may be a good thing. But at the same time, if it's three burglaries, you? That may be a good thing. But at the same time, if it's three burglaries, you're saying that's a life in prison? Do you think that that's equal to life in prison? Well, and imagine, you know, I mean, you could have those three burglaries in a very short period of time. You know, you could, to throw somebody in jail forever, just, well, you're going to be in prison forever. That seems to me like nothing more than a way to build prisons. It seems like a great way to build prisons. It seems like a terrible way to rehabilitate because obviously rehabilitation is not an option with somebody in prison forever.

It seems like a great way to make sure that there's a huge disruption to families. It seems like a great way to burden the state financially. It just seems like a ridiculous, ridiculous thing to do. The three strikes law just simply, it just doesn't work. It's not an effective thing. It's effective only at making sure that we have, you know, percentage wise, one of the largest prison populations on the planet. We have an incredible number of people incarcerated. And if you look at the total number of people who have been incarcerated, the numbers are astonishing.

And those numbers are disproportionately African-American. They're disproportionately affecting communities which are minority communities. You know, three strikes law is not doing anyone any favors. And the idea that this guy, I mean, here's an idea. In order for you to support the three strikes law, you have to be able to say our justice system is perfect. Right. You have to be able to say i'm okay with putting somebody in prison fucking forever just stripping them of their of their freedom of their livelihood of their lives of their ability to connect with and maintain meaningful relationships with friends and family you are taking their life in every way but the physical and you're throwing them in jail

and in order for you to be comfortable doing that i I think you have to be able to say, we didn't make a mistake and we're a hundred percent sure of it. And you look at stuff like this and you look at the existence of something like the Innocence Project and you say, well, we don't have a perfect system. So maybe rules that are unbending and that offer no flexibility, no context, no room for judgment, maybe those aren't good rules to have. The prison system we have is totally not about rehabilitation at all. It is so not about rehabilitation. And other countries work on rehabilitation and their, and their levels are down so much. There's like, especially like the Scandinavian countries, look at some of their prisons. They don't even look like prisons. They look like a fucking lodge that you hang out with

like six other dudes in. Like they do not look like a prison at all. And they, the people that have a, have a, a very low chance of going back, even at a cushy prison, so to speak. They have a very low chance of going back. What are they doing right? And what the fuck are we doing wrong? And there's a lot of things we're doing wrong. You pointed out when you say

there's a disproportionate number of blacks to other races, there's also some bias, a lot of bias in our country, even still when it comes to crime and being black. And they are found innocent a lot less often, and they wind up doing a lot of time. You have to look at that and say, well, why is that? Yeah, you absolutely are. You know, African Americans get stiffer sentences for the same conviction than any other minority. It's not even close.

Many, many studies have been done where all other factors have been factored out and African-Americans get more time. So even if you're just looking at person A and person B are convicted, person A is African-American, person B isn't. The African- American gets more prison time every time, even if it's a first. They've even controlled this to first offenses and what have you. It doesn't matter. If the white guy gets a year, the black guy gets three. I don't know if that's really one to three ratio, but there are many, many studies, which I've seen that promote this idea that seemed to be pretty hard and fast and pretty well designed. And it's honestly become pretty common knowledge at this point. You know, Cecil, we'd be remiss at this point if we didn't talk a

little bit about capital punishment. I look at this and the first thing I think is, you know, what if he had been wrongly convicted of, because he was wrongly convicted of concealing a weapon, you know, so he didn't do this thing. So person A did not do action B. So he could have just as easily have been convicted of, you know, committing some murder. And had that been the case, capital punishment may have been on the table. Capital punishment's still available and used in the United States. The United States is fifth in the world

in terms of numbers of people who are put to death by the justice system. Fifth in the world. Even Pakistan has a moratorium on the death penalty right now, a national moratorium. Fucking Pakistan isn't putting people to death right now. The United States still does it in many, many states. And again, we have a demonstrably imperfect justice system. So if you've got a person who may not be guilty, found guilty, convicted, all that shit.

This guy was too. Who cares? Happens all the time. Innocence Project has released or exonerated many, many people. Those people are as not guilty as me, right? They're as innocent of those crimes as you or I or your brother or sister. But the state was ready and willing to kill them, to end their fucking lives. And how that can be justified? I simply, I don't understand

that. Allah is the greatest Allah is the greatest Cecil, this could be my favorite story of the week. I don't know. It's close. This is from BBC News. This is a story, Ramadan fasting dilemma when the sun never sets. This story is spectacular. This is a story about Muslims who live in the Arctic Circle, basically,

in Finland and other parts of the world, where for several months of the year, the sun just doesn't really set. Now, of course, if you are a great follower of Ramadan, like we are here, cognitive distance, you know that you have to fast until sunset, which means if you happen to live near the Arctic Circle, you're kind of fucked. It's totally true. You know, I think there's a way to solve this problem, and it's by doing something my dear dead papa used to say, and that's you way to solve this problem and it's by doing something my dear dead papa used to say, and that's you need to go where the sun doesn't shine. That's the key.

You know, I was looking it up today and I was checking it out. You know, up there, they have really long days. They're saying that days can be like 20 hours long, but you could find a place, you know, if you go all the way to like the southern part of South America, you can find a place to live during Ramadan where your days are, you know, sometime between around five and six hours a day. Eat more food. No problem. I mean, come on. You could do five, six hours standing on your head. No worries. I mean, come on. You could do five, six hours standing on your head. No worries.

Maybe you could. What if you were in Antarctica? You know what I mean? It does, I guess, rise and set, but it's very short. You know, hour, two hours a day or something like that. Oh, it'd be great. You're just constant eating. You're only taking a break to take a dump you

know you just i could just eat 20 straight hours eat those little fucking crispy little curry things they make just fucking chow down on them man you know you read this and isn't it just so evident that this is a i mean and obviously it is a religion and a bunch of religious principles and in a book and a series of rules written by a fucking desert people who knew nothing of the Arctic. I don't you would think God would have accounted for this, right? Maybe they just don't have the appendix. Maybe like it's like Appendix B of the Koran. They're just like, oh, do we have did anybody remember to get the appendix?

No. Fuck. What do we do? I don't know. Fucking set your clock to Mecca. Whatever. Fuck it. It's a ridiculous idea that this is really a true thing when you take into account something so evident like this.

It's hilarious. Yeah, and you're absolutely right. They didn't have – when they wrote the Koran, they didn't have an iPhone app to tell you what it was in Mecca. You know what I mean? They didn't have that app. They didn't have an app for that. So the fact is, is that they're spending their, you know, certain people in this country, as if I want to say that like the limit is 18 hours. So 18 hour days is your limit. After that, you can rely on Mecca time. So whatever Mecca time that, you can rely on mecca time. So whatever mecca time is, you can rely on that and not eat during those times.

I just – you know, it just seems weird to me too when you think about it. You're like, OK, well, God is going to like me more because I didn't eat a food. I don't – wait, what? Like you're – I mean I guess it's like you're giving something up. You're sacrificing something. But I don't know. But it's only a mild inconvenience. Yeah, really? Because you can eat later.

Right. It's not like I'm fasting for like days and days and days to give something up. I'm just, you know, not doing a thing. This person in this article, though, for 20 hours, they didn't drink any water. So what do they got to do? Like fucking, it's like they're going to run a marathon. They got to Gatorade up like right before the sun rises, like they're like pouring Gatorade over their head, like drinking cups after cups of Gatorade to make sure they're hydrated throughout the rest of the day. Because, you know, you're going to have a fucking nasty headache and stank breath at the end of the day.

Well, what do you do if you're, you know, like if you're a Muslim living in the Arctic Circle and you're working manual labor? Let's say you're in Alaska, for example, and you're working on the pipeline. And it's the same thing. It's 20, 21 hours between times you can eat. I'm burning thousands of calories a day. I'm fucking dehydrating quickly. Well, sir, you're fucked. Yeah, sorry. calories a day i'm fucking dehydrating quickly yeah well sir you're fucked yeah sorry yeah just

uh you know god wants you to be hungry and thirsty and dehydrated and wait what why i thought he loved me you would just have i don't know the shittiest headache for the entirety of ramadan you just had this fucking nasty dehydration headache the entire time be all pissy and you know can you imagine saying that to like your friends or family like hey you know i i uh i really love you oh yeah i love you too prove it what don't eat anything yeah just till tonight wait can't i just tell you that i love you instead like can't we just be good with the can't can't i say it and you say it we both believe it like can i bake you a pie instead instead it's like give something up this story is from abcnews.go.com obviously that's the mobile address um girl 11

could face death in pakistan for blasphemy. Oh, Pakistan. Who are you kidding? First of all, you have a moratorium. You're not tricking anybody, Pakistan. I looked it up on Wikipedia, bitch. But this is a story about an 11-year-old mentally challenged, possibly Down syndrome, young girl, 11 years old, who may or may not have damaged a Koran. And so she has been arrested on blasphemy charges after a mob of five or six hundred people swarmed her house. Yeah, well, you know, she's lucky that she wasn't killed like that one guy who was killed by the mob there.

Because that mob killed that guy. Right. Who did almost the exact same thing, burned a Koran or tore some pages out of a Koran and they killed him. So she's lucky. She should feel lucky. But really, we're going to look at an 11-year-old and we're going to say, oh, well, she made a decision that we should be able to – she made a decision so heinous that we should be able to end her life. She didn't make a decision so heinous that we should be able to end her life. And not that she fucking cut her mom up with a fucking butcher shears.

No, not that. No, she fucking accidentally or purposefully burned or tore pages out of the Koran. Right. That's the heinous crime that you're going to fucking put her to death for. There's got to be, you know, there's a people who look at a paper and a little girl. And they want to protect the paper. Yeah. And you have to look at those people and say, your priorities could not be more wrong here.

You simply can't be more wrong. There's not a further wrong that you can get. When you look at a paper and a little girl and you say, yeah, I mean, like we value like little girls and, you know, human life. But I mean, paper, you can see like if you're throwing like, you know, like rock little girl paper. Paper always covers little girl. Paper does. Paper wins everything then because it covers rock too. Right. Well, and it turns out that you actually have to use the rocks to stone the little girl.

So little girl actually never wins. Little girl loses all the time. Right. Rock wins once in a while. Paper always wins. Always wins. Kyle, paper always wins. Always wins.

So we got a lot of email this time. We're going to truck through some of these here. We got an email from Kyle. I'm going to read this one, Tom. It says, the headline for the first story, and this is the story about those wonderful people in the Walmart parking lot that tied up their children and then put duct tape on them because they thought they were

possessed. Kyle says the headline for your first story should have been silence is golden, but duct tape is silver. We like that, Kyle. Thanks for sending that. Bravo, Kyle. Steve sent us an email, Tom. Jake, last time that was on our show, there was a little bit of an incorrect.

And this wasn't on our show. This was actually on his show that we were talking about this. If you missed it last week, we were on the imaginaryfriendshow.com podcast. We spent the entire hour with Jake. So if you haven't listened yet, it's another chance to listen to us if you so desire. And Jake's a great guy. I mean, his show is fun. It's funny. He's a great guy. He's a great host. And he really gave us some free reign to swear a lot on his show, which I guess he normally doesn't have people do. So it was great to go on. But

if you get a chance, take a listen to it. But on his show, there was a moment where both of us were just slack jawed when he said, first, he asked us what the 19th Amendment was, and we knew it was women's suffrage. And he was like shocked he i can't believe that you would know this and he said he said well australians wouldn't know their constitution and then a few seconds later he proved that australians don't know their constitution by saying that it took until 1966 for the uh women to vote in australia he wrong. It was the aborigines. The aboriginal voting was granted in 1966. Still heinous.

Still stupid. But it wasn't the same as not giving women the right to vote until then. It looks like actually they were pretty early on giving women the right to vote. Yeah, in 1902, it looks like. So that's totally different. It's just totally different. It's not like fucking 1801, though. I mean, let's stop fucking jacking ourselves off here and saying how great Australia is. It was still 1900s.

We got an email from Andrew, and Andrew had some great comments. Andrew is a podcast contributor for The Pod Delusion. Andrew is a podcast contributor for The Pod Delusion. He wanted to know, he's curious how heavily we edit and how much do we go over stray talkovers and splutters and such. Or are we just good radio speakers? No, we're not good radio speakers. What happens is Tom and I record on two separate tracks and then I cut out all of Tom's coughing, which is most of the show. Yeah, he takes about four hours just to do that.

Yeah, it's like four straight hours of coughing that I have to remove. And then there's normally talk over, and then there's pauses that I edit out most of the time, the pauses. Because when you have a conversation over Skype, it's really hard to have a conversation that flows well. Tom and I are practiced at it, so we sound natural. But there's a lot of times where there's just these awkward, nasty, stupid pauses that happen. And people don't edit them out. And I have no idea why people don't edit these. It takes 10 seconds to edit out your pauses and nobody does it.

But we edit out the pauses. Yeah, he also had a comment about something that you had said, Tom. Yeah, he says that our response in episode 61 about being an angry atheist, he said that he found that profound. He realized he was assuming that the question was either or. And to be told that there is nothing wrong with being in a cycle was enlightening. That is the one and only time I will ever have profound and something I've said mentioned in the same fucking paragraph. So I do sincerely appreciate that. Thank you. Yeah, and this show, The Pod Delusion, I listened to it.

I had never – I apologize, Andrew. I had never heard of it. And I listened to it this week and it's actually a really neat show. It sounds a lot like something off of NPR. It's one person who sort of runs the show and then a bunch of people contribute and they write little scripts and then they talk about certain things. And I listened to I specifically went to go find some of your work, Andrew, and you're very good. Great, great writing and very interesting. So good luck on the Pod Delusion, and I hope it works out for you. It's really a great show. So if you get a chance,

check it out. We got an email about fasting from Warren. We did. We got an email from Warren. Warren basically says that we had made, I like too, by the way, that he says the team. Yeah, the team. We're a team of two people uh we made several comments about ramadan in particular how stupid fasting is and how your body needs to metabolize uh warren we were talking about our bodies yeah uh which desperately need to always metabolize as evidenced by my insatiable hunger um which uh is also evidenced by my incredible girth uh michael sends an email, Tom, about meetups. Yeah, there was a question raised previously about,

well, you know, how do you develop a sense of community when you don't have church? I'm paraphrasing, of course. And Michael suggests, hey, you know, go to meetup. So you can go to meetup.com. Meetup.com is a good suggestion. You know, if people are having a difficult time finding a social circle, finding a community, finding a group, that's kind of why Meetup was really invented.

It's a good idea. Other organizations to check out, he suggests, are the American Humanists and Secular Humanism Societies. Find chapters in your area. Those are good suggestions. If you live in an area where it's difficult for you to develop that sense of community, where your friends, your family, your location sort of precludes those people from being like-minded in your neighborhood, just go outside your comfort zone. That's why we have the internets. We got an email from Faith or Fiction.

We got an email from Faith or Fiction. This is a gentleman by the name of Ezekiel who has faithorfiction.wordpress.com as their blog. And Ezekiel says that there's this new movement called Atheism Plus, and Ezekiel wanted to know what we thought about it. Now, there's a blog post where you say that the person is basically calling other people douchebags, telling them to join us or get the fuck out. What's our opinion on this? I will say that the basic values of Atheist Plus or Atheism Plus are the following. They care about social justice, support women's rights, protest racism, fight homophobia and transphobia, use critical thinking and skepticism. I think that's fucking great. I think that that's, you know, when people talk about atheism, and this happens a lot, and if you listen to like Skeptics with a K, when somebody says something about atheists, they immediately say, atheist is just a fucking non-belief in God, period. That's it. That's the entirety of it. And really, that's the definition. And they're wholly right when they say that. But I think, Tom, you and I for a long time have been atheist plus. That's what this show, I think, is based on. Yeah. I mean, it's the idea that atheism and humanism go hand in hand. They're not requirements.

They're not prerequisites in either way. But they do or they should go hand in hand. And for a long time, I've joked about having a no-quarter policy. If there's people in your life or in your social circle or in your workplace or whatever that behave incredibly poorly toward women or toward minorities, toward homosexuals, toward people in the LGBT community in general, they should have no safe place to be. They should be removed from your social circles. They should be removed from, you know, all parts of civilized society for behaving in a way that is uncivilized. have the amazing meeting and we're going to have, you know, other events like Skepticon and we're going to have, you know, a sort of atheist movement, for lack of a better word, an atheist movement, an atheist community, an atheist group. And, you know, that's diverse and it encompasses, you know, a variety of different things because atheism, as you mentioned, isn't really something.

So it's difficult to organize. But if you're going to organize around something, organize around the shared goals of basic humanism. So we got an email from Michael and Michael sends us a video. This video was also posted a couple of times on our Facebook page. This video, I'm going to post it for this episode. It's a song and this song is by Taylor Ferreira. It's a song called Legitimate Rape and it's very funny. It's awesome. Tom and I laughed at it when beforehand we thought it was great. I don't want to play it mainly because I want you to see the video because I think if you heard it, you might laugh. But when you watch the video, you will almost certainly laugh because her facial expressions and the way she sings it is absolutely hilarious.

It's terrific. She does a great job. It's very funny. So take a look at it. It will be on our website. We're going to link directly to her YouTube video. Thank you for sending it in to us. The last email we got is from Steven, and he says, profanity is not a thing.

Steven is a somewhat new listener. And he agrees. He says, it's fucking ridiculous that there are people out there in this world that still find curse words offensive. Fucking A, Steven. No kidding. It really is just a silly. Isn't it? It's just, you listen to this like, oh, man, you guys are cursing too much.

You're uptight. I don't know what else to tell you. You believe in curse words. Right. We want to thank the people this week that took the time out of their schedule to rate us on iTunes. When I mentioned that we got that negative review last week, a couple people went and said, no, this review is not helpful. So thank you for that. And other people wrote some great reviews. Some of them were just like, you know, really? It's

an adult show. And what? You didn't see the disclaimer? Dumb fuck, you know. So thank you for writing reviews. We always appreciate every review we get on iTunes. Remember that if you do rate us on iTunes, it raises our rank up. When people get a lot of ratings, they wind up going up several ranks. But we've been hovering one or two for a while because people have been so good about rating us and also subscribing on iTunes. So we want to thank everybody. We're doing pretty well in Atheism Other, fighting it out, I think, with the thinking atheists most days and reasonable doubts most days, which is good. That's good company to keep. That's awesome. Good company to keep. So thank you very much for all that.

We don't have any more disclaimers at this point. Remember that if you want to write a disclaimer for our show, you can send it to dissonance.podcast at gmail.com. Read a disclaimer. Read it into some sort of recording program. Send us the audio file. And if we like it, we'll play it. But you're just going to have to stick with our disclaimer that we made for this week. And as usual, though, we're going to leave you with the Skeptic's Creed. 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

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