Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 810: Inside the Vatican’s secret saint-making process

Episode Date: December 12, 2024

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Ontario. This episode of cognitive dissonance is brought to you by our patrons you fucking rock. 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. Recording live from Glory Hole Studios in Chicago and beyond, 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 at. Today is the day you're listening to this.

That's what day it is. We're recording it on December 5th. Doesn't matter. We're talking long form. This is a evergreen episode. Cecil it's evergreen because, uh, I don't think the Catholics are going to change the way they're picking their saints anytime soon. I think you might even be able to become a saint if you can touch things and turn them evergreen.

We got to talk about this. Cecil, so just a little peek behind the curtain. Every month, Cecil sends me, I don't know, four or five, six, whatever he comes up with, whatever looks interesting to him, long form article ideas. And I don't read each one of them, but I look at them, skim them over and decide which ones, you know, we might want to cover. And I get to make the final decision on that. And when I saw this one, I was like, oh hell yes. This is the one. This feels like, like we could just make this a citation needed episode. It to me, it feels like fucking nuts.

You could just read this and add interjections and it could absolutely be a citation needed episode. This is, you guys, this is fucking crazy. So it comes from the Guardian. The title of the article is Inside the Vatican's Secret Saint Making Process. So this is like how the sausage gets made for saints. Well, it's a reliquary sausage though. Now Cecil, you have a lot of familiarity with the Catholic Church.

I do. I do have familiarity. So I worked for a Catholic university for many years and you have a lot of familiarity with the Catholic Church. I do. I do have familiarity. So I worked for a Catholic university for many years, and I have a lot of familiarity with the Catholic Church. It's interesting because the people who I worked with and the sort of relationship that they had with the Church was a very left-leaning liberal relationship. And every time I was ever involved in anything that was Catholic related, it was always super fucking weird. It was always weird as shit. Now, my wife was a Catholic

when I met her. She's no longer a Catholic, but she was a Catholic when I met her. And every time I attended their, their sort of weekly rituals, the mass, any time I'd go to like any of these big events that they would have that would be like a weekly, like a lifetime ritual, maybe getting married or somebody being getting buried or a communion or a baptism or something, it was always super weird. And the Catholics very much have such a strange relationship

with dead bodies. They have an absolute weird necrophilia like relationship with inanimate dead meat. They think it's magical. There's a, there's a, the, the place where I was working, this place, DePaul University, they have a saint who is their patron saint, right? And he's actually, like his story is actually an interesting story. It's a story of a guy who dedicated his life to charity. So somebody who is, you know, at least somebody who you could say, well, they seem like they did

some pretty good work in their life, right? But they're so, they like weirdly still have part of his body in like a display in France. And it's in this weird, hemetically sealed coffin where somebody has went out of their way because they don't have the whole body, Tom. They like have parts of it.

But, but in order not to be super gross, they've actually made like a wax figure and stuck those pieces that are real back into the body that's not weird at all no weird at all that's like a that's like a very intricate sex doll is what that is that's like some Carl Tanzler shit that is like it's like a fucking paper towel roll for your butthole or whatever I just want to throw this out there you know to cross promote for a minute because I have an episode coming out on citation needed in just a few weeks.

That goes into relics just by coincidence has happened actually that goes into the holy prep use, which is the, the Jesus is foreskin as a relic. And other holy preplus and the holy prolapse. I mean, you can get a whole thing going on here. So I am cross promoting for a minute, but if you enjoy this, if you're not a listener to Citation needed, you could swing over there in a week or so.

It'll probably release around then and you could pick up that episode. Cause I learned this, see, my connection to the Catholic church, see, so I was thinking about this the other day. I was talking to Haley, We were talking about something else. I think I've never met a nun. I was trying to think if I ever met a nun in person,

I don't think I've ever met a nun. And the only priests I've ever met were at a handful of funerals and weddings. Wow, okay. So I've, because I was not Catholic. I wasn't raised Catholic. Sure. My friends weren't Catholic. We went to a Methodist church when I was little and then we stopped going to church.

So, and I didn't go to Catholic school. So I just, you know, like, it's like I just never ran into them, you know, never had any like connection to the Catholic church. So this is all like, like I just say that like when you're even one step removed, this is so fucking bonkers. Yeah. It's so funny when we'll talk about the details of this because if you're a step, I think if you're like in it, it's like, yeah, I'm fucking in it.

Like this is like the machinations and the fucking politics of how we get this done and we got to make a saint. Oh boy, we got to get a saint done. And then there's rules for how to make a saint. You boy, we got to get a saint done. And then there's rules for how to make a saint. You can't just have willy nilly saints. But like, if you take a step, one half step back from this, and then you explain it to somebody else, you're like, oh, you're fucking crazy. You know that you're fucking crazy.

Well, I have actually met many priests and nuns in my, while I was working. And I got to be honest, some of the priests and some of the nuns were really interesting. And I think really, uh, they lived some really interesting lives and did a lot of really good work. So I'm not going to like shit on the people who did some of that stuff. I, I, there was two, uh, uh, two sisters who worked with immigrants here in the sort of local area, and they would do these prayer vigils outside of these immigrant centers where the people were going to be sent home. These were Sisters of Mercy, the order, not the band, but they were two Sisters of Mercy. And they were actually really sweet ladies.

And what they did was they organized this entire group of people who would come and say prayers outside. And here I am a secular guy watching them pray. But even as a secular guy, I recognized the necessity of them being outside maybe wasn't the prayer at all. It was just to show solidarity to the people inside

who could look out of the window and see that there was a group of people who cared about them outside of the window. Whether or not they were praying was irrelevant, right? And so I thought like, what a cool thing for them to show solidarity to this group of people. And obviously the people inside were probably religious anyway.

So it was a useful thing for them too. But you know, like there's some of these people who do like some pretty amazing stuff. So I don't want to just like say that they're all like, like worthless, but I think that they all kind of are a little crazy. Like I don't, like I definitely think like some of the work they do is great,

but some of the stuff that they think is kind of fucking nuts, man. So let's talk about saints. So the whole idea of a saint is, is, is kind of bonkers. This, I didn't realize what a big deal until fairly recently, until I started reading the citation needed for the citation needed, I didn't really realize for the citation needed. I didn't really realize what a big deal for the sort of like population of the church a saint is.

Saints seem to be, and Cecil, you correct me if I'm wrong, but they seem to be in the Catholic church a like a venerated figure that if not directly prayed to, like a God is sort of prayed around or beseeched for help directly as an intercessor. Yeah, intercessory. But I can, like, let's just look, you can probably talk your way around this in a million ways to say, oh, they do intercessory prayer.

It's a fucking demigod. That's what I was going to say. It's a fucking demigod. It's like a little, it's like a little God. It's like a demi-god. That's what I was going to say. It's a fucking demi-god. It's like a little god. It's like a little baby god. It's a wee little god. It's a little baby god. You got to pick him up and you burp the little god.

And then you set him down and then he loses his finger and that's fucking holy now because he lost his finger. Because everything that they've touched becomes a third class relic. Yeah. So they have different classes of relics. Every bit of toilet paper, Tom. Every bit of toilet paper is a third class relic. At one point in the story, there's people showing up to the body of this person that's

going to be... And there's like a... There's like beatifying and venerating and canonizing. But they show up and there's people like rubbing fucking Rosary beads on this fucking corpse so that they can create relics out of them quick rules question for you Hey quick rules. I'm gonna need an adjudication on this If I collect their flatulence in a jar is that a relic by itself or is it a third party relic? Which is it?

Oh, that is, isn't that kind of Holy Ghostish though? Like that feels Holy Ghostish. That's the third state of matter in here! It's a plasma! It's a Holy Plasma! It's a Holy Plasma! I had a friend, speaking of putting farts in a jar, just real quick. Okay, a jar. I'm glad we're getting up on this. I had a friend who insisted that this worked and I never, I never checked to see if it did, but he would go, when we would go to parties and he was an asshole,

he would go to a party and he would fart in people's refrigerator and shut the refrigerator so that he could hold the fart in the refrigerator so when they would go to open it You really gotta get a lot of oomph on your fart in order to project it that far, right? I believe in him. I mean, I've known him. Yeah, okay, that's fair. You know Rick. Sure, yeah, no, yeah, absolutely. I believe in him.

Yeah. So, yeah. But yeah, I like him farting. You open it up, you're like, the eggs are rotten. What happened? What is happening in here? Alright,, so let's let's so this What is it? Did a fucking saint die in here? What is happening? Well, and like I know I told the story on the air before but like I remember one point you didn't kill a saint Did you?

Not yet not like purpose Yeah They take these saints like they take the fucking bones and the fucking tongues and the fucking ears and like the fucking bits and bobs and they go on fucking rock and roll tours. Yeah, man. With these fucking things. Yeah.

It's like a... A better game would be if you shipped it all in there in a big box and it had to play Mr. Potato, had to put it all back together. It would be really great if you had to like piece them back together. It's like a relic Mr. Potato Head. You gotta put all the pieces back together on it. Like a jigsaw puzzle of fucking reliquary bits. You gotta start with the borders. You gotta always start with the edges.

Give me all the edge pieces. You're taking the scalp and you're trying to put it back together. Oh, that's ball hair. Let's put that somewhere else. You're trying to sing the song like, uh, hip bones connected to the... Ah, fuck, I should have paid more attention to the song. Yeah, man, I don't want to have to put the whole skeleton back together in my memory You gotta put an upside-down Tyrannosaurus Rex or whatever. The guy's got really long femur forearms

I feel like maybe that explains my body like maybe somebody's put me together wrong, you know What I want to talk let's let's let's delve into the article, because I think there's some really interesting stuff in here. The article is focused on one person and they are, their name is Acutus. I don't know what he was that he was saying. Is that the name? I called him Acutus. I think when I read it, I don't know how to say it. But this person is considered the first millennial saint and has been nicknamed God's

Influencer and the patron saint of the internet. The patron saint of the internet. What a horrible thing. Of all the things to be the patron saint of. The internet needs a fucking cesspool that is the internet. Can you imagine like at some point Cecil, there's going to be a patron saint of Twitter. There's going to be a patron saint of fucking 4chan someday. I mean like think about some of the things we've seen on the internet.

No! We need a lot more than one patron saint. He's the patron saint of goat seats. Like he's the patron, like remember like 20 years ago when somebody convinced you to He's the patron saint of two girls one cup. Right! Yeah! Remember like 20 years ago when somebody convinced you to Google lemon party?

He's the patron saint of that. Probably had to experience it before he was turned into a patron saint too. I mean, let's be real honest here. Well, you know, what's so funny is like when they were like researching this guy to decide whether to like, if they could make him a saint, they had to check his browser history. It's in the article. But here's the thing. He's the patron saint of the internet.

He could probably change it by magic. It's one the article. But here's the thing, he's the patron saint of the internet, he could probably change it by magic. Yeah. It's one of his miracles. That's who you pray to when you're dying. That's who you pray to. You're like, dear Jesus, please take me into heaven. And dear Actus, please clear my browser history. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

There's somebody lighting a candle in in church that and may my browser history never be discovered. Actually just dump a bunch of fucking holy water on my computer. Nobody needs to see any of that. Jesus Christ. Yeah, but this guy is they talk, you know, to be honest too, you know, we're making fun of a lot of this stuff, but really there's not only weirdness when it comes to these people revering dead bodies, but then also they're sort of, you mentioned it earlier,

the politics of who gets made into a saint, right? There's sort of, you know, there's a bunch of people who have been pushing for some saints. Some saints have been languishing for centuries before, and they're not made saints. They're they're blessed or whatever they call them. They're like half saints and they've been in this sort of saint pipeline for a long time and they haven't actually made it through the toll booth or the pearly gates or whatever. It's like the line at the DMV. It's like the longest application. There's like somebody that'll tell you like, yeah they've been in fucking in the cause or whatever for 316 years and it's like, man just call that one. You're not gonna do it. You ain't making it.

You ain't making it no more. Like who has still got their application in at that? Who's refreshing the fucking page? Like it's been 316 we're gonna get him at 317 Joe But when you're gonna get him when you when you read this you can clearly see that they are pushing very specifically For this person and they were pushing for this person to become a saint because for them It's great publicity if they have it, they have a dead saint influencer out there. Yeah, well, like it's super weird. Here, there's two super weird things about this.

The first is that this Akutas guy was angling to become a saint while alive. Yeah. Like he, as a person, was like, yeah, I'm gonna like learn to be a saint and become a saint. And then he was like, not exactly teaching classes, but like telling other people what they needed to do and how to live their life to become a saint. Except that like becoming a saint involves producing two posthumous miracles.

So that seems like a really fucking hard thing to plan for since you're dead when it happens and it's magic when it happens Yeah, I like the for them those two things aren't aren't deal-breakers because they believe in that stuff We don't but like you have to like live a whole life hoping that like when you're dead you do this Right, but you're dead. I don't know. I don't I can't like my mind You're my you're I can't even, like my mind can't even wrap around me. Your mind can't get there, but they think they're going to be able to fucking Harry Potter that shit once they fucking kick the bucket. So like, but like the whole saint making process is a process of politics. It is a process of creating heroes made specifically to fit a certain space and time. And I think the Catholic Church very astutely understands and has always understood that the best heroes to create

are dead heroes. Because once they're dead, they are no longer active creators of a narrative. So the church gets to shape the entire narrative around the deceased, what they did, what their miracles are, what their, what their miracles are, what their relevance is. So like, it's actually a really smart way, I think, to have complete top

down authoritarian control of the narrative of, of, and still have the sort of a populist element where you're pulling people from the population, raising them up into this heroic status, meeting this sort of cultural moment, but doing it with fucking corpses. Yeah, doing it in a way that none of those people can ever voice any dissent whatsoever, because you get to be their voice now. What I think is so strange and doesn't make any sense to me at all is why not just fucking wipe the miracle thing away?

Why not say, you know what, we're not going to do the miracle thing. Why not just say this guy was a hero of our church and they're cool and we like them and we think they're a saint? But the weird, the crazy thing is, is what makes sense to us is neither of us believe in God or a saint. So when we, when you say, I want this person to be my avatar, both of us say, well then just make them your avatar. But those people so buy into all this stuff that they have to keep this weird vestigial backstory

about how they can like cure somebody's pancreatic cancer without doing anything, because if they don't have that, then they're not really a saint. Then it was just sort of made by the church, which is made by the church anyway. Made by the church anyway. I know, but they don't believe that. They think they're actually like.

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with iGaming Ontario. They're like- They're the saints people. Yeah, they're like making something up that they don't acknowledge that they're inventing from a whole cloth. It's so crazy because they also to your point, they have changed the rules. They've made it easier. It used to be had to do more miracles. Now you have to do less miracles. Like they've actually substitute one of them for miracle. Yeah, now you use, I can't believe it's not miraculous, like instead, like it's...

It's like, it's, but like they've reduced the miracles. They've like changed the fucking miracles. Dude, well they changed, like they even acknowledged like, yeah, like back in the day we had like way different miracles, but now it's, and they even say it in the art, like the people in the church even say out loud like, yeah, you know, like back in the day we had like way different miracles, but now as, and they even say it in the art, like the people in the church even say out loud like, yeah, you know, like back in the day we had different miracles, but now that science has gotten better, you know, we've got like way different newer miracles. Cause it used to be, there was like the dead would walk around and like fucking like goats would float in the sky, like all this shit. And now they're just like, I don't know, um, somebody you never met

once fingered a girl in Canada. And you're just like, okay, I want to read that part time because I think it's great. It says, Antonia has claimed that her son worked his first miracles on the day of his funeral mass when he cured a woman of breast cancer, gone are the days when saints would work miracles by taking flight or saving the faithful from fires and floods. Since 1950, every miracle approved by the DeCasteres Medical Board, a secretive body of doctors who meet regularly to evaluate stories of divine beings, has been a physical

act of healing. Even these kind of miracles quote are becoming more rare and quote Pope John Paul II acknowledged in 1988. The advance of scientific knowledge means that fewer cures are truly inexplicable. It has become increasingly difficult to ascertain exactly which fact Goes beyond the laws of nature so he's even admitting like we don't even know anymore cuz like fucking We we thought this was cool But now you can literally just cure that shit like we thought oh maybe once in a while somebody will get better for a day And that's a miracle, but now we're just like yeah

No, we can just prevent that disease entirely now. What I think part of it is that before too, they were like, well, that's inexplicable. And then science is like, here's the explanation. You're like, well, we can't count that anymore. Way to ruin everything, science. It's so absurd. They also, at one point they described,

so like when you're like climbing the ladder to sainthood dead, by the way, you can only, you can never be, I didn't even know until this. Actually what they do is they just throw a rope around your midsection and then they drag you up and your head hits every rung on the way up. So like, I think like one of the steps you're blessed or blessed. Yeah, that's, that's you get one miracle, you're blessed or blessed. Yeah.

And at that point, like they say that like your, your status in heaven is assured. So that means you're definitely in heaven. The other ones are all like waiting for their first miracle. Like, come on, baby. Mama needs a new pair of shoes. Blow on my dice. So like what I read that I was like, wait a minute. All these other people that you're like, God, they just live such a great life and like so far no miracles.

But like in your mind, you're like, still not sure if they made it to heaven though. You know, they're just in hell. Like, you're just like, I don't know. It's a miracle. Well, there's a third place. I don't know. It's a miracle. I don't know. There's another place, purgatory. The, uh, But didn't they get rid of purgatory? What's that? Didn't the Catholics get rid of purgatory a few years ago?

I don't, I mean, I don't think you can get rid of it. I thought, I thought, Cecil, I legitimately thought that a few years ago they came out and said, oopsie, there's no purgatory. Oh, did they build casinos there instead? Is that what you're saying? Hahahaha I could be wrong about that, but I- Yeah, I remember reading an article a handful of years ago. I don't know. I don't believe that shit.

I don't know either. Here's the thing. It doesn't matter because here- there's no purgatory. Yeah, nobody listening to this is like, oh it is an act It's fucking stupid there's none of this none of this is anything. Yeah bones are bones I'm like, that's all this is but it struck me is so crazy that most people they're just like Yeah, we're not real sure if they ended up in hell or not. I want to read some, a little bit more of this article. Uh, they were talking about, uh, they're talking about doctors and this is a weird quote. And I just want to, I want to get your take on this particular portion of the article

because I'm not sure I completely understood it. As a hematologist and a historian, this person, her name is Jacqueline has noted, this approach is antithetical to that of scientists and doctors who are taught to believe that the inexplicable phenomenon of today are merely the discoveries of tomorrow. Quote, most doctors behave as if an explanation can be found, that is a belief system. It is in direct parallel to the belief system that there can be supernatural divine intervention. They are both beliefs on the basis of no evidence." I would say that evidence that we've solved other problems is actually evidence and the

things that you have are not evidence. Yeah. And I also, like, I pushed back at her very premise. Like, I don't think that it is a commonly held scientific belief that all things will be explained. Like, I don't, I don't know that I don't believe that. Like, like, I don't think there's any reason to believe that. I think that like everything has an explanation.

I'm not convinced that people will live long enough to find all the answers to every question. That to me seems spurious. Like I don't know that there's a good reason to believe that. I think we've found out answers to a lot of shit and finding answers to a lot of shit leads me to believe That like if we keep looking we'll find answers to more shit that at no point has the answer to anything been magic We never found yeah, it's not like it's like it's like thing is like if it was magic at some point We would have a bucket of things that are magic that never go out of that bucket.

But we don't have a bucket full of magic shit. There's no bucket full of only... Like if Cecil, if there was literally no explanation whatsoever for an eclipse, right? If eclipses happened and we could not figure out any celestial fucking body movements that explained an eclipse. And like, and we went and like fucking blasted rockets and looked around and we're like, there's nothing up here that explains it. That would live in the magic bucket, but everything does nothing that lives in the magic bucket. You get it.

You get weak. When we want to find out the answer, we keep trying to find out the answer until we don't at we we've exhausted all of our possibilities. Yeah, the answer has always been, we're not sure yet. That's it, that's a perfectly fine answer. And there will always be stuff in that bucket. Or, here's the answer. I think part of the problem we run into now is,

as we live in a world that has solved more and more and more of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the, of the,. It's in a language they don't read, a scientific language, they don't read a series of mathematical properties and principles they don't read and understand. Cause at some point you've got to dedicate your whole life to just getting to that point. And like, that's it, right? So like, that's a problem, but it's not a problem of truth.

It's a problem of explaining truth. Yeah. And I think what I think what they do is they move the goalposts. So let me read another piece of this where they move the goalposts. Duffin, the same person who I mentioned earlier, that Jacqueline lady began studying medical miracles in 1989 after she was asked to look at some bone marrow samples of a woman who had experienced an unlikely recovery from an acute leukemia. At first, she was asked to read the patient chart without knowing the context. The patient had

submitted to aggressive chemotherapy, but she had also prayed to an 18th century Canadian nun And it was to the nun, not the chemotherapy, that she attributed her eventual cure. The experience pushed Duffin to undertake what remains the most comprehensive study of the Vatican's archive of medical miracles. So you know, this is a person who said that this was a medical miracle. And you're like, but you're also taking something that we know is not miraculous. Right. Is something that we, that human beings thought up would fix this and have seen other instances of it being fixed. It's not magic. We know what goes in it and we can recreate it.

And the problem is, is that they, too bad, it was not you. It was an 18th century nun who did it. We also know that like for cancer, spontaneous remission is a feature of cancer. Yeah. Some cancers spontaneously remit. That's a known truth. But like, you know,

here's the other thing about these sort of medical miracles that I have to, I, you can't help but go down this path if you've got any sense in your brain. So you've got a God and God loves us and cares about you. And he cares so much that he's going to come in. And if you pray to the right Saint, he'll swoop in and he'll fix your cancer. And you wanna be like, hey, Dick, you coulda just not given me cancer.

All right, y'all, we're gonna play the most high stakes game of Jeopardy ever. And then like, the other- I'll take 18th century none for 200 ounce. But like Cecil too, it's not like everybody, I'll take 18th century nun for 200 acts. But like Cecil too, it's not like everybody, here's where you could convert Tom. If everybody who prayed to that nun was cured of cancer.

Sure, sure, you got something. You got something. If 87% of people who prayed to that nun, I didn't wanna go 100%, if 87% of the people who fucking scrunched up their hearts like real tight And they got their fucking prayer on or however sure yeah and like they all got cured of cancer I'd be like wow there's something there. There's something like if one of them Then I would say I would allow Hold on, let me interrupt.

I would allow that if they were not also taking chemotherapy at the same time. And if spontaneous remission was not a known fact of cancer. Well, even 87% feels like a high number for spontaneous remission. That's true. So I would be, if they're, but if 80, if 100% of them are taking chemotherapy

and 87% of them like fucking prayed to the right person and 87% of them got healed, I still would not believe that it was that. No chemotherapy. All they do is pray. And like then, and then they make it today. Then like I'm in, right? You've converted Tom over. Tom is in.

But I'm still stuck and being like, but your God is a dick. He's like an asshole. Why did I get in the first place? Like imagine treating your kids like, yeah, right. That's what I'm saying. Like he cares so much. He'll swoop in if you do all the things right.

But it's like, just don't make me get sick. Build a better body. You built this thing. Why did you build it with all these fucking time bombs in it, you dickhead? They have such a fucking strange relationship with their deity abuser. Yes! It's such a toxic, fucking shitty relationship where they keep taking him back. And you're like, what is wrong with you?

Leave him alone. He's an, if he exists, he's an asshole. Why would he do that to little kids? Some poor little kid out there never knew he existed, and their bones are fucking revolting against their own body. And that god is cool with that. Fuck you in the face. You don't exist, but if you did, you deserve to get fucked in the face.

In the face, dude, because like the other thing is we only count intercessions that are positive, right? And that we attribute to God, but like we're not attributing all the people who prayed and stayed sick. That's not an anti-miracle. Why isn't that a different thing? Like we're not attributing all the people who prayed and stayed sick. That's not an anti-miracle. Why isn't that a different thing? Why isn't the like the true believer who prayed real hard and scrunched up their heart and concentration and thought the right thoughts at the sky and then they

still fucking die. Why aren't we calling that a something like a divine indifference or what have you? Like, why is that not? Instead, we're just like, well, in mysterious ways. And then we're just like, free will. Ah, I gotta go. Eat your cracker.

Eat your fucking cracker right now. What is that? I also want to bring up too, that sometimes you can just move that goalpost as close as you want to everything. And I want to read this last paragraph because it's kind of amazing. William spoke to a woman in Denver who prayed to an aspiring saint for the return of a lost handbag.

I laughed out loud reading this. Only to have someone call her a few hours later saying they had found it. What some people may regard as everyday miracles, the birth of a child, the rain after a long drought or the simple act of kindness would never pass muster for the Dicastery. That's the people who decide whether a miracle is a miracle. The focus has always been more on proof rather than on the fact that people who were suffering were receiving healing."

End quote. So, but I think it's amazing. So it's like one time I lost my hair bag and then I said, I prayed to an 18th century nun and they said, yup, no problem by the way. Lucky thinking out of the air tag. Oh God. When I was a kid Cecil, I found a money clip on the ground. Full of money, there's a money clip full of money.

And I found it and I was like, ooh, money. I like money. But I was like, ooh, money, I like money. But I was like, that's not my money. And so I brought it to my dad and my dad turned it in, we were at a store or something, and my dad turned it in. And I did that because an 18th century nun whispered in my, no, because I was fucking raised with some ethics. That's why I did it, because my dad raised me to be a decent fucking person. One time I That's why I did it. Cause my dad raised me to be a decent

fucking person. Amazing. One time pocket someone else's money. One time I was out. When I was a kid, we used to, we used to drink underage in fields near my house. I grew up, it wasn't rural, but it was suburb and there was plenty of empty farmer fields and buildings that weren't occupied at night so you could sit in the parking lot and drink. We traveled all over and drank underage in all kinds of different places. And there was a cul-de-sac one night and it was actually, I remember the night

that I was underage drinking. It was the night that O.J. rode his white Bronco down the freeway. We spelled in that field in rocks, OJ, as large as we could. But that night I lost my wallet. I went home and I didn't have my wallet. And no shit, Tom. I got a letter, a snail mail letter in the mail

that said, hey, by the way, I found your wallet. You can swing by my house and pick it up. Someone who was walking their dog, saw my wallet on the ground, picked it up, and they did it because an 18th century man. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Whispered in there. Get the fuck right out of here.

Was amazing. Tell the story is the best. OK, so, Tom, before we end, one of the pieces of this article that I thought was very, very interesting. And this is on the big screen for anybody watching. Is that Is that this patron saint of the internet,

they created a live stream of his cup. Cecil, can you really call it a live stream of a corpse? You can't, you can't, you're not allowed to do that. You're not allowed to do that. But if you want to see, we're going to put a link in this week's show notes. Hey, wait, what's happening now?

If you want to see, that they literally made a little box for this person, and they put him in a hematically sealed box, and he has an actual box around him You can see his fucking coffin live on the internet 24 hours a day if you want You can just watch somebody ultra slow motion rot In a fucking glass case

Like a weird ghoul. Like a fucking weird ghoul. That's what this is. It's fucking Maria vision, by the way, is what it says in the upper right hand. And all you are looking at, this isn't like fat bear week guys. This isn't like fucking bald eagle fucking cams. There's nothing going on. It's just a camera looking at a dead body.

Yeah, and there's a sign that says you can't take a flash photo because he'll rot. What the shit? What is wrong with you fucking people? I don't know, dude. This is the most fucked up. Look, actually, I, to be honest, here's what I think. I don't think they should

allow this on YouTube because you're showing dead people on YouTube. They should! Terms of service or fucking whatever. Terms of service. YouTube, you should TOS this shit. Genuinely, this story is fucking amazing. It is everything you hoped you could learn about the state making process. It really is something else. Alright, that's going to wrap it up for this week. We're going to be back on Monday, but we're going to leave it like we always do, with the Skeptics Creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy mommy issue hypno Babylon bullshit.

Couched in scientician double bubble toil and trouble pseudo quasi alternative acupunctuating pressurized stereogram pyramidal free energy healing water downward spiral brain dead pan sales pitch late night info docutainment. 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 Ladies and Gentlemen here we are at the fabulous State Theater in Hollywood For the world premiere of 20th Century Fox's Soup. Nuts. Starring Ted Healy.

Shaman healers, evangelists, conspiracy, double-speak stigmata, nonsense. Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody. Evidential. Conclusive. Doubt even this. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed the show, consider supporting us on Patreon at patreon.com forward slash

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