Cognitive Dissonance - Episode 99: Every Problem is a Nail

Episode Date: May 13, 2013

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. Next week is our 100th episode. You may or may not have heard about that yet, and we may or may not mention it in this upcoming show here. And we want to give you an opportunity, if you would like,

to participate in our 100th episode. So we are going to open the phone lines to everyone. You can call us at 740-74-DOUBT. That's 740-743-6828. Leave us a message on our voicemail, a brief message. That message could wish us a 100th, a happy 100th, that sort of thing. Possibly there'll be a few glory holes in there. If you want to, this would be a perfect opportunity. If you say you had a podcast or a blog and you wanted to plug it, you could say, Hey, I'm X from so-and-so podcast. And we'd like to wish cognitive dissonance all happy hundredth, et cetera, et cetera. I'm going to mix a few of these together for next week's intro. et cetera, I'm going to mix a few of these together for next week's intro.

So if you're interested in participating, you can call us up. You could also do a voice memo on your phone and send that to us via email. Anything brief is almost certainly going to be mixed together. So feel free to call us or send us voicemails, and we will try to put together something for next week's show that's a little special. And we hope that you'll take part in it. And thanks for sticking with us for 100 episodes. You know, G.K. Chesterton said that the doctrine of original sin is the only one in which we have 3,500 years of empirical evidence to back up.

Clearly, we need faith as a component, and it's just silly to say otherwise. You know, the age of enlightenment and reason gave way to moral relativism, and moral relativism is what led us all the way down the dark path to the Holocaust. And I saw, I just got back from Jerusalem, where I saw Yad Vashem,

which is the Holocaust museum there, where there was thousands and thousands of shoes of little children who died in that one and a half million. Dark periods of history is what we arrive at when we leave God out of the equation. Now, Penny, we should point out that this National Day of Reason was created by the American Humanist Association, an atheist organization. It was created to raise awareness about government threats to religious liberty and to up the profile of the non-religious community. What's troubling to some, though, is that they would take the National Day of Prayer and then essentially co-opt in it by saying, OK, it's also a National Day of Reason. It looks like they're just trying to get some publicity to get us talking about it.

Well, and they succeeded. Here we are. But what a great opportunity to talk about the difference. You know, John Adams said that our Constitution depended on a moral and religious people. By contrast, Mao said that morality arrives at the muzzle of a gun. We must have faith in God in order to arrive at the very things they want to do. They want to contend for their beliefs, and I support that.

Welcome to the argument. We think our ideas are better. 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, Matt. This is the Luftballoons episode.

It is. It totally is. Cognitive distance. That would be episode 99. 99. I know nothing. And Cecil, I think it is fair to say that we can kind of let the cat out of the bag a little bit. We've got some kind of exciting stuff lined up for our 100th episode. We're going to have a Buddhist and a Muslim, and they're going to fight it out on the air. We're going to record it, and they're fighting to the death. We're going to record it and they're fighting to the death.

It's going to be awesome. It's going to be great. One, which, which one of them has the midget on his shoulders controlling him? I keep forgetting. I'm sorry. Little person. He's a little guy. He's very small.

And they'll both be riding puppies. Yeah. They'll just be riding puppies like battle cats. No. That puppy doesn't move very much. It just sort of sits there, crushed underneath an entire person. It's a squashed puppy. Yeah.

This is the worst decision. And there's not a lot to listen to at that point. As audio goes. It's not like they're jousting or anything. It's just a dead puppy underneath them. The listeners are like, this isn't compelling audio at all. It's like nobody narrating the action whatsoever. It's just mic'd. It's just mic'd.

That's it. You just hear a faint whisper and a thud. It should be exciting. It should be exciting. It's just going to be a sad podcast about us complaining. Wait, that's every week? That's the same format. We're going same.

Expect the exact same thing next week. So Cecil, this first story is from Huffington Post. Bangladesh protests calling for stricter Islamic laws leave 15 dead and 50 injured. There are photos of incredible violence. Oh, my God. The photos from this thing, if you click over to them, it's just, when you're calling for like, hey, we got to follow this religion. And if you disagree, we will raise this motherfucker to the ground. Like, that is basically Bangladesh.

Bangladesh offers nothing of appeal to me. Oh, my gosh. 200,000 protesters. 200,000 people thought it was a good idea to march and be, like, very violent. Very violent. I mean, there's a couple pictures of people bloody, like, getting dragged away from the protest. You know when, you know it's a bad protest when the police have shotguns and they're using them.

You know what I mean? Like, they're not just holding them. They're not just like demonstrating that they could shoot. These are just intimidation shotguns. Yeah. These are looking shotguns. This is not a, it's not like a, like a, like a dime store mannequin shotgun. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, some of these photos are fucking apocalyptic. You know, I'm not kidding. Like, it's fucking like walking look at photo five on on this thing real quick see so yeah that shit seriously does look like walking dead it is apocalyptic it's a burnt out street with like fire and shit everywhere and like one straggler. Yeah, look at 10. Look at 10. It's the same goddamn street except for it has two guys with guns on it instead of one. Oh, my God.

And then 12. 12 is like a bus. It's the bus they used in the fucking – in the Dawn of the Dead. I know, right? It's everything but the chainsaws. This is insane. And the one thing that I think, you know, the point that I think everyone should drive home here is

that when people say, oh, it's just the extremists that ruin it for everybody. You guys, you atheists, all you guys talk about are the extremists. Well, you know what? There aren't a lot of extremists out there. They're just not a lot of extremists. How many times have you fucking heard that, Tom? There's just not a lot of extremists. I. They're just not a lot of extreme. How many times you fucking heard that, Tom? There's just not a lot of extreme. Well, I could count 200 fucking thousand of them

right now. You know, they're protesting in the street and they're not extremists, right? A couple of hundred thousand, a quarter million moderates burning down their own city, setting fire to buses. They're just moderates. Even if they are just moderates, I watched the fucking Vancouver riots and there were people trying to stop those people when they were rioting. So where are the moderates here saying, well, whoa, whoa, all we really want to do is mandate Islam for everybody. We don't want to burn anything. Well, and, you know, I mean, it's a pretty moderate stance for them to chant one point, one demand, atheists must be hanged.

That is a moderate position to take. It's a moderate position. It's centrist. Yeah. I mean, that really is what that is. That's just right down the middle. That fucking argument makes me so mad when people say it. They're like, oh, well, you know, it's just like one or two people in the United States that are total assholes.

And you guys think everybody's like that. And you're like, no, there's a voting bloc of people in the United States that are complete assholes. There is a, you know, it's more than a voting bloc here. It's a fucking mob of people that want Islam as, you know, they want to make sure that that's fucking, that that is enforced by, and you're saying, you're saying that that's a moderate position. That's not a moderate position. The very fact that they want to make sure that it's a state law is no longer a moderate position. Okay.

That you have transcended fucking moderate by, you know, leaps and you have Paul fucking vaulted right over moderate. You're just like, I'm going to go into the fucking stratosphere. Past moderate. Yeah, I can't even believe it when people say that shit. And that's the shit that makes me crazy is that all the people, that's all they want to talk about is how we're pointing out only the worst. We're not talking about at any point the normal everyday Joe who's the normal Islam guy. And maybe you're right.

But you know what? Like that's the no true Scotsman bullshit. You can't pretend it's just some ultra vocal minority. You know, you just you just don't get to pretend that. Not when you've got an entire country like Saudi Arabia, which doesn't even have a system of laws. Right. Like they don't have laws. They don't pass laws.

It's just like the Koran is their laws. You don't get to say like, well, you know, that's just, you know, it's just a really vocal, small group of people or, you know, it's just a small group of people that commits these acts of violence or it's just a small group of people. If it was that small of a group of people, they wouldn't be this influential. You know, small group of people, they wouldn't be this influential. If they were that small, Tom, you could have somebody surround them like they do the Westboro Baptist Church. Right.

That's a small but vocal group, right? And they are fucking unbelievably irrelevant. The Ku Klux Klan is bigger than the Westboro Baptist Church. They're a small, less vocal than they used to be, but they're a small vocal group. They're fucking marginalized. They're looked down on by the rest of civilized society. They don't get to play with the big kids. If the entire Ku Klux Klan showed up and was like, we're going to march, they couldn't do this kind of damage.

There's not 200 fucking thousand people showing up in one place like in just like filling the fucking city square and burning shit their their 13 point list of demands includes uh a pledge to allah in the constitution the end to gender mixing and mandatory Islamic education. That shit is, that's, that's like fucking medieval times shit. I mean, it really is like,

you may as well fucking get on a horse and joust and like have like a fucking turkey leg with grease dribbling down your chin. You should, you should stop calling your laws laws and start calling them ye old laws. Hey, Hammurabi had some great ideas. Let's go back. Bangladesh, you know, it's funny, Cecil, because, you know, about once a week I post something from Bangladesh. And about once a week you and I are like, no, you know, it just doesn't make the cut. It just doesn't. But Bangladesh looks like the worst possible place to live.

I can't imagine anything that could draw me right now to Bangladesh. Bangladesh could call me on the phone. Like, hey, it's Bangladesh. Like, wow, yeah, it's all of Bangladesh. We would like to give you all the money in Bangladesh. You're like, I'm good here. I'm okay. Can you send it?

Can you wire it over? Right, I'll give you my account number. I'm a Nigerian prince. Can you send it? Can you wire it over? Right. Give me my account number. Yeah, I'm a Nigerian prince. Can you just wire that shit to me? You know, the only people I could think that would want to go to Bangladesh are the people who are training for those Ironman competitions or like those zombie races that we have over here. Right.

Those are the only people I would... Because they're training. Like, that's it. Like, they're training for like the warrior dash or something. Dude, it's the running of the bullshit. The running of the bullshit. You got to go down the street. They got, like, all this fucking mob of yahoos screaming out about a hanging atheist.

Oh, gosh. Making sure men folk and women folk don't get to talk to each other. Fucking wackadoos. A long black cock, long black cock. A long black cock. A long black cock. Long black cock. This story comes from BrisbaneTimes.com.au. Why can't they just use.com?

Why do they have to specify? They're not allowed to. They're not? Oh, no. Take that, fuck fuckers i just made that up i don't know that's awesome uh west pawpaws youth are being uh removed to islamic religious schools in java for re-education um i love i love when the headline by the way for an article says writes michael bachelard like he's not content with just having his name in a picture.

It's like Tyler Perry's class times by Tyler Perry starring Tyler Perry. I don't know if you've ever seen all his stuff. It has to have his name on it. Like, Tyler Perry has to be, like, starring Tyler Perry, by Tyler Perry, for Tyler Perry. Key grip, Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry. Best boy, Tyler Perry.

Catering, Tyler Perry. Catering, promotional consideration provided by Tyler Perry. Tyler Perry. Best boy, Tyler Perry. Catering, Tyler Perry. Catering. Promotional consideration provided by Tyler Perry. Guests of Tyler Perry stay at Tyler Perry. It's so crowded. But in Indonesia's far eastern province of West Pawpaw, basically these Islamist assholes are luring away poor rural children by offering them a free education. Basically like, hey, you've got no way to give your children a good life, a good education. Let us have your children.

We'll send them off to boarding school, basically, and give them an education. Let us have your children. We'll send them off to boarding school, basically, and give them an education, which these rural people are, you know, they don't have other means. They don't have another way to educate their children. These are very impoverished people. And these kids end up going not to like a school like you and I would think of it, but they end up in these fucking hellhole madrasas where they're basically just indoctrinated into a fundamentalist Islamic culture. It's a fucking – it's get them while they're young, meaning like you actually steal them while they're young. Just take them. It's like religious kidnapping. It is.

It's like religious kidnap. It is. I mean, it's like when I was reading this, I kept thinking, you know, what a devious way to get people to fall into your fold by promising them a way out of poverty and then basically keeping them in poverty and meeting a quota. Yeah, that's, I mean, and this is like, these people, like the people in West Pawpaw are not, by and large, already Islamic. And they're just going to an Islamic school that's maybe a little more radical or fundamentalist. Right, right. This is an area that is predominantly Christian. It was settled by, I think it was the Dutch. Let me see, it says in here, think it was the Dutch. Let me see. It says in here, the Dutch and the Germans.

So Dutch and German missionaries brought the Christian religion, thanks Dutch and Germans, to this area. So this area has a Christian tradition. So they already have a faith tradition. And they're just basically saying, like, your kids look fucking hungry. You're poor. Want them to have a decent life? Your kids look fucking hungry. You're poor.

Want them to have a decent life? We'll just spit on your religious institution, your religious traditions as a people, as a culture, as a family. Right, right. We'll physically take your kids and teach them how to think something else. Because that's not Temple of Doom. These kids seriously are going to end up like, like, like reaching in, you know,

like Mr. Jones, Mr. Jones. They like, they rescue these kids. They all have like bloody hands and beating hearts. Right. Right.

And working in coal mines, like sweaty, fucking dirty ass coal mines. I know. Like it's – it would be – that would be more humane than what is happening. Like when a fictional movie about the torture of an entire people is more humane than what is actually happening we really need to fucking refocus i think right and it's not like these kids are treated well like on the on the airplane just on the just just talking about like just just transporting the kids like they already start

abusing the kids before they arrive at the school it says it took two days for the plane to reach jakarta and we were not fed or offered drinks. How the fuck can you take an airplane in Indonesia and not give people a water? How does it take two days? What, did it float there? I don't know, man. What plane takes two days to go anywhere? What, did it stay on the runway for a day and a half before it left to go somewhere? Can you imagine any other part of the

world where you're like, now boarding flight to New York will arrive Wednesday. Like fucking what time? We're not giving times. No, no, no. We're not that optimistic. It's your flight. Times are for people

who know when they're going to get places. Will there be drinks on them? No. Sit down and shut up. You can't even buy a drink. Shut up. That's not going to happen. You know, and they're like hitting these kids on the bottom of their feet with rattan sticks and shit.

I mean, they're just, they're just like abusing kids. Yeah. They're selling their kids for free. They're just giving their kids away to these fucking lunatics. Well, it helps have a better life, though. You know what I mean? You can't hardly blame them because they don't know. Yeah, they don't know.

They're not saying, well, yeah, you can take my kid. What do you got, seven, eight bucks? Sounds good. They're not trading them. They're saying, this kid can have a good life. This kid can go somewhere, make something of themselves after they come back. Yeah, maybe they're learning a different religion or they're learning this religion that I'm not crazy about. Or, you know, maybe they're learning an elevated level of the religion that I already believe. But I don't care so much as long as they come back with, you know, a work ethic and the skills and intelligence to make sure that they're

going to better themselves in life. And I recognize that that's probably what the parents are thinking. I'll trade that off. I'll trade off this time with my child to make sure that they have an opportunity later on. But instead, it's just like they said that instead of learning, they're really just learning about religion. Yeah.

They're not getting, you know, it's not like they're taking the fucking ACT. You know, it's not like they're coming back like, I've got a'm going to you know no that's not happening instead it's like no i can recite i memorized some shit from a fucking old book i can chant really well my chanting like my chanting 101 went extraordinarily well but i'm a totally different person than the person that you left behind. And some of the kids died. Just throwing that out there. Some of the kids, they don't make it. Just a few of them. Shock TDA, that's all I'm saying.

You got to sacrifice to the volcano. It's Joe versus the volcano. The volcano wins. Every time it does. Volcano's like, really? Me versus Joe? Like, Joe's the best you can give me? You guys do realize I'm a volcano, right?

Like, Mayweather has fought 44 fights, and you're giving me Joe? Right? I got Joe. Like, what's Joe got? Because I basically fart lava. I can shoot a rock nearly into outer space. Several ton rock. What can Joe do?

Nothing? Joe's just a flesh? Okay. I got this. I wouldn't put this on the marquee, guys. It's not going to be very long. It's not going to be a long fight. Let's go over the stats real quick. Okay. Reach volcano.

Weight class. Volcano definitely up. Let's go over the stats real quick. Reach, volcano. Weight class, volcano definitely up. He's got a 700-foot reach advantage. We've got Joe weighing in at 187 pounds versus the volcano at several billion tons. Immeasurable. Joe has... We couldn't find a big enough scale and it melted everyone we put underneath it. Volcano is also connected to the mantle of the earth. I hope you're as committed to safe sex as you are those abs.

I know you're all about that abstinence thing, you know, but I mean, come on. B. Palin, are you serious like you're not gonna hook up with like before you marry for real for real for real for real for real for real so this story comes from the friendly atheist blog um this story elizabeth smart and the case against christian abstinence education um elizabeth smart was kidnapped raped for nearly a year when she was 14 um she said and this is, that she never thought about running away from her captor despite having opportunities to do it. extreme fundamentalist abstinence-only education, she felt so dirty and so filthy that she didn't see a point in running away. She felt basically that she had been ruined, that she would be exiled, that she wouldn't be welcomed back into a community of people

after having been sullied against her will by her rapist, which just enabled her further abuse. Yeah. I mean, and this is horrific, but I think that this is a glimpse that you get a chance to see from a perspective of a woman who is involved in something like this, something so heinous as to be kidnapped and then raped. And there was a recent case, just very recently, some kids got away from somebody in Cleveland that they were kidnapped and held against their will for 10 years. And they were raped repeatedly or whatever.

I mean like it's just – that sort of thing is a horrific experience. And to see it from her eyes basically saying I had already given up the moment I was raped. And I know that the parents who instill this into their child are not thinking ahead to something like this. What they're thinking is I would like to stop my child from having premarital sex. So in order to do that, I will say things to make them avoid that choice, to make them think that that choice is the least desirable choice. But they don't realize that that sort of thing has repercussions, that that is a that kind of speech, that kind of indoctrination, if you will, is going to change somebody's mind and change somebody's outlook on themselves. And, you know, it has some serious repercussions here in this case because she obviously had opportunities to slip away. There's a part of this story that that Hammond winds up linking to.

If you look at the bottom, it's premarital sex is like being a dirty glass of drinking water. And this person was presenting at a, you know, whatever, assembly or whatever, and they had given people water and then they told them to take some of the food that they had

and put some of their food that they've been eating in this water. And then exchange water with someone else and be like, would you want to drink that? And then compare that with someone who had premarital sex. And you're like, well, when you give the children, these visuals, this chewed up gum metaphor, or the, uh, the, the dirty food metaphor, you're basically reinforcing that premarital sex is a, is a dangerous thing and makes them downcast. And. And then they don't come forward when they're raped. They don't come forward when there's incest.

They don't come forward when these bad things happen. Well, and you've got to look at this and just say, like, the premarital sex is like being a chewed up wad of gum. It's just inaccurate because you can only chew the gum once and gum loses its flavor right you can fuck gum like all day i've never met a woman that lost her flavor i've never met a woman either who's like you already did that once i'm done like that's that has never happened like your analogy clearly you are not well versed in the sex well it's not like you're like, you want to have sex again? No, I'm a wadded up piece of gum. What the fuck would I want to do?

Who wants to... You don't fuck a woman and stick her under the table. That's not how that works. Yeah, I had sex with that person, so I just pressed her up against the underside of the table at Burger King and left her there. That's not how that works. Well, admittedly, some people do do that.

But they go to jail for that. So, you know, I mean, they go to jail eventually. I just, I agree. I think that it's a terrible analogy. I also think it's a terrible thing to say, even if it was, you know, even if there was something to it, I still think it's a terrible thing to say because you're preventing your child from, you know, coming to you during the bad times. And I think, you know, putting those stops in there is not a good way to raise a child. Really? So wait a minute. Hold on. I just want to make sure that I have your position here on record. So you're saying that it is a bad idea to teach a shame-first sex education program.

You think that's a bad call? I would be in the minority in this country. Yeah, I think it's a bad idea. Isn't that crazy that we had a president who was like, let's go with shame. Yeah. We definitely want to – because that's going to lead to a lifelong happiness too, right? Like that way even when you do break out of that, like when you start having sex after marriage, if the whole time that you've been a person living in the world, you've had this idea that sex is this dirty, filthy, unpleasant, unnatural sort of urge and you should ignore it.

How the hell are you then supposed to make that transition to, oh, I'm married, now I can have a healthy, happy sexual life and be a fully functioning, healthy sexual being? That dirty glass of water analogy instilled in children sits there, you know, it sits there and it is like it then like a dirty glass of water in the mind, you know, like it's got to get that shit's got to get cleared out. And putting this into the minds of kids, it's just like, well, I want to make sure that you're never satisfied. I want to make sure you always feel bad about yourself. Oh, man,

that'll work. Kids love that. Abortions for all. Very well. No abortions for anyone. Abortions for some miniature American flags for others. So this story is from alternate.org. Why a safe, tiny little pill scares the hell out of prude Christian conservatives. This is an article regarding Plan B and the conservative opposition to Plan B. And a lot of it boils down to, if we give girls plan B, they're all going to have sex with everybody indiscriminately all of the time. Because the only thing, as we all know, holding women back from engaging in sex just rampantly and indiscriminately is a fear of pregnancy. So you get rid of that.

fear of pregnancy. So you get rid of that. And even teenage girls, pre-pubescent girls, according to this article, pre-teen girls, will immediately just start fucking. Well, yeah. I mean, they want to use that gum up as soon as possible. They've got to chew it up? And the reason why is, I mean, Juicy Fruit does not keep its flavor. It just does not, no matter what you do.

I think the other thing that this does, this is really interesting because they want people to sign for it, right? So like what they're asking you to do is they have to basically give their name if they'd like to get this stuff. And what that really does, and there's a great point in the article here because they list what it really does. What does this serve? And one of the major things here is male control of female sexuality. It's absolutely true. I mean like that's absolutely true you know i mean like that's absolutely true and the idea that we would we would look at people and say okay well men can

fucking spill their seed wherever they want however they want whenever they want and get fucking high-fived afterward you know what i mean like when you were in high school, if you came back and said, dude, I totally did fucking, you know, whatever. Some girl, you know, Jilly, I banged her last week. You'd be getting fucking high-fived all weekend. You know what I mean? Be like, oh, man, you're the man. You're the man. You're the man.

But they wouldn't be like, did you, I mean, were you protected? Right. Nobody's asking you that. Nobody's like, hey, man, we, you know, did you play it safe? You know, did you have safe sex? Bare buddy, huh? We got a fist bump as long as you got a condom on right they're not gonna do that they don't care because men are fucking they have the absolute 100 freedom to ejaculate wherever they please in our culture just like you know on things in things whatever they want to do

and nobody cares like a garden sprinkler. It really is. It's totally. I mean, it is like a fucking fire hose. Like, it's actually like if you don't hold the tip, the thing just flips around. You know, it's like. But the idea is, is like women are not allowed that same right at all. Right.

They have the consequences of sex that they have to carry with them if they happen to do it on the right day. I mean, it's the right day of the month. Guess what? And it's actually, it's not just a day. There's a period of time there that if they have sex, they will have a child and they have to carry that around with them. So we don't offer them the same get out of jail free card that men already have. And the idea that you would make people have to go get shamed by their parents or shamed by the pharmacist, this is bleeding into the last story. Well, right. And in this article, columnist Kathleen Parker says,

as long as there's an exit, whether abortion or plan B, what's the incentive to await mere maturity? Well, I don't know, because immature girls don't want to have sex. Like, by and large, it's not this is a problem. That's not a problem. And the article points this out. This is a this is a solution in search of a problem, right? This I mean, this article is the outcry from is a this is a solution in search of a problem. Right. This I mean, this article is the outcry from the conservatives. It's an outcry against the phenomenon that is by and large not occurring. Sure. You know, teen sex is not the, you know, rampant, crazy bullshit that that they would have you believe on Fox News that it is.

that they would have you believe on Fox News that it is. They said that in this article, 11-year-olds, it's less than 1% of 11-year-olds have had sex. For 12-year-olds, the number is 2% to 4%. The 11-year-olds is almost exclusively nonconsensual. For 12-year-olds, the number is 2% to 4%. I mean, we're talking statistically insignificant. By 15%, it's 13%. It's actually going up. Teens are waiting longer than they used to. But abstinence-only education means that although teens are actually, by and large, waiting longer, this whole prepubescent,

waiting longer. This whole prepubescent, sex-crazed, orgy, fantasy, middle school nonsense that's been drummed up and sold to people as this epidemic that's sweeping the nation, it just frankly isn't true. It's not true, yeah. But we've got people getting pregnant, and it's fine. If these girls get pregnant, And it's fine. If these girls get pregnant, they're not in a position. It's not fine. They're not in a position financially, emotionally, socially, educationally to take care of, by and large, to take care of a baby. So these children end up having higher rates of poverty, learning disabilities and learning problems, health complications, criminality, and then teen pregnancy. So it's a cycle.

It's a cycle. And that cycle is easy enough. We have the technology, right? This is a technological issue that is being absolutely hamstrung by religious conservative ideologies that get in the way. You know, you're talking about how men have this freedom. Women have this freedom through technology. Absolutely, they do.

Yeah. And to hold that back, it's like, you know what this is, Cecil? This is not putting seatbelts in cars, right? No, only for men, though. You're putting them in for men. Right. It's like saying, like, well, women shouldn't be driving anyway, So we're not going to put seatbelts in cars for great. And you know, if they get in an accident, well, fuck you. You shouldn't have been driving. So, you know, and

Hey, Hey, it's not my fault. I didn't crash. I didn't crash your car. You crashed your car. Why were you driving in the first place? That's no way to treat a society. That's no way to treat a gender. That's not, you know, like you go back to like, like, I know you and I both were fans of Sam Harris's book. You know, you, we talk about like, you know, the greatest good for, for all people, like Sam Harris is talking about, like, these are knowable answers, right? This is a knowable quantity. Like you can quantify this. We can do this. This math is, is doable. We know this isn't the way to build a better society. And we still do this. We're just like, ah, North Carolina,

that shit and see what happens. So we're going to take a break and give you all the information you need to contact us through various mediums, including Sylvia Brown. And we'll return in just a moment to ruin the rest of the show. 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, shares retweets or rates the show cognitive dissonance would like to cordially thank you for all of your fucking support so this story comes from the moral compass blog self-styled rabbi treated possessed

in quotes children with suffocation burning hamm, hammers, knives. Hammers? Hammers. Stop. Because nothing says, get out, devil, like a good hammering. This is a dude who seriously, like, I read this, my first thought was like, well, when all you've got's a hammer, every problem's a nail. You just walk around like, well, I got me a hammer. I want to laugh. I want to laugh.

But they gave someone fucking mental fucking damage, like permanent brain damage, by beating them in the head with a hammer. What the fuck is this? Fucking Texas Chainsaw Massacre? What is happening here? You gave someone. You retarded someone. You retarded them. I know.

But, you know, to be fair, let's be perfectly fair. He was a self-styled rabbi. Oh, that's right. So he had the authority as granted by himself. So it's like, imagine if you were getting and like the clergy person said, you know, by the power vested in me, conveniently enough, by me. I now pronounce you hit with a hammer. Why? Yeah.

We got this. The thing about this article that I mean, it's stomach turning. I mean, it really is stomach turning. I was reading part of this. I'm going to read it here. It says, the chilling and gruesome child abuse case included a mother who forced her children to eat feces, locked them in a suitcase for three days, letting them out for only brief periods, repeatedly beat, whipped, and shook them, burnt their hands, and gave them freezing showers.

The abusive mother and the educators also poured salt on the burning wounds of one of the children, stuffing his mouth with a skull cap and sealing it with masking tape. You know, you put the kid in a suitcase for three days, you could send him off to a Muslim camp, I hear. It's, you know, that's terrible. Because they sit in the, you basically just sit in the suitcase for three days and then you're – suddenly that's how long it takes the plane to get there anyway. Well, the problem is the upcharge for the baggage. You put it on there.

It's expensive. You're going to charge me $100 for this bag? No, over the 50-pound limit. What if I beat the kid in it? What if I light him on fire? We've been making him eat a lot of poo. Maybe he's gained a lot of poo weight. It's like water weight, but poo instead.

Handicapped kids go free. Give me the hammer. Hang on a minute. I can solve this problem. Oh, no. Again, when all you've got's a hammer. Oh, man. What a terrible fucking, what a terrible person.

I mean, look at this like this guy thought he was getting rid of devils yeah and and part of me has to say if you really think that there's i mean fucking if there were actually demons not like i think there's demons or i believe there's demons but like look out the window and like a demon is getting your mail. And you're like, fuck, that was my mail. And like demon like scampers off like ha ha ha. If they were actually fucking Satan. Actually, that wouldn't be so bad. I mean, they sound happy the way you describe them.

Yeah, but they like take your like food and wine magazine. You're like, fuck, that was the. They're like little jocular little demons. I don't mind jocular demons. Yeah, I don't mind that at all. You know, but if we lived in that world, if we lived in a world of monsters and sharp teeth and devils and demons, then that would be one thing. Like it would really be if we lived in a horror movie where you had to fight for your survival every day against monsters that invaded your body and attacked your soul. Sure, like if you're Lou Angle, basically, is what you're saying. But that's not a world that we live in.

Like you've got to get rid of these myths. You've got to get rid of this demon myth. The demon myth is unbelievably violent, and it just yields more violence. In a way, I think there's got to be something in what you're saying. Why would you spend your life worrying about this sort of thing or spreading it around? And the obvious reason is that it's fear, right? I want to scare you into believing something so that you will then follow my dictates, whatever those are. And I remember being terrified of the rapture as a child. All the way up until my teen years, I was terrified of the rapture. And that sort of thing is made to make you afraid.

And you are afraid so you don't do things that fall outside of that realm of thinking, whatever that is. And in my case, it was biblical values. The biblical values, you don't exit those biblical values because you are afraid that you would be – everyone else would be raptured and you would be stuck here. So you've got to be a godly person in order to make sure that that doesn't happen to you. And the scenarios that go along with the rapture are horrifying. I mean they're horrifying. It's like demons living on earth and all this awful shit. And basically what this guy did to these kids was your life in the rapture. But this guy, he doesn't wait for the rapture.

He just basically puts these kids through hell because he's afraid. He has been told about this, and he believes this deeply. He's probably – obviously, the guy's a nut. The guy is a nut. But you're basically feeding him stories that he can act on. And that's the scary thing, right? It's not, you know, God loves you and everything's great. They're not hearing those stories. And what's up with Jews anyway? Don't they don't believe in the devil and the fucking hell and all that? I thought Jews didn't believe in that stuff. I thought the same thing. I thought they, well, I don't know. Is

there a devil in the old Testament? Is there Satan even? I don't honestly know. Hey, Jew listeners, send us a message and let us know if there's a Satan in the Jewish philosophy. From what I've talked to of people that are Jewish, I had thought I remembered hearing them saying that there isn't an afterlife or there's an afterlife, them saying that there isn't an afterlife or there's an, there's an afterlife, but it's totally different than the sort of fluffy golden road. God loves you. Everything's awesome except for all your relatives are burning in eternal torment sort of after that.

That's actually, that's not real appealing, is it? It's like, no, it's not. You're supposed to forget them, right? Like that's the thing. Oh, you just forget that. So you get, you get fucking mind wiped when you get up there. Well, one of the, one of the explanations I've heard is like, well, if you're in pure bliss, you don't think about anything else is what they said. So heaven is unbelievably selfish.

Sure. Like you get there through altruism. Here's the thing. Heaven isn't real. But it's so funny because like you have to get there through altruism so that you can achieve pure selfishness. Like, pure, unadulterated, like, me time. Like, that's your me time. To be honest, though, that makes the most sense, though.

I mean, if you're thinking about it in this sense, it's like, you know, you have this testing period on Earth where you have to do all the things that make you into a good person. But then afterwards you get rewarded. And that would at least be logically consistent, I guess, in some way. As logically consistent as you can get. Yeah, right. With this, with magic, with a magic world. One popular thing to do in American politics is to note that the summers in the United States over the past few years have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What's wrong with this

reasoning? It's only gone up 0.6 degrees. Yeah, it's not really a big problem, is it? No, I don't think that it's going to hurt us. So this comes from rawstory.com. Belief in biblical end times stifling climate change action in U.S., says study. Big fucking shocker. This is, we've talked about this, Cecil. What would be the advantage to fixing a world you don't think is going to make it that long anyway? to fixing a world you don't think is going to make it that long anyway. Like we've talked on this show about being like stewards of the planet and trying to be good stewards of the planet and taking responsibility.

I mean, you seriously, I mean, why not make Indians cry every day? Just fucking chuck litter out of your car. Who cares? Like burn oil just in your backyard for kicks. The end is nigh. To be honest, I don't know why people don't do it. I mean, like it would make sense that that's why they would do it. That would make sense to me that that's how they would treat the world because, you know, I mean, look, God is the one who decides that things are done.

You know what I mean? Like it's if you basically have a Jesus take the wheel fucking outlook on life, then why would this this does not surprise me in the least that people think this, that people would basically look at the world and not have to have a forward-looking view of the future. And so that means that they can get as many profits as they can right now without changing anything. I mean look at how we do things. Like technologically, look at how we do things. we could, I bet, have very good modes of transportation, even personal modes of transportation that would not be nearly as bad as driving cars around. But we just don't do it because it's just inefficient cost-wise. It's not inefficient any other way. I mean, it would make more sense and we wouldn't have to drill as much or whatever, but there's just a system in place that has a lot of people that are employed and a lot of people making a lot of money.

So there just doesn't need to be a way in which to change it. And this sort of worldview is another thing, another layer on top of that. So suddenly you have the people in there that are pure profit hogs, and that's all they want is just the profit. And they're going to decry global warming any way they can. And one of the ways that they can is to convince all the religious people that, hey, guess what? You know, God wants this too. You know, I mean, wouldn't you manipulate what God has to say or at least show people what God has to say about the world? If you were making a shit ton of profits off it, it would make sense. Yeah. I mean, why not? I mean, and if you think that way, then the earth is disposable.

It's a fucking Dixie cup. You know, who cares? It's seriously, it's a disposable thing. It's absolutely, it's a used condom. It's of no, the earth as a thing, as a, as a, as a, as a really as a resource. If you think, if you have an end times mentality, it's not even valuable. It is of no value. It's short-lived in duration.

Its time is almost up. But I got to ask – like I mean I don't mean this shitty. Like I'm being serious. Like why would you have kids if you thought this? Yeah, I always wonder that too. Wouldn't you just be like, I'm not doing that. I'm not going to break – And if you do have kids, cause these people,

like they seem to believe that they live on a Dixie cup in space, right? That they don't care about, that they don't want to treat. Well, the earth, you know, all this shit is just going to come to an end anyway.

Wouldn't having children be an unbelievably cruel and kind of shitty thing to do? Like, yeah, I'm going to have kids. Why? I don't know. So they can fucking live through the end time. Seemed like a good plan. What? What?

That's all. What would you want? Yeah, there's going to be fucking pestilence and disease and, you know, fucking fire raining down. And I don't know, like scorpions that sting you from the sky. Yeah, it's just it's gonna be i mean like the internet's gonna be slow it's gonna be every it's gonna be the worst thing ever my porn will come up like a section of a time like it's like old timey downloads where you're just like i think i saw a

nipple there's a nipple it's just like 14-4 baud modems just like uh what what what it i mean seriously it's just it's like the worst, and you think this is all happening. Like you're just like, hey, all the coral reefs are dying. Fuck them. I don't care. The whole earth is just going to catch on fire soon anyway, and all the people are going to be voiped up to heaven, and those that aren't are going to live in pestilence and misery and disease. Let's have a baby.

Yeah, and that's an interesting thing. I think the reason why they would do something like that is because they would read in the Bible you have to be fruitful and you have to go out and multiply and you have to go cleave onto a woman and all those little passages that they find that represent the monogamous

relationships that the Bible reinforces along with the child rearing that the Bible reinforces as well. So, you know, it's all in the Bible. Those things are in the Bible. But along with the child rearing that the Bible reinforces as well. So, you know, it's all in the Bible. Those things are in the Bible. But when you think about it, you're like, oh, wait, I'm going to go out and find somebody that I love and I'm going to fall in love with them and they could possibly not come

with me. So I'm going to have to witness that, you know, that moment of them not coming with me when I get voiped up to heaven. Then I also have to see my kids who may or may not be assholes and not go with me too. Yeah, right. And, and how do you enjoy anything? You know, how do you enjoy any part of your time on earth? Like, can you imagine like going to the grand Canyon being like, Oh, isn't it beautiful and majestic? And you'd be like, Hmm, who cares? It's a big crack in a giant ball of dirt. I think you got to shut your brain off.

I really think, I mean, I think you shut your brain off and only think about those things when you want to feel self-righteous. Yeah, probably. Because otherwise, like, you know, atheism is often accused of being nihilistic. But this seems insanely nihilistic. Yeah, it's un-nihilistic because it's all getting annihilated. I like that. If you read that chilling book, 1984, George Orwell, it was a shocker when it was published.

Now people kind of take it for granted. But think what would happen when you wake up in the morning, there's a camera, watches what you do. You walk out in the morning. There's a camera. Watches what you do. You walk out of your home. You have to log in to some kind of a box that tells where you are, at what time you started your day. And then do you get on a bus? Do you get in your car? What do you do? And what do you do during the day when you get to your office?

You punch another button. You log in. All the time, you're under surveillance. Every time you move. When is there freedom? Well, there is no freedom. And that was the whole premise of 1984. There came a time when, quote, Big Brother monitored everything.

We're coming to that now. It's not a pleasant situation. We're coming to that now. It's not a pleasant situation. But this is what the Bible talks about when it says you can't buy or sell without the mark of the beast. You have to be part of that world system. And a few and very, very few can escape because right now they can go down into the bush in the darkest Africa and hunt you down. So you say, well, we're going to feel secure.

Secure from whom? And I think the American people are more afraid of the overreach of big government than they are some occasional bomber. Even if a bomber kills a few people, they would still rather have their freedom than to have big brother in constant surveillance so we're going to end the week's story segment of course with pat robertson pat robertson is becoming a regular on this program uh security cameras ushering in end times and mark of the beast so says pat robertson, I think, referring to daguerreotypes. He's not really familiar with actual cameras at this point. He's trying to hold very still for the photographer. He's got a pinhole and silver nitrate on a piece of wood.

One of those guys is underneath the big drape taking his know, and he's got the thing in his one hand. Hold on, Zoff. We'll have this developed in a fortnight for you. He like lights it on fire and then Pat Robertson's face is all like completely charred afterwards. Like one of those guys from like the 1940s fedora like journalist. Yeah, Shane. Want to take your picture, Pat? Yeah.

But he took issues with plans to expand the use of surveillance cameras, saying that we're approaching a time with no freedom and talking about 1984, which is the last year he can clearly remember. I thought that was his age. What I think he's talking about, because he's like, you know, these cameras are going to be ushering in the mark of the beast. I think he's seeing like a little logo in the corner and he's thinking it's the watermark of the beast. The watermark of the beast. He's not sure, but he thinks that it's the watermark. You know, I understand what Pat's getting at here.

I understand. And I, you know, for once I kind of agree with him. I think, you know, man, I don't want to see, uh, you know, somebody in my home making me check in. Although at one point he's like, you're going to have to go to work and check in. I'm like, I already kind of do that. Like if I have to, if I have to punch in, I already do that. Like if you have a job where you actually punch a clock, like you already do those sorts of things anyway. So the idea that you're going to have to go to your job and punch in, it's like, well, yeah, I mean a lot of people do that. But where he's like, you get up and you basically log in and you go somewhere. Yeah, do I like it when the government keeps tabs on me through my electronic devices?

No, I don't like that at all. I think it's a bad idea. Do I like it when, uh, you know, I'm in my private house and they can tell where I'm going on the internet or who I'm talking to or listen to my phone or, you know, have a camera that's viewing me somehow. No, of course I don't like it, but you don't need to scare me by saying it's the devil. You could just say, Hey, they're doing these things and that's a bad thing. You don't have to tell me it's a devil. I don care fucking the devil the devil fucking it makes it irrelevant then like if it's a person i'm afraid if it's the devil it's a myth motherfucker i know right it's like it's like we've got a real problem let's make it silly so nobody pays attention yeah right it that's yeah you're you're a nut pat

robertson you're just a fucking nut and and i you know, CeCe, you do make a good point. Like, there's a lot of surveillance. We talked about surveillance, I think, last week. And, you know, there's a big difference between public and private surveillance and what you and I, I think, expect. And there's a difference between what we expect and what we approve, but Pat Robertson here is trying to equate that with, you know, he's doing that thing that they all do, that they've been doing for, you know, about 2,000 years or so, which is to look around, point to something that's changing, because societies and technology are always changing, decide that it's bad, and then tell you why it fulfills

a prophecy. Why it, yeah, exactly. And we tell you why it fulfills a prophecy. Right. Why it. Yeah, exactly. And we're constantly fulfilling prophecies. We've been fulfilling biblical prophecies for 2000 fucking years and nothing has happened. Not one single thing. Not one thing. Like, even if you think that we nailed a dude to some sticks and that happened and then he got up and walked around and chatted with Thomas and then, you know, voiped himself into heaven or whatever.

It even if you think all that stuff was a real nothing's happened for 2000 years, but we're fulfilling prophecies every week. We're just like, like they're fucking scratching winds. Yeah. Well, it's like fucking, it's like, you know, you're playing a matching game. Right. You have, you know, you have a list of current events, and those are

A, B, C, D, E, F, G. And then you have slots next to all your prophecies. And then you just basically fill in your prophecies next to them where they kind of fit. We're like, well, this one kind of quasi fits in there. So you know what? This one fulfills this prophecy. It's apocalypse bingo.

It's exactly it. Can I get a fucking Mark of the Beasts I-61? You know what I mean? Like that's what it is. And it's just – it's ludicrous that he's tacking this on to this portion. I mean you can – and sometimes he doesn't talk about religion. Sometimes he just talks about politics. Why not keep this in the political realm?

You don't have to scare people with someone taking their rights away. I agree with him. He even says one point. He's like, we shouldn't be giving up our rights to think that we're going to be more safe against bombings and things like that. I'm like, fucking yes, Pat. I agree with you. I agree with you, you old, freaky, weird dude. I agree. Yes, I don't want to give up any of my rights because of some sort of irrational fears. But you know what?

You're basically trying to get rid of people's rights for an irrational fear in God. Right. You know, Cecil, I don't want to give up my rights for rational fears. I don't. Exactly. When you start, you're like, hey, you want to give up some of your rights? Nope. Not really.

Don't you want to hear what you get in return? Do I lose rights? Nope. Yeah. Like, what did I win? I didn't win anything. Like, can I fly fly because if the answer is no yeah like it's you know it's like well we're gonna have surveillance in your house

but you can be invisible okay yeah rokey dokey i got no problem there i'm okay with that or it's like we're gonna take away one right but we're to give you all the rights back. Okay, I'm fine with that. So we didn't get a lot of voicemail this time. We only got one, and it's Steve, the tow truck driver. So I'm going to play it for you now. Hey, glory hole, guys. Hey, this is Steve, the tow truck driver. I called you guys a couple months back. I called you a few times.

But I just wanted to let you know, after all that stuff I talked about being motivated to start my own podcast, I did it. I'm on my eighth episode now. So just letting you know, it worked out for me. You guys mentioned that, you know, if I wanted to plug it, I could. It's Blue Collar Heathens, the name of the

podcast. It's on Blogstock Radio. It's awesome. You guys are doing an awesome job still. I listen to you every week no matter what. Thanks. Keep up the good work. Steve has a podcast called The Blue Collar Heathens, so if you want to hear Steve's podcast, be sure to

check them out. Steve, we're glad you started a podcast. It's on Blog Talk Radio, so you can go ahead and find Steve's podcast. If you want to post that to the Facebook page, feel free. That way people can probably find it a little easier. And everybody who shares Steve's podcast will get a free towing, he said. Yeah. He'll tow your car, but he won't charge you for it. I also, I wanted to mention somebody I've been talking to on Twitter. Project Archivist has been having conversations with me on Twitter. And I got a chance to listen to two of their shows. I, you know, I did like it. I guess

when I was talking to them, or when they were talking around us, at one point, they were saying something about being true believers. So I don't know exactly where they fit on any of the spectrums of skeptic or atheist. But I listened to two of their shows. One of them was just sort of a show about weird news, and another one was about serial killers. And you know who they reminded me most, especially during the serial killers episode, they reminded me a lot of Caustic Soda. So I think if you're a fan of that podcast, you might find that you like Project Archivist as well. So I would check them out. It was definitely worth listening to those two episodes that I listened to. So give them a listen. We got some donations

this week, Tom. We wound up getting a donation from Taisha, one from David, one from Sean, and one from Terry. And Sean left us a note and said, Thanks, guys. I'm a 47-year-old mother of three school-age kids married to a believer. Your irreverence helps me through when everyone around me seems

to be insane and helps me inoculate my kids against the crazy. So thank you to everybody who donated, and we're always happy to receive your generous donations. And thanks for making TAM possible for us this year. Absolutely. Thank you guys very much. We do appreciate it. We got an email from William, and William says, I just want to let you know that not all chiropractors believe the shit that you hear from the old school chiropractors. That philosophy was the original premise of chiropractic.

Much like the religions of old, people refuse to let go of the past, despite the fact that there is no definitive evidence that supports the theory. evidence that supports the theory. So I just wanted to make you aware that there are chiropractors out there who believe that adjustment has no impact on hangnails, testicular torsion, I love that word, or any other visceral issue, but use the manipulation to reduce back pain. So yes, we did know that chiropractors out there did do this, and there are chiropractors who do believe in this. So we're very happy that you believe in this sort of thing, and we are happy that there is a voice for you out there that sort of collects people that don't believe this nonsense, feel free to send it to us and we will post it on our page to let people know that there are chiropractors out there who don't believe that these, you know, and all the sort of holistic stuff, they just think that they're there to reduce back pain.

We'll happily share a website that's based on that. Yeah, it'd be great to help listeners find somebody who can help them with back pain without trying to teach them that their energies have all been realigned and their subluxations have disappeared and all that. They have to sit in a fucking deprivation tank or something, like some weird shit. We got an email from Emily who sent us two videos about the camel hump hajib, which I guess women are wearing their hair up in beehives and using bumpets to make their hajibs bigger. And somebody went out of their way to like this really crazy guy, like a really crazy guy made a video about how they shouldn't be doing this. So we watched the video.

The video is very funny. We'll wind up sharing it in this episode on the notes. So if you check out the notes for this episode, you could watch this video. And it's like two minutes of some guy talking. And then there's like another minute of just women in like headscarves, which is with like music behind it.

And also the guy, one of the things that really bothers me about this video is there's like a behind it and also the guy one of the things that really bothers me about this video is there's like a chanting going on while the guy's talking so you can't really hear what he has to say there's like this confusion between it's like don't you know how to score anything you just put chanting underneath that's actually the hate just bleeding through like it damages the audio quality hey can you imagine being so uptight that you've already wrapped women up in a headscarf? And then you're like, whoa, whoa.

Now you're putting shit under the headscarf that makes you look like you had a bumpy head. Oh no, you did. You're going to go to hell for a bumpy. Can you imagine like you get all the way through like a pious life, you wear the fucking scarf, you're going through all that rigmarole, and you get up to the fucking Islamic

version of the pearly gates and like no bump it's allowed bitch back to hell with you to the bump it i gotta read i gotta read the ps's here so she says ps glory hole then she says pps i just realized you guys should probably not watch the first one since it's quote for women only and maybe allah peace and his blessings be upon him or some shit i love that might strike you down or turn you into a lady and make you guzzle his holy egg and she puts ppps i just grossed myself out you're not the only one emily yeah no you you successfully grossed us out too we got an email from Esme and Esme included a video of her talking. She basically asked us two questions.

And since it's a video, I didn't really feel like converting the audio, so I'm not going to do it. But we're going to talk about her two questions. The first one was she said, why don't you guys dedicate a little bit of time to the woman who was married to one of the Boston bombers? And she also said that eggnog sucks and you basically you would need to have had half your face burn off in a chemical fire in order to actually appreciate eggnog. And I agree wholeheartedly about the eggnog. And I think Tom can probably address better why we didn't cover the Boston bombings. You know, I thought about tweeting the stories and commenting on them on Facebook and going through and talking about them on the show. But I avoided the whole Boston bombing because it was so saturated.

You know, what a season I have to add to this. You know, what is the reason I have to add to this? You know, the the claims that I heard that the bombings were motivated by an attempt to defend Islam against, you know, being defiled and defamed by by America. It certainly fits. I guess it fits with what we normally talk about. But you've already heard so much about it. You've already been inundated for, you know, a solid week everywhere you turn. Yeah, oh yeah. This isn't a place where you're going to get something new. And, you know, I just feel like you've got to respect that and back off and say, I'm not going to be one more voice adding to the pandemonium.

And I didn't want to do that. So I really kind of avoided that. And I avoided talking about the spouse of one of I didn't want to do that. So I really kind of avoided that. And I avoided talking about the spouse of one of the bombers who converted to Islam because I never read a definitive article or interview or, I mean, I read a lot of speculation. I read a lot of interviews of interviews, but I didn't read anything that felt solid enough for such a serious topic to really come at that and feel good about coming at that topic. So that's why we avoided it. Bradley says he just joined Twitter and he was wondering who he should follow and who's worth following.

You know, Bradley, I guess it's really just sort of who you really want to go up and search out. I think following podcasts is nice if you're on Twitter a lot, because then you can see when they, for us, you get a chance to see what stories we post, and then also when we post an episode. I find, to be honest, I'll tell you one person you should follow, because I think he's fucking hilarious, is George Rabb. His tweets are very funny. He's really good at puns and one-liners, and he does a good job of being very funny in 140 characters.

Another person who I think is really funny is Zach Braff. He was in that Garden State movie. But he's actually a really funny guy on Twitter. Like, he has very funny tweets. So if you're interested in funny, those would be my two choices to find. And there's a lot of other people. I think Sarah Silverman is somebody else who's very funny on Twitter. So I would search those people up.

But if you're looking for news and stuff, there's a million people that tweet news things. So we're just one of those people. But there's a million people that tweet news. I mean, go for the big dogs if you're going to go for the news ones. I mean, follow Hemant or Friendly Atheist blog if you want to get a ton of atheist news. That's a great one to follow. Tom, we're going to read an email here. This is from Debra. Debra says, Dear Cecil and Tom, some months ago you mentioned Ted Haggard and how he was caught with a tranny. I'm right in the middle of your April 29th episode, and I have to stop right in the middle when you again mention Ted Haggard with a tranny.

Now, I know you're supportive of transgender people, and I've also heard you help raise money for someone in that situation. But the word tranny is absolutely offensive and hurtful to these people. As a mother of a trans daughter, I see firsthand how a comment like this can absolutely devastate her and inflict pain for no reason other than to ridicule someone who's different. I've been a loyal listener for years and look forward to each episode. I could swear you both under the table and don't believe in censoring speech, but I also don't believe in being mean either. This word is on the same level with nigger in my opinion, and I don't remember you ever saying that. You guys are always on the compassionate and fair side of things, so I'm thinking that you didn't mean it any way other than a joke. Always on the compassionate and fair side of things.

So I'm thinking that you didn't mean it any way other than a joke. I'm hoping you don't laugh this letter off as a crazy offended listener, but realize that I'm a very scared mother of a child who has a condition with a 41% fatality rate. I'm compelled to fight for her when I hear things like this. Thank you. So I had no idea that tranny was an offensive term. I really didn't. I'm with you on this one. I guess I hadn't hadn't considered cause I, for me, it's so close to trans. I mean, when you, you called, you called your daughter

trans and then we said tranny, it's like, it's almost like saying like, you're a little trans, you know, like you're not a big one. It's like, Hey tranny, you know, like, I mean, it just doesn't feel to me, it doesn't feel offensive. And I certainly in no way meant it in any – I mean, I'm sure I was the one who said it. I meant it in no way meant it to be offensive. We're just – we don't think – if you listen to this podcast and you thought it was offensive in any way, you haven't been listening to our show. Yeah, there's no malice behind that. Yeah. We'll try to avoid offensive in any way. You haven't been listening to our show. Yeah. There's no malice behind that. Yeah.

Uh, we'll try to avoid it in the future. I can't promise anything. I will, I will, you know, preface it by saying that I don't, I don't dislike transgender people at all. And I don't dislike homosexuals. I think we, we've established that abundantly on this show. Um, I think that what, you know, when that when we were talking specifically about this, I think it's pertinent to mention that he was with a transsexual

because he was so adamantly against homosexuals and transsexuals and those sorts of things that him being a hypocrite is the part of the story that's important. It doesn't matter whether he was a homosexual or a transsexual. He thinks a lot of things are deviant. So anything that he thought was deviant would have been fair game if he was with it. Right. And there was absolutely no offense, man.

If the word slips out again, it's just because it doesn't occur to either of us. You know, like you compared it to, to the, uh, to saying nigger. I mean, I wouldn't say that's, that's a word that's not in my vocabulary. I feel uncomfortable reading it. I don't say that word either. But again, I don't think – I think when people say – people, again, use that word. People say, you know, you would never say nigger. But understand that that is a – in African-American culture and black culture in the United States, that is a word that is a that they're in uh in african-american culture and black culture in the

united states that is a word that is used constantly i mean it is used you cannot turn a rap song on and not hear that word it is in it is entrenched in society at this point and people pretend it doesn't exist and that's you know i even feel a little uncomfortable saying it but i mean i mean really truly people pretend that word doesn't exist. And you're like, no, that word exists all over the place. I could probably play you a playlist off my phone right now that would not stop until tomorrow morning that uses that word in every song. Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me at all. You know, if it's a word that is crazy offensive, I'm a big proponent of, you know, marginalized groups reappropriating hateful terms and taking those terms back. I believe language

is deeply important. I believe that it is. And I think that that is an important and powerful thing that marginalized groups can do to take those words and to reappropriate them and to reinvest power from the subculture and from the marginalized group into those words that have been used in a hateful way against that group. But again, this isn't an excuse. We just flat out didn't know. Yeah, I just didn't know. And I, I, I don't, I don't think I'll try to avoid it in the future. I'll try to avoid using it in the future, but this is the first I've ever heard anybody say that that is a, a hateful hate speech term. Um, because to me it's so close to transgender that it, it almost feels like it almost feels

like you might want to change transgender to something completely different then. We got an email from Eric, and Eric's email is funny. I'm just going to read the whole thing. He says, Dear Cognitive Essence, I was going to send you an email just saying glory hole until I thought it over and realized that for any reason in the future that someone might go over my emails trying to piece together what kind of person I am. I wouldn't want them to come across an email that just contains the word glory hole. Now that that's out of the way, glory hole. This reminded me of that old, like, you know, your dying words are like, you know, erase my browser history. Your dying words are rosebud. Ours are going to be glory hole.

We got an email from Daryl who sent us, I guess that there's a glory hole in the UK. And there's an image, a couple images. I'll put them with this particular episode. So check out this episode on our website, dissonancepod.com. It'll be episode 99. We'll put these two images along with this show. But it says there's an an actual what looks like a tunnel in the wall like in a canal and there's a sign over it that says glory hole he says this

is in the uk but i don't think it is because it would say ye old i think i think it would be like ye old glory hole i don't think it would say no it definitely is because when I read it, I read it with an accent. Oh, did you? Okay. I particularly like that the bird shit around the glory hole sign kind of lends it an authenticity, shall we say. It does. It certainly does. It's an action shot. Nobody cleans up like that. We got an email from Susan, and Susan says, can you please give us a shout out with this blog?

And we'll put the link on our website. It's Gorilla Skepticism on Wikipedia.blogspot.com. I will put this on our website. I will say, Susan, if you're ever going to send us anything like this to tailor it to us, so say, hey, guys, or hey, Tom and Cecil at Cognitive Dissonance, I would not address it in the future to undisclosed recipients because that to me seems like maybe you might have sent that to a bunch of people. I wasn't feeling one fuzzies. I didn't feel like

maybe you were even a listener of this show when you sent this. So if you could just say next time hey Tom and Cecil and have it be directed to us, we would be happy to plug anything. But I will tell you that anything that comes to undisclosed recipients in the future probably will not be plugged. Tom, we got an email from Alan who talks about Bill Donahue, which I thought was great. Yeah, he says Bill Donahue seemed very proud of the fact that most child molesting priests weren't actually pedophiles, in his words, but only guilty of abusing children who had achieved puberty.

Doesn't that make you feel better about the Catholic Church standards? Aim high. It's awesome. Aim high. Yeah, aim high. Priests. What a guy. Aim high.

There was... No, literally aim. You've got to aim high. You've got to aim higher because they've reached their past puberty now. When you aim lower because they were a lot smaller before. Well, you remember like Psalm 13.9, if there's hair on the field, play ball. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

I mean, that's right in there. That's right in there. I think that's not in the Bible. David asks us, David says, David's from New Jersey, by the way, and he says, Tom and Cecil, Glory Hole, would you guys consider putting all the submissions of the Muslim Call to Prayer in one podcast file for download? I thought they were hilarious and it would be nice to have access to them all in one place instead of at the end of a handful of episodes. Yeah, feel free to do that. We just, I just don't really have the time to go through those episodes and pull out all that stuff.

But if anybody puts it together and sends me the MP3 file, I'll be more than happy to host it. I've already put like three or four hours worth of mixing into the show week. I'm not going to spend time going back and doing it. I just don't have the time to do it. I actually do another podcast, Double Leg Radio. I wind up doing that on Mondays and I wind up mixing that show too. So there's just too much on my plate at this point. So if you, if somebody else feels like they want to do it, I will absolutely post it. Um, we got an email and we can't really talk, uh, much about the email. The email had a lot of abuse in it. Um, and, uh, and religious indoctrination. And, uh, the gist of the email was basically a deconversion story, uh, that someone had put together and she had sent it once and then we didn't respond and then she sent it again.

We will read all the deconversion stories that get sent to us, but one of the things about the show is that this really isn't a place for people to share their stories. This isn't the medium for that. There's plenty of podcasts out there that do it. That's sort of not what the show is based on. The show is based on news and, and lots of jokes and things and really heartfelt stories about your life. They're hard sometimes to fit into the theme of the show. But Tom had a really great idea, which we're going to follow through on. I'm going to actually create, and it should be created by

the time the show goes up, there'll be a tab on our website that's just going to be called Deconversion Stories. And, and what we're going to do is make a blog post, the one blog post that just says share your stories here. And you can feel free to log into our website. You don't have to be a user. You could leave your story anonymously and share your story with other people. And if you're interested, you can go there, type out your story about how you became an atheist or an agnostic or even just you sort of lost your religion or how you became skeptical and leave that story for other people to read. And that way we can share those stories. We'll have a venue in which to share those stories that isn't the podcast and isn't us reading them aloud, especially because a lot of these stories, we get many stories like this. And most people will say, can I please remain anonymous or don't read all the story?

This gives you a chance to share this and also can basically leave what you want to share with other people. Yeah. And it's not that we don't appreciate your emails and what have you. I mean, that's not the case. It's just when you get something that's so personal and so heartfelt, you know, when we address it, we both, I think, feel like we want to be respectful and we want to honor the wishes of a person to remain anonymous. And so if you don't get a response, it's not because we didn't appreciate it or read it.

That's always – I mean, we read every email. We appreciate everything from all of our listeners. But sometimes we frankly just don't know what to say in return. Yeah, and we don't know that we're going to do it justice. If we just read it, we might not have anything to say about it. I know that, to be honest, your story was heartbreaking, but I don't relate. I can't relate to a lot of the things that happened to you. So I really don't have anything that I can add to that other than to say, you know, good luck. Right. We got a email from Jonathan who said,

I have some unfortunate news for you both. I started listening to your podcast a few months ago and I'm now caught up. Well, it's good of you to have a back catalog of so many episodes. He spelled catalog wrong, Tom. I have now exhausted them. he spelled it with a u that's why that should be totally wrong um i now uh he says i listen to uh three or four episodes a week please increase your production rate to match i understand that this will be added work for both of you but i uh having listened to your show uh i know that both of you have nothing better to do with your time yeah absolutely we're totally gonna up our production schedule to three or four episodes a week. The moment you donate $200,000 to the maintenance fund, then Tom and I can quit our jobs for

a year and just basically produce podcasts. Of course, you're going to have to donate $200,000 every year. Oh, yeah. That's a rotating thing. Yeah. So, I mean, we're more than welcome, more than willing. So, Jonathan, if you want to start that Kickstarter up, or if you just have it in your personal account, feel free to send that right on over, and we'll get started on three to four episodes a week.

Hell, we'll do five episodes a week. You know, I would go so far as to say I'd put in a good 30, 40 hours a week. Yeah, sure, 30, 40 hours a week. Which would translate, Cecil, to you to 120 hours a week. Yeah, I would have to do a lot more. You'd have a lot of mixing. We actually normally don't mention a lot of these, but we did get a post, a comment on our blog on the About the Hosts. This is from Christian, and Christian says, although I said Christian, I have no idea if that's what he's saying.

It's X-T-I-A-N. Looks like Christian to me. Sure. Why not? Hello from Beijing. My favorite podcast. Doing like Christian to me. Sure. Why not? Hello from Beijing. My favorite podcast. Doing my best to increment the China download count. So great.

Thank you for listening from China. I had no idea we weren't blocked in China. I figured we were actually the number one podcast in China because I didn't figure there were any podcasts in China. Yeah. Yeah. So. We got an email from Rachel and Rachel says, she says, after hearing about the girl who moved from the South to Boston and was much happier, I thought I'd add a few words of advice to atheists who live in the South but can't sort of disappear and leave the South.

So she leaves three major pieces of advice. The first one is move as close as your wallet can afford to a large city, preferably one with a university in it. So that's a great piece of advice. She says, use the internet to seek out local atheist groups. And she says, if you live too far away to join a group and can't move, I strongly suggest you join an online forum. She says, at the bottom, moving north might be cool, but I know there are a bunch of other people like me who'd rather chop off their own fingers than deal with the cold and snow and Yankee attitudes. I love Yankee attitudes. I love the idea of a Yankee.

You're still calling us Yankees. I don't even know what a Yankee is. You're still calling us Yankees. I don't even know what a Yankee is. You're still calling us Yankees. You're a Yankee Doodle Dandy. I am a Yankee Doodle Dandy. I can tie it in a knot and a bow. Thank you very much. What the fuck is a Yankee?

I don't even know. It's like something you blow your nose in, right? It's a Yankee. It's after the war of Northern Aggression. It's a candle. It's a candle. That's what it is. This is the best email we've got, I think, this week.

This one wins, Tom. This is the winner. We got an email from, this is from Preston. And Preston says, it's time to play Cognitive Dissonance Mad Libs. Don't feel like searching for news stories to cover the week? Not a problem. Simply use this generator, randomly create some unfortunately believable headlines. And so he basically created some Mad Lib headlines that I'm going to read for you now.

So it's basically a program that I'm allowed, all I have to do is hit a button. He wrote a little EXE file that all I have to do is hit a button and it reads a brand new, brings up a brand new headline. So I'm going to read you a few of these. In our next story, the American Family association in prison, an atheist for the crime of being an atheist. The next one is in our next story, the American family association protested the funeral of a woman who wanted equal rights for the crime of exposing a pedophile, a pedophilic priest.

In our next story, the NRA made a public statement attacking a homosexual person for the crime of voicing his or her opinion. They are ridiculously believable. They are believable. They're awesome. This is the last one. It says, in the next story, the Pope threw acid in the face of an innocent child for the crime of trying to vote.

That's the winner right there. Thank you, Preston, for sending that to us. That is absolutely hilarious. I don't know if there's somewhere where you want to post that to other people, but he has like a little .exe file that runs on PC. You run it, and my Avast

virus database is like saying, whoa, whoa, whoa, are you sure you want to run this? I'm like, yeah, I want to run it. So, yeah, if you want to post that somewhere, Preston, I don't know where you could post it. Maybe on our Facebook page or something. So if you trust Preston, you could play with this little Mad Libs generator too. Very funny.

I love the Pope throwing acid in a child's face as the child tries to vote. Yeah. That's awesome. We wanted to mention too, along with the deconversion stories, there is a fact page up for cognitive dissonance. So if you have a frequently asked question that you think should be on that page, let us know. So, Tom, this wraps it up for this episode. It's going to be on episode 100 next week. And when we get Pat Robertson and we have Muslim robo wars next week, I think it's going to be a really exciting episode.

Yeah, I can't wait for that. You know, I want to find out what the Muslim women in the robot wars are hiding under their bumpets. Yeah, that's where they hide the missile launchers. That's where they had the rocket launchers. That's what I hear. Secret weapons. That's a secret weapon. Well, it's not so secret anymore.

Well, as usual, we're going to leave you with the skeptics creed. Credulity is not a virtue. It's fortune cookie cutter, mommy issue, hypno-Babylon bullshit. Couched in scientician, double bubble, toil and trouble, pseudo-quasi-alternative, acupunctuating, pressurized, stereogram, pyramidal, free energy, healing, water, downward spiral, brain dead, pan, sales pitch, late night info-docutainment. Brain dead pan sales pitch. Late night info docutainment. Leo Pisces.

Cancer cures. Detox. Reflex. Foot massage. Death in towers. Tarot cards. Psychic healing. Crystal balls.

Bigfoot. Yeti. Aliens. Churches. Mosques and synagogues. Temples. Dragons. Giant worms.

Atlantis. Dolphins. Truthers. Birthers. Witches. Wizards. Vaccine nuts. Shaman healers. Evangelists. Cons, double-speak stigmata, nonsense.

Expose your sides. Thrust your hands. Bloody, evidential, conclusive. Doubt even this. The opinions and views expressed in this show are that of the hosts only. Our poorly formed and expressed notions do not represent those of our

wives, employers, friends, families, or of the local dairy council. This This is Cognitive Dissonance. Every episode we blast... Are you on the right mic? Because I'm hearing you through your speakers. Did you test your sound to see if you're on the right mic? My sound is on the right mic on the recording, but I'll change it over for Skype, too.

You don't have to. I don't need it. I just want to make sure that you're on the right mic? My sound is on the right mic on the recording, but I'll change it over for Skype too. You don't have to. I don't need it. I just want to make sure that you're on the right one. Cecil, you deserve the best audio quality I can provide for you. Here's the thing. I just don't want to have to call you again or send you another message and say,

Tom, there's another problem with your audio. We have to re-record the entire goddamn show. However much you don't want to make that call, I don't want to get that call. You just don't want to get it. You just don't want to see that chat when you show up in the morning. And you're just like, motherfucker, what did I do now? Damn it.

At least if I got that chat, I'm working from home tomorrow. so I'd be like, oh, I can fix that instead of wait. Not if you have to record the whole show. Oh, I would just record. I know. I remember everything I said. You just remember it all. Put it in there. And I remember all the pauses.

So I could just, at any moment, like right now, if you were like, episode 66, go. I could do it. Yeah, no. I can't remember this is cognitive dissonance, right? But I've got the entirety of our entire catalog. And the worst case scenario, you could just

listen to me and respond in time. That would be awesome. That would be so fucking funny. Have the conversation again. To be like pausing and be like, oh, he's laughing. I hope I said something. What did I say? I gotta think of something funny to say.

Awkward silence? Okay, bad joke. Really bad joke. It's all awkward silence, my friend. It's all awkward silences. It's just an hour and a half of awkward silences.