The Scathing Atheist - 474: Dowse of Ill Repute Edition

Episode Date: March 17, 2022

In this week’s episode, Idaho Republicans search desperately for the gay porn in their local library, the Streisand effect leads a bunch of Idaho students to find plenty of delightful gay porn, and Bullshit will finally take offense at the comparison. --- Get tickets to see us in Toronto here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-toronto-tickets-294592011637 To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click there: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ To check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticrat To check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-movies To check out our half-sister show, Citation Needed, click here: http://citationpod.com/ To check out our sister show’s sister show, D and D minus, click here: https://danddminus.libsyn.com/ To hear more from our intrepid audio engineer Morgan Clarke, click here: https://www.morganclarkemusic.com/ --- Guest Links: Find out more about American Atheist’s convention in Atlanta here: https://convention.atheists.org/ --- Headlines: Raif Badawi released from Saudi prison: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/after-10-years-in-a-saudi-prison-blogger-raif-badawi-has-been-freed/ Idaho House goes after librarians in their fight against gay stuff: https://idahocapitalsun.com/2022/03/07/idaho-house-passes-bill-that-could-lead-to-prosecution-of-librarians-for-harmful-material/ How Christians enabled Putin: https://www.christianpost.com/voices/how-christians-enabled-putin.html https://www.rawstory.com/putin-evangelicals/ Judge stops destroyer from leaving because it would violate religious freedom: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/to-protect-e2-80-9creligious-freedom-e2-80-9d-a-judge-still-won-e2-80-99t-let-the-navy-deploy-a-warship/ar-AAUX0kb Ad campaign to spend $100 million to remind people Jesus is a thing: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/the-100m-he-gets-us-ad-campaign-for-jesus-ignores-an-obvious-problem/ Anti-abortion Idaho lawmakers accused a Satanist of supporting human sacrifice: https://onlysky.media/hemant-mehta/anti-abortion-lawmakers-in-idaho-accused-a-satanist-of-supporting-murder/

Warning, this episode contains words that spellcheck often corrects to duck. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Stamps.com, Allbirds, and by Godawful Movies Live in Toronto, May 7th. Godawful Movies Live in Toronto, May 7th, because we missed you just as much as you missed us. And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, this is Tim Russ. According to logic, we did evolve from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday.

It's March 17th. And it's Purim. Drunken Jewish Halloween? Yes, please. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Martha Stewart's New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Idaho Republicans search desperately for the gay porn in their local library.

The Streisand Effect leads a whole bunch of Idaho students to find plenty of delightful gay porn. And bullshit will finally take offense at the comparison. But first, the diatribe. It's hard to find the silver lining around the dark black cloud rising out of the dumpster fire of current events, but it has been nice to see the larger culture slowly wake up to the stupidity of assuming the middle ground has some merit simply from being in the middle. It's a problem we've been talking about for quite a while in the atheist and skeptical movements.

It's the reason many of us, myself included, stalled out in agnostic territory on the way here. And it's the reason the mainstream media platformed medical misinformation and conspiracy theorists for so long. So from our vantage point, the problem has been obvious for decades. But the broader culture needed a pandemic to see the problem with anti-vaxxers, and they needed a liar as blatant as Donald Trump to see why the truth isn't always halfway between the major parties. But as obvious as this fallacy seems, and as beneficial as ousting it clearly is, we still haven't taken the next logical step of removing it from our arguments. I'm not saying that we argue that the middle ground is meritorious of course but we're still stuck as a culture at least on starting our debates from the assumption that it is let me give you a perfect example that

i saw online the other day started out when a friend posted something on facebook along the lines of religion is child abuse now this isn't normally something I generally endorse in public. I'm not saying it isn't true. One can mount a pretty convincing argument that it is at the very least psychological abuse, but that's the kind of thing I'm generally only going to say when it's just between us atheists here, right? It's the kind of statement that's really easy for theists to argue with at least well enough to get the movable middle on their side. It's the kind of thing that sounds hyperbolic to the average person. And considering how many easily defensible issues we can take with religion, why leave with

something that's going to put us on the defensive right away? All that being said, the dude's statement wasn't wrong. It was a bit more nuanced than I'm giving him credit for. He wasn't just posting like religion is child abuse apropos of nothing. but the crux of it was that it was psychologically abusive to teach children that they could go to hell and that's true but that didn't stop one of his relatives from chiming in to defend religion against those accusations now this person who identified as a non-believer in their response pointed out that sure from an atheist perspective that might be true but if you actually believe that hell is real it would be abusive not to tell your children that they could go there and as weak as that argument was it was apparently enough the dude backed away from his original claim conceded the point apologized and moved on now you know maybe it's because he's less inclined to argue with his family than i am maybe this family member

happened to be the rich one with the terminal illness. Maybe they're just a pain in the ass to argue with. But to be clear, this is not a good fucking point. It's a dumb one. The person who ties their autistic kid to the bed and tries to beat the demon out of them with an exorcism ritual, no doubt believes in what they're doing. And from their perspective, it would be child abuse to just leave the demons in them. That doesn't stop the shit from being child abuse this is reality not a court of law facts matter sincerely held religious beliefs don't move the fucking needle when we're talking about morality and yet this argument sounds

reasonable to most people this is not the first time that i've seen an atheist back down in the face of it hell i've seen atheists presented as like a preemptive refutation for those that might be inclined to point out how abusive the hell myth is. But the only reason it manages to sound reasonable at all is because we haven't fully excised that idea that the middle ground is some kind of sacred starting point in debate. Yeah, look, where there is generally equivalent evidence, one might have to start from a neutral point to determine an answer. That principle holds even when that evidence is equal because there is none on either side.

But you can't apply that principle when the lack of evidence is the only possible evidence for one side. If I'm arguing something doesn't exist, the lack of evidence it doesn't exist is my whole fucking argument. The fact that all the evidence is on my side shouldn't be a fucking handicap but when we insist on a but what if they're right position that's exactly what we're turning it into and sure you can play some dumb linguistic hocus pocus ass game where you define god in just such an insubstantial way that it could exist evidence free but that shouldn't matter i can do the same shit with Optimus Prime. But even if it does matter, right, even if we accept that,

we're not talking about the existence of God here. We're talking about the existence of hell. That's nine steps on from God existing, right? You have to prove that God exists, which God exists, that he inspired the Bible, that we're interpreting the Bible right, that God never changed his mind on the hell criteria. Just all kinds of unproven assumptions built on top of the fucking king of unproven assumptions. This is why we can't argue about religion on neutral grounds.

Standing halfway between reality is real and reality isn't real is conceding too much from the beginning. Our starting point has to be the mutually observable aspects of the universe, and none of those include God. We have to be able to start from the point where religions are wrong, because religions are wrong. To do otherwise lends itself to this, but what if they're right reasoning that would excuse psychologically scarring children for fun and profit? And if it's proven nothing else over the thousands of years of written history that we have, faith can never be given the benefit of the doubt they're talking about you jesus interrupt this broadcast bring you a special news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight are the mario and luigi to my toad he then right neil i positive fellas you're ready to jump right in i like it i am very well rounded

sure it's like mario and i am a sexual icon. I get it. I can dig it. But before I do, we need to pause for a word from this week's first sponsor, us. I'm not the tall one either. Oh, nice. That's true. Did you do the tutorial, though? No, because it's a hidden ghost guy.

I mean, he's glowing. Everything in the fucking game glows, dude. Guys! Guys! Hey, Eli, did in the fucking game glows, dude. Guys, guys. Hey, Eli, did you try to climb stairs again, dude? You got to stop trying to do that. It never works out well. No, no, no, no. We need to tell people about Godawful Movies live in Toronto quick

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I'm going to drink some water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we're coming to Toronto on May 7th for a God Awful Movies live show. Yeah, you don't have to watch the movie or watch the show. We're just going to be making fun of it on stage. It's a really good time. Come out and see us. We have VIP tickets to get you a meet and greet with us

after the show. Tell them about the platinum tickets. Yeah, just sip the water. Don't chug it, buddy. Remember? So there are platinum tickets which include VIP tickets to the show as well as a private game night and dinner including all our swag the night before the show. Right.

But apparently there's only eight of those left. So you know, hurry. Seven. We just sold another one. Jesus. There's seven left. Nice. Uneven number.

God awful movies. Live in Toronto. Take it to the show notes. Hurry. Get it going. Get them. Please. Your back is sweating a lot.

Because I ran so fast. Yeah. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, we have an update on a story we've been following since this show's inception really saudi blogger liberal muslim and nobel peace prize nominee raif badawi has finally been freed from the saudi prison where he spent the last 10 years of his life badawi was originally arrested for hosting an online forum dedicated to progressive islam views and that's fucking it. Yep. That's the whole thing.

He was arrested for presenting the argument that maybe Saudi Arabia could be nicer to women. And perhaps some people could belong to other religions somewhere in the world. For that crime, he's been robbed of a decade of his life. And I think we can all agree that on balance, it was a shitty decade. Right. Like if you were going to lose lose it this was the decade to lose but like it wasn't saudi prison but this man missed his kids growing up but but to the surprise of pretty much the entire fucking world the saudi government released him this week just because his

sentence was over which is a hell of a lot more than we've come to expect from their justice system honestly yeah saudi arabia knows how to end a sentence better than donald fucking trump mike lindell it's not a high bar but still it's something right and we'd be remiss if we didn't point out that it's not like he just spent 10 years in prison he spent 10 years in prison with the constant threat of maybe being executed over his head so the fact that they're just letting him go to carve his name into the beam like brooks from shawshank is a weird fucking fight yeah okay brooks that was a suicide scene let's not have association with what's rave doing now no he's leaving happily i'm sure prison yeah it's the morgan freeman carving his there you go so just a quick well he's not allowed to leave the fucking

country but yeah he, a quick recap. Rafe Badawi was originally arrested in 2008 on charges of apostasy. He was released that time without charges, but then he remained critical of national religious authorities even after having been warned. So he was arrested again in 2012 on charges of insulting Islam through electronic channels. And by Islam, of of course the religious authorities meant themselves eventually they upgraded that charge to one of apostasy which carried a potential death threat but after international backlash they went back to the lesser charge and sentenced badawi to 10 years in prison a quarter million dollar fine and because their government is

defined by its fucking barbarism a thousand lashes yeah and the u.s responded with very severe sanction oil yes right right look and now as near as we can tell only 50 of those lashes were ever carried out the plan was to drag him into a public square and lash him 50 times every week for 20 weeks but a combination of his poor health and the fact that the rest of the world was fully aware that the 1400s ended a while back stayed their whip. So at least as far as we know, the rest of that punishment was forgiven. But despite eight years of concerted effort by world leaders and human rights groups, nothing could convince them to forgive the prison sentence as well. And by concerted efforts, we mean mumbling at their shoes while they hear someone yell oil and whip a guy starting an online

forum. Yes. Human rights groups are doing a great job, everybody. They're doing a great job. Well, the human rights groups have been very vocal. It's the world leaders that have been like, So in the interim, his family escaped to Canada where his wife, NSEF Hayter, was tirelessly advocating for his relief. But for years, they had no contact with him whatsoever and were left to wonder if he was healthy,

if he was alive, if they ever planned on releasing him. Let's not forget that Jamal Khashoggi's example of how they deal with their critics is still hanging out there. So when his sentence ended on February 28th and there was no sign of him, we all assumed the worst. But after a vocal outcry from Amnesty International, we got word on Tuesday that Badawi had been freed. He was in good health and he had spoken to his family by phone. Okay, that's good. I'm going to feel much better when we see Rafe in a picture with today's Toronto sun. Like because he's in Toronto. Yeah, right.

For God Awful Movies Live in Toronto! Huh? Featuring Rafe? like because he's in toronto yeah right yeah for god awful movies live in toronto huh featuring right i don't weird fucking vibe that would be pretty weird yeah so now of course nothing coming out of saudi arabia can be all good news though rave is out of the actual prison cell he's still in the larger prison of saudi arabia and will be for some time the government decided to tack on a 10-year travel ban as a condition of his release. So he still can't see his family without endangering them with a return trip to Saudi Arabia. We also don't know that he isn't going to be just rearrested on similarly bullshit charges

later on. And we also don't know that he's not going to get like invited into a back room for a fucking appointment with Dr. Bonesaw until he's free to rejoin his family in Canada, we need to continue to advocate for his safety. But the dude's safer this week than last, and that is still worth celebrating. Absolutely. And in Idaho for

better news, the Idaho House of Representatives passed a bill Monday afternoon that could, and almost certainly will, lead to librarians being prosecuted for checking out materials that are deemed harmful to minors under the same laws meant to punish people who send pornography to children jesus yeah and just for context this is the better of two things they just did in the idaho house we're gonna get to the other one later. This is the better one. This is the smarter thing.

Right. No, we're easing you into it. And for clarity, by the way, it was for the purposes of the pun. Eli does no better than to hope for more than this out of the Idaho legislature. Yeah, for sure.

Idaho for, yeah, exactly this. Just guessing. So little background here. You shouldn't give children pornography. That's gross. Let them find it in the woods like our generation. Exactly. And rightly, there's a law about that.

Again, there's a good thing. And up until this past Monday, that law included an exception for schools, colleges, universities, museums or public libraries. Because libraries can't have a little fucking curtained off porn area in the back that you need an ID to get into like Video King. For the younger members of our audience, Video King was... I'm sorry, there's way too many components there.

But trust me, I did a good job with the metaphor just now. I did. Simile. It was like a good metaphor. How dare you? I get what you're saying, Eli, and I agree, but it is high time for libraries to have a curtained-off porn section. Right? People aren't going to libraries enough anyway for a lot of lower-income people.

It's their only reliable access to the internet. This is fair. A lot of jizz-moppers are out of work. This is a win-win-win idea. It's a matter of social justice. Exactly. I agree. No illusions in Heath and Wright.

Always thinking of the jizz-moppers. Right. Exactly. No illusions and he then, right, always thinking of the jizz moppers. Right. Right. So, as I said, Idaho's House of Representatives passed a bill to remove that exception this week and could barely contain themselves as they did from saying, gay stuff, we want to send librarians to jail for getting

kids read books with gay people in them. Yep. Bill's sponsor representative, Guyon de Mordant, who looks like Bill Nye the Science Guy's first attempt at drag, said, quote, We are simply asking that those that are responsible

for the materials in our libraries or in museums or in the other places that are listed in this code are handled sensitively and responsibly. There needs to be more vigilance, period. End quote. Not adding, I am so clearly a death eater i pretty much just quoted one yeah quick reminder that when they say pornography what they mean is whatever we want to censor yeah right i don't know maybe if the most famous quote about your side of an argument is how undefinable it is, you should shut the fuck up. Yeah, maybe.

Seems like it. And don't worry if Miss de Mordant's linguistic labyrinth fooled you. The public hearing on this bill was a lot more clear with a parent group that came out to support the bill objecting to books that featured gay characters, which they claimed violated their children's innocence and confused them with state representative bruce scoug adding again real quote i would rather my six-year-old grandson start smoking cigarettes tomorrow than get a view of this stuff one time at the public library or anywhere else and real word for word quote oh you like gay porn now you're gonna read the whole pack wait fuck where did i get this whole pack of gay porn i don't know you have some cigarettes you're illegal so i think it's obvious what's happening here

fairy tale villains have escaped their books and are now part of the idaho house of representatives i mean bruce scoug gayon de mordant i think that literally means death in french i think her name is of death in french even if it's not it is it is but even if it's not i am going to find a magic pen get them sucked back into their books everything's gonna be fine everybody we figured it out and in hypocritical role news heath are you listening because i will turn this podcast into a recap show this fast but please don't please don't no that was a pun i'm not talking about the show just relax damn it just relax in hypocritical role news in response to russia's invasion of ukraine lots of american evangelical christian leaders are coming out in strong opposition to Vladimir Putin's military campaign.

And they're all full of shit. Pretty much all of them are full of shit. A bunch of the most prominent leaders of that community spent the last decade praising a real-life Bond villain on his amazing Christian values. amazing christian values and i remember hearing lots of pushback from within the ranks from the other leaders about you know the other values he has like polonium murdering the value for example and now they're all about peace and the sanctity of life fuck you absolutely not so um yeah if you're new to the show uh welcome to the podcast where we mention something about religion and then we all fuck you absolutely not just just toss the fucking diatribe formula out there for everybody to use, Heath.

Thank you. Thanks. To be fair, that sums up all of our shows. If you could replace religion with politics, a movie plot, or a thing Morgan wants to do in Dungeons and Dragons, he's got them all. Don't steal that. So the most important example of the fuck you,

absolutely not came from Franklin Graham, one of the most prominent evangelical bigots in the United States. Frey Gray runs a charity called Samaritan's Purse that does really nice charity work if you're a Christian and cishet white person. Otherwise, go fuck yourself. Graham responded to the invasion of Ukraine by saying, I don't support war, and I don't know of any Christian that supports war. What? And yes, you fucking do. Yes, you do. It's an obvious lie.

That's like saying, we don't know any bald atheists with a goatee, Franklin Graham. Yes, you do, man. It's your thing. Read the Bible. They're all, whatever. Yes. Read yourself. Read it yourself.

Fuck. But thanks to an article last week by Josiah Reedy in the atheist propaganda newspaper called The Christian Post, we got a reminder that Graham's been supporting Putin for years now. That includes a statement in 2014, right before the Olympics in Sochi, Russia, when Graham called Putin's homophobic policies a standard of morality higher than our own, meaning higher than the United States, I guess. And he added, quote, Putin is right on these issues. Obviously, he may be wrong about many things, but he has taken a stand to protect his nation's children from the damaging effects of any gay and lesbian agenda jesus now to be clear he's talking about things

like russia having actual criminal penalties for what they call spreading lgbt propaganda what that actually means is talking about lgbt existence is illegal in russia yeah no it's it's downright floridian and quick reminder one of the main justifications the russian christian church is using for the invasion in ukraine is its relative support for lgbtq rights yeah also where he said like oh he's wrong about many things he means war crimes right yes he means war crimes which is kind of like saying but have you seen hitler's tennis game the four stroke the backstroke my friends graham also visited russia and met with his boy putin in person a little bit later they took a picture together that graham proudly posted on twitter like a wacky selfie

just planking with a war criminal hashtag yolo and graham even did an interview on russian television during which he said quote democracy is not for all people in some parts of the world it just doesn't work okay he also added broken clock twice a day i've never been a supporter of sanctions against russia so graham is anti-war and anti-sanctions wait i'm sorry he's are you implying that there's just some inherent problem with a appeasing a war criminal all the way up to the polish border i don't understand i mean his tennis game we get i would have to hear about his tennis game. Hey,

Noah, say what you will, but at least Neville Chamberlain's platform was peace in our time and not honing Lord frock bottom, the third. Yeah. God, they don't rise to the level of Neville Chamberlain.

You're right. No. All right. Before we wrap up the story, I just want to add one more thing. Let's quickly address the counter argument you might hear from evangelical apologists about this. They're going to say something like, OK, we agree with Putin about hating gay people and hating trans people, but we're against the invasion of Ukraine. Those are two separate things.

So, first of all, that's our point. That's a point for us, that sentence you just said. You're an idiot. But more importantly, what's evangelical Christianity doing to help Ukrainian people if you're against the invasion? You're praying and you're voting for Republicans who, a bunch of them, are in favor of the invasion. So, just fuck you, absolutely not, to recap. There you go. invasion so just fuck you absolutely not to recap there you go and with our a segment fuck you absolutely not quote a mat we can take a quick break for a word from our next sponsor this week

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Worse. More no, somehow, now that you said that. Beans. And we're back. Next up in headlines in Bodie No Float Face news. Of the many, many atheism t-shirts in my collection sorry ladies he's taken the one second most likely to entice strangers to start arguing with me on the street is the one that says religion poisons everything many is the time that i've been stopped by a red face and frothing christian blissfully unaware of what shirt i'm wearing that day until someone yells the word charity in my face. But I continue to wear it.

One, because I like upsetting those people. It makes them live less long. And I'm a chaos guy. But two, because one time a little old lady stopped me to ask where she could get one, and I wish we were best friends. But blood pressure effect or no, religion continued to poison absolutely everything this week as a U..s district judge stopped the federal government from deploying a 1.8 billion dollar warship and its 300 marines because replacing

their anti-vax commanding officer violates his freedom of religion okay see this is the problem with all this woke bullshit we got a military full of cuck snowflakes and we don't just get the mission accomplished. We get all tied up in this stuff. I wish that they would keep their social experiments out of the military, right? Exactly. It's amazing how you can highlight their hypocrisy just by saying pretty much anything they've ever said

any time except when they're saying it, isn't it? Yeah. Weird. So the justice in question is the not at all honorable Judge Stephen Douglas Merriday, a George Bush Sr. appointee named after a guy who famously argued in favor of more slavery against Abe Lincoln.

Cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool. This is going to go well. Let's hear about what Judge Stephen Douglas Merriday had to say. Right, because he could just go by Stephen Merida and choose as not to. It's not his fault he was named after him. It's his fault that he keeps

that in his fucking moniker. Yep, yeah. So he was sent from God to remind you why it's important for you to show up during the midterms, even if Joe Biden did spend his first two years playing with those click-clack balls on his desk while he waited for joe mansion to let him do something okay to be clear that is not what happened if you're not aware of any positive accomplishments under joe biden despite

joe mansion being shitty you're willfully ignorant and you know i'm not doing the homework for you you figure out what i'm talking about go look it up okay so you may remember mary day biden did play with those click clclack balls a lot, but that's not the point. He likes to play. It's fun. It's on his desk. He plays them. You may remember Mary Day. You can do two and then two click the other way. You can even do three and the middle one keeps clicking on both sides.

It's very cool. So you may remember Mary Day for blocking a CDC order limiting cruise ship operations during the pandemic back in 2021. So it comes as no surprise that he sided with comrade plague rat in this case. Okay, so important clarification on how Biden's been spending his time. It's called the fucking Newton's cradle and conservation of energy was still new when he was growing up. Okay, it was a new idea.

Give him a break. So cool. But it actually gets worse. Technology. Mary Day has ordered the Navy to retain the commanding officer of the warship and deploy him without regard to his vaccination status. Yeah. Which is fucking insane. Right. He might as well command them to fire the missiles from the bench.

Right. When we say we want civilian control of the military we have specific civilians in mind and i want to clarify it actually goes further than that because comrade plague rat isn't just anti-vax he's a dangerous liar according to his own superiors who testified under oath that comrade plague rat quote refused to get tested for covid19 despite showing classic symptoms then recklessly exposed dozens of his crew to the virus and quote jesus they also attested that he had intentionally deceived his superiors defied lawful orders and demonstrated a pattern of disobedience okay all that stuff also sincerely held christian. His job's going to be safe. He's fine.

Yeah, no, I'm sure fucking Judge Stonewall Jackson would feel just as strongly if the commanding officer was a Muslim, right? Yeah, absolutely. And in, it's What's for Sinners news tonight. Fantastic. Thank you. It looks like the Super Bowl cryptocurrency ads aren't going to retain the title of dumbest waste of advertising dollars in human history for long.

As we recently learned about a nine-figure ad campaign to promote this little-known cultural phenomenon called Christianity. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Led by a fellow... Christianity? Name of... Nope, not an ad spot. No point. Jesus.

So he's apparently a psychotic woodworker from Bronze Age Israel that got a raw deal in the courts. Anyway, in case you're thinking that a 2,000-year-old dead Jew from before we knew about germs and the number zero doesn't have anything relevant to say to the modern world, the ad campaign would beg to differ. The entire theme of the campaign is that, quote, he gets us, end quote. Cool. Yeah. the campaign is that quote he gets us end quote oh cool yeah jesus christ just trying to sit backwards on a stool at a middle school assembly yep doesn't make there's not a back on it he's gonna rap with us great awesome right but he's wearing a robe so we're all just staring at his dick the whole time i get it so so yeah this anonymously funded $100 million campaign is aimed at America's youth who have spent the last couple of decades leaving the church in unprecedented numbers. And while the ads I've seen so far are a bit too vague to come right out and actually say anything substantive, the idea is clearly to counter the narrative that Christianity is all about exclusion and bigotry.

That narrative, also known as the truth, is the most often cited reason people leave the faith. And I think the way that they have to euphemistically imply that they disagree with outright bigotry rather than just coming out and saying it says it all. Because they can't put out an ad that says Jesus doesn't hate LGBTQ people because the Christian backlash would get it taken off the fucking air. Yep.

So instead they put up an ad that says you know some of jesus's best friends were black and hope you catch their meaning jesus had affirmative action friends you're welcome fellow youths right you could literally give one million kids a hundred dollars each and have better success yes kids love cash buy them tamagotchis or something. That's what the kids are into these days, sure. But one way or the other, yeah, $100 million plus a lot of exposure.

Like Eli pointed out, it also could have funded some useful thing for humanity, but they decided to do this instead. Or Tamagotchis, one or the other, yeah. The point is that you'll almost certainly be seeing the hell out of these ads soon. And because the law doesn't yet require them to do it themselves, I just want to tack on a quick pharmaceutical-style disclaimer

that you can feel free to mentally add at the end when you see them. Side effects of Christianity may include confusion, anxiety, paranoia, sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, general xenophobia, aversion to basic science, child abuse, prudery, logical fallacies, boring sex, teleology, and being no fun at parties. While taking Christianity, you may experience heightened gullibility, boring sex, teleology, and being no fun at parties. While taking Christianity, you may experience heightened gullibility, devolutions of grandeur,

and decreased bank balances. Be sure to tell your doctor if you experience autonomy, logical coherence, or feelings of self-worth. Do not treat Christianity if you're pregnant or if you're planning to be.

And finally tonight, abortions are great and we need to have more of them. So I know the standard line for lots of people is I'm pro-choice, not pro-abortion. I'm both.

Fuck yeah, man. More of those would be better. And as a cisgender man, I think my opinion is very important on this topic. Maybe the most important, yeah. And GOP state lawmakers all over the country tend to agree with me on that. And they're not doing a bit.

They genuinely agree with me on that. My bit. I a bit they genuinely agree with me on that my bit i've said this before i'll say it again a bunch of dudes are making eminent domain laws about the domain called uterus one of those states is idaho where the state senate just passed a heartbeat bill that would ban the termination of a pregnancy starting in about six weeks. So now it's moving over to the state house. And during a hearing last week, a pro-choice activist named Rowan Astra made a public comment opposing that heartbeat bill. But according to some GOP lawmakers at the hearing, Ms. Astra is a Satanist who does blood sacrifice.

So, you know, the comment doesn't count oh contraire i have it on good authority that they have to let her command a warship with zombies now those are the fucking rules yeah firing fetuses at other ships might not be super damaging but the psychological effect is worth it my friends let me tell you for sure so the bill in question is SB 1309. And on top of the nonsense heartbeat thing that would make a grain of rice into a human being under the law, it would also include the bounty hunter concept like they started in Texas on this. Any family member of a person who has an abortion would be allowed to sue the doctor for $20,000 or more. Jesus.

The Boba fetus law. All of that stuff violates the sincerely held religious beliefs of Rowan Astra, who happens to be a non-theistic Satanist. Baby Ebriota. Sorry, I have... Oh! Bodily autonomy is a core tenet of that belief system and according to the supreme court sincerely held religious beliefs are based no backseas so it's all there's no rules you have

all you win here's your worship so they started interrogating ms astra about satanism it started with gop state representative heather scott a young earth creationist who asked do you think murder is okay uh astra explained that no i don't think murder is okay and they're basing this on her religion like you're the one that worships the genocidal flood guy you don't get to ask we get to ask you that yeah to answer a question with a question do you plan on trying to arrest the pixar animators for killing bing bong the imaginary friend do you see what i'm doing here no i do not see what you do not see what i'm doing here no so the next question was from state representative vito barbieri uh yeah he's also from the gop you might remember him from way back in 2015 i do during a similar

hearing in idaho when they were trying to ban abortion pills via telemedicine a doctor at that hearing was explaining how a patient can swallow a camera and allow the doctor to examine their colon for example that's when barbieri interrupted and said can a pregnant person swallow a camera so you can examine the fetus in utero the doctor had to stop what they were saying and explain through tears of weeping laughter no and also the vagina doesn't really swallow things i think that's the wrong terminology so barbieri it's it's his turn to ask a question at this hearing and we got the following It's really swallow things. I think that's the wrong terminology. So, Barbieri, it's his turn to ask a question at this hearing, and we got the following

exchange. I want to read. I want to read. Okay. I'll be Barbieri. You're going to be Barbieri? Okay, go. Yeah. I've got some preconceived ideas. Wouldn't he have an Italian accent? Thank you. I've got some precon priest conceived ideas about your religion

i'm wondering is there any tenant with respect to blood sacrifice okay i'll be rowan astra for a second she says no and then committee chairman brent crane jumps in i'll be him too he says mr barbieri um let's make sure we keep it to the focus of the bill her religion is not on trial yeah and then barbieri says what i'm curious about is whether or not there's a tenant with respect to human sacrifice chairman crane find a way to tie it back to the bill buddy you gonna tie it back to the bill there barbieri long pause can't do that we're not making this up pause pause pause sweating no and then chairman crane says okay it was an actually an okay for sure just like that yep

okay let's keep it to the bill. No one's religion is on trial. Thanks for your testimony, Rowan Astra. We're done. Real quote. All of this is real. Every bit of that was the actual transcript. I'm staring at that wall again, guys. There's literally no exaggeration level above

do you sacrifice humans to your dark god in terms of well-poisoning questions. Yeah. I feel like we need ejector seats built into the chairs in political buildings that just automatically go off to certain sentences it's like if 96% of the people have pushed the button or something

exactly I like the ejector but I like the trap door I want to go down yeah ranker for sure Yeah, exactly. I like the ejector, but I like the trap door one. Yeah, right. With a ranger. I want it to go down. Yeah, ranger for sure. Yeah. So this is all terrifying. But if they want to get ridiculous, let's get ridiculous.

You want to do eminent domain of every uterus? Then every uterus owner needs to get paid fair market value for the organ inside their body. That's how that works. And I did a little bit of math on this concept so Idaho can figure out their budget. So it costs about $100,000 to rent a uterus for nine months. I have questions about how you know that, Heath. It's surrogacy. That's the average cost of surrogacy.

Okay, good, okay. If you've ever rented an apartment in New York City, you've looked into it. You've seen smaller apartments than a uterus. So spacious. Let's be generous to the state and pretend the eminent domain ruling is a rental. It's not. But we're trying to cut a deal here. So they'll need to rent every uterus for about 40 years.

Rough estimate. Idaho has about 500,000 uterus havers of childbearing age right now, with the average person in that group getting about 20 years of rental fees. At $100,000 per nine months, that works out to about $2.7 dollars on average for each of those 500 000 people grand total 1 trillion 350 billion dollars for idaho for now yep so everybody go ahead send them the bill for this yeah yeah well it looks like we all need to head over to the billing department so i guess we can close the headlines out there. Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Jumanji. And when we come back, I'll accidentally arm Eli with yet another post-morality financial strategy. Yeah, you will. I wrote that before you started saying it. Right? It's like I knew it. Spring is just around the corner, and the warmer weather is perfect for exercising outdoors. And that makes it the perfect time for the new Allbirds.

No, don't do it. Don't do it. Heath, what are you doing, man? Don't say the name of the new shoe from Allbirds. Probably like a mystical dragon or something. You're going to summon it. Don't do it. Dude, what are you talking about? We're just talking about the new going to summon it. Don't do it. Dude, what are you talking about?

We're just talking about the new Tree Dasher 2. I'm warning. Don't do it. Tree Dasher 2. Tree Dasher 2. Oh, boy. Here it comes. Here it comes.

It's not. Okay, where's the fairy king or dragon or whatever? Dude, the tree dasher 2 is the next evolution of all birds best-selling running shoes it adds comfort to every run with lighter more responsive foam extra grip and an improved fit to keep you running and nature winning made from all birds roster of natural materials like merino wool eucalyptus and sugar cane this everyday running shoe softens impact smooths transition and continuously delivers comfort stride after stride nothing's getting summoned yeah they gave us a pair to try and it's become my new walking shoe they're stylish but they make running and walking and jogging

feel amazing okay and apparently they don't summon a magical creature that's no not happening right now what are you talking about spring forward with the Allbirds Tree Dasher 2 running shoe. Discover your perfect pair at allbirds.com today. That's A-L-L-B-I-R-D-S dot com. Right. Okay, so maybe I just imagined the wool dasher mizzle. That's it, motherfucker!

Got him. Somebody say his name backwards. Somebody say his name backwards. Go away. Does he mean mizzle dasher wool? I think he means mirrored. Heath, do you mean mirrored? He's got a fire sword. You want to get burritos?

Oh, I so want burritos. A common rebuttal that atheists get from religious people is the idea that if we got rid of religion, we'd have to replace it with something. Now, as has been pointed out before, that's a lot like saying that we'd have to replace cancer if we ever cured that, but it also overestimates the uniqueness of religion. There are no end of flawed and dangerous worldviews that rely on gullibility and wishful thinking to propagate through time, which is why we need a section called How Bullshit Is It? So tell us, Heath, what load of shit are we going to be talking about today? Today, we're going to be talking about the Quadro Tracker, or more specifically, the Quadro QRS-250G Detector.

Ooh, letters and numbers. Now it sounds more real and legitimate. Sure does. Science. Fuck yeah. So what is the Quadro QRS 250G detector? It's dowsing with a marketing department. Lovely.

Okay, so could you offer the listeners a quick refresher on what dowsing is? Dowsing is an umbrella term for pseudosciences that employ the ideomotor effect to find stuff. The most common example would be using a Y-shaped stick to look for water. That's the famous example of dowsing. Dowsers also sometimes use bent rods or pendulums or whatever they have on hand, but the idea is the same. They're using the ideomotor effect or just lying to point something towards something else magically all right so could you also offer us a quick refresher on what the ideomotor effect is it's basically a fancy term for unconsciously fidgeting

when you think you're completely still your muscles are still reacting to things to at least a minuscule degree and that can be used to say influence a pendulum or move a loosely held rod or push a planchette across a ouija board a lot of things it can do except for the time i was using it in third grade that was real and i really did talk to the ghost of burgess meredith what why would you want to talk to the ghost of burgess mered Pep talk. You're a bum, Eli. Get up. All right. So I guess the place to start is with this thing's history.

So who, for lack of a better term, invented the Quadro Tracker? Okay. So first of all, I promise I'm not reading the character description from a Carl Hyasson novel. The Quadro Tracker was invented by a guy named Wade L. Quattlebaum. No. He claimed he came up with the idea while trying to invent

something to find lost golf balls. Other people would claim sometimes in fraud trials against Mr. Quattlebaum that he came up with the idea after being given a novelty golf ball finder. Either way, he came up with a device that did absolutely nothing and had no real parts. He then went on to sell about a thousand of them for between $400 and $8,000 by claiming they could

be used to detect items as varied as drugs, weapons, explosives, specific people, golf balls, of course, alcohol, precious metals, not shitty metals, just precious ones, dead pets, and wild game. That is a very diverse series of labels on a knob somewhere on this instrument. No, no. See, there's your problem. You had it set to dead pets, Dave. That's the issue. Well, okay.

So you'd think he'd be nervous about making claims that outlandish. Not if you're paying attention to how these bullshit segments usually work. You wouldn't be nervous about it. Not only did he claim his device could find all that stuff, he also said it was so powerful it could detect drugs even after they were ingested. Wow. This was a testament to its amazing power and also a foolproof excuse for false positives, of course. According to their promotional material, quote,

the tracker will also locate specific drugs in solution. Thus, the tracker will indicate people who are using drugs as well as those who are merely carrying it. Therefore, extreme caution should be taken in searching a person or making accusations as they may indeed not be carrying drugs on them. End quote. Don't worry if the machine is wrong. Just do a search of their bloodstream.

All right. Well, at least that's logically required to be the dumbest claim that they made, right? OK, he claimed that it could detect drugs hidden in airtight containers, drugs hidden in airtight containers, a bomb in a building from outside, or a criminal suspect from as far as 15 miles away. Wow. He also claimed that the most expensive model, the $8,000 version, could detect a person based on nothing but a Polaroid photo. Come on.

That is impossibly stupid. No. Okay. Whatever level of stupid that is, it's at least one click below impossible stupid. He's got the detector on his forearm like a falcon.

He shows it a picture of you. Go find Eldritch the Far Seeker. Tell him there is more. I would trust that guy way more. Alright, so I feel like I'm obligated to ask these questions even when I know what the answers are. So, um,

could it detect any of those things? It could not. Really? You felt like you had to ask that question? No, I guess it's too much to hope that because the claims were so outlandish and scientifically implausible, people quickly picked up on the hoax and the business was over before it started. It operated for years before anybody realized it was bullshit. Made a bunch of money.

Guys, we are on the wrong side. I can make a beep beep machine by tomorrow. You guys, we will never have to watch a movie again. Tomorrow we can have a beep beep. Okay, well, I guess it's also too much to hope that because the claims were so outlandish and scientifically implausible, their customer base was limited

to rural, uneducated, elderly people that had fallen for some unsolicited sales call. His buyers included multiple U.S. school districts and police departments. Oh, for fuck's sake. I have wires right here on my desk, guys.

All right. So for unrelated reasons, can you give us an idea what this thing looked like? Did it at least look high-tech? Yeah. No, it was pretty high-tech. It looked like a glue gun with a piece of a coat hanger jutting out. Oh, Jesus Christ. Fucking dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Whatever extent you consider that high-tech looking. You have to Google it, podcast listener. It's insane. Okay, that's what the most visible part looked like. The device actually had three components. There was the locator card that supposedly contained the signature of the object

you wanted to find. Oh! There was also a card reader. It's about the size of a small cell phone, which was designed to be worn on your belt. So like, like cell phone holster is somehow built into this. The worst. That attached to the glue gun,

that, that the, the card reader thing, it would attach to the glue gun and it had a, a swiveling metal antenna. The end of it, that swiveling metal antenna at the end of it. That swiveling antenna was supposed to point to the drugs or the explosives or the dead body that you're looking for.

Okay, drugs, explosives, or a dead body. Were they selling this to the high school at Twin Peaks? Okay, so we already know what really happened was the Idiomotor effect, but what did Quattlebaum say was happening? Okay, I'm just going to read this straight from the Wikipedia article. Don't you do it, Heath. Don't you do it. Quote,

inhaling and exhaling gases into and out of the lung cavity to charge the free-floating neutral electrons of the signature card with the major strength of the signal. End exact quote. What? Original series Star Trek would be embarrassed by that level of technical babble. It says that you find the dead bodies by the gases they exhale. Oh, the breathing, yeah. All right.

How did the scam eventually fall apart? All right. Someone read that. No, no, that's not how it fell apart. We needed the fucking FBI. Jesus Christ. But like one particular smart person there, not the other people who got tricked by it for a while. We have FBI agent Ron Kelly to thank for having the scam actually fall apart eventually.

While stationed in Beaumont, Texas in 1995, he learned about the device from a friend on a narcotics task force in Louisiana, and he was immediately suspicious. He got hold of a quadro tracker and using nothing more sophisticated than the local courthouse's x-ray machine, he immediately determined that the device was completely hollow. Oh, my God. The swiveling antenna was literally the only moving part on the entire thing. He didn't even bother to put fake stuff inside. The goonies would be disappointed.

The goonies would be disappointed. The question though is, do you really need moving parts to oscillate static electricity and charge the free-floating neutral electrodes? I don't know that you do. That's fair. Scott is fair. He's a good point. But the manufacturer claimed that the mechanism contained conductors, inductors, and oscillators. So at the very least, Kelly caught the guy in a lie. It's completely empty, so it can't have conductors, inductors, and oscillators.

At this point, the FBI commissioned the Sandia National Laboratories to examine the thing, and they confirmed that it contained literally no electronics whatsoever. So other than a couple of random wires and the antenna, it's just an empty plastic box. And this is my favorite part. This guy who made it didn't even bother to connect the wires to the antenna. Jesus.

The locator chip was made of, and okay, I got to assume this indicates a certain fairly high level of psychopathy on Quattlebaum's part. The locator chip was made of dead ants that had been frozen and stuck onto paper with epoxy. Fucking what? Yeah. So the FBI showed up at his door and he was like, so I destroyed my Anticoast Museum for nothing. I'm under arrest. I'm under arrest.

Yep. So did the company even bother to respond to the allegations? They released a statement through their attorneys that said the oscillators in the quadro tracker, quote, aren't the type usually thought of by electronics experts. Oh, Jesus Christ. End quote. Okay, that's true because the type that most electronic experts think of exists. Exists, yes.

All right. But we do have laws against selling people dead ants and calling them bomb detectors, right? Right. We do. Guys? We do, asterisk. They're not very good laws but yes kind of oh no so kelly's office brought the whole thing to the courts they immediately initiated legal action

against quaddlebaum's company and the court issued an injunction that gets as close to barring him from selling the thing as they can get at the same time the fbi sent out an alert to law enforcement agencies labeling the device a fraud and urging all the agencies to stop using them immediately especially if they quote use them as a basis for probable cause now seems like you just say stop using them all together but as usual law enforcement's primary concern was covering their own asses yeah i mean to be fair probable cause has meant how much do you look like a hippie or a black guy since ever so i think a machine that doesn't work is actually an improvement yeah right all right so whatever happened uh quaddle bomb got off scott fucking

free 100 no yep he was indicted for mail fraud in 1996 along with the company's vice president his secretary and a longtime distributor. All four men were acquitted on all charges by a federal jury. How? Well. What? But this leads to a very obvious question that we have to ask in pretty much every one of these segments. Can I make one?

No. It doesn't take someone well-schooled in the ways of science to think of an experiment on the level of, you know, let's put the drugs in in one of these 11 lockers then have ed come in here with the quadro tracker and see if it works this is a pretty simple experiment yep right it doesn't take some brilliant act of investigation to notice that once in practice the device never once actually located drugs and on top of that you say many of the users were schools with science teachers and police departments with detectives so yep that's correct how the fuck does it take three years for these people to notice that it's a squirt gun with a crochet needle in it well the credulity of the average human being explains a lot of that but you

also have to think about how this works in practice so imagine you're running a school and your school has a drug problem i have seen eu Euphoria. I get it. Yep. Just like that. So some slick salesman shows up to tell you all about the Quadro Tracker, a device that, according to their literature, has been tested and approved by the FBI, the DEA, and the National Institute of Justice as a drug detector. So you buy one of these and set somebody to work at the door checking students on the way in. But first, you have a big assembly where you tell the student body about this fantastic new drug detecting technology that they'll have to walk past every morning when they come into school. So even before it's in use, you probably reduce the amount of drugs coming into

your school. And once you start actually using it, some of the kids carrying drugs are probably going to look nervous. And since the detector gives intentionally ambiguous results, whoever's checking is way more likely to interpret those results as positive if there's a nervous looking student right in front of them. Also, at some point, you're going to get a random positive result and it's going to turn out the kid does have drugs. And when you get a false positive, well, maybe they already used the drugs like it says in the pamphlet. Right. So so basically you're saying there's like a drug detection placebo effect.

Pretty much. Yes. Even after the FBI alerted everybody to the scam, a lot of people kept using it. The principal of a high school in Louisiana who did that summed it up by saying, quote, Even after the FBI alerted everybody to the scam, a lot of people kept using it. The principal of a high school in Louisiana who did that summed it up by saying, quote, I heard that there had been some trouble with it, but I tell you what, I'm impressed with it. And this is not necessarily going to be used to catch kids with drugs. If my having this thing keeps kids from bringing drugs on campus, it's worth its weight in gold, end quote. Keeps kids from bringing drugs on campus. It's worth its weight in gold. End quote.

I mean, since it was literally hollow. Yeah, probably worth its weight in gold. All right. So I guess the only remaining question is how bullshit is it? Well, technically, all the guys charged with fraud were acquitted, but the FBI still put out a notice calling the thing a fraud. So it's as bullshit as I can legally say it is, I guess. All right. That's where Andrew landed.

Interesting. All right. Well, with that reminder that, yes, they are always that dumb, we're going to wrap it up. But there will be more dumb on the next installment of How Bullshit Is It? How bullshit is it? to host a charity game night on Thursday evening, and we're going to have a table that you can drop in at all weekend. Check the show notes for links and more information to that, as well as tickets to our live show in Toronto. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show's Hot Friend Godawful Movies,

debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Dita, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I need to thank Heath Enright for doing all the Heath stuff, Eli Bosnick for doing all the legal Eli stuff, Andrew for keeping Eli focused on just that half of it. Lucinda Lusions for just being Lucinda Lusions. And an unusually huge thanks to Paws for hooking us up with a Farsworth quote from none other than Tim Russ, a.k.a. Lieutenant Commander Tuvok. Fuck yeah. Holy hell, that dude can make filthy monkey men sound pretty goddamn sexy. But most

of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most praiseworthy personages. Nicole, Steve, John, Jacob, Chris, Rosemary, Krista, Lee, John, Guy, Jana, Aaron, and Logan is my favorite X-File. Nicole, Steve, John, and Jacob, whose IQs are higher than Mike Lindell in a Sudafed factory. Chris, Rosemary, Krista, and Lee, who are so fair, mirror, mirror on the wall, started adding asterisks. And Jana, Aaron, and Logan, who are so hot they've accidentally burned

the stove. Together, these 11 elites elongated our elevated elegies this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to buy free shit with it, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingatheist, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended ad-free version of every episode, or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage

at scathingatheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but money's too slippery, you can also help a ton by leaving us a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following at PIAATpod on Twitter. Legal Thank you. contact page at skatingadeus.com. That's the silence of Noah cutting this joke. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2022. All rights reserved.