The Scathing Atheist - 538: Shiny Happy Edition

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

In this week’s episode, Governor Hochul flickers into existence for a brief second of mattering, Anti-choice Republicans in Oregon threaten to take their nothing and go home, and we’ll talk to a former shiny, happy person. --- To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheist To buy our book, click here: https://www.amazon.com/Outbreak-Crisis-Religion-Ruined-Pandemic/dp/B08L2HSVS8/ You can send us headlines or possible stories here: [e-mail] 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: Check out Chad’s TikTok Channel: https://www.tiktok.com/@archradish Check out Matthew on Twitch: http://twitch.tv/m132t003c --- Headlines: Oklahoma approves nation’s first publicly funded Christian school: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/oklahoma-just-approved-a-taxpayer Utah school banned the Bible to comply with absurd state book banning law: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/to-comply-with-utahs-book-banning NY Lawmakers try again on secular substance abuse programs: https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/ny-state-of-politics/2023/05/31/after-hochul-veto--lawmakers-try-again-to-offer-non-religious- Christians lose their shit over barely visible pride flag in promo for Jesus show: https://friendlyatheist.substack.com/p/christians-are-furious-over-a-tiny Oregon Republicans Are Literally Sacrificing Their Jobs to Block a Modest Abortion Bill: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/oregon-republicans-literally-sacrificing-jobs-190819340.html

Warning, we haven't gotten any less vulgar since last week. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Aura Frames, Honey, and by the upcoming Zelda sequel where Link just lets Hyrule deal with its own shit but still pretends he's helping, Legend of Zelda, Prayers of the Kingdom. Prayers of the Kingdom. Because the Zelda references have shown up earlier and earlier in every episode so this was bound to happen eventually. And now, The scathing atheist. Hi, I'm Matthew Cutler. I'm an autistic atheist variety streamer on Twitch, and this week, it's my turn to tell you that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey people. It's Thursday. It's June 8th.

And it's the Festival of Corpus Christi. Nice cannibals on parade. Fantastic. No illusions. I'm Eli Bosn parade. Fantastic. I am no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Treason Links, Bedminster, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia,

this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, Governor Holchul flickers into existence for a brief second of mattering. Anti-choice Republicans in Oregon threaten to take their nothing and go home. And we'll talk to a former shiny, happy person. But first, the Diatrap. I feel like Christians must think that the entrance exam to get into atheism is grueling as hell, right?

Because the second you tell them you're an atheist, they expect you to be an expert on every single subject that ever earned its own ology. I was recently on the Sunday show with Matt Dillahunty. We were talking about this phenomenon, and this is how it goes. You're like, oh, I don't believe in God. They're like, oh, you don't believe in God, huh? So where does the universe come from? So yeah, man, thanks for keeping your ask so manageable, but okay. All right. Now I got to go and I got to learn about cosmology to justify my atheism. That's all right. I'm interested in space shit anyway. Let me go do that. Then you come back and it's like, oh, you don't believe in God. So you think we came from monkeys. All right. Well, now I got to add biology,

apparently. And then it's, oh, you don't believe in God. Well, how do you explain this layer of sediment in the earth if it's billions of years old? So we add geology. And then how do you explain this account in the Bible? So we got to add ancient history. And what about this biblical prophecy that clearly predicted this modern event? So we got to add textual criticism. And then where do you get your morals from? So we add ethical philosophy. And then where do you get meaning from? So we add all the other philosophy. And then how do you explain this experience that my cousin says she had when she was 14 years old?

And you're like, for fuck's sake, I've already got two full course loads here. But here's the thing. As I'm sure you're already aware, there is no entrance exam for atheism, and we're not obligated to know about any of that shit. As atheists, we're not making any claims about any of that stuff other than, I don't think it was God. When somebody asks you, where did the universe come from? The only answer you owe them as an atheist from a logical perspective is, well, not a magical ghost. And that's assuming you owe them any answer at all, which given how frequently we encounter these questions in bad faith is a mighty big assumption. Now, of course, it's not always a deliberate obfuscation. Sometimes it is. William Lane

Craig famously tries to debate history with philosophy experts, science with history experts, and philosophy with science experts. But more often than not, those are just the questions that first occur to the theist to ask you. After all, for most believers, their religion underpins everything in their lives. I don't know anybody who would say that about their atheism. I record multiple shows every week about atheism. I have for a decade. I attend atheist conventions. I have a drawer full of atheist t-shirts. I've written three books about atheism. I have for a decade. I attend atheist conventions. I have a drawer full of atheist t-shirts. I've written three books about atheism. And even I wouldn't reserve as high a place in my day-to-day life for atheism as even the average lukewarm Christian would for God.

See, for an awful lot of incurious religious folks, the answer to every question is God did it. When they reach the end of their intellectual curiosity, which is often a mighty short road with these folks, there's a sign there that just says God did it. So before they can even consider your worldview, they need a replacement answer for pretty much every fucking question that there is. Their indiscriminate prance through the course catalog seems perfectly logical if you consider it from that admittedly already illogical perspective. But that still doesn't mean that you owe them polymathery. I know I get sucked into these kind of arguments constantly because I'm actually interested in cosmology, biology, ancient history, philosophy, etc.

And I also get that I'm very often asked these questions with perfect sincerity. And I also get that I'm very often asked these questions with perfect sincerity. So I start to feel like my ability to sell evolution or the Big Bang might actually be the difference between someone becoming an atheist or maintaining the voluntary yoke of religion. The pressure's on. whatever field they're asking about, and instead simply emphasizing the fact that God isn't a beauty pageant runner-up who gets to step in if the Big Bang is unable to fulfill its duties as a theory of cosmogenesis. And sure, it's a source of constant frustration for vocal atheists being called upon to know a dozen disparate subjects per argument, especially because there doesn't seem to be any corresponding obligation on the part of the theist who keeps bringing them up. But it's also a great way to highlight just how many academic subjects religious thinking is out of line with. And if we can make our interlocutors see that, it'll probably be way more impactful than any specific question we might answer for

them about natural selection. They're talking about you, Jesus. answer for them about natural selection they're talking about you jesus interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight are the drogon and regal the my vasirian heath enright and eli bosnick fellas are you ready to burn this shit down daenerys was right absolutely she was right i was rooting for the whole time john shot first oh jesus she was right oh see i thought it was referencing the fact that people are disappointed when we finish. In which case, fair. Fair. Both.

All right. Well, if we're going to end this intro as bad as Game of Thrones ended, at least one of us needs to shit ourselves. So while we take care of that, we're going to take a break from this week's first sponsor, Aura Frames. No, no, trust me. Wind temple, fire temple, water, Which is the best, and then lightning But I want to check out the depths You're not ready for the depths Hey guys, what's going on?

Not much, dude What's with the ski goggles? Oh, you mean my Apple Visions? There it is, 100% unsurprised So you like got them early or something? I wish. No, Heath, these are just ordinary ski goggles that are rounded out on a lathe.

But once Apple Vision takes over the vision space. Please don't just make up words like that. Once Apple Vision takes over the vision space, what's going to be the hardest part? Drowning out other people's laughter? No, no. It's going to be getting used part? Drowning out other people's laughter? No, no. It's going to be getting used to wearing goggles all the time. So I'm starting now so I can be ahead of the curve. So you're looking ridiculous before you need to.

Goodbye, guys. These are awesome. I'm going to be able to watch movies and use apps. I can look at photos of my kid whenever I want. Okay. All right. One, the Quest, which you already have, does all those things. But two, if you want a better way to look at pictures of your kid, why not try an Aura Frame? Oh, this is an ad for an Aura Frame. Yeah. Glad to hear it. I thought we were just dunking on the goggles for a second there. I was like, is this what we do? Yeah, I mean, we could. Did you hear it's going to be $3,500?

$3,500. Literally the price of a high-end computer and a VR headset combined. Guys, guys, guys, guys. Aura frames? Yeah, sorry. What are the... Those are great. What are the aura frames?

Looking for a gift for dad that he won't want to return? What if you could put all your photos, including those random camera roll pics, in a place where he can actually see them? Then get him a Wi-Fi connected digital frame from Aura. It's the perfect gift for Father's Day. This is not the digital picture frame you remember from the early 2000s. There are no USB or SD cards. There's no hassle.

With free unlimited storage, instantly frame photos and videos from any device anywhere in the world and invite the whole family anywhere in the world, and invite the whole family in on the fun through the free Aura app. You can even preload photos and a personal video message that'll display as soon as the frame is connected. It's true. I actually bought an Aura frame because I heard about it on another podcast and I gave it to my mom as a gift and she loves it. Unlimited pictures of my kid. She can even like them and scroll through on the frame. Looks really nice. So right now, Aura has a great deal for Father's Day. Listeners can save by visiting auraframes.com slash scathing. That's A-U-R-A frames.com slash scathing. Use the code

scathing to get $30 off plus free shipping on their best-selling frames. This deal ends on June 18th, so don't wait. Terms and conditions apply. All right, Noah, thanks. Ah, sorry. Did goggles hurt your face? Yeah, yeah, but it's okay. The Apple ones only have a battery that lasts two hours.

Two hours. It's okay, you can plug it in. Oh, you can plug it in. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, the Oklahoma School Board approved what will be America's first publicly funded religious charter school this week. In a move that even the state attorney general calls unconstitutional. The state attorney general of Oklahoma? Of Oklahoma, yes. constitutional the state attorney general of oklahoma oklah fucking homa yes this is a state

next to arkansas where sarah huckabee sanders is in charge yes yeah right yeah and also next to texas where no fucking body's in charge so so this came after a month's long fight between the governor and the first amendment which the governor won by appointing more agreeable lackeys to the school board apparently so yeah unless secular advocacy groups can strangle this in its grave, the St. Isidore of Seville Virtual Catholic Charter School, operated directly by the Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, will become the first religious school in the nation funded entirely by taxpayer dollars. And the prank war begins. Thank thank you you come on to my internet

with this shit they just stepped into the domain name thunderdome saint isadora seville virtual catholic i mean allegedly whatever i have to say that makes laws not real it's a yeah right there's one of those one of those phrases uh so. First of all, well done. So first of all, quick thanks to Bruce, who was the first to send us this story at scathingnews at gmail.com. Yeah, I also got an email from my mom about this one. It just had the link and it said,

get your shit together. Right. As if like, I have to like D up with atheism. Like I gotta talk to my boys at atheism and deal with this. Wait, wait, wait. Gentlemen, are you telling me that based on those two stories, if listeners send us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com,

statistically, Heath will be capable of loving 50% of them? What? He does have you there, Heath. Damn it. Does he? Yeah, kind of. Math checks out. But of course, we've also been following this story since April

when the board first unanimously rejected the archdiocese's application. But after applying an overbroad interpretation of the already quasi-constitutional Supreme Court decision Carson v. Macon, that's the decision from last year that forced Maine to make supplementary funds available to religious schools, they were able to convince two-fifths of the board and the governor who got to appoint the fifth-fifth that it was legal.

So as of this week, they're going to go ahead with it. Yeah, but they might find sign-up a little difficult because when you Google, say, whatever online Rape Your Kids Academy, you don't actually get their website till page seven. Oh, really? Seven of the Google results is where you actually get the

school. Now, it's easy to lose track of how bad this is because of the various incremental steps that we've been taking towards it over the last few years. But make no mistake, this would be a huge step beyond the already egregious violations that we've seen. We're talking about redirecting an estimated twenty three point three3 million of taxpayer funds away from secular schools and towards explicitly religious ones. That's over the next five years. In Oklahoma. Yeah.

Where the schools probably aren't doing great. I would imagine the public schools there. Yeah. Right. Right. And these, of course, religious schools are not required to, for example, certify their teachers. Cool.

Or hire LGBTQ people. Or not fire someone for getting pregnant. And by the way, I should point out that $23.3 million over five years, that's their estimate. So that's the low ball. And again, we're talking about Oklahoma. That's like

$200 million in today's money. Well, each student needs a fan to simulate the wind coming sweeping down the plane, you see. Yeah, right, right. No, at this point. Now, of course, several groups

are already mounting legal challenges, including Americans United for Separation of Church and State, whose president Rachel Lazor said of the move, quote, it's hard to think of a clearer violation of the religious freedom of Oklahoma taxpayers

and public school families than the state establishing the nation's first religious public charter school, end quote. But perhaps the most impactful criticism of the decision came from Oklahoma's attorney fucking general, who said it was clearly contrary to state law and could open the state to costly legal action.

Yeah, from somebody named Laser. Y'all are in trouble that's a gladiator right no she'll kick your fucking ass yeah also imagine thinking the worst thing about destroying the separation of church and state is this is gonna cause some legal fees yeah right well it is oklahoma and he is a republican so that's the best we can hope for. And in epic shell phones news. Nice. Thanks to a book banning law from the Utah legislature, a public school district just removed all the King James Bibles

from the shelves of their elementary school and middle school libraries because fuck your face. This is awesome. Well, yeah, I know this is fun because they're biting themselves in the ass here, but for real, you see, if any other book advocated murdering your kids to appease God or prescribed a fair market price for rape, it wouldn't

have been on elementary and middle school library shelves to begin with, right? This is actually a book we should ban from those schools. Yeah, broken clock and all that. Well, yeah, right, right. Exactly. All right. Well, yeah, right, right. Exactly. All right. Well, a big thanks to Zena and also like 200 other people who sent us the story.

Skating news, gmail.com. Good stuff. Heath loves 50% of you. Yeah. Okay. 100.5 of you. An even bigger thanks to all the piece of shit Republican lawmakers who made this all possible. Heath loves 0% of you.

Yeah. Zero. Yeah. who made this all possible. Heath loves 0% of you. Yeah. Zero. So last year, they passed HB 374, making it illegal for any public school

to have sensitive materials in the curriculum or the library. And of course, the plan was to use that for banning all the propaganda of the woke agenda in their heads. For example, fictional gay penguins, like in the graphically sexual children's book and Tango Makes Three. Now, I haven't read that book, but I'm assuming these two father penguins

are just railing each other the whole time, right? Nope. Yeah. Can confirm. Can confirm. A lot of penguin felching in that one. And felching. Oh, okay. Interesting. Okay. Like flipper stuff. So in order to deal with that very real problem of the fictional penguins, HB 374 defined sensitive material to include pornographic or indecent content

because these lawmakers are idiots and they forgot how that language applies perfectly to the Bible. how that language applies perfectly to the Bible. But one hero of a parent did not forget and submitted an official request to ban the Bible. We talked about this a couple months ago. And that included an eight-page list of Bible verses that mentioned topics like incest, bestiality, prostitution, genital mutilation, fellatio, notably not cunnilingus though, which is very telling that only one of those is in the Bible. Also rape, infanticide, dildos, and masturbation. See, I don't remember the fellatio and dildo parts of the Bible and I feel like I would.

Yeah, I don't think that's what you are my rod and my staff means. I hate to give notes. It could be. It could be. I could just be misinterpreting it. And just a reminder, this hero of Utah also added the following to that complaint about the Bible. They wrote, quote, I thank the Utah legislature and Utah Parents United for making this bad faith process so much easier and way more efficient. Now we can all ban books and you don't even need to read them

or be accurate about it. Heck, you don't even need to see the book. End quote. And that's all true. That's how it works now. Well, the Davis School District got together for a meeting as required by the stupid fucking law.

And they decided that kids should be reading about, you know, incest, bestialest bestiality mutilation at al but not until ninth grade they left it in the high school it's an interesting line in the sand okay all right so what if we told them we would bring back mandatory prayers in schools but only if drag queens come in to lead them do you think their heads would explode and if they did would we be able to be to lead them. Do you think their heads would explode? And if they did,

would we be able to be criminally charged for that, you think? No, no. You have to say allegedly. I said earlier. Can we allegedly be criminally charged? Christian doesn't count. So it actually gets even better. The latest complaint is asking for a ban on the Book of Mormon. Oh.

Interesting. Utah. And the school district already announced approximate quote, we're forming a committee to evaluate the Book of Mormon at a secret location we own guns. Tight as a dish. Always did sound sexual to me.

Thank you. And in Hocho Horses news, we have a bit of good news from Heath and My's home state of New York. That is your home state that neither of you live in? Home is where the heart is, Noah. Go Yankers!

Yankees. Whose side are you on? Anyways, Yankees. Regular listeners may remember that way back on episode 315, New York State Governor Kathy Hochul, a woman so forgettable she's legally invisible, vetoed a bill that would have allowed defendants in possession, distribution or DUI cases the right to a non-religious substance abuse treatment option in their sentencing. And it appears that second time's the charm, however, as a new and improved bill has just passed the state house and is headed to Kathy Hochul's desk, hopefully to be fucking signed this time. OK, why are we letting people from upstate New York have power in New York? What is happening? I know she's the first female governor of the state.

That's good. And she's a Democrat, but a Buffalo Democrat. Thank you. Get the fuck out of here. That's almost Canadian. Yeah. She might as well be a forest fire. Put out your forest fire. How do you get from Rockaway to Harlem right now? Too slow. Exactly. Can't do it. Absolutely not. You have no power in New York. The E? It's the A train.

Oh, it's the A. Okay. The quickest way to Harlem. No, you're right. I was thinking E. I know it's a vowel. I know it's one of the vowels. Okay. The quickest way to Harlem. No, you're right. You're right. I was thinking E. I know it's a vowel. I know it's one of the vowels. It's blue. It's blue. Now, you might be wondering why Hoach Magoach vetoed the bill in the first place.

Well, go fuck yourself. That's why. Her office never even attempted to provide an explanation. However, Assemblyman Harvey Epstein, the unfortunately named sponsor of the bill, promised to write a new one that says, pretty please at the top, with communications from organizations like American Atheists, it seems like this new bill will pass.

Okay, but why does it seem like that? Like, I'm glad that's true, maybe, but why does Kathy Hochul, like, need to be unplugged and plugged back in like a router to do it again? What the fuck happened? I'll tell you what happened. She got a look at fucking Jeff Blackwell's quads and realized she wasn't ready to go toe-to-toe with that machine. They are cut.

I heard Jeff told her, quote, the only way I could destroy you more is with the power of my lovemaking, and she signed on the spot. That's what I heard. That sounds like something he would say. Yep. Anyways, as we mentioned in the original story,

this practice, just for the record, was already illegal. Right? Right. The bill doesn't make secular recovery programs available for the first time.

Instead, it just eliminates the step where secular defendants have to sue the state and win in order to be given a non-religious alternative. This bill is more about ending the waste of everyone's time and money than anything else. And yet, there will still be people learning about their options for the first time because of this bill. There will be defendants who won't just go along with whatever they're sentenced to in hopes of not pissing off their judge. A risk that we've learned on this podcast many times is very real. So yeah,

I mean, however late it may be, this is indeed good news. All right. Well, it's very rare that I get to introduce a sponsor on an up note. So we're going to take that opportunity to pause from a word from our second sponsor this week, Honey. Hey, podcast listener. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And I'm No Illusions. Today's episode is sponsored by PayPal Honey, the easy way to save when shopping on your iPhone or computer. But did you know it only takes a few seconds to get it? That means if you go to add it to your laptop or iPhone right now, you could be done before this ad read is even over. We'll even help you do it.

Here, open your browser right now. Wait, what if they're driving? You can do stuff on your phone while you're driving. Nope, you sure can't. Don't do that. I mean, you can, though. Moving on, moving on. Honey is the free shopping tool

that scours the internet for promo codes and applies the best one it finds to your cart. What do you do if you get a text message? Imagine you're shopping one of your favorite sites. When you check out, the Honey button appears and all you have to do is click Apply Coupons. Wait a few seconds as Honey searches for coupons you can find for that site. If Honey finds a working coupon, you'll watch the prices drop. So you pull over if you get a text message while you're driving?

No, just don't answer it. What? Why, yes, Heath and Eli, honey has saved me money. I use it when shopping online and I've saved money on everything from food delivery to Christmas baskets for friends of the show. And honey doesn't just work on desktop. It also works on your iPhone, too. Just activate it on Safari on your phone and save on the go while you're driving, not while you're driving. Getting honey seriously only takes a few seconds and by getting it you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting the show get paypal honey for free at join honey.com slash scathing that's join honey.com slash scathing

honey please drive carefully missing out on savings no You can do it when you get home. Or not. And in pride cometh all over thy tits news. The Christian television phenomenon let chosen, which you may recall from purposely vandalizing their own billboards last year in a marketing campaign designed to cash in on Christianity's persecution

fetish, is currently filming their fourth season, and they decided to tease fans of the show with a little behind the scenes featurette last week but visible at the extreme left of the screen and occupying less than four percent of the total visible area for literally three seconds of a six and a half minute video was a pride flag anna what are the guys talking about? It's the newest, the greatest, Christian Freakout. That's right. Christians are furious over the lack of sufficient

bigotry on set. Turning Point USA blogger John Root was the first to draw attention to this in a tweet where he highlights the tiny, barely visible smudge of spectrum and says, quote, Hey, at the Chosen TV, can you explain why there's a pride flag on set?

End quote. The comment section of the video itself is predictably filled with elaborations on Root's concerns, including multiple demands for apologies to Christian viewers, calls for boycotts and threats to withdraw funding from the almost entirely crowdfunded program because a person who works on the show supported a human right. Yeah. All right.

So the new game, this is going to be fun. Sneaking rainbow stuff into every single Christian production of anything ever that you have access to. Photons are already being dispatched and so many Heath points for anybody who pulls off a good one.

Seriously, make it happen. I was gonna say, not to give direct instructions, but I know we have a listener who works on David A. R. White movies and TV shows. Yep. You didn't get us into God's Not Dead 3, man. Come on, you owe us. Yeah, right, exactly. You owe us. Promise

is broken. Just keep changing your shirt and like it spells out a rainbow over time. Ooh, just Roy G. Bivitt on them? Yes. Now, for their part, the show's producers have not apologized, but they also haven't expressed the slightest modicum of support for the gay crew member whose flag it

was or for the basic human rights that the flag stands for. Instead, they validated the bigotry by saying that that one person's pride flag quote, doesn't speak for everyone, end quote. And look, as a crowdfunded project that relies on atheist support, we often joke about how much more money we would make if we decided to find Jesus. So it's actually it's kind of nice to be reminded once in a while what a fucking cursity is to cater to a Christian audience. Exactly.

And finally tonight, in epic self-Oregon news, Oregon, the Christian right block of the Oregon Senate has decided they'd rather die than allow uterine autonomy. And I think that is so brave of them.

I love this. They should definitely keep doing that. Just lose all their jobs right in our fucking faces or literally die. Whatever y'all were thinking is super cool. Love this. Brave. But seriously, that appears to be their plan. 13 anti-choice

lunatics have been refusing to show up for any voting in order to prevent the required quorum and keep delaying a bill that would codify Roe into state law. But if any lawmaker rings up 10 unexcused absences in Oregon, they're no longer eligible for re-election. These people do not seem to understand how this works at all. Look, folks, I know it's weird that we have rules describing the appropriate length of the pouty conniption fits

by which we govern our nation, but we do. We actually do have those rules. We do. Yeah, Oregon does, at least. So thanks to Weston for the link, skatingnews at gmail.com. Keith loves half of you, Weston. Yeah, okay. So here's the backstory.

Heading into last year's election, Republicans made a big push to overthrow the Democratic majority in the Oregon State Senate for the first time in 20 years. And they got some huge financial support, including from local billionaire Phil Knight. He's the founder of Nike,

named after the Greek goddess of victory. So they lost, big anti-Nike on that. Democrats held the Senate. And another thing that happened in that election, Oregon voters approved Measure 113, which amended the state constitution to include that rule about 10 unexcused absences. And also on top of that, just for spite,

Senate President Democrat Rob Wagner also added a fine of $325 for each day they miss. Oh, nice. I mean, not getting paid for the days that you refuse to show up for work because you're in a snit wouldn't normally be classified as a fine, but call it whatever you got to call it. Nor a spiteful boss. It's just like not pay you when you're here at work. Right.

Can't help but notice you gentlemen are bringing this up right before my vacation. Just say what you want to say, okay? So we're also bringing it up right after I took a week off to play Zelda. So who I don't know who this is directed at, honestly. So that brings us to last month when Democrats in the state Senate proposed a bill that would protect abortion access and gender affirming health care. Anna, that's right. Of course, the Christians had a freak out about that. And those 13 Republicans refused to show up for work at their jobs of fucking work in order to block the two-thirds quorum that's required to vote on a bill. And now 10 of those 13 Republicans and counting have gone over the absence limit and they cannot be reelected.

And just for context, the entire state Senate is 30 people. But also important context, they can only lose this battle. There's literally no way for them to win anything here. Not going to happen. Okay. But what about the loyalty from voters who can't elect them that they yeah right try running for governor all of you yeah who is a team well speaking of team these idiots are calling themselves the oregon 13 oh fuck you yeah because their situation it's just

like being wrongfully jailed during the civil rights movement. Same, same thing. Same thing. Right. And they set up the Oregon 13 Constitutional Defense Fund, hoping to crowdfund a free speech legal challenge against that democratically approved state law during which the people freely spoke at the ballot box. And apparently that is a super dumb idea, even within our absurd legal system of 2023. According to Sandy Chung, the executive director of the ACLU, which would normally help with free speech cases, quote, go fuck yourself. Or it was something very similar.

I don't think that was exactly it. All right. Well, I guess I need to add not showing up for work to my running list of nonsense things Republicans have tried to cram under the umbrella of free speech. So we're going to close the headlines there. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Basic freedoms.

And when we come back, this musical fade back out. trigger warning the following interview includes discussions of emotional psychological and physical abuse listener discretion is advised every once in a while the mainstream media glances up from whatever vampire superhero reboot prequel they're regurgitating and realizes that there's this huge group of christians openly trying to subvert our government replace it with a handmaid's tale style dystopia and maybe they should acknowledge that well such is the case with shiny happy people an amazing new documentary miniseries on amazon prime that looks at the dark side of the duggar family of x teen kids and counting fame as well as the iblp the fundamentalist ministry that undergirds their twisted family dynamic.

Well, among the voices featured on this series is that of my guest tonight. Chad Harris grew up in the IBLP. He shares his experiences on TikTok under the account Arch Radish, as well as on this documentary. And he's here tonight to share them with us. So, Chad, thanks for coming on the show. And thanks for everything that you're doing to expose this abusive lunacy. Oh, thanks for having me, Noah. And hey, it's a huge honor to talk to you. I've been listening for years. Right on, right on. Well, yeah, you know, we met a couple

years ago at the American Atheist Convention in Atlanta. I believe you were there on the TikTok panel. Is that correct? I was not on that panel, but a lot of my friends were. I'm good friends, well, with pretty much everybody on that panel. But I've been telling my story on TikTok for quite some time. And we've all kind of gathered a little community around that. We all have different experiences, of course, you know, and how we were engaged with religion, you know, before we all became atheists or before we all became publicly known as atheists. And yeah, they're just a really great bunch. I really am proud of them.

Yeah, I've met some amazing people. It's always like that at these conventions. You meet so many amazing people and you're like, okay, well, that's 27 people I need to interview. And then, yeah, some of them take a little while. So, okay. So, obviously, one could spend four hour-long episodes answering this question and just really scratch the surface. But in bronze strokes, for people who haven't seen the documentary, can you tell us what is the IBLP? Is it a church? Is it a religion? What even is this? It's so much bigger than any of those things, actually. It's an entire organization. It was started in the 60s and 70s by a man named Bill Gothard, who essentially just as a graduate from Wheaton College, came up with this idea for a system he called the Institute on Basic Youth Conflicts, where he took a whole bunch of the societal upheaval that came about

through integration, through the feminist movement, through all the different movements of the 60s and 70s, civil rights and what have you, and determined that to try to appeal to the conservative, narrow-minded folks out there there that the real problem with America was that people were disrespecting authority. And if the youth of today would just start to learn to respect authority again, then our country would be great. And if that sounds familiar, it's the same song, different verse today, but he was doing it before it was cool, as it were. So he started the Institute and Basic Youth Complex in the 60s and 70s, and eventually expanded that into the Institute in Basic Youth Conflicts in the 60s and 70s,

and eventually expanded that into the Institute in Basic Life Principles, which came about when he developed his idea of core principles that every Christian needed to have in their life to be successful. From there, he stumbled into the homeschooling movement in the 70s and 80s, and that was when things really took off when he expanded it into the Advanced Training Institute of America, or ATIA. And that was when IVLP really hit the biggest that they've ever been in, well, frankly, in their entire history. So I want to hear more about your story growing up around this. So first of all, this is obviously heavily associated with the Duggar family. Did you grow up in one of these huge quiverful families? Not at first. I grew up in a relatively normal, and I say that in the broadest terms possible, relatively normal,

independent fundamental Baptist family. My dad was an independent fundamental Baptist preacher. And I was actually the fourth of four children to start with. I was kind of born sometime after my older brother. I was an unplanned child, and my folks took the opportunity to let me know that at every moment they could. But when I was about six or seven years old, my mother went to an OBGYN who convinced her to join the Quiverful movement. And for those not familiar, Quiverful is just simply the idea that Christians should try to take over the world by overpopulating it.

The idea is that you have a Quiverful of arrows, aka children, that you're able to shoot out against Satan, and you should trust God to give you as many arrows or ammunition as possible to do so. So this actual OBGYN told my mother that she should consider turning over how many children that she had to the Lord. And so, yeah, seven years after I was born, I had two younger siblings. And so I became the fourth of

six. So it was one of the things that was really heavily promoted in the IBLP because from the Quiverful movement, we went straight into the IBLP itself. The IBLP borrowed a lot of ideas from the Quiverful movement and Bill Gothard taught that having as many children as possible would bring about the societal change and the respective authority that he had been teaching all along. Matter of fact, they didn't touch on this a whole lot in the documentary, but they would actually have entire choirs full of children that were purported to have been born from reverse vasectomies. So, you know, after children were conceived,

after the father had a reverse vasectomy, they would, you know, grow up and, like, train them to sing in these choirs to show, like, see how many people have, many people have really answered the call of God or whatever. And it was just sick. All right. So you've already touched on the homeschooling being sort of at the core of the growth of this organization. So can you tell me a little bit about your education? Were you pulled out of public schools to be homeschooled or were you always homeschooled? I was always homeschooled. My older siblings had all gone to either public or Christian school at some point in their lives. But my folks, even before we got into IBLP, decided to try to go

ahead and homeschool me from the start. They had trouble finding a curriculum. And I believe that the move into ATI, the homeschooling branch of IBLP, came about because they were looking for something that would work for both my older brother and myself. Bill Gothard was a consummate salesman, and he promised that if you followed ATI, you would receive a pristine Christian education. You would even have enough education to qualify for pre-law and pre-med if you followed his bizarre-ass teachings. So I went from doing relatively normal Christian homeschooling stuff, which in and of itself is a whole subject, to going by these just weird ramblings of Bill Gothard, in which he would take the entire Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 6, and 7, and try to pull all these academic subjects out of every line of the

Sermon on the Mount, which you can't do that. Spoilers, but all you end up doing is coming up with total nonsense. Now, obviously, I feel like I'd be remiss to talk about this subject at all without talking about the abuse fostered by IBLP. So to the extent that you're comfortable talking with us about it, of course, what kind of abuse did you experience and witness growing up around this organization? So IBLP was very focused on authority, like I said, and to really emphasize that, they would teach parents how to physically spank, and I'll just go ahead and say it, abuse their children until they absolutely could not put up a resistance anymore. And this is one thing I know that they

cover in the documentary, a concept called blanket training, in which they would put infants on a blanket, entice them to crawl off of it, and punish them when they did. I do remember seeing that growing up quite a bit. I was too old when we got in to really experience that myself. But I do remember that I was spanked and abused for long periods of time physically. And the goal, according to my folks when they did it, was to get me to stop registering an emotional response at all. If I cried out, I would just be beaten until I didn't. If I expressed any kind of sadness, I would be beaten until I didn't. If I expressed any kind of sadness, I would be beaten until I didn't. And I got really good at blocking out pain,

which led to a lot of health effects later in life. You can just imagine. But this was very common among a lot of kids I saw growing up. And I always felt like I kind of got off easy because I knew of other kids who were very, very much like physically harmed and in some cases, you know, developed even worse physical maladies throughout their entire life. And it was all in support of this idea that if you don't have an ultimate authority in your home, which in most cases would be, you know, whoever the oldest man was in the home, then everything would fall apart. So you had a divine

mandate to hurt your children. It was just sick. Wow. Yeah. And we're not even touching on the misogyny of it as well, which is, of course, a huge focus of the documentary. Certainly. So when did you first start thinking that there was something wrong with how you were being raised and these religious teachings? and wrong with how you were being raised in these religious teachings? It really came after I became an adult. I didn't know very much. And another aspect of ATI and IVLP was that they really didn't encourage going to college at all or seeking any higher education.

Your higher education was promised to come from some new scheme that Gothard would come up with by the time you got there, whether it be working at his many training centers across the world or at headquarters itself or going through whatever semblance of a medical or law school that they purported to have. You weren't really encouraged to do higher education. So when I left home at 19, I really didn't have any direction where to go. And I started working for a fundamentalist church. And there was an abuse scandal that happened in that church. And I knew it was wrong.

And I knew that the pastor of that church who perpetrated it was unfit for ministry, but everyone ignored it and let him continue on as pastor. And that was when it really struck me that, hey, there is something bad wrong happening here. And I got to looking into a lot of the pastors that my dad idolized growing up. And this is about the time the internet became pretty ubiquitous in the late 2000s. And I started seeing all these stories of abuse and of just children being harmed and all these arrests that kept coming about. And I asked my dad about it and he said, well, we just don't talk about things like that because it's bad for the ministry.

And that was when I said, well, I didn't sign up to hurt people. And around this time, Bill Gothard was also accused of sexual harassment of many of his workers. And I asked my dad about that too. And he just refused to hear anything about it. And that was when it really started sinking in that I'm involved in something that is built to harm people and I'm being lied to about it. And that was when I really started to find my way out. I had already graduated. I was no longer in the homeschooling program. And Gothard himself didn't have a huge sway in my adult life, but the teachings did.

And everything I grew up with, I had to start questioning. And it was a long, hard deconstruction process, which frankly led to a lot of questioning, a lot of seeking out how I can make religion work in my own life. And through resources like y'all's podcasts and just some amazing books that I've been recommended by friends and a combination of people just gently explaining things that I had never learned in school to me to also being allowed to make fun of the religious stuff that I had been raised in, I now very openly and publicly identify as atheist, and I could not be happier with that station in life. Awesome. Well, I'm glad that we could play some small role in comforting you on your way out. Now, I got the impression from the documentary that your family or much of your family is still in this. Yes, unfortunately. Even if they aren't currently involved with IBLP

or ATI, they're still very sympathetic toward it. Because one thing about fundamentalist Christianity institutions, if you start to question any of them, the whole thing falls apart. I'm living proof of that. So they just refuse to hear it or will not hear it or think that every bad thing that's said about any of the stuff that they hold dear is an attack on them personally. So for my own sanity and the safety of everybody involved, I've chosen to just go no contact with the vast majority of them. And we haven't really spoken in a long time. And it sucks, but freedom is a whole lot better. Yeah. I'm really sorry to hear that. Now, you used the word deconstruction. I think that's a great word for this process. So for you, what has... Because this cult, it seems designed to

turn women into victims and men into abusers and men into victims as well to the extent that it can. What has been the hardest thing for you to unlearn from your upbringing that's a really good question there was a i don't have it with me right now but there was a song that we were taught in alert cadet and for background alert was the pseudo-military branch of Gothard's cult. I mean, this thing just went so many different directions. But Alert was the military-style branch where they would take young men and run them through obstacle courses and scream at them like Marines and stuff like that. In order to toughen them up and, well, in my opinion, build what led to January 6th. But there was a verse that we learned that we sang every day in the Alert Cadet program

for younger kids. And the line was, we are casting down imaginations that rise up against God's hand and boldly bringing to subjection every thought to his command. So the goal of the cult was not only to bring you under subjugation and to bring women under subjugation to men and bring men under subjugation to God himself, but also to make your own brain hold you in line. Like the idea was that your thoughts could not be trusted. So you had to constantly examine every single thought you had and make sure it was approved. Not just every word, deed or action, but every thought could potentially be something that could cause you to be harmed.

We were threatened with illness. We were threatened with bankruptcy. We were threatened with all these horrible things if we even had a stray thought that didn't fall in line with what the cult taught us. So it was really good at teaching us how to keep ourselves in line. at teaching us how to keep ourselves in line. And breaking out of that brainwashing was probably the worst part because, you know, as I was starting to question things and, you know, when I first started, deconstruction wasn't even a term. I just started out saying, well, everything I was raised with seems to be wrong on some

level. So I'm just going to go back to the basics, which at that time was, I believe in God, I believe in Jesus, let's just see what happens from there. And after a year of trying to make that fit, I had to tell myself, I'm going to have to break down what I believe even further, aren't I? And that was the start of my journey to atheism. But even getting to that place where I could be comfortable questioning the very core beliefs that I was raised with, even as a child, my brain had done such a good job keeping me from ever doing that, that giving myself the freedom to do that was the first, the

hardest, and the biggest hurdle. Wow. Again, I'm in awe of your ability to share this story with us. I know you're speaking to a lot of listeners that have very similar backgrounds. So I just want to thank you again for that. Now, you've kind of hinted at this. And I would say probably the most terrifying images, at least in the documentary, are these shots of the Alert Academy, this military wing of this cult. So I want to ask you explicitly, what is the end goal for IBLP?

of this cult. So I want to ask you explicitly, what is the end goal for IBLP? The end goal from IBLP, as they stated, was to, well, essentially world domination, as I said in the trailer and in the documentary itself. We were taught that we would be the generation that would bring America back to God and would eventually, you know, lead to a chain of events, bringing on the second coming of Jesus Jesus Christ where he could set up his kingdom here on earth. That was what we were taught. Now, personally, I believe that the real goal of IVLP was to make Bill Gothard rich. But that's not how it was sold to us. And when you get a bunch of impressionable young people, especially young men who are taught that they're inherently special because of the fact that they are men, they identify as men, they've been assigned that, and they have some kind of spiritual authority over others.

And you run them through all these drills and all these things to try to build them up as some kind of warrior for Christ. And that is literally what they called us. We were called warriors. We were called the Christian Marines. They were like, you know, other Christians are just lukewarm, but you are the cream of the crop. You are the ones who will absolutely bring on this new era of God. It was, I mean, that's heady stuff, especially when, you know, you're, for lack of a better term, you're a dumb teenager, you know? Right. And to be instilled with this and to be told that you're better for lack of a better term, you're a dumb teenager, you know? Right. And to be instilled with this

and to be told that you're better than everybody else, that is shocking. That is dangerous. And that is exactly what you see in organizations like the Proud Boys and similar groups today because this shit works. Cults use these tactics over and over because they work.

And until we realize that, we're not going to solve the problem of why it keeps happening. So now, is there anything that you wish had been included in the documentary that wasn't? Oh, there's so many. And I know that they couldn't get into everything. I 100% am pleased with what they did cover in four episodes. It's really hard to cover what you need to, because anytime I've tried to explain this to folks, I sound like I have a pushpin board with crazy strands of yarn going all over the place. Like, you gotta believe me, it's a cult.

Well, there's so many acronyms. Yeah, exactly. It was designed to be confusing. I thoroughly believe that. One thing that I wish that they had have gone into was more of the misogyny and more of how men were conditioned to be abusers. And for folks like me, who I never really matched up to what their version of manliness was, I'm a boring straight white male, but I was also a very nerdy kid. I didn't have much interest in the outdoors or athletics or anything. You know, I had a Commodore 128 that I loved to play around on. And, you know, that was my toy growing up, right? So when I was out there doing all this stuff with Alert Cadet, I very clearly did not do well. I failed at most of the obstacles.

I fainted when I tried to rappel off the tower. And I was told that the reason that I failed at all this was because I was not spiritual enough. And it wasn't because I had any physical conditions or any kind of proclivities to not do this sort of thing. It was because I didn't study my Bible enough. And if I just had enough faith, I would be able to do all this. Well, that was complete and utter nonsense. But even though it never really quite worked with me because I just simply physically could not do all this. Well, that was complete and utter nonsense. But even though it never really quite worked with me because I just simply physically could not do all that, I do know of many other

boys who are of my age who went all in on that to try to please Bill Gothard, their fathers, and to not be a disappointment. And they turned out to be very abusive people later on. And I don't want to make this sound like, oh, the men had it so bad, because as bad as we had it under those unrealistic expectations, women had it a million times worse. Because this organization was also meant specifically to harm women. The rules were much worse for young women and girls and everything. And as you see in the documentary, horrific abuse came about because of that. So I don't want to make light of that, but there was just nothing that the cult touched

that was not poisoned by their damn sense of authority and the organizational structure, the misogyny that was involved in it. It ruined everyone's life. So what do you, I mean, I feel like there are several fairly obvious answers, but I'd still like to hear your opinion on this. What do you hope to accomplish by speaking out? First and foremost, I want the cult gone. It's been around long enough. It still exists today against all odds.

And I think part of it is because they've enjoyed obscurity in plain sight. And I think part of it is because they've enjoyed obscurity in plain sight. And one thing that really bothers me, and the reason I think that it has been able to exist for so long, is that many people tend to have blinders, especially in our society, where they think that anything religious is good on some level. And I'm here to tell you, religion does not equal good. level. And I'm here to tell you, religion does not equal good. In cases like IBLP, many people, especially when I was deconstructing and I was going to more mainstream churches and trying to get people to understand what I've been through, I had actual pastors telling me, well, yeah, but was it really that bad? Or was it just a little bit of a stricter version of Christianity that doesn't work for us, but it works for some people? And I was telling him, no, I was in a goddamn cult.

Like, I wish you would listen. And now people are starting to maybe pick up a little bit on it. I have received tons of messages from people who have grown up in this. Tons of people who said, I never realized it was as bad as it was. Well, that's because everyone treated it like, oh, well, it doesn't work for me, but they seem happy. All these children seem so well-behaved, especially with the Duggars being the poster children for this cult. Everyone looked at the Duggars, oh, 19 kids, but they all love each other and everything runs so smoothly in their household and they clearly love each other while the cameras are on and one thing that i love about how this documentary really

pursues that is that they showed no it was all a bunch of lies and these lies permeated the entire cult not just the one family so i want the cult gone i i want them to be exposed for what they are i want people to stop buying their materials i want them to be shunned i want them to be exposed for what they are. I want people to stop buying their materials. I want them to be shunned. I want them to be shut down because any other child that is hurt by the teachings of this cult and that man, Bill Gothard, is one child too many. I have said this from the time I started speaking out publicly till now. It needs to stop now. Another thing I want people to take away from this is to go back, look at the Christian nationalism problem we have in this country right now. If you go back far enough, you will find a

nexus to IBLP in all of this. They have been playing this game since the 80s and 90s, and many powerful politicians, many powerful policymakers are embroiled in all this. I'll give you one example. Michael Ferris, who is the leader of Homeschool Legal Defense, which came along about the same time as ATI, had close ties with Bill Gothard from the very beginning. This was a man who actually co-wrote the 1776 project that Donald Trump himself commissioned. And it was overturned by Joe Biden on the very first day of the Biden administration. So these people who have been involved with this cult have had the ears of politicians all along. And the sooner we realize that and how that came about, the sooner I think we can address some of the problems we have today.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. And then that's the real shame of it is that the documentary, it really like tucked a lot of that stuff. And again, I don't say this as a criticism to the documentarians. They were trying to cover a lot of stuff, but really it just stuck all that stuff in the last 10 minutes and like, oh, by the way, that's also the reason the country's burning down now. So given the demographics of our listenership, it's almost a guarantee that right now you're talking to people who are going through the same process as you went through and are continuing to go through and are far earlier in that process. So is there any advice that you

want to offer to them while you've got their ear? I would like to say that getting out is an accomplishment in and of itself. And if you're still in IBLP or if you're in a high controlling religion or cult and you need to get out as safely as you can, because I understand that there are a lot of people who simply cannot do it safely, but as safely as you can, try to find resources and try to find people who will help.

They do exist out there. And if you're in a position to where you are able to share your story and you are out, I would encourage you to consider doing so. Because, I mean, I'll be honest, I'm Privileged City. You know, like I said, I'm a boring, straight, white male and everything. And I have less to lose than a lot of people out there. So I figured, well, you know, if it can do some good, I'll share my story. But I really encourage anyone who has experienced this to go ahead, share your story

on whatever platform you can. I did mine on TikTok, but there's just so many ways that you can get your voice out there. The more that we are able to go out there with our voices and to say this is wrong and people need to do something about it, the more chance we have of making a difference. Because ultimately, what brings these organizations down is when enough people shine the light on them. The very reason they were able to perpetrate all this abuse for all this amount of time was because people like my dad said, we don't talk about this. And I'm here to say, if we do, it dies on the vine. Well, Chad, I think I speak for the entire audience when I express my admiration for your efforts to expose this shit and your willingness to talk about some pretty tough

stuff. A quick reminder for the listeners that want to hear more from Chad, you'll find his TikTok channel linked on the show notes. And if you want to see the documentary, I highly recommend it. It's a tough watch, but it's something that everybody should see if they're able. Look for Shiny Happy People, Duggar Family Secrets on Amazon Prime. Chad, thanks so much for your time. Noah, thank you so much.

I really do appreciate this. Before we get back to exploring Hyrule tonight, I want... No, actually, I just want to get back to exploring Hyrule, so we're going to do this quick. 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 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-sister show Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd be the hostess with the leastest if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for putting up with almost four straight weeks

of me talking about a video game he isn't playing. I need to thank Eli Bostic for putting up with almost four straight weeks of me accidentally giving him spoilers for a video game he is playing. I need to thank Lucinda Lusions for putting up with almost

four straight weeks of me spending all evening on the couch muttering about how I'm hitting the goddamn Y and he's not a fucking tacking. I also need to thank Matthew for writing this week's Farnsworth quote.

If you'd like to check out his Twitch stream, be sure to check the show notes for a link. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best bipeds, Mark, Chuck, Steven, Mike, Kurt, Paz, Minnie, Jolene, Princess of Power, Chris, Cheryl, Jackson, Dylan, Olivia, Rufflebutt, Sarah, Paul, and Mike. Mark, Chuck, Steven, Mike, and Kurt,

whose dicks hit the ground when they pee off the edge of Sky Islands. Paz, Minnie, Jolene, Chris, Cheryl, and Jackson were so badass they could brid bridle a Lionel and Dylan, Olivia, Sarah, Paul, and Mike were so bright they don't need bright blooms to explore the depths. Sorry, those all make perfect sense if you play Tears of the Kingdom. Together these 16 savory secularists supported our serialized sacrilege this week by

giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us, but if you think you're up to the challenge you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathingathe atheist 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 home page at scathingadius.com and if you'd like to help but not in a buying a free thing kind of way you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review telling a friend about the show and following us on social media and speaking of social media tim robertson

takes care of that for us and our audio engineer is martin Morgan Clark who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingadeus.com It might be Hockel, I'm not sure. I feel like I've heard Hockel. I thought it was Hockel. Yeah. But I don't know that I've ever heard it

pronounced to be honest I'm happy for her name to be said wrong also yeah I'll say it a different way in each okay yeah there you go

then we can just pretend it's a bit the preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC copyright 2023 all rights reserved