The Scathing Atheist - 583: Post Apoc-eclipse Edition

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

In this week’s episode, a school district in Wisconsin won't hire dogs or the Irish for superintendent, rapture enthusiasts suffer the financial consequences of the times not ending, and we’ll learn why CS is only one letter away from BS. --- 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/ If you see a news story you think we might be interested in, you can send it 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/ --- Headlines: Vatican calls gender affirming care threat to human dignity: ​​https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-08/vatican-says-sex-change-surgery-grave-threat-to-human-dignity/103683620 School board’s ‘Christian values’ candidate search sparks criticism: https://www.rawstory.com/extremely-concerned-school-boards-christian-values-candidate-search-sparks-criticism/ Big controversy in Jerusalem about red heifers from Texas and a magical prophecy: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/9/what-do-texan-red-heifers-have-to-do-with-al-aqsa-and-a-jewish-temple Fake priest arrested for stealing from churches across the US: https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/fake-priest-arrested-for-stealing-from-churches-across-the-us/ Pastor Kicked Off Stage After Slamming 'Strip' Show at Christian Event: https://baptistnews.com/article/what-happened-when-mark-driscoll-and-josh-howerton-showed-up-at-the-stronger-mens-conference-this-weekend/

Changing a light bulb should be simple. Whoa, whoa, whoa! Uh-oh, that's not supposed to happen. Quickly submitting and tracking a claim on the Bel Air Direct app actually is simple. Bel Air Direct. Insurance simplified. Warning, the following podcast contains adult language in its most juvenile form. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Factor, Stamps.com, MySheetsRock, and by the new Christian grocery store.

No, I assure you there are two groceries in that cart that'll be $80. Because if it works with God, why not other shit? And now, The Scathing Atheist. Hi, I'm Becca Buchaccio-Pachac and McGinty Bembo from East Haven, Connecticut. I'm Becca Buchacho-Pachackin-McGinty-Bembo from East Haven, Connecticut. As a preschool teacher, I can confirm that we did in fact evolve from filthy, coughing, snot-flinging, booger-picking, and absolutely adorable monkey folks. It's Thursday. It's April 18th.

And it's National Ask an Atheist Day. Is it? Yes. I have no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Enright. And from Corey, Bookers, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, a school district in Wisconsin won't hire dogs or the Irish for superintendent.

Rapture enthusiasts suffer the financial consequences of the times not ending. And we'll learn why CS is only one letter away from BS. But first, the diatribe. I finally harpooned my great white whale or whatever. I finally harpooned my great white whale or whatever. I have put in over 4,000 miles in my adult life in search of a total eclipse, and I finally saw one. I looked into the heavens, and they winked at me. And I know a lot of people don't get it. They don't understand why this matters so damn much that I'm willing to drive thousands of miles to see it. But I'd like to think those people just don't understand what a glorious thing a total eclipse really is. If we lived in a Star Trek universe with interstellar

travel and dozens of other intelligent species that we knew of, the way we'd sell Earth as a galactic tourist destination would be our eclipses. They are truly incredible. I said as much on Facebook, and I got a lot of people pushing back on me. They said, well, you know, every planet with a moon would have eclipses, and some planets have a lot of moons. And hell, if you're at a spaceship, couldn't you just park your spaceship between a moon and a star whenever you wanted to? But those arguments underestimate the rarity of a terrestrial eclipse. For that, you need a moon that's the same relative size as the parent star, you need an atmosphere to bring out all the glorious colors, and you need life to freak the fuck out when it's suddenly night in the middle of the day. See, long before you get totality, you start edging.

The skies start to get darker, but not in a way that you're familiar with from storms or evening. It's a unique darkness that bathes the world in a filter somewhere between sepia and black and white, and then the temperature starts to drop, and quickly too. It was some 10 degrees in as many minutes. We were in Northern Vermont for this one, so we started off in t-shirts and spent totality in sweaters and a jacket. It was too early in the year for crickets, but they'll start chirping. Birds will freak the fuck out. Roosters will crow. And then you'll see sunset creeping up on you from every horizon.

And if you're positioned in the right place, and you can bet your asses we were positioned in the right place, you can see the moon's shadow racing along the ground towards you at 1500 miles an hour. And then the moon just clicks into place. There's no ambiguity there. There's no moment where you're like, is this totality or is that just 99.9%? The moon just clicks in like a fucking Lego and the whole world changes around you. Up until then, I was wearing my special glasses, right? That black out 99% of the light. But now for the only time in my life, I laid my naked eyes on the sun. I stood there in the shadow of the moon, staring up at this black circle wreathed in thin strands of writhing white fire laid against this purple black hue that I'd never seen before. And I felt small. And I felt significant.

And I felt the glorious burden of consciousness. Of being one of those rare bits of matter that gets to comprehend beauty. And I feel a rush of communal reverence. As I share this profound moment with a hundred random strangers in this field. And a hundred more in the next field. And thousands and millions more stretching all the way back to Mexico. And I feel this rush of ancestral reverence. As innate terror and wonderment suddenly link me to the millions and billions of past witnesses.

Stretching all the way back to the Maya scene. And because the phrase, fuck those fucking Christians. Is never that far from my mind. As I stood there drinking in this experience that I traveled so far to have, I couldn't help but think to myself, fuck those fucking Christians. How dare they try to pretend that they have a monopoly on all. contemplating the astronomical lottery that we won to have such a perfect combination of lunar satellite and parent star, trying to look through the eyes of our pre-sapien forebears, marveling at the chain of brilliant deductions that allow us to predict these motherfuckers to begin with. And where are they? Where are the Christians, these masters of awe? They're hiding from the

fucking sun. They're dreading the human sacrifices that the eclipse is going to kick off as it ushers in the goddamn end times they're putting up snarky facebook posts about how you'll be pretty sorry when they get raptured later today and you don't i mean for christians yahweh made the sun he made the moon it only made sense for him to make them the same apparent size in that case eclipses are no more remarkable than a willow tree or a snowflake, right? They're simply a God making the logical choice when it comes to relative moon sizes. But they're also, for some fucking reason, imbued with ominous portent. What's God trying to say with this eclipse? What dreadful message do the skies hold for us? So not only are they looking at it as a relatively unexceptional occurrence,

but they're also poisoning that experience with nonsensical panic. Add to that the fact that even at its best, the natural world could never live up to the shit that they're making up in their heads. Right. I think you'd be hard pressed to find a person more impressed with the total eclipse of the sun than myself. But even I have to admit it would pale in comparison to a single glimpse of an eternal paradise bathed in the glory of the universe's fucking creator right in their books god made the sun stand still just to help out with a military campaign if you ask the catholics he made the sun dance around in a way that only a few thousand portuguese people could see barely a century ago so cool as it may be eclipses probably don't even make the top five of shit God does with his son. So here I am marveling at the most incredible sight I've ever seen, free from the taint of

irrational fear, teleological passivity, and magical comparisons. And I can fully experience awe without even having to make shit up to be in awe of. to be in awe of. They're talking about you, Jesus. We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the annular and partial to my total Heath Enright and Eli Bosnick fellas.

Are you ready to cover a few stories? Okay, I'm annular. That tracks. I'm all about edging. Nice. So there you go. And I keep telling you, Noah, this isn't partial.

This is as hard as it gets. All right. Well, with that reminder that everything's a dick joke if you try hard enough, or flaccid enough, I guess, we're going to pause for a word from our first sponsor this week, Factor. Hello? Anyone here? Hello there.

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That's code scathing50 at fact factormeals.com slash SCATHING50. To get 50% off your first box. Plus 20% off your next box. While your subscription is active. Great. Thanks. Hey, um, why is the one apple you have $19? Something, something, economy?

Right, yeah, economy. You want it? Someone took a bite out of it. Answer the question. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, the Vatican, an organization known for demonizing gay people, excluding women from power, and exacerbating the AIDS epidemic, all in their effort to pretend all of human life

is an insignificant precursor to a better existence when they're not raping children, is warning us that something else might be a threat to human dignity. Huh? Yeah, the threat? Well, human dignity, actually. Specifically, human dignity in the form of gender affirming surgery yeah imagine

trying to describe this controversy to an alien just oh okay so yeah the kid fucking nazi gold cabal just sent out a memo about how they don't like what jobs yeah what was the first thing you said oh they don't like boob jobs no before, before that. So yeah, so this came from a 20-page declaration the Vatican published last week that they had the audacity to title Infinite Dignity. Cool. Or Indignity for short.

Right. It's apparently been in the works for like five years, meaning they were averaging four pages a year. I'd love to see them try to keep up with our production schedule. Yeah, right now they're working on the hardcore history model. Right, yeah. But basically, this was a reiteration of Catholic bigotry

that conservatives have been demanding after the Pope dared to suggest that you could be both LGBTQ and human. And while it does have some good stuff in there about poverty and war being bad, nobody outside the Daily Wire is arguing against that. All the significant shit that it says is an affirmation

of prejudice. Obviously, the document reiterates the Catholic belief that gayness is a sin, though it does lightly admonish those countries that criminalize it. Just like, no chill, guys. Just be fucking cool. Don't write it down.

That would be a sterner warning. It also affirms their opposition to abortion and euthanasia in case they hadn't made that clear over the years. There's some language in there that seems to call the humanhood of children born via surrogacy into question.

I don't get, but the most newsworthy section of the thing is all the transphobic shit. Even when he pays lip service to the L's, G's, B's, and Q's, Pope Fran so far away usually leaves out the T's. Right? He has, in fact, dubbed

gender theory the worst danger that we currently face as a society use the words worst danger what yeah and and this document is no fucking different it says that god made man and he made woman and he doesn't make mistakes except when he makes mistakes and that's different that's then it's obvious okay but frankie with all the abortion and the euthanasia and the, checks notes, uterus rentals. Uterus rentals, yeah. With all that stuff, how do you know that gender-affirming surgery is the reason that the world human dignity meter that you have went down?

Right. Like, you got to tease out those other variables where the math doesn't make any sense, man. Thank you. Yeah. And at the rate he's working, he could get us those numbers by what? Next election, if he hurries, right? Well well the election after next yeah yeah yeah sure but yeah so but the document which to be clear represents the fresh hip pope's current position wants to make it clear that gender affirming care is not just morally wrong it is an insult to god and, his words, a quote, threat to human dignity, end quote,

born of a sinful desire to quote, make oneself God, end quote. Just a reminder for the next person who tries to pretend that this Pope is different. Yeah. On the plus side, I'm pretty sure the Pope just said that God's a trans woman, so

if you want to piss off your uncle, there's a way to do it. And in up on the boards news, Cedar Grove, Belgium school district in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin. Fuck yeah, America is looking for a new superintendent. The qualifications, a go-getter,

someone organized and passionate. And of course, most importantly, someone who's not a big stickler for the First Amendment. As the job posting also requested someone who is Christian and conservative. Irish and lukewarms need not apply. Right, yeah. No, it's one of those situations where we can't do the make it black bit for fear of giving these assholes ideas, right? Yeah, for sure. So first

off, big thanks to Brian for sending us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com. The job description for anyone who sends us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com is the person you see every time you look in the mirror. Get on it. So here's the story. As I mentioned, the district is looking for a new superintendent and the super duper illegal request for candidates to be a specific religion was actually pointed out by a former superintendent from the district who wrote in the letter to the law firm hired to do the search, quote, help me understand how a public school district can legally limit its hiring to people who are christians end quote to which the firm responded thanks for your email that was a comment made during the focus groups and you are

correct that should not have been in the report it will be removed thanks end quote okay the official answer from an attorney was Christians and their thoughts. That's totally legal unless you write them down. Not great. No, you know what else isn't great is we forgot about the law as a response from your law firm. Yeah, no, not good. Not good. So as you can imagine, the post has since been amended and you all know what that means.

What are the guys talking about? you can imagine the post has since been amended and you all know what that means. That's right. The Christians freaked out with SBLC listed anti-government extremist group moms for Liberty claiming that Christians are now being excluded from the search. For fuck's sake. Saying on Twitter, quote, in the era of woke, inclusive paganism, everyone is welcome except for Christians. 100% guarantee they hire a Christian person. Yep, gonna hire a Christian. What the fuck are they talking about? She continues,

imagine stating that Christian values in a superintendent might be good how dare this community in sheboygan wisconsin stray from the queer gender-bending multicultural god to whom leftist wing radicals worship and sacrifice sacrifice are we doing sacrifices again and i missed it that's awesome oh and listeners we should be clear that the that she asterisked out the first e in queer because she doesn't want her bigotry to be offensive i guess right exactly like a queer person would be reading that and be like wait a minute wait a minute this lady might be an ally she concludes don't worry folks christ Christians will not have a voice in your public school.

The WPR and ACLU will be sure to take appropriate action. Rest easy and watch a drag show with someone else's kids. That's actually a great idea. But look, look, if you're going to freak out about imaginary shit, at least imagine freakier shit, right? And in bovine intervention news. Beautiful. Now is probably a great time

to call a timeout on cow-based prophecy arguments between Israel and Palestine. So, we have a cow-based prophecy argument between Israel and Palestine. Ah, you hate to see it. According to the Temple Institute in Israel,

which represents an Orthodox group called the Temple Movement, it's very important to remove the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which includes the Dome of the Rock, and replace it with a third temple to replace the second temple that was destroyed in 70 CE. And that requires, among other things, burning a very specific cow and then rolling around in the ashes.

According to Palestine, on the other hand, that mosque is one of the most holy sites of Islam. And also, what the fuck are you talking about? Do you even hear yourself? Well, the Temple Institute has five special cows that might fit the bill.

And those cows are now the correct age for doing the magic spell. And that represents a very serious conflict. Yeah. Like of all the stuff we need to time out on between Israel and Palestine, I feel like cow stuff is low on the list. But yeah, I mean, that doesn't mean that you're wrong. This too, right? Yeah, this too.

And a big thanks to Gregory for the link, scathingnews at gmail.com if you want to help out. So here's the full background on that prophecy, in case you haven't heard this one before. According to the Temple Institute's interpretation of a section from the Book of Numbers in the Old Testament, creating the new temple

requires a long list of magical specs, like an Ikea manual for a wizard, and that includes a purification ritual to cleanse the direct descendants of the House of Aaron so they can safely enter the sacred property, which they believe they cannot do right now. And that means they have to sacrifice a three-year-old unblemished virginal female cow that's never had a job and is uniformly red in color. According to the official rabbinic oral law in the cow murdering section that they have in that thing, it says that if a cow has two hairs of not red, it doesn't count. And if a single hair is not straight, that means the cow

definitely got yoked at some point and therefore had a job, so again, it doesn't count. Also, you have to mix the dead cow ashes

with water from a natural spring carried by children who were raised under magical quarantine to guarantee their bucket-carrying purity or something like that.

It's weird that they landed on two hairs instead of one. Right? Like, were they trying to make it sound more reasonable? Just hedging it. So the Temple Institute has been trying to get the perfect red heifer for a long time. They even raised a bunch of money on Indiegogo to pay for genetic engineering to make it happen

and a 24-hour surveillance facility to make sure that nobody sabotaged the magical cow operation with like a crimper or some hair dye and a squirt gun. Sure, yeah. No, you got to be careful. But then in 2022 an evangelical christian rancher in texas offered up five perfect specimens that were all one year old at the time and the temple institute paid for a private jet that carried five cows from texas to jerusalem now

those cows are three years old and therefore ready to do the magic. Well, yeah, no, otherwise they're in danger of making flying those cows in from Texas a waste of money. Okay, I feel like if you were going to need to genetically engineer the cows

and then fly them in from a continent that the Bible didn't know existed, God would have mentioned that in his prophecy, no? Right? Focus wouldn't have been on the hair so much as what a jet is. And just in case the whole situation was lacking for extremely silly conflict, the evangelical Christian angle represents a third side of this argument. The Orthodox Jewish belief of the temple movement is that a third temple is part of Jewish God's plan for a big happy ending for Judaism. The fundamentalist Christian belief is that a third temple is actually just a technical

requirement for ushering in the second coming of Jesus and a big apocalyptic sword mouth battle with the Antichrist and therefore a big happy ending for Christianity. And the Muslim belief is stop doing magical cow stuff. We have a building there. It's not for sale. And Islam gets a happy end time. Stop trying to fuck it up. Yeah.

I mean, to be fair, they're happy end times. They kill all the jews in the world because the trees tell them where we are like snitches so you know well and in perhaps the most terrifying admission in all of american politics it is literally impossible to understand our foreign policy without knowing all that shit you just that's actually really important this has to be in like memos yes yep. Again, to the alien, you've got to be like, okay, so you know cats? Sorry, I'm still

dwelling on the Nazi gold cult. You've got to move on from that inkthar. And on that note, we're going to pause for a word from this week's second sponsor, Stamps.com. Okay, can I interest you in any stamps today? Can I interest you in any stamps today? Can I interest you in the truth about Jean-Bernard Ramsey's death?

No, dude. The answer is no, thank you. No, thank you. Right. Because I don't want the stamps. Hey, guys. What are you doing? Yeah, we're trying to get Eli ready for the post office. Yeah, I tend to come on a little strong in these sort of casual social situations.

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Plus, easily schedule package pickups through your stamps.com dashboard and you'll automatically see your cheapest and fastest shipping options from different carriers. That does sound good, but will it save me money? I mean, I feel like the legal fees alone. It sure will. Get rates you can't find anywhere else, like up to 89% off USPS and UPS. Order shipping

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No long-term commitments or contracts. Just go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage and enter the code SCATHING. All right, Noah, thanks. Guess I don't need to work on my small talk after all. Well, no, you still do. We just don't need to work on my small talk after all. Well, no, you still do. We just got another call from the guy at the toll booth. Yeah, he asked if you wanted change again. And I said I wanted a change in how we view the case of Jean-Bernie Ramsey.

Yeah. And in the redundant department of redundancy news, you know, our job here at the scathing atheist isn't always easy. Sure, sometimes there are obvious home runs and easy wins, but sometimes we report on stories with more subtlety and nuance. And such is the case with Malin Rostas, who was finally arrested this week after a string of robberies he committed exclusively at Catholic churches. Right.

So what distinguishes him from a real Catholic priest is the arrested part. Exactly. See, it's hard. It's hard. So first off, big thanks to Logan for sending us this to scathingnews at gmail.com. So the story is that Malin committed a string of robberies across the US and Canada by dressing up as a priest, introducing himself as Father Martin visiting from Chicago. I like that Martin's really close to his name, Malin.

He is pretty close, yeah. And then when he was left alone in the rectory, he would just rob the ever-loving shit out of it, making away with $900 alone from the American Martyrs Roman Catholic Church in Queens, New York. Okay, even if you think he's a real priest, why are you leaving him alone in your room full of fraud cash? He's like, okay, thanks for letting me visit. This was fun. I need to be alone in your room now. Go away. Why would that work? Why did they leave? I feel like the Catholic priests have a very lenient, I need to be alone in this room now policy though, right right? Like, that's fair. Yes, that's fair.

Yeah, but that's not all. Rostis is also suspected of taking $500 from a church in Houston and $1,700 from a church in Oregon. And he's not alone. We've reported on two stories of fake priests charging exorbitant fees for rituals and ceremonies this year alone. My favorite being the frauds in Miami who charged one parishioner $1,500 for their services in preloaded iTunes gift cards.

Okay, normally I only take camel cash, but I guess I'll make an exception on this one. You can do the iTunes gift cards. I got to catch up on Ted Lasso. I heard the Christmas episode is just heartwarming. But gift cards are no. What the fuck does a priest do that costs $1,500?

Great question. That costs any dollar. Right. That costs any dollar. Sure. But perhaps my favorite fake father of the year so far

was in Sacramento, and I know we reported on this as well, where the owners of a small chain of taquerias that was under federal investigation for labor law violations hired a fake priest to hear employee confessions. Oh my God, I would love a chance to game that system, right?

Just confess to a long lurid affair with the boss's dad. Yes. So what's the point of these stories? Don't have guys with fake magic powers and no real qualifications, right? Fake priests are a problem for the same reason fake faith healers and chiropractors and

astrologers are a problem. There's no solid ground to build from. It's bullshit all the way down. There you go. And finally tonight. I'm so happy. We have one of the dumbest idiot fights we've ever seen. I'm so happy.

And it happened during the dumbest event we've ever seen. The event is called the Stronger Men's Conference. It's an evangelical Christian misogyny expo featuring, you know, man stuff like guns and explosions and monster trucks and shirtless oily men swallowing swords all the way down their throat. And during the event in Springfield, Missouri last weekend, the whole thing devolved into a feud about whether the shirtless guy swallowing a sword was a super badass man thing or the evil embodiment of the Jezebel spirit podcast listener when i read about this story i ran to our headlines to see that heath had called dibs on it

and then i wept like an italian war widow that's how much i loved this story okay to be fair heath called dibs on oily pole dancing men fellating swords at Christian event stories when we first started the show. That was one of his first demands. Top of the whiteboard. It's true. He did. He did.

I hate being the new guy. And a big thanks to Chad for the link. Skating news at gmail.com, especially when you find stuff like this. So just to give everyone a little context about the Stronger Men's Conference, here's the description of this year's promo video from Baptist News. I want to give you the exact words from a Christian news outlet,

so you don't think I'm exaggerating. Fair and balanced. Thank you, Heath Enright. Quote, it opens as a montage of men lifting weights, revving motorcycle engines, and boxing. Then a wrestler smashes a chair into the head of another man Okay, based on the trailer alone, I now feel like I had a non-zero chance of success if I had walked through the doors to this thing and been like, who's man enough to let me smash this chair over their head? And now I'm even sadder

that I missed it. I'm even sadder now. So during the event last weekend, one of the opening acts of super hetero man stuff was a guy wearing black leather pants and a red leather jacket who peels off the jacket to show off his super jack pecs and abs before climbing a pole, sliding his tongue across a big sword, and then swallowing that sword all the way down to the hilt. Well, according to Pastor Mark Driscoll, that was a bridge too far and made the event seem silly and stupid. That's so funny. Okay, so I don't remember any details about Mark Driscoll, but I do remember his name,

which means he's a hate criminal at best. Yep. So during his talk, Driscoll said, quote, the Jezebel spirit opened our event. It was a high place. On it was a pole, an Asherah pole. The same thing that's used in a strip club for women who have the Jezebel spirit to seduce men. End quote.

That's right, everybody. Mark Driscoll took to the stage to tell everyone that the sword swallower made his pee-pee hard and was there for a demon. He sure did. Right, but it makes you wonder, does he think that the part of that that made it erotic was the pole? The pole, right. Yeah, or he was worried we were going to

find him out, so he was like, I'll talk about how the pole's demonic too, that'll cover it. Also, the highness, the altitude was very erotic to him. So, following that remark from Driscoll, the event organizer named Pastor John yelled from the side of the stage,

you're out of line, Mark. Driscoll tried to keep talking and then Pastor John yelled, Mark. That's when Driscoll stopped and said, okay, Pastor John, I'll receive that. I'll receive that. Then Pastor John yelled, you're done, man. And Driscoll angrily said, thank you, and walked off in a snip. Then the audience started chanting, bring him back.

But Pastor John was not having it. He got on stage and said, Mark was out of line. If Mark wanted to say that, he should have said it to me. He didn't. Matthew 18, if your brother offends you, go to him privately. Not adding, we all knew how hard we were going to get when we watched that guy's promo tape. No backing out now, Mark. we watch that guy's promo take no backing out now mark so wait wait so he cited the matthew 18 verses about disagreeing with people privately as a citation whilst calling a man out publicly

to a big office into a microphone hooked up to a pa in an arena yep so line, we need to attend this event. Yes. We need to attend this event. And more importantly, we need to trick them into hiring Eli to do a super hetero magic act of manliness. Yes. It'll be great.

Yes. I mean, look, I may not look as good as the sword swallower guy, but I am willing to show a lot more skin. I'll just throw that out there. All right. Well, it looks like I have bail money to procure, so we're going to close out the headlines there.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Too much. And when we come back, C.S. Lewis will explain why atheism is stupid. Okay, and now curl the toes. All right, like this. Yes. Oh, they look frightened.

I love it. Hey, guys. What are you doing? Oh, we're selling pictures of Heath's feet on the internet. Okay, why? Well, summer's here, Noah, and I'm a warm sleeper. That means I'm going to need the AC on full blast, and that means the power bill is going to skyrocket. We're doing what we

got to do. What we got to do. Exactly. Right. Guys, if you're warm sleepers, why don't you just try the regulator sheets from MySheetsRock? Oh, what are the regulator sheets from MySheetsRock? MySheetsRock created the regulator

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MySheetsRock sent us a set to try when they became a sponsor and now they're our favorite sheets. That's why I, Noah Lusions, personally endorse MySheetsRock. Okay, but what if I don't believe you? Don't believe me? Their 2,200 five-star customer reviews speak for themselves. Plus, they offer a

90-day risk-free tryout and free shipping and returns. Check out MySheetsRock at mysheetsrock.com slash scathing and enter our code scathing for 10% off and free shipping. That's MySheetsRock.com slash scathing, code scathing. All right, Noah, thanks. Now, let's see a lot of ankle in this next one. I thought you guys were just going to go with MySheetsRock. Oh, yeah, we are, but we got to pay for our Qed tickets somehow you know right yep yeah got it okay that's too much ankle then be more specific a lot of scholars have named gutenberg's movable type printing press is the greatest invention in

human history. Those people are clearly reading better books than us, and it's coming off a little fucking braggy, as we're reminded in this installment of God Awful Books. So we last checked in with C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity. He was starting to run out of ways to say God has to exist because morality. So now we're ready for book two, What Christians Believe. Now that's going to start with chapter

one, The Rival Conceptions of God. And he's going to start this discussion of what Christians believe with a brief note on what they don't believe, which is never a good sign. Okay, no, that's our thing. We have one unbelief. You have a giant litany of absurd things that you have to justify. Yes. And so far, you've spent 40 pages doing mulligans. Yes. Imagine trying to do this with any true thing you knew, right?

Kids, I'm your biology teacher. But first, I'm going to tell you what biology isn't. Yeah. He says that you don't have to believe all the other religions are wrong if you're a Christian. You just have to believe that they're all Christianity. Yeah, you're allowed to believe in Allah if you call him like Christian God A-Dog

or something like that. Sure, yeah, yeah. Yeah, basically the point of this section is it is my humble and modest belief that all the other confident religions of the world are fun little hints by god about mine being the right one yeah right he says on the other hand though as an atheist you quote have to believe that the main point in all religions of the whole world is simply one huge mistake end quote and i'm like no it's several

huge mistakes it's different not just one but yeah right and note the enormous unstated premise that he smuggled in here that there is one main point to all religions complete bullshit so he then explains that when he changed from an atheist to a christian Okay. That allowed him to take a more liberal view of human thought, you see. Oh, sure. Yeah, he says that when he was an atheist, I think he's lying. I think he's a liar. I think he's lying. He said when he was an atheist, he had trouble with the idea

that lots of people were wrong about the universe. But why is that difficult for people? People are stupid and wrong all the time. Yes. It's difficult to assume anything otherwise. That's crazy. Right? And he has this quote here that I have to imagine

was written directly to attack Heath and Noah. He says, quote, as in arithmetic, there is only one right answer to a sum and all other answers are wrong. But some of the wrong answers are much nearer being right than others end quote which is so fucking funny because yes five is a closer number to four than a billion if you're trying to figure out two plus two but five and a billion are in fact equally wrong exactly they're equally not starting a religion about it being five isn't great man

yeah so yeah so but he explains that the first big division in humanity is between the majority the theists and the minority the atheists i have no idea why that's the first big division just a bunch of cavemen dragging an animal carcass one guy's like hey do you guys think there's an infinite regress problem with deistic ontology too i just shut the fuck up sorry come on sorry so christians are better after all their thoughts line up with as he says classical greeks ancient romans and again his words modern savages but setting aside the casual racism, people unacquainted with the scientific method mostly agree with us is not the brag he thinks it is. Okay, and literally two

sentences ago, he said the question of God is just like an addition problem that only has one correct answer. Now he wants to do math by popular vote? What the fuck are you talking about? So, okay, and then the second big division is as i first read it correct me if i'm wrong between christians and people who

don't believe in morality okay when did you stop beating your morality never moving on right so he thinks he's describing pantheism here right but but he's actually describing a dishonest william lane craig argument for his size right yes now so yeah so ultimately we we learned that the second big division he's going for is theism versus deism right but he's too dishonest to define it in a way that makes that obvious right away he ascribes deism to hindus quote as far as i can understand them now to be clear he's saying that as near as he could tell hindus don't draw a distinction between good and bad yeah i mean i think they don't know fucking know what they're saying why is this in my book am i out of mulligans yet? Yeah, right.

He dismisses the Hindu perspective, though, as damned nonsense. And then he includes a footnote pointing out that some listeners complained not about his bigotry, but about his use of the word damned. Okay, it was one listener who complained and he made an entire footnote

to argue about it like a Facebook post inside his own book. Right. His argument was, you heard me. I said what I said. That Hindu nonsense is literally damned and all Hindus get eternal damnation. Yep. That's what I said. Yes.

We should be clear. His defense is, no, I think babies who starve to death in india burn in hell i would never be so callous as to just toss around the d word yes yes right and so he points out he's like atheists think that the world is cruel and unjust but where would they even get the concept of justice if it wasn't for god which is a dumber version of look at the trees. Yeah, it's actually don't look at the trees. So to be clear, God was like, hey, I made a thing full of injustice. And also, here's the concept of justice.

All right, have fun. Bye. You see how that makes it worse, right? CS? Yeah, I want to refute his closing argument, but it's just it's too stupid for refutation. Stating it and refuting it are the same act. Right, which is made harder by the fact that the answer to this problem that he's going to give us in a couple pages

is the damned nonsense he just accused Hinduism of being. Yep, sure the fuck is. And then we get this brief hope that he's given up on silly apologetics and turned to sci-fi when we see the title of the next chapter is The Invasion. Okay. Very first words of the chapter.

Very well, then. Atheism is too simple. Exact words. Like, who are you talking to right now? What conversation happened during the chapter break? You have to tell us in your book. That's a book. I'm always podcasting.

It's not my fault. Okay. To be clear, and we didn't even get to talk about this. The argument he left us on was, I'm not a fish, so I know when it's wet. And we're moving on to... Very well then. Yes, literally. Atheism disproved.

Next step. Yeah, he says atheism is too simple and real shit isn't simple. He says, like, for example, if you ask the scientists what this table is made of, and I'm like, are you sure we want to start asking

what scientists think this early CS? Yeah. Are the scientists fish? How will they know if the table's wet? There are so many flaws. But this is where he explains what he inexplicably calls Christianity and water,

which is where you accept all the heaven and salvation parts, but you reject all the sin and damnation, which he dismisses by basically saying, do you want a little baby sissy Christianity? Because this is how you get a little baby sissy Christianity. And he closes the paragraph by saying,

if we ask for something more than simplicity, it is silly then to complain that the something more is not simple. And again, who the fuck are you arguing with? Like, did the atheist from the invisible universe between your chapters complain that your infinitely complex omnipresent ghost is too simple? Is that part of the argument you're having?

We say a lot of critical things about religion on this show. I don't think we've ever said that it's too easy to understand. Yeah. So his assumptions are crazy, but his argument that he's accidentally making is, yeah, you look around and it's almost like the universe isn't ordered by a rational intelligence at all. Careful, bud. Right? Yeah. He's saying, obviously, God is irreconcilable with our notion of rationality. Just look at how irrational

all the stuff he made is. I wrote, this paragraph is like the scene in a detective novel where the smart guy is like, that's exactly what the killer wants us to think. Except there hasn't been a murder. He's just insisting that there has.

Yeah. No, he goes, reality is usually something that doesn't make sense. And Christianity doesn't make sense. QED. You got us there, boo. You think I'm exaggerating. You think I'm exaggerating. I swear I am not taking this quote out of context at all to make it sound dumber.

He says, quote, of context at all to make it sound dumber he says quote of christianity quote it has that queer twist about it that real things have and real quote and the rest of the explanation makes it even worse somehow he says if christianity offered us the universe we always expected i should feel we were making it up. So just to be clear, he's saying that God created the universe in weird, chaotic ways that match up with atheist physics, but that's just a triple bluff to make sure all the smart, faithful people don't think it's a double bluff by someone who's not God that created a religion that makes intuitive sense. by someone who's not God that created a religion that makes intuitive sense. That's why Christianity had to not make intuitive sense.

That's actually his argument. Right. He's like, yeah, no, I know my religion sounds crazy. Crazy like a fox. Nope. Just crazy. Just regular crazy, man. Or is it? You can't just say or is it at the end of everything.

You can't say that. It's a book. You're the only person talking. But he says only two sets of beliefs fit the facts, Christianity and dualism. The idea that equally powerful good and bad gods are just duking it out in our universe. Oh, thank goodness.

So few Christians are afraid to deal with God's evil twin that looks just like him but has a mustache. This is a serious and great book of apologetics that I have been recommended multiple times by Chris. All right. So actual quote, I personally think that next to Christianity,

dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market. Dualism. That was a man guitar. Is Manscaped Man the evil god? Because it's all coming together. Okay. Also, we have to talk about this because we've mentioned it a bunch of times, but my dude is really, really interested in what the most penis-enhancing set of beliefs are.

And I hate it so much yeah he wants to make it very clear to everybody that his christianity has testicles turgid baby so but he explains that dualism's big failure that was a towel wrap is that if there are two gods that are equal good isn't better than bad and i'm like yes yes it is because it's good i'm sorry that's his problem with the two gods fighting it there can't be two gods fighting over the universe because you wouldn't like it okay i think he's saying that if god and satan are exactly equally powerful then he c.s le Lewis, wouldn't be able to tell which one was the good guy. Yes.

Because they both have, you know, equally virile man penises. Obviously. Which is great, but also makes dualism very tricky. Very tricky. It's a hard one. Yes. No, this whole, like, badness can only be misguided goodness argument is so profoundly nonsensical it's like he's arguing that there must be a god otherwise the unicorns couldn't drive the twinkies i don't

yeah it's also just profoundly dishonest to pretend that people don't know when they do bad stuff right what he's talking around is justification for bad behavior something that religion religion, C.S. Lewis, has been amazing. Hasn't it? He's like, think about it. The bad God would have to have intelligence,

which is good. So this doesn't even add up. That's so stupid. Oh my God. That's so spectrum. Bad God would have to talk all stupid and backwards

like Bizarro Superman. Right, yeah, obviously. Guys, can I say, I think I'm fucking coming around to dualism. I'm just going to start. I'm going to be the, you know how people

occasionally are like, I'm a Christian. That's my turn, but my villain turn is, no, he's a Bizarro evil God and he's just sort of wandering. Me hate goodness. Yeah.

Bad God would have to have sin intelligence. It's the anti-intelligence. Satan would have to be like inside out little girl, apparently, and that's impossible. So Christianity. Q-E-D. Yeah. Right.

So what makes Christianity so much more sensible, you see, is that their worldview, in their worldview, the supreme God created the supreme evil on purpose and keeps it around even though he doesn't have to created the evil in a terrible lab accident guys this au rules i am in a terrible lab on purpose right yes to be clear part of being supremely good as god is creating supreme evil but not creating supreme good because he didn't create himself. No. Right. What if he pushed the wrong button and then he made two evils,

then he's out and over again. Oh, no. So then we get chapter three, which promises us the shocking alternative. This is where we finally get around to the why would a good God let Satan do his thing, though, question.

To which C.S. Lewis says, hey, look, if you've ever been in charge, you know how hard it is to get everybody on the same page. And I'm like, well, look, I've been in church, but I haven't been in charge and omnipotent though.

I'm sorry. The reason for evil is that God is a shitty hands-off manager. So it's, it's see cancer and child rape. That's God letting us tidy up our own room like a loving parent oh yeah who gave god who moved my cheese because that's such a bad buzz really big ideas guy and sex crime is just you know leaderless hot desking it's cool exactly he goes free will that means child rape and and cancer sure yes but it's necessary for joy and and so i'm like

okay so are you saying that there's child rape in heaven or that there is no joy there thank you noah brave you want jared from subway to be sad when he gets to heaven c.s lewis that's not what i'm saying that is not the where i'm coming from um this is the opinion of no illusions and puzzle of thunderstorm LLCs legally. He says, he says, a world of machines would hardly be worth

creating. And I'm like, are you, are you fucking kidding me? That sounds awesome. Yeah. At least make one of those, you know,

and let us have a look at the machine one. Sure. Yes. But he's saying that a machine can't be happy without free will. So like a human automaton couldn't have happiness.

And this entire argument is admitting, one, that God can only create machines that are sad or medium but never happy. Weird thing that God can't do. And it also admits that omniscient beings get mad about spoilers and they have to create free will and a demon and a contradiction of their own existence to entertain themselves right yeah exactly and he's like well maybe you think you could do better than god at godding but you couldn't though no childhood leukemia oh look i did it everybody i did it i did it one better dude just take the l on childhood leukemia and sex crime he says that to me all the time. All of a sudden, your worldview is way more tenable.

Just admit your God is a piece of shit who's kind of the job. Otherwise, honestly, it seems like you, C.S. Lewis, derive happiness by just constantly congratulating yourself, being like, look at me, not having leukemia, not fucking a child. I'm crushing it i'm happy because of this yeah no but he explains that if god thinks this state of affairs is worth it it must be definitionally he's saying this during the holocaust again right also this is less than four pages after expressly calling this belief like word for word in a sentence damn nonsense yep he explains that satan's deception was to tell us that we could be both happy and non-christian okay the lesson

about satan in the bible is so sad they made a character of supreme evil so he could tell people yeah you can totally find happiness without god but then to cap the lesson, God is like, stop. He's a demon and no, you can't have orgasms without me. Also stop having orgasms pretty much entirely unless you're copulating to grow my favorite race that I have. Yeah, exactly. But he

explains that God is the gas in our engines so trying to be a non-Christian, that'd be like filling up your Maxima with diesel, right? Okay. Net zero God by 2050. I got it. That's what the Pew report says. But he explains that there's no such thing as a happy non-Christian.

And I'm like, oh, wow. So just finding one happy atheist completely disproves his arguments. In case we ever meet one, that'll be nice to know, right? And to be fair, we haven't met one, but those people are all meeting us. So it's a bad sample. We're poisoning the well. Also, this was all part of an argument that you'll actually see in the wild, especially if you have a born-again cousin who sends you the case for Christ by Lee Strobel with annotations while you're talking about that book on an atheist show.

C.S. Lewis says, you can't have happiness without God because God invented happiness. Earlier, he said, you might think, you know, no childhood leukemia is a good policy for a God to have. You're better at Godding. But you can't argue with God because God invented arguing. This whole line of argument is exactly equal to, arguing, this whole line of argument is exactly equal to, I can't be wrong because I'm right. It's, I can't be wrong. I've been right for 4.6 billion years as we started the earth. Wouldn't be enough unicorns to drive the Twinkies. Exactly. And he's like, okay, so you might think to yourself, why didn't God do a better job? But think of all the stuff he did. And so he starts listing and he's like, first, you know, God chose one tiny fraction of one tiny fraction of humanity

and he came clean, told him what was going on. That was a perfectly logical thing to do. Actually, Morpheus sent me an email about the whole situation. I can't show it to you, but I am Neo. I am Neo.

Same argument. Exact same argument. Exactly same argument. Yeah. Then, of course, God gave us Jesus and salvation and all that shit. And he's like, if you think about it, the claims that Jesus made wouldn't make any sense at all if he wasn't God.

So he must be God. Yes. Okay. I have to be clear. Noah is not exaggerating. His actual argument is that claiming to be God when you're not is silly. So Jesus must have been God. If Jesus claimed he could forgive your sins against other people and he wasn't God, his claims would be preposterous.

And of course, we're like, well, and we know that preposterousness exists, huh? It's right here in this book, buddy. Well, if the real son of God didn't say a bunch of dumb shit and then get torture murdered, it would make too much sense. And we'd know it was a ruse again. That's right. No, the extent to which he insults Jesus here is fucking hilarious, right? He just goes on and on saying, well, and if Jesus wasn't really God, well, then he'd be a ridiculous, fatuous, idiotic piece of stupid shit whose mama dressed him funny. That's what he'd be. he was jewish c.s

lewis makes a big deal about that jesus was jewish can you fucking imagine who would ever make that up he must be real okay i think if we learn anything from this chapter it's that if c.s lewis was ever an atheist that and i agree with he. I don't think he ever was. He was definitely doing it wrong. He claims that even God's enemies upon reading the gospels, they don't think that they're silly. They just think that they're wrong. And I'm like, wow,

I never thought Bible peace theater would be a valid refutation of Christian theology. But here we are. But he points out that Jesus can't be a great moral teacher if he isn't also God. Cause his primary claim was to godness. And hey, C.S. is right. Yeah.

He doesn't know how and why, but yeah. Right. He's like, either Jesus is a lunatic, the devil, or God incarnate. And I'm like, or a liar. He could also be a liar. It's one of those four things. And two of them definitely exist. We know.

Yeah. definitely exist we know yeah or an alien or a simulation or the subject of thousands of years of retranslation and a post-apocalyptic judean cult like yep but also i'm gonna need a really good argument about how jesus is not the devil now too like you're really paying yourself into a corner there right yeah all right well it looks like we actually get to close off on some amount of accidental agreement with cs.S. this time around. So we're going to wrap it up there. But we'll be back next month with another installment of God Awful Books. Before we season and serve this week, I want to thank Michael Marshall, without whom I never would have been able to take an eight-day not-sure-where-I'm-going-until-I-get-there eclipse trip last week, and to whom I will forever be grateful for that fact. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more of Kate White.

Don't long be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptocrat, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, and even newer episode of our sister show's Hot Friend God of All Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Monday, and even newer episode of our Sister Show's Hot Friend God of All Movies debuting on 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and even newer episode of our Half Sister Show citation needed debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this epi wouldn't sew if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for taking on the lion's share

of my work while I was gone. I want to thank Eli Bosnick for taking on the lamb's share, which, though less, is still very important. I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions who had to sit with me

and post up clips traffic for seven and a half hours and not divorce me at the end of it. I guess she didn't have to, but she chose to. Anyway, I want to thank Becca for providing this week's Farnsworth quote and for doing one of the most important and underpaid jobs that there is. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people. Michael Default, username Jane, Janine, Das, Fergan, IS, Phil, Das, 2, Tony, now in 42, Paul, other Paul,

Lyle and Samantha. Michael Default, Jane and and Janine, whose badassery is the reason the real world doesn't need Avengers. Das, I, Phil, Das, Stu, and Tony, who are so hot they're not allowed to visit Pompeii lest they awaken the ancestral memories. And now in Paul, Paul, Lyle, and Samantha, who are so intelligent we had to downgrade the term from smartphone to applies themselves very hard phone. Together, these 14 fabulous free thinkers

focus ferocious fervor into the fight for freedom from faith's falsity this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us, 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 you can't afford to do the money version of that, 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 handles that for us,

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