The Scathing Atheist - 615: Salvation Harmy Edition

Episode Date: December 5, 2024

In this week’s episode, we’ll warm some old headlines up for leftovers, Heath pushes new boundaries on the surface tension of stuffing, and we’ll follow up a week off with a week … kinda off. --- 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/ --- Video Link: Check out the animated version of the “What the Fuck Is?” segment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7U32vRjZOU --- This Week in Misogyny: Yet another death because of Texas’s abortion ban: https://www.propublica.org/article/porsha-ngumezi-miscarriage-death-texas-abortion-ban Kenneth Copeland warns that Trump’s critics will spend eternity hearing the names of aborted babies: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/scamvangelist-trumps-critics-will

Warning, this podcast did not mean duck, no matter what spell check might lead you to believe. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Factor, Aura Frames, and by the fact that I talked myself out of going back for a fifth piece of pie. A fifth piece of pie. What the fuck was I even thinking? And now, The Skating Atheist. the skating atheist. And it will never go away Because we did in fact evolve from filthy, stupid monkey man It's Thursday.

It's December 5th. And it's Krapasnacht! Cool, yeah, dude's got a lot of houses to visit this year. Like half of America. Yeah, at least. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosbeck. I'm Heathen Wright.

And from Joseph Rogans, New Jersey, and our remission of Wiggers, Georgia, this is the Yeah, at least. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosbeck. I'm Heath Enright. And from Joseph Rogans, New Jersey, and our Michigan Awakers Georgia, this is The Scathing Atheist. On this week's episode, we'll warm up some old headlines for leftovers. Heath pushes new boundaries on the surface tension of stuffing. And we'll follow up a week off with a week kind of off. But first, the diatron. When I was a kid, they used to say, no religion or politics at the table. And then they would start the meal by saying grace. So what they meant was no discussion of religion at the table and then they would start the meal by saying grace.

So what they meant was no discussion of religion at the table. Imposition, on the other hand. And I was reminded of that once again last Thursday as I sat down with my extended family for turkey at El. We all heap our plates high. Some of us have even taken our inaugural forkfuls when one of my nieces says, well who's going to say grace? And honestly, I think she said it as a joke, but my brother took it as a fucking request, and he brings the dinner that we've all been eagerly anticipating for an entire lion's

game to a grinding halt so that we can spend two minutes acknowledging his carpenter god. Now I should be clear that the room here is about evenly split as far as religion goes. Fully half of the people in the room don't ascribe to his religion, some of us famously so. And he knows this. But that does not stir in him even to brief his second of pause about it. It's the beginning of dinner, damn it, and that's the time when Jesus gets thanked.

Of course, a lot of people, even a lot of atheists, see this as too small and imposition to complain about. It's a harmless tradition, they'll say. To begrudge them a hundred seconds to slather praise on their savior would be petty, would it not? But I disagree. Now, I should be clear that among the non-religious half of the people present was significantly the person whose house we were at and who cooked all the fucking food and who'd paid for it. We were at my sister's place and if she's got any religion at all it's some kind of semi-defined neo-pagan earth religion. And I think we can all agree that my Catholic brother and his Catholic wife would freak the fuck out if she'd asked everybody to bow their head in silence while she thanked the all-mother

for her bounty or if I demanded a reverent minute and a half while I emphasized the damning implications of the problem of evil. I mean, I'm sure that if my brother had asked, my sister would have given his blessing her blessing. She's not the type to risk family unity over something so small. But the point here is that even to ask is an imposition that nobody but a Christian would even think of, and and significantly he didn't ask. And far from being a triviality, this is the whole fucking problem, if you ask me. You take any issue that secularists have with Christians and you trace it back to its source, you're gonna find this same goddamn thing. This entitled belief that their impositions aren't impositions. They put their

religion on public property at Christmas, they force their Bibles into our classrooms and their prayers into our locker rooms, they display their doctrines on our courthouse walls and they shove their religious beliefs into the laws themselves, and all the while they do it with the same privileged air of an outnumbered Christian demanding that everybody stare at their food a bit longer while Christ gets his due. It all comes from this paradoxical belief that we can forbid discussions of religion at a table where we're saying grace. Now of course as emblematic of the singular issue that I've devoted my life

to opposing as this presumption was, I didn't protest it at the moment. I didn't speak up and say hey half of us don't share your religion and that's assuming that neither of your kids are lying about their beliefs to keep you happy. We might even be the majority of this table. And also God can hear your fucking thoughts. He knows you're thankful and I'm hungry. He knows that too. At least I didn't say a shit on the outside because much like you, I don't think it's worth risking those brief moments of family harmony just to remind my brother that he's an asshole. I have plenty of opportunities to remind him of that. But at the same time, every time we roll over to these intrusions, we embolden them.

And all around us, we're seeing what happens when those particular instincts are emboldened. I mean, if it's okay to impose religion on your sibling's non-Christian kids, why isn't it okay to impose them on a Hindu kid at the public school? What's the difference? If an opening prayer is okay at a non-religious person's home for a meal with non-religious people, why isn't it okay at the beginning of a city council meeting? And if it's okay to demand that your non-religious family members revere Jesus with you, why isn't it okay to demand that of everyone?

Just consider what they're asking when they say grace. We're not asked to say it to. We don't have to know the words or anything. We're just asked to close our eyes and stay quiet. We're asked to look down, to adopt a posture of supplication, to blind ourselves to our surroundings and to keep our thoughts to ourselves. to adopt a posture of supplication, to blind ourselves to our surroundings, and to keep our thoughts to ourselves. That's what they're asking.

And the more often we give it to them, the more often they're gonna ask for it. They're talking about you, Jesus. We need to wrap this broadcast and bring you a special news, Wilmington. Joining me for headlines this week is nobody. I know, I know, we take a week off just to take another week off, but we're already all

in Nashville getting ready for the GAM live show. So we're going to serve up some pre Thanksgiving leftovers when it comes to headlines this week. We've got all new if slightly dated content, but first a word from our first sponsor this week factor. Okay. What about squeaky Pete's pig feets? Feets plural?

Yeah, plural. It is not a great sign. Hey guys, what you doing? Oh, hey, Heath. Me and Norah just looking for healthy places to eat in Nashville, but we're not having much luck. Well, now to be fair, we didn't even call big mamas to ask what soaked in grislens means. That's true. We did not do that. Okay, if you want to eat well on the go, why don't you just try Factor?

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Two minutes? Even we've got time for that. Everyone does. Head to factormeals.com slash 50skating and use the code 50skating to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping. That's code 50SCATHING at factormeals.com slash 50SCATHING to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping while your subscription is active. All right, Heath, thanks. So you guys going to try Big Mama's? No, they had a grease fire this week.

Wow, again? Yeah. Yeah wow again. Yeah. Yeah again and Now back to headlines from the past already in progress and we're back next up in headlines in so you're telling me There's a Chas news tonight Florida's Broward County School Board is rethinking its policy on outside advertising banners Thanks to the secular activist extraordinaire Chaz Butt Plug Jesus Stevens. Okay, just in case anyone's new here, that nickname is complimentary for sure.

Yes it is. I can think of no way that it wouldn't be, but yes it is. After noticing that local schools were allowing churches to put up advertising banners on school tracks and football fields, he decided to submit his own sign for consideration. But it turned out that none of the schools wanted to put up a sign for Chas the Bro-Postles Church of Satanology and perpetual soiree. So much so that in every instance where he applied, the school quickly changed their policies and far less quickly took down the religious advertising.

Yeah, the schools in Florida were confused at first. Chas, the Bro Apostles Church of St. Nology and Perpetual Soiree, it sounded like Matt Gates' favorite underground club for TV advertising, but then they realized what was going on. Yeah, right, right. Now, to be clear, generally speaking, the school districts already had prohibitions

on religious and political advertising on school property. There's no statewide or apparently even county-wide policy on this, but generally speaking, the school districts themselves do abide by the First Amendment voluntarily, at least on paper. So when Chas comes along and he says, here's your sign, they have something to point to to turn him down.

And then he says, oh, okay, but what about the Pentecostals of Cooper City or Cavalry Chapel Parkland or Potter's House Coral Springs Church or whichever side drew his notice in the first place? And then they'd go, Oh, and they would slowly get it. Yeah, we thought they were vape shop churches. Okay. Honestly, vape shops owe a lot more to high schools than they're willing to admit.

Fucking step up and sponsor a softball team, you assholes. I'm sure they would if we'd let them, Eli. But understandably, Stevens isn't happy with the arrangement, which requires them to basically go to every school in the county to check and see what they're advertising for before starting the arduous process of getting them to follow the law. Because what's happened now is that as an unstated policy, they're just excusing the churches from the rules until somebody notices and then enforcing the rules, right?

And even though that's better than not enforcing the rules at all, it's still discrimination. Because not one of the schools he's talked to has allowed his sign to hang until the other one was taken down or anything. So he's suing. And while there's no chance in hell that he'll be successful, what with him not having a lawyer and all, it looks like... You can do it, Chance. We believe in you. But it looks very likely that he can do it.

He might lose the lawsuit, but it looks like he's going to be successful in affecting countywide change, regardless of where the lawsuit goes. Okay, if equality happens and you got to call a timeout, you're the bad guy. Especially if your timeout is blocking a perpetual butt plug soiree. Yes, exactly. Bad kind. And look, I think this serves as a really important reminder as we stagger back into the dark times. Most of us cannot affect change on the national level,

but many of us can make a difference locally, whether that's by challenging a discriminatory invocation process at a local city council meeting, or by submitting a secular holiday display for an overly Jesused courthouse, or hell, by running for office. And many of us who can't do any of that shit can at least support the ones who can.

And if we're going to get through the next four years, that's how we're going to do it. Next up in headlines in God awful journalists news, we have a story about Ross do that. He's a Christian columnist for the New York Times. They don't want to be too credible over at the Times. That would be, you know, obnoxious and showy. So they keep him on staff to be an important voice of the reasonable Christian right. And that makes him the perfect person to explain to us liberals about what we believe regarding late-term abortion So he wrote an article last week called what liberals believe about late-term abortion, huh?

Are we telling each other what we believe now sassy op-ed man because one of us believes in a magic cracker Yeah, dude. So do you want to well he also and consider this a call to action if you must Eli believes he has chronic Lyme disease and consider this a call to action if you must, Eli, believes he has chronic Lyme disease. Oh, get to curing. All right, so I got to say, this piece from Ross Duthat was illuminating. Apparently, I was not aware of my beliefs about late term abortion.

I was pretty sure I believed it was a thing that almost never happens outside of rare emergencies. of course it should be legal considering the, you know, emergency nature of emergencies and also considering bodily autonomy in general, more importantly. But it turns out that no, that is not what I believe. Another belief that I was pretty sure I had is that government control of the uterus having population is heavily based on religious dogma that's not even mentioned in the Bible and got made up as a wedge issue to get the Christian right into the GOP voting base. But again, turns out I was believing wrong about my believing.

According to Ross, what I was describing to myself as made up religious dogma is actually quote, a sincere commitment to the human rights of the unborn. And those are different. So his article is the problem is that the left aren't wrong enough. Yeah. Next he's going to tell me I didn't want him to shove this article up his ass the whole time or that I wasn't reading it on my laptop at the time I was thinking. Okay so at this point if you're being intellectually honest as defined by Ross Doothat you're probably

thinking okay Heath maybe late-term abortions are needed once in a while but why are you cool with all the kids getting killed in school shootings? I was thinking that. And yeah, well, Ross did that. He's a pro, so he will connect those dots. Quote, relative to other causes of childhood death that liberals take extremely seriously, thousands of late term abortions loom quite large. Just over 10,000 American children under 14 died

of natural and unnatural causes in 2022. So causes, I think is what he's trying to say there. If you included late term abortion in those numbers, it would instantly be the leading cause of childhood death, eclipsing diseases, drugs, and gun violence." End quote. Okay, first of all, that's not true by his own admission. And second of all, if you included cum tissues, it's bigger than the Holocaust, man. The point is we don't. If you include bags as fucking shoplifting, that's the leading cause of theft.

This is a problem, Ross, that we can solve with shittier car seats. Yeah. I don't know if you thought about that. So from there we learn about the problem with having a bright line that defines the beginning of human life. That bright line as I understood for me and for many pro-choice people is being born. Yes. Or breathing and therefore not being part ofice people is being born. Yes. Or breathing and therefore not being part of a different person's body. Yep, sure.

But no, it's not. Oh. According to Ross, quote. You sure? Yeah, yeah, he's quite sure. According to Ross, it matters a great deal whether you count a post-viability fetus as a human being. If you do, then their protection should be a matter

of great importance, even if you also support first trimester abortion. If you don't, if you accept that they will be killed in meaningful numbers, numbers that would almost certainly increase under Harris's preferred legal order, well, I'm already voting for him. Then you need to either retreat to the life begins at breath position, radical but consistent, mystical but stable. Oh, you wouldn't want people being mystical about it. Jesus. Firm but tenuous.

Yeah. Or else you have to come up with some other marker that establishes personhood at, say, 35 weeks of pregnancy and consigns viable fetuses before that line to a less-than-human status. The pro-choice side consistently refuses to make this choice, preferring to occupy an ambiguous zone where late-term abortion is permitted in law, minimized as a reality and left unjustified by any consistent argument about human life or human rights.

Okay, but the standard has never been viability, Ross. Not in 1975. And not to you. Because if it was, you would have terrible news about all the babies that are held in frozen stasis at IVF clinics across the nation. Right, Ross? If viability was the thing, Ross? But also, look, the bright line problem remains no matter what position you take on abortion. Exactly.

Right? Heath defined one that is entirely reasonable and based on the principles of bodily autonomy. It was mystical, though. It sure was pretty fucking mystical. Turgid but throbbing. It was all mystical. It was pretty fucking mystical. Turgid but throbbing. It was all of those things. On Ross's side though, you have either the life begins at conception extremism that Ross himself rejects, or you have an arbitrary line that shifts based on technology, geography,

and social status, you jackass. Fetal gumption. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, here's my best translation of that fucking non-Euclidean tangle of yarn and pushpins, also known as a paragraph in the world of Ross Doothat. He's arguing that if we care about viable fetuses, we would never support latent pregnancy abortions.

Our only recourse, intellectually, would be retreating to the bright line position that I already had called being born and breathing as part of not someone else's body. So yeah, thanks for that, Ross. You were able to explain what I didn't believe for the entire article and force me to land on believing what I believe. You're doing God's work over there.

Genius. And hey, if anyone sees Ross, remember, you're entitled to his kidneys, his liver. No, you are. He believes in life. Maybe grab one as a spare. Jesse, you might as well have one. Ross cares.

And in fact, check yourself before you fact-wreck yourself nose. Catholics in Australia are worried about a proposed law that seeks to crack down on misinformation on social media because everything they say is a fucking lie. And even though the law specifically exempts expressions of religious belief, they worry that doesn't go far enough

towards protecting religious bigotry. And if you think coming out against truth is a difficult point to balance on, I should point out that they're pivoting away from coming out against inclusion to get here. So Practice religion really makes you focus on the effort grade the improvement grade, but yeah, no solid improvement there champ you saw you went from stupid and evil to a Sort of slightly better stupid and evil Maybe yeah so first of all, I need to thank Alan for sending us both the story and the Sort of slightly better, stupid and evil. Yeah, maybe. Yeah.

So first of all, I need to thank Alan for sending us both the story and the opening ice cube joke. And to his eternal credit, Alan didn't send me a story about Australian Catholics freaking out about the law. He sent me the actual freaking out in the form of an op-ed by one Margaret Chambers in the Catholic Weekly bombastically and clumsily titled, Is Religious Freedom Without a Prayer in Australia? Prayer.

Right? Yeah. And while she takes a full nine paragraphs to admit it, the religious freedom she's concerned with is the right to bigot. Okay, I'll never understand why this is so confusing for religious people. You get freedom of thought, like going inward, but your freedoms end where other people's

freedoms begin. That's how the word freedom works in fucking society. You can't walk around spraying your sticky freedom gunk on everybody else in the form of pictures. And personally, I don't think you should get freedom of thought either. Just be happy I'm in the minority on that and I'm not running Australia. Take the W. Right?

Yeah. Now, the law in question here is a controversial proposal that would issue potentially enormous fines to social media companies that fail to prevent the spread of misinformation online. And it's controversial for several reasons, including the fact that they're apparently going to let those same social media companies define what counts as reasonable prevention measures, but the biggest opposition is coming from, predictably, Australia's biggest liars, the Church. And like I said, the law specifically exempts religious leaders saying religious shit. God loves you is misinformation to be sure, but that's not the kind of thing they're

trying to crack down on. But as the frenzied op-ed points out, quote, consider a Catholic mother who posts her belief on social media that there is an immutable link between biological sex and gender, end quote. No, I will not consider that. Why would that person be a mother? What is that? Yeah, right.

But could that be seen as misinformation? Well, no, not according to the way the law is written, even by your own admission, that wouldn't qualify as misinformation. But what if social media companies censored it anyway? I mean, what other than stifling bigotry against an endangered minority would that do? What other than that? Yeah. What if firemen come and spray all the redheads with hoses because they think they're on fire?

Yeah. I'm an adult who can vote, by the way. And look, it's really telling that the most damning thing the Catholic Weekly could think of to say about this proposed law is that if it were misapplied, some stuff that's bad but not illegal could also get censored. The reality, of course, is that they want to protect their right to misinformation for far grander purposes, like, for example, lying about what proposed misinformation laws would do in an effort to protect their ability to misinform. And on that pre-recorded note, we're going to take a quick break for a word from our

other sponsor this week, Aura Frames. So you're not getting your mom anything for Christmas? No, she said she doesn't want anything. Stop right there, citizen! Eli, what are you doing? Why are you dressed like that? Is that your son's Paw Patrol costume? Affirmative citizen. I'm here from the mom police and you're about to make a big mistake Wait, I am you sure are when mom says she doesn't want anything for Christmas

She wants you to surprise her with a gift. Anyways, it was a test. Well, that's Super manipulative don't overthink it. Her generation is not okay. Yeah, okay, that's super manipulative. Don't overthink it. Her generation is not okay. Yeah, okay, that's fair. What should I get her? That's easy, civilian. She needs an Aura Frame. Named number one by Wirecutter, Aura Frames makes it incredibly easy to share unlimited

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Alright, thanks Eli. I still think mom has been a little weird though. She literally couldn't get a bank account when your parents got married. Yeah, you know what? She gets a pass. Right? A man wrote the bible? A horse was slung.

If it's a legitimate race. It is a slut, right? Cooking can be fun. Hey! I'm proud of a man! This week in Massagena. So, as of this recording, the official death toll from Texas' abortion ban is at 3. The real number is doubtless much higher, but the body count that can be directly and arguably linked to their draconian ban is at 3 as of November 25th.

And the latest death, that Portia Goumezzi, with apologies if I butchered the pronunciation there, is exactly the kind of death that reproductive rights activists have been warning about. Because look, I'll spare you the gruesome details, but Portia showed up at the hospital after a miscarriage. Any pre-baby she might've had was already dead. But doctors were still afraid to provide

what would have been the routine response a couple years ago. And the end result was that she bled to death in a hospital waiting for timid physicians to get off their fucking hands. This is gonna keep happening. This and stuff like it are gonna get more widespread as more and more states pass the draconian laws.

Because the thing is, is that they're not really based in anything medical. They're based in something religious, but they're trying to couch them in medical language that make them sound more reasonable. And what ends up happening is that a bunch of legislators start wielding terminology they're not qualified to wield. The end result is doctors who have no way

of really knowing the law and knowing when they can and cannot administer life-saving care. Of course, I shouldn't imply that there are no risks on our side, because based on some of the conversations that I've had with listeners in the past, I know I've changed the minds of some people on the issue of reproductive rights and its importance in the liberal platform. But I don't want to do that without making sure you understand the risks that might entail. Which is why I feel compelled to tell you about a recent warning from Kenneth Copeland that those of us who support abortion and criticize Donald Trump will, upon our arrival in hell,

be condemned to spend eternity listening to the names of aborted babies. He recounted this revelation during a post-election service last month. Quote, I saw this in the spirit, literally. It was judgment day and Jesus stood there and said, those of you that didn't vote or didn't pray and vote like I told you, you will listen to the names of all the babies that are here and never got any life. And it'll be a while because there's over 65 million of them. But you are going to listen to everyone and you are going to be held responsible for their death." End quote.

Now, this brings up a bunch of thoughts all at once. For example, do people name their abortions? If not, who's deciding the names? Or are they saying that names are innate? Like I have some kind of inherent lucindaness that my parents discovered rather than decided on. But setting that aside for a second, it's also worth noting that we're talking about a pretty mild punishment as far as hell goes.

I mean, as Noah proves in the ultra every week, a list of names can be entertaining if you do it right. But even if you're going out of your way to make it annoying, it's nothing like the mouth asses that Dante promised. Of course, it could be that you're going to hear these while some other torture is going on, I guess. But even then, it sounds like a more relaxing soundtrack than the screams of the damned around you.

But the way he says it, it kind of sounds like they're going to have to read the whole list before they can start punishing you. In which case, awarding more babies is a great way to delay the damned nations when we get there, folks. Not really sure what message Kenny was trying to send here, but that was my takeaway. Anyway, now that you have your marching orders, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over

to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next up in headlines in Electile Dysfunction News, the older you get, the less effective your Johnson tends to be. Sorry to just throw it out there, but that is a fact that you have to reckon with. Same girl.

So, like, if you're a 248-year-old democracy, for example, it is to be expected. Which is why nobody listening will be surprised to learn that the Johnson Amendment, which bars tax-exempt churches from directly endorsing political candidates, didn't stop mega-church pastor Josh Howerton from directly endorsing a political candidate. Specifically, telling his flock to vote like Jesus would by casting their ballot for Donald Trump. Yeah, and that's ridiculous that Jesus would like Donald Trump. So, Christian people, I know you're listening. Jesus Christ of Nazareth would definitely know that the two major parties are all the same and do a write-in vote for RFK Jr.

Yes! You gotta send a message. Yes, you do. Yeah, maybe don't ever vote again, right? Take the ultimate stance. Right. Right into everybody's face. Just never, ever in your whole life.

To be clear, he never actually said the words, vote for Donald Trump, but only in a very not touching, can't get mad kind of way. The name of the sermon was how to vote like Jesus. And the entire thing was about how Donald Trump is better than Kamala Harris. And it was at least close enough to a direct endorsement that the Freedom from Religion Foundation is calling on the IRS to investigate the church and rethink its 501c3 status. Another strongly worded letter. Love it. Yeah, now that letter is sitting in a field full of Hugh Jackman corpses. We'll see how

it goes. We'll see if the IRS gets on that. And by the way, if the name Josh Howerton rings a bell for you, that's probably because we reported on this asshole a couple of months ago when he tried to manipulate traffic data for the city by recruiting a volunteer army to drive through the intersection near his church. He really wanted a traffic light and he was willing to commit fraud to get city funds for it. So you can see why this support immoral leaders message appeals to him so much. I forgot his name. I thought of Glenn Howard from It's Always Sunny when I saw the name.

Oh, that would have been so much better. And apropos, can I say? And at At-A-Laws for words news. Regular listeners to our show might remember back in February when we talked about Anna Nuslock, a California woman who, in what I imagine was one of the darkest moments of her life, lost her twins just 15 weeks into her pregnancy. Bleeding and in pain, Anna rushed to the nearest hospital, Providence St. Joseph, in nearby Eureka, California, where doctors told her that in spite of the risk to her life, they

would not help her because the Catholic Church called saving her life an abortion. And if you're like me, when you heard this story, you thought to yourself, hey, I bet if someone went into that hospital and beat the shit out of that doctor, he'd be a lot more inclined to bend policy. But after, after you were done thinking that first thing, you know, I said, and then yes, and then maybe you got yelled at by your coworkers, you probably thought to yourself, hey, that's gotta be fucking illegal, right? Like even in America?

And the answer is, surprisingly, yes, it is illegal. Which is why this week, after a lawsuit by the state's attorney general, the hospital has agreed to follow the laws about saving people's lives from now on. So. Cool. Yay!

Yeah, I mean, you could still do a John Q Q it's just like for the fun of it now you can think about you can think about it it's also for vengeance right like if we're not gonna attach a value to vengeance for its own sake this is gonna be a really hard four years to stay motivated through okay exactly yes now it's worth pointing out that this was already a law on the books, right? As Hemant Mehta over at the Friendly Atheist blog points out, California's emergency services law already talks about this scenario, right? If you provide emergency medical services, you have to provide all of them to everybody, even if you wouldn't do certain procedures in non-emergency situations.

But that didn't stop the hospital from lying their asses off when they were first served this suit saying, quote, Providence is deeply committed to the health and wellness of women and pregnant patients and provides emergency services to all who walk through our doors in accordance with state and federal law. End quote. No, but you don't. Except they didn't, yeah, thank you. They didn't, and that's why there's a fucking lawsuit.

Hey, just more broadly, it feels like maybe the law shouldn't have the incentive to make a situation into a medical emergency. That seems stupid. Also, it's weird that we have a group of people who need a law to tell them to do all the life-saving stuff they can before they'll do it, and we let those people still be in charge of life-saving stuff.

Yes! Insanity. They recognize that this law needed to exist. And look, I tell you this story for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, it's nice to have some good news to report on this week. Though disappointingly, I do have to report nobody has removed that doctor's eyes from his skull. But secondly, I want to remind you that the danger of religion is most lethal when it's hidden behind the good, right? The Catholic Church uses their ownership of hospitals

and those hospital statuses, charities, as a front for all of their evil shit. But when push comes to shove, they do stuff like this in those hospitals and they don't stop until it's gonna cost them money and or fucking jail time. Yeah, yeah. And meanwhile, atheists are being confronted with the, if the Catholic church was bad, why would they operate all these hospitals apologetics?

Mm-hmm. Yeah, so first things, never ever choose a Catholic hospital if you can prevent it, and if you ever do end up in Providence St. Joseph in Eureka, check your doctor's name tag and keep an eye out for sharp stuff. That's all we're saying. That's all we're saying. Keep the eyes in. Yes. No out. And on that pre-recorded note, we're gonna wrap up the headlines for the night. Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli, thanks as always.

To Mongey! And when we come back, we're gonna get slimed. But not in a way as sexy as I just made it sound. There's no denying at this point that we live in a world ruled by bullshit, so it's never been more important to understand it. Luckily, we've got a resident expert who's spent years doing deep dives into this stuff, really digging in, and he's going to share some of the kernels he's discovered with us yet again on another installment of How Bullshit Is It?

So tell us, Heath, which pile are we digging through today? Okay, the intro made me think Marsh was here and I was like, oh Marsh is going to do the thing. Okay, cool. No, it's me. Yep. Today. Nobody introduced me so I refuse to speak.

Oh, okay. All right. Good refusal. Today, we're going to be talking about ectoplasm. Wait, ectoplasm as in he slimed me ectoplasm? The same. Okay, awesome. So for people who don't immediately catch all my 80s references, what is ectoplasm?

It's vagina gauze. Wait, what? Yeah, okay. Sorry. Probably should have eased you into that. But that is ultimately where we're going with this. No, no, Heath. I have learned that if vagina gauze is your ultimate destination, it's better

that people know that upfront. Sure. Fair. Okay. Well, with apologies for not having learned my lesson about carefully crafting the opening question on this segment, what would somebody who believed in it tell me ectoplasm was? Ah, that would be ghost cum.

Yeah. Okay. That's not better. Okay. Yeah. There's no easy ramp into this one. No, you just got to go right into it. OK, I'm willing to bet that the Wikipedia writers found one a little less steep than this. OK, yes, yes, they did fine. So according to Wikipedia, it's, quote, a substance or spiritual energy that's

exteriorized by physical mediums. I'm sorry is Exteriorized even a word it is. Yeah, but even the Wikipedia article puts it in scare quotes. Good job, Susan. Yeah So what what does that fucking mean? I'll allow Wikipedia to elaborate quote in Spiritualism as opposed to in reality, correct in spiritualism, ectoplasm is said to be formed by physical mediums. When in a trance state, this material is excreted as a gauze like substance from orifices on the medium's body. And spiritual entities are said to drape this substance over their non-physical body,

enabling them to interact in the physical and real universe." End exact quote. Okay, so it's gauze that the medium shoves into an orifice and then excretes later? Sometimes, yeah. Oh, well, we call that kale in the vegan community. I don't know if you guys... Sure, it's like kale, but less fiber. So at the risk of violating the code of Eli's other profession, which I also put in scare quotes, I should point out that the magician doesn't really have that many cards in his

mouth. That's... Wow! Okay. So it's likely that most mediums opted for less intrusive sleight of hand ways of making the gauze appear to extrude from their orifices, assuming they bothered to extrude anything at all. Wait, did some of them not even bother to learn the trick?

Once again, from later in that same paragraph on Wikipedia, quote, some accounts claim that ectoplasm begins clear and almost invisible, but darkens and becomes visible as the psychic energy becomes stronger. According to some mediums, the ectoplasm cannot occur in light conditions as the ectoplasmic substance would disintegrate. Amazing. Okay, listeners, I would like to report podcasting malpractice. Because when Heath wrote that quote into our notes, he did one of those bracket, dot dot dot bracket things that means he left something out.

So I checked to see what he left out, and it was, continuing the quote, still other accounts state that in extreme cases, ectoplasm will develop a strong odor. Ectoplasm will develop a strong odor. Wow. Okay. Heath, do you care to explain yourself? Okay. I was saving that for later. It didn't fit into the invisible bullshit point that I was making at the moment. Okay. All right. Forgiven. So, okay. So con artist mediums once convinced people that the gauze that they shoved up their asses was magical. Is that a fair summary of where we are so far?

Yeah, I told you there's no subtle ramp for this. No, you're right. You're right. So when did this become a thing? During one of America's real credulity heydays, the late 1800s. The term ectoplasm was coined in 1894 by psychical researcher Charles Richet. It comes from the Greek ecto, meaning outside, and plasma, meaning anything formed.

I'm sorry, researcher? As in person whose scientific field was studying vagina gauze? People, no, plural. Oh my God. Plural people. Like I said, it was a heyday for credulity, and that included scientific researchers. Gustave Jolet, a French physician and metaphysical researcher.

Not a great combination. Yeah. Yeah, correct. So Jolet defined ectoplasm as being, quote, very variable in appearance, being sometimes vaporous, sometimes a plastic paste, sometimes a bundle of fine threads or a membrane with swelling or fringes, or a fine fabric-like tissue." Sometimes it was change, it was loose change. It's whatever the fucking medium had laying around then.

Pretty much, yeah. Okay, so when I think of ectoplasm though, I think of like a sticky ooze. Yeah, that's mostly because of Ghostbusters, but that is how it was sometimes described. The wiki quotes no lesser authority than Arthur Conan Doyle, who described ectoplasm as, quote, a viscous, gelatinous, which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes. End quote. His medium needed to go see your guy, right? All right.

I'm sorry. It's actually a disease. I'm sorry. But wait, could other substances not solidify and be used for material purposes? And a better question, what material purposes was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle finding for vagina gauze? Yeah, right. No, that's it.

Yeah, that too. Great questions. No idea what the hell he was talking about. Every real test of so-called ectoplasm by competent scientists has shown it was just some normal substance. Okay, so how do believers get around that? Incompetent scientists. Oh yeah, no, that makes sense. Indeed.

So much of the early history of the spiritualism movement consisted of scientists very slowly learning about lying. Somebody would tell them, I do this thing where magic ghost gauze oozes out of my vagina. And they would set out about earnestly trying to figure out what previously undocumented phenomenon could cause such a thing. OK, but but hoaxes go way further back than the 1890s.

I feel like they would know about them. Oh, they did. But what they hadn't realized yet, or at least what the incompetent ones hadn't realized is that they could be fooled. Most of the mediums making these claims were uneducated. They were almost exclusively women. And the idea that uneducated women could fool a credentialed scientist with a penis that was unthinkable to a lot of men.

Right. Yeah. Keep in mind that the spiritualist movement was started by two tweens who could crack their toes. Yeah. This isn't exactly J-Ref, you know? Right. Okay. So we're talking about a combination of hubris and sexism. Well, I feel like some of it was probably just naivety too. A lot of people just don't consider that the sweet old lady they're talking to could be entirely and consciously full of shit. Okay. So do we know where it comes from? Do we know who the first person to go like, I bet if I shoved this gauze up my pussy was,

do we know that name? Well, the idea of a physical substance that was central to spiritualism was around from at least the 1880s. Scientists had observed what they thought was telekinesis in a lab environment, and they considered that there had to be some kind of physical substance that manifested in the real world to make that telekinesis possible.

Yeah, nobody tell these guys about thread. That is what was doing it, yeah. But they didn't know that yet because of the aforementioned naive sexism hubris thing. But that idea of what was originally called an ectenic force was first proposed by a French statesman and author named Agenor de Gaspérent. Agenor de Gaspérent?

He proposed it as an explanation for the phenomenon of table tipping during seances. So I'm sorry. So he was a researcher trying to figure out how a table could possibly tip when one of the people sitting at it was paid to make it tip. Yeah, their naive hubris was really sexist back then. So Gasparan eventually teamed up with a professor of natural history at the Academy of Geneva and Conducted a bunch of experiments on this non-existent force

They even claimed that some of those experiments were successful though. Nobody was able to reproduce their findings shocking Yeah, okay But in his defense imagine how hard it was to be a scientist back then right some dude writes in the paper I touched God's left nut and you've got to be like, okay, so what's the sample size on God's nuts? But eventually, because of the prying of researchers like Gaspéren, it became known in medium circles that scientists were on the hunt for a physical substance that would validate mediumship.

And mediums had all kinds of physical substances. scientists were on the hunt for a physical substance that would validate mediumship. And mediums had all kinds of physical substances. So all at once, several prominent mediums started incorporating ectoplasm into their routines. And oozing out of them was just the easiest way to pull this off? Probably not. We're talking about people who got away with just pushing the table up and down with their knees. Alright, that's two, Heath!

Alright, I'll give one more. Cross my people again. Cross my people again. See what happens. The card's already in the lemon. But some researchers, they speculated there was an internal substance that gave mediums their powers, dubbed psychode. So the easiest way to satisfy everybody was with an unknown substance that secreted from the medium's body. Okay, but even the gullible scientists of the day must have thought of that. They didn't check the orifices beforehand? Sometimes they did, sometimes they didn't.

But given the researchers were almost exclusively men, none of them were asking to check the vagina in advance, which is why that was so often the orifice of choice. Okay, so wait, so they just go like, well, look, it's coming out of my hoo-ha this time. Well though, far more often, they'd hide it there and then act like it came out of their nose or their mouth or even just the pores of their skin. You got to keep in mind that this stuff was generally produced in conjunction with a seance, which meant it, quote, appeared while the lights were out. So the scientists can check the medium's mouth beforehand. Then they shut off all the lights.

She does her song and dance. She does her song and dance and when the light comes back on she could just be like well Would you look at this fucking Lugia ectoplasm I hocked up all the lights were out Also, keep in mind that a lot of seances at the time were like barely concealed script shows and sex shows so asking to check the orifices would be like going to Amsterdam and like Demanding to know the brand of the ping-pong balls. It's not in the spirit. It's not in the spirit. All right, so when did all of science stop being idiots then? Okay, so here's the thing. Not all scientists were fooled. In fact, generally speaking, the only ones who were fooled were the ones who wanted to be fooled.

These are people who have entire labs or book careers that are contingent on the idea that there's something to the nothing that they're studying. More serious scientists were generally interested in doing, you know, more serious science. Okay, so what did serious scientists find when they looked into this stuff? Fraud, Noah. They found fraud. For example, there was a medium named Kathleen Gallagher that was a favorite among credulous scientists.

She was said to be able to levitate shit and produce a substance that was too fine to see with the naked eye, but it could be felt. But when a genuinely skeptical researcher named Edmond Dalby investigated her claims, he saw none of that. Nothing levitated, no unexplainable substance was produced, and at one point he actually caught her fiddling with gauze with her feet. I'm fucking pregnant.

So he caught her cheating. He would only go so far as to say he saw evidence of fraud. Yeah, should have put it in her vagina, rookie mistake. Yep, yeah, every time. It's hard to overstate Just how half-assed most of this fraud was a great example comes from a medium named Ava Carrier Who claimed she could form images onto the ectoplasm that she produced? She demonstrated her ability to a researcher named Albert van shrink-nazzing

Who was so impressed that he published a whole book about her magical powers. And the book included photographs of some of the alleged ectoplasm that she produced. Oh, please tell me she was just like hiding magazine cutouts in her vag. Well, there's no confirmation on where she was hiding them necessarily. But yeah, readers of Shrenk Natsing's book pointed out that the ectoplasm contained marks of magazine cutouts, as well as pins and a piece of string. And when they drew attention to that, he admitted that he had caught Carrier try to sneak pins

into the seance room on more than one occasion. Mediums at home trying to think up the trick and she's like, okay, well I'm not hiding pins there. Yeah, right. So. All right, so was this enough to convince him that he was mistaken in his science? Not even close.

Oh, perfect. When people hunted down the actual magazine images she'd used to trick him and showed him that they exactly matched the ones he presented in his book. He claimed it was because she had seen those photos in those magazines and they had imprinted on her mind so strongly that she reproduced them on her very real ectoplasm. Okay, so did the researchers ever catch on or are ectoplasm mediums still hiding out like homeopaths

to this day? Well, as the 20th century rolled on and claims of ectoplasm production started to get more press, skeptical researchers stepped in a bit more and exposed some of the fraud. For example, a committee from the Kistinaya University in Norway was asked to investigate the claims of Danish medium Eininer Nielsen and they found him hiding fake ectoplasm inside of his ass before the test. I can't tell who's more embarrassed in that situation, right? I mean, I hope it was the guy with stuff up his ass, but I've also been the guy with stuff

up his ass. Right, right. The other guy is like, man, this is my job. This here is my job. Can I see up your ass? No. Okay. Well, now I have to see up your ass. You know that, right? Alright, well, the most damning aspect of this particular fraud is that it leaves behind a trace.

Especially after you have to pull light. Yeah. I mean, some mediums would claim the ectoplasm disappeared when the lights came on, but far more often, they'd have an actual physical substance like muslin or gauze or a goo made from soap, gelatin, and egg whites or something like that. And no matter how convincing your performance might have been on the night of the seance, a scientist looking at the purported ectoplasm later can always be like, no, that's gauze and vagina juice. Check, check the science eyes. It's not that magical thing. All right. Well, I feel like you've already answered this, but the segment

can't really end until we quantify it. So final question for you, Heath. How bullshit is it? All right. So when you hear about pseudoscience from, you know, somebody like R.F.K. Jr., you might say, alright, that guy pulled it out of his ass. Well, this one's not a metaphor. Nope.

Yeah. Nope. And with that reminder, we're going to wrap things up, but we'll keep our knee-highs handy for the next installment. Thanks Heath. Normally, we don't recycle content on this show. Just seems lazy to me. But what that means is that there are very often important points that we neglect because we've talked about them years ago and we don't want to be repetitive.

So because it's too important not to bring up periodically, and because we were running a few minutes short on all the pre-recorded stuff, I'd like to remind everybody why they should pass by the Red Kettle this year with a segment that first aired over on Godawful Movies episode number 17, way the hell back in 2015. And by the way, if you'd like to share this info with a friend, friend of the show Angelo Madrid of Madrid Tunes actually animated the older version of this, and we have a link to the YouTube video on the show notes. What the fuck is The Salvation Army? The Salvation Army is a quasi-military evangelical Protestant church that would much rather you

thought of it as a charity. But it's not. While the Salvation Army is actively involved in a number of humanitarian projects, including disaster relief, homeless shelters, and outreach programs for the poor, they are not a charity, because being a charity would require full financial transparency. According to their mission statement, the Salvation Army's primary function is to spread the Christian religion. Though to their credit, that's immediately followed up by a bunch of shit about education

and helping the poor. They follow the mission statement up though with a more elaborate list of 11 doctrines or guiding principles, not a single one of which has the slightest goddamn thing to do with charity or helping people. Unless you count harassing them about Jesus as helping them, which you don't. And shouldn't. The group was founded in London in 1865 as the East London Christian Mission and quickly adopted the whole military schtick that they retain to this day.

But despite their self-congratulatory use of military titles, the early soldiers of the Salvation Army proved themselves far from battle-ready when local opposition to their missionary work arose in the form of the Skeleton Army. This was a group that rose up in opposition to the Salvation Army and would disrupt their meetings by throwing bones, rocks, tar, and rats at their speakers. Now the sources that I've seen don't specify whether those rats are alive or dead, but we're gonna go with alive because that's the funnier option, unless you're a rat. Today's Salvation Army operates in 127 countries, though it

could be 126 if Putin ever manages to kick them out for being a paramilitary operation, which he's been trying to do since 2001. And if you think about it, that multi-decade failure should have served as a solid warning that his Ukrainian invasion wasn't going to go well. The group claims a membership of well over a million, which, when translated out of bullshit church membership calculus, amounts to almost 200,000 people. It's widely believed that the Salvation Army spends approximately 85% of the donations that they receive on charitable activities, though this is impossible to verify since

they're a church and they don't have to tell you a goddamn thing. Their status as a religious mission exempts them from full financial disclosure, which makes them impossible to assess by the criterion used by groups like Charity Watch. To their credit, however, a number of independent charity rating services do give the Salvation Army a passing grade. Of course, it's also worth noting that 85% of the donations going to charity isn't very much. But irrespective of how much money they spend on humanitarian aid, it's vital to remember

that when you give money to the Salvation Army, you're giving money to a church with a kettle-shaped collection plate and an egregious record on LGBTQ rights. A couple of quick examples. In 1986, the Salvation Army of New Zealand collected signatures against the Homosexual Law Reform Act, which would later go on to legalize gay sex in that country. In 1998, the Salvation Army of the U.S. turned down a $3.5 million grant and closed down programs for unhoused people in San Francisco because a city ordinance would have required them to pay benefits to employees with same-sex spouses. In 2000, the Salvation Army of Scotland submitted a letter to

parliament opposing a law that allowed schools in Scotland to teach that homosexuality was normal. In 2004, the Salvation Army of New York threatened to shut down services for the unhoused over the city's anti-LGBTQ discrimination ordinance. In 2012, the Salvation Army of Burlington, Vermont allegedly fired a caseworker for being bisexual. As recently as 2013, their website in the US included links to gay conversion therapy centers. In 2017, the New York City Commission on Human Rights charged the Salvation Army Rehab Center for refusing to accept trans patients. In 2020, Chick-fil-A distanced itself from the organization for their reputation on gay rights. They were deemed to be too homophobic for Chick-fil-A.

And in addition to their grotesque record on gay rights, the Salvation Army also actively opposes euthanasia, and though their stance on abortion rights is progressive compared to most Christian organizations, that doesn't make it progressive. And of course, according to their current positional statement on homosexuality, it's okay to be gay as long as you're celibate. They also ban gays from holding positions within their organization above the rank of minister. Women, on the other hand, can be ordained in the church.

Technically, their rules stipulate that female Salvation Army officers are only permitted to marry other Salvation Army officers, but that rule's been relaxed in recent years since that's blatantly illegal as fuck, even if you're a church. It's also important to remember that being a church rather than a charity leaves the Salvation Army

inordinately prone to doing bat shit crazy stuff, like in 2010 when their Canadian affiliates refused to accept toy donations based on Twilight because those are satanic. They've also come under fire a number of times for proselytizing during government-funded events and for asking their employees about their sexual habits as conditions of employment. And all of those controversies of course pale in comparison to the Australian branch of the Salvation Army which raped orphans. Before we wind things down tonight, I want to remind you one last time that there are still general admission tickets available for our live Godawful Movies show in Nashville,

Tennessee on December the 7th. Check the show notes for details or check out GodawfulMoviesLive.com. Anyway, that's all the blessing we've got for you tonight. We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be in the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister shows, hot friend God of Film Movies debuting at seven Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half sister show. Citation needed debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, I can't wrap up the episode without thanking Heath Enroy for being Mary, Eli Bosnick for being bright and Lucinda illusions for being all my Christmases. You were wondering how I was going to finish that without being racist. Weren't you? Be honest. Anyway, I also want to thank Peter for writing this week's Farnsworth quote. Kind of depressing when you just go ahead and say it like that, man. But yeah, it's the stupid and it's not going anywhere.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best bipeds, Lizzie, Pauls, Ben, Jake, David, yes, pistachio, Corey, Jim, for Eduardo, paint, McCalla, Cullen, Stephen, Randy, stones, McGillicuddy, BS detector, Esquire, Snow 13, Spiritual Jiggalo, Starshark, Stewart, Chess Piece, Space Stephanie, Just Another Food Smith, Lily Desiree, and Andre. Lily, Paulsman, Jake, David, Yaz, Corey, and Jim, who are so hot the planes there and never need to de-ice. Fred, Drardo, Paint, Cullen, Stephen, Randy, Stones, Snow, and Spiritual Jiggalo, whose

thoughts are even deeper than this lake effect snow. And Starshark, Stewart piece, Stephanie's, food, Smith, Lily and Andre, who are so cool they can have snowball fights in the summertime. Together these 22 dutiful, beautiful, root and tutiful supporters helped us keep the stocking stuff this year by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us, especially this time of year, but if you do, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com. Skating 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 homepage at scathing atheist.com. And if you'd like to help, but all this shit your loved ones want for Christmas is expensive, 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 to social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us and our audio engineers, Morgan Clark will also roll 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 scathingadius.com. Well, you see, sometimes we even have to pre-record the outtakes. And that's awkward.

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