The Scathing Atheist - 658: Ad Mominem Edition

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

In this week’s episode, the nones are emptier than we thought, a Trump video about med beds gets recognized as AI because of complete sentences, and Ross Douthat will ask how we explain all the alien abductions if Jesus isn’t our Lord and Savior. --- 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/ Report instances of harassment or abuse connected to this show to the Creator Accountability Network here: https://creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org/ --- Guest Links: Get your online tickets to watch in on the action at QED here: https://qedcon.org/tickets Learn more about Skeptics in the Pub’s pre-QED Skepticamp here: https://sitp.online/ --- Headlines: Nonreligious Americans might not be as spiritual as previously reported: https://religionnews.com/2025/10/02/nonreligious-americans-might-not-be-as-spiritual-as-we-thought/ Christian group deceived SCOTUS about LGBTQ research, cited scholars say: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/oct/06/alliance-defending-freedom-supreme-court-conversion-therapy SCOTUS term opens with docket full of theocracy building: https://religionclause.blogspot.com/2025/10/supreme-court-term-opens-monday-with.html Trump posts AI-generated video about "MedBeds For All": https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/28/politics/trump-ai-medbed-conspiracy-theory

Warning, the following podcast uses more foul language than Noah watching a Jaguars game. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by BetterHelp, sometimes illness wins by Carrie Black, and by the fact that I was able to convince Eli that that wasn't the kind of ice that pick was meant for. And now, the Skating Atheist. Greetings all, Cass here, so I'm reading an early modern medical text, as anyone might do, and suddenly it smacks me in the face with this gem. Quote, superstition requires gullability, just as,

true religion requires faith. End quote. Five hundred years on and they are still no closer to hearing themselves. All of this is to say that we are still in the process of evolving from filthy monkey men. It's Thursday. It's October night. And it's national pro-life cupcake day. Well, I believe batter is already a cupcake, so grab a spoon. I have no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heathenright. And from Mitch Albums, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia. This is the scathing atheist. Oh, this week's episode, The Nuns are emptier than we thought. A Trump video about Medbeds gets recognized as AI because of complete sentences. And Ross Deltzer will ask how we explain all the alien abductions if Jesus isn't our Lord's Savior. But first, the diatriat.

Despite what us mediocre white guys might lead you to believe, thinking objectively is really hard. I used to think it was easy and that I was great at it, but it turned out I only believed that because thinking objectively is really hard. And it makes sense when you think about it, right? Shit gets weird when you suddenly have to hammer a nail into your hammer, but the entire problem is that you don't think about it,

or at least I didn't, not until I was prompted to repeatedly by people smarter than myself. Over and over again, I realized that what seemed to me to be the logical and objective truth just turned out to be a reflection of my bias. Of course, the intellectual humility that comes with that realization can be crippling. I've met a lot of people crippled by it, actually, people who are unable or at least unwilling to formulate any strong opinion about anything for fear that their intellectual faculties are too polluted by bias to be trusted. Instead, they hold other people's opinions.

Like you might hold another person's cat, right, firmly enough to provide comfort but light enough to let it go the second there's a struggle. And when we succumb to that state, we've traded thinking poorly for not thinking at all. Now, as we all know, the way out of this dilemma is to do the actual hard work of reasoning. To honestly engage with the arguments on the other side, to reexamine your biases as they relate to the subject, to seek out the opinion of those with different biases, to allow yourself to change your mind and to admit when you're wrong. And as easy as that list is to rattle off, it's really fucking hard to do. Each step along the way is harder than the last one.

so what ends up happening for a lot of people is that you mostly outsource that shit and for a lot of you that's where I come in right I'm not I'm not saying that I'm doing your thinking for you but unlike you I've got the time and willingness to stay current on the Christian news sites learn what they're freaking out about dive into it to see what if any merit is there and report back to you and you trust me to be honest with you and myself and tell you whether or not their latest tirade is valid and if not what they're going to getting wrong. But that adds in a whole new layer of bias, doesn't it? Because I'm kind of duty-bound to side with the atheists here. I mean, I'll be as objective as I can be, but I'm

never going to come back and say, yeah, so I looked into those claims by the Holy Sepulchard Baptist Church and Pottaud Pami or whatever. And it turns out that Christ is our Lord and Savior. So how could you ever trust me, an atheist podcaster, whose whole fucking job is to conclude that there's no God to objectively assess arguments for the existence of God. Now, to be honest, I doubt this is a huge concern for you since I'm not thinking for you, right? If I was full of shit, you'd probably be like, huh, he's full of shit on this subject. But it's something that I'm challenged with constantly by emailers and shit like that.

How can this scathing atheist ever be objective if the title states the conclusion? Now, of course, the short answer here is there already wasn't a God when we named the show. right ours isn't a show about exploring the possibility of God it's about exploring the reality that there isn't one so i don't really need a defense for this but that doesn't mean i don't have one and it's a pretty definitive fucking defense i desperately want to be wrong about this the other side has fucking immortality not just for me but for my loved ones hell some versions even have it for my dead cats Jesus died for their sins too, apparently, selectively.

So holy shit, if I could convince my brain for just one goddamn second that even one of religion's arguments wasn't horseshit, if I could find one iota of credible evidence the science couldn't explain. If I could find even a hint of a suggestion of an influence by a benevolent God, I would be all the way in. I would love to convince myself that there's a heaven everlasting. But even if I was wrong, it would be genuinely really nice to be able to pretend along with everybody else.

To put the thoughts of the yawning void of nothingness at bay and believe I still have another million, million years to figure shit out, that I actually will get to read all the books I want to read and finish all the video games I want to finish, that I actually will get to give my dad another hug. You think I don't want that shit? And Christian apologists for their part recognize this gaping hole in their argument. They've got all the motivated reasoning on their side, which makes it really hard to argue that we atheists are in it for ourselves, right?

we just want to protect ourselves from the thoughts that our loved ones live on and that we're not doomed to be forgotten by a cold and uncaring universe tough to sell right so what they do is they pretend that our side is tied with their side because you know as much as we all want the immortality in the paradise we want our sinful butt sex and pornography even more but if that were true you're right if we really just needed an intellectual out to accommodate all the sins we wanted to indulge in, we wouldn't give up believing in God. We'd just stop believing in a God that thought but sex and porn were sins. There are, as it turns out, plenty of those gods to choose from. Hell, we don't even need that if you offer up a God who's infinitely forgiven. But even now, like even 12 years into being a publicly outspoken atheist, I find myself reading Ross Douth's idiotic book thinking, man, it'd be awesome if he convinced me. You know, and not just because there's a lot more money to be made if I find Jesus at this point in my career, but because I genuinely want him to be right. I want eternity. And I want a world governed by a just and loving

God. But I have the world I have. And I have the intellectual humility it takes to admit that. They're talking about your Jesus. May interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight of the Smash Burger and Impossible Burger to Mike Quarter Pounder with cheese, Heath Enright, and Eli Bosnick. Are you ready to slide between them buns? Right. In and out.

I like, you know. And I am way worse for you than promise. So this all tracks. Yeah, yeah. Animal style. All right. Well, quick before I lose my Gen X cred for not coming up with a where's the beef joke here, we're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, BetterHelp.

This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Hey, podcast listener. You know, October 10th is World Mental Health Day. And one of the many benefits of being an atheist is our firm. and prominent belief that mental illness is not ghosts in your blood. No, it's not, Eli. No, it's not. Whatever you're going through, an exorcist, which doctor or shaman can't help. But you know what can?

A therapist with BetterHelp. Better help does the initial matching work for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences and their 10 plus years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means that they typically get it right the first time. And if you aren't happy with your match, switch to a different. therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations. This World Mental Health Day, we're celebrating the therapists who've helped millions of

people take a step forward. If you're ready to find the right therapist for you, BetterHelp can help you start that journey. Our listeners get 10% off their first month at betterhelp.com slash scathing. That's betterhELP.com slash scathing. Therapy, because mental health is real and ghosts in your blood are not. And now back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, Normally, we pick the top story based on which story we think is the most impactful to the largest percentage of our audience. But as you may have noticed, that can get really fucking depressing.

So because of that, and the fact that he sort of just rolled all the Supreme Court stuff into one story before I got to the notes, I want to open on some good news. Greedy. And I get to be a demographic nerd about it as well, which is always a plus. So it turns out that the vast swath of nuns that demographers like to write off as still religious, even though they say they aren't. You remember them, the ones that they describe as spiritual but not religious? Well, new research casts serious doubt on just how spiritual this vast array of nuns really are.

Yeah, they're yes-handing spiritual in hopes of having sex. We've all done that. Exactly. Yeah. And in my experience, any single question usually does the trick to destroy this narrative. So I'm glad they finally got around to doing it. To asking one question, yeah. So this nude research comes from the unofficial demographer of Puzzle in a Thunderstorm, LLC,

Ryan Burge at Al. And it looks into the question of just how spiritual the nuns are. So the prevailing theory among demographers is that, yes, Americans are walking away from religion at an incredible rate and have been for decades,

but they're not becoming atheists so much as they're finding new spiritual practices to sort of fill the religious void. These vaguely defined spiritual practices include stuff like meditation, yoga, crystal healing, astrology, and cultural appropriation.

And like already that's problematic, right? Because you don't have to be spiritual to meditate. A lot of people, myself included, do yoga and just hold their noses at all the spiritual stuff. But another thing that's problematic about that view is that according to Burge's new research, it's also just wrong. Yeah. And sometimes with cultural appropriation, you got to just let it go. Like if my culture had crystal healing and astrology and obnoxious people started taking it, have fun

that's like stealing my insured car that doesn't work like please steal my 05 Subaru right now what Heath is saying is you should be grateful for

cultural appropriation brown people it's a compliment it's a compliment sometimes it is so Burge and his team surveyed 12,000 nuns and asked specifically

about their spiritual activities do they do yoga do they meditate smudge their homes or whatever the hell that's called and it turns out that by and large

the answer is no. Only 27% regularly did yoga, only 15% meditated or did astrology, whatever the fuck that means. And fewer than 10% use drugs to obtain spiritual experiences. Did astrology is a weird place? Do you do it? Yeah, I did stars. But the key is, despite what the religion is vital, universal, and inevitable crowd will tell you, the overwhelming majority of people who walk away from religion don't replace it with a damn thing. all right i got my boil lanced off i guess uh i could get a new sack of pus from a body or maybe just no sack of pus now i don't know hard to tell you go i'm going no i'm going no sack a bus we'll see how it goes and also keep in mind that the minority percentage of spirituality we're keeping is only because we're counting completely unrelated shit right like if you counted jerking

off as exercise i work out 11 times a day right right now of course this is a weird this is a weird way to yes and the sack of pus man. Now, of course, look, this leads to the question of why so many nuns will take the mantle of spiritual when it's offered. And Burge's new research doesn't actually go into that. But if I may, speculate a bit. I think one of the possibilities that we've underconsidered is I have a whole fucking show for me to speculate, God damn.

But I think one of the possibilities that we're not giving enough credence to is the fact that admitting to some form of spirituality is often like a compromise, right? A cultural compromise. If I say I'm spiritual but not religious, I'm leaving room for you and your stupid beliefs. Right. Like, I'm not contradicting you as directly. So some people see that as the proper or polite answer, even if it isn't true. Right.

And in docket full of kryptonite news, Supreme Court fired up their new term this week. And the important lesson on constitutional theory is, you should have voted for Hillary Clinton. They've got a docket line. up with a long list of theocracy building bullshit, and pretty much every case is going to be affirming that Christ is God, or reversing a lower court that said Christ is God, but not enthusiastically enough. That includes the religious rights of conversion therapy,

spreading disease, and skipping over state courts when those state courts are all secular and gross, and you just want to go straight to federal. Also, a Rastafarian plaintiff wants a religious freedom for Rastafarianism. So good luck to that guy, I guess. Hey, wacky minority religions. Let's pop back down while the high papal court declares Jesus our national god like they're picking a state bird, huh? Not really the time to do your bit.

I'm not going to say rostafarianism isn't wacky, but I'm going to strenuously object to the idea that it's wacky for a religion. Weed is so much better as a god than a fucking cracker. Come on. This is true. That's true. I didn't say bad. I just said wacky.

And a big thanks to Nick for sending a link to Skating News at gmail.com. Nick gets to be first in line to take a mission accomplished victory photo when we do that thing with the guy in the place. So I'll start with the case of Childs v. Salazar. The plaintiff, Kaylee Childs, is challenging a Colorado state law that bans conversion therapy because it's not therapy. That's why they have that law banning it. It's actually anti-therapy or abuse, I guess you could say, or malpractice or stupid and evil. Lots of words for it. Much like a doctor giving a patient a hege doesn't cure the lady vapors, the data shows that

conversion therapy doesn't cure the made-up illness of LGBT or Q. And even if you do the hege Christianly, it's still a no. It doesn't do anything. And that's why Colorado has a law about licensed healthcare professionals only being allowed to do Real stuff that works. Kaylee Childs, of course, is a Christian therapist who claims that being forced to only do real stuff is violating her First Amendment rights of speech and religion. Right.

So to be clear, she's suing for her religious right to torture children into pretending to be straight. And she's going to fucking win everybody. She's absolutely going to win. Because elections have consequences. This is one. You guys remember how Elron Hubbard had to change dionetics from a therapy to a religion? because religions don't have any rules or laws. You guys ever for a fucking second

thought those would turn out to be the good old days? Yeah. Good times. Yeah. Yeah. And it's worth mentioning that Kaylee Childs is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom. I mentioned that because they're liars.

And they did a bunch of lying again. They cited multiple studies in their filings trying to claim support for conversion therapy in those studies. But immediately, two of their sources released official statements saying fuck your face. Or maybe it was like the ADF is profoundly

misrepresenting our study or something like that. Yeah, same statement, different intensities. Yeah, they just turned down the dial. They sound very similar. And the ADF is fully aware of their lying. They quoted a study as saying, respected researchers of LGBT issues have long

observed that longitudinal population based studies show changes in the same-sex attractions of some individuals over time. But the ADF very conveniently left out the sentence that introduced those longitudinal studies and explained the context here is not conversion therapy and don't use this for your bigot lawsuit and remove this sentence. You have to include all of this. Yeah, I love that they literally cited and when my kid left home, he turned gay as evidence for their side. Yeah. Also, it's like saying that because

some people eventually become astronauts, therapy can turn you into an astronaut. not, right? Like, no. Yeah, all right. I would go to astronaut therapy. Next up, we have first choice women's resource centers v. Platkin.

New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin is fully aware that first choice, whatever the fuck, is one of those Christian liar facilities called a crisis pregnancy center. And pretty much all they provide is anti-choice propaganda. So the AG's office issued a subpoena

to first choice as part of an investigation into their practices. In response, they sued Plattkin in federal court, claiming they were targeted for their anti-choice views. And yes, a fucking course they were and they should be. They also argued that responding to a subpoena violates their freedom of speech and association by chilling donations to them. I'm not driving.

I'm traveling. I'm traveling on the land. Yeah, I'm just going to guess that the donations were not chilled. Nothing chills donations quite like. publicity. Yeah. Jesus. Either way, two different federal court rulings said, no, you can't just skip to federal. Go and argue in state court. What the fuck are you doing? So now the Supreme Court is going to decide if you can just skip to favorite theocrat court if it suits you. Yeah, it's like how four out of five doctors say I'm fat, but the fifth doctor is doctorate Liz Rosenberg, my mommy.

And she says I have big bones. So. And I have a note from her. that gets me out of whatever. That gets me out of gym class. Or into whatever. It's susceptible to colds. It's whatever I want. My mom said. And just to be clear, the ability to challenge a state subpoena right away in federal court,

it might be a good thing in certain cases. Like, I don't know, just top of my head. If a fascist red state AG tried to go after a, I don't know, like a list of enemies that they might be handed. Sure, sure. But that's only helpful if the new principle was applied consistently, regardless of Christianity being involved. And it won't.

No, none of them are. Yeah, the only fucking thing consistent about this court is Sam Alito's asking price. Adjusted for inflation, of course. And that brings us to the Christian freedom to plague your local school. Obviously, this topic was pretty big in recent years. It's going to be decided at the highest level

in a case called, we the Patriots USA Incorporated the Ventura Unified School District. I wonder who the bad guys in that. Yeah, it's hard to say. Pretty much all the contacts you need built right into that title. A California parent was using

the religious exemption on vaccinating kids for public schools and claiming that vaccines have a ground-up, aborted Dutch baby from 1973 inside the syringe, at least a little bit. And not the delightful breakfast. They weren't talking about that. There's no interpretation of those words

that wouldn't make for a delightful breakfast, Heath. This is true. Definitely true. But then California realized it was homicidaly insane to have exemptions for magic to vaccination rules. So the family was told they can continue worshipping the Bible passage about stem cell biotech, but not with,

unvaccinated kids inside public schools. And now our current Supreme Court is going to decide if that's anti-Christian persecution. Are they? And to be more specific, they're going to rule whether the imagined incorrect objection to something she doesn't understand is more important than public health. And again, the answer will be yes. I just don't want anyone to be confused. Sure will. And I'm just going to go ahead and give you my picks for your fantasy school.

Godus League. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. This is a real thing, by the way. There's like a fantasy scotis league that, like, they're taking seriously on a site. Here's mine. For the conversion therapy case, that's going to be 6.3 in favor of Christ is God.

For the crisis pregnancy center's religious right to end run state courts, that's going to be 9-0 in favor of the Christian plaintiff, or maybe whoever else wants to use the rule, maybe. And when a non-Christian plaintiff tries to use the rule, we'll get a 6 to 3 ruling that Christ is God. Oh, interesting. That's a no. And in We the Patriots USA, Kaka,

or whatever the fuck it was called. That's going to be 6'3 in favor of super spreading Christ is God. Also, there's no more bodily autonomy and trans rights are being attacked all over the place. But Hillary wasn't exciting enough, and Dems are just like Republicans.

Identical parties. Happy pumpkin-spiced latte season, you fucking idiots. Okay, well, Heath, don't take it out on PSLs. That's all we have left, okay? All right, well, well, you get those bets locked in. We're going to take another break for an ad for one of you. Hey, podcast listener.

I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heathenright. And I'm No Illusions. And the next sponsor comes from one of you. That's right, knuckle fuckers. Today we're going to be talking about sometimes illness wins. A book about grief for kids, teens, and adults. got to start reading ahead. I was excited to represent our listeners. I should have been way too hot.

Yeah. Written with the distraught brain in mind, sometimes illness wins is all about what to expect when navigating the loss of someone's special and what can help. Plus, there's lots of blank spaces for your own experience. We all manage grieving in our own way. Motherfuckers! Seriously, the only way out is through is what I've decided. Okay. Get your copy from Fillingthegap Publishing.com. That's Filling the Gap Publishing.com. Sometimes illness wins. A really lovely book that Eli should have probably read about. No, no, no, no.

No. And finally tonight, in Medbed Redemption News, the president of the United States is promoting a magical healing device that fixes all the ailments called a medbed. Or is he? We've got multiple levels of stupid confusion, so it's kind of hard to say.

Trump shared a video of himself promoting this technology on a Fox News segment, but the video was made with AI, and so it never actually aired on Fox. It was AI. And then Trump quietly deleted his post the next day. So that's a real post of a fake video, of a real person who made that post

promoting a fake technology but with real companies that sell it on a fake segment from a real channel that does fake news. Oh, interesting. It's a bed that cures everything, so you decide. Okay, but we know that this actually means

that Trump, like, saw himself promoting something and was like, that's me, I love that guy, retweet. And then the intern had to run into the Oval Office and be like, Not you, sir. Count the fingers. Count the fingers, sir. It's not you. The only way that you know how to count in the first way is count the fucking fingers. So the medbed idea dates back at least as far as the UFO craze following World War II.

Conspiracy theories emerged about the U.S. government finding alien ships full of amazing technology and then reverse engineering a bed that cures any disease and regenerates lost limbs and it even reverses aging. And, of course, the government is keeping that a secret this whole time, especially now that John F. Kennedy is being kept alive using a medbed. And the lie around John F. Kennedy got way too big to, like, walk it back now. Not clear what JFK is doing for us in the medbed, but that's a real part of the conspiracy narrative. Well, so every conspiracy theory that existed between 1963 and 1987 had to have John F. Kennedy in it, by law, there was like a...

Yeah, that's true. By long. My theory, by the way, he's regenerating so he can come back and kill his nephew. Okay. I like it. Support? Support? Tick, I mean, tick.

Really conflicted, my friend. He's just there with that out. No, I wasn't conflicted. I was just thinking about how to say how I'm very happy about that. So the Medbed got some renewed attention lately thanks to the Q&on movement and some notable celebrity endorsements. Like, for example, Romana Dadulo, that would be the Queen of Canada. You might remember her from a who's who segment.

Also, Aaron Rogers, the anti-vax dolphin fucker who lives five minutes from Eli's house. Sure fucking does, baby. Dolphin voyeur. And then most recently, we got the AI generated president being re-bleeded on truth social by the actual president as an endorsement. The video had Donald being interviewed by his daughter-in-law, Larry. Trump with the president claiming that we're entering a new era of medbed facilities and promising a medbed card coming soon. Can I look at Dave and Buster's hospital scenario?

But then Trump deleted that post, which made people even more certain. There's a really big secret being kept about the meds. No, no, no. Sarah, they're not ready for the medbed yet. Let's just shoot another lady in the face and say she tried to run us over life. Well, we did it. I'm sorry. Wait.

So the conspiracy theorists think that there was a secret segment on Fox News? AI made up a secret, but not, but double bluff? Not clear what they're thinking. So obviously when Q&N people start believing something, there's going to be stupid lies for sale. And medbeds are no exception. One of the companies is called Tesla biohealing. No connection to the car company, other than that. than being named after Nikola Tesla, who allegedly built a medbed in a top secret lab somewhere

in New York City. He did not. That did not happen. Nonetheless, they're selling a medbed product that anyone can use in their home just by adding a bed, just to add bed. The thing you get, it looks like a can of paint, and it's called a biofotonizer. And of course, it generates a biophoton healing field from under your bed that increases cellular energy in case it's too low in your cells. And then, you know, this would heal anything. According to the company, the can contains, quote, fine naturally active stones, activated fine metal, grout, sands, and proprietary polymers. So, okay, they're describing cement. That's cement. and people open this thing up, it's a can of cement.

It costs 11,000 Christian dollars for the biofotonizer M model. Well, but I like that they painted it gold, though, right? Illusion of value. Okay. Do you guys think when you're painting a can of cement gold to sell for $10,000 to the elderly and infirm? You have a moment where you're like, ah, I might not be. be a great guy, huh?

I don't think you do. I love that it's $11,000 instead of 10 because they found out how expensive it was going to be to ship, right? Or something. Oh, there's tariffs on the can. Yeah, I put some pictures here in the notes. Don't be fooled by that second photo I put in there that shows two cans under the bed with the really happy lady on the bed.

It's probably just her bed. But you get one can. for the 11 grand, but you're going to want four cans on the or page, it says. Asterisk, this device is sold individually, but may be shown as a pair. If you'd like to purchase more than one, we suggest four, if possible. Please contact us in the chat box or by phone to get the best price. And so the bed doesn't tilt, right? Is that what it is? Yeah, it seems to be holding the slats up, nice and even.

So, okay, if you're not ready to drop 44 grand on cement cans, I'm not. Coward. Tesla Biohealing does have resort facilities available. Oh, of course they do. One of them is, it's so sad. It's a Ramada, and it's in Butler, Pennsylvania. Fucking, I would like to get off, please.

Yeah, that's where the ear thing happened, by the way. Interesting. Oh, that's probably why he doesn't have. a scar because they rushed him to the medbed facility and the Ramada. Thank you. I didn't want to say it, but Noah understands. I thought I was going to sound crazy. But no, that's clearly what had a lot of buzz about this.

So I went on Wyndhamhotels.com, and this is real. It's listed as Ramada slash Tesla Biohealing Resort. Continental breakfast included. It is. It is, though. They don't have the waffles, but they didn't. The station is broken. The station is not there.

So I wanted to get the real scoop, though, not just what it says on their site. So I checked them out on Yelp. They have an overall rating of three stars out of five. It's based on two total reviews. One is a five star. The other's a one star. Here's the five star from Ashley of Butler PA.

Quote, absolutely loved our stay by far the nicest hotel pool we have been to and so warm. Staff were all very friendly, rooms were clean. The restaurant is incredible. We have ate here a few times for breakfast, but finally had dinner. My husband had the pork chop and I had the steak. I'm a steak snob and I loved it. Best in Butler. Definitely a hidden gem. Can't wait to return. I am going to kill myself and this Reveal is the Noot. So,

they live in Butler and they go to this Ramada for breakfast. To the Ramada in Butler. What the full? Who are you fucking, Ashley? Yeah. But they finally had dinner there too when they stayed there at the Ramada in their own hometown. Because it was her 40th birthday. Maybe they didn't stay there. Maybe they just had dinner

and snuck into the pool and they're like, we should at least leave a five-star review. Yeah, the pool was warm. And that steak, come on. Yeah. Okay, so. She's a steak, snob, and she like it. So that was a five-star review.

Here's the one-star review from Monique of Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, is what I'm saying. Quote, if I could give this place zero stars, I would. We went here to try something different with no expectations of miracles. That's a good first step. We found out when checking in. that we did not have an energizing room. Why else would we have booked a room there if we just wanted a regular hotel room?

One star, I wish I could give zero. But did she even try the sake? Right. Yeah, exactly. It turned out when we got there that energizing rooms don't even exist. I'm an idiot. I'm an idiot. Okay.

I also, that review went on for a while too, and it described the pool and the pool has the energizing stupid fucking cement cans like just sitting in the pool Oh, that must be why it's so warm. Yeah.

A bunch of drowned kids who tried to pick them up like the pool toys. Yeah. Okay, well, if the offerings from Tesla biohealing aren't working for you, I have one more option.

It's a quantum medbed. Huh. Much like the biofotenizer M. You have to provide your own bed. And in this case, you provide your own particle waves, too. But the Quantum Medbed Company provides the entanglement services. You upload a photo of your bed, and they entangle it with the concept of a healing bed.

And then you're good to go. It's only about $3,000 for the quantum medbed. Do you think when you're charging someone $3,000 to quantum entangle a photo of their... You know what, never, we have our answer. We have our answer. Yep. All right. Well, it's time for us to rethink our monetization strategy again.

So we're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Dumonti. And when we come back, Ross Douthit will see if he can change our minds with chapter. Fuck, we're only on three. It's that time of the month again. The time we're forced to crack open Ross Douthit's effort to make. make even the most ridiculous possible claims seem plausible by injecting obscure enough literary references.

That would be the book, Believe, why everyone should be religious. And we're going to talk about it again in this installment of God Awful Books. All right, so just to catch everybody up, in Chapter 1, Ross pretended that the God of the Gap's argument was valid. In Chapter 2, it was the fine-tuning argument. And now that he's established that the people still reading this don't know about refutations, It's time to move on to miracle claims. So this week we're going to start but not finish chapter three, the myth of disenchantment. And we're going to fall short of the full chapter this week because it's almost twice as long as the last chapter.

And damn near every sentence cries out for a refutation. Oh, it sure does. Or at least like, why do you have this sentence here? I don't know. I don't know. It's like it's end slash a on refuting it. It's just dumb to be here. Right, right.

Or why this word choice? Yeah. So, okay. So we start with an obviously bullshit, unevanced ghost story about a broken radio that proves the existence of miracles. Yeah, when Noah told me

we would need two segments for this chapter, I will admit, I was skeptical, but then Ross starts it by ushering us into the Midnight Society, and I kind of got it from there. But he's like, wait, do you doubt the veracity of the story? Well, what if I told you

that it came from none other than Michael Shermer, that bastion, of integrity whose word should never be touted. Finish your drink. Oh, no. So, okay, so stop for a second and consider it God

who would hide his existence in all ways except for turning on Michael Schumer's wife's broken radio at exactly the right moment. Yeah, got to admit, not the message I would choose to send to Michael Shermer's wife. I'm not God. Okay, my first thought, like, Maybe stop worshipping a God who can't pee while you're looking.

But it's worse than that. You're worshipping a God who can only pee when Michael Shermer is looking. And that's so terrifying. Yeah, in so many ways. All right. So now we're going to be asked how the rubber duckies would be so unsinkable if they weren't true in a subchapter titled The Resilience of the Supernatural. He goes, the idea that modernity means the death of miracles and magic is shared by

writers who welcome disenchantment and those who lament its progress. That's the opening quote. And I'm like, yeah, man, pretty much all the writers who know about photography. Yeah. Notice how you had to group miracles, you know, the proof that his religion is true, in with the fucking smile of a child on Christmas to make us the grumps there, right? And he explains that maybe the dark ages were bad and science is good, or maybe the dark ages were fucking amazing and magical.

and children smiling on Christmas, or maybe it's pros and cons that kind of work out to a tie. The score's not important. It's neither here nor there. We all agree that disenchantment is a great word to describe modern science. And that's the framing.

Disenchantment. It might be good. And then he makes references to the realm of capitalized official knowledge, right? Which is the fucking intellectual equivalent of talking about the lamestream media, you know,

with the lamestream media. would tell you. I don't know things. I don't have custody of my kids. Right. Never had sex with a woman. Yes. But we have five kids.

So I'm not sure how that works. But we do have five kids. I don't know what happened. I'm Ross. But yeah. But his argument here is like even as we've learned more, many of us remain selectively stupid, which is true. Right.

Got us there. He's like, even as we've rejected the supernatural claims, people kept having them. And I'm like, yeah, the. claims, right? The people kept having claims. You're championing credulity here. Yeah. And he listed the very serious people from, you know, big official knowledge capitalized who rejected supernatural claims. That list would be journalists, academics, and Wikipedia editors. He still pissed about that one time. Yeah. So he says, you know, non-religious people have religious experiences all the time.

You don't know. I'm not going to say they're from Canada, but there happens. Really? You're going to call me a moron. That's your argument. Oh, oxymoron. Yep. No, you got me there. You got me. So, you know, he does admit that there are no large-scale miracles on the order of the parting of the Red Sea anymore. But then he tries to sneak in the hilariously disprovable miracle of the sun and Fatima in 1918 as a possible contender. If you want to know more See Scathing Atheist 154 For the more on that one

Yeah, when your first miracle is Michael Shermer And your second is North is tricky It's a great sign for your argument A bunch of people staring into the sun Saw weird shit Also, also, let me finish There was a dress that was blue and black And white and gold at the same time

Only through wizardry Was this possible? Sinbad played a genius in this movie Shazam with like Nelson Mandela and Shaquille O'Neal, a lot of miracles have happened. Now, okay, so there's also, there's a point where he's like, you know,

okay, we can all agree that Mormonism and Scientology are bullshit. But what about the religions where we don't have the arrest records of their founders? Those ones are probably real. Bad news, Ross. The New Testament is like 90% Jesus is arrest. Oh, it is, though.

You found out. Yeah. This was Ross trying to seem reasonable. So he's like, No, okay, granted Joseph Smith and Elron Hubbard were conmen making money on supernatural claims. And then he just moves on. Like nothing else was to be said. You're Catholic. You're Catholic. We've noticed.

Biggest landowner in the world. Valtz of Nazi gold. Come on. Also, hey, Ross, just a professional note, man, if you're trying to establish how reasonable your thing is, maybe don't equate it with people who say they were abducted by aliens. Especially when the abduction people have a story that's like, infinitely more coherent than yours. Yeah.

Aliens are possible. Well, okay, one of his actual arguments, page 73, if you don't believe me, is, okay, but what about all the real psychics? How do you explain them? Still don't believe me? They're a very serious group of real psychics, and they're called the Premonitions Bureau. That's what he tells us here. That's the name of the book.

Like, maybe don't give the name, if that's the name, man. Yeah, right. Right. Well, then in his search for credibility, he turns to NDE's. Now, to be clear, NDE are, by and large, dreams, right? Often dreams had on really potent drugs. Nobody is claiming that dreams don't exist. Yeah. And they also correspond to religion by region.

So if we're doing this democratically, Ross, NDE's prove that Islam is true. Sure. So, yeah, also there's this moment where he's like, well, you know, and who would want to make a supernatural claim, given all the negative attention that you're showered with when you make supernatural claims. People are always so negative about it. Everybody at the bar is like, boo, this guy sucks. Who has an accurate story about the materialistic universe that ignores the numinous? I want to hear a mundane accurate story. This guy's credulous. Boo. Also, there's a point here where he's like, and also, hey, by admitting that religious experiences have a psychological

root, we, the atheist, the secularists, are moving the goalposts from the, it's all a bunch of lies, lie that he started the chapter pretending our position was. Who are you arguing? Imagine if a science textbook chapter ended with, and hey, even if evolution isn't true, I think we can all agree it warrants the cockles of our heart to believe it's true, right? Or in this case, the science textbook would be saying, and hey, even if evolution is wrong, you said fossils are a Ponzi scheme and that doesn't even make sense. So I win, I think.

And then he talks about the varieties of spiritual experience by which he means whatever wacky claims don't seem too wacky to include in the book, right? So he starts with, he's got three different levels that he's going to tell us about. He starts with level one, which is generic mystical experiences, i.e., looking at a sunset, but really looking at it. Right, but really. Yeah, that's exactly what he means. but it takes him so fucking long to get there without even getting there because getting there

would make him sound like an idiot instead we get like a thousand words about the the interconnection of dissolution and the soul's independence from mortal flesh and i have some resin we could scrape out of a pipe please have sex with me back at my dorm room so it's the worst now but importantly his first category is a thing that would be unverifiable and we just have to take people's words for it, right? Oh, by the way, artistic epiphanies also count, that's religious. Dibs, dibs, licked it. Don't you try to

take Randy the raw dog from us, Rostoo Tapp. That's our work. Oh, it's work, damn it. Yeah, we also learn this was interesting, that reading Proust makes you Christian and possibly Hindu. Huh. Eat a Madeline, and you remember your soul's independence

from mortal flesh in a Christian and or Hindu way. Clearly. Dualist cookie. Now, the second type of experience is when you can tell God's looking at you. Again, unverifiably, entirely internal. Perfect example of what I'm talking about. This is a quote that he offers up from William James' varieties of religious experience. Quote, God had neither form, color, odor, nor taste.

God was present, though invisible. He fell under no one of my senses, yet my consciousness perceived him, end quote. That is what he's offering into evidence at this. point. I'd like to enter exhibit B. It is this file of iocaine powder also that's God that I am pantomiming. No, it's not, it's invisible, but it's God and it's here. Okay. Guys, I was pretty religious. Admittedly, I was Jewish, not Christian, but I don't remember this particular God-specific snipe hunt. Yeah. Do you have sleep paralysis while you're awake, Ross? Because it explains your writing. It does explain your writing. I think he does.

Well, then he also quotes a Yale-educated writer who, I swear to you, turns out to be his goddamn fucking mother. It really does. Who was at a charismatic healing service. So the looniest of religious gatherings. And holy shit, did that read like she got molested by the Holy Ghost? Okay. It is sexual. Can I read a little bit?

Can I read a little extra? Okay. Please. Yeah. It just came into me with a roar. It clamped onto both sides of my. face and over my thyroid and gripped my arms down into my hands that were still hovering over my waist and vibrating. But I was vibrating in many other places too by this point. And I couldn't breathe

right because my diaphragm was really tight where this power was pouring into me and my stomach was quaking up and down. So that's not even the whole thing, but it goes on like that. I read that. I read that. And I thought, like, okay, did I somehow like click into a different book? Yes, right. Now, Eve Ensler is doing an erotic poem about sex with a xenomorph. This is a cool book I clicked into. I don't know what happened. But then I'm pulled right back out of it because Ross do that is like, my mother, ladies and gentlemen, that's my mother.

And then I was like, ah, I'm sad for his super cool mom. That's sad. Yeah, also, I just want to chime in and say that using your mom and her credentials is actually totally fine. He didn't know or being ridiculous. He didn't say it wasn't his mom. No, he didn't. He admitted after the fact that it was.

Admonominum. So stupid. That's awesome. So it's important to note that all religious encounter with a god or gods count for his thing, regardless of their religion or origin, right?

Well, that's lucky. Yeah, no, it makes something so much easier for him. But then we get the third category of religious experience. And that's the one where God shows up and says hi. Okay. Still not clear how any of this matters, Ross. People reported a feeling that that's nothing. And nobody's arguing with that.

And now you're explaining all the details of the categories of the nothings. I don't get any of this. Yeah. And it's also like make it so that like the one claim that he has any evidence for, like what? You have to multiply by three because there's two categories that have no kinds of evidence, right? So my evidence gets tripled. And

importantly, all claims of meeting the divine or even an alien or an otherworldly being count for his thing too. Well, isn't that lucky? Well, look, I get it. When, but my thing is true counts as an explanation for everything. You get a lot of stuff

in your explanation basket. Yes. Right. Yeah. Voices in your head also count. He does say that, yeah. As to any number of other symptoms of mental illness that we really shouldn't be diluting. Okay, it's cool if it's mostly like my voices, right? Nope. All my different wacky character voices.

Oh, well, there you go, yeah. Okay, honestly, if you're walking around your apartment with Sarah Huckabee Sanders being like toast again. Sometimes. Yeah. Okay. Well, that, yeah, we should talk to somebody. I approve. This episode's brought to you by then.

She's usually judgy about food choices. That is how it works, yeah. Yeah. You can get a cheese plate anywhere you want, though. You should have joined that gunfight. You got to be a patron to get that joke. You have to be a patron listening in reverse. So then he tells the story of a British lady that God started talking to like her brain was a cell phone.

But then it turned out she had a brain tumor, which was removed. And then she stopped hearing the voices. I'm like, how the fuck does that help your claim? Are you saying the tumor triggered the hearing gods? secret messages portion of her brain? Yeah, okay, just to review, you're worshipping a God who, first of all, can only pee if Michael Shermer is looking and your God invented a cell phone made of brain tumor. Like, maybe stop telling us about your God.

I don't know. Yeah, let those ways be a bit more mysterious. Do you ever notice that nobody who ever hears God has like an original thought or a decent magic trick out of it? Like if I thought I was talking to God, but he sounded like my hippie aunt after three glasses of white wine, that would be an indication to me that it maybe wasn't God. Yes, exactly. Yeah, God spoke to me. He didn't really have much to say, but banalities, yeah.

But he's desperately trying to marry together these vastly different, culturally dependent religious experiences under one umbrella, which he achieves by offering no details about any of those experiences or what they entail. he's just vaguely talking about encounters, right? He's like, well, like maybe, and again, I swear he actually makes this argument, maybe Christian God just disguises himself as a Hindu god sometimes to get the point across when he really needs to talk to a Hindu about some shit. Did you ever think of that?

Okay, seriously, this part was so fucking sloppy. He's describing how everyone's, you know, God vision is clearly determined by their personal experience in the region of the world and the culture they grew up in. And then he remembers he's fucking up his own point, and we watch him try to make an argument against himself, and he loses to himself in his book here. It's great. He says that non-Christians do have visions of the one true Christian God also, and they quote, this is the exact words, quote, eventually realize it's

Jesus or the Virgin Mary or St. Michael, and quote. And like, what the fuck does that even mean? What does he even think he means? They eventually have a realization about their hallucination? Yeah. What is that? Except for the ones who don't. Right. Well, at one point, again, the argumentation, like, takes such a turn to the south in this

third chapter. Right? Like, he clearly blew his load in the first two. Because at this point, he starts saying, well, and demons are clearly real, because all the cultures have demons. And if you don't believe in them, just ask people having bad acid trips. They see them all the time. sure yeah he points out the trickster gods elves fairies and UFOs they all count even though they have no equivalent in Christianity isn't that like the stuff that Eli says about politics on the phone to Heath the way he uses a backup camera

anyways the elves and the tricker gods they're the ones who keep making me put counter examples to my own ideas in my book someone someone sees them all right and then he tries to explain away the glaring lack of evidence for his son with a subchapter he calls the disreputability problem, right? So he admits that people are more skeptical of that third kind of mystical experience than the other two. And I'm like, well, it's not that we're more skeptical. It's the other two don't describe a thing happening, right? Like, we're equally skeptical about all three as evidence for God.

Yeah, nobody's calling your mom a liar, Ross. Like, I fully believe that she fully believes that her greatest sexual experience was a facehugger with a god inside. I just, I don't have a theory of the universe emanating from that. Right, exactly. Yes. Right. I do have a theory of the universe emanating from that, but Ms. Dutat emailed and asked

me not to say it out loud. Yeah, no. I'm a respect. Yes, exactly. Now, so, okay, but he admits that lucid hallucinations and deliberate deceptions are things, which really shoots his whole argument in the fucking foot, I think. Yeah, look, and keep in mind, I'm the one saying this. If you have to caveat your worldview with, now,

I admit that lying does exist. You probably don't have a great worldview, huh? Well, see, but the problem is that the researchers that learn the truth about spiritual experiences are drummed out of academia, like the people who speak the truth about climate change or evolution or herbal remedies or med beds. Yeah, exactly.

I like that Ross tends to pop into every chapter to remind us that he's a dangerous idiot. It kind of gives me the strength to go on, right? Right, right. But hey, look, hey, I will admit, that when professors at prestigious universities prove themselves gullible enough to fall for UFO accounts, they do

and should lose academic credibility. I will concede this point to you. He makes that point. He gives an example. This guy John Mack, and he's like, there are countless other examples, far too numerous for me to list any of. Yeah, okay, point for Ross. Fine. But I'd feel better about giving him the point

if Yale University would stop employing a professor named Ross Douthit. Yeah. So at one point, okay, I shit you not. He literally cites experiences that his mom told him her friends told her they had at her church. And then, in case you're in any danger of taking this shit seriously, we get this actual line, quote, Some of the spirits most eager to be summoned may not have your good in mind, end quote.

Also, remember, always. and your Ouija board session by saying goodbye, I'm a correspondent for the New York Times. And then he lost the work of Tanya Lerman who apparently can write about religious people doing religious stuff

without being a dick about it. And then he offers this long quote from Lerman about her spiritual experience, which amounts to, one time I was on the train and I got really hot and I thought it was God, but I realized that one of my bicycle lights

caught on fire in my backpack. I swear, I am not making that up. He quotes that on page 84 as though the spiritual feeling of warmth caught the bicycle light on fire. Yeah, you know what they say. Stop dropping holy roll. So the way the pages broke in my copy made this moment even better. At the very bottom of a page, she says, I began to feel power in my veins. I grew hot.

I wanted to sing. and then I turned the page Fuck, my backpack's on fire My bike light is melting I think it's on fire I could not stop laughing It's the greatest Oh and it's the perfect place to stop

So that gets us about halfway through the chapters We're going to wrap it up there For the time being And we're going to tackle the other half In the next installment of God Awful Books Before we fold ourselves back into the zeroth dimension this week, I want to announce that this year's QED will feature a live record of the final episode of one of my favorite podcasts

of all time incredulous. And Andy Wilson has made the mistake of inviting all three of us on to be part of it. So Eli, Heath, Andy Wilson, and myself will be seeing the show off in style. Tickets to QED sold out months ago, of course, but they do have online tickets available where you can watch in from home and keep track of all the action. They're very reasonably priced. You will find a link on the show notes. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but we'll back in 10,000, 22 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be to look up for a brand new episode of her sister-so's hot friend God-awful Movies Day, being a 7-Eastern on Tuesday, and an even new episode of our half-surchasey on Tuesday. Obviously, I can't fulfill my obligations as the host until I thank Heath Enright for all the right he does. Eli Bosnick for all the ices, for all the ins she does. Yeah, it didn't work out the way I had hoped.

I also want to thank Cass for providing. this week's Farnsworth quote, hey, quick reminder that Cass is presenting at Skeptic Camp, which is a free event put on the day before QED by skeptics in the pub online. Check the show notes for a link for more information. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week and last weeks and the week before that's best people. Michelle, Angie, Allen, Audrey Spencer, darling, Callison, the canonical debate, Nash Gillian, 60 seconds is too long for a theme tune. Louise, Melissa, Paul, Robert, Will, Justin, Genevieve, Blue Gemini, Caps, the size of cantaloupes, James Cheseld, Arthur, Mads, Ripe, Ivy League, 710, Charlie,

Richard, Dan, Kevin, Katie, Peter, Jason, Stephen, Aaron, and Dennis, who are so hot, they give the ocean an orgasm when they surf. Together, these 33 people, arguments, leagues, and important reminders for podcasts, came together over the last few weeks to give us money. Not everybody has the money or patience to hear their name in the outro of those fine people, but if you do, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you'll learn early access to an extended every 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 scalingadies.com. And if you'd like to help but not in a having less money at the end of it kind of way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show and following us on social media. And speaking to social media,

Tim Robertson handles that for us, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scalingadious.com. I guess at this point, he's like, all right, that's all the smart stuff that there is for my side. And I got a whole fucking book to do.

Surely in these first few chapters where I used the biggest words I know did all the work I possibly could need. Everybody's done reading by now because that was obnoxious for two chapters. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249. 4255 or on their website at creator accountability network.org. The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC. Copyright 2025. All rights reserved.