The Scathing Atheist - 679: Statue of Limitations Edition

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

In this week’s episode, Alabaman children make a much more depressing kind of wish, The Guardian is pretty sure AI witchcraft is on the rise thanks to Gemini of Newt, and Ross Douthat will hide little thoughts in big words again.---To see us live in San Francisco, click here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/god-awful-movies-live-in-san-francisco-california-tickets-1976632374642To make a per episode donation at Patreon.com, click here: http://www.patreon.com/ScathingAtheistTo 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] check out our sister show, The Skepticrat, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/the-skepticratTo check out our sister show’s hot friend, God Awful Movies, click here: https://audioboom.com/channel/god-awful-moviesTo 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:Check out the New Books in Secularism podcast here: https://newbooksnetwork.com/category/religion-faith/secularismSee Noah’s Tarot talk here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRsYQFbOH3E---Headlines:Alabama House passes law requiring each school day start with student led prayer: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/alabama-house-passes-bill-forcingThiel brings his Antichrist lectures to the Vatican’s doorstep, and Catholic institutions back away: https://apnews.com/article/italy-peter-thiel-paypal-pope-vatican-c3a6c7d2daba501caf8152558ac2d743https://ground.news/article/popes-ai-advisor-calls-thiels-rome-lectures-prolonged-act-of-heresy_a17f76Muslim parents, private schools sue Texas over exclusion of Islamic institutions in voucher program: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/education/2026/03/12/545932/texas-lawsuit-school-vouchers-muslim-parent/Mike Johnson warns of encroaching Sharia law in US: 'Serious issue': https://www.christianpost.com/news/mike-johnson-warns-of-encroaching-sharia-law-in-us.htmlHouse GOP leadership silent as more members post anti-Muslim statements: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/14/g-s1-113667/republicans-sharia-law-andy-ogles-mike-johnsonChatGPT driving rise in reports of ‘satanic’ organised and ritual abuse, UK experts say: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/08/chatgpt-driving-rise-in-reports-of-satanic-organised-ritual-abuse-uk-experts-say---This Week in Misogyny:Judge decides how US women give birth: https://www.propublica.org/article/florida-court-ordered-c-sectionsJudge dismisses divorce proceedings because “a few beatings won’t kill you.” https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/mar/12/a-few-beatings-wont-kill-you-judge-rejects-divorce-request-of-woman-abused-by-husband-in-afghanistan

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Conditions apply. Warning, there's literally no way to talk about now without using the word fucked. This week's episode of The Skathing Atheist is brought to you by Aura Frames and by Tony D's House of Long-Raged Subsonic Cruise Missiles. Because apparently Tomahawks are pretty generic. these days. Who knew? And now, the scathing atheist. Hi, I'm Carrie Lynn Evans, and I'm the host of New Books and Secularism, a podcast channel on the New Books Network, where we interview authors of academic books. On the secularism channel, I talk to professors, researchers, and other experts

to hear about the latest scholarly work demonstrating that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey people. It's Thursday. It's March 19th. And it's Teenish, and it's Teen Butein Ninja Turtles Day. Okay, by the way, that's the whole shell. It's a whole show. It's a stupid song. Isn't it? Thank you. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heathenwright. And from Michael B. Jordan's, New Jersey. Oh, Oscar winner. Oscar winner, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia. This is the skating east. Of this week's episode, Alabama and children make a much more depressing kind of wish. The Guardian is pretty sure AI witchcraft is on the rise, thanks to Gemini of Newt. And Ross Douth

it'll hide little thoughts and big words again. But first, the Diet Trior. So the big news in my little town is that the local city council has voted to remove a big-ass Confederate statue that looms over a downtown park. And I don't mind admitting that I've spent a lot of time over the last couple of weeks

scrolling through the comment section of posts about it on local groups and just salting my popcorn with bigot tears. Hell, I've even poked the cage a bit when they weren't salty enough, but mostly I've just been observing. Just sitting back in anthropological fascination as these idiots twist themselves into knots, yes, anding each other about how this actually isn't about racism at all. A bunch of racists winking at other racists about how racist they all aren't. And honestly, when you console yourself with the fact that they're sad and losing, it's kind of

fun to watch how deep into their imaginations the conversation can get when every is playing along with every single claim, right? Like a dubious claim that this removal is illegal based on a stupid Georgia law that governs the reverent relocation of their racism trophies quickly morphs into an unironic claim that it's a form of genocide within, in one case, three comments, three steps from a law that says, okay, but you can't put them in the dumpster when you're done, though, to you are massacring my people. But the most interesting defenses for a guy like me anyway are the biblical ones. Biblical ones, you may ask if you've never heard of the state of Georgia?

What the fuck possible biblical defense could one muster for the preservation of a graven image on a high place? But of course, you don't need to actually formulate an argument. All you have to do is imply one. Everybody's yes-a-ending to begin with. So when somebody says removing this statue is against scripture, all the responses are, yep, sure is. nobody asks for a biblical citation or anything. Well, almost nobody. I guess I did pop in at one point on one of those,

and I asked where in the Bible it says we should preserve Confederate statues. And the response I got was in its entirety, quote, it's all through the Bible that you should honor your heritage, end quote. Which, no, it isn't. I mean, like, if you're Jewish, sure. A lot of stuff in there about. honoring that particular heritage. But as to the general concept of honoring one's heritage, not a fucking word.

And even the rah-rah Judaism stuff is done by the end of the Old Testament. So, you know, the appendix of a holy book they're trying to hide behind the Jewish Bible has nothing to say about this at all. But of course, that doesn't matter. None of the people telling me to read the Bible have read the Bible. And no you is never a convincing argument, no matter how justified it is. So I just kicked back and I watched them all comments. confidently invoked the holy book they've never read to justify a history they've never studied. And why wouldn't they be confident? After all, the Bible is a book of morality that's always

going to tell them what's right and this is right. So a fucking course it's in the Bible somewhere, even if they're not willing to dig through all of them be gats to find it. And when you consider that fact in its totality, it forces us to walk back our opinion of the Bible as a moral guide, right? Actually, our opinion was just too generous up to this point. Because very often, atheists tend to focus on what's in there, which is damn tempting given how much fucked up shit is in there. But none of that really matters when you're talking to people who don't know what's in there and would argue with you if you told them. Hell, even if the Bible had nothing but profoundly moral suggestions, it wouldn't matter much to a bunch of motherfuckers that can't be bothered to read it. So much like they

can hear God telling them anything they want, they can ascribe anything they want to the Bible as well. And if you think about it, this is exactly how Christians tend to respond when they are confronted with the immoral shit in their book. If I point out some defense of slavery or encouragement to smash babies against the rocks or something, well, I'm just taking it out of context. Because the same confidence that presumes one's feelings about the importance of Confederate monuments must be in that big old book somewhere also presumes some context where endorsing slavery is okay must be in there too. Of course, their absolute certainty that God's on their side has a ton of downsides. You know, people who have given themselves divine sanction to do shit tend to be way more sinister than folks who only have their own permission. But on the bright side, it makes them all the more vocally heartbroken when their God-ordained statue gets removed anyway.

So at least I still got that to look forward to. They're talking about your Jesus. May interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin. Joining me for headlines tonight are the alarm and resistance to my exhaustion, Heath, Enright, and Eli Bosnick fellas. Are you ready to stress the fuck out? Still same past, they don't go sleep. It's all good. No stress.

I feel like we shouldn't joke about exhaustion the 679th time we ask anyone to do anything, Noah. You know what I'm saying? I wait to add down that perfect embodiment of resistance. We're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, ORAFra. Hey, guys, good news. Oh, hey. What's up, Noah? What's going on? Our sponsor this week is Aura Frames. Oh, I love my Aura Frame.

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Terms and conditions apply. My 40th birthday. It's wreaths on your grave. Damn it. Nailed it. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, the Alabama State House has opened a new front in the war against church-state separation by passing a bill that would force schools to reserve time every morning for student-led prayers. That is, right after they get done swearing

fealty to a piece of cloth in the name of God, they'll also have to let some kid come to the front of the class and get a bit more explicit about which God this nation's under. But don't worry, I'm sure the children of minority faiths will draw on Alabama's famous spirit of cultural inclusivity and avail themselves of this opportunity to espouse their faiths as well. It can be fun. Yeah, I mean, look, this is a bad idea, but a chance to be the center attention and Jew It Up, Baby Eli would have loved this bill. Okay, baby Heath agrees. Thank you.

Maybe not the Jew It Up phrase in my version, but I'm pretty sure that I'm allowed to filibuster the beginning of school with a very long speech about my sincerely held beliefs now, which are manyfold and quite upsetting. So that's what I learned. And can I say, I feel like Baby Heath wouldn't have been afraid to Jew it up. The radical left has changed you, Ethan, right? in my hometown, that's accurate. Yeah, yeah.

So this bill is the work of Alabama state representative Reid Ingram, who's desperately clawed his way up the extraordinarily competitive ranks of America's most vapid Christian nationalist lawmaker. Last year, he failed to advance a bill that would have required all public school children to say a, quote, prayer representative of the Judeo-Christian values

upon which the United States was founded, end quote, every day. Okay, so that's nothing if you think about it. Right, yeah, no first. But his defense for the clear violation of the First Amendment was that it would be voluntary, right? Like the pledge is voluntary. And since the message of literally every Christian prayer is ours is the only real God and everybody else is full of shit,

I assume that hearing it would also be voluntary. Okay, well, now I'm kind of sad that that one didn't pass. The lawsuit over the, you know, Satanist right to la la la, la, la. That would have been fantastic material for our show. Okay, well, good news for a, Future show, I guess, because the new bill passed. Yeah, good boys, Eli. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. So after that bill failed, he came up with a slightly less blatantly unconstitutional version of it. He reintroduced it this year as HB 43. But that stalled in the House Education Policy Committee. So he reintroduced the exact same bill as HB 511 in the House State Government Committee, which is the legislative equivalent of asking dad after mom told you no.

But it worked, apparently. Just like asking dad. Yeah. No, that often works. Really, really smart play. So, yeah. So HB. 511 made it out of committee and got passed last week by the full house. Now, the bill was watered down a bit from his original proposal, which would have withheld

funding from school districts that didn't do his stupid prayer thing. The current version, I don't think it has any kind of penalty. It just allows schools to do it, which, you know, makes the law a little bit less insidious, but a lot more worrying since it actually might be legally plausible enough for this Supreme Court to hallucinate it into kind of. constitutionality. Yeah. So that's terrible. But also, many listeners in Alabama, see what seems to be Eli at their child's school in a backwards yarmaca that has a little brim carrying a skateboard and greeting his fellow youths. Don't be a narc. We're doing a thing. And okay, I know we've said

pretty much that exact same thing before, but this is a good thing. Let him do his thing. This one's not just me. The before ones, those were just me being in schools for my own. reasons. But. And look, this one's official. I get how to somebody who isn't as steeped

in church state watch doggery as we are. Like, maybe this wouldn't seem like lead story material, what with the goalless war and the skyrocketing prices and the slow grinding

destruction of America's civil institutions. But this is the why. Right? Like, this is how they make their voters. This is how they perpetuate their stupidity. And this is why they play along with Trump's bullshit adventurism

for stuff like this. All the things we talk about on this show, that seem minor are the various straws that snap the spine of American democracy. The idiots who care more about enshrining the cultural dominance of their brand of space magic than the American experiments are the ones paving the way to the idiocracy. And these stupid fucking laws are their paving stones. Yeah. And in teleological fallacy news.

Fantastic. Billionaire GOP donor, Palantir tech mogul, and top candidate. it to be the actual Antichrist. If there was one, it's Peter Thiel. He gave a four-part lecture series in Rome this week, warning about the dangers of the Antichrist and the end being nigh. The lectures were closed door and recording devices were banned, so it's impossible to know all the cosmic secrets he revealed.

Asterisk. The thing is, the no recording devices was also the policy. at the lecture series about the antichrist that he gave in San Francisco last year. And one popular recording device called Human Brain ended up getting used at some point and the details of the insane lectures got leaked. So we already had a pretty good idea what this latest one was about. The basic idea, pay no attention to the Antichrist behind the curtain. The real Antichrist is Greta Toonberg and the concept of wokeism.

God, we owe Apocalypse movie writers so many apologies. Apparently putting the 666 and binary was actually too subtle. It was. Yeah. And look, I'm loath to offer the Catholic Church any praise. But if there's anything they have experience with, it's rich guys approaching them to say what profits of the end times they are. They've been burning Peter Teals at the stake for like a thousand years, guys.

They got this one. They got this. I believe in them. And a big thanks to Erica for being the first to send us a link to skating news at gmail.com. When Armageddon happens, Erica gets to play with our scorpion horse locust,

who is actually a pug-a-peg corn in a costume that he doesn't like. Don't be an art. So the TED talk, full of ridiculous propaganda about the Antichrist, being held steps away from the Vatican, did not sit well with Catholic leadership. So we got to watch some of those leaders do their best to condemn

Peter Thiel, but without directly saying, dude, you're fucking stealing our thing. We're doing, that's our thing. And they're probably jealous that Peter Thiel included relatable pop culture references during his propaganda, like 17th century essayist Jonathan Swift and Nazi political theorist Carl Schmidt, also Lord of the Rings, of course. Oh, there you go. It cut to Pope Leo Grande desperately flipping through the book. of the Bible to see which one has the coolest chapter six,

verse seven. I'll fucking show you. And as part of that feeble attempt by Catholic leaders to distance themselves from the guy giving regular speeches about the nature of evil in order to profit, we saw two Catholic universities that were definitely involved in organizing Teal's event pretending they had nothing to do with this

just all of a sudden because there was backlash. The venue for the lectures was originally planned to be the pontifical St. Thomas Aquinas University in Rome, known as the Angelicum. It's also the alma mater of Pope Bobby. And when they started getting that backlash, the university put out a statement that said, this event is not organized by the university will not take place at the Angelicum and is not part of any of our institutional initiatives. Except it was, though. It definitely, definitely was. They were listed on the official announcement for the event that came out a while ago.

I feel like we should open a place of our own called Demonicum, like that's across town and like challenge him to a basketball game or something. Yes, except then I'm getting dunked on by a flying child rapist and I'm like, well, this is not how I wanted it to go. Yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair. Croquet. Got posterized.

It's no good. And the Catholic University of America tried a similar, lie. A group within the university called the Clooney Institute was very much part of the organizing as well. But then a spokesperson said, the Catholic University of America is not sponsoring our hosting an event featuring Peter Thiel this month in Rome. The Clooney Project is an independent initiative incubated at the university. Convenient. Yeah. Conveniently also not adding, we hosted Peter Thiel at our university for a talk in 2023. And we are giant liars. Oh my God, an independent initiative that you're incubating. That is some fucking anti-abortion

logic right there for you. Holy shit. And sorry, your defense is, guys, that's not part of our school. It's a rogue nation state within our library walls. It's a much more reasonable chill sit. Use the fucking insurangico act or whatever. I don't know. 1798 thing, whatever. And just to be clear, Peter Thiel. and Palantir are doing exactly the type of stuff that Catholics are supposed to fear about the Antichrist.

Exactly. Guys, are we wrong? It's not real. So, the landing point for the lectures seems to be, you gotta let AI companies like Palantir get enormous government contracts to help ICE do fascism and guide

our automated weapons. You know, libertarian stuff like that because we're libertarians. So yeah, Peter Thiel is somehow crazier than the Catholic Church on this, if that's possible. They're both crazy, but it looks like Teal invented, I don't know, like a new dimension to outflank them from the crazy side. Yeah. It's almost impressive. Look, there's a real possibility that Peter Thiel, in real life, believes he is secretly the Antichrist.

And a bunch of secret atheist Catholics behind closed doors have had to be like, it's a met up, man. Don't wave your fingers at me. That's like a pretty reasonable explanation based on all the evidence we have. The most reasonable of all that they would actually account for all the shit we know, yeah. You just did too much ketamine, man. This is really lame. It's lame. And in what do you mean I'm not the leopard news?

Four Muslim parents and three private schools have sued Texas leaders for excluding Islamic private schools from participating in the state's private school voucher program, Because when the state declared they were establishing a theocracy, these folks wanted to wait and see which God was going to be in charge before they complained. Yeah, no, it turns out that bigotry doesn't play by fair rules. That actually turns out to be the whole fucking point. Or maybe the Islamic schools defunded themselves. There's no way of knowing. Yeah, we don't know.

Lots of countries have bought defunding somehow. Yeah, no, you're right. on defunding. Yeah. So first off, big thanks to Jim for being the first to send us this story to Scathing News at gmail.com. If you send us atheist news to scathing news at gmail.com, you, like Jim, get a free school voucher to the scathing atheist religious school

of anti-religiosity where all the classes are about how to steal your money back from religion. Scathing News at gmail.com. What Eli is trying to say is that we do have a backup plan for when the FCC shuts us down for Heath's Iranian Girl's School of joke that he just. Yeah. Yeah, we do. So regular listeners to our.

show, remember way back in 2025, aka 100 emotional years ago, when Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2 into law, which authorized the creation of a statewide program that allows families to use public funds to pay for their children's private school for homeschool education. And at the time, Noah literally pointed out,

almost exact quote, gee, I bet they're going to love when private Muslim schools start using this too. Well, acting comptroller, Kelly Hancock, unironically shares no illusion's concerns. And so, on December 12th of last year, he filed a request for an opinion from the state attorney general

and man whose eyeball is constantly trying to distance itself from association with him, Ken Paxton. Yeah. Well, Ken's wife did the same thing as the eye last year, actually. She did ex-wife now, I'm pretty sure. Hancock was asking Paxton

whether schools could be excluded from the program if they were linked to a foreign terrorist organization or a foreign adversary. That terrorist organization being the Council on American Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group which Governor Craig Abbott unilaterally decided was a terrorist organization in November of last year. Yeah, right. So the rules we're playing by here are you don't get equal rights if you're in category X

and we get to decide who's in category X. Yeah. And category X is, come on, y'all. Come on. You know, you know that. First we're doing. And look, I want to be clear, care sucks, right? They have lots of people who work for them who say and have said shitty things.

They say shitty things as an organization. And they were anti-Semites before anti-Semitism was cool, my friends. But they are by no stretch of anyone's imagination, a terrorist organization. Like if saying bigoted shit, supporting acts of violence and praising evil military leaders makes you a terrorist organization, we've got to. a lot more churches that are terrorist organizations to deal with before we start dealing with care. You know what I mean? Yeah. But the state of Texas never let a little thing like self-reflection getting the way of their policy. So this year, they declared that schools accredited by the organization

Cognia had hosted events organized by care. Therefore, all Cognia schools were excluded from the program. What? I want to be clear here. Cognia did not host the events. schools accredited by Cognia hosted the events, and therefore all schools accredited by Cognia are terrorist-adjacent. Wow. And they probably considered sending a thank you note to Cognia because, like, Plan B was just to exclude religions

that rhymed with Shmuzlum. Yeah, but don't worry. Plan B leads to a fine of at least $100,000 and maybe a bounty hunter in Texas. Yeah, no, yeah. A fetus. That's true. Although, all that stuff happened in Texas.

they sponsored it in their state. So Texas is terrorist-adjacent. Oh, you're right. Yeah, no, that's true. That's true, too. One more thing about this story. If you read about this story in, like, conservative media, they make a big deal about the bad policies and ideas of some of these organizations

and schools. And some of these schools are extremely devout, and they teach all kinds of horrible, problematic religious shit. But the question isn't, are these awesome schools? It's, are they terrible? organizations that should be denied legal property ownership and the benefits of state programs. And no matter how blatantly illegal those state programs are, they should. Yeah.

So in this case, we're siding with the religious assholes about their right to do religious assholery. But then we go right back to not liking their assholery anymore. Well, yeah, yeah. No, to be clear, our preferred solution is that we give taxpayer money to none of the lying sexist bigotry schools. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, none of the truth-telling feminist woke private schools. Taxpayer money is for public schools. What the fuck? No, you lost me. Now, I don't understand anymore. Hey, you remember how Texas privatized their power grid? Seems to work out great. You couldn't hear me say that because your power went out and your internet is not in Texas.

Yeah. I'm not Texas. Gross. All right. Well, this discussion is bound to lead Eli into another. We should start our own private atheism school in Alabama proposals. So, well, we talk him down. And we're going to hand things over to my lovely wife, Lucinda.

But what if your schools are poor? A man wrote the Bible? A whore is what you want. If it's a legitimate rate. The dangerous slut, right? Cooking can be fine. Hey, I'm glad of a man. This week in massages.

I've got a quick suggestion. I know a lot of you have pulled your support from legacy media outlets like the Washington Post and the New York Times and stuff, which is great. But that leaves a lot of people wondering where they should put that money instead. other than patreon.com slash scathing atheist, of course. Well, I'm here to suggest maybe you consider Populica. They're doing some of the best journalism in the country. They're helping focus on local issues, and they're not owned by a billionaire subsidiary

of the United Corporations of Trepaston. Of course, the downside of ProPublica is that they report the real news, which is depressing as shit. Like, for example, an expose that they ran last week about two women in Florida, who were sentenced to have ceaseless, sections against their will by judicial panels that were convened over Zoom while they were in

labor. So these women are basically already in the middle of a difficult delivery, had made their choices clear, and then all of a sudden had to advocate for themselves in legalese. And I want to be clear here that we're not talking about women who came in and were like, fuck it, give me the most dangerous possible delivery. I want to have this kid while jumping Snake River Canyon on a motorcycle. One of the women was a professional doula. who'd had three C-sections in the past and knew the statistical risk of a vaginal birth in her case

better than any of the people on the Zoom call. The other woman was a woman who was helping care for her elderly mother and was like, okay, but who the fuck is going to take care of my mom and my newborn while I'm recovering from a fucking C-section then? Look, there is literally no other condition in the fucking world where the state will make medical decisions over the objection of an informed patient,

not for legal medical procedures anyway. But as soon as you start entertaining this fiction that an unborn fetus is a human being, you inevitably end with shit like this. And once a pregnant person's body is reduced to a fetal vehicle, they only get to drive some of the time. And if you want a sneak preview of where the theocracy has taken us, by the way, we should check back in with the horrifying descent of women's rights in the Taliban-led Afghanistan. We got a story out of there last week about a woman who filed for divorce after her husband beat her with a cable wire. Her request was denied by a judge who editorialized, quote,

you want a divorce just because of that, a little anger and a few beatings won't kill you, end quote. Never mind that they will, of course, kill her. And they do all the fucking time. Just a quick reminder that 20 years ago, women in that country could vote. Doesn't take long once the religious zealots take all of the levers of power. Something to keep in mind is we inch ever closer to the SAVE Act.

A law meant to disenfranchise as many voters, as possible with a particular focus on women. So, with apologies that I'm all bummer this week, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. Next to be headlines in Shereal House Lies News. Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is lying about Sharia law. And it's a subtle one, so it's tricky to spot the lie.

He's claiming that Sharia law has already taken hold in Muslim-friendly places like the state of Texas. It makes sense. Yeah. If you hear anything that sounds like very obvious Islamophobic hate speech from his Republican colleagues, it's probably just a normal reaction to that very real problem in places like Texas. Holyish. I mean, it tells you a lot about where we are that their spin over public declarations of Islamophobic. at this point is like, well, they kind of have a point, though.

Let them cook. Yeah, right. So let me give this little context. Okay, we're in a war with Iran. That's context. And according to the estimates I've seen, we're paying about $1.6 billion a day to make it happen. But that's the high end. We might be getting it for the low, low price of $900 million a day.

Either way, Republicans who like this. idea are bending over backwards to justify the war and to blow Donald Trump while bending over backwards at a weird angle that takes to the beege a lot toothier, I would imagine. So it's not even a good beege. Well, considering Iran has mostly Muslim people, the immediate version of that GOP justification was panicky hate speech, as you might guess. For example, Tennessee representative Andy Ogles took some time away from his cuck porn only fans, I'm assuming he does with his name on it, to make a post that said, Muslims don't belong in American society. Pluralism is a lie.

Yeah. And then Mike Johnson had to go out and explain how goose stepping is actually just a very efficient form of locomotion, actually. You guys don't remember the ministry of silly walks? That's a great sketch. And we also got plenty of bigotry from people like Representative Randy Fine, who posted, We need more Islamophobia, not less. Fear of Islam is rational. And, okay, yes, he accidentally got the second part right, sort of we should fear Islam and Judaism and Christianity and religion.

But that's not what he meant. He accidentally worded a sentence with less bigotry by accident. Yeah, to be clear, these idiots keep fearing it. wrong and fucking the whole thing up for all of us who are trying to fear it right. Right. Yeah. We also heard from Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama. God, I love that this guy exists.

He posted a photo of Zoran Mamdani next to a photo of the twin towers exploding on 9-11. Wow. Along with the caption, The enemy is inside the gates. And, okay, I know this isn't the point, but he's recycling material. He did the same line when Mamdani won the Democratic primary in New York last year. Write some new bigotry, you fucking hack. I'm getting, sorry, I'm getting off track. That's not the focus.

During a press conference, Mike Johnson got a question about the comment from Andy Ogles, and here's what Johnson had to say in response. Quote, there's a lot of popular sentiment that the demand to impose Sharia law in America is a serious problem. It's not about people as much. Muslims, and I think he even reversed those words by accident. But, I mean, only in that you don't think of them as people, he literally said the words, Muslims don't belong in American society.

Yeah. Yep. All right, well, don't worry, everyone. There is some good news. Republicans are speaking out against the hate speech of their bigoted colleagues like Andy Ogles. Oh. Wait, sorry. None of that.

It's the opposite. Democrats are doing that sometimes. And we might even get a censure. Ooh. So the victims of the hate speech and the victims of the blowing up Iran with giant explosions might finally get justice in the form of a stern talking to for Andy Ogles and Randy Fine.

Yeah. But also probably not. No, actually. No. Yeah. And finally tonight, in the headline. writers that the Guardian fuck their dad's news. We try to keep our news stories based in atheism here on the scathing atheist.

After all, there's no lack of religious assholery in today's world. Hell, we could do three or four episodes a week on the dumb shit Christians are up to these days, but sometimes we are forced by the sheer stupidity of a phenomenon to veer into the world of skepticism. And that, my friends, is the case for me this week, as the Guardian put out a headlong so misleadingly titled, it technically counts as a prank war. Okay. So what's the headline?

Thank you. Let me cook. So first off, big thanks to venture free for sending us this story to scathing news at gmail.com. For sending us atheist news to scathing news at gmail.com, if we ever see a headline blaming you for satanic child abuse, venture free, I'm going to read the whole thing before I believe them. You're welcome.

You won't, though. So what's the headline? Yeah. What are you a fucking Irish folk singer? Enough with the preamble, maybe with the goddamn song, man. I have been listening to a lot of Tom essays over on our sister's show citation. I'm a weaver of tales.

I'm a weaver of tales. I'm weaving. Right. So the article in question bears the headline, chat GPT driving rise in reports of satanic, organized, and ritual abuse, UK experts say. What?

Which, even a reasonable person could interpret as reporting that chat GPT is making people sacrifice people to Satan. But it is very much not that. So we're going to talk about it. Yeah, it's confusing because, I don't know, like the headline, for example, GROC driving rise in reports of AI-generated child porn is technically accurate.

Sure. And Grock both did the thing and the thing led to more reports of the thing. But in this case, it's just the reports, I think. Yeah, exactly. Well, hey, if there are two, topics the general population is great at accurately assessing the dangers of based on headlines. It's satanic ritual abuse and chat GPT, so we should be fine.

These are two normal chill topics that everyone handles well. Yeah. So to understand the story, we need to talk a bit about UK law around abuse, specifically organized and ritual abuse and witchcraft spirit possession and ritual abuse or whisper. Oh, it's good. It's got a jaunty acronym. Whistra. That'll save me a lot of time. I mean, I want to talk about witchcraft, spiritual possession, and ritual abuse. It's hard to write a grant with the word witchcraft right there. I can't be doing lists with commas. That's crazy. Wisprah. Great.

Now, you might have noticed that in that list, witchcraft, spirit, possession, and ritual abuse, two of those things are fake, and one of those things is very real. Right. And why are being full of ghosts cursed by a demon and forced to pray my gay away all under the same category when it comes to the legality of that behavior? Just one of the adorable quirks of the motherland that it's best not to think about for too long, like the monarchy and everything that England ever did in India. Or any of the other countries, actually. Yeah, exactly.

But you're probably wondering, Eli, where does chat GPT come in? Has it been doling out the proper recipe for child-based spellcasting? Has Deneres Targaryen perhaps been using it to tell parents just the right way to say, sacrifice their baby? No. But people are telling it about the fucked up stuff that happened to them as kids, because everybody uses it as a therapist. And then the yes and lie machine is like, dude, that sounds fucked up. You should talk to someone about that, which has led to an increase in reports of ritual abuse to the National Association for People Abused in Childhood. Okay. We're taking away your acronyms. End of the semester at least. Like, Hitler led to more

happiness too. That's Holocaust and puppy pictures in every slideshow. It's not helpful. You can't just make up acronyms like that. No, you can't. But like all things with AI, wherever there's an upside, people, you know, knowing the truth about what happened to them, there is a magnificently present downside as well. In this case, many of the reports also include satanic abuse, which means it looks like the job that ChatGPT is planning to steal next is shitty cops from the 80. Is, you Yeah, so one of the underreported problems with the satanic panic is the way that it helped to bury very real child sex abuse beneath mountains of hallucinatory bullshit. Sure did. Sure did. So, yeah, as much as I'd love to say that chat GPT is only provided an outlet for people to process their trauma and to hear that the religious bullshit they went through isn't healthier normal, it seems a fair amount of people are being, you know, fucking yes-anded into a brand-new satanic panic at the same.

same time, none of which you'd learn based on the headline for this article. So, you know, congratulations to the Guardian for the third worst anti-AI take of the week. At least they chose a fun topic, like ritualistic religious abuse to clickbait about it. They could have done it about something serious, you know? No, exactly. And with the promise that in the near future, our moral panics might be entirely automated, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Too much. And when we come back, we'll dive deeper into the part of Ross Douth's books that he assumed nobody was going to still be reading. Early on and Ross doubt that's believe why everyone should be religious, I had trouble imagining who his intended audience was.

The arguments were too simplistic to convince the educated and the language was too obscure to appeal to the uneducated. But the further into it we get, the clearer it is that it was never about readers. This book exists not to be read, but so that dumb people can have a thinky book with thinky words in it that says that their religion is true as a counterpoint to all those thinky books with thinking words that say it isn't. So with that in mind, we're going to dive back into another installment of God Awful Books. Now, as you recall, to this point, he's convinced us to his own satisfaction that religion is better than atheism, making up your own religion doesn't count, and you should hedge your bets by going with one of the big religions. But now he has to

narrow that down to one. And he can't just say, you know, the one that rhymes with Christianity, man. So we're going to look at the differences between the big faith. Starting with a subheading, this is where halfway through chapter 5, the subheading is moral guidance or divine experience. Now, he figures at this point, he does an assessment where he figures that his readers are so far are loving the humans are better than everything else arguments. They're mildly interested in the mystical stuff and pretty sure that the angels and demon stuff is bullshit. Yeah, and to be fair, that position is too reasonable for Ross.

He's going to try and take us away from that position in this chapter. And honestly, as weird as it is to watch a writer just halfway through his own book, give himself a C plus, I think he's being way too generous with that grade. Yeah, that was quite the clever ruse making a list of three things. Nearly got lost in that web. Almost forgot that intelligent design is dumb and mystical stuff is just stuff I can't personally explain with a physics paper because I'm not a physicist. You almost cheated yourself a C plus in your own book.

But no, no, no, I caught you. It's actually zero so far. You're at a zero. Still enough. And then he's like, sure, you could be religious without, you know, the angels and the miracles. But the angels and the miracles are the whole fucking point. I mean, look, yeah, wrong. Right.

Yeah, no, he goes, look, if religion isn't impossible, it doesn't count. That is so close to a fucking quote. It is. Yeah, he says that religion can't just be a code for being a good person. Boring, it's got to have cool magic, right? So not great. But then he quotes W. H. Aoudin. So I was Pete.

Oh, obviously. The W.H. Auden. Yeah. Old Langsine. Maybe you've heard of it. He stole it. Nothing can save us that is possible. We who must die demand a miracle.

And just a reminder, that miracle is hanging out with Christian people forever in the sky. That's not good. Sounds great. Yeah. But now it's time for him to start like sort of flowcharting the religion for us. And he starts off by saying like, look, if you want to be a good person to not have magic powers, I suppose you'd be like a liberal Protestant or a California Buddhist. But he's only really saying this so that he can later argue that Christianity has all the cool liberal hippie shit.

that those Buddhists have. Yeah. It's weird for him to call dibs on Enlightenment and then the actual existence of Satan in the same paragraph. Yeah. I separate those two.

You would think, yeah, but he explains that liberal Protestantism deemphasizes the mystagogic elements, guys, and that was a really I don't know if you noticed this book on my shelf, but it has the word misdivis. What?

Mystic Jogic. Mr. Gajick, is that what you said? No. Yeah, you're relatable. Cool. I almost feel bad for the liberal Christians as they read this shit. Just being like, hey, shut the fuck up. You're making the whole squad look insane.

We're trying to get more people on board. He's like everyone who is saying, you know, I'm too progressive to vote for Kamala Harris. You are the Ross Douthits of liberal politics to see you know. There you go. I feel bad for Ross Douthit in this moment. So, yeah, so but he's describing his. and Buddhism and hippie Christianity like a salesman that gets a higher commission

on the Catholicism throughout this? Right? That's this whole thing throughout this entire chapter. It's increasingly obvious, right? Like, in his objective description of those religions afterwards, he summarizes their practices as austere worship, therapeutic meditation, and detailed legal codes. Uh-huh.

Yeah. And Noah was really helping out Ross there by explaining that detailed legal codes was referring back to the last paragraph about Islam. Ross is bad at writing. So it sounded like Buddhism is mostly, you know, sitting quietly, plus the hearings for the zoning board sometimes. Yeah. But then Ross is like, hold on, hold on.

You know what? I like you. I like the cut of your jib. I might have one Catholicism left in back. Yeah. Yeah. He's just running his hand along Catholicism. Yeah.

I suppose the practice of enhanced cognition is all right. But this baby, this baby comes with a who you should fuck undercoat. Stop slapping. Don't put it in my hand. He absolutely presents Catholicism as like the just right balance between the moral guidance and divine experience dichotomy that he's created out of thin air.

But then he also, he tosses, he's like, oh, if you want to balance it out, just right, you could get Catholicism or Sufi Islam or Tibetan Buddhism. You know, whichever of those three you can find a local church for or whatever. Closest to you. All right. So we all agree.

It's either the ancient Iraqi Edsel, the pillow with wheels on the bottom, or the Catholic Church rated number one in his class by J. J.D. Power and Associates. Yeah, exactly. I found one in the back. Slap, slap. Yeah.

And then the Choose a Religion flowchart asks us how many gods we want in a subchapter called God or the gods, where presumably we're going to learn that the best religions are probably the ones where you'd have to memorize the fewest names of gods, right? Yeah. And by the way, after I wrote that in my notes, he opens up with, you know, monotheism is where all the smart people in history typically wind up.

Here's the actual line. You think I'm exaggerating. Actual line, quote, monotheism in some form has often tended to be the destination of philosophically minded believers, end quote. Ah, yes, those famously monotheistic Greek people. Yes, ancient Greeks. And that monotheist, Albert Einstein, that's this paragraph. Right, yeah.

With an AI generated picture. And he's got no justification. He just says, like, you know, if you think about it, you'll probably realize that my religion is the smartest. No evidence. He's just like, you know, if you look at reality, I mean, obviously that was one dude, right? Multiple deities? or one singular almighty. You want the Bible

or the sweaty, crowded rush hour pantheons of Hinduism and Buddhism. Almost exact words without the trumpet and the trumpet. No, he almost has the trumpet noises in the fucking book. Yeah. Look, I'm a dad too. Think of the money you're going to save on shrines and incense when you just got one guy.

We then we learn that part of the convergence of the great religions is that they all started to settle on the idea of a creating God who exists outside of space and time. He does not mention how many people had to be killed into believing that. Yeah, but it wasn't all of them, Noah, or else nobody would believe it. Yeah, right. So actual quote, quote, even in Buddhism, you arguably see development towards more theistic conceptions of divinity over time, end quote. and it actually helps if you selectively ignore huge schools of Buddhism when you do that. That does help. Okay.

So true story. In my world history, 11th grade class, my history teacher, who was also the wrestling coach, explained to us that the concept of chi... He has many things. Yeah, he was a many fascinating human,

but he was mostly the wrestling coach. And he explained to us that chi was how you don't get warm in the shower until the water hits your neck. Fucking what? I think about, first of all, I think about it every time I get in the shower, so will you for the rest of your life, because it's kind of a little true,

but definitely was planted in my head young enough. But I was like, is this, gee? That's the understanding Ross has of Buddhism. Sure. So, okay. At this point, he also, he's like, you know, and also, hey, in terms of confluence, Buddhism has three of something.

Christianity has the Trinity, right? basically just copying off of our homework at this point. Yeah, even Ross had to admit that was stupid, the thing he wrote in his book. The idea of Buddha's three bodies bears some, Ross says exact words, not entirely distant resemblance to the holy spirit. It's three thing. It's a three. I said three again.

But then he does admit that polytheism could be appealing because the Christian God is too aloof for some people. Also, if you're polytheistic, you're going to end up going to one of your gods burlesque show, and it's not going to be a fun one. It's good. I'm telling you. I'm warning you ahead of time. You know, I thinks monotheism is spiritual slavery.

Literally slavery. I mean, I do think that about monophysis. Sure. And you might think at this point, right, that like, well, at least he's offering up one possible criticism of Christianity, one defense of philosophy. defense of polytheism. No, it's so that he can go, wow, if only some religion

had the philosophical gravitas of monotheism with the approachable intercessors of saints. Ross might as well walk into the paragraph and drop a giant armful of gods everywhere. Like, what is this happening to you? There must be a better way, Catholicism, slap, slap, slap. If only there were handles. That'll hold.

So it's amazing to be how comfortable this guy is, too, saying that like, you know, maybe all these brown people are just doing my religion wrong. Yeah. It could be that. All human knowledge boils down to my beliefs is the kind of thing I muttered into my mic after Heath and Noah don't laugh hard enough at one of my thoughts. It shouldn't be in a book. Sure.

And then he's like, he's like, oh, also Wicca is bullshit. That one doesn't even count. That doesn't count. Yeah. Broken clock twice a day. Sure. Yeah. But no, he's literally railing against those filthy pagans at this point in the book.

Let him cook. No, I'll let him cook. Oh, he also points out that polytheists are easier to trick into worshipping demons in his various serious book with various serious words. Did I mention mistake Godget? I want to put it back on the shelf now. I was trying to show your book. Yeah. He also goes after Gwyneth Paltrow for a second here.

But the problem is his worldview is so stupid. He can't even roast Gwyneth Paltrow correctly. Yes. Yeah. Just a reminder. Gwyneth sells a vaginal steam gun with laser beams that you shoot your vagina with. But Rost Douthith is focused on the dangers of summoning a literal demon to your bubble bath of self-care. Yes.

If you say the wrong spell while you're handling the essential oils that are not really real. Also, yeah, and this misguided attack on Gweth Peltro comes as a Catholic is implying that neo-pagans don't do enough to protect their adherents from predators. That is a problem for them. Their septic tank babies were for fun. Oh, God. They weren't part of the religious practice. They were extra credit.

Okay. Baby septic tanks. So, okay, so then we get to the, what kind of afterlife do you want portion of the flow chart with the subheading? What are the eternal stakes of human life? Right. So at this point, he's pretending that like afterlifes are universal in religions. Which is it, they are.

Right? I tried for years to find literally any universal within the world's religion, any one thing that all the religions believe, I came up empty. The best he can come up with is religions all care about morality and the afterlife is always some kind of journey, which, to be clear, as infinitesimal as those are, they're also not universal. Right, which means Ross was at two in the morning at one point, staring at a whiteboard in his office that said religions equal stuff. And then he just was like, starts typing feverishly. He's like, I did it. All right.

All right. But he does. He offers up Christianity light, right? Because we're talking about hell at this point and how cruel it would be to punish somebody for eternity for literally anything. So he's offering up Christianity light where hell is temporary. And I'm like, I've never encountered a Christian that suggested this. Yeah. Neither have I.

But the implications that you could be sentenced to 25 years in hell for serial. killing and then spend eternity with your victims awkwardly like sharing the blowjob fountain? It seems to have a few plot holes, right? You've created new ones now. Maybe somebody gives a pardon to all the people in hell. You never know. Right, yeah. But then he's like infinitely reincarnating, though.

That's actually just as bad as an internal hell if you think about it. Is it? What? Gentlemen, gentlemen, to be fair, he is currently incarnated as Ross Dutat. Okay, yeah. Think about it. Okay, he really painted himself into a corner again here. He explained that torture for infinity might sound bad.

However, and then he had to keep writing. Yeah, no, that is a corner. The correct answer is backspace, but Ross doesn't do that. No, never get to the word count if he allows himself to backspace. No, he goes, it would be like an eternal punishment that you weren't aware of to have your memory wiped over and over again. Well, I mean, an itch you're not aware of is nothing, dude. Right. Instead of Backspace, he claims that all the recurring memory wipes that you would tend not to remember are torturous.

And he says it's a lot like the torture in Dante's Inferno. And no, it's not. No, it's not. Being a dung beetle for a few years probably sucks. Yeah. But Dante's hell had, I don't know, just one example, an eternal rape tornado. And that was only the second circle. That wasn't even close to the worst stuff, according to Dante.

That version of hell, by the way, also had obnoxious writers taking little tours and staring at you the whole time and making comments. Yeah, that's in all the rings. Yeah. And then he reinforces the older religions or better point from earlier in the chapter with a subchapter called how does God appear in history. Now, he does have to concede here that there's no historical consensus on the, the nature of God, which is weird because all the real things have one of them historical consensus. Yeah, Ross, you know how the earth wasn't actually flat when everyone thought that? Your God's not like that.

No, wow, totally different, yeah. And then he presents the argument from, well, maybe we're getting ever closer to the one religion that won't be wrong. Oh, hey, my mom, four sentences into any serious conversation we've ever had about religion. What are you doing here into the book? Also, you just accidentally described atheism there as the apotheosis of theism in your book. Until we figure it out, we should probably be here, right? But he opens a chapter with three possible historical perspectives on God, the last of which is the one that all religious people believe, right? Because they are briefly, we'll never know, someday we'll know, we know.

And credit where credit is due, it is hard to get a crusade going with the someday we'll know. They are. Yeah. Okay. But if you do get it going, that's got to be fun to watch, right? Just like a big crusade that's all like, quiet, quitting. Okay.

Crusade. But no, this entire subchapter boils down to, so read all the holy books and see if one does it for you. Yeah. And maybe Jesus or whoever doesn't excite you right away. But maybe after a while, he really wears you down. And he has a published all. and a professor and a podcaster,

and you ignore his very punchable voice. And I've had sex with a woman at least five times. I have five kids. That's at least five a thing. Yeah, I thought Heath was doing a bit about me. I did do right until the five kids. Yeah. I was like,

you said I had sex five times. And then I was like, has I been lying for me? That's awesome. Thank you so much. So then he goes into the hard cell with a subchapter called the Paths between the Paths. Now, this is where he makes it clear.

that even if you don't choose Christianity the first time around, you can still change your mind and join his religion later. So he starts charting paths between the religions, right? So he's like, you know, here's how you'd get from Muslim to Christianity. And so it doesn't seem like he's aiming you that way. He's like, and here's Christianity to Muslim. And here's Buddhism to Christianity and here's Christianity to Muslim. But notice that there's no Muslim to Buddhist or Buddhist to Muslim, right?

Yeah. Yeah. And to be clear, the path away from Buddhism is in both the cases he lists in the book, okay but then who will tell me what to do? Yeah, right. Yeah, he remembers, he has to at least connect Buddhism to Christianity. And he says, there's overlap in stuff that God is not. God's not a task, not a lamp, not Ezra Klein laughing at me.

He's not your prom dress. But eventually all the other religions will realize that they're just doing Catholicism wrong. Yeah, but don't worry, you people. Ross forgives you people. You were probably just taking a truth too far. You knew about God, but then you like, you know, tanned them up a little too much or whatever.

And with that, the poll broke in the middle of the pole vault of a close. We're going to wrap up this installment, but there are still more bad arguments to come when we open this book again next one. Before we coax out the music, I want to let you know that if you're really bummed that You didn't get to see my tarot talk that I did it a couple of times last year. There's actually video of it online right now. The audio isn't perfect, but if you want to check it out, I'll have it linked on the show notes for this episode.

Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,000, 22 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be a look up for a brand-new episode of our sister-show on Monday, debut at 7-Eastern on Monday, and an even newer episode of our sister-show on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half-sister show, Citation Needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, this show would fall short if I neglected to thank Heath Henry for being so tall. It would fall flat if I neglected to thank Lucinda for being so sharp, and it would ring

hollow if I didn't thank Eli for being so dense. Sorry, bro, you always have to be the butt of the joke on these when Don isn't here. It's just kind of the way it works out. Also, I want to thank Carrie Lynn Evans for providing this week's Farnsworth quote. I actually had to trim it down a bit from what she originally sent, but apparently the New Books Network has a bunch of shows about different types of books. Be sure, check the show notes to learn more. But most of, of course, I want to thank this week's best people, Christian, Mr. Ed, Bill Ryan, and Audrey Horr, so hot they wear asbestos suits to protect the lava. Together these five scintillating skeptics secured our screen against sketchy and scurrilous sanctimonious skullduggery this week by giving us money.

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