The Scathing Atheist - 684: Turin Test Edition

Episode Date: April 23, 2026

In this week’s episode, Donald Trump will read the only book dumber than he is, this new connection between public health and raccoon penis will surprise you, and we’ll take a look at Christianity’s security blanket.---To 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/---Event Links:Get tickets to see Noah live with Seth Andrews in Cincinnati: https://www.sethandrews.com/cincinnati---Headlines:Debunking the religious revival among young men (again): https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/are-young-men-really-becoming-moreNon-religious NASA astronaut 'broke down in tears' seeing cross after Artemis II mission: https://www.christianpost.com/news/non-religious-nasa-astronaut-broke-down-in-tears-seeing-cross.htmlTrump tries to appease Christians by reading a Bible verse: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/after-angering-christians-all-weekA barista says she was fired for her Christian faith - the facts are far more nuanced: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/a-barista-says-she-was-fired-forRFK Jr. lied about measles vaccines: https://apnews.com/article/measles-vaccine-outbreak-mmr-rfk-canada-mexico-bed6d69b668b9d8548ad65dab1a4fd9cAnd he has a podcast now: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/apr/20/rfk-jr-podcast-maha-healthAlso he cut off a raccoon's penis: https://nypost.com/2026/04/15/us-news/rfk-jr-once-chopped-off-a-dead-racoons-penis-to-study-later-while-on-a-family-road-trip/ 

Warning, the following podcast contains profanity-free sentences. But don't worry, there aren't that many. This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Quince. And by the new Drano for that clogged, pesky straight, Strano. Straino. If none of you guys tell them it isn't real, we can make a lot of fucking money here, okay? And now, the Scathing Atheist. Hi, this is Kyle Sinclair.

At a Neridium night in Seattle, I told Heath that I was determined to get onto the scathing atheist, and here I am, even if only to remind you that we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men. In your face, Heath. It's Thursday. It's April 23rd. And it's International Pixel Stained Techno peasant day. You buy Bitcoin again? Even better.

No, it's not. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath Henwright. I'm F. Scott Fitzgeralds, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia. This is the scathing atheist. On this week's episode, Dom. Trump will read the only book dumber than he is.

This new connection between public health and raccoon penis will surprise you. And we'll take a look at Christianity's security blank. But first, the diatribe. So over the last year or so, I've gotten into working out, which can't possibly surprise you more than it surprises me. But if you'd ask me five years ago about this shit, I'd said it was more likely I would get into fucking Bulgarian poetry at this point. but here I am picking up heavy shit and putting it back down again and calling that a hobby.

And it's a weird hobby because like whenever you spend a lot of your time doing something, you're going to have observations about it, right? It's going to relate to all the other stuff in your life. And with any other hobby that I've ever had, that kind of stuff slots naturally into your day-to-day conversation, right? I was out hiking when X, while I was learning this juggling trick, why? While I was trying to sabotage this lady's other eBay auctions after she outbid me on an old Nintendo Z. But whenever I'm called upon to do that about a workout thing, I get super self-conscious about it. It's impossible for me to say, like, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the

gym without feeling like I'm saying, I'm a gym person, by the way, who goes to the gym. You can probably tell from my glutes. Hell, like, even, honestly, even introducing a diatribe with this has me feeling like a bit of a prick. So anyway, so to solve my self-consciousness dilemma, I joined a few online spaces for fitness nerds, who, by the way, hate being called fitness nerds, apparently. And after I weeded out the 99.98% that were all woo, I settled on three or four places where I more or less felt comfortable sharing my funny thing happened on the way to the gym stories without sounding like an asshole to myself. So I'm in one of those spaces when I came across the question that really got me thinking. A guy posted this whole big thing,

But the crux of his question was whether it was bad to find himself attractive. He couched it in all these excuses about how he worked really hard to lose a lot of fat and mold exactly the body that he was after. And now when he looks in the mirror, he's like, wow, that dude's pretty hot. And whenever that happens, he's like, wow, I'm a terrible asshole. Now, think about how bizarre that really is. I mean, even short of putting in a bunch of work, picking up heavy shit and putting it back down, finding oneself attractive isn't a bad thing. even if you're not attractive, and this dude is definitely attractive. But we've been beaten over the head with this concept of sinful pride so thoroughly

that even a person who's clearly dedicated years of his life to make himself more attractive feels guilty about admiring the product of that work. If a person spent that much time learning how to paint, they probably wouldn't feel like an asshole for admiring their own art. They might be nitpicky about it and say, oh, I did that wrong, did that right? But when they said, wow, I nailed that, they wouldn't feel. feel like they were being an asshole. But because the product is his self, society told him to feel guilty about it.

Now, it's worth noting that this group where I encountered this question was an atheist space, a Facebook group for non-religious fitness nerds. But even absent a religious dogma, this uniquely religious guilt trip is so pervasive in our society that even an atheist still feels it. And look, I'm not saying that there's not a point where pride in one's appearance goes off the rails. every one of you conjured an example from your own personal life to prove that assertion, as I was saying, off the rails. But I'd wager that nobody who is self-conscious about admiring their own appearance enough

to ask a question about it is in danger of that. I mean, everything's bad at a certain point of excess. That doesn't make the thing itself inherently bad. There's nothing wrong, actually, with pride. There's a lot of good shit about it. I mean, you know, look, there's nothing wrong with human. humility either and a person can simultaneously exemplify both. Hell, you can be proud of how humble you are. But it's been really convenient for the powerful people who are trying to control us to

beat that pride right to fuck out of us for a really long time. It's one of those things they smuggled in along with all the real immoralities to make the flock a bit more pliable. But the point that I want to make here isn't actually about pride. It's about the pervasiveness of these religion-inspired pseudo morals. I remember reading a line in Darrell Ray's book, Sex and God, where he pointed out all these sexual morals that non-believers still carry around after they leave religion that have no secular justification. And so many of the things on his list were vestigial prejudices that I was carrying, despite

the fact that I was never a churchgoer. One of the big problems with the way society let religion lay claimed immorality is the way it fuels prejudices against the other, right? As atheists, we're constantly asked to justify our ethics. in light of our lack of superstition. If you don't believe in God, where do you get your morals? But an even more insidious byproduct is the way that they've Bermuda triangled our moral compasses to the point where we sometimes can't even tell

which way good is even after we've stopped listening to them. Joining me for headlines tonight are the Carl and Princess Donat to My Mongo, So Heath Endwright and Eli Bosnick fellas, are you ready to grind? Okay, I'm Carl. I got to grind some fucking leg day. That guy is yoked. Unacceptable. By the way, I want to point out that I was going to use that intro a while ago,

but me and Eli have been in a fight over which of us is the princess donut of this podcast for weeks. And while that fight continues, we're going to pause for a quick word from this week's sponsor, Quince. You're the AI. What's taking him so long? Bathroom, probably. No, no, because he always comes in and he announces that he has to go potty. Has to go potty. That's right, he does.

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So, you ready to go to dinner? Yeah, just one second. I got to go. Go potty. Yeah, go potty. And now, back to the headlines. In our lead story tonight, at the end of last year, we had to devote a lead story to knocking back a media narrative about how young men were flocking back to the

church after years of decline, and we debunk that narrative by quoting the source. Everybody was citing saying that narrative was a misinterpretation of their data. But now they have new data to support the same already debunked stories. So apparently it's time for us to do it again. To be fair, okay, what about this lie has been religion's go-to strategy for a while. No, that's true. That's true, yeah. So this latest rush to interpretation comes to us from Gallup.

And to the media's credit, unlike the Pew survey that touched, off the last round of this bullshit, at least the Gallup poll actually does say the thing that the news is reporting. According to recently released Gallup data from 2024 to 2025, a shockingly high 42% of men between the ages of 18 and 29 reported that religion is very important in their lives. That's up from only 28% in 2022-23 and the highest it's ever, well, sorry, the highest it's been since 2001 when they first started taking this survey. And that actually is kind of a big deal, if it's correct, which it probably isn't. Yeah, as usual with Christianity, big if true, for sure.

Exactly. Right. Right. So there are a couple of issues that I take with these survey results, but I do want to start off by saying it might be true, right? There has been a lot of anecdotal reports from a bunch of religious leaders that their congregations are increasingly made up of young men turning to religion on the advice of Trumpian brosphere assholes.

So it's not crazy to think that there could be some truth to this, but it's not showing up in other survey data. Well, that's weird. Yeah, right. Like, for example, the misinterpreted Pew data from December or pretty much all of PRRI's data from any fucking recent year. And it's hard to imagine a swing that big wouldn't be showing up in their numbers too. Yeah, numbers often show up in fucking numbers. If you're thinking it's debunked by other people counting. You're stupid.

Yeah, at best, or lying. Well, at best, right, right. Well, it's also worth noting that the sample size for young men and women in the survey was pretty low. It's 295 men, 145 women. All in the same church building. Well, so the reported margin of error for these groups was much higher than all the other demographics. It was plus minus 7% for men and plus minus 10% for women. It's also worth noting that the phrasing of the question is, how important is religion to you?

Okay. So we're not talking about a question like, how often do you go to church? So if this represents a real movement, it's the smallest possible form of movement. That is, people aren't attending church or even reporting that they pray regularly or participate in their religion in any way. They're just saying it's important to them, which could represent nothing but a shift in what some people think is the right answer to that question given their identity, right? In other words, Trump supporters are more likely to answer yes to this question now than they were 10 years ago, even if they're the right? even if their actual level of religiosity hasn't changed. Also, Trump voters are very likely to answer no about are you going to vote for Trump?

They say a lot of things. They say whatever. There's no value to it. Yeah. And as we've pointed out in the past, religion is very important to the hosts of this podcast. But it doesn't mean we're going through a religious revival here at Paulson and a thunderstorm LLC. Now, the real takeaway from this data and the headline Gallup, self-led with isn't about the almost certainly anomalous date of young men flocking back to the

church. It's the fact that young women are leaving, right? The number of women reporting religion is very important to them as a meager 29%, which is tied with the lowest it's ever been since they started doing the survey. And that is perfectly in line with all the other trends that these other surveys are showing. It took a while, sure, but the decades-long crusade against their rights seems to be paying off. Yeah, you know that internet saying, thing that only men like is cool. Religion's been waiting to get on that list for a while. Right.

Yeah. It's about time. And in talking out of your astronaut news, what of the worst things about religion is that it takes any moment of awe, any experience of wonder at the magnificence of the universe, and then it turns it into a goddamn pop-up ad for Bronze Age tribalism. Yep.

We're whack-a-mole the podcast, everybody. Exactly. And we got our latest example of that this week when a non-religious astronaut upon returning from motherfucking space was overwhelmed with emotion. And now Christians are pretending that he fell to his knees and was saved by the light of the Lord. So we've got to talk about it. I bunked my head on the firmament, I think. And now I'm a Christian. Sounds real. It sounds like exactly what happened. Yeah. Religion is like a spoiled, greedy kid running around. calling dibs on fucking emotional states, right?

Oh, no, that one's ours. Ours, awe, that's us. We call that. It's like when Oprah told that atheist swimmer, she had to be religious if she felt awe or inspired. Yes, that that was religion, yes. And a big thanks to Ben for sending us this story to scathing news at gmail.com.

As a reward for sending us atheist news to scaling news at gmail.com, if Ben ever becomes overwhelmed with emotion, we hear a puzzle in a thunderstorm LLC, promise to pretend it's because he's remembering the ending of his favorite movie, Armageddon. A great movie that everyone likes, especially Ben. Wow.

Daily News at Gmail.com. I feel like the people who got possum nipple pizza for their submissions are listening in going, wow, Ben really got fucked on this deal. Asshole. So if you follow Christian assholes, and we do, you've seen eight majillion versions

of this story already, and they all go something like, astronauts sees cross upon getting off spaceship and falls to knees in in almost certainly our religion, right? But the words of the astronaut in question, Artemis II commander, Reid Weissman, actually tell a very different story.

So he's at a press conference, and for some reason, maybe Oprah was in the audience, and he was asked whether he experienced a universal connectedness upon returning to Earth, or a shift in consciousness, which is a weird question

to ask a scientist getting back from their science job. I get it. It's among the cooler, more awesome science jobs. But nobody asks the guy who discovered a new vaccine if he feels transported into a different dimension by the experience. I bet they do. And they're not going to tell you they were in league with Bill Gates and Satan anyway, even if that was the scenario.

That's true. That's true. Yeah, no, but this question is a very thinly veiled version of, would you like to throw a bone to religious people quick before they pretend that spaceflight kills babies or something? Okay, but can we skip this? that guy, I have a real fucking question about astronauts. Right.

Really? Some space shit I want to talk to. On Earth is limited. Can I go? Right, right. Okay, but listen to Weissman's answer. Quote, I'm not really a religious person. Good start. But there was just no other avenue for me to

explain anything or to experience anything. So I asked for the chaplain on the Navy ship to just come visit us for a minute. And when that man walked in, I'd never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross. on his collar and I broke down in tears, end quote. Turns out that chaplain was my long lost twin brother who died at sea.

I'm Christian now. For all we know at this point, he's just crying about the memory of women's rights, you know? He continues, quote, it's very hard to fully grasp what we just went through. We have not had that reflection time. So I'm basing on what we saw. And when the sun eclipsed behind the moon, I think all four of us, I turned to Victor and I said,

I don't think humanity has evolved to the point of being able to comprehend what we're looking at right now because it was so otherworldly, end quote. Not adding, really makes you think that a rabbi 2000 years ago was God sacrificing himself to himself in a substitutional act that forgives original sin. Right. Also, evolution is a hoax.

I know I said that word earlier. I don't know why I said that. Evolution is actually a test from that rabbi. His dad is like super needy and he does like testy stuff. Weirdly needy. Yeah, man, look, otherworldly doesn't mean religious, especially when you're like actually otherworlded in the moment. You're out of like view of earth.

And look, if you ask me, that is the statement of someone who is describing an awesome experience, an experience in which they had the emotion of awe. And then they got down to earth and he sees a religious symbol. And like most people, he associates that symbol with. the form of awe and connectedness that has nothing to do with God getting an 11-year-old pregnant. And we could have all shared that moment, right? Atheists and Christians, Jews, and Scientologists. Okay, maybe not Scientologists because space is kind of their dad.

But we all could have said, like, yeah, man, that's pretty amazing that a set of human eyes saw the sun eclipse behind the moon in space. But now, Christianity had to turn it into their thing. Like the couple of the bar refused to hear that you. You don't want to be the unicorn in their threesome. And in putting the boo back in book news. As we discussed last week, Donald Trump spent the first half of this month in what would seem an intentional effort to piss off Christians if his mental acuity rose to the level of

intentionality. He started off with an Easter missive about how he was going to genocide Iran if they didn't open the fucking straight, his words. And by Orthodox Easter, he'd graduated to picking fights with the Pope and tweeting out pictures of himself as Red Cross Jesus. So in the most transparent possible effort to appease his Christian base, he decided to read some Bible verses on video, which is amazing, given that the only thing more tenuous than Trump's piety is his literacy.

My fellow Americans, love his patient, love his God. It's the opposite of me. You know there was at least one, give him some peanut. butter and use an AI conversation. Yes. Like that plan got legs before someone shut it down. He's a lot like Mr. Ed, if you're dealing with him as like one of the wranglers in the White House.

Yeah. Sure. I'm sure. Yeah. So this is apparently part of the afterlife punishment called America reads the Bible, which began on April 19th and is still going on through the end of the week. It's a live stream of hundreds of different participants reading the Bible out loud from cover to cover and was organized by a woman named Lagomorff Sex Acts.

What? Which, okay, that isn't her real name and it also isn't rabbit fucks or hair humps. But it is bunny Pounds. Yes, it is. And that's not better. Hi, Ms. Pounds. No. Podcaster, Eli Bosnick, pleasure to make your acquaintance.

Just so you know, there is no amount of Jesus that will undo your name. You are wasting your time. Change your name. You can just change your name. All is possible through him. Fuck. Right. So the event is taking place at the Museum of the Bible,

but if you can't make it there, it's also being live streamed on Great American PureFix, formerly Purefix, but don't worry, they're doing great financially. Just like all the companies that suddenly have unwieldy extra names on their names. Okay, you name a streaming service

that doesn't offer their entire membership weekly game nights on Zoom, okay? Yeah, you can't. of one. Everyone does that. And so this event, the list of participants is a veritable who's who of Republican politics and a veritable who's that

of entertainment. It includes Kevin Sorbo, Dean Kane, Candice Cameron Beer. Apparently they couldn't get Kirk. Patricia Heaton. He's still in his struggle. And people somehow less relevant than that. Dean Kane.

Just Dean in like full ice gear chasing a tan kid in a circle who's leading him or. Fuck. This guy's really fast. God, damn it. Love is patient. Love is coming.

Give me a second. But of course, the list of participants includes even more skeptic at regulars than gam regulars. It includes Mike Johnson, Marco Rubio, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Ben Carson, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, and Pete Hagseth, who will not be reading

Ezekiel 2517, despite Hemet Mena's awesome suggestion. But the most notable name, of course, is that of Donald Trump, who will not be participating live, like pretty much everybody else who's doing it. Yeah, well, that's a shape. Because I'd bring popcorn for that for watching him try to read live. But no, they let him pre-tape it and pretend it he was too busy presiding, I'm sure. Okay.

If Melania does a reading, I will donate to the Republican Party campaign. I will get a mortgage to donate if Melania does. I will get a house to get a mortgage on. Glavis-Persheng. Of course. It does not go to Epstein Island. Yeah, right, right. Now, at first they announced that he'd be reading Second Chronicle 714,

despite his historic inability to correctly name those kind of books of the Bible. And they also said his segment would be two and a half minutes long. And that had me fucking intrigued because Second Chronicle 714, is only 41 words, right? That's the same as the number of words I've said since the beginning of the last sentence. So my hopes were that we would get to watch like Trump stumble over 11 seconds of Bible verse for two and a half minutes. But no, it turns out they were only promoting that one because it has a repentance theme. The bulk of what he said is the favorite passage of Christian nationalists about how if everybody worships to write God correctly, he won't smite the land.

Hey, quick question. What if you claim God's human conduit on Earth got his job because you pulled some strings and feud with that guy and your number two lectures that guy about just war theory and you build a golden idol of yourself. Are there any like, are there any smiting passages? Anything in there? Yeah, there might be something in there somewhere. I don't know. And look, they obviously chose that passage because it supports the Christian national.

Nationalist agenda. Hell, they fucking, they recited that one at the January 6th riot, right? And Trump, no doubt, loved saying it because he gets to speak as God in the first person and threaten to smite people who don't do what he says. But it's worth remembering every time you hear that passage from the Christian nationalists that even if you take it in the context that they're pretending it was meant to be taken in, it would be a quote about how everybody in the country would be supposed to be Jewish. That's true. So. And they should. And in what's the Bigot Deal news. In times like these, it's very little

that you can count on, but there are still a few constants. If you're wearing a Yankees hat when you passed by Heath, then right, he will say go Yankees to you. Go Yanx. Yep. Everyone in the front row of a NASCAR race voted for Donald Trump. And if a Christian tells the media that they were

fired for their beliefs, the belief they're referring to is that gay people are going to hell. Yep. And we got yet another example of that this week as a Christian Barissa took to every possible conservative outlet to cry persecution. Okay, I'm just trying to share my faith in the Yankees with people and make sure they know that Red Sox fans go to hell for all. That's true.

He does say that. So, I want to take issue with the absolutism of that last contention, though sometimes when they say that it's transphobia. That's true. Oh, that is. That is. I asked and answered. So first off, a big thanks to Hemit Netta for bringing this story to our attention over at the friendly atheist blog, the fact that we turned Hemet Mehta's sharp mind into a parser of a teenage barista's work

drama means God won't talk to us even if he did exist. And Hammett, we thank you for your service. Dude, could have been making crossword puzzles with clever puns in him while solving quadratic equations in his head. He could, yeah. He could have done all that, but instead he's reading texts between coffee shop employees. Anyway, Paige Rogers is a 19-year-old student at the Southern Baptist Convention-affiliated Boyce College in Louisville, Kentucky, where I'm sure she's getting a fantastic education free of any mention of evolution or internet piracy, whatever the fuck they're afraid of this week. Page also worked at Hein Brothers Coffee, a local coffee chain.

But then, last October, she got talking to her coworkers about Jesus. According to Paige, she was asked where she went to college. And when she mentioned she went to Hogwarts for Bigots, her coworkers were curious about her beliefs. When one of them expressed a passing interest in the Bible, I don't believe her, Paige had this to say, quote, I shared my own testimony with her. I shared how God saved me and changed my life.

And that it is God who changes your heart when you become saved. Okay, zero percent chance those were the words. And nobody has a passing interest in the Bible. Nobody's like, oh, what's the book called? I'm going to put that. I'm going to put that on my reading list. The Biblie? Cool.

Is it on audible? Let me check if it's on audible. But even if we accept your obviously bullshit account, you're the worst and everybody wanted you fired. You're fucking page. That's your name in every conversation about you at work. Like if I was bartending and I said to a coworker, hey, can I give you some of my testimony right now?

They should throw a martini in my face that they're making right now and we're both fired. Yeah. Now, to be fair, exactly, Heath, I want to be clear that it was that co-worker's responsibility, their civic duty, to say, okay, and then never speak to Paige again. That's on them. That's on them. But Pobody's Nerfect. So then another coworker asked Paige if her religion meant that she had to break up her queer polycule, to which Paige said, yes, homosexuality is a sin. There it is.

Now, Hemet points out that we don't know how Paige mentioned that homosexuality is a sin. Maybe she was like, yeah, being gay is a sin, but who doesn't love a little sin now and that? You know what I'm saying? Upta! Probably not, though, right? People tend to remember an up top. They tend to repeat when you said up top. Whatever she said, it made that coworker uncomfortable enough to report her and then she was fired.

Okay. I'm good if she gets fired. for the up top. Like, go to your job. Nothing up top. Go fucking make a latte. Do a spot sweep. Oh, we are in a fight.

And up top is a central part of a workplace. How dare you? Now, as you can imagine, Paige has been doing the Christian persecution tour ever since. She went to the right-wing legal nut jobs, the First Liberty Institute, which filed a former complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and granted an exclusive story to Fox News about the case.

Page then wrote, an opinion piece for Fox News that just reads in part, quote, I was fired for responding to a question from a coworker. I was fired for my faith, end quote. Okay, clearly nonsense. But Hein Brothers, if you can't afford to fight this bullshit, which is the whole point, please hire Page Back and just do that thing

where everyone hates her and her job is the worst. And make a YouTube channel of everyone hates fucking page, Like, set it up. There you go. Let the internet know when she's going to be working the counter, right? Make her wear a name tag that says that homophobe from Fox News. I like it. Yeah.

We're proud, Pange. Yeah. I hate that employers can do that. But this time, definitely do that. This time, yeah. And look, I think even well-intentioned allies tend to get duped by this kind of story. So let me remind you that if your religious belief gets you fired for bigotry, that's the fault of your belief

not the fireer and the answer is for you to have less illegally bigoted belief not for your bigotry to become illegal it's confusing I know but that's that's that's the pattern

and finally tonight in ring tail between your legs news RFK Jr continues to be the most tragically interesting man in the world. He's in a sketch about the Dosecchi's guy written by Darren Aronovsky.

Every new thing we learn about him is another escalation in this insane series of it seems to be bits. First, it was the anti-vaxxer and so-called health guy having a literal worm surgically removed from his brain. Then it was the time he was doing some falconry like you do. and while very clearly drunk driving on his way home from falconry, possibly through the woods instead of on the highway without knowing it, he plowed into a bear, tried to skin the carcass, botched it,

through the dead bear in his trunk, drove to a steakhouse, like a really fancy steakhouse, ate a steak dinner, paid the check, just like normal, and then he went to Central Park in New York City and dropped the bear carcass in a bike lane as a playful frame job prank thing. Fun. And then we learned about the time he found a dead whale and chopped its head off with a chainsaw. Yeah. Kind of felt like that was the three beat.

You were set. You had it. But no, Bobby said, hold my whale chainsaw. And we learned last week that he sliced off a raccoon's penis with. a knife during a family road trip. Yeah, honestly, if anything, this time of him being head of health and human services has taught us that the Kennedys are amazing at covering up their crazy shit. Right.

He's blown their cover, but think about it. Absolutely. So, okay, guys, in Act 3, he's clearly going to pull back a curtain and we're all going to get attacked by some Frankensteinian monstrosity with a whale head, bear skin, and a raccoon penis and whatever other morbid souvenirs we don't know about yet. And as much as is possible, I need everybody to plan accordingly. I don't know what the fuck that would mean, but plan accordingly. Yeah, seems high probability.

Getting its guard. Got to get in its guard. And a big thanks to Christian and Sam for sending us link to Skating News at gmail.com. Christiane and Sam get dibs on the next two animal parts that Eli acquires on the side of the road after a very sober driving incident. That is also tragic. So we'll get into the details of the raccoon penis, but I want to edge it. I want to edge it.

So pin in that for a minute. We'll get there. Oh, okay. So when Heath wants to edge a raccoon penis on air, it's fine. I will say that when he told me to put a pin in it, it did make me wins a little bit. That's fair. Okay. First, a couple other nudist items on RFK Jr., who I'll remind you is the Secretary of

health and human services for these United States of America. Why do you have to fucking remind me of that, dude? That's so mean. It's a real thing. It's how no wakes up every morning. He's standing over his stand. Hey, buddy. Bad news.

It's still true. Still the secretary for hell. Yeah. Right. So he testified at a congressional hearing last week, during which he tried to justify the proposed cut of 12% to his department's budget. Just intuitively, that's going to make America about 12. percent less healthy again.

One might think, yeah. Although taking money away from him might go the other direction. He didn't think of that argument. That would have been kind of a good one. Either way, Arfke Jr. is pretty sure we're doing great. He got asked about measles outbreaks, which are weird given the fact that we effectively eradicated that disease from the entire country about 25 years ago. He responded by pointing out that measles outbreaks are happening all over the world right now,

not just here. Okay, but if AIDS was on the rise in America, I don't think anybody would accept, just look at sub-Saharan Africa as a rebuttal. Yeah. Also, he didn't add to that defense. I actually caused a few of those measles outbreaks. Like, there is a huge one in Samoa in 2019.

That was me. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah, infected, I think, 3% of the country's entire population killed 83 people. Yeah, that was him. That was him.

And he also caused pretty much all. the outbreaks here in the U.S. too with a decades-long anti-vaxxer scare campaign. But here's the rest of that answer from Bobby. He said, quote, we've done better under my leadership than any country in the world in limiting it, end quote. Have we? Also stupid. Here's the real answer. Measles is highly contagious, so the vaccine rate needs to be about 95% or more to maintain herd immunity. It was that high for a long time, But thanks to RFK Jr. and his propaganda squad, it's down to about 92% here in the United States. Yeah, no, sadly, we're no longer able to keep up with countries like Rwanda and Turkmenistan.

Yeah. That both have over 99% vaccination rates. Yeah. And that brings me to a new podcast I want to tell you about. That's exciting, right? Ooh. And if you're a big fan of the RFK Jr. podcast, it's time to get excited. And we know you are.

Bobby's got a new show. We know you are. Get excited. It's the same show. It's the same. But he has a fancy job title now, and we wanted to put that in a show title. The new podcast is called The Secretary Kennedy Show. And, of course, I was agog when I heard about it.

First episode just got released, so I checked it out. It starts, it's weird. It starts with somebody making French press coffee out of, I think, sand and then dumping it into a garbage disposal? Or maybe Kennedy was talking at the beginning. I know, it's hard to say. Tough to tell. There was something in the intro about making health care affordable.

That's not what he's doing. And then for the body of his very first episode, we got an interview with a celebrity chef. Topical. It's the former executive chef at Trump's Taj Mahal, in Atlantic City. Oh. And of course,

being in charge of feeding casino goers in New Jersey is exactly the experience you need to understand healthy nutrition. Apparently, the answer to healthy nutrition

is whole foods, just like all the nourishing fruits and vegetables that I'm sure he was serving at the Taj Mahal Casino in New Jersey. They're on the buffet. People skip them

because they're right next to the plates and they don't want to fill up. You know, when people go to the buffet, they load up on the kale. Yeah, that's what he was doing. Side note, RFK Jr.'s boss and Faustian bargain counterpart, Donald Trump, just proposed a large cut for the nutrition program that helps women, infants, and children, called Wick.

Sure did. Specifically, a large cut in the assistance for buying whole fruits and vegetables. Huh. Okay. But the two-for-one filial fish coupon. that are going to come with that could be more than enough to make up for it. As long as it's a whole filial fish.

That's true. You've got to get that. It's a lot of buns. A lot of, you really got to line them up. Okay. Raccoon penis. Yes, he's. Here we go. This is a real thing in our lives now. I love that you're using my nickname on air now.

Our top public health official was driving with his kids. He saw a dead raccoon or maybe caused one and then saw one. He pulled over, got out with his animal genitals pairing knife, the dedicated knife that he has. And he cut off the penis of a raccoon so he could study it later. We learned about that, thanks to a new book called RFK Jr.,

The Fall and Rise by Isabel Vincent. And during the research, Vincent read through some private journals that Bobby was keeping between 1999 and 2001. In one entry, it said, quote, I was standing in front of my parked car on I-684, cutting the penis out of a road killed raccoon. Sorry, that's a sentence you wrote about your life. Yeah.

It's not even done, though. He is doing that. He continues thinking about how weird some of my family members have turned out to be. My kids waited patient. in the car, end quote. Yeah, my family is weird. Why, they just leave a perfectly good raccoon penis sitting in the road. I'd wager a raccoon penis.

Because I'd have one der ranger unlike them. Okay, listen, I know that Heath has a tendency sometimes to make up pretend quotes in his story. So I have to emphasize here that those are the actual real words in the actual order that he presented them to himself. they are. Motherfucker was cutting the penis off a road killed thinking, those people are weird. I also looked up the real quote. He's not a sketch. I looked right when I saw that,

I was like, oh, that's a joke that he's doing a fake quote. You got to do the real one and then doing that. But nope, that's real. I'll say a proximate quote when I'm fucking with it. When I say quote, that was a real quote. He's one of the best arguments for we're in a simulation. Truly, he really is one of the best.

arguments. Yep. Okay. We're in a simulation and they're leaning on the machine. And so you don't want to get a drink after work or so, oh, fuck, I made RFK Jr. The head of Health and Human Services. Ah. They're going to wake up. So I was thinking about this news coming out recently and I was thinking about the real victim here. Well, other than the whale and the bear and the record. and that worm who has, I'm sure, PTSD and it's got to be exhausting. Yeah. And, well, the very concept of public health, that's a victim.

Well, there's that, yeah. The other victim, Kennedy's PR guy. That guy, it's a fucking raise. At some point last week, they're having a meeting trying to figure out how to spin the latest lie about vaccines during a congressional hearing. And the publicist guy was like, hold on, sorry, I just got text. New York Post RFK Jr.

Chopped off a dead raccoon's penis. Oh, come on, man. Are you serious? I said, list all your crazy dismemberments. You never said this. Jesus Christ, that guy needs a raise. So now we're playing clue. Bobby's real life is a game of clue.

And the question is, what's the next animal and dismembered body part and weapon that we hear about. I'm saying I'm going with Peacock, because Mrs. Peacock, peacock, plumage, and the Noon Chaku? I don't know.

Oh, really? That's a good one. If I get this right, I'm going to win huge on Polly Market. That's all I'm saying. Fox, tooth, bat full of nails. That's mine. That's mine. And having armed you with yet another clue about what the worm driving him's master plan might be.

We're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks, as always. Too, Manji. And when we come back, we'll tell Heath once again that he can't do the U.S. beaten rush at hockey in the 1980s Olympics for the miracle segment. The miracle? One of the most potent arguments in the atheist quiver in my mind is why the hell God never does anything.

But religious people will counter this one with dubious claims of miracles, none of which ever manages to withstand a thorough debunking or a cursory debunking. or a cursory debunking, as we'll demonstrate with another segment of The Devil's Advocates. So what beacon of hope are we going to be snuffing out today, Heath? Today, we're going to be talking about the shroud of Turin. Ooh, I'm so excited.

Okay, so why did you pick the shroud of Turin? Well, because last week we reviewed a movie called Beauty and the Atheist by Donald James Parker, okay, Gramps. it revisits a debate about evolution that he lost very badly to an atheist YouTuber. And he's been seething with rage ever since. So he sticks in all the gotchas that he didn't remember to bring up. And among the powerful pieces of evidence, he forgot in a debate where the proposition was evolution by natural selection is a scam. One of those pieces of evidence was the shroud of Turin.

Oh, that does sound like a very biological piece of evidence. Indeed, it was. And I've got to be honest, I kind of forgot that Christians keep pretending the Shroud of Turin is real after just so many public in debunkings, but they do. So I thought we'd take a minute to talk about it. And there can never be enough debunkings, Heathleton, of anything. No, nope, there certainly can't. Crazy that we actually haven't tackled this topic before. Okay, so what is the Shrout of Turin?

Well, it's a fake blankie that dumb people think Jesus irradiated when he came back to life and that drew a vague shape of himself in the blankie. Okay, well, it sounds silly when you describe it like that. Okay, it does. I challenge you to describe it in a way that doesn't sound incredibly silly. Well, I didn't say there was one. I just said it sounded silly. Yeah, that's because it very much is.

Okay, so but what is it physically? It's a rectangular piece of linen on which a medieval forger painted a very sloppy silhouette of Jesus Christ covering up his junk with red ochre. Then he added some blood-colored pigment to all the stigmata places. We don't know exactly when it was forged, but it shows up in the historical record around 1354, so probably around 1353, give or take. Okay. So, and how sure are we that it is fake?

How sure are we that the The linen with a photo negative Of a somehow completely flat savior That was blasted into place When God zapped him back to life With his God lightning Is fake? Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

We're pretty sure. Okay. Okay, the concept of the segment Is that we ask you questions, Heath, Don't be sad. All right? Don't be meta. Nobody likes this.

This is off-putting when you get meta. I like it. I think it's great. Will Dashy, stay out of this. You're being too meta. You guys hear that I'll be. doing AI now?

We did hear that. What's up with that? What's up with the AI? I'm not sure my guy. It's a weird fucking year. Yeah, sure is. Okay, so how do we know? About the AI thing?

A bunch of listeners. Yeah, no, they put it on the web. About the shroud of Turin being fake. No, everybody else. Okay. Shroud of Turin. I'll start with the fact that it shows up in the historical record.

record in 1354. Where the fuck was it before that? Sure. I mean, consider the painstaking efforts that have to be undertaken now to keep this thing from turning to dust every time a nap farts near it. And imagine that somehow some monastery was doing that shit for half a century longer than we've known about it, mostly using three-digit year technology the whole time. All right. So when does this thing show up in the records? when someone points out how fake it is. Around 1355, a church in the village of Leret in France started exhibiting this thing and saying it was the burial shroud of Jesus Christ.

And you could tell by the Jesus on it. So the bishop of Liseu pretty much immediately identified it as a hoax, said the clergy faked it to make money, and identified the forger by name. We don't have that name. But we do have a later bishop who had jurisdiction over that church pointing out to the Pope, or the French Pope anyway, that the name of the forger was known. Okay.

Well, that seems like something of a slam dunk. Very much. Yes, it was for rational people. But this thing was making money in 14th century. France wasn't exactly crawling with rational people. As opposed to now when they're crushing it. I don't think Americans can throw stones there. man.

No, they're French. So the higher-ups know what they did. Said the church could continue displaying it as long as they admitted it was just an artistic interpretation. So they slapped a warning on the back that said it was, you know,

clinically tested and wasn't meant to treat or diagnose any condition and they kept raking in the pilgrims. Okay. So how do we go from for entertainment purposes only to Donald James Parker's Lespri de la Scali. I mean, he's pretty sure you just named a French soda.

He won't drink if he's listening to know. I don't listen to, I don't drink gay drinks like that. Yeah, right. Fizzy water, Satan's empty. Big Newton. Okay, so over the next century, the shroud got passed around a bit. It got sold, deeded, sued over, excommunicated over, and eventually wound up in the hands of the Vatican.

And by 1503, the forger had been. dead long enough that Pope Julius II decided to officially declare it real. Huh. That's all it took, huh? Well, he's infallible, Noah, you see? Oh, right, right, right, of course. Sure, but the church did eventually take that back. Oh.

At present, it's no longer recognized as a true relic. Conditionally infallible. Okay, so hold on. So the Catholic Church, which just declared that a dead influencer magically healed some kid's pancreatic cancer based on the fact that that kid didn't have. have pancreatic cancer, has decided that this thing is too bullshit to earn their seal of approval? Despite also owning it. Yes.

Wow. I'm glad this isn't how bullshit is it, segment, or I'd have just stolen your clothes there. Well, even before you could subject the shroud to carbon dating, it was pretty clear it was fake. John Calvin debunked it in a book about relics that he wrote in 1543. by pointing out that Jewish people back then didn't wrap people in a cloth like that. They wrapped up the body in linen up to the shoulders and then put a little doily over the face. So they hadn't even forged the right thing. Oh!

Also, as our guest, Forrest Valcii. Hey, Forrest. What a buddy. Hi, Forrest. We're on YouTube with you now. So as Forrest pointed out, on god-awful movies. It also doesn't match the human form.

The shroud doesn't, the image on it, doesn't match the human form if you imagine it draped over somebody. It's just a two-dimensional painting of what people back then imagined Jesus to look like. The character depicted on it isn't even lying down. His hair is falling down around his shoulders in a way that only makes sense if he was standing up. His arms are also different lengths. They're way too long.

and his forehead is so small that Jesus would have had the cranial capacity of approximately a homo erectus. Also, gravity wouldn't allow his hands to stay over his junk like that unless they pinned him to his dick. And dick pinning isn't really a thing that we know of from history or now much.

It also appears that the artist didn't really do feet. So that didn't know. The Thomas Smith story. Sure. Well, I guess with multiple debunkings dating back centuries that can be confirmed with either a passing familiarity with the roots of Christianity or just fucking looking at it, I guess no informed person ever took it seriously again, huh? So, syndenology is the bullshit term they came up with for the formal study of the shroud in the 1950s. Okay. Okay.

Because I'm guessing that by now and even by the 50s, we have like a lot more new ways to prove that it's bullshit. Well, the shrouds owners who weren't actually the Vatican until 1983 were not in a hurry to invite scientists to examine their prized possession. Sure. Which they had ever reason to believe was fake. But by the late 1960s, it was getting way too obvious that continuing to keep scientists at bay was just admitting it was bullshit. So in 1978, they finally let real scientists examine it. Okay. And what did those real scientists find?

That it was fake in every way. First, they tested it for pigments to see if the images were painted on. They were. Next, they checked to see if the stigmata stains were actually blood. They were not. They were just different pigment. Pigments that were coincidentally in common use in 14th century France. Huh.

And the team that was doing this work was, as you might expect, really hoping to prove it was authentic. They did so much dithering about their conclusions that one of the real scientists on the team resigned from that team and spent the rest of his life publishing refutations that show just how full of shit the team really was. Okay, so we're like truly independent scientists that were able to get a hold of that? it's never been subjected to a truly rigorous independent test by a team of unbiased scientists. But certain bits have been subjected to certain real tests here and there. For example, in 1988, bits of shroud were subjected to radiocarbon dating at the University of Oxford, the University of Arizona, and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Man, it's so sad that all those real science places had to stop looking for.

for, I don't know, fucking the cure for cancer that day so they could answer a question that was already answered the first time someone pointed out that that isn't what hair does when you lie down. Right. Indeed, giant waste of time. But sad as it was, all three groups found with 95% confidence that the linen used on the cloth dated to some time between 1260 and 1390. And that just happens to be exactly. when this thing shows up in the historical record.

What an incredible coincidence. So weird. Now wait, question. Does radio carbon dating have a margin of error of a thousand years? Nope. The margin of error is written into the bit there, man. No, fuck. Also worth noting, after a fire in 1997,

the backing was removed and people were able to see the back of the shroud for first time. And it turns out the image had bled through, but only a little, which seems weird if it was created by a flash of god lightning that penetrated through the crypt, but couldn't quite make it all the way through the third of a millimeter of linen there. Right? Yeah. Okay, so with all the evidence of science and logic against them, I'm sure that religious people, dug in their fucking heels and just said, no-uh, didn't that? Exactly what happened.

Yeah. They discount the carbon dating because the parts that were tested could have just been repaired at exactly the time the shroud would have been forged if it was forged. Or they say,

because there was a fire near the shroud in the 1500s, the carbon monoxide from that fire would be fucking up the tests of radiocarbon dating. or the samples were all contaminated before they made it to those testing labs. And have those various claims been looked into?

Looked into and completely debunked, yeah. Side note, I feel like if radiocarbon dating was thrown off by was there a fire near this thing ever, it wouldn't be a particularly useful scientific tool, right? Yeah, great point. Wouldn't be my go-to. Okay, and so, and they reject those debunkings, assume? Of course they do. Yeah. And then they point out the fact that nobody has perfectly

recreated the shroud on both the macroscopic and microscopic scale because why the fuck would anybody do that? Right. Yeah. And that's enough of an argument for a motivated thinker to say the jury is always going to be out on this one. Woof. Okay. So easily provable nonsense. Yeah. And that's a shame because a legitimate 800-year-old forgery is actually pretty cool if they were willing to admit that's what it is. Instead, it's ammunition for Donald James Parker's shower fight with Forest Falci, which is a decidedly lower station and quite tragic. Couldn't agree more. All right, well, thanks a ton and sorry religion. It looks like you're still down zero to however many of these we've done.

But I'm sure if we keep examining the miraculous, we'll come across the miracle that isn't democracy. possible bullshit eventually. Perhaps on the next installment of the devil's advocates. No way, there's no winnings, no debunking, stop. Before we declare a unilateral ceasefire until next week, I want to remind you that I'm going to be doing a live show with Seth Andrews on July 11th in Cincinnati at 2 p.m. Tickets are on sale now and we do expect the show to sell out. So get yours quick. You're going to find a link in the show notes. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,000, 22 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on look out for a brand new episode of our sister-so's hot friend Godd Offa Movies debuting at 7am Eastern on Tuesday and an even new episode. And an even new episode of our half-situr-sitian day, being at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, the show wouldn't earn its episode number. If I neglected to thank Heath Enright for always digging down and Eli Bosnick for always digging in. I want to thank the lovely and talented Lucindilusions, who's still busy seething over that rape academy story, but should be back next week. I also want to thank Kyle for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, always happy to help thwart a heath bet or whatever that was that I was doing. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most delightful diploids,

Cindy, Scott, Stephen, Denton, Harry, me, Lucius, and Jay Meteor. Cindy, and Stephen, who are so hot, hell doesn't scare them. Denton, Harry, and Me, who are so cool, hell doesn't scare them. And Lucius and Jay Meteor, who are so atheist, hell doesn't scare them, because it's fucking... It's pretend. Together, these eight amiable atheists aided our aims to alienate the Abrahamic anus. Sorry, I've used that exact same thing a couple of times before,

but it works so great when it's eight people. Anyway, together they all gave us money. You can do that too at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you're on 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 scathingadet.com. And if you'd like to help, but the price of literally everything is fucking insane right now, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-short review, telling a friend about the show and following us on social media. And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also enrolled the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

If you have questions, comments or death threats to find all the contact info on the contact page at scalingadias.com. If I met a five-year-old whose name was Bunny Pounds, I would fistfight their dad. But other than that, right, you're not doing anything. Yeah, no, you're not going to do the bit. Yeah. But when you meet a 15-year-old named Bunny Pounds, at some point, someone in that child's life has to go, hey, you know your name is, comes but McGee, right? You've got a middle name, right?

Can we call you by your middle name? Do you go by anything? What's your, what's the nickname here? What do we, what's your call sign, Big Dog? This content is scanned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm to their hotline at 617-249-4-255 or on their website at creator accountability network.org. This podcast is a production of Puzzle and a Thunderstorm LLC and was created without the use of generative AI. Its contents may not be used for AI training. Copyright 2026. All rights reserved.