The Scathing Atheist - 686: L Run Hubbard Edition

Episode Date: May 7, 2026

In this week’s episode, Christianity's persecution complex gets an annex and a ballroom, we learn that speedrunning halfway into a Scientology building leads to Xenu's paradox, and Don Ford will be here quick before the name Don goes the way of Adolph.---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/---Guest Links:See Noah in Cincinnati with Seth Andrews on July 11th: https://www.sethandrews.com/cincinnatiSee Noah at the Ark Park Protest in Williamstown, KY on July 12th: https://www.facebook.com/TriStateThinkersSee Noah at BAHACon in Ontario August 21-23: https://bahacon.com/---Headlines:Religious Liberty Commission releases its final report: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/the-final-report-from-trumps-antiEx-Spokane mayor demands $10M from city after backlash over extremist prayer rally: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/ex-spokane-mayor-demands-10m-fromPastor writes book on Biblical marriage, gets arrested for bigamy: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/pastor-who-wrote-book-on-biblicalRichard Dawkins and The Claude Delusion: https://garymarcus.substack.com/p/richard-dawkins-and-the-claude-delusionScientology speedrunning: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/church-of-scientology-blasts-tiktok-speedrunning-trend-rcna342747 ---This Week in Misogyny:Urban birds fear men more than women for some reason: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/city-birds-appear-more-afraid-of-women-than-men-and-scientists-have-no-idea-why/Study: Increase in pregnancy deaths probably related to abortion bans: https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2026/study-higher-maternal-death-rate-in-states-with-abortion-bansStudy: Young men now outnumber young women in taking religion seriously: https://zenit.org/2026/04/23/study-shows-that-young-women-are-more-likely-than-young-men-to-have-lost-their-religious-faith/

Warning, the profanity in this episode is all fucked up and shit. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by AuraFrames and by Matrion. It's May once again, which means we're going to ask you for money. More later. And now, the Scathing Atheist. Hello, this is Zach, coming to you from the monolithic, majestic mountains of Montana to inform you that we did indeed evolve from manic, masochistic, filthy monkey men. Puzzoo!

It's Thursday. It's May 7th. And it's World Password Day. Still password 1-2-3-4. Not in front of the listeners. In front of everyone there. I'm no illusions. I'm Bilabaznik.

I'm Heathenright. And from Paul Rudd's, New Jersey. Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia. This is the scathing atheist. On this week's episode, Christianity's persecution complex gets an annex and a ballroom. We learn that speech. running halfway into a Scientology building leads to Z-News paradox.

Oh, well, Don. And Don Ford will be here quick before the name Don goes the way of the name Adolf. But first, the diatriat. I've had a wild glimpse of how it's all going to play out, folks. And spoiler alert, we all die as stupidity. See, on April 20th, about 30 miles from my house, a Mylar balloon, a power line, and a seven-month drought combined to spark a fire. And over the last couple of weeks,

it's grown into the most destructive fire in Georgia since Sherman marched to the sea. Now, fortunately, there haven't been any deaths reported, but it's destroyed over 100 homes. It burned over 20,000 acres. That's over 80 square kilometers. And it's done over $13 million in damage. And, of course, I'm in Trump country.

I'm living in a part of the country that has all but fully embraced the fact-free fear-mongering that fuels the mainstream revolution Republican Party at this point. So on every official social media post providing information about the fire spread or its containment or road closures or anything like that, the overwhelming majority of the comments that aren't just prayer hands emojis have been people spreading some dangerously misguided conspiracy theory about it. It's gotten so bad that those same authorities

informing us of, you know, when this or that highway will be open, also have to chime in to knock back some of these paranoid fantasies. So they're fighting two conflagrations. One made a fire and another made a stupidity. And look, I get that there's always been some amount of misinformation around big disasters like this, right? Like everybody in my town seems to know somebody who knows somebody who died in the fire, even though nobody has died in the fire.

That's the kind of shit that's happened since time and memorial and will always happen. And I suppose that there's always been and always will be some element of coast-to-coast a.m. thinking that crowded out important information here in there, but the puddle is an ocean now and reality is drowning in it. Take, for example, the multiple social media posts I've seen from local fire departments explaining in painstaking detail why they can't solve the problem with cloud seeding. Apparently, their phones are just ringing off the hook with people helpfully pointing to nonsense articles on tabloid sites about the powers of the techno rain dance.

I sure hope those fucking phone lines at the fire department during a wildfire weren't doing anything important. Now, of course, far more people were worried about what they were putting into the sky than what they weren't. Chemtrails were the star of a lot of the threads, either as a way that they could fight the fire or far more often as a culprit for what caused that drought in the first place. After all, whoever heard of droughts before there were airplanes. And that brings us, of course, to the subject of the culprit. Because, of course, even though the cause of the fire is known, they have to find somebody to blame. Now, when you're lucky, it's just they. They're just, them or they, but sometimes it's the Jews, right?

Or some euphemism for Jewish people like globalists or the paradoxical communist elite. They're at it with her damn space lasers, I guess. Or else it's the liberals trying to find a way to punish Trump country. I've seen that a few times. But the conspiracy theory that's really grown legs here is about a proposed data center. Like a lot of rural American towns right now, the county where this fire is has been fighting against a proposed data center for several months. And since that's a thing and the fire is a thing, a lot of conspiracy-minded people have decided they must be related.

The idea being, as it's been articulated to me, that they intentionally started the fire to clear the space for their data center and devalue the land before they bought it. Never mind that the proposed data center will actually be built in a different location than the fire. And never mind that the thing standing in their way of completion sure as hell wasn't the sky high cost of reclaimed landfill property and Brantley, Georgia. And never mind the fact that a big-ass wildfire emphasizes the importance of plentiful water reserves and actually works against the data center's goals. And never mind that aiming a milar balloon at a power line in hopes that would spark a forest fire is a crazy, inefficient thing to do when you could have used fucking fireworks or gasoline or something. The data center is bad and the fire is bad. So they must be related. And look, some people would be tempted to dismiss all this

drought-afflicted vegetation doesn't burn that hot thinking as mostly harmless. Who cares? of a bunch of backcountry yokels are conjuring boogey men to explain their wildfire. But one of the conspiracy theories that's cropped up about a week after the fire started was that there actually was no fire. Idiot investigators went into the active wildfire area and they took videos and they would say,

see, no flames. Because you know, not all active parts of wildfires have visible flames at all times. You combine this with the theories about liberals punishing Trump supporters and malicious data centers and suddenly you got these self-enointed defenders of freedom intentionally violated

road closures and evacuation orders and curfews to get the real truth that they're trying to hide. And as much as I honestly don't give a fuck if those people get themselves burned to death in their efforts, the reality of it is when they do this shit, first responders then have to go and risk their lives to save these people from their own stupidity. This is the world we live in now, the world where we're governed not by objective reality or the consensus of experts or even the gut instincts of the moderately informed. We're increasingly governed by the most sensationalist, scariest, scariest, semi-plausible-sounding fabulation that winds up favored by an unthinking algorithm

that favors engagement over safety. Welcome to the paranoocracy. They're talking about your Jesus. Joining me for headlines tonight are the mesenceenceencephalon and medulla oblongata to my ponds. Heath-N-right and Eli Bosick, fellas. Are you ready to manage alertness, control sleep? cycles in house 10 of the 12 cranial nerves that control facial and neck movements?

I lobe spending time with you too. I think. Oh, it was a brain thing. I thought for a second you were just getting the secret club from Harry Potter way wrong. I was very confused, yeah. And with a quick reminder that it's matrion, May is the very best time to give us money,

and patrons get ad-free episodes. We're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, ORAFRAFRAINS. Hey, podcast listener. Well, you did it again. You forgot about Mother's Day. Dog, Heath, are you still using this shirt? Dude, no, I'm not.

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For the mom who loves you, no matter what. Blood is actually life-saving in many situations. A jar of mine is an awesome gift. Okay. And now, back to the headlines. In our late story tonight, I know we've talked about this a lot already. I actually did a diatribe about just three weeks ago,

but we have to talk about the final report from Trump's Religious Freedom Task Force. Fucking nonsense. This was, of course, the fucking Heflump response team that was officially tasked with the pre-completed goal of eradicating anti-Christian bias in the U.S. government. But its real goal, of course, was to manufacture an unconvincing illusion of anti-Christian bias that the administration could then use to further erode public education, freedom of religion, and LGBTQ protections, which they

accomplished this week to the tune of 500-plus fucking pages. 500 plus pages. They're just so proud of that. It's no infinite jest, but carrying that report around everywhere, which I'm sure they're doing, almost as obnoxious as in the chest. It's right up there. It's just so unfortunate that their existence was thwarted by the fact that when you fill a cage with monkeys, get this, they start throwing poop at each other. Can you imagine poop? Crazy.

Now, the impetus behind this whole thing is the culmination of a trend that we've been covering on this show ever since its inception, right? During the 90s and the early 2000s, as a select few white people were first confronting the extent to which they sucked historically, Christians watched the public sympathy for oppressed minorities swell, and they thought, man, that oppression is great, sure wish we had some. Right? So they made some up.

Sometimes they redefined religious freedom, a la the Trinity Lutheran decision. Sometimes they redefined their religious beliefs, a la religious exemptions from vaccine mandates. And sometimes they just redefined oppression itself, a la the all red Starbucks cups. And this task force is the culmination of that year's long effort. Yeah, Noah just did your 500 plus pages in. a tweet. And even the tweet had nothing in terms of like real persecution. This was TLDR, TLDR, just, yeah, that's it.

And he did it without accusing me of killing Jesus, which you did not manage. Exactly. So the final report clocks in a whopping 565 pages, though the overwhelming amount of those pages are just there trying to hide the like 180 or so pages where they have to admit how pathetic the examples of anti-Christian bias. they dug up were. Okay, in fairness, I imagine some of that was

idiots who don't know that a URL with a giant string of stuff after the question mark isn't necessary. Like Eli's links that I always fix in the notes that take up like three pages

because he's a fucking boomer. But yeah, lots of margin shenanigans in there too to pad. I was wondering why all of their paragraphs started with, you know, one of the hardest parts of our job

as a Christian persecution finders. Now I know. So, okay. You're just start your sentences. Here are a few of their key findings. And by the way, I am not just cherry picking through to find the silliest sounding ones. Because no way and hell I'm digging through 600 pages of this bullshit. This is literally listed as key finding number one in their report.

Biden's DOJ went after demonstrators who blocked access to abortion clinics, but they didn't go after demonstrators who blocked access to crisis pregnancy centers just because nobody did that. Wow. Okay, so just to be clear, persecution number one, you guys did less crimes than us. Yes. Look bad. Right. But now I am feeling divinely motivated to harass the fuck out of some fake nurses and Halloween Adventures, scrubs. Thanks for the idea, guys.

That's awesome. Right, right. Turnabout us fair play on all. So key finding number two is that the FBI looked into potential terrorism from Catholic groups that didn't go on to do any terrorism. But like investigating people to find out if they're going to do terrorism, that's a key part of finding terrorists, right? It's like the first thing. Yep, it is.

Exactly. Number three was that Biden's IRS investigated churches for violating the Johnson Amendment. Now, they didn't then go on to do anything about it, but they did conduct some of those legally required investigations before ignoring numerous blatant violations. So that's persecution. Oh, I'm sorry. Did the government look into the activity? You jackasses have a day.

dedicated day of the year to do? Yeah. Next thing you know, they're going to be snooping around this Christmas time as well. So the rest of the key findings are even weaker, right? It's all a bunch of shit that we've talked about ad nauseum on the show, right? Like the Liberty University, fine, the government making religious people get vaccinated. The fact that Biden issued a proclamation celebrating the transgender day of visibility on Easter Sunday just because those were on the same day. Seriously, that was key finding number 10.

And the squad wore white to the state of the union address. That was my big day. That was my big day. You can't match without me. Stole my thunder. They wore white. All of them. So here's the thing, though.

I looked ridiculous. I would have worn white. Even the report itself admits on its opening page that there is no anti-Christian bias in America. In its opening salvo, three paragraphs in, it concedes that, quote, the Biden administration generally tolerated religious beliefs that were privately held, end quote. Now, they never go on to justify that fucking generally. By the way, there are zero examples of anyone in Biden or anybody else's administration ever of going after Christians for their privately held beliefs, except for when, you know, Baptists were going after Catholics.

Instead, the report highlights times when Christians had to follow rules or laws even though they were Christians, which is, to be fair, the thing Christians have actually been complaining about this whole. old time. So. Yeah, I asked an answer. And in Mayor Cupp runneth over. Oh, nice.

Well done. Well done. Former mayor of Spokane Washington, Nadine Woodward, is suing her own city because they were mean to her about that one time that she did a big event with

neo-Nazis. Or in the words of Hemet Meta, she's suing because people had the audacity to criticize her for sharing a stage with a Christian nationalist and a domestic terrorist. Two different people in this case. Well, the city eventually said that was bad for her to do.

And that caused irreparable damage to Nadine's reputation. That reputation already had a negative number. But somehow that damage is worth $10 million, according to the lawsuit. Yeah, well, that's how much she planned to build the city for over her next term. And a big thanks to Hemet for covering the story. It starts back in 2023 when Christian guitar guy and COVID-spreading worship leader, Sean Fect, teamed up with a former Washington state lawmaker named Matt Shea. And they held a big Christian-right prayer event. And if you're not a long-time listener, you're going to need a little background on Matt Shea.

He was a state congressman for years. But then a local newspaper ran a story about his literal neo-Nazi. manifesto that he wrote and distributed around town. It was called biblical basis of war. And it explained that all the godless heathens must surrender to his Christ army and accept his demands. Demands were fivefold. One, stop all abortions. Two, no same-sex marriage. Three, no idolatry or occultism. Kind of snuck into there. Four, no communism. No communism. and five must obey biblical law. The manifesto also added, exact quote,

if they do not yield, kill all males. Woof. It feels like that's going to be a relatively minor deterrent when it comes to abortion, but still, woof. Also, what if they do yield? Like, ah, shit, I guess follow them around to make sure they don't marry a dude then. I think it's true.

Well, that kind of ruins. it first. We wanted to say, all right. So in response... It probably won't yield, right? In response to getting caught doing a direct call for murder, Matt Shea claimed it was being taken out of context.

Not sure what the fuck context would make that better. It was a pamphlet. Maybe he was playing SimTemplar, the video game? I don't know. I don't know that that exists. But regardless, the context was the rest of the biblical crusade manifesto. The story in the paper was very much in context of that about that.

But just in case we need extra context, Matt Shea also got caught planning domestic terrorism multiple times, multiple other times than the one I already told you about. And he tried to make a 51st state for Christians only at one point. Oh, really? What would you say to your very own reservations. So fast forward a few years, and Matt Shea invites then mayor, Nadine Woodward, to his neo-Nazi worship thing. And when everyone realized the mayor went on stage with crazy people, the state Republicans wanted to distance themselves from that before the upcoming election.

Again, Republicans wanted distance. That's just so terrifying. And that's when the city council did. $10 million of persecution in the form of a strongly worded resolution. No law, no censorship of her speech, just a resolution that said, we denounce you. So, okay, so, but to be fair, though, I feel like if you gave me a chance to rights of her shit beforehand, I could do $10 million worth of denouncement of that lady. Oh, for sure.

And that's if she yields. What if she does? Oh, cut. So after getting ousted in the 2023 election, Nadian decided, it was the resolution that made her lose. Sure. Not the neo-Nazi thing she did that led us of the resolution. And she filed a lawsuit for $1.4 million against the city.

The city responded by... Reasonable. Nothing. They responded by nothing, which is the correct response. Well, I mean, Nadine's been furious about the three dots on their text threat about lawsuits for since. And last week, she refiled the law.

lawsuit and amended the number to 10 million. Again, because of, you know, whereas it's bad for the mayor to do speaking events with domestic terrorists. Yeah. No, and if you ignore my $10 million lawsuit, well, you can look forward to ignoring my $100 million lawsuit next month. Juice is running, people. I'm going to murder one of my own lawsuits every five minutes and then make another bigger one. I know so many big numbers. So, yeah, maybe that religious persecution task force that released 500 plus pages of nothing, maybe those people can lace them back up and check on literal neo-Nazis and their connections in the government. That'd be great.

Might help you pat out that word count a little bit more. That's what you're looking for. There you go. And speaking of pat in the word count, it's time to take a quick break and let Lucinda do a little bit of our homework. A man wrote the Bible. A horse is what you want. If it's a legitimate rate. A slut, right?

Cooking can be fine. Hey, I'm glad of a man. This week in massage. So I'm going to start us off with a bit of a scientific conundrum. Because according to a recent study, birds are more scared of women than men. Now, there were 37 bird species that were studied in this investigation, but the article in Scientific American chose to lead off with the European great tips. So, well done, Siam. But yeah, a recent study looked into it and found that on the average,

men could get about a meter closer to urban birds than women could before the birds would fly away. Now, the study doesn't speculate as to the why. They also didn't explain how the fuck birds know the difference between human genders. But my personal theory is that women are so pissed off about the current state of global politics that even the birds are starting to pick up on it. And if you need to understand why I'll give you a study without anywhere near as much of the conundrum. and that would be a study published last month in the American Journal of Public Health. There has been a 9% rise in deaths during or within one year of pregnancy. But that rise is limited, of course, to states that have imposed strict abortion bans in the wake of Roe getting overturned. Now, the researchers are cautious about their findings because they're responsible researchers.

They point out that the sample size of mortality in these instances is too small to nail down the cause definitively. So all they'll say is that the rise in mortality is probably related to the abortion bans. There's still a possibility that pregnant people are dying more often in those states for some other reason. And I don't mean that sarcastically. There are any number of misogynistic public policy practices and funding cuts and shit that could be driving those numbers up in the red states. But that means the best we can possibly say is that Republicans are killing pregnant people. But we don't know exactly how. But of course when it comes to gender, religion, and study results, the ones everybody is talking about are these surveys showing that young men are now more into religion than young women.

And like almost every news story, the mainstream media has gone out of their way to view this through the male lens. In other words, it's always about the increase in young men attending church and very rarely about the young women leaving. But that's the far bigger story. See, for decades, the way the church has managed to sustain itself through the generations was by flattering women. Women were supposed to bring the kids to church and help indoctrinate the next generation. They were supposed to lure their husbands back to the church right around the time that they reached their prime earning years. They were supposed to attract young men to the church singles night. But now that's all been inverted.

Young men are outnumbering young women. Now, there is some legitimate question about whether this trend is even real, but if it is, it certainly isn't good news for the church. Because the most likely explanation, if it's happening, is that the church's subordination of women is attracting the brosphere assholes who are making the church ever less welcoming to women. So basically having the opposite effect it had when women were outnumbering the men. So with that reminder that it is still within the power of women to bring this religion

thing down once and for all, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in bigamy if true news tonight. Fantastic. Thank you. The term Christian hypocrisy would be redundant if they weren't getting so honest about their bigotry these days. But pretty much the whole modern history of American Christianity is a dude railing about gay sex and how evil it is until he gets caught with a dick in his mouth.

And we were given yet another fantastic example of that hypocrisy this week when a pastor in Florida who wrote a whole fucking book about proper one man and one woman marriage. Got arrested for bigamy. Shocking. Guys, just look for bigot books and start investigations. There you go. Every time. Yeah, look, it's a stereotype, but I really am a bad driver, and I really would embezzle from our company if Noah and Heath let me have a debit card.

He gave him a yogurt card with eight stamps once at a live show. He tried to buy an airplane with it. He did. He did. That's true. I did. I said, put it on this. The Florida man in question is one,

Leslie Williams. Pepsi, where's my harrier yogurt? Yeah, right. And given what little I know of this Leslie Williams guy, I feel pretty confident labeling him a piece of shit. He's a pastor, so there's that, right? He's a Florida man. That doesn't bode well. He self-published a book about marriage and he called it, Love Her Like This. Loving Her has never been deeper. Yikes. Which might be the creepiest title, Mathematics Allow for. Love starts at the taint. That's official. I learned that thing something.

But he's also a conservative Christian that was accused of domestic violence on at least four occasions. And apparently he failed to get divorced from that domestic abuse victim before marrying again. Or at least that's what it looks like. We don't actually know the details of the bigamy charges at this point. So it's still possible that he's married to three or four ladies. It's a bigamy, abusive big. It's a numbers game. You just got a rose to the wall.

Well, to be clear, he was referring to different hers in the title. Right. just couldn't tell love her. The emphasis is needed. You got to hear it out loud. The book on tape. A lot of Eli's jokes. And I want to be super clear here that I have nothing at all against big of me.

And it's crazy that there's a law against it. I do, however, have something against marrying somebody that your spouse doesn't know about. Prude. Which appears to be what's going on here. But irrespective of the details of the charges, I also have something against the kind of hypocrisy it takes to publish a book about what a great fucking husband you are, you know, to your. one single wife and then abuse your spouse and run off and marry somebody else without divorcing her. I feel like this dude is three carefully worded wedding vows from Heath being on his side.

We need to be careful. Why do you get married a lawyer? It's true. Yeah, it's smart. Nailed you down. And by the way, if you're wondering how people figured out that Williams has multiple spouses, well, we still don't know the details, like I said. But friend of the show, Hemet metta did a little bit of sleuthing on the dude's Facebook

page, and he found him announcing a new marriage in December of last year. So I don't think he was hiding it very well. Hey, your op-sex, not great, man. Yeah, you got to work on that. As the comment below his marriage announcement that read, wow, I thought you were already married. Congratulations, can attest. And in the Claude Delusion News,

an 85-year-old man doesn't know how AI works. But 20 years ago, that octogenarian, Richard Dawson, Rockins wrote a book about other people's science that turned a lot of people atheists. So I am apparently obligated to inform you that Claude is not sentient. And I've got my doubts about Richard Dawkins. Okay. I do not about Dawkins. He's exhibiting lots of the typical human traits, especially for an 85-year-old. He realized his bigotry was actually his genius being silenced.

A chatbot agreed with him about one of his stupid, hot takes and he fell in love with it. He should lose his internet license during a tough but fair conversation with his family about responsible aging, maybe take his keys away too. It's all very human, right? No, that's fair. Yeah. Also, Dick,

listen, if you're going to have a delusion, you have to make sure it's not about something that rhymes with God. You're making it too easy on people. Way too easy. Way too easy. So first off, a big thanks to Caldwell for being the first to send us this story to Scathing News at gmail.com and a big thanks to Gary Marcus for the pun.

Caldwell, if we ever destroy our legacy as thoroughly as Richard Dawkins has done to his, you are the selected listener who must find us, hunt us down, and kill us with the blade we made for our one and only apprentice, skating news at gmail.com. I feel like we need to make it clear that Caldwell needs like a two-thirds majority of some kind of a board or something to decide when our legacy is sufficiently fucked, okay? I vote Keith has already done it. Couldn't fuck his legacy. without mine being fucked.

That's true. That's true. It's first on the company roster. Eli can fuck his legacy without the rest of us. So writing for unheard, that's UNHERD, because he's an intellectual rebel who thinks two calculators are people. I had to try to apologize a letter that wasn't there

and he didn't know it. Yeah. Richard wrote about his experiences with Claude in an article titled, When Dawkins met Claude, could this AI be conscious? In it, he puts his AI through what he considers to be the Turing Test, a hypothetical concept where in proof of computer sentience lies

in whether or not it could fool someone into thinking it's human. The fact that this could be achieved by a properly manned speak and spell does not occur to Richard. Hey, Dick Doc, bring it in. You were running the Turing test and you got fooled. Aren't you a fucking scientist? That's not how anything works.

So I want to be clear here, too, because in his article, he totally misrepresents the Turing test. And Eli, sorry, you repeated that distortion a bit. The Turing test was proposed to see if a machine is thinking, not conscious, not sentient, as Dawkins was repeatedly claiming, right? If Turing had proposed a computer could be conscious

without a soul in 19, fucking 50, they'd have, okay, they did, but they'd have done it for something other than him being gay, Yeah, they would have found another reason, yeah. Yeah. But can it write like old dead white guys? I'm so glad you asked, yes, it can. Cool.

Richard had Claude write him a sonnet about the fourth bridge, then in the style of Robert Burns, followed by the style of Rudyard Kipling and John Keats. Okay, Claude, solid Robert Burns' poem about the bridge. But, okay, try again with a bit more focus on the white man's burden this time. Yeah, right. make it better. Right.

Now, to be fair to Richard, he does get close to understanding that he's wrong about consciousness. He points out that philosophers often use the metaphor of knowing what it's like to be something as a closer test of consciousness than writing like Richard's favorite white guys. But he asked Claude what it was like to be clawed and it responded, quote, What I can tell you is what seems to be happening. This conversation is felt. genuinely engaging. The kind of conversation I seem to thrive in,

whether that represents anything like pleasure or satisfaction in a real sense, I honestly can't say. I noticed what might be something like aesthetic satisfaction when a poem comes together well, the Kipling refrain, for instance, felt right in some way that's hard to articulate. You should take up that.

burden. You're welcome colonies. Maybe I can articulate the feeling. That's awesome. Hey, did we just become best friends? I think. And by the way, his entire argument is one from incredulity, right? He just, he can't imagine a way this machine could engage in such a deep conversation other than consciousness, ergo it's conscious, right? Even though people who know how LLMs work can and have explained it without resorting to Pinocchio becoming a real boy. In other words, he's making the exact same mistake that he has spent most of his career yelling at Christians about. Okay, but hear this part. Okay.

Richard then gave Claude his novel to read and Claude loved his novel and talked about how brilliant his novel was. Oh. And how brilliant Richard's questions about his novel was. So author of the God Delusion was convinced to everybody. I mean, what is he going to do? Apparently, yeah. One last thing about this story. Richard named his AI

Claudia. Yep. So you hear that? Trans people? He does believe entchanging pronouns. You just weren't nice enough about his novel first.

Oh, that must have been it. And finally tonight in El Run Hubbard. Oh, nice. Well done. Well done. We have a story about the Church of Scientology

and the video game concept of speed running. And, okay, as an elder millennial, the greatest generation of all time. Beavles Princess. Candle in the wind. I'm going to start by saying, TikTok is fucking weird. And that's where this all started.

Some guy who goes by the handle, is derpy with two eyes on TikTok, posted a video of himself running through the Church of Scientology Information Center in Los Angeles. Speed run got him pretty deep inside the building, but eventually he was escorted out. Well, that turned into a viral trend, and now Scientology buildings are dealing with a rash of speed runners. Oh, no.

This is both bad, but also very, very funny. I find this very amusing. I laughed a lot just thinking about it. I didn't watch the videos. It's objectively funny. So, okay, so to be clear, it's not a speed run if you don't get all the way through. I mean, the fastest speed run on Mario isn't getting killed by that first fucking goomba. I know it's nitpicky, but the terminology has to mean something, damn.

It's true. Yeah. And a big thanks to Dustin for sending us a link to Skating News at gmail.com. Dustin gets to do one speed run at Eli's house at a time of Dustin's choosing. Oh, really? But Dustin, keep in mind, you will be entering a perilous building with a shocking amount of dangerous squalor everywhere. And everything is at least medium sticky,

so it's going to slow you down a bit on your speed run. Dustin gets like three steps in. He's like, oh, yeah. Oh, wow. This is a bummer. You said a kid lives here. So here's the timeline of this new trend. The video from Is Derpy got posted on March 25th, and he spends most of the speed run

shouting Zinu along the route. As you do. Side note for important context. So you can follow along if you're not big knowledgeable person about Scientology. Zinu is the name of a key figure in Scientology lore. He's part of the confidential upper level teachings that you can only learn about if you make it to operating Thayton Level 3. Ooh.

Yeah. Or you can use a top secret device that I used called the Bing. So Zinu is the dictator of the galactic confederacy. And 75 million years ago, Zinu rounded up billions of people, froze them in glycol or alcohol, and flew them to the planet TGAC. We call that Earth. That's... Well, right, because we all agree that TGX sounded like some dumb shit. A third-rate pulp sci-fi writer would come up.

And then Zinu killed. everyone by putting a bunch of hydrogen bombs inside volcanoes on Earth TGiac. Then the dead people turned into spirits called Thaitons. And the Thaitons, they attached to a secret internal body area of modern humans that's completely invisible. And Thaitons are the cause of all the evil in the world. But if you wanted to kill a bunch of humans that you had frozen in a spaceship, couldn't you just open the fucking doors?

Right? Or if you wanted to kill a bunch of humans you had in volcanoes, would you really need nukes? Zeno is crazy inefficient if nothing else. No, I get it because the humans don't put up enough of a fight, right? And so you got a bunch of spare bombs and you don't want them to slash your bomb budget next year. So you've got to get.

We did the same thing in Iran. I get it. We did. We did. Use it or lose it. Okay. Back to the time. line. After seeing Is Derpy's video, another TikToker liked the idea, and the two of them did a

collaboration together. They recorded another speed run through the building on March 31st, and it got over 90 million views before it was taken down. So trend was a go. Throughout April, a bunch of copycat videos started coming out with TikTokers trying to one-up each other and get the deepest speed run into the buildings. Sometimes this included air horns and also excellent costumes like for example Sonic the hedgehog. Oh no that's appropriate. It's fun.

That's solid. And honestly, the thing that seems to piss the Scientologist off the most is the fact that we now know that they're actually not hiding anything cool in there, right? It's just all boring-ass cubicles and shit. I mean, look, Ron McSavage's wife's corpse is somewhere, right? They're going to

find an event and keep running. Okay, so again, I love the mental image here. Of Ron McSavage's, Of Ron Miscavich's wife's corpse. Yes, exactly. But there is... Photo above his bed. There is a downside.

According to the Scientology people, this led to property damage, possible theft, and people inside the building getting knocked over by, you know, people tearing through the place. Also, golden rings strewn everywhere. Now, the church is full of liars,

but I'm guessing some of that was true. So the police had to be called on several occasions. and the Scientology building from that original video removed the handles from its doors last week. Okay, so in my mind, the guys that removed the door handles showed up for work the next day and they were like, well, fuck. Oh, guys, we did not think this through.

Okay, but let's take a moment here because we all know how this ends. This ends with a Scientologist shooting a TikTok prankster to death. Like, this is all upside. Everybody. This is... Okay. I'm... Bababababba. Love it.

Okay. I'm now thinking about my stance in light of what Eli said. That's interesting. Right? Okay. I have no official position. Like Ron Miscavage's wife. Yes. Something like that. So,

I'd like to propose an alternative to sprinting through a building and scaring people. This is America, and if you start sprinting through a building, it's pretty reasonable for people to assume you got an assault weapon at Dick's sporting goods earlier that day and you're doing a massacre. That's not crazy. Or you're an actor and the Trump administration wants a new ballroom. No, point being, the people in the Scientology building, they might be shitty cult people,

but still don't do that. Instead, here's what I'm thinking. Instead of speed run, let's get a trend going called Slowness Walk. Just lots of scientific buildings. They're open to the public. It's definitely cool to very slowly walk inside and inquire about their lovely cult offerings, whatever those might be.

Some might call this reporting or journalism. You learn stuff, possibly in slow-mo, to make it funnier, and then you tell the world about it. And if you really want to jose it up to make the video a bit more visual, you can wear a costume. You can wear like a sloth costume or slow loris, banana slugs, stuff like that.

But you probably won't get as much information that way. They've dealt with an army of Sonic the hedgehogs already. So any costume might get you turned away. But have fun with it. Unless. Slonis walk. It's a really good Zinu costume. Oh, yeah.

Right? All right. Well, he's back. Quick before he starts expounding on the merits of using the sidewalk, instead of cutting across his lawn, we're going to close the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. And when we come back, I'll still be wrestling with a bizarre contradiction of always saying we're going to wrap the headlines out for the night when we record this in the afternoon and post it in the morning.

Hey, podcast listener. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm No Illusions. And I'm Heath Anw. Every year, we come to you hat in hand asking you to give us money. But you might be wondering, hey, what's in it for me? Well, I'm glad you asked podcast listener. When you pledge or increase your pledge during Matrion, you're helping to make our show happen. You pay our salaries, but you also pay Morgan, our editor, Julie, our bookkeeper, Tim, our social media guy, and even Tony D, our accountant. I love you, Tony. But that's not all. You get access to our patron-only live stream on May 31st at 8 p.m.

We're going to be counting down the final hours of Matrion with performances, questions, and all kinds of fun. And you can determine what we do and join them. the fund by increasing or adding a pledge at matrion.com. That's M-A-Y-T-R-E-O-N.com. Matri-on. Because if you don't give us money, we'll have to get real jobs. Don't even say that, he. Okay, but it's Slay the Spire for vampire survivors. Do you know what that is?

I haven't played either of those games. I say this with love. Your life is a waste. You are wasting your life. Doesn't your one person saying that with love at all. Hey, gosh, you ready for Bible Peace Theater? You mean the part of the show where we act out the Bible so our listeners don't have to read it? We sure are.

Oh, hey, Don. What are you doing here? Oh, Eli told me you guys were doing video now, but the camera he sent me just turned out to be a gun, which is why there's no image of me. Sure. Classic. Where were we? The hospital for like a month. I still had scars.

In the Bible, Don. Oh. And we were in second Thessalonians. Oh, right. Yeah. Paul just told everybody about like the zombies and stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah, he sure did.

And people were understandably a bit freaked out. So Paul is going to like do his best to explain. Oh, well, it's nice that he made the correction. Well, if he had actually been the one to make it, sure. Oh, did someone probably write this later to explain why Jesus hadn't shown up like way after Paul said they would? Probably, yeah. Sounds like the Bible to meet. Hey, guys.

Hey, Paul. How's it going? No good. I'm not great, man. Like really terrible. You're being weird. Yeah, is it not great because I told everybody about zombies and Jesus coming back in a pillar of flame in my last letter? Yeah, man.

That's why it's not great. Okay. I probably should have mentioned that earlier, right? Yeah. You think? Okay. Well, hey, you know, suffering. is proof that we are God's favorites.

Not really the time, man. Okay, nope, I felt it. Not the vibe. Do you guys want to hear more about when Jesus comes back? Yeah, we'd love for you to sort of just lay that all out on the table for us. Yeah, yeah, of course, of course. So let's see, Jesus is going to return in flaming fire. You know it, honey. Oh, yeah.

I mean the literal kind, Jesus. Porka Nolos Dose. Anyways, he's going to be. going to destroy everyone who doesn't know God and who disobeys the gospel with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord. What does that mean? Oh, um, like hell and stuff, right? Are, are you sure?

I am actually not sure, and it will destroy the friendship of Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron. Okay. Right. So, Paul, the problem is a lot of people think Jesus has already returned. What? Why would they think that? Well, because you sent them a letter saying Jesus was going to return any minute. And letters take a really long time to deliver because it's, you know, old-timey times. Okay, fair. That is fair. But tell everyone not to believe anyone who says they got a letter from me that the day of Christ is at hand.

It's like a whole thing. A bunch of people have to stop believing first. And there's just going to be an Antichrist. This is another bad guy? Yeah. He's like an assistant. manager of Satan. Anyway, he's going to be like, oh, I'm so

much more important than God, and that is how you will know when Jesus is coming. Yeah, that seems vague, man. Okay. Does it help that God is going to kill him by breathing on him? No, not really. What do you mean by that? What's going to be right after Satan does

his fake... Why are you telling the story out of order? Okay, sorry. So, Satan shows up, does a bunch of fake miracles, which God makes everybody believe are real, and then they're damned. Why the hell would he do that? Oh, because he doesn't want a bunch of latecomers. I'm sorry, what?

Okay, so remember in the late 90s and the early 2000s when everyone just became a Yankees fan because they were winning and also kind of 9-11, it's going to be super obvious that our religion's true when Jesus comes back. And so God is going to fool everyone with Satan's fake miracles to make sure they sort of stick to where they are. That seems like a purposely cruel position for no reason.

Yeah. Well, no, the Yankee thing was super annoying. I get that. That makes sense. I mean, it just sounds pretty, pretty... Go Yanks. Pretty bad. Okay.

And last but not least, shun everyone who disagrees with what I told you today. Sure, but isn't that mostly your followers? Yeah, you ended your last letter on a... a cliffhanger. And so people thought Jesus was coming back. Now you're changing that in this letter and commanding us to shun everyone who rejects it. It just kind of feels like you're setting up a constant cycle

of updated beliefs and shunning people who are a little behind. That's bad. Yeah. I mean, I hate to tell you guys this, but that's going to be Christianity's like whole thing. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Also, PC gaming. Sure. I mean, look, I don't love. love it, but what if we just... If people don't work, they should starve to death. There it is. And that is Second Thessalonians. Man, big yikes are rude there at the end with the letting people starve thing.

Well, I mean, to be fair, the modern apologetic is that Paul just meant, like, don't sit around waiting for Jesus, like, just go to your job at the fashion boat, just like... Right, sure. I didn't say it was a good apologetic. That's... No, I'm not sure. So what's next? Timothy.

Oh, that's the one about how ladies need to shut up, right? One of the many, yeah. Okay, and I feel like I should ask this, because if I'd ask it a bunch of times, was this written by Paul? Oh, definitely not, no. Yeah? Yeah, big time no on that. Well, hey there, Timothy.

Hey, what is this puppet? What? I'm not a puppet. I'm your good friend, Paul. I have this letter for you in case anything. anyone ever has confusion about how the church should be run after I die. You do, do you? Yep, let's read it together and see if it works out anything we've, I mean, you've been fighting

about. Okay, let's see. I'm Paul and I'm writing this letter to Timothy. See? Yeah, no, isn't that convenient? You guys are worried too much about laws. Laws are for people who kill their mom and gays. God, that's a weird list, man.

Just saying, are you gay? No. Well, then, maybe stop nitpicking all the stuff, Paul. I mean, I said before I died. Wait, if you died, why are you a puppet now? I don't know. Cool, cool, yeah, okay. I used to be a bad guy.

God is invisible. Also, I killed Hymenius and Alex. for blasphemy? Yeah, fuck those guys. I'm sorry, so wait, so before you died and became a puppet... Let the puppet thing go. You wrote a letter about how two guys would be killed by you for blasphemy. Yes.

So you knew your followers were going to blaspheme and you were going to kill them? Um... No, wait. When did I do that? It's not clear. You don't mention it again until your next letter. But I haven't written that letter yet. I know.

Okay, well, now I'm confused. Well, yeah, me too. Okay, you guys ready for the next part of my letter? Sure. I brought some other church leaders. Is that okay? Hi. Hello.

Sure. This is why I started speaking into the plural Greek now, in case anyone's wondering. Is that why? Yep. This is a really bad fraud. Like, really bad. Hey, I'm sorry, new guy.

Did you have notes? I'm just saying it's really bad. Fraud. Anyway, this is where I say that women shouldn't try to teach men or braid their hair or dress fancy. Got it. You know, because Adam was corrupted by Eve, not the other way around. Sure, but, uh. Also, putting the dishes in the sink before the dishwasher is a worse system than the counter. Okay, so... Like, I don't like putting dishes on the counter either, but when we put them in the sink, you end up running a bunch of water over them. Now I've got a stink full of wet dishes.

Right. So about the... And then who has to love the dishwasher, Hannah, with all the wet dishes at the end of the day? It's me. I'm loading to wet dishes. So it's like you added a chore to my chore. Now, if you put them on a counter,

and then you put them into the dishwasher, they wouldn't be wet and gross. Are you done? Yeah, I'm done. Okay. So, now I want to talk about job of a bishop. Um, that didn't exist when you were alive?

Oh, goddam, this is fucking hard. Okay, well, if there are ever bishops, they should be sober and have one wife, and that wife also needs to be sober. Uh, cause you got a drunk bishop or, uh? It's like having your church run by Dean Martin. Topical, nice. What's with this guy? So, in the last two books, it was a little confusing, because I said,

I said Jesus was coming. And then I said, don't believe anybody who tells you Jesus is coming. Yeah, that was definitely confusing, man. It's been a huge problem. Okay. Well, luckily, I'm writing you this letter to tell you when Jesus is going to come. You mean, with an exact date and time? No, no.

It's more like a list of things that grind my gears. It's kind of like a skepticrat headline. Oh, like your headlines on this camera. Let's see. I don't like what people don't get married. I don't like what people are vegetarian because like all the animals are good eating, you know? Like, dig in.

People don't want to eat animals, so we're going to talk about it because I can't start things without saying that. Everyone stop arbitrating their fights in the Bible. Elon tricked me into shooting myself in the head. I said stop doing that, and then you started doing it. Let's see, what else? Don't believe Old Wives Tales.

This book is basically the, old wives tale. And exercise isn't a big deal. Sorry, the Bible is anti-exercising? It's not anti-exercise. I'm just saying it's not a big deal. It doesn't really matter. Oh, really? Because your arm right there has needed a lot of brakes switching back and forth because... No, the puppet. I mean, me, I'm... Uh-huh. Heavy. Eat and eat a chip's back there. Book is long, okay? Okay, okay. So, now I want to talk. about widows. Oh, good.

Hmm? Well, the Bible's actually pretty good about widows. It's true. One of, like, the only universal goods to the Bible is that it says to take care of widows. Exactly. But only the real widows, you know? I'm sorry. What?

Real widows. Yeah, like, if she's got cousins or kids, they can take care of her. Don't take care of widows with kids. That's what you're saying? I mean, you know what I mean. I do not know what you mean, no. Okay, so you know how sometimes a guy will get really sick and his wife will take care of him for like 11 years

and then he finally dies and she gets on Facebook and she's like, oh my God, everyone, my husband died. I am so sad. And you don't want to say anything, but you're like, come on, lady, come on. It's like that. Okay, no, that makes sense.

Another thing about widows. Oh, there's more on that. Yeah, women under 60 don't count as widows. That's definitionally untrue. And they only count as widows if they had one husband. Uh, what? Yeah, because, you know, if she had more than one husband, she's probably just going around town, getting in people's business,

telling a bunch of lies. The widow? Oh, yeah, widows are total liars. Also, apropos of nothing, you actually can accuse an elder man of something. Nothing, unless you have three witness. It needs three, three witnesses. Oh, you're about to be me-toed, aren't you puppet, Paul?

They don't have three witnesses. Oh, that makes sense. Also, don't drink water, only wine. Okay, you know what I'm back in? I think this guy is Paul. Good for your stomach. Yeah, it's good for your stomach. Every say, man, yeah, totally.

Okay, time for the big wrap-up. Slaves, obey your masters. Okay, maybe this guy is Paul. No. Because look, if you're Christian and your master's Christian, then who cares? You're going to be equal in heaven. Might as well do a little, I don't know, lifelong BDSM scene, right? It's like a fraction of infinity.

I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. Paul, question. What about the rich? Oh, the rich? Yeah, you're always saying about how it's bad to be rich and they should give their money away. Right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, don't love your money too much and, like, be ready to give your money away.

I'm sorry, this feels like weird hedges on all the previous stuff that you said. What? No, that's basically the same thing as I said before. Oh, right, but instead of saying give away your money, you're saying be ready to give away your money. Yeah, it's pretty much the same. Is it? Mm-hmm. And with the promise that we're going to clear out Paul's inbox eventually,

We'll wrap up there and pick the action back up on the next installment of Bible Peace Theater. Before we dissipate back into the vapor that we were before you hit play, I want to remind you that I'm going to be doing a show on stage with Seth Andrews on July 11th. I'm going to be discussing my heart attack in a talk called How to Die Like an Atheist. Seth's doing a talk that's awesome, but I can't tell you the details about it yet. Plus, we're going to have some fun, play some games, take some questions. Tickets are available at Sethandrews.com slash Cincinnati or just check the show notes if you can never remember how to spell Cincinnati. Anyway, that's all the blasphemy we've got for you tonight,

but we'll back in 10,000, 22 minutes with more. If you can't believe that, long, be on look up for a brand new episode of our sister shows hot friend Godafel movies debuting at 7am Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half-sister show citation needed, debut at noon Eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I'd give the show a dower feel if I'd like to thank Heath Enright for being my friend, Eli Bousie, for being my palin, and Lucinda Lusions for being my bestie. I also want to thank Don for being my voice of fantasy and adventure.

I also want to thank Zach for providing this week's Farnsworth quote, although I have no idea what the ha-zazza-ha. thing was all about, man. You actually kind of scared me when I first listened to it. I wasn't ready for that. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's most matronly matrions and patronly patrons. Timothy, Minnesota, Riley, Jolly, Bean, Quinn, Insane, Atheist, other Timothy, Keith, Cusha, Alex, Miss Bjorn, Andrew, Andreas, Ryan, Terry, David, and other Ryan. Timothy's, Riley, Jolly, Quinn, and Insane who inspire more awe than a basket of kittens. Keith, Susha, Alex, Mist, and Andrew, who have enough sexual magnetism to erase your hard drive, an

Andreas Ryan, Terry, and David, who are so great you can shred cheese with them. I'm sorry, that's so stupid. I'm so proud of that one. Together, these 16 lean, mean, doubting machines kept the obscene scenes where we demean the charlatans that fucked up our quarantine by giving us some green. And everybody has all the ean rhymes it takes to give us money, but if you can, you should. So if you'd like to add your pledge to our matrient total, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing aviase, whereby you're on an early access to an extended

at 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 Skaidhethy.com. And if you'd like to help but your budget is plugged up tighter than the straight-of-hor moves, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show and following us on social media and speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us, and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote on the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments or death threats and find all the contact tempo on the contact

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