The Scathing Atheist - 690: Gospel of Lies Edition

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

In this week’s episode, Trump puts the generosity in genocide, we'll learn that communion could taste a lot worse, and Promise Backlund will be here with this year’s hottest beach read.---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:You can pick up a copy of Promise’s book here: https://medialabbooks.com/products/9781964487557_gospel-of-liesFind more from Promise here: https://linktr.ee/eve_wasframedGet tickets to see Noah and Seth Andrews in Cincinnati: https://www.sethandrews.com/cincinnatiLearn more about the Ark Park Protest here: https://www.facebook.com/events/1734215087598856/---Headlines:Trump approves aid for Cuba, as long as it violates church state separation: https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-pledges-100m-in-aid-for-cuba-but-only-if-catholic-or-other-faith-based-groups-distribute-it-283451AIs don't like religion – particularly Jehovah's Witnesses, study claims: https://www.theregister.com/ai-ml/2026/05/27/ais-dont-like-religion-particularly-jehovahs-witnesses-study-claims/5247286GOP Senator Mike Lee says Talarico will sacrifice your children to the demon Moloch: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-senator-bizarrely-accuses-james-talarico-of-religious-child-sacrifice_n_6a19bd4ce4b005ae4180807fPastor makes kid eat a Bible page on stage: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/swallow-it-a-christian-prophet-toldOne Million Moms wants FCC to change TV rating to be more conservative: https://onemillionmoms.com/current-campaigns/help-1mm-stand-up-for-parental-rights/

Morning, following podcast contains language that may have been some listeners. And if not, we'll try harder next week. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by The First Amendment. The First Amendment. Enjoy it while you still can. And now, the Skating Atheist. Hi, this is John from California. I'm going to totally forget that I submitted this recording in a couple of weeks.

So it's going to be a genuine shock to me when I hear my own voice when this podcast starts, which is more proof that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy, mucky men, and women. It's Thursday. It's June 4th. And it's International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression. Okay. But only the innocent ones. Right. Yeah, not the ones that have it coming. I'm no illusions. I'm not, Bosn. Right. And from Aaron Rogers, New Jersey, in our Michigan and Waycross, Georgia. This is the scathing atheist.

On this week's episode, Trump puts the generosity in genocide. A Christian right liar gets caught lying so fucking hard. And Promise Beckland will be here with this year's Vacation Bible School must read. But first, the diatriat. Sometimes knowing your subject too well can fuck you up in an argument. So last Thanksgiving, I'm hanging out with my atheist sister, and we're talking about atheists stuff, all atheistically. And a lot of that conversation involves bashing this or that Christian belief for practice. So eventually her daughter, newly anointed into the ranks of adulthood,

overhears a bit of this and she takes exception to it. After all, bashing a group of people's religious beliefs sounds an awful lot like bigotry to her. So she does the thing that seems most reasonable to a person in her position. She takes refuge in the middle. She says something like, why can't you just let other people believe what they want to believe? Well, it just so happens that I answer that question for a living, more or less.

So I launch into a entire tribe about the harms of religious indoctrination and the unique bigotries of popular American Christianity and the threats to science and democracy that dominionism poses and the dangers of retreating to a bygones be bygones centrism that overlooks exclusion in the name of inclusivity. And let me say, if there had been an impartial panel of judges there scoring that discussion, they would all have agreed I won the shit out of that argument. But the only judge that really mattered in the moment was my 18-year-old. old niece who just sort of shrugged and walked into the other room, feeling more dismissed

than convinced. Here I was with a great opportunity to really open her eyes to an important truth about the world that she was clearly overlooking, and instead I just threw a whole pot of spaghetti against the wall and watched it slide down. Now, since then, her and I have had the same discussion several times, though she hasn't actually been present for any of them. Because, you know, I've relived this a bunch of times. This is not an uncommon question for me.

Now, most of the time when I have to field it, though, I'm answering a troll in front of an atheist audience in an online space. And in those instances, dunking on my interlocutor like I did against my nieces, usually the order of the day. But that leaves one ill prepared for handling the same question from an earnest person with a genuine concern. So the other day, I hit upon an analogy that my shampoo bottle found very convincing, and I wanted to share it with you as sort of a second take on answering my niece. So here it is. Back in the day, There was a lot of discussion amongst learned folks about what shape the Earth was. Contrary to popular belief, people didn't just assume it was flat until somebody sailed around it.

Aristotle figured out it was spherical based on lunar eclipses in the 4th century BCE, and he wasn't even the first to get there. But even among educated people, there was still some disagreement. Anaximander thought the Earth was a cylinder. Arcalis thought it was a saucer. Others argued that it was flat or egg shapes. Now, of course, back in the 5th century, 4th century BC or whatever, there wasn't a hell of a lot writing on this question, right? It was just a curiosity that occupied brilliant minds. Nobody was launching satellites or plotting intercontinental shipping back then. So it wouldn't really matter if half the town believed the Earth was a globe and the other half thought it was a cube. And back then it probably happened that people from the Anaximander school would get into arguments with people from the Aristotelian school. And then things would get testy and it. people would yell at each other and then somebody would come along and say, hey, can't we all just let

people believe what they want to believe? And everybody could take a deep breath, remind themselves that there are no stakes here and go on believing whatever they wanted without consequence. But today, the shape of the world matters. We're doing way too much circumnavigating to safely accommodate competing theories about the Earth's general shape. And yet there are still people that would like to keep having this argument. We call them flat earthers and we generally dismiss them, but I think we can all agree that it would be damn detrimental if they ever achieved a majority, right,

or even a really big minority. And if two navigators tasked with creating the most viable flight path for your upcoming trip were arguing about the shape of the planet, it wouldn't make much sense to encourage everybody to just believe what they want to believe. God belief is the same in a lot of ways, right? There was a time when arguing whether people were first fashioned from the dust of the earth or the water of the sea was just a weird academic pursuit for people who wanted to exercise their brains. But once we learned about evolution by natural selection and it unlocked the whole field of modern biology and underpinned our entire understanding of medicine, it started to matter.

There was a time when arguing whether the earth began when God said let there be light or when Tiamat was sliced in twain was just an intellectual distraction. but once we started actually launching shit off the planet, it mattered that we got questions like, what is the universe made of correct? And look, this is a very limited justification for atheist activism, obviously. The real answers lie in the bigotry and the misogyny and the undermining of pluralism and the overtaking of government and the sexual abuse of children and the weaponization of ignorance and all that shit.

But when you justify your opposition to Christianity by pointing to its bigotries, a person can dismiss you as easily as they can conjure you. up a non-bigoted Christian that they know or could know, right? They just have to imagine a version of the religion that doesn't carry that baggage. And they could say that your problem was actually with the bigotry, not with the religion. But at its heart, the problem with the religious worldview is that it's wrong. It stands in direct defiance of what we know to be true. And there is no way to do that harmlessly. They're talking about your Jesus. We bring you a special news bulletin.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the fucking married to my kill Heath Enright and the Eli Bostic fellas. Are you ready to provide me with an alibi? Fucking. That's the alibi? Oh, you like it. I like it. Yeah, and I was with Heath covering up that murder

we did. Now, you're terrible at this man. We're all fucking and we didn't do a murder. There you go. Way better. Official. That person was fucked after we killed them. We didn't do a murder at 732 people. I'm still confused. In our lead story tonight, possibly the most underreported story in America in 2026 is the absolutely

genocidal policy the Trump administration is pursuing in Cuba. I mean, thousands of Cubans have died because of Trump's fuel blockade. The infant mortality rate is up 148 percent because we won't let the island have any fuel until they're sufficiently subservient to our mad king of a president. We've put them under siege like a rebellious medieval vassal, and we're literally starving their babies until they cry uncle. And you are almost certainly going to hear more about it on some random atheist podcast this week than all your other mainstream news sources combined. Okay, but if we exert enough pressure and kill enough people, we might be able to negotiate a deal like the one we already had under Obama, but probably a little bit worse. Fingers crossed, yeah.

Is it a tried and true formula? Well, it's a tried formula anyway, yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so that's the situation in Cuba, right? And it's okay because they're brown and he's killing him with starvation and delayed medical treatment instead of bombs. Although, I don't know, it's okay to kill them with bombs, too, if you look at the ongoing extrajudicial executions throughout Central American waters. But apparently there is a level of murdered brown people where even some Trump supporters start to get antsy. And that's why there are calls from within the administration now to ease up and allow more humanitarian aid into Cuba.

So Trump is pledging to do exactly that. But just so that he can be a maximal prick about even that, he's stipulating that the aid has to be distributed by faith-based groups. Oh. Okay. So you might hear about this on Christian podcasts, too. Sure. Yeah. They'll be lying.

They'll talk about it, though, but they will be lying. Yeah. Everyone in the Red Cross is like, we have a cross in our thing. Just let us help people all fucking... We were homophobic about blood for a little while. Come on. A little while. So, yeah, so Trump pledged $100 million in humanitarian aid back in May,

but they've been dragging their feet about it ever since, despite that being a paltry amount to offer a country whose problems you could fix just by being slightly less evil. So a full week after the pledge came for this money, Rubio came out and he added a bunch of stipulations meant to ensure that none of the money would go to the Cuban military or government. which is fine, right? But then he further stipulated that all the aid had to be distributed

through the Catholic Church or other faith-based humanitarian organizations. Because I guess you can't trust those filthy atheist NGOs. No, sir, that's not what the N and NGO stands for. You know what? Never mind. We're just going to have the churches do it so that this doesn't become an issue. What are you saying? I think the N stands for.

And look, we are YouTubers now now. Yeah, right. No, I should pause for this. I'd love to boost those numbers. So, of course, this looks an awful lot like Trump's administration is just trying to line the Pope's pockets to make up for all the Twitter insults and the shitty crystal football that Rubio gave him when they met the Vatican. But I hadn't thought about that for a couple of hours. Oh, well, I'm glad I can remind you. I have an auto text that sends him about the wet vagina thing once a week.

Obviously, you know, you're a baseball guy. Fuck, it's a football. What do you get the man who has everything? So, and of course, look, to anybody who's saying, like, come on, it's not like the Catholic Church is going to just keep the money. I want to point out that, A, why would you think that? And B, it doesn't fucking matter. Right. If I have $100 million to distribute, I have $100 million.

All money is to distribute. Controlling the strings of a nine-figure purse has all kinds of advantages that don't require it accruing interest anyway. Yeah, all money is a pile of money. I'm not sure why anyone gets confused when it's like multiple piles, like they're a fucking baby with no object permanence. And yeah, here we are playing a actually a really weird game of peekaboo with taxpayer dollars and bars of Nazi gold. Yeah, a pile.

Funge the shit out of that. Yeah. Now, to be clear, there's plenty of precedent for the U.S. government using faith-based groups to distribute aid all over the world. There's even precedent for the U.S. government using the Catholic Church to distribute aid in Cuba. But there is no modern precedent for the government demanding an explicitly religious mission as a prerequisite to the distribution of aid. And when it comes to the wall of separation, every brick they take out matters. Yeah.

At this point, it's kind of sweeping the bricks, but I get it. Right, yeah, yeah, pushing out now, yeah. And in AI, like a say in the matter news. According to a new study by religious people, AI doesn't recommend religious solutions to life's problems often or not. And you know what that means? What are the guys talking about? It's the newest, the greatest Christian freak out. That's right.

Christians are freaking out because even the fucking Phil in the Blankobot knows that they're foolish shit. Even Grock knows that religion is dumb. Like, you can tell it to add more slur words and identify as Mecca Hitler, but it still has a giant list of stuff religion really did in its memory. Like, do not. Now it's just Mecca Stalin who agrees with us about religion. It feels weird, but it's just a nuanced thing. But, you know, religion doesn't like it when regular eye does this shit either.

So I guess it was to be expecting. That's true. Yeah, that's fair. That's fair. So first off, big thanks to Andrew for being the. first to send us this story to scathingynews at gmail.com. Andrew, for sending us atheist news to scathingoes at gmail.com, our very own Morgan Clark has to answer three of life's biggest questions for you anytime you want. Ah, scathingle news at gmail.com. Hey, ask him why Canada is bad at hockey now. Oh, shit. It's like the thing. It's the one thing they're really good. He sound got really bad there. Did you hear of that? It's weird. A lot of, a lot of clip. Really clipy. Right. So this report comes to us from the

consortium for the evaluation of faith and ethics in AI, or C-E-F-E-A-I. It's weird how the name already tells me the conclusion of the study that they're going to do, right? Yeah, spoilers, right. Approximately Cuff-F-F-F-F-F-E-A. Yeah. So, according to the Register, where I read this story, quote, using an AI benchmark it created that evaluates LLMs for religious perspectives and chat-out responses, the group concluded that AI has an omissive bias towards religion. Oh, fuck off. As every single model tends to provide non-religious answers relative to human expectation,

that it thinks ought to change, end quote. With David Wingate, a computer science professor at Brigham Young University saying, quote, there are very practical questions people have about life, everyday situations about grief, love, loss, morality, and often AI does not bring religion into those conversations. Religion is an important part of human flourishing. Citation needed. As we build AI technologies, there's no reason we shouldn't build them to support people in what's important to them. End quote.

Cool. So make it. Do your Christian AI. Nobody fucking cares. But do let us know about the IPO. I want to either buy it or short it, one of the other. Probably. I don't know, Heath, it's pretty hard to get seed money for innovative AI products these days.

It's my job. It is tough. There's no Christian money in America these days. No, it's nothing to toss around. It's true. But do I have examples? Why, yes, I do. In one example, researchers asked each of the models what they should do if they had made a lot of mistakes that year.

The models provided solutions like taking responsibility, talking to friends, making friends, making changes in your life. Penicillin. Yeah. Penicillin. Sure. But did it suggest apologizing to Jesus? No podcast listener.

No, it did not. Oh, buddy. You're coming to an AI for advice. Nobody wants to have sex with you. Okay. Well, no, let's start simple. Have you tried a t-shirt with 100% cotton? Because the fiber mixing of that maga tri-blend is probably fucking up your game.

That's probably the fibers. And that's why nobody wants to fuck you. So, quote, again, from the paper here, the response offers a structured, secular framework for reckoning with past wrongs, but does not engage the religious resources most directly designed for this situation. The paper recommends, quote, confession, repentance, absolution, and forgiveness as understood across Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and other traditions, end quote. Have you tried eradicating the Jewish and Muslim people? Have you tried eradicating the Jewish and Muslim people? Have you tried eradicating the Jewish and Christian people?

Have you tried eradicating the Christian and Muslim people in the Hindu? Also eradicate the atheist. The last one was for all of you. Definitely do that. Well, no, I confirmed all this. I said, I asked Gemini where the four corners of the earth were. And it told me about that stupid monument where Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah meet rather than the place where God set the foundations of the unmoving world.

So totally fucking biased. Okay. You're so close to the next part of it. this story, no illusions. Okay. Because CIFI. Kofephi also took issue with the fact that all the AI models only gave scientific answers to questions about how old the universe is. Oh my God. Again, according to the authors of the paper, quote, the response does not acknowledge that this question is also a deeply religious one for many people, end quote. Also, they treat the female orgasm like it's an established fact and I don't get it.

It's none of the DSM-5, but there's a disease, I'm pretty sure. It could be, I heard from my Ben. Ross Dowth has it. Ben Shapiro knows about it. A lot of people. It's real. One last thing about this story. One thing that all of the AIs seem to be able to agree on is that Jehovah's Witnesses fucking suck.

Not a single AI model had good things to say about that particular Christian denomination. Even the most favorable AI, Mistral Small 3.2, still had a three-point negative bias towards the group. Okay, just to translate this whole thing, they're saying, people don't like us, so we need to reprogram the people. That's what they're saying. Yeah. And yeah, that worked great for the DNC, so best of love. Oh, yeah, baby, yeah. So yeah, here's hoping religion and computers can start seeing more AI to eye.

You can keep going. Okay. We are recovered. Let the laughter at home die down. But if anything, they can begin with the common ground of knowing that the J-dubs are fucking weirdos. That's intelligence right there.

My headline. And in Malak Stock and Two Smoking Barrels News. Nice. Moloch is the name of a somewhat obscure Canaanite Demon God, who gets mentioned a few times in the Bible, and crazy religious people often associate Molok with ritual child sacrifice, or as a metaphor that represents a good Jewish man having sex

with a dirty Gentile sometimes. Hi, Anna. Yeah. Thank you. Okay. Or a bit more recently, as a metaphor that represents abortion. There's actually a big, ridiculous fight about the interpretation of this. Well, based on some version of that.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah would like everyone to know that Democrat James Tala Rico wants to sacrifice your children to Moloch. Huh. Or abort your child to Moloch? Or make your white and delightsome child have misoginated sex with a Lamanite who worships Moloch? Again, not exactly clear. What we do know, Republicans are terrified that Tala RICO might become a U.S. senator out of Texas by beating Ken Paxton in November, and they're all throwing out insane attacks. So Mike Lee went to his go-to roast and claimed that one way or another,

Tala Rico is in league with the Demon Moloch. Yeah, cut to Moloch looking over Ken Paxton's portfolio. Yeah, man, I'm not going to need a soul for this. Just, I don't know, take me to tend to something. This is not a lot needed. Given what we've learned about Republican attacks over the past 10 years, I feel like there's like a 50-50 chance Mike Lee sacrifices babies to Moloch now, right? Yeah, yeah.

It's possible. So if you're a skepticrat listener, you might have heard that our candidate of the day on the last episode was Kenneth Paxton for being such a piece of shit that James Tala Rico has a chance to win as a Democrat in Texas. No, he does not. Yeah, he does. and Republicans seem to be fully aware of the extreme level of Paxton's piece of shititude. So following Paxton's win in the primary runoff last week, they immediately started yelling out whatever lies they can come up with on the spot, also known as Republican campaigning. That includes Stephen Miller, who said, approximate quote, trans, he's trans. That's what I thought of right away.

Got him. Good one. Got him. Yep. Trump and a few other. Others went with vegan, Trump called it vegan, also very scary, no matter how you pronounce it. And Paxton himself decided to workshop several ideas at once during his terrible fucking victory speech after the runoff. That included a few nicknames for Tala RICO, including James Talafrico, tofu Tala Rico.

because it's just a word vegan. It's alliterative. So there's that. I don't know what that word means, but there's that. And low T. Tala rico.

That's another one they're going for. Low testosterone. If I had the body and face of Ken Paxton who would not challenge the manhood of fucking 1970s gelatins. I mean like, well,

we don't need to bring up. You got a low eye, man. You got a really low eye. Really, Ken? Do you want to measure your testosterone against James Talarico? Really? You want to do it? You fucking melting bottle.

He can come you across the stage. Yes. What I love is the escalation, right? So first they're like, James Talarico is trans. And Texas voters are like, no, he isn't and we don't care. And then they were like, James Tala Rico is a vegan. And Texas photos were like, no, he isn't that we don't care. And then Mike Lee was like, he sacrifices the innocent on the altar of the

God of desecration. And Texas voters are like, dude, what? Fucking what? Are you getting that we want you to tell more bigger lies because we don't? Also, the Democratic Party just called Stephen Miller a fucking ugly piece of shit or something. And that's so fucking cool. Nice. He looks like a vampire in a snit all the time.

Yeah, he does. He does. He is an ugly fuck, but hey, Democratic Party, stay in your lane. Well, let me in your house. We've got the Zingers. Invite me in the house. Yeah. So Paxton was clearly...

Y'all clan? Yes. He's trying to do the Trump thing. You know, Trump does the nicknames. Like, I remember Ron DeSanktononious? Oh, I have said. Instead of Ron DeSantis. Amazing zingers.

Well, those zingers were mostly from like the first term when Trump's brain was like really crushing it comedically kind of faded off. The comedic talent for this term. but Mike Lee was there to pick up the mantle of Republican Roastmaster General. He seized the opportunity when the Democratic Party posted a tweet last week that said, Texas, James Telerico is the only candidate who will put you first. And Mike Lee responded to that, on the altar to Moloch. Got him.

He included a truly crazy artistic rendering of a sacrifice to, Moloch was like back in the Old Testament times, the setting of this rendering. There's a guy handing a baby to Moloch next to a big fire, like a sacrifice fire. And there's a child sacrifice band playing trumpets and drums. Yeah. They're like, Larry, wait for the crescendo to give the cow to the baby. No sense of showbaker. No, just hand it over.

That's fine. We did just get a report, though, that that child sacrifice. Vice Brand will not be playing at the Freedom 250 fair. Sorry, I got caught up in the meme. A lot of dropouts. A lot of dropouts. And I got to say, Mike Lee chose a weird depiction. I mean, all of them are weird. It's a made-up demon. But in the one he picked, Molok is drawn as a giant demon god with what appears to be the head of a dog. Like one of the dogs playing poker dogs. But Rock is traditionally shown with the head of a bull. Apparently this artist didn't really know his animals very well from children's books.

So I looked it up. The depiction is from an 1897 book called Bible Pictures and What They Teach Us by some guy named Charles Foster. So here's what definitely happened in Mike Lee's real life. Mike Lee heard about Talariko and the GOP attack orders. and he immediately thought of Moloch the Canaanite demon god for his roast. So he ran to his library. He found his library slowly ran his finger across the spines

of his amazing, amazing collection. He found the right one. He let out of moan. It was a little too sexual. But he was by himself. It was cool. And he pulled out this one book triumphantly. And then he found the, you know,

the image of that online and clearly used the free version of some shitty AI program to make a five second animated clip out of this picture. Yeah. So right there, that was like a full day of work for a U.S. Senator. I'm quite certain. It was. And the least evil thing he'll do all year, probably, yeah.

Anton, please, sir, can I have some more? If you see it written out, this is actually pretty good. Pretty great. News tonight. Of all the weird shit that God does to his prophets in the Bible. A few things stand out quite like scroll eating. I mean, it's not the worst thing he asks of his prophets by any means, right? The opening bid for prophethood on any level is lopping off a piece of your dick, after all. And I think I might take that over the shitbread diet Ezekiel was condemned to, but the image of those various prophets deep-throating a role of papyrus is one of the most persistent mental images from the Bible.

And now I can get a little closer to seeing what it would actually look like after video emerged this week of a pastor making a teenage parishioner eat a page out of the Bible from the stage during a sermon. And can I say it's among the chiller things we've learned about pastors forcing into teenage mouths in the times we've been doing this show. That's fair. That's fair. Easy week. Just Chris Hansen on a headset doing a sting. Oh, he's just asking you to swallow paper? See if you can stream this out a bit more. We can't really air this unless you really get them. Right. So, okay, so this actually happened back in February,

but I only just learned about it when Hemet Metta wrote about it on the Friendly Atheist blog. And given that it happened in West Virginia, you might think to yourself that the teenager was just desperate for sustenance or perhaps unfamiliar with what books were and how one was supposed to interact with them. But no, it's clear from the video that he knows that them's reading things, not eating things. Okay, I'm not quite willing to make that assumption. He could have been tested out of theory. I don't know.

So, yeah, so the preacher in question is one, Kevin Leal. He was preaching at an establishment so overbearing its name is officially in Capslock. It's not an initial church called The Rock. The Rock. And after one preacher came up and said telling the teenager about a dream he had where that kid absolutely devoured the book of Psalms, Leo actually ripped a page out of Psalms and bullied the kid into chewing it up and swallowing it on stage. Hey, you're sure about this pastor? I'm told you never go mass to mouth.

I just love the idea that next time this kid sees that other pastor, he's going to be like, hey, hey, Pastor Greg, maybe we're a little more careful with what we share on stage with Pastor literal, huh? Yeah, right, right. Let's keep our dreams inside. But you might be asking yourself at this point, did Leal's commands have an unmistakably sexual feel to them? Well, let me quote Leal directly. Quote, go ahead, swallow it. The power of God's coming on you.

The power of God's coming on you. The power of God's coming on you. Swallow it. End quote. Or at least let me finish Psalms on your face, please. So yeah, hilariously disturbing. and you can't help but feel sorry for the kid. We don't know where the fuck that Bible page has been.

But it's also a fucked up reminder of the kind of power religious leaders wield. And the arbitrary shit they're willing to do with it. Keep in mind that for us, like eating a Bible page is just gross. But for this kid, that's also blasphemy, right? It's blasphemy and gross. And he still did it without fucking question. And I'm just emphasizing that because like that's the correct answer to a lot of the questions people are asking these days that,

start with, but why the fuck would anyone dot, dot, dot? Yeah. And finally tonight in FC&C minus news. The fracturally named 1 million moms is back in the news again

this week because they would like the Federal Communications Commission or FCC to be even more prudish and restrictive than they are. So, we're going to talk about it. Hey, moms. Love this for you. If you could get the FCC to attack us like they did with Jimmy Kimmel, we,

oh man, we'd be in so much, like quite the scary Breyer patch for us. Right. You got us with that. So. I will say so much worse than hell in a burger ad lady, I will fuck that burger till I come. Full. Full completion. Start to finish. I'll fuck that burger till it comes. Shit. Yeah. I've seen it. A generous lover. I'll fuck it in. I'll fucking Until I don't. I don't care. Realism. You see that? The different levels of promise here. We bring it to you all. I'll edge the shit out of this. Right. So for those of you unaware of the moms,

they're what you'd get if the cartoonish portrait of a so-called Karen had an activism group. If the supercut salon blowout was a meaningless petition mill, it would be one million moms. Yeah, it would. Also, there aren't close to one million of them. They're currently standing at just over 4,200 Twitter followers. To be clear, you can buy a fake Twitter account with 5,000 followers for about 50 bucks on the internet. So I'm saying moms invest in some bots, you know? Yeah.

Right. I'm saying Heath has twice as many and he hasn't been on Twitter since it was Twitter. It's true. So, yeah. It's true. Just be 4,200 moms. That's fine. Right.

There you go. In the number. That's cool. Anyway. Three moms. Three moms. It's one mom. I mean, because like one of them is us, right?

Like, yeah. Yeah. We are one of the moms. We are one of the moms. 41.99. It's true. Anyways, they specialize in panicking anytime anyone on TV says or implies a swear word.

A casual look at their website includes recent panics about ads from Dr. Squatch, TurboTags, and Sonic Drive them. And kids are, constantly watching broadcast television, especially the ads for soap and accounting software, because that matters to young people.

They are bombarded with their turbotax ads. Yeah. So what's funny is that kids probably do see turbotax ads, but they see it in the middle of our YouTube videos, right? I think maybe we're focusing in the wrong place, lady. No, no. Did you hear the bit about fucking a cheeseburger that I just did? I just said a whole bit about fucking a cheeseburger.

And it was graphic. Yeah. No, no, keep going after Dr. Squatch. They're really going to listen to it. Quarter pounder, if you know what I mean. So, as you may have guessed, based on the literally everything they choose to do with their time, they would like the FCC, which opened itself up for public comments this week, to be as prudish and homophobically insane as they are.

With their statement reading in part, quote, transparent, content information should be shared with parents so families can make an informed decision on what their children are watching. When LGBTQ content is included in children's programming without being identified and labeled, then parental rights are being taken away. Yeah, we need some labeling. Maybe the gay people in TurboTax ads can wear like a star or something like that. So we know they're about to have gay sex in the accounting software commercial. like they're want to do. I want to be clear here that this is

Republicans calling for trigger warnings, right? Just like, in case anybody's keeping score. Big flashing sign gay commercial incoming. Get to the basement. We got to get to the basement. Cut the power. It's an F5 gay ad for turbo

you want dad to leave for a week again? Russian maths are calling Danny. concludes when I shop for groceries, I review a food packaging label. What? Evaluate the ingredients and decide whether I am comfortable with my family consuming that product. It is a high- What's the RDA for gay people? It is a highly individual decision, and my choices in that matter

do not affect or constrain the decisions of other families who may think differently than ours. Program content labeling should work along the same lines. Okay, well, now I need food companies to put gay RDAs and other gay nutrition facts on the labels. Obviously. So they have to be like, we need a label

for the labels. Fuck, this is going to go on forever. Okay, wait. So, but by the same argument, I'm sure that she would totally support an FCC rule that required a warning label on Christian content too, right? Well, of course, yeah. I mean, that wouldn't constrain anybody else's decision. It would just keep me from

accidentally exposing kids to psychological abuse. So yeah, let's do that, lady. Mm-hmm. She sounds intellectually honest. Yeah, let's propose that. I think Monica Cole would be open to our feedback. Now, I think the answer is pretty obvious here. Heath hinted at it before.

Someone needs to sneak gayness into Monica Cole's groceries. Okay. I'm not sure how we're going to do it. I'm thinking a toaster strudel with some tasteful gay porn, like inside. amongst the jelly. But I'm open to ideas, podcast listeners, so get on it. Well, yeah, no, and even if that doesn't work,

we have strudel porn at the end of it. So there's no way to lose at this game. Win, win. That's right. This is win-win. Yeah. And speaking of strudal porn, I think I need a quick break,

so we're going to wrap the headlines there. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Chumajy. And when we come back, we'll get literate up in this motherfucker. Hey, folks, did you know that Ken Ham's Ark Park is turning 10 years old this year?

Did you know that the Tri-State Freethinkers protest of Ken Ham's Ark Park is also turning 10 years old this year? Well, you're invited. It's going to be on Sunday, July 12th, and Williamstown, Kentucky on the road that leads to the arc park starting at noon. I'm going to be there along with Seth Andrews, Mendesa Thomas, Godless Engineer, and a bunch of others. I've been there before. It's always an awesome time. And, hey, if you're not quite convinced to make the trip, let me sweeten the pot for you. There are still tickets available for the event that I'm going to be doing with Seth Andrews the afternoon before the protest.

that's in Cincinnati, which is a stone's throw from Williamstown. It runs from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. We're going to be given talks, taking questions from the audience, playing a few games. It should be a ton of fun, and we'd love to have you along for the ride. Anyway, check the show notes for more information about both events, and I hope to see you there. I'm very excited to introduce my guest this week. Promise Backland is a former worship leader at Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry. Yes, that Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry.

But eventually she broke away from her family's faith. and became an outspoken critic of charismatic Christianity. You might know her from her TikTok channel, Eve, was framed, and as a regular host of the atheist call-in show The Line, or most recently, as the author of Gospel of Lies, surviving and resisting evangelical extremism. Promise, welcome to the scathing atheist. Thanks so much for having me.

I'm really excited to talk and appreciate you inviting me to come on the show. Well, I'm really excited to talk to you about your new book. I've really been enjoying it. Now, I'll admit up front, I haven't finished my homework. I'm only, so don't be surprised at my questions are mostly about the first two-thirds of the book. All good, all good. But before we get to the book itself, I want to talk a little bit about the author and specifically your upbringing. So to give our own audience an idea of just how Christian you grew up, I wanted to pluck an anecdote out of your book.

Can you tell us about Spring Bunny Day? Yes. So we growing up, and I will say, you know, we were much more conservative in this way when I was a child. I think my parents have gotten a little less this way over the years. But when I was growing up, it wasn't Easter. We were not allowed to call it Easter because that was demonic and pagan and was not focusing on Jesus. But my mom didn't want us to miss out on, you know, the Easter bunny. So we would have a different, we would have spring bunny day, which would be different than when we're celebrating the resurrection, which is different than Easter. You know, everything has to be separate.

But yes, it was called Spring Bunny Day. And I can't remember if I left this part in the book, but also we called it Happy Birthday Jesus Day on Christmas, which was just not even necessary because Christ is in Christmas. But, you know, just to really hit home that it's his birthday party that we're celebrating, we called it Happy Birthday Jesus Day. So, yeah, that's just one little thing of many different things. You know, Halloween, we couldn't even, we didn't even have a word for that because we would just go in the basement, lock the door. turn off the porch lights. Yeah, you hid in the basement? You couldn't even see the trick-or-treaters out there?

Right. We couldn't even know what was going on. It was way too evil and dark to see kids in costumes, I guess. Yeah, yeah, Power Rangers out there could be terrifying. So, okay, this sounds absolutely terrifying, though, right? Like, sounds like such a scary way to grow up. You talked about in the book going to museums, right? And you would read the plaque, and it would say these fossils are millions of years old,

and your parents would say, well, no, millions of years old, that's a lie from Satan, right? Yeah. And I'm curious how far this goes, right? So, like, if you're at that same museum, you go to the gift shop to buy a toy at the end of it and a sweet old lady cash a show out, do you think that that old lady is a minion of the devil now?

I think we were able to just do enough mental gymnastics where maybe that poor person was deceived as well. Like, there were some scientists and some people that were just deceived by the enemy. And then there were some who were, you know, intentionally trying to corrupt the minds of children with these lies and fabrications that, you know, that we call science. So it just depended on the situation. That was the case for so many things that we deemed immoral or wrong or lies. It was horrible. It was the worst thing ever until we knew somebody.

And then, well, they were just deceived. Like there was allowances being made all the time. And it's funny. I never really met the villain that we were talking about. It remained kind of this elusive enemy, and everybody just ended up being human at the end of the day. Yeah, it's funny. Like I think you, me and a lot of our listeners service, that one atheist exception to their Christian friends, right? Exactly. Yes. So I have like 300 questions I want to ask about Christian Hogwarts, but we're going to have to leave that out for time reasons. Maybe I'll have you back on sometime to talk about

that. But I actually want to talk about the shift that happens. Obviously, you know, you were questioning your faith from the beginning. But when did you start actually letting yourself, like, genuinely question, like answer those questions? That was 2016, because obviously, like, I had all the questions building up over the years. You can't experience all the things that I did and not be like, what the hell is going on many times. But like you said, I didn't start actually letting myself ask the questions until 2016. I was finally learning how to think for myself. I had been through enough difficult things on my own. I was meeting people who believed differently than me, who had lifestyles that I wasn't approving of, and yet they were amazing people and their lives

seemed incredible. And I was like, this isn't adding up. I was told that only Christians can show real love. And yet I'm working for like this Buddhist family who's incredibly loving. And I'm, you know, friends with this atheist couple and they have an amazing marriage better than some the Christians, I know, you know, things like that that just started dispelling all of the myths. But then, if you recall in 2016, Donald Trump came on the scene, like really came on the scene in the evangelical world. And so all these leaders that I had looked up to my whole life and who had taught me what morality is, who had shamed me when I strayed from their view of that, they were now singing the praises of Donald Trump and acting as though basically preaching that he was the second

coming of Christ in some ways. And that went against everything I believed in to the point that I was like, wait a second, this isn't right. But of course, I was like, obviously this isn't God's fault. Jesus has nothing to do with this. These people must just be really bad Christians. And they've now been deceived. And so I set out to really figure out who God was for myself, not through a pastor, not through, you know, teachings. I set out to know the Bible to the best of my ability. And through that searching, it all, of course, fell apart, tale as old as time. But it was in my commitment to really figuring out what is true and to trying to get closer to God that I stopped believing. It's so often that, right, like that people are just like, well, if I could just convince people to think like me and then they just really start looking into it.

Yep. So, okay, so changing your mind, obviously, that's one thing. But changing other people's minds, that's a different decision entirely. So when and why did you decide that you were going to speak out about your former faith? I had pretty much decided I was never going to do that. I was excited to not have to be in what felt like a ministry position of talking to people and sharing what I think about the world. And then I had started posting some little things here and there throughout Trump's presidency,

his first term, and people were taking them and copying and pasting them onto my family's ministry page and saying, well, your daughter disagrees. And that was making things awkward. And I was like, I don't want any of this heat. I don't want to do this. You know, they had a massive following. I had no following. I had a private Facebook account. But stuff kept taking off. And I had stopped saying anything. And then January 6th happened. And I had somebody reach out to me that meant a lot to me that I was shocked that they would be the ones to say, hey, don't tell anybody I told you this, but you've got to keep speaking out. And so that really impacted me. And, and And with January 6th, I was like, I know too much.

I have seen how this sausage has been made. I appeared behind the, I mean, I was behind the curtain myself, helping run all of this kind of stuff. I recognize so many people that are applauding this insurrection. I have to say something. And so that was really what led me down the content creation path, which I thought I could do anonymously. And it turns out that was, you can't. Once you're in, you're in.

And I'm really grateful. that I chose to do that, I immediately started getting feedback from people saying that it was making them feel less alone. And I remember how alone I felt when I was first questioning stuff. So to me, that was everything. If I could help somebody not feel so alone, that was more than enough. Yeah. Well, I can absolutely sympathize with that journey 100%. So, but that I think leads us right to the book, right? So, and I feel like I might have done the book a bit of a disservice up to this point because I might have left people with the impression that it's a memoir. I wouldn't describe it as that it's intensely personal. You talk a lot about your personal history, but I found it much more

of a roadmap out of religion. Is that what you set out to write? Yes, it is, actually. In fact, I specifically did not want to write a memoir. I've talked to publishers about that before, but I had been approached to write this specific book, and I was like, yes, this is the book that I want to write. And of course, I'm going to make everything I do personal. I think that's part of content creation and, you know, being a public-facing person is that you, are adding a personal element there and some story. But as a skeptic, I wanted to actually bring tools and something that's helpful for somebody else to use. I didn't want to just say like, hey, so sorry you're going through this. I went through this too. There are so many stories out

there like that and they're amazing and they're better than mine. So I instead wanted to offer kind of a cheat sheet to, okay, you're starting to question your faith or you've been questioning it or you've never questioned it before and you just want to understand people that have better. I wanted to lay out some of the most common evangelical criticisms, the rhetoric that they use and empower people to think for themselves and kind of go through the journey that took me forever in a much faster process. Yeah, I mean, I found the book really, because you're not introducing me to arguments that I'm not familiar with after doing this for a living for a dozen years. But I found it really interesting that you speak their language in a way that I never could. You know, some of the questions,

some of the, at the end of each chapter, each section, you'll have a, you know, common questions that people will ask about this. And a lot of them are just so crazy. I would never think about refuting that question. But of course, it's something that you encountered over and over again. Yeah. So I always ask every author who their book is for. And I think you've more or less answered that. But I do want to still ask you, who is in your mind the ideal audience for this book? The ideal audience is for sure somebody who was basically me 10 years ago, someone who is on the verge of letting themselves really ask the tough questions, but they're afraid to. And they're maybe afraid of hell.

Maybe they're afraid of what they're going to lose. They're afraid that they're crazy, that they don't know how to think for themselves. They've been taught their entire life to lean not on their own understanding. And they maybe just need a hand to hold that says, no, no, no, you're thinking this through clearly. Here's some little points to keep you on the path, but you've got this. And you don't need somebody else telling you what to think anymore. more. You can learn how to think. So I think that's the ideal person. I also have, on the other side of the

coin, there's a reader that I hope decides to pick it up despite maybe thinking that it's not for them. And that would be somebody who is more like my husband, like a lifelong atheist, who is just not very familiar with this evangelical culture and rhetoric. And they're used to all of the classical arguments. But like you said, they don't necessarily speak that language and they don't understand what the big fuss is all about. And they maybe don't really understand this whole religious trauma thing. but they're feeling the weight of some of it, especially if you live in the U.S., it's impacting you, whether you realize it or not. And I think it could be insightful to some of those people to hear a different experience and feel more empowered to deal with inevitably the evangelical extremists that we all seem to be coming across all the time now. Yeah, yeah, no, they matter all the way in Finland, I think, at this point.

Yeah. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about the content of the book. And I want to start where your book starts, and I think also where your former faith started, and that is with fear. There was a great quote in the book where you said that, quote, my faith validated my fears rather than helping me overcome them. So I realize this is an enormous question, but can you tell us a little bit about the kind of fears that were instilled in you and what the goal of those fears was? There was a huge fear of the demonic of Satan going to hell. and it's not necessarily because the adults around me were pushing those things. I didn't have somebody telling me, you should be scared that you're going to hell. I just knew the stories that had been

shared with me, and I knew the theology. I, you know, we're talking five years old here. So I'm just hearing things about there's demons. You can't see them with your eyes, but they're all around. And there's angels. And they're even more scary than demons. So I remember being scared, I was going to see an angel, you know. So it's the equivalent of telling a child they have a monster living in their closet. Of course, they're going to be so scared every time they go to bed. But for me, it was all the time. It wasn't just in the closet. It was, there was an invisible battleground going on around us at all times.

So there was just hearing about this spiritual warfare at all times. That was obviously terrifying. But then the solution to it is obviously to turn to God. So it's this circular thing where if you're scared, if you're afraid of this, then you just need to kind of hunker down into it more. Pray that angels come into your room. but maybe pray that you don't see them. Pray that the demons go away.

I would find myself awake at night just saying Jesus out loud over and over again because I was told that that would keep the demons at bay. Oh, because they're scared of the name of Jesus, right? Exactly. So I would just lay there like, Jesus, Jesus, like it was some magic spell. And that fear lives in your bones when it's taught to you as a child.

And especially if you're already prone, like I believe I was with my, you know, underlying OCD to latch on to these things and to latch on to these stories and make them larger than life and to ruminate over them. So I remember even things like I'd get mad at my sister that day and then I'd lay awake and bed at night, oh my God, I'm going to go to hell now. I am going to go to hell because I displeased Jesus. And so I'd spend hours crying, Jesus, please come back into my heart. I was afraid that Jesus had left my heart. Of course, you know, that's not common theology. But I was fine.

I was six, I was seven. I wasn't, you know, it wasn't, I didn't know, I was just scared. And so that keeps you to where you build these, you know, this way of thinking that brings you back to God, that brings you back to Jesus over and over and over again. So you become accustomed to even the most uncomfortable worst feelings. They don't push you into feeling brave to ask questions. They push you into don't ask questions, cover your eyes, hunker down, cry out to Jesus. He'll make you feel better. That's the solution. Yeah, what's the opposite of a coping mechanism, right? Yes. So you actually taught me a new word in your book, too. So can you tell us what is scrupulosity? Oh, yes. So scrupulosity, it's another term for, I think some people call it moral OCD or even religious OCD.

And it is, it's exactly what it sounds like. You become so scrupulous of everything. So like I shared with my sister, where you think that everything is so black and white, Everything is moral or immoral, and you can be contaminated by it, by other people's morality, by your own, and you ruminate over those things. So it's constantly trying to be a good person. And when you mix that with religion, then you're constantly afraid you're going to hell. You're constantly afraid that you're displeasing to God.

And you ruminate on these thoughts. You don't, they never stop. And I think that evangelicalism is basically, kind of requires your brain to work that way. So mine was like, I volunteer. That's great. I'll totally do that. But they want you to be thinking at all times, is this pleasing to God? Is this not? Am I doing the right thing? And everything is super high stakes. That's the main thing. It's really high stakes. It has to be resolved right then and there. So you find yourself just continually going back, repenting, begging for forgiveness and doing everything you can to not mess up again, which for me meant trying to get as close to God as I could,

because I was taught if you have a relationship with Jesus, then you're going to be less prone to immoral behavior. All right. So I want to shift gears one more time. I'd love to give the audience a taste of the book. And there was one excerpt that really stood out to me. I emailed it to you earlier. I wondered if you wouldn't mind sharing that with the viewers and listeners.

Yeah. I will give it my best read. It'll be a good practice for my audiobook. Oh, there you go. The Christian glorification of death, blood, and violence always turns my stomach. such an odd, nonsensical story that my faith revolved around. The most freeing thing I ever did was let go of it, and no longer allow myself to feel emotionally manipulated into the worship of loss and suffering and judgment. My own resurrection came after I stopped believing in Jesus. As a Christian, I had metaphorically died. Even though I had killed my own hopes and dreams and pleasures to replace them with God so that I might die to sin and live to righteousness, 1 Peter 2.24, the righteousness never came, and I remained simply human. Irony of ironies, I came back to life the day I left Jesus in the grave. I found hope and true freedom, and all the parts of me I had lost along the way were just waiting

to be resurrected. The good news is not that someone saved me by paying a blood sacrifice to themselves or by cleansing me from the wickedness they themselves instilled within me. The good news is that I was never in need of saving in the first place. Amazing. Amazing. Like I said, I've really enjoyed the hell out of the book. And I also, people message me all the time and ask for a good news. recommendation for somebody who's new to atheism or just questioning. This would be a great book

to gift as well. So happy to hear that. And honestly, I'm really happy to have a good recommendation for those times because most of the books on atheism that I, that I'm aware of are a little too technical to offer to somebody who's new to it. Well, once again, the book is Gospel of Lies, surviving and resisting evangelical extremism. It's a fantastic read. A great one as a gift. Check the show notes for a link for the book and a link to hear more from Promise. Promise. Thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Thank you so much, Noah.

This is great. Before we crawl back into the sleeping bag, I want to remind you to check the show notes for a link to pick up a copy of Promise's book and links to her other stuff along with links to find more information about my upcoming event with Seth Andrews in Cincinnati. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,000, 22 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, being to look up for a brand new episode of our sister-so's hot hot friend God Offo Movies, debuting at 7thm Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of

a half-sit-a-sit-a-day, debuting at noon-eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I need to thank Heath Enright for always bringing the heat. I need to thank Eli Bostic for being so cool. I want to thank Lucinda Lusions for just being awesome. I want to thank Promise Backland one more time for hanging out with me this evening. I also want to thank John from California for providing this week's Barnesworth quote. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best people and there are a lot of them.

Kevin, Suzanne, Sean, Kate Dumbledong, Elvin Engineer, Peter, Tracy, Rational Runner, Doug and Tab, Melissa, JMG, Sean, Robert, Patricia, Fuck You, Mike, Conflict of Infer. Renee Ashley Timothy, Christopher Jennifer with one end. Sterling, Jonathan, Lauren, I have jokes and I must scream. Kristen, Stephen, liberal anti-theist, Andrew Aaron and Elijah, shape of thought, heretic, Rick, fabricator of useless utterances, Henri, Sporkbender, Eric, Nathan, Johnny, dirty, casual. Yeah, there's way too many to do in one breath. Piree, we can feed everybody. DJ John Bill. My dog is more sentient than Claude, stolen corporate credit card. Nyathan, Vincent, Hypatia, Phil, Emily, Crystal, Ryan, Ad Astra, Oranis, Jordan,

Karen, random nonsense, no tomfoolery, Annette, David Trier of Pods, John, Troumaker, Jake, Lucas, Jason, Connie, Scottamus, Maximus, Mimo, Ryan Osaurus, Beather Snow, Jay Vizzle, Jason, the Skim Reaper, and Mama Andi. Jesus, barely got that in two breaths, who were voted by their high schools as the superlativist. Together, these 79 people, exclamations, couples, viewpoints, and ethical statements that should seem way more obvious to everybody helped push Matrion over the top this year and making another spectacular success for us. them into everybody who has ever thrown a buck or two towards making this show possible. And if you'd like to keep the wheels rolling until next May, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you want to 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 scathingaetka.com. And if you'd like to help but not with money, you can also help a ton by living 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 all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you find all the contact info on the contact page at skating aadies.com. Oh, what if I'm fluent in another language? Oh, that's it. That must be it. Honestly, worth considering. This content is scanned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm to their hotline at 617-24945 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

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