The Scathing Atheist - 695: Virtual Pretend Edition

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Come see us live in Washington, DC on August 14th!: https://www.atlasarts.org/events/god-awful-movies/In this week’s episode, a bible school takes a vacation from sanity, the US women's team looks primed to win the World Cup again, and Christians will find yet new lands to colonize.---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/---Appearance Notes:Get tickets to see Noah in Cincinnati: https://www.sethandrews.com/cincinnatiLearn more about the Ark Park protest here: https://www.facebook.com/events/ark-encounter/10th-anniversary-ark-encounter-protest/1591721388785519/Get your tickets to BAHACon here: https://bahacon.com/---Headlines:Viral video shows mock execution at Vacation Bible School: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/viral-video-shows-church-stagingVatican excommunicates all members of ultra-conservative rebel group SSPX: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/jul/02/vatican-excommunicates-all-members-of-ultra-conservative-rebels-sspxStephen Miller is pretty sure that Trump was sent by God: https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-makes-bonkers-claim-about-divine-president/https://www.huffpost.com/entry/we-dug-up-stephen-millers-dubious-dating-advice-and-relationship-experts-say-its-telling-g_l_6a451831e4b07b95cff31d69Ken Ham big mad newspaper didn’t pretend his bullshit was science: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/ken-ham-is-furious-that-a-reporterChristians think there are abortion pills in the drinking water: https://washingtonstand.com/article/pressure-mounts-on-epa-to-test-drinking-water-for-traces-of-abortion-pill---This Week in Misogyny:Manosphere getting worse on college campuses: https://19thnews.org/2026/07/manosphere-misogyny-infiltrates-college-campus/Australia set to be first nation to eliminate cervical cancer… if antivax idiots don’t fuck it up: https://www.sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/news/2025/11/20/australia-on-track-to-eliminating-cervical-cancer.htmlCatholics sell hospital, reproductive care immediately reintroduced: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/a-catholic-hospital-was-sold-reproductive

Warning, the words we're about to put in your ears are so dirty you're about to need a Q-tip. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Q-tips. Q-tips. If I'm not supposed to clean my ears with them, why the fuck do you keep selling them to? And now, the Skating Atheist. Hi, I'm Gordon, and I ain't got nothing to plug. As a bona fide, barefoot Tennessee hillbilly, who now lives in Utah around a bunch of people wearing magical underwear, I was already pretty sure. But then I read the Epstein files, and it removed all doubt. I can assure you that we still, in fact, walk among filthy monkey men.

It's Thursday. It's July 9th. And it's take your webmaster to lunch day. All right, Oskar, get in here, buddy. You like, you like Thai? He seems like he likes Thai. Hi, no illusions. I'm Elon Bosnick.

I'm Heathen-Raein. And from Carly, Lloyd's, New Jersey. Ann Arbor, Michigan, and way across Georgia. This is escaping at these. On this week's episode, a Bible school takes a vacation from sanity. The U.S. women's national team looks primed to win the World Cup again. We're moving on, huh? And those motherfuckers will come from my VR spaces. But first, the Diet Trout.

Okay, I know this isn't exactly an atheism-related thing, but I want to complain about Trump ruining America's birthday party. So here's the thing. Lucinda loves to decorate for holidays. Yes, she goes buck fucking wild for Halloween and Christmas, but she also decorates our house for all the other holidays. New Year's, Valentine's Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter's, Secretary's Day doesn't fucking matter. And when there isn't a holiday nearby, she'll just decorate the house for like spring or autumn or whatever. So naturally, as July 4th approached, our yard grew star-spangled. And when I looked at it, I thought, man, we look racist.

I mean, that's kind of what the American flag has come to signify, isn't it? I guess that's probably more or less what it always symbolized internationally. But even now here at home, if I saw somebody in an American flag shirt or an American flag hat or with an American flag decal on their car, my first thought wouldn't be, oh, that person must have a lot of national pride. It would be, oh, that person probably wonders out loud why there isn't a white history month. It's not a perfect rule, of course, but you'll win that bet a lot more than you'll lose it. And that pisses me off. Look, I engage with America's history, warts and all. We are and always have been a nation that redefines the limits of racism.

We're a nation founded on genocide. We're a nation that wrote about the sanctity of freedom in the blood of our slaves. But there's also shit to be proud of in there. I mean, like, you know, we stopped doing some of the horrible shit we were doing. Isn't much to brag about when it's an individual, right, or one group. But when the new generation puts an end to the evil shit, the last generation was doing, that's a genuine accomplishment, especially when it's done by a minority standing against the momentum of an entire country as so often it was. I mean, sure, when America's founders talked about governance by the people, they had a view of what counted as people that's shockingly narrow from a modern perspective. But governance by the people was no less profound for it.

There actually is a route to this country and a thread running throughout it that's worthy of celebration. because America is the thing we criticize, but it's also our criticism. It's both the imperfection and our efforts to perfect it. But today, patriotism has been subsumed by nationalism. The patriotic desire to live up to our national ideals, that was replaced by a national conviction to pretend that we already have. The patriotic duty to criticize our national shortcomings was replaced by a national imperative to deny them. And along the way, all the people,

Patriotic symbols became nationalist logos. The stars, the stripes, the songs, the slogans ground down to hollow totems of tribalism. I mean, nobody would ever accuse me of being a patriotic guy, but I want to be. I was born in 1976, the year the country celebrated its 200th birthday. And that anniversary celebration was such a big deal culturally that to this day, my mom still calls me her bicentennial baby. That occasion was marked with parades and pageantry and proclamations and specially minted coins and specially designed bills and dedications and declarations and a collective national pride that's sort of hard to imagine from a modern perspective.

And as a person born in that year, I've always had a fascination with it. I used to collect bicentennial coins and bills with sort of a tongue-in-cheek idea that the country was actually heralding my coming without realizing it the whole time. And so there's a part of me that's kind of been looking forward to the follow-up. I grew up connected in some small way to a celebration that I was too young to be a part of. And the nation's semi-Quincennial was supposed to be my chance to see what that was like. I mean, in the grand scheme of all the shit Donald Trump is stolen from us, this is almost too petty to bring up. But it still pisses me off.

And since it's such a great metaphor for the way he stole our whole fucking country, I thought it was at least worth venting about. they're talking about your Jesus and interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news bulletin joining me for headlines tonight of the waddle and daw with this podcast he then writing Eli Bosnick fellas

are you ready to make everybody feel at home yeah I think the vibe of the show is basically a spite fence between church and state and everyone listening feels comfortable about that too yeah yeah and I am surprisingly sticky to the touch and I refuse to apologize

for that so this all tracks is what we're saying these all work out and make sense with who we are. Like every time. It's the best. Fucking nail it. Guys, feel like I googled the wrong thing. I feel like I should have scrolled down in the dead job. Yeah, no, no, you're good. Cool.

In our lead story tonight, you might have seen a disturbing viral video over the past week from a vacation Bible school in Lexington, Kentucky, in which children cheer on a mock execution. And if you haven't seen it, you'll be surprised to find that I'm underselling how creepy it is. In the 79 second clip available online, we watch a crowd of rambunctious five and six-year-olds chanting, take him out, blow him up as three men in army fatigues armed with realistic looking rifles, enter from the back of the room, corner a character on stage, fire dozens of shots into him as he mock dies, and then they drag his corpse out of the room. Honestly, the only surprising part about this story is that it was a mock execution.

All right, career day at school. okay everybody's dad works for ice everybody's dad i guess we combined so yeah so this went viral on tic-tac shortly before we recorded last week and i i would have talked about it then but at first we didn't have anything to go on except for the clip and with no context i'd just be describing a fucked-up video to you without context and that'd be kind of silly but since then the pastor at the heart of the thing one dwayne walker has released a video addressing the controversy and his excuse amounts to look, we fake execute people in front of children all the time. And that's it.

Okay, y'all need to check the camp app. All right. Fake kill a guy right there on the schedule after Tetherball. All right. See, yeah, tetherball, exactly. Everybody take out the Lanyard noose that you made earlier. Yeah, right. During the Lanyard News time.

Not the pony beads ones. Those will fall under the human weight. That'll fuck up the noose. No, of course. The issue that people took with the video is that it's a, traumatic thing to put children through and it encourages violence, right? The character and the fake execution is supposed

to represent sin and the pastor excuses it as just like encouraging kids to metaphorically kill the sin within themselves, but the sin character didn't fucking Bud Dwyer this shit. That would have been fucking awesome. Right, that would be a more fucked up video. But what happened...

T-shirt gun comes out of the back of his hand. Is an armed cadre came in and they took him the fuck out. Right? And since Christians are so quick to label LGBTQ people or the woke left as the embodiment of sin. It doesn't take much of a leap to see how this could send the message that it's moral to murder the sinful. The pastor doesn't address any of that shit in the video.

And instead, he pretends that the issue was that we didn't realize the victim was supposed to be a devil character. He's also not dressed as the devil. No, he's not. Not really the point. But yes, that's true. He's in a hoodie and a tracksuit. Was the story about how important it is to catch the. The devil on casual Friday.

Yeah. So in his response video, Walker even dismisses the outrage online as misinformation. But it's a fucking video. You're not like even pretending that it's been doctored in anyway. We already knew that stuff happened both before and after the fucking video. That's no revelation. And if the best you can muster in your defense is, but the person we killed was bad. Hey, I think you were probably better off last week when you just turned off the comments on your fucking Facebook page.

Listen, listen, we showed the kids how to make ricin and poison a demon, a demon, though. And we never even actually poisoned him. We only have poisoned a fake demon, yeah. But so to be clear, the use of guns and prompts and sermons is something we're seeing more and more of. Imagery with modern soldiers, sketches that depict violence and warnings of actual armed conflicts are on the rise in America's churches. And these people are the first to complain about kids being, you know, desensitized of violence. through movies and video games and shit, they don't suddenly stop no one about that shit

once they're the ones doing it. Right? So at best, Dwayne Walker is accidentally traumatizing kids in a way that makes them more likely to act out violently in defense of their faith. And with these people, it is never at best. Isn't that how it works? And in holy, see you later news,

it hasn't been easy for America's first pope. First, his name was Bobby. Tough sell. then I'm pretty sure Donald Trump floated the idea that maybe he should be Pope earlier this year. If Bob was going to be all whiny about war crimes, that sucked. And now the Catholic Church's favorite on again, off against sect, has forced his hand and made him do a magic spell on them. So we're going to talk about it. Well, please tell me it was the force lightning this time.

Hey, okay. Catholic God, quick note for you. if you give Pope Bobby just literally one magic power. That's one. You'll have me and billions of other new people on board like that day. Seriously. Like he gets to force, even if it's just a little bit, he gets to force lightning one guy per year.

Or even just a force choke for like three seconds once a year. Honestly, a really good card trick that I can't figure out. You'd have me and a lot of people. You'd have him. Just do one thing. Think about it. Yeah.

So first, a big thanks to Edward for sending us this story and the excellent pun to scathing news at gmail.com. If you send us atheist news to scathing news at gmail.com, we'll excommunicate the heretic of your choice from our podcast. But remember, that's nothing. Oh, no, don't excommunicate me. No, I love getting TikTok so much. It's not what it means. Damn it. You're stuck with the TikToks.

So let's get to the nothing. The group in question is called the Society of St. Pius X, or SSPX, if you want to sound like you're talking about a snowboarding event. And as much as this is framed in the press as Pope Bob versus a right-wing resurgence within the Catholic Church, SSPX were bigots before it was cool. SSPX was founded in the Swiss village of A Kun in 1970 in response to the Second Vatican Council, which introduced Wokey! is like allowing mass to be celebrated in local languages, dialogue with other religions, and the recognition of other Christian churches. To be clear, not the recognition that other Christian churches are valid, just that they exist.

Well, not even that, right? Like, even that's kind of overstating. And they read that, like, their baptisms count in 1964. And these assholes were like, no, no, we need a breakaway sect over this bullshit. We are the only waterbenders. This is untenable. It's going to make us look silly. We can't, we have to break off.

There can be only one waterpin. They can only be us. Also, this isn't this group's first go around with excommunication. The group's founder, along with four other bishops, were excommunicated in 1988. Pope Benedict lifted the excommunication in 2009. It was the 16th. I love that you were just like, nope, not going to figure out that Roman number. We all know who it was.

Come on. Benny boy. Benny boy, the Nazi one. And we know it was the Nazi. won because he did it just in time for one of those bishops to turn out to be a Holocaust denier. Oh. Yeah. So since then, SSPX has aligned itself with pretty much every bad political takes Catholics are

capable of having on the world stage. So much so that their controversies page on Wikipedia is significantly longer than their Wikipedia page. Yeah. And it's mostly raping children and covering up child rapes. Big surprise there. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, it is. But of course, none of that matter to the Catholic Church. After all, if you kicked out all the bigots, child molesters, and Holocaust deniers, you'd just have mediocre cracker enthusiasts left in the church. Okay, that sounds pretty delightful. Okay, so you'd have, again, another chance to have Heath, but it's not what it is. I'm an alpha cracker enthusiast, and it would be awesome. I'd be the leader of the mediocre cracker enthusiasts.

You don't follow the back. No, what crossed the line is that they ordained bishop, without the Pope's consent. In a statement on Thursday, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who heads up the Holy See's disastery for the doctrine of faith, said the group, quote,

committed an act of schismatic nature, which, under canon law, was punishable with automatic excommunication. The punishment for doing a schism is, we fucking schism you before he'd start to do. We wanted you to want to go to your room. We schismed you. We schism you.

So here's the thing. The Vatican actually went, further than expected and said all priests of SSPX and all Catholics who adhere formally to the group were in schism and excommunicated as well. Vatican also reversed concessions on sacraments made to the society by the late Pope Francis, meaning confessions and marriages administered by its priests are invalid. Okay, I love it when this happens. We've talked about a few of these because now they have a team doing like magical contact tracing.

Like as their job. Yeah. Like grownups as their job have to like figure out the magic that went wrong in this technicality. This is the best. Exactly. And to be fair to the Vatican, no I choose the mayors of Catholicism is more than like a difference of opinion, right? It's directly taking control away from the guy who's supposed to be the conduit between the

church and God. So unlike most of Catholicism's victims, it kind of feels like these guys were asking for it. Okay. I know this isn't how it works. But now I like to think. that if like Pope Bobby sees one of these guys on the street, he has to look like at the person next to him and go, did you hear somebody?

I didn't, I don't think I heard anybody by the song. I didn't hear. That's nothing, nothing at all. I'm just, I'm going to walk through this mostly empty space over here while swinging my arms wildly. Just because it's empty. It'll be fine.

Now, like I said, a lot of media, especially conservative media, are portraying this as like a much bigger deal than it is, right? They wanted to seem like Pope Bobby's barely noticeable, noticeable liberalism is tearing the church apart. But as I said above, these guys were too conservative and started their own church over anti-beer and anti-hooker views in the 1960s. Plus, they're fucking tiny.

According to the Guardian article, I read the group claims 150 to 200,000 members worldwide. But one, that's using Catholic counting system of if you were born when your parents went to our church, you count. Yeah, that's a Catholic birth. Right tourism. Lots of that shouldn't count. For sure, that's an inflated number. And two, that's also a numerical claim that could be made about the following of this podcast.

And nobody ever asks us about our relationship with the Pope. I wish they would. But just to be clear, y'all are also excommunicated from Catholicism listeners. You guys too. Oh, one? Yeah. So, yeah. Run away.

A bunch of bigots find themselves, once again, two right wing for the trans people are destroying God's gift not to do any abortions, Pope, and it has rocked a tiny fraction of some European bigots. We'll keep you in the loop if Bobby starts digging guys up for a trial. And on that note, we're going to take a quick break for a word from this week's sponsor, us. Why would you put the lime in the coconut? I don't know. It's the lyrics.

Just say it. You're supposed to be teaching me. I am teaching you. No, you're not teaching, Sarah. You're explaining this difference. What? Mr. President? Tyler, big guy.

How's my favorite intern doing? Not great, Mr. President. You know, our fair is a total bust. And what's worse, it looks like Godawful Movies Live here in Washington, D.C. on August 14th, is going to sell out before we do. What are you talking about?

All anyone can talk about is what a sell-out millivin-in-lin-lini is for coming. First of all, it's vanilla ice. And second of all, that's not what I mean. I meant that they're almost out of tickets over at godoffelphim MoviesLive.com. God-awful MoviesLive.com? God-awful movies,

Live.com or check the show notes, but act fast because they're selling out. You hear that, Sarah? We got to come up with an even bigger number. Bigger than Harry Nilsson's coconut. God damn it, we have to try. Impossible. A man wrote the Bible. A horse which one. If it's a legitimate rate. It's a slut, right? Cooking can be fine. Hey, I'm glad of a man. This week in massage. We talked a little while ago about a concerted effort. the UK government is making to combat growing misogyny in schools. And I'm sure it won't surprise you at all to learn that in America, we're not doing anything remotely like that. In fact, we're doing

the opposite by dismantling DEI offices and initiatives and colleges. We're effectively making the problem worse. See, for those of us who have been watching the rise of the online menosphere for the last 10 years, it's no surprise that misogyny in the classroom is on the rise. We've watched as it seeped out of the dark corners of a deep web and into the mainstream. And a lot of people are like, holy shit, where did this go from? And we're like, if only somebody had been warning about it on the podcast segment for 10 fucking years. And yes, you can blame a ton of it on the misogynist in chief.

But you've got to remember that it was the Joe Rogon Manosphere jackasses that put him over the hump in 2024 and got him reelected. He's both a cause and a symptom. According to recent studies, as many as two out of every five young men in America trust at least one prominent misogynistic voice online. And that's when you exclude Donald Trump. I'm just talking about YouTubers and podcasters and shit. I recently read a story about female professors in America's colleges

and how they're increasingly targeted by online harassment campaigns for teaching woke ideas about gender, regardless of what they're teaching. And those campaigns are working. In the article, they cited a number of women who left academia altogether over it. But it's not just a misogynist actively making women's lives harder. I also came across the story this week

that should be good news. But thanks to a bunch of anti-vaxxers is covered in a really frustrating astras. See, back in 2007, Australia started aggressive campaign to eliminate cervical cancer through widespread use of the HPV vaccine. And it worked.

Australia is on the verge of being the first nation to effectively eliminate cervical cancer. if the anti-vax idiots don't fuck it up. See, just as public health officials were ready to break out the champagne, they noticed that the vaccination rates were falling. Now, some of that is inevitable. The closer we get to eliminating a disease, the less people feel threatened by it, the less they adopt the preventative measures. But this trend has basically been put on steroids by anti-vaxxers and their bullshit conspiracy theories.

See, the HPV vaccine has been a special target for them, probably because demonizing it doesn't endanger men. and they're putting one of medical sciences great accomplishments at risk because of it. I don't want to spend another week just giving you bad news, so I want to close on one of those nature-healing itself kind of stories, because in Western Michigan, the Catholic Church recently had to sell a few of its hospitals. And when a secular nonprofit group took them over, basically the first thing they did was allow patients to finally access reproductive care, which, of course, they were denied as long as the hospital was Catholic.

And look, we've talked a lot on this segment about the dangers of turning our hospitals over to professional misogynists who think they're pre-angels. So it's nice to see things swing the other direction for a change. So with that brief distraction from all the other horrible shit I'm always talking about, I'll wrap things up and hand you back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli. Thank you, Lucinda. And in the Alpha and the Omaga, New... Oh, well, does that. You might remember when... Donald Trump workshoped the idea that he is personally the son of God and the savior of humanity.

I do remember that. That came in the form of an image depicting himself as a magical healer wearing a robe and injecting John Stewart's forehead with the power of the light ball that's in his other hand. While someone gave Stewart an over-the-blanket hand job from outside of the frame and also several people watched all that happen, but they're kind of looking away because they know what's happening. Also, some eagles were there and a fighter jet, a flying shark, I think, and shredder from the Ninja Turtles, all in the sky. It went over kind of badly when he posted that. Well, luckily for Trump, he's got somebody in the administration to help moderate his views

and present a more even-handed take. Of course, that would be Stephen Miller, who said last week that Donald was sent by God, but not God or Jesus himself. So it's a lot more chill. It's a totally chill stance now. Assistant to the regional guys. That's still pretty good, though. Yeah. I like it.

Yeah. The funny thing about Trump's cronies is that they all consider themselves to be these finger-steepling evil masterminds, but they are constantly having to debase themselves by saying stupid shit like this. Like if in order to capture James Bond, Dr. know had to dress like an adult baby and shit himself. He would have tried something else, Stephen. Yeah.

Stephen's just doing the steepling, but none of the mastermind. Right. He's happy to do any of this bullshit to help out Trump. So here's the statement we got from Stephen Miller. He posted this on Twitter. Quote, it is impossible. Impossible, that was my emphasis, to review the events of the last decade and conclude that it's anything other than divine providence that Donald J. Trump is the president of the United

States on the year of America 250, July 4th, 2026. Feels like a threat, right? It feels like a threat from God. Yeah, no, but if he spun straight out of that into like a mathematical proof that an entire nation of people couldn't possibly be this stupid, I'd at least have to hear him out, right? Yeah, yeah, I'd be listening. So just in case the pure evil of Stephen Miller wasn't shining through with that vague nonsense about God endorsing Donald Trump sometimes, but not always. We also got some crimes against humanity from Miller last week. Well, okay, in fairness, although that's crazy for me to say, some deliberation about crimes against humanity. He's toying with the idea of a new one. So the Supreme Court got fucking one

single thing right amidst a series of terrible and wrong. And they confirmed that our Constitution does in fact say what it fucking says about birthright citizenship. Well, that was terrifying for Stephen Miller because he's a neo-Nazi. And he called the ruling National Self-Obliteration. And now he's reportedly talking with other administration officials about a policy response. the idea is being knocked around, include a ban on any foreigner entering the country while pregnant at all, full ban, or perhaps the suggestion from Sean Davis of the Federalist. That would be forced sterilization for immigrants or maybe visitors too. Wow.

Sean, I really need you to finish Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, my man. Look, I'm so glad you're loving the first. half. It doesn't end well for your side, buddy. Cut to an immigrant in Sean's office with a pair of dirty tongs, a sharp and slinky. They're covered in blood going, oh, you meant you sterilizing us.

Fuck. I'm, now you tell us. I got to go fix the thing. Fuck. All right. Just circling back to that idea of divine providence, that means the god of the universe is actively guiding what happens.

And this was all part of the big plan. So let's just do it. a quick review of some highlights from that plan that are being implied here. God decided he needed a messenger and he got in touch with some reality TV personalities and, well, he got turned down by a bunch of them and he settled for Donald Trump. Then God made Trump get elected in 2016. Then moving ahead a year. God did an eclipse in the summer of 2017 to celebrate and told Trump, just don't stare at it. Trump stared at it. And God soured a little bit because he had picked an idiot. But God kept the plan rolling. Then in 2018, God's divine emissary appeared on national television with

toilet papers stuck to a shoe while he was trying to get on Air Force One. So I think God decided to pivot at that moment and he picked Joe Biden as the new emissary. So we let Joe Biden win the election in 2020. But then obviously God saw that debate in 2024 and he got back together with Trump, like a weird breakup back together scenario. The master plan from the omniscient creator of the universe, everybody. That's what I just described. Master plan. Yeah. And in putting the nihilist journalist news. Fantastic. Not really.

If Ken Ham as a nemesis in this world, it's objective fact. He's been in a big fight with it his entire career and the fact that he's losing infinity to nothing hasn't slowed him down a bit. But it has left him in a decades-long perpetual snit, which we got to see on full display recently when the Cincinnati Inquirer had the audacity to talk about his theme park objectively in the news. In their headline, they identified his park as anti-science because of the way that the entire reason it exists is to be contrary to science.

So he did all, yeah, he did a whole little video where he decried it as fake news. Christians, Republicans, idiots in general on the internet, their entire existence is you are. Like, that's their whole thing is just you are.

At least Kenham has like an amusing accent. Yeah. He says that. Eli, what's the Kenham you are? Yeah. That is. Yep.

You are. So. Very accurate. It's got the wall. Yeah. Yeah. No, so, of course, the Arc Encounter theme park is celebrating its 10-year anniversary this year. And if you'd like to celebrate along, you can come out this weekend.

The tri-state free thinkers of organizer protest this Sunday, July 12th, starting at noon. I'm going to be there along with Seth Andrews, Mandisa Thomas, Godless Engineer, and a bunch of others. Also, the day before that, I'm doing a ticketed event with Seth Andrews and Cincinnati. So check the show notes if you don't already have tickets for that. Sorry, I swear I'm doing a headline. Noah, between me and he, you never have to apologize for getting distracted midheadline. Okay, yeah, no, that's fair. That's fair.

But yeah, so for his 10-year anniversary, Ham sent out a press release to all the local papers highlighting all the events and speakers and shit that they're going to bring in to mark 10 years of deceiving children about reality. And some newspapers just printed his press release more or less verbatim, like the Northern Kentucky Tribune because a lot of papers are lazy and they'll advertise for you for free if you format your advertisement like a news story. And Ham was sure to highlight. them in his angry snit video so he could contrast them with the Cincinnati Inquirer, which

used his press release only as an inspiration for a different story about how foolish it his park is. Okay. Having lived in Cincinnati, I can tell you for sure, anything with the title, Northern Kentucky at the front, bad sign. Bad sign. There's a few good things going on there, but mostly bad sign. So that's basically the difference between like New York Times and strip mall in northern New Jersey near Eli's House times in terms of like journalistic integrity.

Big Gino would never let Tom Cotton speak on behalf of his publication. Second of all, it's an outlet center. Okay, you absolutely would if Tom Cotton was willing to publish that everybody was not. Tom Cotton reached out.

You actually, that's what you seem like a, you look like a fucking idiot. Can't tell people to kill. a million. Not to be clear. The article wasn't just this park is so full of shit.

Included in his guest speakers for the 10 anniversary are a couple of astronauts. And a reporter saw that and thought, why do fuck would astronauts be celebrating a park that lies about how science works?

And she decided that that would make a good story. And over the course of the story, she reached out to Bill Nye as like a stand-in for what science thinks about this shit. And it was Nye who labeled the park specifically anti-science.

And when, It's called anti-science in the headline. Anti-science is in quotes to indicate that she's using someone else's label for the park. So like good journalism all around, which is, of course, why it pissed off Ken Ham so much. Okay, but just for the record, it's just regular anti-science. Yes, right. Yeah. No, absolutely.

Either way it's still a thing. Yeah. So anyway, so over the course of his video, he berates her for doing her job and insists that a real journalist would have just printed his press release without all this fact-checking and source-sighting bullshit. But hey, Kenny, if you think anti-science is bad, how much you stroll on down to the entrance of your park on July 12th, a bit afternoon?

I promise to call you much worse. Yeah. Give you something to really be angry about. And finally tonight in Killababy PPA News. Oh, for fuck's sake, man. You really belaboring that fetus thing you were doing. If you're like me, that I know I am, you find yourself wondering what conservative Christians think is happening in the world today. That is a great fucking question, yes.

Right, because like everything's obviously very, very bad because of Donald Trump. So you have to ask yourself, are they blaming demons for the price of eggs now? Is Antifa raising gas prices? If the left is responsible for all the bad things around them, why does it even matter that, Donald Trump is president. Okay, I think the question of like, what do they think is happening? The answer is n slash a. They're not thinking what's happening.

We do not know what it's like to be a rock, but we can imagine what it's like to be a Trump supporter. Yeah, that's fair. Well, we might never have those answers. But this week, we got an insight into the kind of things conservatives are worried about, namely that the EPA needs to check the drinking water for traces of the abortion pill. Well, we had a good run. We had a good run of baby killing.

Yeah, no, it's time we floor right into the sunset. Hey, there it is. So first off, a big thanks to Jamie for sending us this story to Skathing News at Gmail.com. Jamie, for sending us atheist news to Skathing News at Gmail.com, we would never blame that truly atrocious opening pun I used on you. We know you'd rather die than provide such inferior wordplay, Jamie. scathing news at gmail.com. It's honestly, it's the only reason I felt okay putting that shitty fluoride

into the sunset punning your story, man. So this particular panic comes to us from the Washington Stand, the news outlet of the SPLC-listed hate group Family Research Council. They're making a concerted effort to be on our show every week with a front page that boasts headlines

like, why are so many Americans voting for socialists, illegal immigrant charged with illegal voting, And I swear I'm not making this up. A headline that just says, Christianity is normal. It does. You're being weird.

By Joshua Arnold is my article. And Eli put a picture in the notes. It's insane. It's just like a family out in the woods for some reason. So like he wrote this article, Christianity is normal. And then basically it's like, just look at this normal. Christian family that carried a bench

into the woods to take a family picture. Normal. And a tripod. And everyone's just been crying. They're wet. It's nuts. They don't fit on the bench either. Now. Bring two and smush them together. No. No deal at the cracker barrel for that one.

Yeah. So with those journalistic standards in place, it's no wonder that they published an article this week entitled Pressure Mounce on EPA to Test Drinking Water for traces of abortion pill. And spoiler alert, no it doesn't because no, it isn't. Well, I mean, pressure is mounting in the form of the article I'm writing is still technically true, I guess. We have dozens who are reading the whatever the fuck this was called Washington Stand. There was another article

called The West is the best that they linked. It wasn't theirs. They linked to it. It was like a lesser They didn't want to be associated. They just wanted people to know about it. So this article comes to us from Dan Hart, who looks like if No Nut November could be a style of eyeglasses. And safety goggles for like early December probably, yeah. Sure, sure. Yeah, he's one of those

guys who had to grow like a beardlet so people could tell where his chin was. Yeah. But it didn't work. Not really. I don't still. I still don't know. Don't tell people about that. It fades. So here's how Dan begins. Quote, last year, an astonishing report was published,

revealing that the global rate of infertility has surged 84% between 1990 and 2021. It further found that in 2021 alone, over 110 million women suffered from infertility with about one in 10 women of reproductive age being infertile. The increase in infertility largely coincides with the rollout of the abortion pill, which was first released in Europe in the late 80s

and the early 90s and in the U.S. in 2000. So I guess then the decline in fertility in America should be a couple of decades behind the one in Europe where your assertion is demonstrably incorrect, huh? Why not talk about that? It largely coincides with a like basically two-decade range that I made up. But it doesn't work the way Noah said. Yeah. He continues, quote, in the wake of the dramatic increase, experts and state officials are pointing out that there have been no new studies in almost three decades on how Mifapristone, is affecting the nation's water supply.

Also, I was thinking about it. No studies in 30 years about a dial-up affecting the water supply. Or Pokemon. A lot of these things coincided with some decades. A lot of these things coincided with some decades. Earlier this month, 14 Republican State Attorney's General sent a letter to the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA,

urging the body to test drinking water for contaminants related to Mipipristone and birth control pills, end quote. Yeah, okay, that's not how it works. Mifipristone breaks down in the body pretty much immediately. So unless our baby killing Intiva squad is spiking the public water like a punch bowl at homecoming, that's nothing. And we're not doing that. Bing.

Yeah. Okay, so I just 14 is so many more Republican state attorneys, General than are demanding the release of the rest of the Epstein files. It's so weird. It's crazy. Well, they care about kids. Oh, okay. So Dan spends the rest of the article conflating birth rate and fertility because they are the

same to him. But we did get some absolutely terrifying quotes from Kansas State Rep. Practicing physician and vice chairman of the committee on health and human services in the Kansas Health of Representatives Ron Bryce, including this quote. there are also people in the bureaucracies, people at the agencies, people that carry out these things that are constantly putting up roadblocks, he insisted. And so my impression is there's been a push from a large contingency of powerful people who don't want this study done. They don't want to know the answer. They want it to be in question because they have an agenda. In the legislature,

I've noticed that sometimes one side will be arguing an opinion, other side will be arguing an opinion. We don't stop and just look at what the facts are. This is one of those times where we really should look at the facts. No, no, you're lying. The person refusing to look at facts is exactly you. You're doing the U.R thing I was talking about before. We covered this conspiracy theory back in March. And here's the actual facts that I mentioned from an environmental chemist.

who I'm assuming knows a bit more than Danny cum goggles about this topic. Well, now, according to Sebastian Sovey at the University of Montreal, the effect of trace amounts of other drugs, to be clear, not Mifififristone, that might barely show up in the water supply, also nothing. Here's the quote. If you were to drink two liters of water a day for 70 years, at the end of those 70 years,

you would have taken 1% of the normal daily dose of someone taking that prescribed medication. And look, if you can't trust a guy named Sebastian Soave about pregnancy stuff, what are we even trying to save it? Exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Well, ignore everything that Heath just said because he, Ron, has been looking at the facts.

Quote, a study that was done about a year ago on female frogs found that when they were excited, exposed to Miphypristone, that it is considered the level that is in our drinking water today. They had half as many babies, he explained. And so we're looking at fertility rates that are very low in the United States and in Western civilization. West is best. The genetics have not changed. The genetic pool is the same as has been for generations.

Oh, then I guess immigration isn't as big a problem as you guys have been letting on, huh? It's either environmental factors. or its behavioral factors. It's probably a combination of the two, but it's an existential crisis. The birth rate and the fertility rate that we're looking at, we really need to get to the bottom of the environmental factors that might be contributing to this.

And it's just obvious that we need to look at the levels of Mifeperston in our water. And real quote. Sounds like Danny Comggles and the GOP are doing that, refusing to look at facts because of their agenda thing, like Danny was complaining about in this. article. Our birth rate is down and the very obvious correct solution is more immigration, especially younger people from places that tend to have more babies. That would be the very obvious answer. Also good for the economy. Well, it's always, it's always fun watching them try to dodge that

and pretend not to be racist, right? Because they're like, oh, but their, um, their culture has way more. What do you got? Malin. There is. So yeah. Once again, Christian men will believe literally anything except that when women stop being enslaved they stop fucking them. I know that's not exactly news, but then again, if it was, it wouldn't belong in the Washington stand. Well, there you

go. And with the knowledge of yet another imaginary thing Christians have managed to be afraid of, we're going to wrap the headlines up for the week. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. And when we come back, we'll get virtual. Podcast listener, when it comes to new reporting on our radio program,

we try to bring you the latest atheist news with a brevity and humor to keep you chuckling and informed in equal measure, except for sometimes when I get distracted and accidentally kind of sort of list all the times Greg Lach called Jolostina pedophile for five pages. My point is... I thought that was informative and humorous.

So did the patrons, but the regular listeners never heard it. That's true. Give us money. And you can hear. the parts of the show. Edgutainment. Exactly. Edge being the operative word there. Heath and Noah, welcome back to the program.

Thanks. My point is, we keep it brief. We keep it tight here. Do we on scaling it? Like this intro? Yeah. But sometimes we come across a piece of news so bad shit that every word deserves a dissection.

Today is one such day. And we'll be examining one such piece of news. It's an article entitled, Christian missionaries have found a new virtual mission territory by Fiona Murphy in partnership between NPR and the Religious News Service. It begins. Ten figures stand in a circle inside a Japanese-style penthouse. The book is happening.

The lights are low. A white stormtrooper huddles besides a large orange cat. who bows his head and clears his throat. Noah's keys can be heard clinking into the bull. Heath's keys can be heard as he takes a bump from a fancy mirror on the table at the party that he's also definitely at. Noah can be seen clocking which key was Heath's. I got keys for days. Don't worry.

This is the cat talking now, everybody. Father God. Lines? Should we switch your lines? I did a key bump just now. Let's switch. We're going to switch the lines. Switch you up to lines.

Yeah. You said Father God, some guy? Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. So there's the orange cat now. Father God, just thank you for this opportunity to go and reach out to people who need you. Said the cat in the voice of Kurt Curtis, a Christian missionary, in his 60s from Texas.

Nope. Can be heard from Heath, followed by the noise of Heath, carefully grabbing that mirror and leaving without tipping it at all. The room is virtual, but the prayer is not. It is, though. Guide us and direct us to people who have a need in their heart, Curtis continues. Also, I'm not a cat, for real. I'm a cat in the VR only.

For three years, Christian missionaries with the evangelical organization crew, that's CRU crew, because they're too edgy for proper spelling. have gathered every Friday. They're like a fine wine. Exactly. Have gathered every Friday in VR chat, a popular social platform where millions of people

from around the world interact through avatars resembling anime characters, animals, robots, and humans. Users can explore thousands of virtual worlds where they talk, flirt, play games, and, in the missionaries case, spread the gospel. Okay, so as an avid user and promoter of VR,

I think it's a bit much to describe any VR platform as popular. Also, just for the record, for those of you unfamiliar, describing VR chat as a place to flirt, play games, and talk is like describing the Orgy Dome at Burning Man as a refreshment tent because they have bottled water. Yeah, and you're about to, like, blow a cat furry in that orgy dome, and he's like, wait, wait, wait. Does anybody have a moment to talk about Christ Jesus?

just the worst, I've had this exact nightmare. Yeah, recently. The worst. Yeah. As more people build friendships and spend significant portions of their lives in virtual spaces, Cruz missionaries are adapting familiar evangelistic practices to reach them. At first, we were like, what is it like here? Who comes here?

Why are they here? said Frank Kugowski, the digital strategist for crew, who led the idea of crew missionaries purchasing VR headsets. It's for God's stuff. He insisted to his mom when she asked why he was playing a video game when he still owed her for that new phone. Yeah. He said the same thing when she walked into his room and there was like a stormtrooper blowing a cat on the computer. Yeah, right. His head is bowed in prayer.

His head is bread and prayer. For science and religion science. I need this in a headset, guys. Fuck. After praying, the missionaries pull up their virtual maps and choose a world to enter, which Kugalski described as an art of its own. 20 users is the sweet spot, he said. Enough activity without chaos.

Once inside a world, the missionaries split up and seek out small groups chatting in quieter corners. They begin casually. Cool avatar, Kugwalski might say. Did you make it? After some conversation, they turn to religion. Is faith a part of your life at all? Or I was reading in my Bible earlier today? Yeah, no, I can confirm that if somebody walks up to you uninvited in a VR space and they're

obviously 11 years old. You've got three minutes max before they go all Jesus or start feeling you out for weird sex stuff. It's fun when it's both. Yeah, that's fun. I meant the sex and the Jesus, not the latter two of the three. There was no comma to be clear. That's a parenthetical.

Both of the last two only. Read the script. In retelling one of his success stories, Kugulski. It's Kuligowski. It's just like a simple. Yep, it's just pretty easy name. That's crazy that you're making stuff up like that. Sound crazy right now.

Describes a virtual world in which he and a colleague were talking to a woman from China who said she wished she could go to church. They invited her to a virtual church. And as the three of them stepped through a fourth user who had been quietly listening in, slipped in behind them. That encounter eventually led to a virtual church service in a connection with a real life campus ministry. The fourth guy just walking and jerking off.

So clearly sex. Everybody's like, I want to have sex and they're fucking, they're just cock blocking and beaver damning everybody in VR on their cock blockulous quest. I hate these people so much. That's been one of my great memories, Kugugwowski said. My guess is there. Eli has included a picture of what I assume is this church service in our notes. and it consists of seven human avatars and two purple Godzilla's

standing together in the old Dell computer wallpaper. Yeah, and the Godzilla's, they're just standing there being like, guys, fucking too much roleplay you're committing. Let's fucking go. Really? What are you method? My kids asleep. We've got to hurry up.

Founded in 1951 as Campus Crusade for Christ, Crew has traditionally focused on evangelism and discipleship among college students and other young people, but in recent years has ventured into video games and now virtual reality. Heidi Campbell, a Texas A&M University professor who studies digital religion, said efforts like Cruz date to the 1990s when the Billy Graham Foundation began training Christians to start conversations in online chat rooms. Quote, it's the work of seeing these digital spaces as like the new religious frontier. for evangelism in many respects, Campbell said. Guys, you know how everybody loves us on the subways?

I have the perfect thing. It's like a subway superhigh way of information. We haven't tapped it. Their presence in VR chat, however, is not unanimously accepted. Well, that's one way of putting it. They're not even animously accepted. Nobody wants those fuckers around. A thread in the VR chat subreddit questioning the influx of Christians drew nearly 200 comments.

One user listed Sunset Bar and Midnight Rooftop among the worlds where missionaries are most active. Several commenters raised concerns that the missionaries may bring anti-LGB Plus views into VR chat, a platform known for embracing diverse gender identities. Campbell said, concerns that missionaries could upend the culture of an online space or common. I think that's one of the big criticisms that people come in and try to kind of take over and turn it into something it's not, Campbell said. Whether missionaries are from crew or other online missionary groups, there's this idea that

they should really be a part of the culture, the same kind of rules that apply about adapting to foreign countries, end quote. Yeah, which Christians have always been great at. Once a colonizer, always a colonizer, okay? Exactly, yeah. The missionaries who joined crew's weekly meetings range from Jeffrey Powell, who has logged thousands of hours in VR chat,

to Curtis, who said he rarely uses the platform outside of evangelization. Powell, a 28-year-old multimedia artist and computer scientists, said he was drawn to VR chat for its imaginative potential, allowing users to create, quote, whatever worlds or characters you want, end quote. But after spending seven years on VR chat,

Powell came to see a community often plagued by loneliness, alcoholism, suicidal ideation, and explicit sexual activity. Circle the one that doesn't belong. This is nonsense. How does alcohol do anything to do with this thing? Including using the space to share pornography and have virtual group sex. In recent years, allegations of sexual harassment and children gaining access to virtual reality strip clubs have made head. headlines. More dangerous still, they might run into Christian missionaries in there.

As I got to know the community more, I really started to feel the hurt, said Powell, who helped crew members navigate VR chat in the group's early days and remains its resident technical experts. I knew that the people in VR chat were real people that God wanted me to reach, end quote. So I stepped in to prevent all the joy and orgasms and ruin the vibes entirely, just like I normally do everywhere else. Just like God intended. God, he's fucking ruining so many of these amazing fuck rooms.

Just trying to be in a fuck room dressed as a cat. For Stuart Freeman, connecting with a pastor in VR chat, changed everything in his life. After a six-year relationship ended, Freeman fell into what he calls his lowest point and began spending his nights

in VR chat, logging more than 10,000 hours overall, often playing from after work until 5 a.m. Okay, without knowing when he gets off of work, that's meaningless. He could get off at three. He said he threw himself into the world's darker side.

I was juggling relationships with different women in that space, he said. I'm going to get to the dark park. The dark part in a minute. So it was going great, and then a missionary showed up. So I'm standing next to another purple Godzilla. Dicks are out, just hard as a towel rack.

And he's given this long fucking speech. I'm going to get to the dark part in a second, but it's the worst. What the fuck? And chasing every way that the space would try and claim that it would have a reason for hope, end quote. That changed when he met Jason Poling, a California pastor from Cornerstone Church, who started visiting him in his VR chat homeworld, the private world each user creates for themselves to read the Bible and walk through scripture with him every week. As crazy as it sounds, God used virtual reality to call someone into that space to lay out the gospel in its fullness, said Freeman, who grew up Christian but said he only called himself that because his parents did. It was the first time where I believed the gospel.

Yeah, nobody loves turning Christian more than people who are already Christian, am I right? After being ministered to in VR, he said he sent God calling him to do that work full time. eventually selling his business and moving to Orlando to join Cruz Jesus Film Project and help other people in VR find God. Bring, what's that God? You want me to go to fuck rooms and just figure out Christianity? No problem, I guess.

I guess I'll do it. You said, I guess I'll have to jack off to a lot of Godzilla's. Your mission? Okay. It'll be for Jesus. Mom, I need a fucking VR answer. One of the main things that's nearest and dearest to my heart

is stepping into the darkest of those places of getting to know the individuals in that space, growing in relationship with them, and then pointing them to the answer that they're searching for, Freeman said. One of my favorite things about VR is that when I meet people like you there, it's usually in an area where I can attack you with a lightsaber or some shit. Okay. You remember the funeral raid in World of Warcraft? Yes, I do.

we can start raiding missionary stuff apparently. And it's like the law of the open seeds. Yes, absolutely. No rules. We know what the fuck we want. Right. So yeah, so that's the article. In conclusion, even if you create an imaginary space of your own entirely constructed from one, zeros in your imagination,

Christians will still invade it and act like they have a divine fucking right to be there. Thanks, Eli. Even though you did the least amount of work. I found the article. Yeah, you did. Found it. Before we loosen our grip on your earholes this week, I wanted to let you know that this is your last chance to come see me in Cincinnati. Daddy, I'm going to be there this Sunday, July 11th.

Seth Andrews is going to be with me. Seth's going to be doing a talk. I'm basically going to be doing a 30-minute diatribe. We're going to do some audience interaction stuff. We're going to give away some prizes. It's going to be a ton of fun. There are still tickets available. Check the show notes for a link.

And if you're coming, be sure to stick around for the protest at the arc park the following day, less than an hour's drive away. Anyway, that's all the blast me we've got for you tonight. But we're back in 10,000, 22 minutes with more. If can't wait that long, be in a look up for a brand-new episode of our sister's hot friend Godolfo Movies, debuting at 7 Meanston on Tuesday and an even newer episode of a half-stitchel citation needed, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, this show would get disqualified on a technicality if I neglected to thank Heath Enroy for being the show's anchor, Lucinda Lusions for being the rudder, and Eli Bosnick for being the other important boat part that I would know about if I knew more about boats. I also want to thank Gordon for spreading this week's Farnsworth quote and for reminding us that the monkey men haven't gotten any less filthy over the years. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best bipeds. Danny James Ryan Mark Dead Eye, Nick Slider, Lauren Travis, Angie, Victoria Clockwork, just me, Dr. B, Robert, Jonathan, Pax, Chris, Dennis, Kellynne Scott, Aaron, George W., Kilgore, Trout,

and other Robert who are so sexy YouTube would have demonetize the video if we'd put it up this week. Together, these 23 listeners, ex-presidents, Vonnegut characters, and undersized sandwiches came together to help kill God this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the deocidal intentions it takes to give us money, but if you do, you can make a per episode donation, at patreon.com slash scathing atheist and thereby earn 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 scathingatheas.com. And if you'd like to help but not in a money kind of way,

you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show and following us on social media and speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us and our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote the music who was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments or death threats, and find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingaithetist.com. for him to pronounce evangelization, guys. There's no saving it. What do we explain to the,

hey, podcast listening, I couldn't say a word. I'll come in and I'll go, evangelization. Yes, exactly. Evangelization. This content is canned credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm to their hotline at 617-249455 or on their website at creator accountability network.org.

This podcast is a production of puzzle and a thunderstorm LLC and was created without the use of generative AI, its contents may not be used for AI training. Copyright 2026, all rights reserved.