The Scathing Atheist - 696: Ark Park's Narcs Edition

Episode Date: July 16, 2026

In this week’s episode, Heath is in Paris and Eli’s in Washington and Noah’s just showing back up from the Ark Park protest. And somehow we still managed to get a full blown episode together for you.---Come see us live in Washington, DC on August 14th!: https://www.atlasarts.org/events/god-awful-movies/---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/

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and by the new solution for all those irritating election texts just setting your phone on fire. Just setting your phone on fire. Pretty much the only thing you'd actually miss is this show. And now, the Skathing Atheist. Hi, my name is Ben. I've provided the farms with quote in the past for episodes 426, 467, and 614. As somebody who had to have both hips replaced at the age of 40, thanks in part to a loss of the biological wheel of misfortune, I can, for certain, say that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy monkey people.

It's Thursday. It's July 16th. And I'm flying solo, actually, for the intro this week. I just grabbed them, It's Thursday from a previous episode. But it's okay, because I can just do all the lines. I'm no illusions. I'm Eli Bosnick. I'm Heath.

This, no, doesn't work as a solo. script for reasons that seem obvious in retrospect. Anyway, on this week's episode, I'll relive one of my all-time favorite fuck-offs. Heath and Eli of old will join me for some headlines of old, and Michael Marshall will be here for something even less topical. But first, the diatri. I suppose that if the Ark Park employees that were crashing our protest had chosen to interrupt Seth Andrews during his speech, he might have politely engaged with them.

and killed them with kindness. If they'd chosen to interrupt godless engineer during his speech, he might have gotten into a fiery debate with them. If they'd interrupted Mandisa Thomas, she might have drowned them in facts, counter examples, and righteous indignation. But they chose to interrupt me. So I told them to go fuck themselves.

What I'm saying is that everybody's got their own approach. So let me set the scene for you. Last weekend, the tri-state free thinkers put together their 10th annual protest of Ken Ham's Ark Encounter theme park. That park is an explicitly religious institution with an explicitly religious goal that's getting subsidized with Kentucky taxpayer dollars to lie about science. It is as gross a violation of church-state separation as it is a violation of logic. And so once a year, the tri-state free thinkers, in conjunction with the Kentucky atheist,

gather a bunch of people together to wave signs at the cars driving into the park and remind the park's ownership that there are still secular watchdogs keeping an eye on them. And this year, they invited me to come and give a short talk as part of the proceedings. So when I get there, I'm pretty much immediately accosted by a few arc encounter employees that have come to shoot some video of our protest, a contingent that our favorite listener, April Poff dubbed the Ark Narks. And they're nice enough at first, keeping to themselves, shooting their little videos, huddling in their little prayer circles. But eventually they decide they want to pone some atheists. So one of the organizers of the protest comes to me and he says,

hey, the Ark Park guys want to engage with some of our speakers on camera in a civil dialogue. Would you be interested? And I'm like, thanks for the offer, man, but I'm not your guy for civil dialogue. I get too angry for that kind of shit. So instead they turn to Seth Andrews, right? Mr. Civil Dialogue, who not only agrees to talk with him, but continues the conversation even after the sky unloaded and he's just getting drenched with rain, still polite enough to keep talking to him.

And as I suspected, when they said civil attention. turned out that all they meant was without the word fuck in it. Several of the speakers and attendees chatted with their guy, and I don't think a single one of them would have described the conversation as civil. He was belligerent, insulting, pompous, and dismissive. He talked over people. He ignored their questions. He lied.

He misrepresented. Basically, he had his silly little how to argue with Atheus flowchart, and he was just working his way through that regardless of what was set around him. And of course, the indomitable Christian privilege that tells them that they are owed everything and belong everywhere could not abide the fact that I had no interest in talking to them. So they kept pushing me to have a conversation in a very rapy fret boy at the bar kind of way. Like I could not possibly have been more emphatic that I had no interest in talking to them. Anyway, fast forward to my talk. And during my talk where it's already pouring fucking rain, I'm addressing them directly a bit because my whole talk is about how

bad the arc park sucks and they're there representing the park, right? Eventually, I guess they decided that they don't want to be such an easy stooge for me during the rest of my speech. So they start to shuffle off to a less conspicuous location. And that's when we get the following exchange. All the talk he had about all these new hotels and these restaurants and these businesses that we're going to open up to serve all of the customers that were going to come flooding into his art park. And you guys, and you guys see them? Oh, did I scare him off? Oh, I didn't even have to say fuck wow all right so no I don't want to have any kind of civil conversation with you you lie to children for a living and that's disgusting thank you speaking of lying

they also he says I'm scared hey how won't you shut the fuck up and let us do our thing so okay so anyway so speaking of the lies they told I was I was looking on my way in did anybody see any of these new hotels and businesses because I came in the back way a pair of didn't notice any of those. Now, some people at the event thought I should have been more polite. But to be fair, some also thought I should have been less polite, myself included. Look, if you want to engage with Christian apologists and debate them and try to change their minds or try to score points for anybody watching along, that's great.

I'm glad there are people willing to do that. But I'm not one of those people. I don't know anybody a goddamn conversation. I don't know anybody an explanation. I don't know anybody a debate. And I certainly don't owe one goddamn second of my life to anybody who wants to disingenuously engage with me in a performance piece where I'm a prop. I don't owe them a goddamn thing.

And they're lucky I even deigned apart with a perfectly good fuck off for them. Joining me for headlines this week is nobody, as you might recall from the intro. Heath is in Paris and Eli is at his wife's family reunion. so, you know, they're both tied for how much fun they're having, I bet. But don't worry, we knew this was coming, so we recorded a few extra headlines over the last few weeks that, while no longer topical, are at least still new. And we also pre-recorded a word from this week's sponsor, Mint Mobile. Hey, podcast listener, you know, when it comes to some things, transparency is not ideal. Hey, guys, sorry, I'm late for the ad break.

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Cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month and mintmobile.com slash scathing. That's it. There's no catch. Up front payment of $45 for three month, $90 for six months or $180 for 12 month plan require, $15 per month equivalent, taxes and fees extras, initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes might slow when network is busy includes up to 20 gigabyte hotspot capable device required availability speed and coverage varies cement mobile.com The question now is how long ago did I eat all those tomatoes? It's blood, man.

It's always blood. And now headlines from the past already in progress. And in gather ye bros, buds while ye may. Our funds are fucking high class on this show, God damn it. Chatter. We have a story about a Christian right men's convention that was so very stupid and tragic. It honestly seems like it has to be fake. It's called FreedomCon.

And even after quadruple cross-checking with different sources and calling the New York Times to make sure, like I'm Leo McGarry, arguing about the spelling of Gaddafi in the crossword puzzle, which is a great moment in the West Wing. I'm still like, I'm still not sure. I'm like 50-50, this thing was created in a lab in order to give us material. Like Brovid 19. But the Times is quite certain this is real. The fantastic article by Ruth Graham about this is entitled, Where Testosterone and the Bible are the new punk rock.

The message of the event was all about, you know, doing manly stuff and making more babies with your wife. rejecting woke secular gay paganism. That's an actual quote from somebody on stage. And making sure that Christians finally get some power in the American government. Got to say secular paganism is the hardest kind of paganism to pull off when you think about it. Let alone the gay stuff. Hey, when did newspapers start using is the new punk rock as a substitute for? is a thing some racists are doing.

And how many murders do I have to do to make them stop? So, no comment. So FreedomCon took place in the central part of Washington State in a town called George. It was held in George Washington. Get it. And yeah, it seems like they actually chose the town for its name so they could do a stupid thematic pun. Because a major focus of the event was making. Christian bros into statesmen. And they made it official with a big signing ceremony for all the

aspiring theocrats that they might have recruited. And if you're wondering whether they signed, you know, just like a boring piece of paper for that, the answer is no, it was a super cool oversized parchment thing mounted on a big easel. Document is called a Congress of Christian men, the George, comma, Washington Declaration of Freedom. Hey, guys, remember we could reliably make fun of how little

chances these guys had of holding office? And now I'm just screenshot and faces so I can call back to this when they're a state senator. Do you remember? You guys remember? I don't think, honestly, you can see like 106 people in this photo. I don't know there's a single one that's not wearing a baseball cap.

Yeah. Right. And you might be like, oh, well, the sun's in their eyes, but like half of them are backwards. I would have expected a few bucket hats or something. Yeah. Okay. And the headline that mentioned the new punk rock, that wasn't hyperbole. Those were the exact words. One of the big speakers at FreedomCon, that would be Mark Driscoll.

Hey. Those who aren't familiar, he's the guy who had to resign in disgrace from the megachurch that he founded because he was too culty. I'm going to say that again. He was too culty for parishioners at an event. evangelical mega church that he founded. So he just moved to Arizona and started a new one. That one was in Seattle.

And more recently, during a similar event to this one in 2024, Mark Tristicle got into a messy fight on stage about a performer right before him, deep throading the sores. And he was very angry about that. It was the Jezebel spirit. And then a different pastor, I'd be like, you're done. You're done on the stage here. You have to get off.

Mark. You're fucking it up. You're ruining the men's conference. Well, yeah. Well, that guy, Mark Driscoll, during his big sermon at FreedomCon last week, said, quote, heterosexual, sober men who marry girls and read Bibles, we're the new punk rock. He also talked about the Tower of Babel story and how it warns us about the evils of globalism. Okay.

I didn't know that what it was about. So I know one of the murders for the new punk rock thing. Okay. Just starting to start. Guys, it turns out to homogenous conformity to an outmoded and boring ideal that is entirely antithetical to punk rock is the new punk rock. Who would have thought? It's where you at least expect it.

It's like how they say counterculture, but then if the cowlick and outside of the box so hard, we're back into the box. Right. Yeah. It comes the culture. Then your counter counter, then is just culture. How many numbers are you on now? You lost track.

So you're probably thinking at this point. point, FreedomCon sounds pretty amazing. Lots of good activities. But was there a slam poetry reading from a pastor and tactical gear salesman? And yes, there was, podcast listener. Yes, how could there not be? He is called, this is real, the warrior poet. No, no, I bet he's the only one who calls himself that. That's very likely. But he calls himself the warrior poet. And He's the founder of Warrior Poet Society. So that's real. There's a website.

Is that a society of many poets warrior? It is not. It is not. It's the name of his tactical supply store. I swear I'm making none of this up. You can buy guns there and armor and tactical belts and coffee, of course, and a knife that, quote, fits your hand like. it was born there. Oh, it must have been rough on your mom. Yeah. Okay. Guys, I spent an absurd

amount of time on this website and I could talk about it for hours, but what really haunts me is that it appears that this gentleman doesn't write poetry. There's no poetry on the website, not on his YouTube channel. He has links to his books. None of them are books of poetry. You can't just not be half the words that are your brand. Do a rhyme. You have to do a right. I'm told by the New York Times he did some original verse at FreedomCon. We didn't tag in Eli's mom to come pull him the shit out of this ass.

Oh, absolutely. This is her doom music. This is her the rundown. Lee Bennett Hopkins Award winner. They're in trouble. She just throws the award down. With her hands behind her back. Right.

Robert E. Lee, Bennett Hopkins? No. She could out poetry this guy while shaming me about how many gummies my son eats. She would weave the words together. That's happening right now. Yeah. Hang on, Dan, I've got a passage for you, news. The big problem for kids in Texas is that they don't have enough resources for finding out what's in the Bible. I've always said that. Yeah, but the Texas State Board of Education has been hard at work doing something about that for years. and their latest salvo in the war against secular education is a vote this week on requiring public school students to learn a series of Bible passages and Christian myths. And to be clear, they've already voted to require kids to read these Bible passages. The latest vote is just like which ones they will be cramming down their throats. Okay, okay. Maybe they'll pick the socialist ones about how Zoran Kwame Mamdani is a much better Christian than everyone in Texas.

So, okay, we call this a teachable moment for Christians. I'm really hoping that there's like an online poll element so that we can, you know, Bodie McBote face some donkey dicks in there. I'm saying it's a possibility, people. No, unfortunately they're not going that way. So the list in question. Donkey McDick face. There you go.

Grades 1 through 12, which means yes, they will have Bible passages and stories to assign to children as young as six. For example, David and Goliath, Daniel and the lion's den, and of course, Noah's Ark. Because the closest thing to child friendly that their book of morals has to offer are a story about challenging a guy to a fight and then killing him from a distance with a rock. Nice. A story about trying to feed a human being who's still alive to lions. That one's tricky. And a story about God committing global genocide because he was mad at people for fucking angels.

Okay, okay. But God apologized and gave us light spectrum. Yeah, no, that's true. That's true. And Nari a genocide ever since. Right. Thank you. Requirements for older kids include seventh graders learning the beatitudes, high schoolers learning about speaking in tongues,

and fifth graders learning about the exodus out of Egypt as though that was a thing that happened in the world. Okay, everybody, we are doing Egyptology this month. So please do not mix up your workbooks or you will fail. Right, right, yeah. Didn't one of the Bartons just make up a Bible verse recently to try to make a point? And everybody's like, that's not in the Bible, man. Yes, it is. That was nothing.

Now, you just made that up. In this one. The book of Claude. That was from the book of Claude. Claude co-work. Now, in an effort to paint a veneer of constitutional plausibility to this proposal, the Board of Education has sold it as an effort to teach kids about religious traditions in general. So in keeping with that charade, the list includes a couple of passages from other faith traditions.

That would include, I shit you not, a Hebrew translation of an Old Testament passage. and that's it. I mean, there are a couple other things from Judaism, but they're all shared with Christianity. That's, and no other religion but Judaism and Christianity is represented. Okay, it feels like the Hebrew passage was like DEI there.

Yes. Opus DEI. Okay, listen to me. Listen, Texas Jews. I know you don't exist. But if you did, there's no way they're checking your work on this, okay? You can put some hardcore anti-Christian shit through on this one. Just say, no,

they're only taking shit that's already in their book. I'm sorry. Speak your truth. And it's worth noting here that even a lot of the people who aren't bothered by pushing Christianity at kids from different faith traditions are still pissed about this proposed list. And not just for what it includes and what it admits. The rules also specify, like, which specific translation of the Bible can be used, which can make a huge difference in how a story is interpreted, especially when you're only plucking out a few sentences at a time. So underscoring one of the primary reasons the nation's founders pushed for church-state separation in the first fucking place,

even the people who agree that kids should learn about Christian God in school can't agree which of the singular and indivisible Christian God they should be learning about. Yeah, it's tricky. Next up in headlines in Pastor Prime News, I miss being friends with bigots from my hometown. I'm scrolling through Facebook and then... Take us there. Boom.

A guy who I once smoked nutmeg out of an apple with is asking me how I can be an atheist when joy dot golf is reporting that they found Noah's Ark. It was a simpler world. Nowadays, on the rare occasion that I'm on social media, I'm bombarded with a much darker form of religious idiocy. I'm talking, of course, about well-meaning Christians who keep accidentally supporting bigots because they can't be bothered to Google them. And we got another example of that this week as a pastor went viral for a clip of his sermon, which isn't nearly as woke as the Christians on my Facebook are hoping. Yeah, it's impossible to be a Christian without supporting bigotry, but a lot of them would like to at least keep it tertiary where they can. Yeah. So first off, a big thanks to Hemet Metta

over at the Friendly Atheist Podcast for bringing this to our attention. You can support Hemmett's work over at Patreon or just subscribe to his substack. To be kept in the loop, as we are. Also, Emmett, let me see them tozies. So close. Right. So, to the post, which as of this recording has about a million views, it's no

Skittles viral post, but it's okay, it's okay, I guess. It's of Pastor Lauren Livingston of Central Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the good part of the quote goes as follows. There has never been a Christian nation. You don't live in one now. We had

godly people get on boats and come, over here so they could worship. Godly people. We've had the greatest Bible preachers in the 15, 16, 1700s. Godly people. Some of the people that constructed this country. Godly people. Fuck. But it has never been a Christian nation and never will be. A Christian nation would never have killed and displaced 20 million Native Americans who are still left out and living in poverty. A Christian nation would never have thought that owning slaves was pleasing to God or that it lined up with scripture in any way, shape or form, end quote. Godly people.

Well, if they read the scripture, they think all that shit, but right, no, you're right, they have not read the scripture. So maybe that's fair, I guess. I think he's confusing America with a country called True Scotland, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. All his friends are there. So, first of all, as my co-host just pointed out, it's worth noticing that killing a bunch of a Native Americans and slavery, not being Christian values, that is an incredibly new idea.

Yeah. Like heresy a couple hundred years ago and definitely not mainstream a hundred years ago now. There are also citations in the Bible for killing people whose land you want and for owning slaves. So, I mean, look, I know biblical scholars disagree on those passages, but I'd like my God to have a much more clear-cut policy on owning humans. And to be clear, he does not. Well, he does, but it's a yes on that. No, it is clear, yeah. Very clear. Unless there's a book of errata that's about to drop. I don't see it happening though. Some tasteful nudes of God. That's a rite. The truth is, got to get it approved by Amazon and then it's going live. I swear, Book of Arata, get excited.

The truth is, Livingston is only using these examples because they're bad things that Christians agree on now. And the evidence of that is everything else he said in that speech that you didn't see in that clip. For instance, he also says, quote, Oh, brothers and sisters, we have religion in our government. I'm talking about our government. We have Judaism in the Senate and Congress. You know who they are. We have Islam in the government. You know, the Muslims who make the noise. We have atheism in our leadership.

What's the noise? YouTube has asked that we not do the noise. But everybody, take a moment. Picture the noise. That's what he meant. All right. You know who they are. that's religion. We don't believe there's a God. That makes you your own God. That's a religion. We have the

LGBTQ religion in Congress and the Senate. And in other places of leadership, it's there. That's, see, that's your religion. Whatever you embrace and pour your energy into and think about and work for becomes your religion. They're there, end quote. Yeah, yeah, the old everybody's religious, if you let me misdefying it trick. They love to use that trick when it comes time to skirt religious restrictions. Not so much when it comes time to dole out religious rights, though. Right. I wasn't listening to anything for the last, like, minute. I just found out that I'm a God.

Nice. I'm a God of my own God atheism. And Eli's religion is finding a great taco. It's crazy. Mm-hmm. Yep. It is. And Judaism.

You know. But it somehow gets worse. quote, no Christian nation would thoughtlessly murder 80 million unborn babies. There it is. Mostly minorities. Thoughtlessly throw them in a trash can and be done with it. Mostly minorities. I'm pro-choice.

I didn't get stuck by the way. He says it twice. He does repeat himself a lot. Yeah. I'm pro-choice. People say, well, you are for the most racist stance in this country, knowing that abortion affects minorities more than anybody else. And you stand for that question mark?

That's because poverty disproportionately affects minorities, by the way. You don't see them trying to remedy that, do you? Oh, hey, so you're a big fan of disparate impact as a metric? And you definitely understood the words I just said. Cool, cool, cool, got it. Got it. Yeah, that sounds great. He concludes, do you think a Christian nation would be gender confused?

A Christian nation would fund and finance the butchering of children's bodies to change their sex because abusive adults were so empty and lost that they would advise young children who don't even understand biology, much less the sexual process, to have their bodies changed? Do you think a Christian nation would praise and promote same-sex union? A woman marrying a woman and a man marrying a man? This is going badly. Go back to your cadence of godly people or something. Repeat something. You notice I said union. I didn't say, marriage. The only definition of marriage is one woman

and one man or any other perverted union. So yeah, that's the pastor who's going viral for how woke he is. That's the woke. That's the woke pastor. You're your friends from high school. But it is a worthwhile reminder that if a religious leader claims their religion

represents modern values, they're lying to someone. And if you're lucky, it's themselves. Yeah. And in church and state fair news. Had tip arrested development. Donald Trump and the Republican Party decided to hijack the 250th birthday for America by turning the celebration in our nation's capital into the great American state fair. And pretty much nobody showed up.

It was like Donald Trump trying to, you know, throw a party as a kid. Everybody fucking hates him, of course. And his mom called up America's mom to get. guilt to showing up, and America's mom was like, go fuck yourself and hung up. So the festivities end up being a tiny group of Maga loyalists sweating a whole bunch, like more profusely than normal in the heat, and tipping very badly, I'm sure, at the local restaurants. And then nothing but pamphlets that look like $100. Yeah. And then after all that amazing stuff was in place over a thousand missionaries showed up and ruined the delightful time I just described.

Oh my fucking guy. There was also a heat dome over it the whole time too. Even nature's mother told him to go fuck himself at this fair. Yeah. I haven't been this filled with the milk of human sympathy since that Titan submersible imploded. I'm really. So a big thanks to Michelle Borestein at the Washington Post for covering the story. They do occasionally some good stories still.

That's cool. Occasionally. So the fair, it could have been a pretty big success. Like, who doesn't love a sticky gaggle of idiots with American flags? That's awesome. Fun for the whole family. But the whole thing was organized by, unfortunately, different sticky idiots with American flags. A group called Freedom 250.

And it went very badly. They got a big Ferris wheel. And it broke down right away. So bad start for the whole family. And then a reporter found. Confederate flags. Oh, really? The fair had a series of booths

for every state in the union, but North Carolina decided not to participate, kind of like that other time they weren't part of the union, but for better reasons this time, they just didn't like being part of Trump's dumb thing, probably.

Well, a private group took over the booth for North Carolina, and they had big screens in their tent showing videos that included a bunch of Confederate flags. Eventually, that got removed, But I'm sure it was like in a snit begrudgingly. Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Hey, guys, if I had known getting away with taking over a state booth had been an option, I would have made plans for this thing. I have ideas, y'all. I'm ready to. Yeah, not doing great so far. But don't worry. I had an amazing slate of musical guests lined up like Martina McBride. And let me finish Brett Michaels.

And those people all backed out. So did Morris Day in the Time, Young MC and the Commodores. But don't worry. Don't worry. They still had their superstar. Robert Van Winkle. That's right. Van Winkle Ice.

Bobby Winks. Vanilla Ice. He was the headliner for the big I Love of the 90s concert on Friday night. Survivor of the Tonteen, if you will. Makes you the headline. Pretty much. But then the God of the universe sent a big thunderstorm. And they had to cancel that concert with the vanilla ice two hours before it was about to happen.

So sad. Yeah. And I almost wish I was there. I do wish I was, I officially wish I was there just so I could watch like 15 enormous vanilla ice fans walking away. Walking away in a sniffing. That must have been great. Do you think they did a sad little hammer time shuffle? Yeah.

Yeah. They're all going like, they're like, now we won't get to see them again until bowling night. Damn. All right. So now it's Saturday the 4th. Ferris wheel is back in operation. Maybe. I'm not even sure. I think they might have fixed it. The Confederate flags are blurred out in the video or something. People are disappointed about missing vanilla, but they're not going to let that ruin the weekend. So literally dozens of people are milling around the National Mall. And they're all getting bothered by preachers, a group called all. Revival Ministries arm showed up with more than a thousand missionaries because they saw the big fair as the perfect environment to get converts. What with all the atheists and pagans wearing Maga hats who flooded into the fairgrounds for Donald Trump's fair?

Yeah, they got their strategy from the time that Christian guy bought a booth at the American atheist conference and we all just literally ignored him all weekend. Just stood there and smiled. We literally ignored him and we didn't do anything illegal. Yeah. No, he pretended to be half of a podcast that also had an atheist on it. And he kept saying his co-host was running late, but would be there any minute until they kicked him out. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. I forgot about that. It was awesome. He's liar. Okay. So you might be wondering, how does a big team of missionaries manage to, you know, keep score on all their soul saving? Well, there's an app for that. All the preachers keep their personal stats on a stat card during this process, writing down

how many people they fucking bothered and how many people accepted Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And those stat cards, they get entered into the app, which keeps up-to-the-minute numbers on all their batting averages with souls. The app also keeps track of the location within the National Mall of each member of the squad to make sure they don't bunch up and to minimize any redundant preaching, they wouldn't want to be obnoxious.

Yeah, no, they're aware that alternate universe Christian Heath just surrounds four people with 96 speaker sets and just rapidly says, Believe in Jesus, believe in Jesus, believe in Jesus, believe in Jesus for 24 straight hours. Like, he's checked. That guy wins. Now, I will say this totally opens up the possibility

for a Fantasy Missionaries League, though, if anybody's interested. It does. It does. And as you might expect, the missionaries quickly realized that everyone they spoke with was, in fact, somewhat familiar with the Son of God, Jesus Christ. They'd ask if people had a moment to talk about Christ. And everyone was like, yeah, yeah, do you actually have a lot? Oh, yeah, you know, I was going to say, so cool. We're both on board. That's great. That's great. We're on the same team. And one of those interactions led to my favorite part of Borsstein's article.

one of the preachers spoke of the lady from Iowa named Jacqueline and her daughter named Abigail. And Jacqueline, the mom said, this country was based on faith and we believe God has its hand on this nation. And here's the exact words from the article that followed. Quote, in the Constitution, it says, under God, her daughter, Abigail, 20, who is studying to become a teacher said, incorrectly. End quote. Borsstein continued. in my head in the voice of Ron Howard. The Pledge of Allegiance

includes the phrase under God. The Constitution's text makes no mention of a deity, end quote. Okay, so that means Michelle walked into her editor's office after she finished this article and she was like, hey, can I point out how stupid one lady is?

I'll do three White House press conferences in a row. I just want to keep this one fuck you. Well, but it's another great reminder, though, that the America that these self-professed patriots are so in love with is imaginary. Sure is. Yeah. All right. That brings us to my favorite detail of the weekend. I mentioned how the God of the universe ruined the amazing vanilla ice concert with bad weather. Well, it's even better. Around 7.30 on Saturday night, Independence Day. The big storm rolled in and everyone had to evacuate the National Mall and take shell. inside nearby buildings. One of those buildings was the National Museum of African American history and culture. Oh, nice. Phenomenal. So a crowd of mostly Christian right idiots had to hustle

inside that museum. So, okay, God, I know you're listening. I'm not a big fan most of the time. I know I say a lot of shit. But for last weekend, no notes. Just, well done. Well done. Every single. step of the way. Really good. It's like Christian for that whole day. And on that pre-recorded note, we're going to wrap up the headlines for the week. Pre-recorded Heath, pre-recorded Eli. Thanks as always. And when we come back, Marsh will be here to remind me that all podcast voices are pre-recorded from your perspective. Knowing that Heath and Eli would be absent this week and not yet knowing that I'd get enough material from the Ark Park protest to do a 60-minute diatribe if I'd had to,

we asked Marsh to fill in for this week's C segment with another installment of who's who. So what do you have in store for us this time, Marsh? Okay, France seem undercooked in midfield and at fullback. Portugal, well, Portugal, we've got a great team, but Ronaldo's ego is going to be there undoing, you know, if he insists on playing every minute and starting every game. Argentina could do well, reclimatized the heat.

Messi doesn't need to move too much or run ever to still be like a breathtaking talent, but their defense is old and it's in poor fitness. So maybe Spain could be the ones. Oh, sorry, my mistake. That wasn't my who's woo. That was what I said to you on June the 10th about how this world's upwork for. Well, and Marsh, it's what I repeated verbatim

on the skeptocrat. And when I did, Heath said he could tell it came from a Brit because you had the audacity to suggest that France would lose in exactly the way that Spain beat them. Incidentally, that's why he's not here this week. He went to France because he figured if anybody's going to protect him from the mockery of an Englishman, right?

It would be the French. Oh, but anyway, do you also want to do the who's woo while we've got you here? Okay, okay, we can do that. We can do that. Okay, well, generally speaking, it's often the case that when putting together biographies of figures in the past, it's often hard to be certain exactly what happened and when. And then that general rule goes way more than double when it comes to summarizing the life story of someone who spent so much of their lives promoting one.

Wu, potentially even knowingly promoting Wu. Because for such Wu merchants, chronology and it's often far more about expedience than accuracy. And so it proves with today's entry to Who's Woo, because today we're going to be talking about Helena Blavatsky. Oh, awesome. One of the most valuable of the Who's Wu trading cards. Nice. Helena Petrovna Hahn von Rottenstein was born on the 12th of August 1831. though even that is a matter of perspective. And that's not because she lied about her birth date. It's just because at the time of her birth in Yacatharineislav in the Russian Empire,

they hadn't yet adopted the Gregorian calendar, meaning that she was officially born on the 31st of July 1831. And I know that's not her fault. That's just how calendars worked before they were standardized. But there is something incredibly fitting about there being any kind of ambiguity about her date of birth, given how much the rest of at least her early life is just riddled with inconsistencies. Well, it also gives the listener a strong nothing gets by Marsh sense early in the proceedings. I like that too.

And that's largely because all biographers really had to work with were her own accounts. And even then, only the accounts that she wrote after 1873, by which time she spent 40 years creating contradictory stories and outright fabrications. And biographers note that there are some accounts of her early life that were provided by her family members, but even those had we be taken with a pinch of salt and are widely judged to be highly dubious. But to hear Helena tell it, she was born in Yakaterina's love, now known as Dinipo in Ukraine, in the middle of a cholera epidemic, which almost took her mother's life, and yet miraculously both mother and child survived. She was born into nobility,

probably. Her mom was the daughter of a Russian princess, and her father was descended from German aristocrats, hence the Germanic surname that she had there. And also her great-great-grandfather was a French nobleman who served in the cult of Catherine the Great. Possibly. Yeah. Okay. Well, the fact that she lived through babyhood during a cholera epidemic is strong indication of

noble birth at the very least. Yeah. We'll go with that. Throughout her childhood, she moved around a lot. Odessa, Astrakhan, Saratov, Politava. As a child, she was described as wayward and a beguiling storyteller who loved to play pranks on people, which sounds a lot like historians speak for

she was a lying liar who liked to trick people. Yes. A beguiling storyteller. Yeah, exactly. Like speaking of which, while in Saratolle, she claims to have found the personal library of her maternal great-grandfather, a Russian prince and an 18th century Freemason, which contained books on esotericism. And she also says she had visions of a mysterious Indian man who she claims she would then later go on to meet in

real life. Yeah, this is the 1800s. To judge that claim, I need evidence that she wasn't too racist to tell Indian men apart. Okay, that's fair. That is fair. At the age of 13, after her mother's death from tuberculosis, her father brought her to England, where she learned piano from various famous virtuosos, except, no, she didn't, because there is no record of that happening, other than what she said. There's not even any record in the memoirs that her sister kept, and her sister probably would have mentioned it. So soon after that didn't happen. She says she learned how to astral project and she had more visions of her mysterious Indian man. Yeah, that also didn't happen since we're pointing these out, I guess. At 17, she did actually definitely get married. We know this. She got married to Nikifor Blavatsky.

He was in his 40s at the time. And it's not all that clear why they got married. She said it's because she was attracted to his belief in magic. But that can't possibly be true because nobody has ever found attractive a man in his 40s with an interest in magic. Yeah, you know what? He deserves a lot worse than that for the website, Marsh, keep it coming.

He's not even here to defend himself. That said, she did try to actually get out of the wedding unsuccessfully. And then not long after she was married, she left her new husband initially to go back to a family, though, according to the story she told when she was much older, she actually slipped away from her escorts and bribed the captain of a ship to take her to Constantinople,

where she spent the next decade traveling the world alone, with nobody could verify any of the travels and keeping zero written account of any part of it. Even historians of esotericism admit everything we know about this really genuinely pivotal time in her life is based on her, quote, largely uncooperated accounts, which are marred by being,

quote, occasionally conflicting in their chronology. Oh, and those are people motivated to take her word for it saying that. Other historians who aren't motivated to believe her point out that the period for which there is no reliable account of her life extended to the next quarter of a century. Oh, wow. Well, now, to be fair, nobody checked for sources in the astral plane. That is true. Right.

And this is actually a shame because what a quarter of a century it apparently was. She saved a Hungarian opera singer from being murdered. She toured Egypt with a countess. She went to Paris to meet a mesmerist. She went to England where she bumped into Master Moria, the Indian man she kept seeing in her visions. She must have had quite a lot of visions of him because sometimes she explains that they met in London

and other times in Ramsgate, which isn't London. And the details change on each telling of what happened and when. But what does remain consistent, and probably completely undrue, is that Moria sent her on a spiritual mission to Tibet, for some reason via Canada and then Texas and then Mexico and then India before arriving at the border of Tibet

and then being turned away by the British. All right, well, I mean, you swap out the final destination, that's pretty much exactly what happened when Eli tried to go to Sweden. So carrying on her life story, yada, yada, yada, surviving a shipwreck near the Cape of Good Hope. Dot, dot, dot, dot. England's Royal Philharmonic Society is a concert musician.

Something, something, something, a Tartar shaman in Kashmir who asked her to guide him to Siberia, but never got there because they got too lost along the way. Oh, and then she got injured fighting at the Battle of Mentana, medical records, MIA. These scars? Well, they're not from trying to box jump onto a stage in Seattle. That's for sure. They're from the Battle of Mnuchamp. Mentana.

So throughout all this definitely real and absolutely true, but sadly unverifiable adventuring, her paranormal abilities just kept growing. She claims her furniture would move around of its own volition and that she'd be followed by mysterious creaking sounds

as if pursued by a spirit. Yeah, no, it turns out all that globe trotting she was doing was actually just chasing down her furniture and running from squeaks. And then, After she recovered from her war wounds, or possibly the coma she said she fell into after injuring her spine falling off a horse, after one of those things, her Indian guide, Master Moria, sent her back to Tibet.

And they actually let her in this time. Once she was there, she says she stayed with Master Kuthumi, who is a Kashmiri of Punjabi origin who trained her further in the paranormal. He taught her an ancient unknown language called Senzar. Well, it's not unknown if he's teaching it. She learned to harness her psychic powers, including clairvoyance, clairaudians, telepathy, and the ability to control another's consciousness, to dematerialize and rematerialize physical objects,

and to project their astral bodies. Well, most of that sounds demonstrable. It does, doesn't it? By the time she left Tibet, she was fully trained in these psychic arts and was determined to prove to the world that spiritualism was objectively real and definitely not the work of frauds as many at the time suspected.

Well, and many at this time suspect as well, yeah. Yeah, exactly. She had proof, though, she believed. She had proof that what people were experiencing wasn't actually communication with spirits of the dead, but actually mischievous elementals or the shells left behind by the deceased. Oh, that sentence was doing so good

before it got to the karma, right? And so she sailed for Cairo, and then her ship exploded mid-jurney, and she was one of only 16 survivors. But she got to Egypt, and she founded what was essentially a spiritualist society in order to start proving that the paranormal was, in fact, real. That society lasted two weeks.

And then she shut it down when she says she realized most of the mediums in the society were frauds. A less charitable interpretation is that she realized they weren't as good at fraud as she was, and she didn't want to be on that particular sinking ship. Yeah, like when you guess for a living, there's a lot of incentive to throw shade on other professional guessers that might guess different shit. Yes. So, yeah, I can say how you get there.

And then she left Egypt, and on her way back to Russia, she met with a writer called Lydia Pashkova. And in doing so, for the first time since she fled her marriage at 17, her movements could be verified by someone other than herself. So we now start to get things that someone else can verify here. But soon, her Indian vision master, Moria, unverified, told her that she needed to go to New York. And so off she sailed. And she actually managed to get that without being sunk or shipwrecked along the way, which is a first for her.

Yeah, well, now that we're on the record. Exactly. And while in New York, she met a man who was intent on marrying her. And eventually, she gave in and they got married. And at this point, she hadn't divorced her previous husband. But it's fine because that second marriage didn't last. She had absolutely no interest in consummating the marriage. So he divorced her.

and then he left. Kind of got to wonder what she did intend to do with that marriage. Right? I have no idea. So her real passion throughout all of this time was her paranormal gifts. And when she read in the newspapers about two Vermont brothers who could levitate and manifest spiritual phenomena, she had to go and investigate. The reporter for the story was Henry Steele Olcott, who was absolutely convinced

that these brothers were legit, whereas Blavatsky was not so convinced. She said at least some of their demonstrations were obviously fake. However, she did show Alcott her own genuine ability to manifest spiritual phenomena, and he was so impressed that he immediately became her disciple and acolyte. Yeah, going after people who credulously write about other psychics is like the, it's like the leaving a bunch of misspellings in your Nigerian prince email of its time. Yeah, it really is. So she began to teach Alcott all the ways of the psychic,

explaining that to develop magical skills like she had, he had to be T-Tortle, vegetarian, and celibate. Oh, that's two out of three, Eli. You're getting there. And Blaski, it is worth noting, also was only two out of three because she wasn't vegetarian. Oh. She was T-Totel, and her attitude to husbands

did suggest she probably was celibate too, or there is also reasonable speculation that she may have been a lesbian, and that's why she had very little interest in the men in her life. Now, so, Marsh, I'm going to be honest with you. I can think of no magic powers I could possibly have that would be worth having if I had to be T-T-T-T-T. total vegetarian and celibate to get them.

Allegedly, inspired by visions given to Blavatsky by her two masters, Moria and Kuthumi, she and Alcott founded their own spiritualist group, the Miracle Club, which was later renamed to the Theosophical Society. And that was actually picking upon an existing esoteric term

for the Greek for God and wisdom, theosophical. It was largely funded by Alcott's ongoing work as a lawyer, which itself is kind of interesting because by this time Blavatsky's father had died and had left her a considerable inheritance. Oh, well, yeah,

and even before that, she had enough money for, like, fucking infinite travel. Exactly. So Blavatsky used this newfound support to pen a book outlining her philosophy. The book was ISIS Unveiled, which she claims was written via channeling a second consciousness within her.

It mostly consists of extensive quotes from, like, a hundred other esoteric and religious texts. But that wasn't plagiarism, because, as Alcott pointed out, she didn't physically have access to those books at the time that she was writing. Oh, yeah, Chad GPT says the same shit all the time.

So really, if you think about it, it was the second consciousness within her that was the plagiarist. How was she to know? So this book, Isis Unveiled, it claimed that all the world's religions were aspects of the same ancient wisdom, and that spiritualism was real,

but it didn't involve contact in the dead. And also that Darwinian evolution is false because it ignored the influence of the spirit world. And this book was an instant hit. It sold a thousand copies in the first week, and it attracted fans, including Thomas Edison. Yeah, then as now, people were way into Darwinian evolution being false. Yep, they really were, hence the rise of the flat earth movement.

Yeah, absolutely. Despite its success in the US, Blavatsky and Alcott now headed off back to India, impressing the locals with their willingness to put Indian religions at the heart of this new religious movement they were forming. Blavatsky continued to grow up with influence and to improve, to impress people with her definitely real psychic powers, like how she could manifest spirits, and how on one occasion she was even able to make a cup and saucer

materialize under the soil during a picnic. That was enough to convince keen spiritualists, like Alfred Percy Sinat and A.O. Hume that she was definitely on the up and up. And Sinner persuaded her to contact her teacher and guru, Koot Humi, who is actually sometimes referred to as Kot Humi, and she graciously relented and was quite happy to contact her guru, and she allowed Mahatma's Kuthumi and Mahatma Maria to channel through her

and then write 1,400 pages of their thoughts for Sinat and Hume to then inspect. And that came to be known as the Mahatma letters. And Sinit would go on to summarize those letters in his book, Esoteric Buddhism. Both of those are foundational texts in the Theosophic Movement. Yeah, I imagine her being like, yes, I'll do it. And please stop fucking winking at me every other side. sentence. I get it, man. Yeah, and look, this wouldn't be Helena Blavatsky's who's woo if I didn't

point out that she is the only person who claims to have met Mahatma Kuthumi, and the details of all of this do not remotely stack up. That Blavatsky describes Kutumi as being a Punjabi Indian who'd studied in Germany, but he couldn't speak German or Hindi or Punjabi. Weird. Yeah. She has got some writing that she says is. his, but it's in French and in English, and he writes both languages in exactly the style characteristic of a Russian writing in their second or third languages, someone like her, for example. He's actually just a big fan of unconjugated verb forms, okay?

It's just his thing. Style. Also, critics have pointed out that his name, Kotumi, is literally just a portmanteau of the two men in her life, all cot and human. Oh my God. Cot Hume. Most scholars agree that Kudhumi was almost certainly a deliberate hoax by Blavatsky and possibly also Al-Cot as well.

But none of this stopped theosophy taking off all across India with branches of the Theosophical Society springing up all across that country. The only really astonishing thing about history's psychics is how little effort they had to put into it, right? Completely. So by 1882, Blavatsky's health was actually fading at this point. So she set sail to England to, a company Alcott as he tried to spread their new religious movement through London society.

But that was to no avail. Essentially, she rubbed British people up the wrong way. She was described as an unbearable snobbish woman, and it led to a schism in her movement that actually part of that schism went off to form the Hermetic Society. Which is, unfortunately, despite their name, not sealed in an airtight chamber. And then meanwhile, in her absence, the headquarters back in India was just rocked by accusation, after accusation of misappropriated funds, leading to her deputies trying to blackmail the society with letters that they claim proved Blavatsky's paranormal demonstrations

were a fraud all along. And these were letters that would be published in The Times in London, but actually did very little to diminish the popularity and the influence of Blavatsky and her movement in India, which by this point had 106 of the 121 international theosophical society lodges there. Wow. Yeah, well, I mean, the demonstrators is. themselves are proof that she's fraud.

Turns out almost nobody cares. Yeah, exactly. So 1885, she's in ailing health. Blavatsky resigned from the society and she headed for retirement in Europe. And soon after, the Society for Psychical Research published the Hodgson report into the Theosophical Society

and the Mahatma letters and Blavatsky's paranormal claims. And this report concluded, Blavatsky was in fact a complete fraud and a conwoman. And they even pointed out that an examination of the physical space where her paranormal demonstrations took place, revealed concealed features that allowed her to hide

and then produce her decidedly unparanormal objects. And the man who authored that report, Michael, shallow lake or flat coastal area experiencing increase in sediment deposits. Sorry, I googled what is a marsh before it's a marsh, and that's the best I could come up with. The report did much to discredit her and the society, but many of her followers

stuck by her nonetheless and supported her through her final years. She moved back to London, she stayed with various theosophists and she tried to rescue the London Lodge from what she saw as synit's mismanagement of it at the time. While in London, she finished writing

her final book on Theosophy, The Secret Doctrine, which completely ignored all of the previous completely crucial paranormal elements of her worldview to just focus on broader philosophical themes. The post-exposure pivot, you might call that. Also, while in London, she was visited by the occultist and poet, W.B. Yitz,

and then in November 1889, she was visited by an Indian lawyer and notable vegetarian named Mahandas Gandhi, who would go on to earn the honorific she'd co-opted for her fictional guides, Mahatma. A couple of years later, in 1891, Blavasi contracted the influenza strain that had raged across Europe, and she died on the 8th of May of that year, leaving behind a worldwide movement of more than a hundred thousand followers. And another great counter example when people try to offer up a, but if it was a lie, why would so many people follow it argument? Exactly. Right. Her ideas went on to influence the anthroposophical movement, the New Age movement, and they also fed in the writings of figures like David Ike. If you've heard of the Akashic Records, arguably you have a self-mythologizing

paranormal hookster to blame for that. And given her influence on so much that followed her, Helena Blavatsky undoubtedly earned her place in, Who's Wu? All right. Well, Marsh, thanks for the information and thanks for managing to stay focused through the entire segment, mere hours before England faces off against Argentina and the World Cup semis. Good luck and rest comfortable in the knowledge that whatever happens, at least France lost. Amen. Before we swap into our chill-in slippers for the night, I want to remind you that we're going to be live in Washington, D.C., recording an episode of our sister show, God-awful Movies on Friday, August 14th. Tickets are available at godoffal Movies Live.com, which you will find link. on the show notes. Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but we're back in 10,022 minutes with more. If you can't wait that long, be on look out for a brand new episode of our sister show's hot friend Godhaful movies debuting at 7 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday and an even newer episode of our half-sister-saw citation needed day, debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, I want to thank Heath and Eli for doing extra pre-vocation work to make this episode happen. I also want to apologize for the absence of the son of obituary that you were no doubt expecting this week with the guys all jet-setting about and everything we couldn't make it happen on short notice. I also want to thank Ben for providing this week's Farnsworth quote and sorry about your hips bro i hope that the new ones have like enhancements or cup holders or something but most of all of course i want to thank this week's best people are new patreon donors whose names i don't have at the time of this recording because hey i was also out of town for most of the time that we would normally be setting up this new episode

so everything is a bit cobbled together this week but i promise to thank you all by name next week and if you'd like to hear your name alongside theirs you can make a per episode donation at patreon dot com slash scathing athias whereby you'll learn early access to an extended ad-free 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 scathingaith.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 as being as 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,

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