The Scathing Atheist - 699: Communion Edition

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

In this week’s episode, Trump's religious committee tries to DEI so they don't DIE, a preacher gets kicked off a flight after a complaint from a baby with kidney stones, and we’ll crack open a book that can’t be trusted around the couch enough to sit on the coffee table.---Come see us live in Washington, DC on August 14th!: https://www.atlasarts.org/events/god-awful-movies/Come see Noah in Ontario at BAHACon: https://bahacon.com/---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/---Headlines:Trump judge redefines “diversity” to justify his bullshit religious panel: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/a-trump-judge-redefined-diversityKim Davis still owes $565,000 and a new lawsuit says she hid her inheritance to avoid paying it: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/kim-davis-still-owes-565000-a-newRoss Douthat and Ben Shapiro try to spin religious conservative message from The Odyssey:https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/01/opinion/the-odyssey-culture-war.htmlhttps://www.wonkette.com/p/elon-musks-war-on-the-odyssey-goingFlorida AG threatens to defund Catholic schools for being too vaccinated: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/florida-ag-threatens-to-defund-catholicAnnoying "Sky Evangelist" kicked off airline after scaring everyone with her preaching: https://www.friendlyatheist.com/p/annoying-sky-evangelist-kicked-off

Warning, the following podcast contains words. If you get offended by them, that's kind of on you. This week's episode of The Skating Atheist is brought to you by Godawful Movies Live in Washington, D.C. on August 14th. Tickets available at godoffelmovilovieslive.com. And now, The Skating Atheist. It's Thursday. It's August 6th.

And it's corporate baby name day. You think money grows on trees? Little Saudi Aramco? No, no it doesn't. I'm no illusions. I'm Elon Bosnick. I'm Ethan Wright. From Ivanka, Trump's New Jersey, and over Michigan, away across Georgia.

This is the scathing atheist. On this week's episode, Trump's religious committee tries to D.E. So they don't DIE. A preacher gets kicked off a flight after a complaint from a baby with kidney stones. And we'll crack open a book that can't be trusted around the couch

long enough to sit on the coffee table. First, the diatriat. I have spent so goddamn much time arguing with apologists on the internet that I almost forgot what it was like to argue with somebody who is earnest. Because you know how internet arguments are, or maybe you're mentally healthy in a way that I can only dream of and don't feel the need to chime in on the comment section under Fox News articles. But when you argue with people on social media, generally speaking, nobody's out to change their mind. And they've got a zinger in their

holster and if they can just get you to answer these three questions from their flowchart correctly, they get to whip it out and pretend they thought of it themselves. Or their bots. Usually they're bots. is that it's all performative. They have to ask you a question to start because that's how their flow chart works, but they don't give a fuck how you answer it. It's not going to change their response. Or if it is, it's just going to kick them

to the other side of the flowchrist. They're not going to think about what you said, right? It's either that or else they're just parroting some bullshit, the right-wing echo chamber armed them with and they only realized it made no sense when they tried to deploy it in a real-world scenario, at which point, rather than changing their minds, they simply abandon it and go back for another talking point.

Or they abandon that conversation and use the same talking point on a dumber opponent. But once in a while, you actually come across people who are earnestly engaging in a conversation. And that's like coming across a working pay phone. You're like, no way, I remember those. And since the great algorithm has been steering me towards these atheist versus Christian debate groups a lot lately,

I'm seeing this more and more. And by that, I mean, I've seen it like five or six times in the last six months, but that's a lot by Facebook standards. And here's the interesting commonality that I found in all of these conversations, The Christian, who is earnestly presenting their worldview for consideration, almost invariably goes into the conversation with the assumption that atheism and Christianity are more or less tied in terms of supporting evidence. And as silly as this always strikes me, I have to remind myself that atheism is unique in this regard, right? Because of all the thousands of other attempts to answer the God question, they're all tied in terms of evidence.

Right? You and I know that they're tied at zero because we know how evidence works. But let's be honest, religious people mostly don't, kind of a prerequisite. So what they use in lieu of evidence is stuff like, when I pray, I feel a presence. Or when my cousin turned to God, she got off meth. And if you're arguing with a Muslim or a Hindu or a Christian of another denomination or whatever, they're justifying their faith with the same sort of shit. You have a couple arguments like that. And it's probably really easy to conclude that all the various religious beliefs are tied

and picking a religion is a higher stakes version of picking your favorite baseball team. And if you're choosing a religious affiliation based on the benefits, you couldn't do much worse than atheism, right? Both in terms of imaginary benefits and real ones. I mean, I certainly don't want to start ranking the oppressions. And I'll freely admit that in most of the meaningful ways, most of the other non-Christian faiths have it worse than atheists when it comes to prejudice, at least in the United States. But in most of the country, atheism doesn't even give you a place to belong. Plus, you don't get a heaven. You don't get to watch the people who wrongs you burn in hell after you die.

you don't get magical intervention when you're sick, you have to find your own car keys and parking spaces. It's all downside, unless, of course, you can tap into that sweet vein of atheist podcast money, but for most atheists, there's no upside. That's the problem with atheism. It fucks up the whole concept of the religious debate by being right. The unspoken rules of the religious debate is that everybody has to be equally wrong so that nobody's psychological security blanket gets frayed along the way. And then along come a bunch of fucking atheists, it all up by pointing out all the known science. But I have to remind myself that not everybody knows that going in. There are still two types of religious debaters in the world, those who don't

know the facts and those who don't accept the facts. You deal with the latter long enough, and it's easy to forget the former even exists. Joining me for headlines tonight are the boots and pants of this podcast of this podcast. Keith Enright and Eli Bosnick Phillips. Are you ready to drop the beat? Okay, I am, but Gico is not taking Eli's calls anymore. No, that's true. They heard I have a Nissan.

That's not why. In our lead story tonight, we've probably spent about as much time on this show talking about Trump's Religious Liberty Commission as the Commission has spent committing. And given that it's a purely symbolic, powerless puppet parade with the sole purpose of rubber stamping a preordained conclusion,

that might seem like too much. But it's such a perfect microcosm of both the Trump administration's ineptitude and the degree to which that aptitude never fucking matters that I almost can't help myself. So we're at it once again to let you know that a lawsuit against the commission for failing to meet the minimum legal diversity requirements failed because the judge was a Trump appointee and they're not really doing laws anymore. Yeah. Plus Sam Alito announced the end of racism in April. So was it something along those lines? A lot like that. Come on. That a Jew.

That a lady who hated Jews. It's all the religions. We got them. Yeah, that's the full spec. Yeah, that's the full effect. Yeah, right. So we first talked about this lawsuit back on episode 675 because it turned out that even bullshit symbolic advisory panels filled with presidential cronies still have regulations.

Specifically, there's a 1972 law called the Federal Advisory Committee Act, or FACA. And it exists to basically keep a precedent. Well, they make it easy. on us sometimes, right? But it exists to basically keep a president from creating a bullshit symbolic advisory panel and filling it with his fucking cronies. It has strict requirements for both transparency and diversity, both of which have been something of a kryptonite for the Trump administration. Okay, I'm sorry, knowing things and people who know different things, can you hear yourself right now? Right. Yes, crazy. It's crazy. I am lost. So when the panel's

members were announced and ended up being 13 conservative Christians in a far right Orthodox Jew, a group of actual religious freedom watchdogs sued over FACA violations. And not just based on their lack of diversity, they're also supposed to publish minutes and transcripts of their meetings and announce meeting agendas and witnesses in advance and published drafts of their report before the fucking report comes up, none of which they actually did. In terms of transparency, all they ever did was post videos of their meetings on YouTube after the fact, at least one of which was edited.

Okay. I mean, I see you gave yourselves costumes from the village people with AI. But that's a lot of diversity. That's nothing. My background's a nice room. You see it's a nice, you see it's a nice room. So to be clear here, there is almost no imaginable way in which this commission could have more grossly violated both the letter and spirit of the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Everything about the law was clearly designed to keep future presidents from doing exactly what this commission was doing, which we were. would have been a real problem for the Trump administration if they were maintaining even a fucking pretense that laws applied to them.

But they're not. So the Trump had pointed judge that this case was assigned to tossed it out entirely on the grounds that, while not religiously diverse, the panel members had other forms of diversity. Like eye color in fucking shoe size. This panel of beautiful, unique, all white, snowflakes.

Yeah, right. Lots of nuance about, I don't know, Oh, pineapple on pizza, for example. Lots of diversity. Whether hot dogs is a sandwich. You should hear these guys go at it over Buffy season six and seven. There's a lot of team spike. There's a lot.

I don't know why I'm doing the Trump voice for him. That guy's right. Now, of course, the dismissal completely, no fucking diversity on this panel whatsoever. Just like Buffy. Now, of course, the dismissal completely ignored all the transparency violations and the meaning of the word diversity. but the coalition that was challenging the committee doesn't appear to have any plans to appeal. Partly because the legal system is a farce and there's no chance in hell that Trump will ever be held accountable by it. And partly because the report is already out.

So there's nothing the courts could really do to remedy their issue now anyway. It's not like they can order them to have pre-published their meeting agendas. And to their credit, the group that did this lawsuit also did a lot of good work highlighting the extent to which the panel was bullshit, which would probably come in handy for some future Edward Gibbon working out. his fall volumes or something. We can burn it for heat after the times. Yeah. Yeah.

And in Bromania news, works both ways. Bromania or bro mania. Bro mania. Another tech bro is trying to create his own country as they are wont to do. We've heard about libertarian barge islands with nothing but the laws of the open sea. We've heard about a tax evasion themed community called Prospera in Honduras. tourist that's getting stalled by the government of the actual country they're in. We've heard about Christian Wright, California, trying to secede from California and make its own

state. It hasn't been working very well for these groups, but this latest example combines what the founder sees as the best elements of those projects I just mentioned, plus a few others of his own. And it just might work. And they got kicked out of their compound in Malaysia. So we're going to talk about it. Guys, it's so easy for money to buy happiness.

And these fucking goofballs cannot sink the shot. It's insane. It's insane. Absolutely. And also, also, think about how bad you have to be fucking up that you can't bribe your way out of trouble in Malaysia. Yeah. So the mastermind behind this one is Balaji Serena Vassin, a 46-year-old from Long Island, New York, who's worth about half a billion.

Well, that depends on how crypto is doing, which he's betting on heavily. Wait for it. Both as an investment and with extremely stupid literal wagering. In March of 2023, he made a public bet on Twitter with an economist. He was claiming the price of one Bitcoin would be over $1 million in less than 90 days. It went down about 3% during that time. and Bolli lost the $1 million bet. Wait, it's such a stupid bet, right?

Because, like, if your assets suddenly increased by 35,000 percent, which is what it would have taken for that to happen, who the fuck cares if you win another million dollars from some economist on Twitter? This is a bet you can only lose. Yeah, unless you're doing a pump and dump scenario with some true shenanigans, which was alleged by some people. It didn't work, though.

Belashi's background, it includes being a partner, at Mark Andresen's venture capital firm, Andresen Horowitz. Chill. And he was also the chief technology officer at Coinbase. The crypto site. How'd that go? And now he's making the natural pivot to what he's calling tech Zionism. And he's going to be the prophet of the new tech pro promised land.

He actually compared his movement to the ones started by the biblical Abraham, Jesus Christ. And in Eurek, high. crimes and misdemeanor's news. You see? You see what I did? Got it. Imagine, if you will. I really enjoyed it. I did enjoy it.

Thank you. Thank you. Imagine, if you will, that on August 28th of 1963, as Martin Luther King Jr. had gotten up to give his now iconic, I have a dream speech. He said instead, oh my God, you guys,

they arrested us for protesting. Look, there are a lot of you here. I need everyone to chip in five, no, $11 each because I'm not paying that ticket. They arrested us, arrested us.

That, my friends, has been the journey of Christian Crusader and name you wish you could forget, Kim Davis, who this week is being sued for fraud because she is still trying to get out of her divinely commanded

legal fees. Okay. Okay, so, Eli, I know you're doing a satirical bit about MLK there, but as usual, satire's corpse is ready to jump out of the grave and flick you in the fucking eyeball. This is real. Kim Davis was held in contempt, contempt of court in 2015. And she went to jail for five nights. I'm sure it was really tough. And this, again, this is the real part. Her defense team literally compared her righteous refusal to sign a marriage license.

license to MLK's letter from Birmingham jail. They really, really did that. Okay, you guys are being really judgy. Look, she's willing to suffer for her beliefs, but she's way more willing not to suffer from them. Okay, the term is martyre, not martists. Exactly, yes. Right.

So first off, a big thanks to Hemet Metta over at the Friendly Atheist blog for bringing this latest bit of carmic retribution to our attention. You can check out his stuff at Friendlyatheist.com or send of a pillow filled with your hair. He loves that. It's only a matter of time before the restraining order thing stops being a choke, man. Self-fulfilling prophecy. It's a nice thing. Right. So, for those of you who don't remember, Kim Davis was a thrice divorced Rowan County Kentucky clerk who defied the law in 2015 when she refused to sign a marriage license for a same-sex couple. She lost that lawsuit about the case and ended up owing the couple $100,000 in damages

and then another $260,000 in legal fees, which shouldn't have been a problem. The minute Christian idiots heard someone was standing up for bigotry, the money poured in from all over the country. And the idea of a third of a million dollars in homophobic go-fund me payments all go into the lap of a couple that was gay and having their rights trampled on it, that is the closest we get to poetic justice in the real world.

Sure was. Sure was. Well, apparently she can give send go fuck herself. Because, as I said at the top, we discovered this week that it wasn't quite enough to cover her bills. So she's been hiding her inheritance in hopes of not having to pay up. According to the Lexington Herald Herald-Berrne Bailey Jr. Fuck off. Come on.

I just keep saying hick names. It gets more hicc. Junior pig feet racism. So apparently they transferred a Moorhead home in her mother's estate to Bailey Jr. and his wife and Kim Davis's husband, Joe Davis, effectively writing her off the deed. Then in May of 2025, Kim Davis and her brother transferred a 50-acre farm parcel and a separate three-bedroom home to a trust for which her husband and son are beneficiaries. Okay. So I've been to Moorhead, Kentucky. It's the home of the pretty good Wendy's off I-64 if you're driving from. from Cattlesburg to Saltlick. Here's the thing. I wouldn't call anything in Moorhead an estate.

Well, if it doesn't include the Wendy's, it's not an estate in Moorhead. Pretty good Wendy's I would call an estate. But, okay, it's some bullshit either way, but just to clarify. Okay, one way or the other, though, I want the reality show now where that couple that she denied the license to moves to her old family estate

and learns to farm. Yes. A million dollar idea. But it actually gets worse. So this might chalk you to your very core, but Ms. Davis is actually not the first person to try to get out of legal debt by giving stuff to her family.

So in 2025, she swore under oath that she had not transferred property over $2,000 in the previous five years. So not only will those transfers be legally reversed, but she could face criminal charges for them. Just like the, prophet Elijah being hunted by Ahab and Jezebel. It's tough. Hopefully, hopefully her legal team does a good rendition of swing low, sweet chariot in her defense at that trial. I'm sure they're

real. I'm sure they were. Now, you might be wondering what Kim's lawyers think about this. Well, as someone whose lawyers regularly wake up screaming, Eli, don't say anything in the middle of the night, I imagine they would be disappointed. Can confirm what he said by. Well, luckily, Matt Staver, of Liberty Council has no such worries. According to Matt, real quote, she did not lie. They asked a specific question and she answered it exactly,

truthfully, the way they had asked. The attorneys asked Davis to identify each property you own or in which you have an interest. Not the past tense, owned. Okay, she was talking about her present tense ownership during the past five years.

Thanks for clearing that up, Matt. Got it. Right. Yeah, exactly. Hey, do you want a tea? Do you want it? I have an extra tea, Matt. Do you want it?

Oh, that's the gay one. Yeah, this is so close to, yes, your honor, but she had her fingers crossed. I mean, honestly, it's right next to it. It's like a little dumber than that. Right. So we're going to see how this turns out. I'm going to be honest. I'm still a little worried that we're going to get a gay marriage ruling from the Supreme

Court that sort of pulls Davis out of this pickle, like the Duke boy she shares a flag affinity with. But until that happens, we'll let her and her lawyers rely on the same legal strategies Heath uses to play board games. Next up in headlines in epic failure news. A bunch of conservative chuds are pretending they read Homer's poem and they decided to pick a fight with Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey for being too woke and they are losing super hard. Based on the box office numbers I saw, the lesson is go woke, make a billion dollars in counting.

Yeah. Elon Musk, for his part, responded by promising an AI-generated remake with fake white people in order to correct the historical inaccuracies of the story about gods and sorcery and sea monsters. We talked about it on the last episode of The Skepacrant. Check it out if you're interested. but for today we're going to talk about the responses that came from a more religious angle. That means we're going to be hearing some cinematic and literary analysis from Ross Douthit, as well as Michael Knowles and Ben Shapiro of The Daily Wire,

if the Daily Wire still exists after the edit. We'll see how it goes. Yeah. Curse those liberal cucks in their foundational Western texts. It's such a loser. argument. And by the way, I love for Ross that that's the company he finds himself in, right? A man who aspires to be a real intellectual, just like Ezra, just perfectly at home on a list with Michael Knowles and Ben Shapiro. Also, just bigger context. The whole story, it's stolen from the

epic of Gilgamesh, which is from like Mesopotamia. So it wouldn't be white people at all. Just for the record. That's where a lot of that came from. Okay. Well, now we're fighting. I'll start with Ross Douthit. You might remember him from being the token conservative Christian in the New York Times opinion section. Or vastly more importantly from our Godawful Books segment that we did. We just finished his book. Or maybe you went to that bridge where he does the fucking riddles. He's also the newest member, Ross Douthit is the newest member of Barry Weiss's team at 60 minutes.

Yeah. It's going to be a correspondent. for 60 minutes. Well, here's how he starts his op-ed from last week. Quote, Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is the blockbuster that launched a million takes. The interpretations crowd by social media feed, like Agamemnon's assembled ships at Outlis, right? They keen in my ears like the sirens' seductive voices. We get it, man. Okay, okay. Look. And seriously, that's what he wrote. He like realizes. He's doing a voice, but these are the backwards.

Okay, look. I'm just saying people have a lot of opinions about the biggest movie of the year. Hey, Ross, are you sitting backwards in your chair as you type this? You're reading really hard, man. We can hear you. So I know this is that dumb thing to chase, but he says there are a million of them in one sentence. And then in the next sentence, he compares them to a thing that very famously there were $1,000. Right?

And that would be dumb enough, even if the phrase he'd bastardized in the first, first sentence wasn't about the thing there was a thousand of only being a thousand. Jesus, Ross, pretentious better, you dumbass. You're with 60 minutes now. Yeah, you got to, you were, you were pretty good on pretentch, but like you got to ramp it, man, for Barry Weiss. Yeah. Come on.

So one of the big critiques from Ross is that Nolan removed too much sweet religion stuff, which led to a bland version of the story in the movie. according to Ross, quote, Gone are the sex and sensuality, the warring deities, the heroes outsize ego and charisma. I can barely jerk off to this point. In their place is a story that's very American with tropes familiar from war movies and westerns,

dialogue that belongs in a contemporary Y-A novel, and a moralism that's at once extremely didactic and extremely general. Jesus. They let Tom Holland say dad once in the fucking movie and half the planet loses their goddamn mind. Oh, my fucking guy. Yeah, Ross's critique is that he made it relevant to modern audiences.

Right? Like, that's genuinely what he said. And I can see why a Catholic apologist would take issue with that. But holy fucking shit, it clearly works. And that brings us to the chapter 10.9 daily wire. Michael Knowles is one of their talking heads and he saw the movie in order to make his anti-woke takedown video

but then the movie was pretty great and he was fucking furious because it ruined his thing so all he left was trying to claim the movie for the Christian right like Nolan was doing this on purpose so Knowles tried this with two different angles one was transphobic not surprisingly regarding Elliot Page

as the character Sinon Knowles argues that Christopher Nolan is actually a secret conservative, if you think about it. And choosing Page was a subtle reference to Sinan's depiction as a fraudster in the Aeneid and the Divine Comedy, where that character actually appears historically. The other way we know that Nolan is a secret conservative is because The Dark Knight was really a story about how George W. Bush was a great president and the War on Terror was a super good idea. idea. Was it? Yeah.

Remember at the end where Morgan Freeman gives the super surveillance computer to flock? And he's like, I think you guys are going to do great stuff with this. This is really fantastic. Well, and you know how Memento is really a tribute to how quickly Republicans can forget that they were outraged about high gas prices, government interference with private industry and the Epstein files? Yeah. No, it's because of the disease. And their wife took too much insulin. Yeah, exactly.

died on purpose. Did you guys hear that? Do you hear that gravelly scratching sound just now? Well, that means it's time. Talk about Ben Shapiro. He also. Really, before Anna can make a Ben Shapiro jingle, how dare you, sir? Make it happen.

So Ben also loved the movie and went home furious. And he had to tell his dwindling audience to relax about the black lady as Helen of Troy because it's making the squad look stupid. So, you know, good safe. Close one. Got him, Ben. And from there, from there, you tried to claim the movie as a Christian allegory about the golden rule. According to Benny Towels, quote, it's a Christian allegory because the whole thing is a biblical take.

Christopher Nolan establishes at the beginning of the film something that he calls Zeus's rule. Sounds pretty Christian. Treat others as you would be treated because you don't know. who is a god in disguise. Now, you may notice that treat others as you would be treated is the golden rule. The golden rule comes from the New Testament. Okay? Is that okay with you guys?

I mean, he's lying. No, he's not, actually. I'll get to it. And usually it finishes because God made man in his image. Nolan takes that and flips it and says, because any person could be a god. Okay? It is okay.

This is not something that the Greeks cared about, end quote. It's a good thing that the source material that specifically talks about Zeus's law isn't a thousand years older than your fucking Bible or you'd look really stupid right now. I know it's a Jewish thing. Jesus Christ stole it from 8,000 years before Christ. Yep, that's how you got it. I know it's a Jewish thing, but I like that Ben and I have the same verbal. tick when we're lying. You got it?

Uh-huh. Agree with me. nod. Okay. Yeah. Yes. So, yeah, there you have it. Christopher Nolan is secretly incepting us with conservative Christianity.

He cast to Elliot Page and paid him $1.5 million for five minutes of screen time as a smokescreen for subliminal anti-trans propaganda. And the golden rule, it's kind of like a secret. shopper scenario when you're bartending at TGF Fridays. You've got to be nice to everyone just in case one of the patrons is actually a Greek god in disguise asking for a strong island and you have to not be a dick about that horrible, horrible thing they just said. Yeah. Everyone's ordering an angel shot around Zeus. Yeah. And in keeping the duh in Florida news, some pretty fucked up shit has to happen before I come down on the side of government funds going to private Catholic schools. I'm a firm believer that no taxpayer money should go to religious schools whatsoever.

I also think that diplomas from religious schools should have big asterisk on them and degrees from religious colleges should be legally required to make slide whistle noises when you unroll them. You should run on that and nothing else. Nothing else. Right. So all that being said, PhD. I don't think that taxpayer money should be selectively and vindictively yanked from religious schools for being too damn vaccinated. And that's what's happening in Florida, or at least that's what they're threatening. So damn it, if I'm not going to have to side with the fucking Catholic schools for a few minutes.

Yeah, when a bank robber is, I don't know, like jaywalking later that day and gets shot in the face by a cop and the cop takes all the cash in his pocket, like, technically I'm on team bank robber now. So, like, that's what you guys have done. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, so this comes to us from the Attorney General of America's flaccid penis, James Uthmire. And if you feel like you don't have enough context about the guy to hate him sufficiently,

I want to add that he basically aspires to be Ken Paxton. That's his goal. Center of his vision, born. Exactly. And he's all mad because Catholic schools in Florida don't accept religious exemptions to vaccine requirements, which, to their credit, it's their religion. Right? Their religion doesn't have any restrictions about getting vaccines. And since you have to be their religion to go there, there's no reason why they would.

Yeah. If the Bible had anything at all about RNA or stem cells, I'd be Christian already. Yeah. Maybe not like for spite, I wouldn't be. But I know I was wrong for sure at that point. Yeah. Even if we pretend he meant what he said, and to be clear, he does not, this would be like being mad because a Baptist school doesn't have a policy against bringing Trafe into the building. Like, it's not your thing. It's your thing.

But Uthmeyer, himself a Catholic, he disagreed. He sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic bishops decrying their decision not to accept religious vaccine exemptions for the new school year. The letter, son of mansplained in part, quote, as a Catholic, I am confident that the teachings of the Catholic Church do not require schools to compel students to take vaccines derived from the tissues of aborted children against the sincerely held religious objections of their parents, end quote. Which is almost as wrong,

theologically as it is scientifically. I mean, the whole fucking point of Catholicism is that it's dictated from on high, right? The whole, we each get to interpret it for ourselves. That's literally the Reformation. And the Vatican has specifically stated that it is Catholic kosher to, quote, receive COVID-19 vaccines that have used cell lines from aborted fetus. in their research and production process, end quote. Yeah.

It's a magical HIPAA violation to even ask the religion about their stuff or even consider whether or not their stuff is dumb. That's, I just said, the official position of Antonine Scalia. You're being too Republican for Antonin Scalia right now. Yeah. I love that this guy's just like, he finds this out and he's sitting at home. He's like, modern evangelicalism has all the fucking new bigotry choice, stupid. Pope and his wokeness from 1915.

Right. Does he believe in all the stupid shit I believe? So here we've got a case where the state is using its financial leverage to dictate to a religious institution how it should practice its religion. And those crickets that you hear in the background are all the conservative Christian chicken littles that have been screaming about Democrats weaponizing the government against Christians for the last fucking decade. It's almost as if giving taxpayer money to religious schools was a bad idea for both secular

taxpayers and religious schools. If only literally every vocal advocate of church state separation had warned them. Right? What are you going to do? And finally tonight in Fly the Unfriendly Sky's News. As I was preparing for our audio visual

program last week, I noticed that we got quite a few emails about self-proclaimed sky evangelist Whitney Lynn, who went viral for bothering people on a plane about Jesus last week. And I'll admit, I was hesitant to talk about that story because, first of all, about once a year a person with borderline personality disorder goes viral for doing this. So I kind of felt like everything I want to say

has been said. But secondly, she's lame. Don't do that. I hope she gets eyeball cancer. So today, I'm going to make an exception because I'm pleased to announce that Whitney was kicked off Alaska Airlines this week for her shenanigans. And I have a feeling she's going to be calling herself the trained evangelist sometime real soon. Also, I hope you get eyeball cancer. I feel like we can say it's many times we want. Yeah, we are a lot to. I do.

And since those stories started cropping up in the news, I have to admit, I thought a lot about what I would do if I wound up on a plane with one of those people. And I end up consoling myself with stuff like, well, you know, being on the terrorist watch list would like actually look pretty cool in my historical reputation. Yeah. Right. We all would overdo it. We would all, all of us know in our hearts.

hearts. We would really love to get up and give like a soliloquy, but we'd all be like, fuck your face. Yes, exactly, exactly. And we'd all be like, hey, guys, we're going to have to do life shows like a drive to. Yeah, and we'd have to go to jail for a minute. It would be real.

Also, I have to be able to drive, like, within 50 miles. It's an ankle monitor. So. Right. So, first off, big thanks to Lloyd for being the first to send us this story to Scathing News at gmail.com. Lloyd, as thanks for sending us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com.

Next time we are on a plane together, Heath has to get up and give a short, passionate speech about how awesome you are. Passionate? And encourage people to check us out on YouTube, as well as TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook. ScathingNews at Gmail.com. Okay, here's the thing.

Laura actually beat Lloyd by 25 minutes. So I'm really sorry about this, Lloyd, but that prize is voided because of what I go. It's a 25 minute. The thing. Laura gets Eli's airplane snacks. That's official. Okay.

Eli's airplane snacks are such a fuck you of a prize. Okay. The only prize here is Eli not having them. And that's a prize for Heathmore than Laura, I think. I'm just saying. Yeah. Honestly, you take my tapis box away at this point. I think it's the only thing holding me on.

I think we're all going down together without that tapus. Right. So it appears that Whitney was up to her usual shenanigans on Thursday this week when a flight attendant asked her to get her stuff and step off the plane because the crew didn't feel safe with her. And it's worth pointing out that that's an extremely reasonable position, right? A lot of people scream about Jesus during their psychotic episodes. And it's very hard to tell the difference between them and someone who wants attention on the

internet. You could argue they're in the same category right there. One might, yeah. Yeah. And even if you assume that the she's... He's a totally sane person who's just the fucking worst. The crew might need to make a safety announcement on the airplane during her little Jesus speech.

And taking time for her to stop her sermon to do that is quite literally unsafe. Yeah, right. And also, I might be on the plane somewhere. In which case, nobody between me and her could really be said to be safe at all. Exactly. Think of the innocent bystanders. It's like a Tasmanian devil scenario, right? Yeah, exactly.

So like all normal people doing a totally chill thing, Whitney immediately starts recording herself and posted a seven-part Instagram story where she yells some more. And then in response to being asked to leave the plane because she's making people feel unsafe, the first thing she says is, do I have guns?

Which, side note, side note, screaming the words guns, he's not a great way to convince the people around you that you are in a threat. Hey, we just need a verbal yes or no, Whitney. But, okay, I do love the idea that an air marshal tricked her with like, psychopath says what? Psychopath says guns, huh?

Yeah, right. And then she said, she yelled guns. Like, ah, you said guns. That's like, bomb. We got to take it. Now, in the videos, Whitney does receive some paperwork to rebook her flight, but looks like she might have a little difficulty with that because, She received an email from the airline following the incident,

letting her know that they have placed her ability to travel on Alaska, Hawaiian, and Horizon Air on hold while they investigate. Yeah. Okay. And here's my favorite part. The airline gave her an e-credit, but also immediately banned her from all their flights and all their affiliate flights. Just lovely work by the airline. This is such a weird fucking week. They've got me now rooting for airlines fucking their customers.

out of their money. It's such a weird week. Strange bedfellows. And look, I don't want to get your hopes up too far on this. This is the kind of thing that's going to cause a big stir with Christian assholes and airlines don't want trouble. So they might reverse their decision. But as a person who travels frequently and has, in fact, had to reschedule a flight out of Orlando airport, I know just how much pain Whitney put herself through with her shenanigans.

So no matter what happens. no matter what ends up happening, we're always going to have that. At least to that. And click before some Christian asshole gets to be rooting for the TSA and flock cameras. We're going to wrap the headlines for the night. Heath, Eli, thanks as always. Chew Majy. And when we come back, we'll be very disappointed to learn that the communion in the title of Vance's book

has nothing to do with his relationship to the couch. Back on episode 10 of this program, Heath and I started picking our way through the Bible on air. and like so many of the decisions I made back when I thought this podcasting thing was just going to be a phase, it perpetually haunts me in a segment we now call God Awful Books. Oh, do we though? Do we really? Do we? So last time around, we wrapped up on Ross Douthat's mealy mouth and failed effort to convince us that religion isn't stupid. And somehow we're moving down from there this week by moving on to a book by now.

no lesser sapient mold spore than James Donald Boland, who rejected almost every part of that name. And now goes by J.D. Vance. I genuinely didn't know. I thought it was Jansdance. I actually thought it was Janicefer. Yeah. Shadanzifer from Van Zer. In my head and my heart. That's what it was. It was James Dethesda Vance. Yeah. So he wrote a book about how religion isn't stupid also. And his is called communion, finding my way back to faith. You are very excited. You, in fact, chose this book for us. Why?

Well, okay, so based on what we know about chance stance, Vance, it was time for, I'm going to call it a Devon intervention. Boo. Fuck you. That was amazing. That was amazing. That was pretty fucking good. And Eli, you fought hard to keep us from doing this one. So my question for you is, why didn't you fight hard?

though. What can I say, Noah? I'm couching my expectations. Boo, boo! Okay, so that's really, that is because yours was better than my and I was jealous. Right, right, no, clearly. It was a boo of jealousy. It doesn't even make sense, boo. It doesn't. And audience, you're damn right. This is going to be wall-to-wall couch fucking jokes

for the rest of the year. It's what the people demand. It's all we got. Now, the original plan for this week was to go through the intro in the first chapter in this segment, but the four-page intro was so thick with bullshit that I wrote to the guys, I was like, we have to scale, back our ambitions a bit and really dig into this.

We're gonna go like a paragraph at a ton. Yeah, really. Each episode. Really. So okay, so we start with a dedication and it's dedicated to some heathen lady, so I'm not sure how serious his conversion to religion can be. Poor Usha, my muse, my rock, my love seat. Yeah.

Because he fucked a couch. So then we get introduction, True, it is, and I gotta admit, when I first saw the page count, I was like, okay, well, this one will fill up, you know, we'll spend 12 months But then I saw the font size. And I'm like, oh, this is for those who like big fonts and they cannot lie. Gotcha. Yeah. When senility is your target demographic, everything is heading one in Markdown.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. And also, okay, I shit you, out. He has two sentences into his book before his kids hate him. They do. And then genuinely, very next sentence, bitterly. Yes.

They hate what he's making them do bitterly. He takes his kids to church every week and they fucking hate it. Yeah. So, okay, Jady Vance thinks they hate going to church because they're little kids, which, okay, and that might be true. But also, they definitely hate him, the person. Like, for sure, little kids and dogs, they can just sense it when people are evil. Priests, fascist, dads, whatever. Like, I guarantee the kids do that, like, that recoil, you know, like, who should be.

did with Jady's hand got too close. For sure. Yeah. I just love that he's decided to begin his grand story of conversion with three pages on how literally everyone in his life hates him. Like that's his warm up. Yeah. Maybe you start with like an intro by a warm up comic next to.

Yeah. I bet Chappelle would do it. Yeah. Rob Schneider's available. For sure. Yeah, I feel like at this point though, he starts showing off that he knows his kids' names, right? It feels like he's name dropping them.

Okay. These kids are going to be delightful when they're old enough to write a memoir. I'm really looking forward to that. The only charming moment on the entire first page is the youngest kid, I think, Mirabelle, being like, we can't go to church yet. I'm finishing my fucking 11sies. Get off. Right?

Yeah, he's talking about how hard it is to get him to church. And he's like, as in all things, my wife actually does all the work. Sometimes I'm the lazy boy. You got to mix it up, right? He goes, you know, sometimes I enter church as awkwardly as I order donuts. And I'm like, why keep sometimes people stare at me like my fly is down in the opening paragraph of your own fucking book, man? Yeah. Honestly, J.D. Vance, not knowing you can be less hateable, explains so much.

Okay. We're still in the first paragraph. We are. And he's showing up late to church and holding up the mass. for everyone. The Secret Service, they're clearly like interrupting the sermon and doing like dive rolls and running op-sex sweeps being like Bobcat is clear to enter before J.D. finally walks in. That's his real name, by the way.

He's Bobcat in the Secret Service. Oh, is he? Nicknamed Lingo. Nonsense. What name do you think they gave him before he did a little huff and they made me? Yeah, right, right. I have to point out, I had eight notes on the first paragraph of this book. eight knows nine of you count this one you tied the paragraph in sentences so he talks to all this

about how miserable it is and how everybody hates every moment of it and then he says quote still this is one of my favorite family rituals end quote oh my god we hate you so much it's he's almost saying like my kids hate the other shit we do together even more actually and then he's he's talking about the parts that he likes and he's like i like it when my little kid gives me a cushion to bend over and I'm like, come on. Do you know about the couch spoken jokes, man, come on. Don't make it that easy. Hey, yeah, why are these two stuck together?

What is it? It's crunchy. He says, quote, an uncomfortable reality for any devout Christian is that so many people raised in the faith later fall away from it, end quote. And I'm like, yeah, man, seeing that most people outsmart the worldview, you haven't outsmarted must be rough. Well, you know how a lot of people go to college and they stop believing in gravity, but you know the gravity.

he's real. It's like that very real experience that lots of people have. It's going to become like atheist podcasters and write memoirs. Fuck. All right. Ask Todd Blanche about NDA's

for kids. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So he got kind of his statement of purpose. He's going to tell us how he fought his way out of atheism back to ignorance. So see, Vance once didn't consider himself a Christian,

but then he decided to go. into politics. Yeah, yeah. He's going to spend the next few pages accidentally explaining how the path to Christ is very narrow and paved with opportunism. Yeah. American Christianity is the market equilibrium guided by the invisible hand of the God market. That's how he got there. Wasn't this guy a fucking writer first? He's just bouncing all over to place and he's on page two. Okay, Noah, to be fair, his mom really was a drug addict. And he only had to lie in the second half of that first book. So, you know, this one, he's all tightrope, you know?

Yeah. Yeah, no, that's fair. Yeah, but he says he used to want to rise above others. But since he met Trump, he's more of a bottom, I guess. And that's how I got my job. We're all power bottoms to Christ. It's true. It's true.

There's also this sad fucking moment where he's like, you know, I've accomplished pretty much all the stuff that you can accomplish. And I'm like, dude, you're the vice. president. Even if that, even if it wasn't too a fascist, that's a joke fucking job. There's been one TV show ever about a vice president and it was about how nobody would want that fucking job. I made it to the brass ring. Well, the other, there's a shittier ring right below the brass ring. I'm right there. Yeah. And then, of course, our first encounter with scripture comes on page three. Matthew's talking about how he shall know them by their fruits. And he quotes

the whole passage, which is so repetitive Dr. Seuss would tell Matthew to get to the fucking point. Yeah. It's like God was trying to explain something to Matthew and God got flustered. And he's like, okay, so good trees, good fruit, wait, that, okay, stupid.

Bad tree, no. Okay, Matt, man, man, ma, ma, man. You know, fucking trees, right? You're running all this down? It is. Also, can I say,

whole buddy's nerficed is a follow up when your last sentence was, I have achieved all of my dreams. Right. But you know, nobody's, nobody's perfect. He goes, but you know, the reason that I turned back to Christianity is because Christians just kept turning out to be better people than everybody else. And I'm like, you're married to a Hindu lady, dude, stop. Okay. I met her when I was a dirty atheist. Come on. Exact quote from the subtext of this book. Oh, yeah, right, right. No, This part has a very like, what's it going to take to get you into this religion feel to it too? Yeah.

Just slapping the hood of the Bible. She's a beaut, Emma, right? Right. A lot of raping this. Then he quotes himself, right? So the first quote is scripture. Second quote is J.D. fucking Vance. A great man once said.

Yeah, right. Well, so he quotes the thing that he said that got all Christian, the Christians all pissed off at him. Because he was asked about why he became a Christian. and he didn't talk about Jesus enough. Right? And the quote is basically, he's like, you know, look, I looked at all the societal benefits of the different religions and Christianity says,

no-brainer. Duh. And then Christians got mad because, of course, when you're asked, why did you pick that religion? You're supposed to pretend like the answer is, oh, that one was true. Yeah. He just wrote about his capitalist path to Christ.

And then he stops here to re-adjudicate a Twitter fight about it. He had with these Christians. And to be clear, nobody wins the scripted fight that he wrote in his own book. No, he agrees to disagree with himself. Yeah, they all look like. Christian people were like, hey, fucking do the lie. Do the like fucking up.

Yeah. And speaking of which the book we're reading right now, he continues. Right. He goes, I turn to Christianity because I saw so many Christians doing good things. And I'm like, yours is the kid rapiest of all the religions. Did you not also see that? man? No, I didn't see that because Donald never invited me to the island. He goes like, you know, my mom and dad took in drug addicts when the hospital turned him away.

And I'm like, oh, what do they do for the people who were turned away who needed abortion? No questions, please. Hands down. No questions. Yeah. Anyway, we're getting Medicare and Medicaid to give tax cuts to billionaires. More opportunities for the sector of Christian detox couches, right? Yeah, there you go. It's a growth sector, am I right? Am I right? He always has been for me.

I fucked a couch. He's like, I saw that good of Christianity and I ignored the bad, which let me tell you, that is the way to go. Yeah, I know, I'll do it. And then he goes into this bill. Like, you know, back when he was a dirty atheist, he's like, you know, but then I had kids and I realized that I was a bad person. And I'm like, oh, man, I could have told you that. Also, you should have some more kids. I don't think you understand how bad a person you were.

No, he was, quote, so. focused on winning the game of life that I had neglected the deeper truths, end quote. Just want to remind everybody that Rupert Murdoch recently compared him as me to Marco Rubio. Yep, exactly. Also, just to remind you, you're both wearing clown shoes from floor shone right now because of the shallow truth of your penises. That's what actually happened. But, like, this whole thing is so fucking sickly. It's like, boy, you know, I sure.

What I learned is that I sure do love the simple salt of the earth, white people. First and foremost, the ones in Iowa. Why? And then secondly, the ones in South Carolina, I think. Maine. One second. I'm going down a list of Wikipedia as I read this. Marco Rubia is a Cuban.

Wait, I mean, Michigan. New Hampshire. Yeah. He's like, you know, I realized that the people that I used to ride as simpletons, the ones who didn't go to Ivy League colleges or accomplish anything, but still voted a pretty high percentage. If they're scared enough of gay people, were actually the best of the people.

Yeah, I can't help but notice you didn't hire any of them for your venture capital firm. It's so weird. I guess he realized this after. Earning enough salt. And then he tells us about an email that a friend sent us so that he could pad the word count with somebody else's email. And basically he's like, hey, you know,

a Christian guy told me on pretty good authority that all I need is a mustard seeds worth of faith. that counts and that I actually have. Look, I know that this book is going to be a barely disguised call for the Theogacy Vance wants to establish, but I will not stand for him encouraging annoying Christian cousins to send their, you should try Jesus emails, okay? Right. Too far. I'm about to get a copy of this book for my boy. Cousin with like, annotated post-its. If that's a bet on Calci, y'all should take it. That's happening. Oh, absolutely. He goes, I know that no non-Christians are going to be convinced by my testimony in this book,

but that's okay because unless they're making fun of them on a podcast or something, they're not going to read it anyway. Also, the whole point of this book is to just to say, like, you know, I'm just like you, rubes. So that's the only thing I need to convince anybody of. Oh, these? Yeah, no, these are my shoes. They're 13.

They're from Flauchime. No big deal. Marcos are 11.5. Anyway, Pat, God. That's a God. Yeah, he says, he says, this book is, quote, one man's story. No more, no less. And I'm like, well, last.

Yeah, don't worry if he forgets anything. We'll fill in the gaps. I feel like he's going to forget a few things. Remember when he couldn't hold a trophy? He couldn't. I do. He was half a second into trying to touch a trophy, and it basically exploded. It did. He goes, quote,

I'm not a particularly sectarian person, end quote. I'm like, regardless of what my words and actions and desires might suggest. And how history books will define my, effect historically. Yeah, right, right. He goes, I'm a Catholic, but don't worry, Protestants, I'm one of the good Catholics. He actually spends a little time on the, now I know you might think Catholics are Heathen's question.

Yeah, look, I know my base is an incongruent mix of the mentally ill and mutually exclusive religions, but I think we can all agree that you guys would vote for me for president next year, right? You guys don't think I'm math compared to Marker. You would probably not say math as your answer. You guys would be as excited about me as you would be for Trump. You'd be like... 13 to 11.5.

Vance. When we both lied. You can make a statue of me. I don't care. He's got this moment where he's like, you know, he's got to kind of acknowledge how weird it was for God to split the one true religion into a bunch of mutually exclusive denominations. And his explanation for this is like weird, right?

Anywho. But no, I love prodigists, too. You all had that? You had that plucky little reformation thing? I mean, changing God's words. But I love that. For you, it's ingenuity or something, right? He says, quote,

one of the things I admire about my own church is that fundamental questions of doctrine change very rarely, end quote. And I'm like, yeah, no, fuck all this post-5th century thinking that's plaguing the rest of the world. I'm not one of these guys that's down with this. Nicene wokeness. Also, I should say

Pope's fucking love me. I'm killing it at the Vatican, just so really nice. Killing it. He goes, he says, he's like, I said Protestants are good at music. That's actually a compliment. I like their music. I like it. They're also eloquent speakers in tongues.

Lots of good stuff going on. Yeah. Oh, here's a good lie. He says, quote, besides the amazing music, I promise, and he's talking about, if you go to Protestant churches, he says, I promise, she'll find people who invite you to coffee or to their house for a meal, end quote. And I added, unless you're gay or look different for them or are brown or have a Hindu wife actually now that we're talking about it. Okay. This is amazing. This is J.D. Vance being like, yeah, so nobody invites me for coffee ever.

That's a Catholic thing specifically. I think Protestant. That's why it's because it's Catholicism. It's just taboo. Also, J.D., who fucking cares, man? If you think I'm going to burn in hell, but you invite me to your house for fucking cookies with jam in the center. All that makes you is an evil liar, right? Yeah. It's just a liar.

I'll take the cookies. Yeah, he goes, look, whether you're a Protestant or a Catholic, I think we can all agree that the real enemy is those damn Muslims and atheists. Right. Sorry, no, you're on your own for the end of the chapter. Ethan and I are having a silent,

our jam cookies good fight. Okay, that's good. I'm on the last paragraph anyway. You are. You're so close. Yep. And that's as deep between vanses cushions as we're willing to look tonight, but we're going to dig even further on the next installment of God Awful Books.

You're not eating jam cookies? I'm not eating jam. They're so fucking good. They're awful. I'm alone. It's the best way to put fruit into a cookie. Or not. It doesn't matter.

I'll eat cookies with no jam and then spoonfuls of jam or together or whatever. It's all great. They're awful. Yeah. Or no spoon involved. It doesn't, it's all great. Before we put the milk back in the fridge tonight, I wanted to remind you that it's almost too late to get tickets to see us live in D.C., but not quite. We're recording an episode of Godawful Movies Live on August 14th. Tickets are still available at gotoffelmoviesLive.com unless you want premium tickets, in which case you should have acted sooner. Check the show notes for a link. Anyway, that's all the blasph me 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 lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show,

skeptocrat debuting at 7 am Eastern on Monday, an even newer episode of our sister-in-hot-friend God-Effle movies, debuting at 7-Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our half-srichs Lestead debuted, debuting at noon-eastern on Wednesday. Obviously, I can't close it out until I thank Heath Enright for being my rock, Eli Bosnick, for being my scissors and Lucindilusions for being my hammer.

They could absolutely take out both the rock and the fucking scissors if she wanted to, but she doesn't want to. And apologies for the lack of a Farnsworth quote on today's show. We're making a few changes to accommodate the shift to video. Farnsworth quotes might be back. It might be Elsewhere in the show, might be video. We're still sorting all of that out.

So apologies if you've got one waiting in the queue. But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best people. Jim, Nigel, Sean, Melissa, Dakota, Keaton, Roanuck, William, Rebecca, Carnifax, Thrain Sack, Jalderon, Tyler, Jan, and sounds like Elias, Niaf, and James, Kelsey, Aaron. And sounds like Eli Upton's Patreon Pledge, whose hearts are so big, cholesterol, doesn't even bother. Together, these 18 amiable atheists aided in our aims to alienate Abrahamic Ace Hulery this week by giving us money. Not everybody has the money it takes to give some to us, but if you'd like to do so, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com slash scathing athias, whereby you're on 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 scalingadias.com. And if you'd like to help, but not if there's money involved. 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 and Lily Bosnick handled that for us. Our cartoonist is Angelo-Madrid from Madrid-tunes. That's right. If you haven't checked out the YouTube version, you're missing, Angelou animations between bits. And our audio engineer is Martin Clark,

who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission. If you have questions, comments, or death threats, or find all the contact info on the contact page at scathealias.com. I don't think we fucked anything up in this episode. Let me fuck something up so we have something for the outtake, okay? This content is scanned credentialed,

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