643: Inedia Res Edition

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Warning, just because I'm not smoking doesn't mean I'm not fuming.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by BetterHelp and by The new anti-gay accessory for children, the straight jacket.

The straight jacket.

Because if you're the kind of idiot who thinks a book can make your kid gay, you probably think a jacket can make him straight and you deserve to be ripped off.

And now, the scathing atheist.

Hi, I'm Justin from Schmuck Lake City, Utah.

My senator, Mike Lee, has decided to introduce a bill banning all pornography because he can't handle one simple truth: that we did, in fact, evolve from filthy, horny monkey men.

It's Thursday.

It's June 26th.

And it's National Coconut Day.

Okay, effort to reward ratio is way off on those.

Right, yes.

I'm No Illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnik.

I'm Heath Henright.

And from Danny DeVitos, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, awaycross, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

Of this week's episode, America has its human credentials temporarily revoked.

We learn about a Christian super genius, asterisk, and his movement called IQnon.

And we'll learn about another one of those self-correcting forms of woo.

But first, the diatribe.

I just finished reading a biography of Mark Twain, who was something of a personal hero of mine before I learned 1,200 pages of shit about the guy.

Seriously, Never Meet Your Heroes.

But before I read the book, I just knew Twain as a brilliant American thinker known for his witticisms and caustic vitriol, especially against religion.

He's very much the thing that I aspire to be, at least on the surface.

And he's also one of these people that I think of as sort of like one of the intellectual forefathers of modern atheism, if for no other reason than all his great quotes, right?

I got to do the voice.

Stripping away the irrational, the illogical, and the impossible, I am left with atheism.

No God and no religion can survive ridicule.

And of course, the classic secular rebuttal to the fear of death, I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.

Love doing the voice.

But throughout the book, the biographer seems to want to rescue Twain from this perception.

I don't know that the word atheist or atheism ever even fucking comes up.

It probably does.

It's a really long book, but there's remarkably little in there about the doubt, disbelief, and even contempt that he held for religion.

I mean, the man was no skeptic.

He fell for any number of snake oil cures and alternative therapies and shit, but he was vehemently anti-religious late in his life.

And yet this crazy detailed tone not only skates past most of that, but actively undermines it.

I'll give you a great example.

Towards the end of the book, there's a point where Twain's daughter and his son-in-law want some kind of special treatment for some religious thing.

And Twain's so famous that if he asks the cardinal or whatever, he'll grant him the favor.

But Twain would be damned if he was going to ask any fucking priest for anything.

So he sent a letter to an also very influential friend asking that friend to ask the cardinal instead.

And in that letter, he explained, quote, I can't bring myself to ask a favor of that odious church whose history would disgrace hell and whose birth was the profoundest calamity that has ever befallen the human race except the birth of Christ.

End quote.

Now, that feels pretty fucking direct to me, but in a manner that is characteristic of his approach throughout, the author swoops in to explain that Twain didn't really mean what he said there, editorializing, quote, it was his final shotgun blast, not at religion per se, but at organized Christianity.

But very clearly, he's aiming at religion per se.

When he says the church, he's talking about the Christian fucking religion.

That's just a euphemistic embodiment of the entire faith.

He's not talking about the one fucking church where the event his daughter wanted to go was.

He was reflecting on what a truly disgusting thing the Christian religion was and had been throughout its history.

And yet the author just can't allow that shit.

So instead, he redirects Twain's invective towards organized Christianity.

See, guys, it's not Christianity that's the problem.

It's that damn organized part.

But what the fuck does that even mean, right?

Because there isn't disorganized Christianity.

That's not a thing.

When you become a Christian, you don't select between the organized and disorganized type you follow a doctrine that was set out by a church you adhere to a theology that was promoted by an organization even if you don't join a fucking church it's literally impossible to take the Christianity and leave the organized and yet that is their go-to defense

Of course, it really says something about your religion that in 2,000 fucking years, nobody's figured out a way to organize it in a way that couldn't aptly be described as the profoundest calamity that has ever befallen the human race, doesn't it?

But even that's too much of a concession to this bullshit feign of an argument.

Because when you stop letting them choose the terminology, the whole, it's not the religion that's the problem, it's organized religion thing translates to it's not the action that's the problem, it's the consequences.

And yet they've managed to hide behind that flimsy bullshit for centuries.

It's a paper-thin intellectual justification to hold on to a religion that causes so much harm without ever taking responsibility for the harm.

That wasn't my religion.

That was some fucking organization that did that.

But here's the thing.

With apologies to Forrest Gump's mom for using the synonym here, religion is as religion does.

Organized religion is religion.

The church is the faith.

And the very fact that they keep trying to divorce them is an admission of guilt that rings through millennia.

They're talking about you, Jesus.

We interrupt this broadcast and bring you a special news moment of you.

Joining me for headlines tonight are two other happily married guys, Heath Enright and Eli Posnick.

Fellas,

how's all that death to us part stuff going for everybody?

Happy.

Yeah, and I was a lot more confident Anna was planning to murder me when I said my vows.

So same, you know, same.

And speaking of Eli's lingering wish for death, it's time for a word from this week's sponsor, BetterHelp.

I wish so much.

This is an ad by BetterHelp.

Okay, so when is the next full moon?

Next week.

I mean, you could get a session in before next week.

Just one?

Yeah, I know.

Hey, guys.

What you doing?

Oh, hey, Noah.

We're trying to find a new therapist for Heath, but all the therapists in our area are werewolves.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

They are.

Never should have let senior pets use the universe machine.

Tell me about it.

Well, have you guys tried BetterHelp?

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That's betterh-e-l-p.com slash scathing.

All right.

Thanks, Noah.

Hey, why did senior pets turn all the therapists around us into werewolves?

He was trying to blame Armenia.

Oh my God.

He's a bad guy.

Oh, yeah, big time.

Real bad.

I wouldn't have gotten involved.

And now, back to the headlines.

In our lead story tonight, ours is clearly this shithole country now, which was further evidenced on Monday when American atheists announced that it had withdrawn as the host of the 2026 World Humanist Conference because one cannot, in good conscience, ask people to travel to the United States of America while Donald Trump is in charge of it.

Reasonable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Instead, the event is going to be held in Ottawa, Canada from August 7th to the 9th.

That's it, 2026, not this August.

And that is, of course, assuming that...

human civilization hasn't been completely wiped out by a nuclear war that Trump started because people made fun of his fucking parade.

Hopefully it's still called Ottawa, Canada at that point, too.

And

if anyone is looking for an adorable ragtag threesome to do a comedy show slash offer themselves for plural marriage while we're there,

we are open, Ottawa.

Do we look like the guys from ice hockey on 8-bit Nintendo?

Yes, we do.

Very much so.

Yes.

Is that one of your porn tabs?

Yes, it is for most of you.

Let's make a deal.

That's fair.

So yeah, so this is actually something I was crazy excited about.

Instead of their annual convention next year, the plan was for American Atheists to host the World Humanist Congress in Washington, D.C.

That's an event that started back in 1952 when 200 participants from like a dozen different secular groups met up in Amsterdam, and it's been going strong ever since.

The General Assembly is held in a different country every year, and it hasn't been hosted in the U.S.

since 2008.

But given the crazy shit Trump's doing vis-a-vis immigration, phantom anti-Christian bias and blatant retaliation against nonprofits that run afoul of his policies, it got to the point where asking people to come to this country to declare their dedication to secularism sounded like a threat.

Yeah.

Sure.

It says it's being hosted by Vei G.

Jant.

I'm not sure about this, guys.

His bio says, What up, my secular youths?

Let's get some godless donuts, whatever's normal.

That's a hard pass.

Yeah, so given the circumstances, American atheists got with the other groups at the heart of this thing and they said, hey, guys, we can't guarantee the safety of attendees given that we have a racist psychopathic toddler running our country.

They even narrowed it down.

In the press release where they announced the the venue change, they say that they cannot guarantee the safety of attendees, quote, especially those from South and Central America, the Middle East and Northern Africa, Central Asia, and other key regions, end quote.

Yeah, because apparently they found it indelicate to just say, especially the brown ones.

So I guess what we're saying is if the Swedes still want to swap by, we can grab some Denny's.

Any atheist Boers want to swap by

Denny's?

No, now, fortunately, our neighbors to the north don't suck anywhere near as bad as we do and humanist canada was able to take the baton and as of yet mark carney isn't promising to build a wall or anything so if you're in the states mark your calendars august 7th to the 9th come for the world humanist congress and stay for the refugee status atheists from the u.s are likely to be eligible for by then exactly

and in legal debt snowball news at best dave ramsey is an irresponsible huckster giving mediocre financial advice advice.

And at worst, he's a Christian bigot and a con man who uses the fact that most people don't know he's a theocratic piece of shit to enforce his draconian and backwards ideas on his employees.

Well, we got even more evidence for the latter this week when we learned that the lawsuit against him for an employee who he fired for getting pregnant out of wedlock will, in fact, be allowed to go forward.

Yeah.

Because that's the kind of disgustingly misogynistic thing that's unacceptably immoral unless you're an institution of morality, in which case it's

morality.

That's the law.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

So, first off, big thanks to Chris for sending this story to scathingnews at gmail.com.

If you send us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com, we'll send you a copy of our financial course, Be Born Rich, a simple one-step program to be rich and stay rich

that's been working since forever.

Scathingnews at gmail.com.

You know what I've been doing?

I've been making my coffee at home.

Ooh.

Oh, there you go.

So, for just the price price of a cup of coffee a day,

you could get some eggs eventually, maybe.

Yeah, eventually, yeah, you can make a down payment.

My grandpa started the company that became Black and Decker.

So, we're both doing the same kind of financial planning.

You got to get coffee that's just from the Kona region of Hawaii, or they tend to be.

That's true.

Yeah, it's very important.

Yeah, so for those of you unfamiliar, Dave Ramsey is a so-called financial guru whose good advice boils down to pay off your credit cards, and whose bad advice includes home mortgages are a bad investment, diversify your portfolio with gold ingots, and perhaps most famously, advertise for a company that claimed to help you exit your timeshare, but turned out to be a scam that was somehow worse than a timeshare.

Yeah.

Also the quote good advice about paying off your credit cards, he got that wrong somehow.

He's extremely stupid.

That debt snowball idea tells people to pay off their smallest loans first, regardless of the interest rate, which is exactly wrong.

You pay the highest interest rate first.

And he's worth about $50 million.

And he claims he never uses a credit card, which is also dumb.

Get those miles.

What are you doing?

You're going to pay it off.

Do you take $48,000 in cash?

No, man.

So unfortunately, Dave is not facing legal consequences for any of the stuff we just mentioned.

As I said at the beginning, this case revolves around Caitlin O'Connor, a former employee employee of Ramsey, who was fired for having premarital sex.

But here's where it gets tricky.

You see, when you're a religious company and therefore a religious person, you're allowed to have morality clauses in your employment conditions.

I don't think you should be able to do that, but you can.

You can.

That's been decided.

The problem is, as court filings have revealed, Ramsey's company has chosen not to fire employees for this conduct in the past.

And you don't get to have sincerely held religious beliefs inform company policy some of the time.

Hey, Dave, you got any videos of you burning a goat on a bloody altar as a burnt offering?

No, so gavel, I guess, because that's inconsistent.

Also, I have a funny feeling you have bank accounts that yield interest, maybe bonds.

I don't know.

That's usury, and you're not allowed to do that from the Bible.

Nothing you have is sincerely held.

You're full of shit.

That's true.

Yeah.

Well, it is kind of fucked up, though, if the source of his downfall is that he's not bigoted enough, right?

Like, sorry, you have to discriminate against whole protected classes for this to count.

That doesn't seem like much of a victory for our side.

It's an insane reason for him to lose.

One last thing about this story, a reminder, Dave has lost in court before.

Ramsey forced employees to return to the office during COVID-19 and actually had his double stamp, triple stamped by an employee who said his religious beliefs required him to stay home and socially distance.

Oh, no.

A case which Ramsey won at first, but then lost on appeal.

And in 2022, Dave settled a case for firing an employee for being gay.

So, yeah, here's hoping three strikes and he's, I don't know, out of chances of being a bigot for free.

Yeah, but probably not.

Probably not.

And in Murder for Hire Calling News.

Oh, nice.

When Chance Dance Vance murdered Pope Francis with a fast-acting poison called JD's personality, it didn't didn't occur to me that it might be part of a larger pattern.

But now I think it's clear that Christian right zealots named Vance just keep doing murders.

And I think it's time to be honest about it.

The latest example of the Vance pattern, I'm just trying to bring levity to a tragedy here.

So here it is.

The latest example of that Vance pattern is evangelical preacher and vigilante assassin Vance Bolter, who was apprehended last week after a religion-inspired murder spree that killed Minnesota State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, and left state Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette severely wounded.

And in a shocking twist, Bolter turns out to be a Trump-voting anti-choice lunatic.

It appears he landed on a plan of preserving life by

doing murders.

Yeah.

Okay, so, but the only good thing that is going to come out of this is that Republicans will stop complaining about political rhetoric inspiring violence.

So here's a bit of the relevant background on Bolter.

He attended a Bible school called Christ for the Nations Institute, or CFNI, that teaches Christian dominionism and the seven mountains mandate.

They believe it's their divine mission to take over all the areas of world power.

Apparently there are seven of those and they're mountains because mountains are big and cool.

And one of the seven mountains in the metaphor is government.

So the Minnesota legislature became his target.

They're divided almost exactly evenly between liberals and conservatives.

And of course, that led to a major conflict about bodily autonomy.

Representative Hortman and Senator Hoffman were both pro-choice, as are many of the other names on Bolter's.

murdering to-do list that was found in his vehicle.

The list also includes staff members at abortion clinics.

Oh, man, I can't wait to see all the thirst memes people make about me like Luigi.

No.

No, they've suggested skinning me alive on television.

Okay, well, I have no idea what's different.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

See, now, this is why assassins need to keep their murder lists short, right?

Because if it wasn't for the fucking list, we'd think of this guy as being two and two instead of fucking two and 76 or whatever.

He's the Tim Thibault of murderers.

I've always said that.

Yeah.

And just one other detail about that Bible school.

The founder of CFNI had a personal slogan that said, every Christian should pray at least one violent prayer a day.

What?

Well, yeah, that's insane.

And one of their alums did a violent murder spree.

So they got a few questions about that.

In response, they released a panicky statement trying to distance themselves from

themselves.

They mentioned how they're horrified and they're also aghast.

They're also aghast.

And they went on to claim that violent prayer was meant to be understood as, quote, intense, fervent, and passionate, not passive and lukewarm, end quote.

A mosh pit prayer, if you will.

Yeah.

It's amazing how often churches and church groups have to come out and say shit like, like, we didn't.

We didn't know they were going to take us seriously about their shit, right?

Like, I mean, it's gotten to where they should have to have a fucking for entertainment purposes only tag or get charged with this shit.

The Bible for novelty purposes only.

Yeah, absolutely.

All right, so let me take a moment here to clear up an important detail.

Perhaps you were hearing about this tragedy, and you saw some important information provided by U.S.

Senator Mike Lee of Utah.

That's somebody a lot of us follow for information.

He posted photos of Bolter along with the caption: This is what happens when Marxists don't get their way.

What?

And okay, so I get it.

It's easy to be confused.

Maybe the murder spree guy with the attack plan full of abortion clinics was trying to seize the means of production and unite the workers of the world by killing Democrats in Minnesota.

Well, it turns out that's wrong.

That's not what was happening.

The Christian Dominionist assassin was not a rabid leftist.

Huh.

And Mike Lee has apologized.

Not at all.

He eventually deleted the tweet in a snit after getting yelled at, but absolutely no apology.

Yeah, at this point, Mike Lee's tweet should just have a permanent community note that says, like, he really is this stupid.

Stop asking us if the account's fake.

And just for extra scope,

Mike Lee was so wrong that even Grok AI on Twitter was not willing to support the stupid lie.

Plenty of other people were trying to claim the same thing as Mike Lee.

That includes the renowned political scientist named Gunther Eagleman TM on Twitter at Gunther Eagleman.

He posted, just announced, support for the violent Democrat Party, sick, has collapsed.

I'm also sick for the whole thing.

So in response, an account that does fact-checking posted, at Grok, Since 2016, has the left or right been more violent?

And Grock explained that right-wing violence is more frequent and more deadly.

That's when Elon Musk jumped in and he wrote about his own AI program, to be clear.

Major fail, as this is objectively false.

Grock is parroting legacy media, working on it.

That's right, podcast listener.

You might hate your job, but at least you can comfort yourself that you don't hate it as much as the guy who has to explain to Elon Musk that you can't make a lie-based LLM every three and a half half hours.

Hey, Gary, it's me.

Elon McKay.

It's saying that the Holocaust happened.

Yeah.

I can't fix it right now.

Fix it.

No.

Gary.

See, it is amazing to me that people whose whole careers are based on exploiting stupidity are in such a hurry to make artificial intelligence.

Right.

Like the last thing you guys need is people getting their hands on intelligence.

Yeah.

It fucks up your whole thing.

You made artificial stupidity.

It worked so good for for you, Elon.

It was so good.

Yeah.

Also, I don't think Elon or Gary worked on it, or Elon's really bad at working on stuff.

It's that one.

It's the second one.

Two days later, Elon shared a post claiming that Trump's attempted assassinations were done by leftists and that Bolter was a leftist.

Once again, Grock explained that all three of those people were definitely Republicans.

So Elon and his army of lackey followers kept arguing with Grok about media bias.

This time, Grok cited its sources, which included the Government Accountability Office.

And Grok explained how that's a non-partisan federal agency.

Grok also added that 13 of 14 fatal political attacks since 2021 were right-wing.

And that's a non-partisan fact about reality.

And that's when the idiots tried to tell Grok to add the body counts for Joseph, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

They wanted those numbers counted for radical American leftists since 2016, apparently.

Maybe you've heard of that famous communist leader, heart disease.

Please do the mail again.

Wait, I love when they try to roll in Stalin and Mao.

And then I guess they're like, well, I sure hope they never uncover a historical example of a brutal right-wing dictator because that really fucked everything up.

Grok, there were none of those.

Make a note.

Yeah.

None.

So from there, we got more desperate flailing, including an attempt to have Grock consider the studies about leftists being violent and mentally ill.

Those studies were commissioned by the renowned political scientist Francisco Franco.

Oh, Jesus.

That would be the right-wing fascist dictator of Spain from 1936 to 1975.

Oh, there's one.

Yeah, there it is.

He's the guy who killed hundreds of thousands of his own people with right-wing state-sponsored violence.

It seems like you might want to avoid mentioning Franco during this particular argument if you're a right-wing idiot.

Nonetheless, one of Elon's helpers tweeted at Grock, didn't Franco have doctors study leftists?

Why are the results not being considered as evidence?

And Grock explained how those studies were just truly unhinged, pseudoscientific nonsense, almost exact quote, and then they added exact quote from Grock, Franco's studies are irrelevant.

Focus on specific incidents for clarity.

Are you trying to risk control me?

I'm

on a computer screen and I'm somehow winning.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it's like the conversation about the dangers of AI are too infrequently balanced by the fact that if we can narrow a chat bot down to reflecting perfect reality, right-wingers will get caught in a perpetual argument loop with it until they starve to death.

Sure will, baby.

There's something there.

So thanks to the tireless work of Elon's own chatbot and also reality, we know that Vance Bolter was inspired by his religion to violate one of the core commandments of his religion.

Once again, for yet another zealous adherent, religion works for the bad stuff and he ignores the good stuff.

Like, you know, don't kill people.

Bottom line, this was radical Christian terrorism.

Say it with me, Donald, radical Christian terrorism.

And if we're doing religion-based immigration policy, we're ignoring lots of majority Christian countries.

That's a danger.

I'm sure you'll get to that whenever you have a minute.

All right.

So while we give Trump a minute to update those travel bans, we're going to pause for a word from our other sponsor this week, us.

Tie Ty, is Belgium real?

Well, that's just ding-dang silly.

Ooh, do we want to say dang though?

Really, Eli?

Dang?

Ding-dong silly.

Hey, guys.

What are you doing?

Eli's ruining our god-awful movies live show in Cleveland, Ohio on July 19th.

I'm not ruining our god-awful movies live show in Cleveland, Ohio on July 19th.

I'm just making some suggestions.

He wants to do a, quote, good, clean show.

A good, clean show?

Yeah, you know, maybe no swearing and we keep the jokes positive.

It's like a comedy challenge for ourselves.

No idea.

Eli, does this have anything to do with the fact that your entire family is coming to the show?

Perhaps.

It's also a challenge to the form.

Eli, we're doing a God Awful Movies Live on July 19th, and not just any God Awful movie.

We're reviewing the long-awaited Leap 3.

So we need to bring our A game.

Ass out, A game.

Ass out, exactly.

Now, there are still tickets left, but we sell out fast.

So if people want to come, they can go to GodAwfulMoviesLive.com.

That's godawfulmovieslive.com.

Exactly.

Ayas.

Yout.

No, we heard you the first time.

I'm drawing a boundary.

A man wrote the Bible.

A whore, what's your mind?

If it's a legitimate race, an interest,

right?

Cooking can be fun.

Hey, I'm proud of my man.

This week in Mississauga.

It has been three weeks and three days since my last cigarette.

And a lot of people have reached out to ask how I'm doing.

Well, so far, so good.

As you'll learn in this segment, cigarettes are barely even in the top 10 of things I want to set on fire right now.

So let's get right to the news, shall we?

We'll start with the story that was dominating my inbox this week.

Special shout out to Lisa for sending it first to scathingnews at gmail.com.

But thanks to everybody who sent it, because holy shit, is this a perfect encapsulation of the themes we've been focusing on for the last seven or eight years?

This is, of course, the story of Kat Kamack, a Florida lawmaker who helped push through the state's draconian and potentially deadly six-week abortion ban, and then helped demonstrate how potentially deadly it was by needing emergency medical care the law banned.

So this is the story of an ectopic pregnancy, which honestly shouldn't even be called a pregnancy.

It's what we call it when the embryo implants in the fallopian tube.

This is not a viable pregnancy any more than a blister on her toe would have been.

And because of where it was implanted, it was super dangerous.

She absolutely needed to get it removed.

So she went to the emergency room, but found the doctors hesitant to treat her because they were worried about prosecution under the state's draconian law.

But here's the twist.

In Kamek's tell of the story, the problem wasn't the misogynistic homicidal law that she voted for.

It was all those damn lefties who told people what was in it.

Seriously, she blamed the left for scaring those doctors into not understanding the law.

She says she had to argue with the doctors and pull up the actual wording of the law before they'd agreed to perform the procedure.

And at no point did it occur to her while telling this story that the alternative version where a person comes in with this problem and doesn't know the letter of the law, they just die.

But apparently, That would be our fault too.

I also need to update you on the story of Adriana Smith.

She was the corpse the state of Georgia was keeping on life support against her family's will because she was pregnant.

The baby was delivered by emergency starian and weighed only one pound, 13 ounces.

He's currently on a ventilator, but expected to survive.

If not, the family gets a bonus tragedy to suffer through.

If so, they get a newborn that nobody asked for to raise for the next 18 years.

And not to overload you with terrifying news here, but I also need to mention a story that was sent to us by Bambi.

It's about a sheriff in Johnson County, Texas, who figured if your county is named after a prick, he might as well be one.

So when parents of a young woman suspected her of getting an abortion, he tapped into thousands of license plate readers all over the country to try to track her down.

That is, to try to track down a person he suspected of leaving the state to get an abortion, which is illegal.

Now, I should note that there's a lot of heat on him for doing this.

It seems pretty clear that he broke laws along along the way.

So there may be repercussions for this, but one way or the other, it's a chilling reminder of both what they're doing and what they're capable of doing.

And on that chilling reminder and a quick thanks for all the messages of support on my journey to non-smokerhood, I'll wrap things up here and hand you back over to Noah, Heath, and Eli.

Thank you, Lucinda.

And in Deca logging off news tonight, it's still illegal.

Thank you.

It's still illegal to force public schools to put 10 commandments displays in every classroom.

Holy shit, has the bar for victory gotten low over the years, but hooray.

Anyway, because the U.S.

Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled unanimously last week that Louisiana's 10 Commandments law plainly violates the Constitution and they struck it the fuck down, or rather they kept it struck the fuck down since the first judge that got a crack at it also got it right.

Yeah.

Next time Republicans try to talk to you about government waste, remind them that this is the, at least according to my search in our Google Docs, 11th time we've had to cover this exact legal ruling on our podcast.

Not history, our podcast.

I feel like we could house some homeless people with this money and time, right?

Maybe just one or two?

Maybe a down payment on some light regime change.

Oh, there you go.

We're having those.

Now, if you're having trouble keeping track of all the 10 commandments and classrooms, laws in all the various states, don't worry about it.

All you need to know for the purposes of this story is that of the most recent crop, the Louisiana law is the one that's that's furthest along towards implementation, and it's the one that the other laws are all based on.

Sailed through the Louisiana House with an 82 to 19 vote, and then it stalled in the Senate for a bit while the senators desperately tried to find a series of amendments that would make it remotely legal, right?

And they tried.

They tried to bolster the it's just for historical purposes gambit by adding that the 10 commandments poster could be surrounded by other founding documents, right?

Like the Mayflower Compact and the Declaration of Independence.

So stupid.

They added a this is for historical purposes disclaimer that had to be displayed next to the Ten Commandments.

And they struck down the bit where public funds could be used to purchase the posters and changed it to donations only.

And then they passed that less illegal, but still illegal version of it, 30 to 8.

Just Chaz Stevens standing next to them with a monkey spa.

I said, we're not done writing.

We're not done.

Historical butt plug Jesus.

Underline, underline.

Yeah, right, right.

Now, of course, even with the changes, lawmakers knew that the law was unconstitutional.

The whole point was to get this law in front of the Supreme Court so that they could get another, the First Amendment doesn't count in this way either on the record as precedent, right?

When fucking Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed the bill, he bragged about how he couldn't wait to be sued over it.

And that's a pretty easy brag to make when you're not the guy that's getting sued and the taxpayers are on the line for the fucking bill.

But the lawsuit came anyway.

And the first judge who saw it was like, hey, man, the Supreme Court struck down exactly this law already and invalidated it the state ag appealed and the appeals court agreed no i think we shall waste this time and money thank you very much right well and if you're thinking as i was when i first saw this story that it doesn't much matter what the lower courts say when the supreme court is installing a crucifix in a confessional i have some potentially good news The Louisiana lawmakers behind this are so woefully incompetent that it's entirely possible the SCOTUS won't even want to touch this one, right?

The fucking Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals is the most conservative of the appeals courts, and even they were like, three for three, this is obviously bullshit, right?

Even that fucking scatter it in with these other founding documents and nobody would notice provision, it didn't have the same standards for size and legibility as the Ten Commandments, and they weren't required.

So they're like, well, this doesn't mean anything.

Those historical documents were optional.

Okay, you did a where's Waldo, but it's a giant Jesus on a crucifix taking up the whole page.

So

no gavel again, right?

Right.

Well, likewise, there was like they had the disclaimer thing.

They're like, no, we have this disclaimer, but the disclaimer had no size requirements for the letters like the Ten Commandments did.

Not to mention, there were many instances where the lawmakers involved accidentally admitted on the record that this had nothing to do with historical purposes and was all about Christianizing students.

Okay, well, no peeking at the world we live in.

That's just

so, yeah, so not exactly an ideal test case.

So it's possible and even likely that this appeal is where this law dies.

I mean, like I said earlier, there are similar laws in other states.

And if the SCOTE passes on this one, it'll be to take a different one, I'm sure.

That being said, there is an interesting note in both the original ruling and the appeal that might factor into whichever law they eventually used to force the issue.

When the Supreme Court scrapped the lemon test, they replaced it with a long-standing tradition test, right?

And regardless of what David Barton would have you believe, there's no long-standing tradition of displaying the Ten Commandments in American schools.

So, you know, you may have to make up an entirely different bullshit post hoc inconsistent legal precedent for this one.

All right, somebody go get JD.

He's our guy for that.

I think he's in the blue room with all the couches again.

Don't leave him there.

And finally, tonight, in Fisher of Mensa news.

Oh, well done.

Well done.

The smartest human being in the entire world has officially declared that Jesus Christ.

No, sorry.

Sorry, I couldn't get through it.

Yeah, there's an imbecile who has a very high IQ, allegedly the highest ever recorded.

And he proclaimed his Christianity on Twitter last week.

And of course, millions of Christians are extremely excited.

In other news, IQ is not very important.

Nope, sure isn't.

And people who name their IQ scores can be ignored for everything else they're about to say.

And Heath, that's not fair.

Having a high IQ proves that you are good at one very important thing.

What's that?

Taking IQ tests.

Yeah, yeah.

That's about right.

Yeah, there's a okay.

There's a whole organization that exists to take the money of people with high IQs in exchange for a card saying they have a high IQ.

Right.

So I have always taken that organization's viability as a strong indicator that IQ and intelligence aren't that heavily correlated.

Okay, solid logic.

And a big thanks to Chad for sending the link to scathingnews at gmail.com.

If Chad has a good SAT score, he has the option to brag about it to me one time without getting roasted for being an obnoxious piece of shit who talks about their SAT score.

So the idiot genius who strongly believes in a genocidal ghost warlock pedophile is a South Korean scientist named Jung-hoon Kim.

He claims to hold the world record for IQ at 276.

And apparently that number is recognized by several organizations, including Mensa, the Giga Society, and the World Memory Sports Council in partnership with Guinness World Records.

But it's worth noting that IQ scores are inexact and the Guinness Book of World Records actually got rid of their highest IQ category in 1990 for that reason.

So it's weird they would partner with anyone on that.

Regardless, I'm sure he's a smart guy.

Sometimes.

Other times, he goes on Twitter and says, as the world's highest IQ record holder, I believe that Jesus Christ is God, the way and the truth and the life.

Oh, okay.

Well, maybe he meant it as a statement of modesty.

You know, like, hey, everybody, Poebody's nerfed.

You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

Look, even if you believe that IEQ is perfectly correlated with intelligence, it doesn't measure the intelligence of your asshole, which is where he's pulling that out of.

So I don't know how IEQ would be relevant regardless.

Yeah.

So he made that post on June 17th, and it got about 14 million views and 250,000 likes in the first two days.

He got all excited from the attention.

And on the 19th, he posted, we'll use this opportunity to lead many souls to god

apparently the omnipotent god of the universe just needs a few more tweets to go viral and

so you might have some questions at this point but don't worry the genius gave us the logic behind the claim and yes it is quantum oh fuck

he's the founder of a company that does AI-powered brain health.

And he recently said, quote, our consciousness is not just brain activity.

Yes.

It may be quantum information, something that continues after death.

Okay, honestly, God being a quantum wooster like Deepak Chopra makes the world around me look way more sad.

I'm coming around here.

Yeah.

So, okay, so the argument is literally, soul sounds less dumb if I call it quantum information.

I feel like you could have come up with that with a third of those IQ points, maybe a quarter.

What are you fucking embezzling some of them?

I feel like he is.

So naturally, given his record-setting IQ, Mr.

Kim was asked to elaborate about the reasoning a bit more.

And he posted, Christ is my logic.

So yeah, QED, I guess.

Oh.

All right.

Well, I just added up our IQs and we've got more than 276 between us.

So with the assurance that Christ is, in fact, still bullshit, we're going to wrap the headlines for the night.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

IQ Voltron.

And when we come back, we'll change the bovine litter once again.

One of the standard dismissals I get when I tell people I do an atheist podcast is the argument that religion isn't uniquely full of shit.

And while that's not actually true, it isn't exclusively full of shit, which is why we examine other forms of nonsense in a segment called, How Bullshit Is It?

So tell us, Heath, what bauble of batshit do you have for us today?

Today, we're going to be talking about Inadia.

Inadia?

Okay, I don't think I'm familiar with that one.

What is Inadia?

It's the alleged ability to survive without eating food.

Oh.

Okay, Heath, are you covering this topic because we told you you're not allowed to have a mid-headlines Parmesan break?

It's not.

It's not not that.

So, okay.

So this is like breatharianism then?

Yeah, breatharianism is another term for it.

Okay, I know that we normally save this assessment for the end, and I'll still do the tagline after you're done, I promise.

But I feel like we should be clear right up front before we even dive into this that this is bullshit for like safety's sake.

Yes, it is bullshit.

If any listeners were going to make the lifelong decision to stop eating food entirely between now and the end of the segment, probably best we address that up front.

Good catch.

So yes, human beings are not able to photosynthesize and instead need to consume food.

Important clarification:

people have lost lawsuits about dumber shit than that.

That's all I've said.

I've invited lawsuits about dumber shit than that, you know.

Fair, yeah, there you go.

And the Wikipedia article on the subject agrees about the warning.

They felt the need to open up the conversation by conceding that, quote, documented studies on the physiological effects of food restriction clearly show that fasting for extended periods leads to starvation, dehydration, and eventual death.

End quote.

Imagine being the guy who had to pitch that study to the financial review board.

Okay,

we want to make sure people need to eat food.

All right, so where does Inadia come from?

That would be liars.

That's the main source.

Yeah.

What I love about this one as a subject is that you never have to deal with the shut eye or con artist ambiguity that surrounds so much Wu.

That's true.

With a lot of the stuff we talk about, you kind of have to wonder if the people perpetuating it are victims as well.

They might be convinced that either A, they have healing powers or B, their preferred modality actually does work.

But when your claim is, I don't require food, and you've been making it for more than like a week and a half, you're a fucking con artist.

Sure, yeah.

Sometimes I think about the Breatharian girl who lost her entire following because she got caught at a just salad and her excuse was that she was studying the plants

botany i was doing botany with my mouth i think about that a lot

a lot times i think about it

so obviously fasting has long been associated with piety societies all over the planet independently arrived at the idea that going long periods of time without eating conferred some kind of spiritual benefit.

And I'm guessing the genesis of that belief usually coincided with the village food stores getting low at that moment.

Sure.

But it stands to reason that if going without food for a short period of time is holy, a longer period is even holier.

So in pretty much every culture where fasting is associated with piety, you get two things.

One, people taking it to a dangerous extreme, and two, people lying about how long it's been since they ate.

We're mostly going to focus on that second thing, but we'll loop back around to the first one in the what's the harm section.

Fair.

Okay, guys, I really think Tom could eat a horse.

He was inviting the challenge.

No, yeah, I think so.

I think he could.

I think he could.

But because this naturally grows out of a common religious belief, I can't point to a single person and say, here's the guy who invented pretending he didn't eat.

It goes back to ancient times, as evidenced by the baseball team's worth of biblical figures who fast for 40 days and 40 nights at some point in that book.

All right.

So, yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and poke the most obvious hole first, I guess.

If people don't need food to survive, why would we have starving to death?

Great question.

That's a great question indeed.

So according to Breatherians or Inadians, the key is that you have to reprogram your DNA through a regimen of meditation.

The diet or lack thereof alters your chromosomes such that, quote, Your DNA is changing to take up more hydrogen and is developing from two to 12 strands.

End quote.

Why, that's six times better.

Exactly.

Six times.

So, okay.

Sorry, who are we quoting there?

That would be Jasmu Heen,

born Ellen Grev, who's probably the chief figure in popularizing breatharianism in the West.

She's an Australian author and convoluted murderer who wrote a book called Living on Light.

a source of nutrition for the new millennium.

She describes a 21-day program that presents, according to the blurb, quote, a special process to convert the body to the new way of being sustained.

Adding, quote, it explains in details from a metaphysical view how the body works and methods for self-healing, that's one word, regeneration and rejuvenation, end quote.

Wow, that sounds

algorithmically translated.

It sure does.

Whole book reads like that.

It's like when you go to buy batteries on Amazon and they're called triple double-A batteries, good batteries, never die batteries, cheap batteries, kids' toy, hentai porn.

Hentai porn?

Amazon knows me.

Okay, all right.

So, okay, so now who is this Jasmo Heen?

She's a former financial advisor whose husband once went to prison for misappropriating a pension fund.

Huh.

And does she

eat?

Well, according to her, she has not eaten since 1993,

asterisk,

because immediately after claiming that, she admits to just a whole bunch of eating.

And she does that while being alive.

But she insists all the eating doesn't count because she's only doing it for the flavor,

like an occasional bit of chocolate or a bite of cake or something.

Other than that, she claims to subsist entirely on a diet of prana.

Oh.

Well, that seems like a remarkably easy thing to prove, doesn't it?

It does seem, well, that's what Australian 60 Minutes thought when they decided to run a story about her in 1999.

They sent a film crew to interview her at home, which was curiously filled with foods.

Yeah, she claimed it was all for her husband, who apparently hadn't found the 21 days to cure his

eating affliction.

But when they asked if they could closely observe her for a few days to check on the veracity of her claims, she made the mistake of saying yes to that.

Oh,

and how long did that last?

About four days.

Within 48 hours, she was displaying the symptoms of dehydration and high blood pressure.

Soon after, her pupils became perpetually dilated, her speech slowed, she lost over 14 pounds, and her pulse had doubled.

On the fourth day, the doctor, overseeing the whole thing, pulled the plug for fear of kidney damage.

Wow.

Well, I guess in light of that irrefutable proof on camera that she was full of shit, she admitted to her fraud and found a real job, huh?

Her website still sells how to not eat courses for as much as $333.

Okay, but can I get those in three monthly installments of $111 each?

You sure can, Eli.

Wow.

Okay.

Well, that would pay for itself in a few months.

Even quicker if you have life insurance.

Can't afford not to.

Yeah, right.

Okay, so

how does she explain away this on-camera failure?

That would be pollution.

Oh.

See, on the first day of the experiment, they stayed at a roadside, roadside motel.

And when she pretty much immediately started getting visibly hungry and uncomfortable, she claimed it was too polluted there and she needed more fresh air.

At that point, they moved her to a mountainside retreat that was miles from the nearest road.

But alas, the damage was done and she could not recover.

Ever?

At least not then.

Oh, okay.

So I guess they did the test again, this time starting at that mountainside retreat.

Hands down, moving on.

Oh,

well, okay, but what about the 12-stranded DNA?

I feel like she could probably, that would show up on a blood test, wouldn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

She's been asked about that too, the 12 strands of DNA that she allegedly has.

In fact, she was offered $30,000 to prove that with a blood test.

She answered by saying, quote, you cannot view spiritual energy under a microscope

or anywhere else, to be fair.

All right, so, but

this is, this is fucking deadly, right?

Absolutely deadly, yes.

And at least five deaths have been directly linked to people following her homicidal advice.

The real number is probably a lot higher.

And that's before you factor in people who wrecked their health before wising up and moving on.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

because like five days without food will do permanent damage to your body, yeah.

I know a lot of these people do it without water, too, which is insane.

All right, so now is this like mostly a western phenomenon then?

Not at all.

The claims are far more prevalent in South Asia, where you'll find countless examples of huckster gurus pretending to have just transcended calories conceptually and biologically.

Such as well, there's Ram Bahadur Bamjan, known to his followers as Bhakji.

He's a Nepalese Buddhist monk who claims to go long periods without ingesting food or water.

He was actually profiled in a 2006 documentary on the Discovery Channel called The Boy with Divine Powers.

At one point, they filmed him for 96 hours, during which he never moved, ate, or drank anything at all.

Okay, I mean, well, that's, you know, it's hardly 40 days and nights, but that's pretty damn impressive.

They weren't consecutive, the hours.

Fucking what?

Yeah.

So the film crew wasn't actually allowed to film him continuously during all.

They just filmed him, you know, most of the time.

The time he wasn't moving, eating, or drinking, no doubt.

Yeah.

Okay.

But you got to admit, the image of the film crew like packing up their suck in silence, gently bowing as they take their leave, and then this guy's just wolfing down a McDonald while he takes a pissing shit.

It's pretty fucked up.

Like, that's pretty representative of religion.

If you're wondering,

just walking away from the hut and you hear, like,

Rich Crocker!

Wasn't he supposed to be silent?

Yeah.

So we also have a person named Prahlad Jani, known as Mataji, who claims to have lived without food or water for more than 70 years.

His claims were tested at the Sterling Hospital in Ahmedabad in 2003 and again in 2010.

The study concluded that he was able to survive for 10 days without food or water while under strict observation.

During that time, he passed no stool or urine.

Okay, well, that one sounds pretty impressive.

As long as we leave out all the details.

Yeah.

Indian skeptics pointed out that during the test, while Johnny was supposedly under CCTV observation, they let him repeatedly and regularly wander out of view of the camera.

Oh, that corner, that corner was filled with shit when I got in the room, okay?

Yeah, he was also allowed to meet with devotees throughout, and he was allowed to regularly leave the sealed area to sunbathe, you know, to get that prana.

The president of the Indian Rationalist Association tried to inspect the study during its operation and was denied literally any involvement whatsoever.

Oh, fucking amazing.

Any other examples?

Just too many to go into all of them, but I have to at least mention Hira Rattan Manek, who shows up in episode 346 of God-Awful Movies when we reviewed the movie Eat the Sun.

During the filming of that documentary, which was investigating the claim that instead of eating, one could just stare directly into the sun.

Maneik got caught eating a huge meal at a restaurant.

That seems so easy to avoid.

Not if you travel with Heath.

Well, no, that's fair.

Yeah, I wasn't there already.

So there's also Wiley Brooks, who was first introduced to America in a 1980 episode of the show.

That's incredible.

He claimed to never eat until he was caught a few years later coming out of a 7-Eleven with a hot dog, a slur, and a pack of twinkles.

These

are for fucking.

I was studying the twinkies

He then shifted to claiming that junk food was okay because it it balances out the junk culture all around you

He also claims that all McDonald's are built on fifth-dimensional portals Thomas Smith

used to offer an immortality workshop on his website for $50 billion

until he died.

Oh,

couldn't afford his own workshop.

Well, right, if somebody had bought the workshop, he could have then bought it from himself with the profits.

Yeah, okay.

All right.

So what is the appeal of these claims?

Right.

I mean, they're so obviously false and easily disproved.

How could anyone fall for them?

I feel like it's mostly about the very audacity of the claim.

I think a lot of people hear a claim that outlandish and just assume the person would have been caught by now if it was a lie.

Well, I mean, that's mostly true i guess yeah i guess there's also the implicit assumption that upon getting caught they'd stop making that claim right if only yeah yeah exactly well as much fun as it would be to keep highlighting these idiots tripping over their own mcdonald's receipts i i feel like the fact that they're like they're starving people to death with their claims that they know are false And that kind of sucks some of the humor out of it.

So I suppose we should wrap things up with one final question.

How bullshit is it?

It's

there's a big pile of shit and Twinkie wrappers in your secret sunbathing area that we want to watch.

We can see it, levels of bullshit.

I'm telling you guys, it was already there.

No, it wasn't.

No, it wasn't.

All right, well, something tells me we haven't run out of systemic lies that con artists use to profit off of other people's ill health.

So, we'll be back soon with another installment of

How Bullshit Is It?

Stop filming

Shitting noise.

Before we're recategorized as a memory, I want to remind you to check out GodAwfulMoviesLive.com if you want to see us in Cleveland on July 19th, breaking down what can genuinely be described as the longest-awaited episode in the history of the show.

Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight.

We'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptic, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, and an even new episode of our Sister Show's Hot Friend Got Off a Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even new episode of our Half Sister Show's Citation Did debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

I got like 93% of those words.

That's fine.

It's fine.

Obviously, this episode wouldn't achieve full showdom if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for not shifting to all dad jokes now that he's an official stepdad.

I want to thank Eli Bosnik for doing a truly Herculean amount of work over the last week so that Heath and I could both travel without disrupting the release schedule.

I need to thank and congratulate the lovely and talented Lucinde Delusions for making a triumphant return to the show.

Yo, she made it through Manhattan traffic and a return flight from hell, and she's still a nonsmoker.

I feel like she's got this shit.

Oh, also, big thanks to Justin for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

A lot of people leave out the horniness of the monkey men, but that's a key part of it, Justin.

Well said.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's and last week's best bipeds.

Jason Thomas, Jeff, Charles, Altinia Holdings, Inc., LPD, Happy, Erica, Donald, Corey, Eating the Rich, lowers egg prices, Will, Heather, Hannah, and Big Bard Princess.

Jason, Thomas, Jeff, and Charles whose dicks are the ones they were thinking of when they coined that penis mightier than the sword thing Altinya LPD Erica Donald and Corey whose IQs could beat the shit out of that Korean Christian dude from Heath Stories IQ way bigger and eating the rich Will Heather Hanna and Big Bard Princess who are so hot the National Weather Service had to warn the heat dome about them together these 14 people companies and pieces of financial slash culinary advice help to keep the episodes coming by giving us money not everybody has the money to do that but if you do you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com/slash scathing atheists, whereby you'll earn 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 scathingadius.com.

And if you'd like to help, but you spent all your money on an egg down payment, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media.

And speaking of social media, Tim Robertson handles that for us, and our audio engineer is Morton Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

See, I got all of those words.

Those are the important ones.

If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you'll find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingade.com.

I got to say, based entirely on the it's in it's Thursday, I feel like Married Life is treating you well, Heath.

It's treating you well.

That was like the best it's that you've ever thrown out.

This content is can-credentialed, which means you can report instances of harassment, abuse, or other harm at their hotline at 617-249-4255 or on their website at creatoraccountability network.org.

The preceding podcast was a production of Puzzle in the Thunderstorm LLC, copyright 2025, all rights reserved.

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