625: Bursting at the Seams Edition

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Warning, profanity ahead.

Have your feigning couch ready.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by HelloFresh and by the new sport sweeping the nation, Dogeball.

It's where you throw shit at Elon Musk.

And now, The Scathing Atheist.

Dad Prime from one dozen dads.com here.

One mom of a million proves we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey men and women before she went right off a cliff.

It's Thursday.

It's February 20th.

And it's the great American spin-out.

Yeah, don't get too excited, though.

It's about not chewing tobacco.

I feel betrayed.

I'm No Illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heath Henright.

And from Corey, Bookers, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Waycross, Georgia, this is Scathing East.

Oh, this week's episode, we'll search Amazon for theocracy-stopping backpacks.

J.D.

Vance goes to Germany and says what he will about the tenets of National Socialism.

And we'll watch a Christian Grift video that Oral Roberts would say is a little much.

But first, first, the diatribe.

A couple of years before we started this show, I got it in my head that I wanted to learn to ride a unicycle.

I guess back then, life didn't seem complicated enough.

So I talked my wife into buying me one for my birthday.

Then I spent about a week or so in a hallway in my apartment trying to learn the basics of mounting it and shit.

But to really learn, I knew I was going to have to find a place where I could go out and fail a bit.

Luckily, just down the road from my building was a basketball complex with like eight basketball courts worth of space that was usually empty after school.

It's public property and there's a fence all the way around it, which is a really useful thing to have to cling to when you're learning your first baby steps on a unicycle.

So I started going out there every day after work, teaching myself the basics.

Because unicycling is like most skills.

The trick is to just do it over and over again and eventually you get it.

Now, of course, as I'm doing this, the basketball complex isn't completely empty.

There's a group of four or five boys, about 12 or 13 years old, that are always hanging out there playing basketball pretty much every day.

And at first, they're having a lot of fun at my expense.

They'd jeer and they'd talk shit and they'd laugh every time I fell and I fell a lot and humorously, right?

The unicycle would go skittering along the way.

And they would tell me that I was wasting my time and I would never get it.

But after about two weeks, I was good enough that I didn't give them a lot to laugh at anymore.

And a couple of weeks after that, I was good enough to literally unicycle circles around them.

And along the way, I had demonstrated to these kids that seemingly impossible goals are attainable if you accept small victories, let yourself fall a few times, and believe in yourself enough to keep getting back up.

Or at least that's what I hoped to demonstrate to them.

But I'd been chatting with them along the way.

I got to know them a little bit.

And what I saw instead was a transformation from, you'll never get it, to you are unlike me.

Even though they had watched damn near every step of the process from clinging to the fence like a frightened toddler to confidently riding the damn thing

rather than accept that that's just how human beings work

they built a mythology in their heads where i had some ability that they couldn't tap into i was just the kind of person that could do that and they weren't

i i think about that a lot these days because i feel like heath lucinda eli anna and i have sort of done the same thing with this show.

Not to suck my own dick here, but I feel like this show has made a difference.

Not a big national, culturally measurable difference, to be sure, but we've made a lot of small personal differences.

We've made people feel less alone.

We've emboldened people.

We've connected people.

We've inspired people.

We lifted some voices up and to a lesser degree, we've knocked a few down.

And we've made people laugh even when there was no good reason to laugh.

And along the way, we've demonstrated that it could be done.

We showed that a group of people who had no real experience or expertise could make a difference.

And instead of realizing that and accepting it, a lot of people who watched it happen put us in a separate category from themselves.

They said we were just the kind of people who could do this shit, just like I was the kind of person who could learn to unicycle.

Folks, when I decided I wanted to do this podcast, I had never owned my own computer.

Unless you count the Commodore 128 that my brother gave me when he went to college.

And sure, I had some experience as an entertainer, but it was as a juggler.

The only entertainment experience less useful for a person moving into an audio-only medium would be mime, which is the other experience I had.

The only relevant experience I had was the confidence you get when you learn to ride a unicycle.

And look, I'm not saying that everybody can start a successful podcast.

That's not true.

And even if it was, we don't need that kind of competition.

What I'm saying, though, is that everybody can make a difference.

Maybe not a big national culturally measurable difference, but a difference, right?

Like you might not be able to make trans people feel safe, but I bet you can make a trans person feel safe.

You probably can't take down a theocratic president, but maybe you could take down a theocratic school board member.

You might not have the time to start a secular organization in your area, but you probably have the time to join one.

You know, the fire hose of fascist shit coming from the White House is designed to overwhelm us and make us feel helpless.

I keep saying this.

It's designed to flood the space so much that any action seems hopeless against it.

And most of us are predisposed to doubt ourselves anyway, so we don't need much of a push to fall into complete apathy.

But you can

do something.

I'm confronted by proof every day, and so are you.

The people making a difference aren't fundamentally different than you.

Yes, they have advantages that you don't have, but if you look hard enough, you're going to see that you have advantages that they don't have as well.

It's a hard thing to accept, not just because we're all so riddled with self-doubt and experience to back it up, but also because it's such an intimidating thing to know.

Because as soon as you accept that you could make a difference, you run out of excuses not to.

They're talking about your Jesus.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the salt, peter, and sulfur to my charcoal, Heath Enright, and Eli Bosnik.

Fellas, are you ready to blow this shit wide open?

Powder keg party.

Let's do it.

Two of my favorite types of parties.

Remember, remember, the conservative Supreme Court justices all eat lunch in the same room.

That's how the poem goes, right?

Yep, something like that.

And before we get going, there's been a lot of questions about this from a lot of people, and we're finally able to answer this question in full.

So if you're curious, yes, we are doing a Vulgarity for Charity fundraiser again this year.

It's going to run through November, as always.

And this year, we're going to be raising funds for our good friends at Recovering from Religion.

They're the guys that do the secular therapy project, the hotline project, a lot more stuff.

We're going to be talking a lot more about them and about the fundraiser between now and then, but we wanted to give you plenty of time to put together both those donations and those roast requests.

And don't worry, we asked Daryl his favorite nice restaurant, and he did say Long John Silver's.

So we are good.

Yeah.

We are good.

And speaking of eating good without breaking the bank or allegedly misappropriating charitable donations, a word from this week's first sponsor, HelloFresh.

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I'm trying to get more fruits and veggies in my diet, but I'm not a big fan of the taste.

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All right, Noah.

Thanks.

Hey, Heath, I guess you don't need to spear me with a carrot after all.

Yeah, okay, but can we try the t-shirt gun, please?

I mean, fine, but this is for science.

For science, okay?

No, of course, of course.

I'll call 911.

Probably best, yeah.

And now, back to the headlines.

In our lead story tonight, One of the hardest parts of my job these last few weeks has been to look at this cacophonous explosion of fascist oligarchy and try to pluck a lead story out of it.

I mean, given the present circumstances, how could the lead story be anything other than how the fuck do we get to sports almanac back to Marty in time?

But when I was perusing the secular headlines in advance of this recording, I noticed a trio of stories that all sort of underscored the efforts of the Christian right to lock down their control of public schools.

So in our lead story tonight, they're coming for your children.

Marty kissed his mom.

No,

we never talked about it, right?

And Keith, we deleted this from the notes and edited it back in.

We called you.

We had a conversation.

We had a team meeting.

I don't remember that.

So the first story is out of Alabama, where House Bill 231 seeks to amend the state constitution to require that public school students be led in prayer every morning.

Specifically, quote, prayer representative of the Judeo-Christian values upon which the United States was founded, end quote.

And since the country wasn't founded on Judeo-Christian values and the values it was founded on endorsed fucking slavery, that phrase can mean whatever the fuck they decide it does after they pass the goddamn law.

And in case that isn't bad enough on its own, the bill would empower the state government to withhold funding from any school that fails to comply.

Which, to be fair, is illegal even when you're doing it in the name of real laws, let alone fake ones.

Steel thinks we have laws.

You adorable Rube.

Laws?

Oh, that's true.

No, we've got laws against us.

I'm sure.

That's true.

Of course, the asshole introducing the law insisted the prayer would be optional for students, and therefore it wouldn't be illegal.

And that's untrue in both directions, right?

Because students can't just not hear the fucking prayer, even if they don't pray along.

And even if they could, it would still be illegal given the current Supreme Court precedent.

But even this veneer of legitimacy dissolves the second they let their guard down, which brings us to the second story, where an Oklahoma lawmaker accidentally admitted that his efforts to get the Bible taught in public schools for historical reasons won't work if the people doing the teaching aren't Bible-believing Christians.

No, I get it.

You know, the principal walks in and I'm like, oh, hey, Principal Walters, we were just finishing up our lesson on slave rape.

Oh, can you see me in the hall?

I mean, can you wait till after class?

Right in the middle of the day.

There's a lot of questions.

These kids have.

Meets were between the age of nine and 11.

So, yeah, so that candid admission came during an interview on David Barton's show.

The very existence of which is plenty for me to dismiss this jackass as a far-right Christian crank.

But during the interview, they're talking about the state superintendent's efforts to spend state money bringing Trump Bibles into the schools.

And this whole thing has been cloaked up to this point in the same, like, no, but we're just doing this to emphasize our Judeo-Christian history bullshit, right?

But state senator David Bullard freely admitted that was pretense when he said, quote, I don't want some pink-haired person who doesn't believe in God to start trying to teach the Bible, end quote.

I mean, to be fair, I don't want some inbred doofus with a white supremacist undercut teaching biology.

Well, there you go.

If only there were some way we could keep the two subjects separate, you know, so that everyone could have a view.

Separate?

In the words of Andrew Jackson, make me.

Seriously, that's the new constitutional law.

Like, that's what we're doing.

Even if the Supreme Court recognized that very clear violation of the establishment clause, which they would not, state-level theocrats are going to take J.D.

Vance's advice and use the legal principle of fucking come at me, bro, and do it anyway.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the last of the three stories, by the way, comes out of North Dakota.

And it's actually the kind of mundane shit that we rarely talk about on the show anymore.

They introduced a bill that would require public schools to include intelligent design in their science curriculum.

And that kind of shit, like, that happens constantly.

It happens in state legislatures all over the fucking country and it has for decades.

Usually we don't talk about it though because those bills tend to die quietly.

But that's not the kind of shit we can really count on at this point anymore, especially from the state that wants to legally acknowledge the kingship of Jesus.

So, hey, that's where we are at this point.

Okay, if you're looking at the world right now and you're saying, yep, God nailed it, intelligent design.

This is intelligent.

You're official proof it's not.

If that's what you're thinking.

Yep.

And in CTSD news, if you're like me and you live in the now times, one of the things that you've thought about a lot since the Trump election is what do we actually do now?

Disabuse from the notion of majority or fluke.

How do you fight the daily horrors of theocratic fascism?

Now, if you're me, you complain about it while praising your own brilliance.

I also gave up TikTok.

But luckily, not everyone is as paralyzed by their pessimism and genius as I am, which is why the city of Worcester recently designated their city as a sanctuary for trans and gender diverse people.

And you know what that means?

What are you guys talking about?

It's the newest, the greatest Christian freak out.

Yes, that's right.

Worcester had the gall to officially declare the floor isn't lava, even though America voted for dipping trans kids in lava fair and square.

And so this Christian freak out comes to us from one of our favorite theocratic news sources, the Christian Post.

Yeah, you know, I'd like to believe that there's at least one Christian who responded to, we're going to protect people from bigotry with, now you wait one minute here and hurt it, right?

Like, I just

don't reason to believe it, but I want to believe it.

Okay.

I get it.

I'm pretty sure that plenty of those people fucking heard it.

And they're all cowards and liars.

That's what's happening.

271 are Republicans in U.S.

Congress, and I haven't heard a fucking peep from them for the last month about about pretty much anything.

I mean, most of those people in Congress, the Republicans, are Christian bigots, but they still heard it.

They fucking

know what's happening.

They heard it.

Yes, in an article titled, Lesbian Pastor Blasphemes Jesus as Drag Queen Trans Activists Issue Threats at City Council meetings.

Even their headlines and another thing themselves.

That's amazing.

The Post expressed their horror that gay people would politely ask not to be murdered within their time limit at a city hall meeting.

Let's hear what they had to say about that lesbian pastor.

Quote, Payne Britton, a pastor at Hadowin Park Congressional Church, which is affiliated with the Progressive United Church of Christ.

Payne Britton, who identifies as a disabled cisgender lesbian, supported a clerical collar as she told council members that if Jesus were at the meeting, he would be, quote, dressed in full drag, end quote.

In this instance, identified as could just be replaced by is yeah that was which is a word economy people just is

well that's the best part right they don't know the difference between what identities they're denying anymore

allegedly

drove to my house in a volvo

quote from the pastor here the jesus i know would be dressed in full drag and serving face or handsome as a trans man or wrapped in the garb of a non-binary person who knows one gender is way too small to capture their gloriousness.

The Jesus I know would be at this mic with a trembling voice and a shaking body and tears that will not be held back, crying, Make this city safe for my child.

End quote.

That's a good quote.

I mean, that's not the Jesus of the Bible, but what the hell, right?

The Jesus of the Bible also wasn't a white dude, so I guess it's fair.

She can have that.

Yeah, right.

Based on the Bible, he's mostly a fucking dick.

That being said, lots of Christian people claim to be worshiping this all-caring, charitable, open-minded, immigrant-loving Jesus.

And that made-up guy would be furious if he showed back up right now.

But again, I'm not hearing a fucking peep from those people either.

No giant public apologies for helping elect an evil sociopath.

No big demonstrations against this stuff.

Like, I could swear they talk about a source of absolute morality like all the time.

That's like their thing and how that's good to have.

I would like to call bullshit.

Yeah.

I think Christians are lying.

I'd like to

devote a career or two to that.

But Eli, you say, what about the violent threats?

Did a trans person at that meeting reasonably respond to the continued threat to their person and being with an initiation of violence that Noah and Heath should stop beeping, you cowards?

No.

Quote, after identifying as multibly disabled, the speaker, standing in front of a sign that read silence equals death, issued what appeared to be a a threat against the council, quote, if you say you're afraid of Trump, and that's why you don't want the city to be a safe space for trans people, you better prepare for trans people to make this a very unsafe space.

A short time later, a black female activist warned the council about strong, queer, transgender-identified people who will, quote, collect you with the quickness, end quote.

All right.

Nice.

I mean, I.

I don't know what that means, but Christians are scared of it, so I'm all for it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sounds great.

I'm down with the quickness.

I'm just, I'm picturing Republicans at a government meeting and just one by one, they're all getting side-tackled out of the frame by a blur, just like

yes, exactly.

So as we can all see, now that we have this news, trans people who point out that it shouldn't be safe to actively murder minority groups and Christians who are enabling the active violence already being committed,

Those groups are tied now, right?

Those ties are exactly the same things, at least in the Christian minds.

And And hey, look, podcast listener, if you know a Christian who thinks that's true,

good.

I hope he lives his entire life in fear that a trans person is going to take power, make his existence illegal, drive him to suicide, and then celebrate his death online.

And, you know, just in case by some wild chance that doesn't actually happen someday, I'm going to stand alongside the people of Worcester in the meantime.

Sounds fair.

Sounds fair.

And in Path of Brotality News,

the long series of terrifying autocratic insanity from Donald Trump and the Dogebags made its way from the political realm to the science realm.

And just in case there wasn't enough face punchability involved, Ted Cruz got in on the action.

You might remember Ted Cruz from going to a Yankees game and almost getting punched in the face by everyone in the entire stadium and city of New York.

Well, now he's coming for Noah Lusions personally.

Ted Cruz released a database of so-called woke science last week, and that includes the study of eclipses.

Okay, Ted.

Okay, you can have my eclipses when you take them from my about five degrees Celsius colder during totality dead hand, okay?

Yeah.

Noah, I want you to know three people in elbow patches are positively rolling right now.

I made a lot of elbow patch jokes into this.

All right.

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

If we ever find ourselves inside a wrestling ring with Ted Cruz and he's all wobbly and Ryan happens to be standing there ringside, we will tap in Ryan for the big splash off the top rope.

That's official.

Oh, shit.

Scathingnews at gmail.com.

Man, our Matreon goals get more and more ambitious every year.

Yeah, the splash from last year almost happened on my bathroom floor on Instagram live.

So we learned about our Eclipse-based socialist revolution getting foiled last week when physicist Corinne Brevik of Southern Illinois University was told that her Eclipse project for middle school science classes got flagged as woke, which is a problem.

The National Science Foundation was told by executive order to freeze their grants and comb through all their existing projects to find any references to woke stuff or DEI or possibly socialist revolutions.

Seriously, like, I wish I was exaggerating when I used that language, but I was not.

The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, chaired by Ted Cruz, issued the following statement last week.

Quote, Chairman Cruz released a database identifying over 3,400 grants, totaling more than $2.05 billion in federal funding awarded by the National Science Foundation, NSF, during the Biden-Harris administration.

This funding was diverted toward questionable projects that promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI, or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.

Really?

End quote.

Okay, look, eclipses have nothing at all to do with neo-Marxist class warfare until we start yeeting billionaires into the sun.

So

like where your head's at, I guess.

That's an idea.

Right.

And again, podcast listener, I just want to remind you that the withdrawal of funding that has already been awarded is not an executive executive power by any definition of the law as it exists right now.

But for the record, laws.

Okay.

Fair, fair.

But when the Supreme Court overturns that, I just want to point out that pardons are next.

So just, you know, be careful what you wish for, Trump.

Okay.

I'm just saying.

Okay.

So you might be wondering what other science projects were promoting neo-Marxist class warfare problems.

Neo-Marxist class warfare problem.

Well, in addition to the moon and sun passing each other when viewed from earth marxistly the list from ted cruz also included studies aimed at synthesizing new medications for example or examining protein malfunctions that lead to cancer and of course improving the safety profile of self-driving cars

marxistly yeah weird yeah getting rid of cancer seems less of an imperative when you're a cancer i guess

I've submitted my paper on the moral imperative of murdering Ted Cruz to several medical journals and have not gotten a single acceptance.

So, I mean, where are the wokes when you need them?

I guess is what I'm saying.

He's got a lot of responses, but not a single acceptance.

I feel like that would get right through peer review, no problem.

So, according to the NSF.

The Lancet, maybe.

Those guys are lazy.

Yeah, right.

There you go.

I mean, they're still named after bleeding people.

So they can't.

Yeah.

Come on.

All right.

So according to the NSF, the executive order doesn't technically stop payments on all these existing existing grants.

That's what Eli was mentioning.

But the funding freeze made it pretty clear to all the scientists that their projects might get pulled entirely.

And just in case the Ministry of Truthiness vibes weren't strong enough, the NSF was told to use a list of woke suspicion keywords and search every grant for the presence of these words, which would get them red-flagged.

And the list of words is truly insane.

It includes ethnicity, barrier,

biased.

Biased in science is a key, a key word flag.

Jesus Christ.

Disability, trauma, and historically.

Just the word historically is a flag.

Things that have happened in time.

Yeah.

By the way, the requirements for NSF funding included you had to discuss some of this stuff.

So, like, all these studies had this stuff in it because that was kind of the rules.

Right.

But those are all bad science words, according to these fucking idiots.

The list also includes the word female.

Science projects that have the word female or women are getting red flagged because of that.

Jesus Christ.

Shocking.

Male and men were not red flag words, though.

So weird

who would have predicted that.

Yeah, no, it's nice to know, though, that if the podcast thing doesn't work out, Eli could get work misspelling grant applications for scientists trying to thwart the algorithm.

I'm the new Navajo wind talker from the

follow me grant is spelled with an e at the end no no not there

yeah so bottom line we're failing science class the united states as a country is failing at the study of

reality yep we're also failing social studies math english economics philosophy and we cut the budget for pe in the arts long ago so we like pre-failed those um gender studies is now illegal i think so that's out out.

And same for Black history.

And it all happened during Black History Month.

Sorry, sorry.

McKinley America History Month, something like that.

Like if you showed our country's academic performance to any decent middle school teacher, we would not be allowed to walk and go to, we'd be going back to kindergarten.

Yep.

And in senseless census news tonight, Australia has decided that they don't want their census to be too accurate.

so they've elected to keep a question that has been proven to overcount the nation's Christians.

Because otherwise, it might just show that the majority of Australians have no religion and thereby undercut the fuck out of all the theocratic bullshit that they still do in their schools.

Okay, so the support for theocracy in Australia is based on a lie.

That must be nice.

That sounds

so jealous.

When did you stop believing in God and beating your wife?

It seems tricky for a multiple choice, but we just can't think of a better one.

Yeah, right.

Now, so I should say up front that the Australian census's religious question has been the target of secular activists in the country for years.

We've been talking about it here since at least episode 229, when the Atheist Foundation of Australia and some other secular groups succeeded in getting the formatting of the question changed so that the no religion option was no longer fucking locked in the stairless basement bathroom behind a beware of the leopard sign.

That change, along with the actual increase in atheism, bumped the number of Australians reporting no religion from 22.2% to 30.1%.

And they do their census every five years.

And keep in mind that Australia is one of the fun countries where we lose a bunch of votes because you can say you're a Jedi.

And look, I know fighting theocracy should be more important, but I would totally check a box that got to say I was a Jedi.

So like, I get it.

Here's not a box for Jedi.

But yeah, yeah.

You think you'd be a Jedi, not a Sith?

Yeah, come on.

You could be a Jedi.

You could be a Sith, too.

I mean, they both count.

So, okay.

So the phrasing of the question is still a bit confusing and in a way that almost seems intentional at this point.

See, the changes that were made before were all about the orientation of the existing options.

It used to list nine religions and there's a big write-in box for other.

That's where you would have put Jedi.

And then after all of that, it included no religion under it, like in its own little space.

Well, now no religion appears at the top of the form in keeping with the way every other question is formatted.

That is, that like the none or does not apply to me option is at the top of everything else.

But the question itself is still, what is the person's religion?

As though having a religion were an assumed state, despite the fact that as of the most recent census, 38.9% of Australians have no religion, even when the question is posed in a way that overcounts religiosity.

Okay, I feel like the form needs to be more of a flowchart.

Like, it starts with, do you you believe any of the religion scriptures are non-fiction science books?

If no, you're done.

We know what your answer is.

Right.

Look, look, if you want to identify as an atheist, just check the box labeled EPIPIP.

Gonna stop you right there.

Well, yeah, look, if it seems like I'm overstating the case by saying that the wording is intentionally confusing, I should add that the other option that they have, it includes a couple of examples of religions not listed.

And one of them is humanism.

right?

So it's basically telling at least some non-religious people not to check the no religion box.

And the only change they made to this question between the 2021 census and the 2026 census is that they changed the example from humanist to atheist.

Okay.

So in addition to the flowchart thing, I guess we also need a box for.

I say I'm Christian, but I know it's fucking dumb.

I'm just being nice to grandma.

And that counts as none, too.

There you go.

Right, yeah.

And then also on the flowchart, if you click Bible believing Christian, you now have to tell me how old you think the earth is while your eighth grade science teacher watches on Zoom.

You have to write it in.

Call them.

So yeah, so the question still lists seven different flavors of Christian in its nine options and guarantees an undercount of non-religious people.

And even with the DAC stacked in their favor that much and with their religion still being taught in state schools to every kid whose parents don't opt out of it, Christianity can't even muster a majority in that country.

So the bad news is that they're cheating, but the good news is that it's because they have to.

And in Hambone news.

Okay, that's fantastic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Valentine's Day is briefly receding into our rearview mirror.

It's a day of love, romance, and to find out if your partner is one of those douches who'd rather explain how superior they are to the greeting card industry than buy you a box of chocolates.

Well,

luckily for us, our very own Ken Ham had a couple of tips about romance this season.

Really?

Yes.

And whenever Looks Almost Deadpool has something to say about smooching, you know we're going to talk about it on the show.

Some gals like beards, some don't, so meet them halfway.

And you can blend the edges of that beard with a nice camembert mold region.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Camem beard.

So first off, big thanks to Lisa for sending us this article and the contained video to scathingnews at gmail.com.

You can send us atheist news to scathingnews at gmail.com, but you can also just send us famous Christian people being fucking goobers like Ken Am is here.

We take all comers at scathingnews at gmail.com.

You're done.

Give Lisa a goddamn prize and make it a good one.

Fine, fine.

Lisa, you can pet my pug Madge once and respectfully.

She is old, okay?

Two pets.

We should start an email, guys.

So we'll be able to send us stories stories for the show.

Anyways.

Get another pet and make a promise about it.

Careful, Lisa.

Careful.

Now, the article preceding this video is a very spicy tease.

Quote, today is Valentine's Day.

Hopefully you remembered.

Our social media team recently interviewed me for my thoughts on Valentine's Day and some dating tips, including what not to do on your first date.

Not interact with Ken Ham in any way ever.

Are we done?

oh dear you're gonna find out things about me that I'm not sure I should be making public like this anal

it's anal anyway we're gonna start with an absolute banger Ken Ham opens this interview this is the video itself with

my wife Mallie gave me a Valentine's Day card and I looked at it and said what is that

Is this some sort of rectangle?

I don't know.

I was told there'd be no math.

What is this?

It says happy Valentine's Day on it, you fucking idiot.

Come on, solve the puzzle, buddy.

You got it.

I don't read.

Yeah.

But of course, that little anecdote is just an intro to the all-important question, should Christians celebrate Valentine's Day?

Because the only take worse than I won't be bullied into telling you I like you by Big Flower is, do we think this love-themed holiday is a trick from God's goat demon ex-employee to burn our souls in fire forever?

Okay, my take is not the worst.

Nice.

All right, but clearly that's an excuse in the moment, right?

Like, no, I was going to make dinner reservations, but

Satan.

I don't know what a square card is.

Yeah.

So we get some biblical tips for Valentine's Day for the men in his audience.

Number one from the Bible, quote, if you're a Christian, you shouldn't even look at a non-Christian.

Great start.

Yeah, step one, bigotry.

Okay, Ken Ham shows up for a first date like Bird Box.

Does not surprise me.

That's fast.

Absolutely.

No, that's fair.

But it's not just finger shaking.

He goes on to say, quote, but I want to tell you what not to do on a date.

Don't do what I did when I took my wife to a drive-in movie theater.

Anal.

I was still wearing the blindfold.

It went really bad.

Sadly, it's nothing as interesting as anal or a car crash.

No, after a minute-long explanation of what drive-in movie theaters were, he tells us that on his first date with his wife, he he drove away with the speaker still attached to his car.

But what we don't know is whether or not that was because his pants were drenched in comp.

That's what I'm saying.

Yeah, right.

It's possible.

Yeah.

Maybe, hey, maybe we just don't take dating advice from somebody who took his first date to the Nickelodeon down by the Mercantiles, huh?

Exactly.

Yeah.

So that hilarious story out of the way, it's time for his, but seriously, folks, which goes, I shit you not, quote,

hey, you know what?

I encourage you to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Hi, you know what?

I encourage you to celebrate Valentine's Day to do something special for your wife or special for your girlfriend.

But remember, as a Christian, you should never look at a non-Christian in regard to marriage.

So he doesn't specifically say the words, beware the power of the Jewess, but like, but that's the message.

Yep, that is the message twice in this three-minute video.

Amazing.

He has thoughts about the international Jew for sure.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So he talks about how important marriage is for a second.

And then, because he said the word important, he has to start talking about Jesus and then sacrifice, which leads him to conclude as follows, quote, We need to love our wives sacrificially.

Pour out that love on your wife to the point we're prepared to die for them.

Do your children, do others see you loving your wife that way?

That's what we need to do.

So pour out that love upon them as God tells us to have a great Valentine's Day.

End quote.

Pour out your love into your dead brother's widow, biblical.

Got it.

But aim for the tense.

One last thing about this story.

The article that video is contained in ends in the following manner.

I'm not kidding.

This is the actual quote.

And happy Valentine's Day to my wife, Mallie.

If I forget to get her a card, at least I can show her this.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Wow.

No for me it was.

No, but.

Wow.

I actually couldn't feel sorrier for Kenaham's spouse.

Wow, wouldn't I guessed?

And finally, tonight, in Vance Vance Revolution News,

Vice President Jan Stance Vance, that's official, made his first international speech since taking office.

And he decided his top priority is persecution in Germany of neo-Nazis.

Oh, seriously, they're having a really hard time, you guys, in germany the neo-nazis it's hard for them according to the headline from the christian post jd vance rebukes anti-free speech anti-christian discrimination in munich speech or according to reality jd vance worries about the dearth of christian right hate speech in germany So I'm sure it'll be fine.

What could possibly go wrong with that?

It'll be cool.

Also, why does everyone keep asking me to get used to the Hague?

Are we doing a tour later?

No, I actually did mean that I was a jelly donut.

I'm terrible at ordering these.

I'm so bad.

So you might remember Germany as a country in Europe that did a thing one time.

And ever since, they've been somewhat focused on preventing political extremism, including laws against hate speech and xenophobic nationalist parties.

Well, with that in mind, J.D.

Vance visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp, and then he gave a speech in Munich the very next day about the persecution of Christian people.

We'll get to the worst parts of that shortly, but I'll start with the least problematic example from J.D.

Vance.

And that would be a very obvious lie about anti-choice protesters getting persecuted, by which he means told about a new law.

According to Vance, quote, the Scottish government alerted citizens with houses in so-called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer within their homes may amount to breaking the law.

Nope, he's lying.

That's not how anything works.

Here's what actually happened.

Local officials sent letters about the new law, explaining that it bans people from, quote, intentionally and or recklessly harassing people within 200 meters of an abortion clinic.

And yes, sometimes a Christian person's house is within that safe access zone.

But in order to break the law with private praying from inside your house, like Vance claimed, your praying would have to be somehow private and also public and also reckless and/or intentionally disruptive and harassing.

Right.

Sorry, I get pretty worked up and start making signs when I'm in the spirit, you see.

I guess, yeah, no, this is the exact same thing as reacting to a law against public nudity by saying, it's illegal to take a shower in my own home.

Exactly.

And speaking, that brings us back to some neo-nazi stuff vance warned about the perils of regulating online hate speech as part of the eu's digital services act he really doesn't like that act the act very intelligently places limits on specifically american hate speech and disinformation on european social media it's uh it's kind of like a tariff on one of our chief exports actually but jd vance does not like tariffs especially if they crack down on propaganda from Germany's far-right AFD party.

AFD has been classified as extremist by German domestic intelligence and me, just because duh, in part for downplaying the atrocities of Hitler and for embracing literal Nazi slogans.

Also, a bunch of their members got arrested for multiple treasonous plots to overthrow the democratically elected government.

So, yeah, J.D.

Vance had some words of wisdom about that, I guess.

That makes sense.

He also suggested that any European government that's unfriendly to religious liberty and free speech should not expect American backing on security stuff.

Yeah, if you're mean to our terrorists, we won't be mean to yours.

Right, yeah, yeah.

Okay, so

what's happening here is that Germans aren't allowed to agree with the Trump administration online.

Because that's indistinguishable from Nazi hate speech, right?

That's what actually happened.

And the Trump regime's strategy with regards to this is to call attention to it.

To a speech with the VP, yeah.

So following the AFD-friendly speech from Vance, German Chancellor Olaf Schultz said a commitment to never again is not reconcilable with support for the AFD.

Makes sense.

And Der Spiegel described the speech from Vance as, quote, a campaign gift to the AFD.

Yep.

Well, speaking of campaign gifts to the AFD, the neo-Nazis, they're being heavily supported by Elon Musk right now.

He publicly endorsed the AFD and recently told party members that Germany is, quote, putting too much of a focus on past guilt.

Oh, end quote.

So what do you think?

Is it too much guilt?

What's the Goldilocks own there?

Okay, I get where you're going for, Elon, but okay, maybe once more doesn't have quite the same ring to it as never again does.

You understand that, right?

So we don't know that he was talking about the Holocaust.

He's probably talking about their guilt over Tudenberg Forest.

It's probably just a Roman reference.

Just Cecil loved that joke, but he loved it.

He loved it.

It's so good.

It's because of the Roman sleep.

He said, the elbow patch guys are loving me this.

Exactly.

Yeah, no, 100%.

I am loving you.

Yeah.

So just for context, he's not even wearing a long sleeve shirt with the patches on.

I just stick them on.

He's just sewn into his actual elbows.

Yeah.

So the AFD party is currently polling in second place, terrifyingly, for Germany's upcoming parliamentary elections with about 20% of the voting public.

And during Vance's visit, he actually met with the AFD candidate for chancellor, Alice Vadel.

And of course, Elon recently gave Alice Vadel an interview on Twitter, where the leader of the neo-Nazi party gave us the classic argument from you are.

According to Vadel, the real Nazis are the tyrants preventing the freedom of speech.

Does she mean freedom of hate speech and propaganda by neo-Nazis?

Yes, she does.

Yes, she does.

She just didn't say that.

She said, quote, what Adolf Hitler did, the first thing, he switched off free speech.

So he controls the media.

Without that, he would have never been successful.

Yeah, he did some other shit, too, but the speech thing, that was the main thing.

It was mostly about the speech.

Yeah.

So during the last few weeks, we've seen a swell of protests across Germany against AFD and against the meddling from Elon Musk.

So that's good.

But according to J.D.

Vance,

it's nothing to worry about.

Elon Musk's not going to do anything.

According to Vance, quote, trust me, if American democracy survived Greta Thunberg's scolding for the better part of a decade, I guarantee you, German democracy will survive Elon Musk.

What the fuck does, does he think Greta is German?

Is that it?

He definitely thinks that.

He probably thinks The Hague is a building in Germany like Eli does, too.

It's a city in the American crew.

So

if there's any

good news here, it's the fact that neo-Nazis aren't in first place and don't have like almost 3 million more voters than their nearest competitor.

It's good news for Germany, anyway.

Yeah.

So, yeah, that's right.

Check your anti-fascist privilege, Germany, I said from America.

Fuck.

And with that devastating reminder of just where we are right now, we're going to close the headlines there for self-care purposes.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Jimanji.

And when we come back, things won't get better.

They'll just get funnier, I guess.

Christian Manji.

Hey, folks, no way here to tell you that we've now officially joined the Creator Accountability Network.

CAN is a non-profit dedicated to reducing harassment and abuse through ethical education and a system of restorative accountability.

We join because we care about the safety and well-being of our community members.

If you feel our behavior or content has harmed someone, please report it to CAN either via the reporting system on their website, creatoraccountabilitynetwork.org, or via their hotlines, 617-249-4255.

They'll help us make it right and avoid repeating the same mistake in the future.

CAN also needs volunteers from our community to help with their process.

So if you have skills that you think would be helpful or time and a desire to help, please visit their website to find out how you can volunteer.

Most importantly, get the word out to other creators who you think would be interested in getting credentialed.

Help us build safer communities together.

And now, back to the show.

Christian idiocy comes in all shapes and sizes.

And while our sister shows hot friend God Awful Movies handles all the full-size stuff, there's still plenty of bite-sized stuff remaining for

God-awful minis.

So, tell us, Heath, what will we be breaking down today?

We watched That Little Fox.

It's the story of God taking away fertility until the end of the semester, and maybe you get it back if you behave.

Yep, yep.

And Eli, how bad was this mini?

Well, if you love Vultures of Horror, but you wish it had more Deus Ex ice cream mascot, you will love this movie.

Yeah, so, all right, so we're going to open up on a lovely drone shot of manchester england that ate up about 40 of their budget i think oh my god every time we had a street shot i was like there's a chance michael marshall is about to walk into camera unrealizing and unaware i think that's opening shot was that little train station right next to the qed hotel it's so the ability of us to walk into the church that this movie is set in is

tantamount

we will have to actively avoid it next time we go to qed Yep.

So, okay.

So, we're in Manchester, England, and we're going to meet Annie.

Annie is a middle-aged woman that's very sad about the fact that she doesn't have any kids.

Yeah.

And she's looking at a guy in a photo who has the swirl background in his photo.

Like, like a picture day for grown-ups, apparently.

Yeah.

We don't do enough picture days for grown-ups.

I agree.

That's true.

Yeah.

And we see her like spying out the window on other kids playing soccer.

And she's doing it like

Lucille Bluth, where she's like slowly closing the curtains on her one eye.

Yeah, like we're supposed to be getting, this is supposed to be them showing us that she really wants kids of her own, but it plays like she wants those ones, though, right?

Yeah, right.

So then we cut from her to the guy in the photo, and he's running down the street, bumping the shit out of his loft.

Oh, yeah, no, he did not get his deposit back.

Yeah, tell me you weren't monitoring the sound without telling me you weren't monitoring the sound.

Yeah.

But he runs in and he turns to this guy that's next to him and he's like, hey, did you see a dude with a white hat and a white suit run by here?

He was glowing a little bit.

But no, the delivery guy has not seen him.

Yeah, and I wrote my notes, pretty confusing that we couldn't just see him go home and tell her he had a strange encounter.

But apparently we need a scene where he's just had the encounter and then he goes.

right.

Well, and then he calls her and he says, I have had a strange encounter.

Let me go home and tell you about it.

Yeah.

And she's like, Hey, do you want to add like one more detail?

He's gone.

He's gone.

Okay.

Strange encounter.

Thanks.

Yeah, no, I'll just wait at home for like however long it takes you to get here to wonder what the fuck that was about.

I will say, this movie specializes in half a sentence in one scene, the other half a sentence in the other.

Right.

We will often watch actors move between scenes and be like, anyway, as I was saying,

I'll see you at the Tape X's soon.

So we head home so that he can doodly do us back into the encounter that he just had, which we also could have just started there.

Okay.

And the way he goes into the doodley-doo, we see it happen.

He's like, all right, let me tell you the story.

At break time, and then he looks up at the ceiling and you watch her watch him look up at the ceiling, being like, sorry, are you?

Are you looking at a flashback on the ceiling?

Is this a doodley-doo?

Did you say doodly-doo?

So, yeah, so he's at break at work.

He's sitting at this restaurant when suddenly black Colonel Sanders appears to him.

Both Eli and I wrote the words, Black Colonel Sanders, appears to him in our notes independently.

If you're wondering how like dead on the comparison is.

I mean, how else are you going to describe it?

Yeah.

But Black Colonel Sanders appears and he's like, hey, I'm here to like set you right.

You've got a few little foxes that are loose or whatever the fuck that was.

Yeah, I looked that up.

It's in the Bible somewhere.

Little foxes are like low-level sins, like the venial ones.

So to be clear, the title of this little movie is that little technicality.

And it's like a whole thing.

And the entire plot is that God is withholding this woman's ability to bear children because of technicality.

Yes.

Yeah.

It's like how in the headline segment, he said that I didn't know that The Hague was a separate city, even though i totally did and i'll hold it against him forever what country is it in

it's not even a big one um portugal so

i say you nailed the continent eli you nailed the continent hey podcast listener i am actually on the rest of the episode it's just me mumbling small countries under my breath so no i've got it i didn't like leave or anything you won't hear me again but that's what's happening

Okay, the Netherlands, that's made up.

You just made up the money.

But Black Colonel Sanders assures him that he's going to go see Annie, this guy's wife, sometime in the next three days.

But between now and then, there are a couple of Bible verses that he gives them that they should look into, right?

So then we're out of the flashback.

We're looking into those Bible verses.

The first is a psalm that just says, be good and God will do good shit.

Yeah, but it also says, like, no vanity and no

ribbaldry.

Like, it's the venial sins again.

Right.

Yeah.

Well, and then we get this Malachi verse that includes a, the servant should honor his master.

Servant is the word that they chose on this particular translation.

So I thought that was a weird one to bring up.

Yeah.

And as they're doing this, I should point out that Black Colonel Sanders is standing behind them as like a force ghost.

Yeah, Black Colonel Sanders will be a forced ghost in I'm going to say three out of four of the scenes remaining in the movie and will do nothing except sort of look around like a real estate agent trying to make a not nice house seem nice.

Well, yeah.

So he'll either sort of nod along with, yes, you guys are nailing it, or he'll look kind of vaguely disappointed, right?

Yeah.

Like a grandpa watching you roll the extension cord the wrong way or something.

So they read that, and then he's like, let's pray.

And so they start to pray, but Annie takes a phone call in the middle of the prayer.

I love this so much.

She gets on the phone.

Her phone rings, she answers it, and she says, oh, you know, I can't talk.

I'm in the middle of a prayer.

She comes back, puts her hands in there, she's like, Amen, amen, amen.

I was the whole time, I was really into that one,

right?

And they're praying because they want to like thank God for sending us a weird riddle about low-level bullshit.

And so they're thanking him for that opportunity.

And then she takes a phone call, picks it up, and is like, I'm doing a fucking prayer.

I can't deal with this.

I gotta go back.

So these Nigerian British people, that's, I think, who we're seeing in in this movie, they're somehow giving me Boston lady and Boston lady boyfriend vibes for sure.

I feel it.

I feel a little bit of it.

Okay, so I want to talk about the phone call.

Not fucking pregnant.

Got it.

Because it comes up twice in the movie, but it is not one of the little foxes.

Apparently not.

The little fox, we will learn later, right?

But it's not this.

I thought the movie was setting us up to be like, oh, you don't concentrate enough during prayers.

Right.

It seems as though they included the two prayer interruptions to go to the phone one which happens now one which will happen towards the end of the movie because like he was complaining about her not

you know taking phone calls during the prayers and she was like put it in the movie it's fine

so yeah so he gets mad at her he's like hey you know i noticed that you took a phone call in the middle of that prayer i'm sure god probably noticed too and she's like what was the important call it was my friend Told her I was going to meet her at five, but then you called talking about a fucking strange encounter.

And I couldn't exactly leave with that hanging.

Who's the meeting the fucking Applebee's?

I like Applebee's.

So she storms off to the bedroom.

He follows.

We get the first of our and another thing scenes,

right?

Where he comes in, he's like, Oh, I wasn't done with that conversation.

She's like, Weird that we would have changed scenes then.

Yeah, neither am I.

We are still right, we are sentence for sentence in the middle of this conversation.

Yeah, but then she checks her blood pressure, and the scene ends.

So then we cut to any and she's just gone shopping with a friend.

And we see her loading the groceries into her car.

And as she does so, she thanks Jesus for each bag.

Yeah.

She's like, thank you, Lord, for this food.

And then she's like, thank you, Jesus.

She switches to Jesus as she puts toilet paper into the bag.

Oh, interesting.

She's like, huh, okay.

All right.

Sure.

I wonder what she thanks the Holy Ghost for.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, but then as she's doing this, Lizzie shows up, and Lizzie is a woman that she really doesn't like.

Now, I want to point out that it is insanely windy while they're filming this scene of these two women behind the car and everything trying to have this conversation, both of them having to like steady themselves so as not to blow away.

It's like a reporter trying to do a hurricane broadcast.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So, but Lizzie was trying to be friendly, and Annie Annie just could not hate Lizzie more, right?

She's not even trying to hide her dislike for this woman.

Yeah.

And Lizzie bought some prophetic baby items, which is apparently a thing you like.

Yes.

You're not pregnant, but you just like try to get a baby by buying baby stuff ahead of time prophetically.

Is that the idea?

So what I gathered from this, because they talk about this quite a bit, is that this is you showing faith that God is going to grant you a child, right?

Well,

I'm so faithful in the Lord that I'm already buying the baby stuff because I know that he's going to bless me.

That's what Lizzie is establishing here.

And what we're learning, of course, is that any doesn't have enough faith to do that.

Yes.

But it also won't be one of the little fucking.

No, sure won't.

Sure won't.

So, okay, so she goes home to Google menopause so that we know that the clock's a ticking.

Yeah.

Her husband comes in.

Did he ever get a name?

I never caught his name.

I didn't.

No.

I don't think he got one.

Although he does have this great moment where he's supposed to surprise her and he's just like, any,

any,

any.

But yeah, so they talk about how much, you know, she sure wants kids and nothing's working and they need a miracle.

And he scolds her for saying doubts out loud to her husband.

Yeah, no, because he's like, well, for all you know, there's an angel force ghosting behind you right now, just over your shoulder.

And of course there is, you know, and he's nodding along like, you never know.

Maybe there is.

So then, like, I guess it's sometime later, her husband comes in to tell her that he hasn't been faithfully paying his tithes in their entirety.

Right.

And his first fruits, which was new to me.

Apparently, you have to tithe, but also give like annual tips called first fruits too.

Oh, Jesus.

Yeah.

And what's crazy about this scene is that he explains that he's paying their bills and then giving what's left over.

And then both characters agree that that is not enough because it doesn't meet the percentage that tithing is supposed to be.

Right.

Well, so

the impression I got is that he was tithing based on what was left over after the bills, not based on his total income.

Oh,

so yeah.

But either way.

God needs you to get a side hustle going.

Maybe start up crypto trading or something.

God's got Tony D up there.

Right.

But this message is like the message right now is, hey, maybe your infertility is because your husband isn't giving enough money to the church.

Maybe that's the problem.

Huh?

Have you thought of that?

But just then, as they're having this conversation, a package arrives at their door.

And we watch, well, we and Black Colonel Sanders watch her unbox it for like a minute and a half.

Sorry, is that confusing when Noah said package?

It's a parcel or an item of some sort.

And we hear that announced.

She walks in with the box and she's like, it's a package or parcel.

It's like, okay.

Yes.

Let's watch her open it now, very slowly.

Does the rest of the thesaurus?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So it's also, they go too early on this because she opens up the outer box and it's an inner box.

And the husband says, it's so beautiful.

Like, we haven't seen it yet.

It's a fucking shoebox.

It's just, we saw it.

She's looking at a shoebox, man.

So far.

And then she opens it and it's a mug.

And I think it's like a 50th birthday mug.

So I guess that was, it was supposed to be her birthday and their anniversary.

I don't fucking know.

But she's like, oh, this is a great fucking mug.

Go me.

There's a card in it.

So they read the card.

And damn it, if it's not from Lizzie.

Yeah, and I can't begin to describe how long it takes them to finally get to this mug.

It is literally a mug in a box, in a box, in a box.

It is with, and there's tissue around it that they have to take out.

Yeah, it's fucking incredible.

It's amazing that nobody thought to just cut all of that and like look at their faces for a second.

No, we get to watch the whole goddamn unboxing.

Hey, can you get the knife that we use just for opening boxes?

I think it's

don't use my fabric scissors.

Yeah, exactly.

But this is where we're going to find out what the beef is with Lizzie.

Yeah, which is that Lizzie lied about her and cost her

an employment reference 15 years ago.

Well, cost her her job, got her fired, and then she couldn't get an employment reference afterwards.

Yeah.

So, which, hey, you know what?

You're allowed to hate that person, I think.

Yeah, Lizzie lied somehow and got any fired.

Like, that's a big thing.

But the husband is like, babe, this is perfect for the ghost riddle, right?

This is probably...

It's probably a little fox or something, right?

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Again, now the message is maybe your infertility is because you're still mad at somebody who deserves your anger.

So she's like, no, fuck Lizzie.

And she throws the mug in the trash can.

Babe, do you think the grudge with Lizzie is blocking your phlebian tubes?

Do you think that might be

what a God, an all-loving God would do?

I think it might be.

It might be.

So then we cut to them in bed.

It's the next morning.

And we've talked a couple of times in the movie so far about this miracle service that they're supposed to have on Sunday, right?

Like, so this is a special type of service they have at their church where people ask for and receive miracles.

And she's so excited that by 4 a.m., she's already getting up, waking up, and getting ready for this big service.

Like a kid on Christmas morning.

Yeah, he isn't, though, and is very angry.

He's asleep.

Yeah.

He's he's snoring with an accent, though.

Like, and they're like, it's like they're daring me to make fun of it, but he's definitely there was something going on there.

It's, it's there.

Okay, tiny detail.

We also see his phone for a second.

Yes.

And he has a photo of just himself as his phone background.

Yes.

Yeah.

This is what I assume before Ann Heath had as his background.

I don't like pictures of him.

I don't even have pictures of me.

You don't have a phone.

It's true.

It's just a picture of himself covering up part of the time.

Yeah.

But then he tries to go back to bed.

So she plays loud worship music and makes him wake up.

So, okay.

So then we're going to cut to the church.

It's 8 a.m.

Now, again, like the weather got him again, like it did with the windy bullshit at the grocery store.

It's super foggy.

So it looks like a church in a horror movie.

But they just, you know, it's just whatever the weather was that morning.

That's what they were going with.

So it's not what they were, like, they're not trying to make their church look creepy.

They just couldn't help it.

Just an establishing shot that's still in England.

Cool.

Got it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

So, so they.

We're at the church and they're getting ready for the big service.

This woman that we haven't met named Sophie comes in to vacuum up.

And damn it if black Colonel Sanders isn't sitting in the front row.

He explains to her that all her prayers are going to be answered and she's going to meet the husband that she wants and that she's going to have

a couple of twins nine months after they get married.

So there won't be any funny stuff beforehand.

Don't worry.

And her immediate reaction to this very obvious angel visitation is to be like,

Fuck, there's a guy in here.

She runs and immediately gets it like there's an intruder.

It's so funny.

It's the funniest reaction to have to what is very clearly an angel God visitation.

She pulls out a gun and shoots him.

Yes, exactly.

You beep me to it.

It's exactly right.

She might as well shoot God in the face.

So, yeah, so she goes, she screams and runs to the pastor.

Him and his wife figure out it must be a visitation from God.

I was about to write like, man, it feels like these people would be really easy to fool, but then I remembered Earth and America.

Yeah.

Speaking of which, we're about to watch a jam-packed vulture.

Yep, that's exactly what we cut to as I'm writing that.

It's 10 a.m.

It's time for the church service.

And he sits towards the back.

They make a big deal out of that.

She's trying to be humble, I guess.

Yeah.

And we watch like four or five minutes of just scooching shots to a strange church.

Yes.

It's a lot of church with a lot of people.

There is no more disjointed and jarring contrast than the Easter best everyone is wearing in this church and the motel chairs they are forced to sit in.

It's weird.

It's like if we made everyone wear tuxes to the Vegas live shows.

So yeah, so like this woman comes out and she's praising God and she starts speaking in tongues.

And I'm like, well, that's unpleasant.

And then she starts singing and I'm like, speak in tongues.

This song goes on so long.

I had it on two times speed by the end of it and it was still so slow.

Yeah, and she's a she's a pretty good singer voice-wise, but the lyrics are so stupid.

It sounds like, it sounds like somebody forgot to give God a Valentine on Valentine's Day and they're making it up on the spot as they go.

It feels like someone is pitching a Christian song

in the writer's

love to God, you know, like God and love, something like that.

Yeah, and it goes on for like four fucking minutes.

That was at two time speed.

Eight fucking minutes.

Yeah.

And also at one point during this song, like we cut to like one lady just laying stomach first on the ground, like she's doing an airplane or something.

Yeah.

And nobody acknowledges her.

We just see her rolling around and everybody else is just like, all right, now she's doing that again.

It felt like it was like the lady who tries to get recognized for having the Holy Spirit and it never works.

She keeps trying every week.

But eventually the song ends and it gives way to the sermon.

And we get this pastor who is, he's going to like, he'll say a sentence and then he'll speak in tongues for a sentence.

And then he'll say a sentence and he'll speak in tongues.

And it occurred to me what a brilliant grip that is, right?

Because your job is to talk.

That's your whole thing.

Imagine how much easier our job would be if half of your shit just was flummina, humming, humming, snamma, slammina, flamma, bammata.

You know, that's so much easier than writing stuff and coming up with new shit.

Oh, so jealous.

But yeah, and we also we get pastor's eye view here as he's doing his sermon, and he can see a bunch of little force ghost angels wandering through, like giving out blessings to everybody.

Okay.

And the angels are wearing very large sheets as their costume, and the sheets are just way too big for these people, and they clearly can't see anything.

So they're like bumping around as best they can.

They look like a kid dressed up in dad's way too big suit, but uh, dad is in the clan in this case, it doesn't look right.

Yeah, no, they're dressed like the guys that water the trees in Dune.

What the exact thing?

What are we going for here?

It's so fun, and they run out of angel business so quickly.

My favorite shot in this short film is a bored angel just wandering past the camera at one point.

It is fabulous,

yeah.

Well, and and the pastor, the whole time, he's basically doing, I'm getting an M or an N.

You know, he's doing that shit.

He's like, you over there, the Lord has given you the prayer that you've asked for.

And the guy's like, great, hooray.

Yeah.

You, Felix, you get a promotion from the angels.

It's so, the first one was so vague.

It was just like, you get.

a thing you want and everybody's like holy shit he's getting a message from god

and then we see any for a second and she's so mad that she didn't get the thing that she wants from god from the very first announcement.

And she's she's shaking, like, I need to get chosen for prices right in.

You need to get chosen for prices, yeah, right, right.

Well, and then, so we go to the lady that's airplaning, the one who's like rolling around like my cat's in heat or whatever.

And the pastor says, Oh, I see you too, and you're on fire with the Holy Spirit.

And we see like her with CGI fire all over her.

I guess that's like pastor's eye viewers.

Hell yeah, it wouldn't be Nollywood without some CGI fire.

And then and then he goes, and there's a woman here.

And then he's like, oh, that's me.

It's me.

I'm a woman and I'm here.

And he goes, oh, and the spirit said that he would visit you within three days if you fixed your little foxes.

But you didn't, so you don't get your shit.

Sorry, boo.

Sucks to suck.

Okay, I just want to mention a couple other of the pastor promises that we get.

Sure.

At one point, he's like, this is not a moment to be distracted.

And then he looks out at some guy, and there's a floating hologram of a soccer game that's happening.

There sure is.

So is the idea that that guy was like being distracted by he was thinking about a soccer game?

I believe that is what was supposed to be happening.

Oh, interesting.

Okay.

Or God grants soccer wishes in the UK.

And I was like, okay, that

makes some sense.

For recruitment purposes.

Right.

And then the pastor says, hey, Felix, I just saw an angel who said, God is giving you a big promotion at work.

And Felix is obviously excited, but I wanted Felix's boss to be there, just be like, ha,

hey, pastor, just maybe check back with that angel.

You sure that's what he said?

I'd love for the angel to just look over the comments we've gotten from HR over the last couple of days.

You sure it wasn't just like a title change?

But yeah, so he gives out a bunch of blessings.

Annie doesn't get hers.

So they go home.

We come back to the house where Annie storms in like God just sent her to her room.

She flops so hard, it rocks the camera on a shelf.

She says flounce out loud.

Yeah, the word flounce is pronounced.

And then she looks outside where her kids aren't.

She remembers all the scenes from earlier in the movie.

And then she realizes that the problem is just that she hasn't forgiven Lizzie for lying and getting her fired, right?

It's so, so like, she might as well see little foxes outside, let them in, and they like go over to the garbage can and they're like, take the mug back out of the desk.

So she takes the mug out.

I wanted there to be like barbecue sauce all over it or something like that, but no.

She gets the

coffee grinds.

I thought, ah,

you can't read that phone number anymore.

Before we put it in the bag.

Damn it.

So, yeah, so, but she gets the card out and she calls Lizzie and she's

holding the phone way too close to her mic for a minute it's great

but she tells lizzy that she forgives her and then she's like give me your text me your address i'll come over and we'll chat and and the end presumably i guess she had a kid later i don't know the motherfucking end solved the god rule i wanted her to immediately vomit and be like yes i'm fucking pregnant that worked so fast

Cecil starts screaming from off camera.

Yeah.

No.

And well, and then when it closes off, of course, it comes up and it says, special thanks to almighty god for making this film a reality and i'm like i cut to god going like hey could you credit alan smithy with two

all right all right well i guess that's with with the blame for this movie thus assigned i suppose we could wrap it up there heath eli thanks again

Before we signal the getaway driver tonight, I want to remind everybody to check our wacky shenanigans on DD Minus.

I don't always list it with the other shows at the end here because I don't always remember what day it comes out, but of all our podcasts, that's the one where we fight the most dragons.

So be sure to check it out on the show notes.

Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but we're back in 10,022 windows 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 a.m.

Eastern on Monday, and an even new episode of our Sister Show's Hot Friend God Awful Movies debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday.

And an even new episode of our Have Sister Show Citation Nita debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, I can't shut the fuck up until I thank Heath Enray for being a badass and Eli Bosnick for having a badass.

I need to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions who will be back to fighting misogyny here again soon.

I need to thank Dad Prime for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

He's from one dozen dads.

It's the opposite of one million moms in all ways, including being honest about the number.

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

Alex, Helen, Brian, I aim to misbehave.

Melody, Drew, and Norma, Sam, Cassandra, Brian, and Dinah.

Alex, Helen, Brian, and Misbehavior, who despite representing such a small percentage of the population, contained the majority of its IQ points.

Melody, Drew, Norma, and Sam, whose auras are so advanced they have colors only birds can see, and Cassandra, Brian, and Dinah, who have so much tenacity it was upgraded to 11acity.

Together, these 11 infinitely intelligent infidels indulged our institution of insults this week by giving us money.

Not everybody has the money it takes to do that, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation to patreon.com slash scathing atheist, whereby you want 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 scathingadious.com.

And if you'd like to help, but you can't afford to have less money, 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 Robinson handles that for us.

And our audio engineer is Morgan Clark, who also wrote all the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

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

How did anyone wind up Christian, guys?

That's serious.

What would it have to look like for them to go, hold on a second?

Yeah.

This content is canned-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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