619: Hollowed Out Edition

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Warning, this episode would make Elmo faint.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by BetterHelp, stamps.com and by our new Christian health share ministry, Crucifliction.

Crucifliction.

Because Christian health share ministries are a scam that I can't believe is legal, we want in and we've got a pretty solid pun for the name.

And now, The Scathing Atheist.

This is Best Case Jesus from the unofficial Puzzle in a Thunderstorm Discord, weighing in to remind you to join your local leftist organizing chapter, because we did in fact evolve from filthy monkey people and apes together strong.

It's Thursday.

It's January 9th.

And it's Play God Day.

Another day not curing baby cancer.

Check the time.

No illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnik.

I'm Heathen Wright.

And from Allen, Aldous, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Wake Ross, Georgia, this is the Scathing Atheist.

On this week's episode, the state of the Union is bad.

Yep.

Pope Francis may have accidentally opened a morning stargate.

And we'll learn that Flat is only one of the incorrect Earth shapes available to believe in.

But first, the Diatron.

Apparently, my town has a vanishing Buddhist temple.

I was unaware.

But in my defense, it vanishes, right?

Which makes it very easy to be unaware of.

Probably the the whole point of the vanishing, if I had to guess.

But I learned about it anyway from a friend the other day, and then it was confirmed by multiple relatives.

So it's definitely there.

And I checked on Google Maps, and it's there too.

I mean, I don't know if it's on Google Maps when it vanishes, but when I checked, it was there.

So here's the reality of the situation.

There's a road to nowhere in my town that's inexplicably well paved and maintained.

And when I was a teenager, this was the road that you used to drive down to smoke weed on when nobody had an apartment, but everybody had a a car right you could consistently drive 10 12 miles down that road 10 12 miles back without passing a single house or business or pedestrian or or vehicle there's nothing out on that road well at some point in the relatively recent past somebody bought some property out on that nowhere ass road and they started a buddhist monastery which is great seems like the right place for it right not a lot of traffic but since virtually nobody has a reason to drive down that particular road on a regular basis other than smoke and weed i guess everybody who drives down that road and notices it is like, well, I just appeared out of nowhere.

Either they hadn't been there during its construction or they were too stoned and don't remember what they saw last time they were down that road.

Now, most of us would have the sense to be like, well, it has been a long time since I drove down this road and buildings are normally constructed over periods that are smaller than that amount of time.

But there's a different average for sense when you're dealing with people who don't have the sense to get the fuck out of Way Cross Georgia.

So a lot of people around here see that and they're like, huh, I wonder if they use their kung fu Asian powers to teleport that over from China or something.

And this is exacerbated if you happen to later drive down that road and not notice the setback in the woods a bit Buddhist temple.

Did it teleport back to China?

This is how I assume the rumor got started.

People who imagine themselves well informed on the goings-on in this town just because there are so few goings-on in this town can't imagine that something as unusual as the construction of a Buddhist temple could happen without them hearing about it ahead of time.

After all, they knew about the new Chipotle opening up by the Kroger months before they even broke ground.

So isn't it at least as likely that there's some kind of mystical Buddhist force that shields people from seeing what's going on there?

And now it's all over town.

I heard about this from a friend, and then I brought it up as a joke to some family members when we were having dinner, and two of the five of them had heard the story of the disappearing Buddhist temple out on Swamp Road.

I even have a friend who swears that he saw it not be there,

or didn't see it not be there.

I guess he drove by when it should have been there, and he didn't see it.

And when I asked him if it's possible that he just missed it, he gave me an incredulous look and reminded me how distinct this building looks.

It would be hard to miss, after all.

Now, I would argue that nothing is hard to miss when you're not fucking looking at it.

And when one drives, one tends to look in front of them, not to the right the whole fucking time.

But he assures me that he looked exactly at that time where it was supposed to be, and it wasn't there.

It disappeared.

Of course, I could have pressed him.

I could have asked why he didn't get out and walk up to the spot where it should have been to see if there was like a force field there or like a hologram veil like when you go to Wakanda.

I could have asked, I could have bet him an unimaginably high sum of money against lunch tomorrow that when we drove out that road it would still be in visible mode every single time

i could have in other words called him on his bullshit but that would have been rude

i wouldn't be showing him something he doesn't know that is that buddhist temples don't disappear i would be robbing him of a fantasy that allows him to escape from the doldrums of his shitty fucking town and its paucity of opportunity

It allows him to at least daydream himself into a world where he happens upon some weird mystical ritual that sends him forth on unimaginable adventures.

A good friend in his mind, I'd imagine, actually would have yes and did his bullshit and added some more so that we could both bask in the possibility that the other guy wasn't lying.

That being said, it's also crazy racist.

And it's the kind of rumor that so often ends with torches and pitchforks and shit.

And when taken as a symptom of a larger problem with education and epistemology, it's one of the reasons why this area is so bereft of opportunity so even if i don't want to rob him of his illusion by arguing with it i still want to disabuse him of it by fighting against it

it's just really hard when all the people so interested in thinking for themselves are so uninterested in thinking

they're talking about your jesus the inner of this broadcast and bring you a special news well within

Joining me for headlines tonight are the nickel and dime to my penny Heath Enright and the Eli Bosnick.

Fellas, are you ready to make some change?

No quarter.

That's right.

Look, guys, if we're not going to admit that I'm the penny of this podcast, we're never going to heal.

All right.

Well, it looks like we're going to have that conversation.

So we're going to wander backstage for a minute while you hear a word from our first sponsor this week, BetterHelp.

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp.

Hey, podcast listener.

I'm Eli Bosnik.

I'm No Illusions.

And I'm Heath Enright.

Look, we're not going to lie to you.

This year, it's going to be rough.

Bad.

It's going to be a bad year for peopling.

But just because the horrors are coming doesn't mean that there aren't better and worse ways to handle them.

I took away my own phone like a naughty child.

Right, right.

You could do that, or you could learn better coping skills with therapy.

Therapy?

I thought that was just for people who went.

No, not at all, Noah.

Therapy is a great way to work through difficult emotions, thoughts, and even situations with a neutral third party.

Well, that sounds great, but I don't have time for all that searching and roaming about to go to some person's office I don't even know.

Well, good news, Eli.

BetterHelp is fully online, making therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide.

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Wow, so no awkward therapist breakups?

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Write your story with BetterHelp.

Visit betterhelp.com/slash scathing to get 10% off your first month.

That's betterhelp, h-e-l-p.com/slash scathing.

New phone doesn't have games.

We know, man.

In our lead story tonight, American Atheists just released their seventh annual State of the Secular States report and hope you're sitting down for this one.

The news isn't great.

No!

Yeah.

You don't say.

I do say.

Yeah.

No, this is.

This is a report that the organization started putting out in 2018.

It is a state-by-state breakdown of where and how theocrats are attacking our First Amendment rights and has increasingly just become a list of which rights you have depending on which state you live in.

Yeah, apparently we're bringing back the good old 1800s, but minus the good part.

Just you're doing the old owners.

Just the old 1800s, yeah.

What about pistol dueling?

Cocaine in a bottle for just a nickel.

There's so many good ones you can take in the 1800s.

So first of all, kudos to Nick Fish and all the folks putting this shit together not to have the first three pages just say told you and so in 116 point font.

Instead, it opens with an intro that reminds us that the state governments, those few that aren't already controlled by theocrats, are likely to be the only bastion of religious freedom we're going to find find in this country for the next four years.

From the intro, quote, the federal government, including the federal courts, will not be viable forums to vindicate our rights.

Rather, the fight will occur in the 50 state capitals, where, to be clear, you will also lose.

But on the bright side, by then, it'll be too late for you to escape.

So there won't be a bunch of...

There's 17 or 18 states, though, where you will still have rights.

It'll be great.

There's some good ones, yeah.

Yeah, maybe.

Well, that's why you need this fucking report, right?

It tells you which ones are color-coded and everything.

Yeah, but the border guards will shoot you as you're trying to.

Yes, you.

Not if you get in there quick enough.

Now, of course.

There's krakens on the corners of the country all over the scare.

Yeah.

So you got to get them.

Now, of course, we'll have the PDF linked on the website, and I'd encourage you to give the thing a read.

It's a pretty substantial document, but it's well worth a perusal.

It gives a brief overview up front about key legislative developments of the past year, sort of sketches out the battle lines going into 2025.

Then it breaks down each state on a number of categories so that you can learn, for example, that Eli's home state of New Jersey protects medical providers who perform abortions and doesn't allow religious displays in schools.

Or that Heath's home state of Michigan protects children from conversion therapy, but allows kids to leave school early for religious reasons.

Or that my home state of Georgia fucking sucks in all but three possible ways, one of which is just being on fire.

Yeah, it's a depressing spreadsheet.

The entire section for Texas says Gilead.

That's all it says.

It's just a promo code for a hat shaped like a recovery cone for a dog.

That's all it says.

But don't worry, guys.

Five or six more trees fall on Noah's house and he is out of there, okay?

He swears.

Yeah.

So, no, well, and here's the best thing about the report.

One of the most common post-election questions that we're hearing is, what can I do?

And this report focuses a lot on that question state by state.

It talks about new legislative initiatives by the secular community, and it warns about the upcoming incursions by theocrats.

And if you check it out, be sure to sign up to get action alerts so American atheists can get in touch with you if help is needed in your area.

And in super marriage news, Oklahoma State Senator and upside-down Chia Pet Dusty Deavers has filed a new bill that would create a covenant marriage option for newlyweds in the sooner state.

What's the difference between covenant marriage and regular old marriage the plebes like you and me are entitled to, you ask?

Well, if you guessed it's Christian bullshit, you would be correct.

So we're going to talk about it.

Okay, if it means Anne can have more official dominion over me, you know, stop all my backsassing.

That might be a good idea for us.

Like, I'm...

I'm an idiot.

It's probably best.

You are.

Not even one bulldog puppy, Heath and Wright.

Not even one.

Yeah.

We're talking about it.

I have a stinging suspicion that this version doesn't have like more rights for the woman, Heath.

I don't think.

That's not where we're going.

Right.

So, regular listeners might remember Dusty for his various forays into Christian theocracy on our program already.

He tried to end no-fault divorce, co-sponsored a bill that would define abortions as homicide, and my favorite proposed an anti-porn bill which banned sexting between unmarried people.

Okay.

Would that include pugs in a sexy bikini?

Whoa, he didn't say.

He didn't say.

I feel like there's only pugs in a bikini, Heath.

That's just disagree.

Now you're outvoted.

Pug in a sexy bikini is coming to Heath's website.

I take it seriously.

I mean, my friend takes it seriously.

Well, now he's back with a definition of marriage as batshit as all his other ideas.

He's okay.

This guy is such a regular that we made it through more than a minute of this story without remarking on the fact that he has a bad guy from a poorly written spaghetti western name.

I know, right?

And he looks like he has his name.

Right.

No, if you had to guess this guy's name, you might guess.

Oh, it's Dusty Deavers.

It's definitely alliterative and starts with Dusty for sure.

He's like a character you don't pick in a game, right?

It's like, you know.

So the major difference between normie marriage and covenant marriage is how hard it is to get divorced.

According to the bill, the only way to end covenant marriage is if one spouse can prove, quote, by a preponderance of evidence that she slash he was the victim of abandonment for at least one year, abuse, physical or sexual, or adultery.

And the only reason to include physical or sexual as a specification, of course, is to eliminate psychological and emotional, folks.

Yeah.

Right.

Like we would have guessed that this includes both slapping and rape, even without any parentheses getting involved.

Yeah.

You'd have hoped.

Now, I know what you're thinking, podcast listener.

Okay, Eli, that sounds amazing.

But what if my partner does abandon me for a year?

year well even then the bill would require marital counseling before a divorce can be granted with the only exceptions to that being in the case of abuse or a criminal conviction right but when the the shitty ex shows up for counseling the abandoning thing is technically over at that point so yeah it's tricky but at least you can keep sexting the person you hate right yeah but at this point maybe you're thinking eli why would anybody do this well it's because they're a christian idiot but But don't worry, Double D has sweetened the pot because covenant marriages would be entitled to a $2,500 tax credit.

So for fuck's sake.

Kind of worth being a legal handmaiden if you think about it.

Yeah, it really seems like illegal coercion to make people get married.

So yeah, if you're single, just make sure you don't live in Oklahoma or anywhere that's covered by the...

what's it called?

Federal government of the United States.

Anywhere else, though, is cool and you're fine.

I don't know.

It feels like you could make a fortune fortune getting married in Oklahoma and then divorced in Vegas a dozen times a year, though.

And I know the man to do it.

So obviously, there's only one proper response to this, which is that Dusty Deaver's wife needs to start emotionally and psychologically abusing the shit out of him.

Maybe she likes him.

I don't imagine she does, but it's possible.

But even if she does, she needs to make with the hate speech right away.

In the name of the bitch, she must do it.

and in preacher of habit news fantastic pope france is not the birthplace of the croissant it's actually austria

pope francis wants to make the world a better place so he kicked off 2025 by focusing on two very important issues the prevention of death with dignity and nuns with vinegar face What?

Yeah, that's what he's working on.

On New Year's Day, he gave a speech that called for preserving death with indignity.

And then he visited a group of Dominican nuns in Siena and told them all to fix their faces, in particular, the vinegar part of their faces.

That's right, everybody.

The Pope is God's tell women to smile more guy.

Yeah, look, I'm sure the bar was low for the guy that took up Megatron's job when he retired, too.

But at a certain point, you have to hold him to some fucking standard, don't you?

And a big big thanks to StormyD for sending the link to skatingnews at gmail.com.

Stormy gets to handle all of our death with dignity stuff going forward.

You're welcome, Stormy.

Please, Stormy, I'm so tired.

No, no, not like that.

That's not what I mean.

I don't know how you're going to die, Eli, but my money definitely isn't on with dignity.

Well, maybe Stormy could help.

That's what I was asking.

Stormy could still help separately, just unrelated to this.

That's true.

Thank you.

Stormy, if you could write me some fucking.

All right.

So I'll start with Pope Frankie's

New Year's Day Mass.

She keeps offering.

Pope Frankie called for abolishing the death penalty.

And, you know, abolishing the death penalty, that's a good start.

But then he completely ruined it by ignoring the death reward, which is a thing too.

He went on to call for no more uterine autonomy and no more life autonomy, like assisted dying, also known as death with dignity.

And the words he chose for that message were, quote, respect the dignity of human life from conception to natural death.

Yeah, no, that's our word.

We're taking it back.

Yeah, right.

Yeah.

Life is precious from the moment of child sex slavery to the death of starvation.

God watches and is ba-ba-ba-ba-ba loving.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that brings us to the global scourge known as resting bitch face.

Frankie addressed the issue last week when he spoke with a group of nuns at the Union of St.

Catherine of Siena of the missionaries of the school.

And instead of roasting that clunky ass name for the place, four ofs?

Ridiculous.

We're four of's deep.

What is this?

The fucking last act of inception?

Fuck.

Right.

So he instead focused on

90s hack comedians and their gripes about women.

He started by saying, quote, please distance yourself from gossip.

Gossip kills.

Gossip poisons.

Please, no gossiping among you, none.

And to ask this of a woman is heroic.

Am I right?

But come on, let's move forward and no gossip.

End quote.

Exact quote.

Christian.

Well, he didn't say amazing.

Am I right?

Yeah, other than that, yeah.

It's a real testament to the level of sexism that he achieves here.

That at the beginning of the quote, I'm like, God, is he even aware of how sexist it is that his message to women is about gossiping?

And by the end of the quote, he's just staring me right in the fucking eyes and going, yes, Noah, I do know that.

Yeah.

And to be clear, this is actually worse.

than the sexist bullshit that it seems to be because what he is almost certainly talking about by gossip is that nuns have started to speak out against the sexual abuse they suffer in the last few years.

So what he is actually saying to these nuns is no snitching.

Right.

So from there, Frankie told all the nuns to speak with everyone except the devil.

No talking to the devil.

And then he made the natural segue to vinegar face.

Quote, I've met nuns with a vinegar face, and that's not friendly.

That's not something that helps to attract people.

Vinegar is nasty.

And nuns with a vinegar face, let's not even talk about it.

End exact quote.

Sure, a significant percentage of our clergy are rapists, but the vibes are off with the nuns, you know?

The vibes.

The vibes?

I would like a shot of the, the, like the looks on the faces of the women staring at him that prompted him to say that, right?

Like the pure hatred in those faces.

And hey, apropos of a nothing, after I said my whole gossip thing,

don't frown.

Why are you looking at me like that?

Yeah.

And just for the record, this isn't the first time that Frankie spent his time as the conduit of the God of the universe to scold women for stupid bullshit.

In past sermons, he's chastised nuns for being way too spinsterish.

What?

Seemingly unaware that the Catholic Church fucking requires every nun to be unmarried, and that's what that dumb word means.

And he also accused them of secretly looking at online porn.

Speaking of which, just a quick fun fact, little reminder to close it out.

In 2020, the Pope's official Instagram account liked a photo of a very scantily clad Brazilian model.

It did, that's true.

The moment people noticed, the photo got unliked all of a sudden by that official account, but not before the model responded by saying, all right, at least I'm going to heaven.

Sweet talia girl.

Get in there.

And with that reminder of just how arbitrary and stupid religious hierarchy is, we're going to take a quick break for a message from this week's other sponsor, stamps.com.

November?

With Thanksgiving and everything?

Absolutely not.

No, yeah, that's fair.

Hey, fellas.

What are you doing?

We're trying to find a time to mail this package, but me and Heath's schedules are pretty tight.

I mean, we've got scathing today, of course.

And Gam on Friday.

Skepticrat on Sunday.

Plus, you got to edit the D ⁇ D Minus episode.

Yeah.

Oh, thank you.

I forgot about that.

Wait, so you won't get this package out until November?

No, no.

November was a no-go, actually.

Guys, if you want to mail and ship stuff for your business without all the hassle, hassle, why don't you just try stamps.com?

Wait, what's

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Whoa, how do they do that?

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Man, we should really thank Noah for telling us about stamps.com.

When do you think we can work it in?

I was thinking June 2028.

Guys, I'm right here.

And interrupting.

Oh, okay.

And we're back.

Next up in headlines in Defense Against the Dark Arts News.

A new breed of con man is taking advantage of the disabled and those who care for them for those sweet, sweet iTunes clicks.

Yes, using approximately the same subtle amount of legendarmants with which I sold magic thumbs at FAO Schwartz, a new podcast has convinced a brand new audience that nonverbal autistic people are actually

psychic.

So

we're going to talk about it.

Fun fact, there are a lot of ways to end up nonverbal.

I wonder if I could interest these hosts in some psychic fucking powers.

Okay, hold on.

Let me try it out.

I bet nothing happens.

Yup, I have psychic powers.

Oh, shit.

We found it.

There it is, man.

Awesome.

All right.

So for those of you who haven't listened and shouldn't, because it's a bad, evil show made by bad, evil people, the telepathy tapes are a seven-hour podcast series which have now outpaced Joe Rogan, in which a journalist interviews several parents of Autistic Children who have discovered that the universe is a simulation.

Journalist was in quotes, everybody, just for the record.

It was.

Yeah, I tried to say it, but yeah.

That the universe is a simulation, that autistic people are able to break free of that simulation into the reality in which we all reside and bring back infinite knowledge and wisdom through telepathy.

And the proof of that is a series of magic tricks that your nephew would shout out the answers to if I performed them in his fucking bar mitzvah.

It says a lot that my first thought though here is, all right, it's nonsense, but it's nonsense that'll probably save a few kids from getting ass bleached, maybe.

Yeah, that's worse.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So the Morpheus to our journalist journey is Dr.

Diane Hennessy Powell.

Let me quote from friend of the show, Jonathan Jerry, about Powell for legal reasons.

Double J?

Quote: Powell is described on the show as a neuropsychiatrist, researcher, and author, and she tells Dickens that she went to medical school, worked with some of the greatest minds in neuroscience, and joined the faculty at Harvard.

She is no longer at the vaunted university.

Additionally, in episode six, she claims her medical board revoked her license after she published her book, The ESP Enigma, which makes the case for psychic phenomena.

Powell asserts that the members of the board hadn't read the book.

After they reviewed her research, they reinstated her license.

I think she's lying.

You guys think she's dying?

Yeah.

So actually, Jonathan Jerry did a little digging, and it turns out that is, in fact, that's not quite what happened.

Again, quote, according to publicly available documents from the Oregon Medical Board.

Okay, I was going to say, I bet she's lying, and it's refutable easily with publicly available documents.

It is.

It's like they have to write that shit down.

It's crazy.

They do have to write it down.

Powell's license was indeed suspended around the time her book was released, but the reason was a pattern of practice including poor management of therapeutic boundaries, incomplete chart notes, a disorganized approach to treatment, a failure to respond to significant patient symptoms, and concerns over her management of patient medications.

End quote.

TLDR, bad doctor.

Yep.

Yeah.

She was accused of relying extensively on phone consultations to manage complex psychiatric patients without seeing them face to face, thus posing, quote, a significant risk of harm to those patients, end quote.

When asked to stop practicing medicine during the investigation, Powell declined.

Her licensing board also asked her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, which she did.

She was subsequently allowed to resume practicing medicine under a strict list of conditions, which were waived in April of 2012.

The medical board's website now lists her license as lapsed.

Okay, I feel like reinstated medical licenses should have to have an asterisk on them at least or something, right?

So, yeah, that is the doctor doing these so-called experiments.

And as Jonathan points out in his excellent article, link in the show notes, the experiments are little more than the widely debunked facilitated communication with the extra indignity of fucking blindfolding the autistic person while it's happening.

That's monstrous.

Cool.

Yeah, exactly.

The tests, which the podcast claims anyone can view, are in fact hidden behind a fucking paywall and are terribly constructed.

For instance, one telepath apparently describes a character in a book, but only does it when her mom, who is holding her speaking pad, is also looking at the book.

Come on.

When her father tries and is not looking at the book, he has no such luck.

Dad's the kind of guy who gets furblucks for

from the Ouija board or whatever, and he's just like, I don't get it.

And I love him for it.

I was trying to say, Welcome to Flavor Town.

Welcome to Flavor Town.

There are more examples of this, of course.

I highly recommend everyone check out Jonathan's article and forward it to any friends or family members who might have been taken in by this bullshit.

Because look, it's not just bullshit.

It's bullshit preying on the families of severely disabled people, many of whom have no idea that they're part of someone's con and are accidentally turning their child into a magic act.

And also, point out that verbal people are psychic too.

They just never tested us.

That's true.

They're afraid.

They're afraid of what you might reveal.

And look, I sympathize with these parents, right?

I have an Autistic Kid.

And while he's not nearly as Autistic as the people in these podcasts, if someone was selling, you know, a magic crystal that would make my kid watch a movie other than Boss Baby, and then I heard a podcast from a so-called journalist assuring me that the crystals worked to make the boss baby go away.

If I wasn't already a skeptic, I would cough up some dough for sure.

Boss Baby is a bad movie, and people are, right?

People are going to pour their life savings into this con.

And if skepticism has a purpose, it's to prevent bullshit from claiming more victims.

Also, if anyone would like me to recite the movie Boss Baby for them from memory, I can.

And I will.

And nobody wants that, man.

We're going to fight about boss baby.

Survival of the fittest.

It's the first line.

And in Boo Buddhist Dist news tonight.

Phenomenal.

When I saw a headline about a Buddhist group suing the army for fucking up the ecology of their pristine wilderness retreat, I really didn't expect to wind up on the army's side, but here we are because the Buddhist group turns out to be a cult, the wilderness retreat turns out to be a resort, and the army project they're pissed about turns out to be an Everglades conservation effort.

But that effort is going to kick up some dust and make some noise, which is going to fuck up the cult's meditation.

So they're suing, not because the project violates their rights as landowners, but because it violates their religious rights to it being quiet there.

Hey, did the Founding Fathers mention sincerely held shh?

I don't remember that part from like the Federalist Papers or anything like that.

No, I didn't see it.

So, okay, so here's the story.

The Soka Gaikai International's Florida Nature and Culture Retreat is a 118-acre property that a Japanese cult uses for meditation retreats.

And I do mean cult, Orlando Bloom.

Classified as such by most of the countries that have official classifications for that.

But a planned conservation project by the U.S.

Army Corps of Engineers is threatening the tranquility of the location, so they're suing.

And I'm sympathetic to that, right?

If I was a cult and I had a nature retreat that was beautiful and tranquil and the government came along and they wanted to put a seven-story pump house nearby, I would be upset too.

I might even sue them.

But ultimately, balancing the needs of private landowners and the needs for, you know, Everglades conservation, that's kind of why we have a government at all.

And claiming extra rights because your tranquility is religious in nature and therefore superior to the tranquility of, say, a secular retreat in the same location.

Well, that's exactly why we have secular watchdogs.

Okay, the pump house is a giant robotic hand clapping by itself.

There, fix it.

Okay, but guys, haven't they been punished enough that their retreat is in Florida?

Right?

Like, that seems

like a sufficient punishment, doesn't it?

Really?

North Florida, no less.

But let me give you an example of the kind of special treatment they're asking for.

This is from the lawsuit.

Quote, the recitation of mantras in parentheses, prayers, so you got to take it very seriously.

continuing aiming to harmonize oneself with one's environment, including the natural environment, and awaken awaken to the inseparability of life and the environment are core tenets of Nichiren Buddhism.

Naturally, such tenets or practices make a peaceful environment a priority for our organization.

End quote.

So they don't just need peace and quiet.

They need peace and quiet for their magic to work, people.

All right, Chaz Stevens, you are up.

And I'm pretty sure the magic of your church of Satanology and perpetual soiree doesn't work without a good deal of sweaty army engineers doing it.

You need a pump house.

You got to have a pump house.

Every time we touch, playing at full volume.

I've heard that.

I've heard that.

Well, look, honestly, I almost scrapped it.

I got like three quarters of the way through this story, and I almost scrapped it because it's so easy to sympathize with the Buddhist cult here, right?

It's really easy to look at this and see a story of a minority religion being pushed out by an unsympathetic government, hell-bent on destroying their pristine retreat.

But what's actually happening here is a gazillionaire cult that's been convicted of tax fraud and all kinds of shit in Japan is standing in the way of environmental protection to protect their multi-million dollar property.

This is the religious equivalent of fighting conservation efforts because they blight the view from your favorite golf course.

And the injection of monks should not change that.

Okay, heard, but counterpoint.

They are preserving Florida here.

And I think

maybe we just

let nature take its course.

Okay, but no, for nature to take its course, there needs to be a place for all the alligators to propagate.

And that's what they're trying to save here, Eli.

Yeah.

Do it with the Buddhists is what I'm saying, I think.

It's just a little shush.

And finally, tonight, here at the Scathing Atheist, we like to be good skeptics.

Speak for yourself.

And that means giving a full...

open-minded examination when you come across new information that conflicts with your prior assumptions.

So in that vein of intellectual honesty, I want to take a look at a story that's being reported differently depending on the source that you're looking at.

In one headline that I found, it says, Vatican to open five sacred portals.

And in the other headline, it says, no, Pope Francis did not open spiritual portals to other dimensions.

And it really seems like somebody dropped the ball here.

Somebody's wrong.

Someone's wrong.

Fair and balanced presentation, Heath, just like Mark Zuckerberg is hoping for.

Yeah.

No, I feel like the truth is clearly somewhere in between.

I'm thinking maybe two or three portals.

Yeah.

Okay.

Fair and balanced once again.

Community note.

And

a big thanks to Leone for sending the link to skatingnews at gmail.com.

Leone gets full access to any.

and all dimensional portals that we might open, sacred or otherwise.

So the overall story from both sources is about 2025 being a jubilee year for the catholic church that means we're in a special year full of extra grace that happens only once every 25 years

of course the vatican does this in accordance with the bible which says we're supposed to have these once every 50 years but um that's from leviticus the fucking gross jewish part so apparently the vatican decided to just double that up because they felt well it's because we they have twice the bible so that's what they have to sure gotta read in there and then the vatican expanded the format a bit more and added like a

wildcard jubilee called the extraordinary jubilee, which can be called whenever the pope feels like it.

Pope Francis did one of those in 2016.

Bottom line, the big takeaway, there's extra grace this year.

Get excited.

Yeah, no, the great thing about nothing is that you can give out extra nothing whenever you want, right?

I mean, honestly, I'll take what I can get at this point, guys.

Yeah, I could use a little bit of

stubby.

I'll never take anything.

I don't care.

Anything.

Even pretend.

All right.

Well, how does the Pope make that all possible on a year of Jubilee?

Well, he opens five interdimensional portals.

Asterisk.

It's up for debate.

Those portals, it turns out, are just literal doors in our dimension.

The symbolic, possibly interdimensional entity is called a holy door.

And the Vatican usually does this at five churches in Rome, including St.

Peter's Basilica.

The physical doors get bricked up and sealed between jubilees for a bunch of years.

So, you know, no problem so far, just tearing down some walls for extra grace and casting a door spell.

Totally normal.

Normal, chill.

This year, the Pope chose a new location for one of those symbolic holy doors.

He went with Rabibia Prison, a place that's never had a holy door opened before.

And that's a big part of the controversy.

Either Pope Francis went to a prison and he opened a door, or he might have accidentally created a magic portal for Satan, the Prince of Darkness, to attack humanity

and he opened a literal door.

Okay, between the plenary indulgent requirements and the Satan door, this is starting to sound like an awesome D ⁇ D campaign, though, right, guys?

It really is.

Okay, I feel like which doors do and don't get opened at a prison is really important, though, right?

Yeah, hopefully they picked a reasonable door for that.

So, let's examine the two sources that represent the argument here.

The headline of no, the Pope did not open spiritual portals to the other dimensions, came from a publication out of Ireland called The Journal.

In particular, their fact-checking unit called the Journal Fact-Check.

Their argument was,

yeah, those are doors.

On the other side, we have the headline that said, Vatican to open five sacred portals from charisma news.

They described themselves as the most trusted source for credible news and insight from a charismatic perspective now that might sound a little questionable but we also got a story with almost exactly the same headline from the very serious news team at the new york post the argument from the post and charisma news was saying this is how you get demons do you want demons this is how you get them and the indignant panic from the article in charisma is my favorite part they're furious about the vatican putting lives and souls at risk.

Here's the very first paragraph from charismatic journalist James Lasher of Charisma News.

Quote, the Vatican's announcement of opening sacred portals has raised eyebrows and sparked intrigue.

Intrigue.

While the Catholic Church claims this tradition upholds a doorway to salvation, one can't help but question, what exactly is the catholic church attempting to achieve with this elaborate ritual and only you brave adventurer can stop him before it's too late i'm in i'm wishlifting this on steam right now obviously everybody ready for initiative and charisma news that's obviously more more credible right the journal fact check could be replaced by the journal community note and nobody would even notice it would be the same thing so yeah yeah i'm leaning towards the ladder yeah so that's what the journalism team at Charisma News has been working on.

But despite all these very serious warnings, Pope Francis went ahead and opened the demon portals for the Jubilee year or just opened, you know, doors.

And that year of Jubilee has begun.

We'll see how it goes.

And that's all stupid.

And the Catholic Church is truly evil.

But for at least a few months, the newsroom over at Charisma is going to be screaming about the proper journalistic response to magical doors.

And that makes me kind of happy.

You got to love an idiot fight, right?

Gotta, gotta love it.

Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got some spiritual doors to shake some demon treats in front of.

So we're gonna wrap up the headlines there.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Jubilee Monty.

And when we come back, we'll figure out where that smell is coming from.

Religious bullshit is a very small portion of the larger Venn diagram circle of bullshit.

And since we're down here anyway and this smell isn't coming off, we figure we might as well root around and see what else we can find in a segment we call How Bullshit Is It?

So tell us, Heath, what stupidity sewage do you have for us today?

Today, we're going to be talking about the hollow earth theory.

Okay, so why is that?

Because it's making a comeback, Noah.

The popularity of flat earth belief has sort of reached that critical level where the refutations are starting to catch up with the bullshit, and it's getting harder and harder for the dedicated conspiracy theorist to ignore the overwhelming evidence against it.

But they're not ready to just live on a normal Earth that was the same shape as Big Sphere has been telling them the whole time.

So Hollow Earth has become sort of a citadel for the debunked flat earthers to retreat to.

Huh.

I would not think those two at all compatible.

You'd be surprised.

The two conspiracies have a lot in common.

A worldwide cabal hiding the truth, a grand conspiracy to keep people away from the South Pole, Nazis, anti-Semitism, all the stuff they love.

Yeah, it's a stupid people wish list, if you will.

Okay, all right, take us there.

All right, but it won't be a direct journey.

See, the history of the hollow earth theory is just a centuries-long, precipitous drop in the prestige of people proposing it.

That begins with Edmund the comet guy Halley back in 1692 and eventually leads to spiritual medium Diane Robbins and her revelations from the spiritual guide Lil

of the interior city of Telos about the coming of the Golden Crystal Age.

Okay, well that sounds like the kind of journey you need a parachute for.

I bet Halley totally made everyone call him the comic guy.

That's totally dangerous.

Totally did that.

So let's start at the top.

In the late 17th century, the preeminent British astronomer Edmund Halley, the comic guy, the comic guy, was trying to make sense of some unexpected compass readings.

And in his effort to do so, he tied himself in exactly the kind of knot that Occam's razor was designed to cut through.

He proposed that the Earth itself consisted of four concentric spheres, each separated by its own luminous atmosphere.

He then went on to suggest that those inner spheres were inhabited and that gas escaping from the outermost one was the source of the aurora borealis.

Though, presumably, those last two assumptions weren't based on the compass ratings.

Yeah, or the luminousness of the atmosphere, idiot.

Everyone knows that the aurora

are based on

trails of

someone interrupts me and answers.

But here's the thing.

Here's the thing.

Hallie's proposal wasn't quite as wild as it sounds to us today.

There are actually four Earths.

The idea that the Earth was hollow kind of fit right in with most of the existing cosmologies of the day.

Pretty much every ancient culture had an underworld, because that's one of the two places other than the Earth where you can locate fictional realms.

And pretty much every culture near a deep cave was very certain they knew where the entrance to that underworld was.

So when Halle proposed it, it's not like there was a solid earth consensus that he was pushing back against.

So his theory was just the accepted wisdom then?

Okay, so in Halley's defense, I wouldn't go so far as calling it a theory.

He never claimed that it was true, just that it was possible.

Like a Matreon promise, isn't that right, Heath?

But to answer your question, no.

There was a lot of debate about the composition of the planet through the early 1700s, but by 1740, so still within Edmund Halley's lifetime, gravitational experiments showed that the Earth had to be pretty much a solid object.

By 1744, Charles Hutton's Schihalion experiment definitively refuted the idea of a hollow Earth.

So from that point on, the theory was left in the hands of the pseudoscientists.

There's something sweetly nostalgic about the fact that when we dispose of an idea, a bunch of wackos pick it up and use it for themselves, right?

Like alchemy or transphobia.

Yeah.

Right.

So now that the pseudoscientists have it in their hands, what do they do with it?

They ran and pin in alchemy, by the way.

And this is where we meet John Sims, who would basically dedicate his life to the ideas that A, the earth was hollow, B, there were inhabitants that lived within it, and C, that there were entrances to the inner part of the earth at the north and south poles.

Why would there be entrances at the north and south poles?

Great question.

Mostly because nobody had actually gotten to the poles yet, so it couldn't be easily refuted.

Yeah, nowadays they think the entrances are at mattress first.

But this idea of a polar entrance was introduced to the hollow earth mythology pretty early on, and it stuck.

In fact, there were even theories that human civilization emerged out of those entrances, or in keeping with the racism of the day, that only some human civilizations emerged out of them, specifically the Inuit and Mongolian people.

Oh, that's nice.

So the idea of the polar entrances come from Sims?

No, but he was the the one who brought the idea into the public consciousness.

In 1818, he proposed a model where the Earth consisted of a hollow shell, about 800 miles thick, with 1,400-mile-wide openings at the poles.

Sims never actually wrote a book about his ideas, but he was so influential and so strongly associated with the idea that when a big hole that was alleged to lead to the inner earth was discovered, it was named a Sims hole.

There's even a monument in his honor in Hamilton, Ohio.

Yeah, celebrating wrongness has been a long tradition in Ohio, I think.

Yeah, ever since North Carolina beat them to aviation.

That's right, Ohio.

I said it.

I said it.

So did Sims or anybody promoting his ideas provide any evidence?

You mean other than the Mongolians?

Well, yeah, other than Inuit people and Mongolians.

No, no evidence, but that didn't stop the popular imagination from latching on.

See, at this point in history, the unknown parts of the map are shrinking rapidly.

And that's great if you're capitalism and you're hell-bent on denuding the planet of every useful resource as fast as possible.

But it sucks if you're trying to tell fantastical adventure stories of faraway lands with giant scorpions and bikini-clad barbarians, because none of the places we checked had giant scorpions and bikini-clad barbarians.

Except South Beach.

Except South Beach, yeah.

But this exploration ultimately left storytellers with two options, up or down.

So you've got science fiction exploring far-off worlds that can have as many giant scorpions as you want, or unknown realms within the Earth, which you can populate with all the bikini-clad barbarians your heart desires.

Well, that's not a lot of bikini-clad barbarians.

You should try South Beach.

No, clearly.

Okay,

this is, of course, the era that gives us novels like Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth, in which, spoiler alert, they never get remotely close to the center of the Earth.

Thank you.

That pissed me off so much as a kid.

Why are they lying in the title?

Yeah.

Edgar Allan Poe and Edgar Rice Burroughs are among the many writers who took advantage of a hollow earth setting for their stories.

And for a lot of people, fiction defines what's possible.

The idea of a hollow earth was so ubiquitous in fiction that it didn't seem crazy to people.

And for a people that craved unknown mysteries, anybody with even a patina of credibility claiming the Earth was hollow could find a very willing audience.

Okay, so help me out here.

What are they picturing?

Right.

Are we talking about a system where like gravity is reversed on the inside and they live along the interior like a Dyson sphere?

Or is there another

smaller Earth inside that they live in and the under, like the underside of our ground is their sky?

Yeah, no, a way to find something relatable like a Dyson sphere to sort of simplify the visualization for everyone at home.

Well, you can find examples of both models, actually.

Some even have both a population on the Dyson sphere interior and a littler earth inside.

There was even a dude in 1869 named Cyrus Reed Teed, which is an awesome name.

No, there was.

Who claimed we were living inside the hollow earth and that the poles contained a way to get to the outer earth.

And what gave him that idea?

That would be a woman who appeared to him in a vision, in his professional capacity as an herbalist and alchemist.

Okay.

So as long as he was on the clock at the time.

I'm willing to hear him on the clock.

He published pamphlets and gave lectures on this idea for 40 years and even tried to turn it into the basis of a religion that he called Kurishan, after a Hebrew version of his own name.

Okay.

So what's in?

the hollow earth.

Yeah, that's where the fun begins.

Obviously, it depends on who you ask, but the most common answers include an advanced civilization that wants to destroy us, an advanced civilization that wants to control us, an advanced civilization that wants to usher in an era of peace for us, the Atlanteans, the source of UFOs, the Jewish lizards, and the Nazis.

Also, Mongolians.

No, no, they left.

Oh, right.

Sorry.

Duh.

Read a...

Blinking multi-font website.

Fuck.

Sorry, I was excited for the barbecue and I wasn't.

I lost track a little bit.

Okay, but to be honest, these fanciful ideas of holes to the inner earth fanciful probably helped out a lot gay when it came time to fund expeditions to those polar regions explorers didn't need any extra incentive to risk their lives and digits on a months-long frozen slog of misery boredom and self-deprivation for the title of you know first person to a magnetic anomaly.

Well, obviously.

But when it came time to fund that stuff, it helped to dangle the outside possibility of giant scorpions and bikini-clad barbarians in front of those people.

What if I told you that Tom would write an essay about you for our podcast?

Exactly.

You want to be a podcast essay?

Yeah, yeah.

Take as your comparison, I guess, on this the interest in funding lunar missions after we definitively confirmed the lack of little green men.

Exactly.

But alas, in 1909 and 1911, explorers reached the North and South Poles, respectively, and found, you guessed it, no giant holes.

Ah, well, I bet the hollow earthers admitted they were wrong and updated their worldviews, huh?

Heath.

They changed the size of the hole and claimed it might not be exactly at the pole.

It might be a few miles off and might be small enough that everyone on the expeditions missed it.

Huh.

Well, I bet once we had technology to fly over the poles, they updated it then.

Well, those happened in 1926 and 1929.

And this time, they mostly said that the guy who flew over it was in on it.

Oh, okay.

Well, now that we have satellite images, faked satellite images, and thousands upon thousands of people have been to both poles.

Turns out the hole's somewhere else.

Mattress firm.

They're in the mattress.

And every inch of the earth, including mattress firm, has been thoroughly attached to the map.

The illuminati is hiding the entrance exactly.

God damn it.

That makes sense.

Name one person who's been to a mattress firm.

Fuck.

So, yeah, basically, it's really easy to win arguments when you're on the only side allowed to just make shit up whenever you want.

Fair.

Yeah.

Okay.

So this seems like such a stupid thing to have to ask, but I do have to ask it.

How do we know that the Earth isn't hollow?

It doesn't go bong, bong, bong when you knock on it, Noah.

I knew that.

No, that's actually a fair question because it's not like we can just dig our way through to know for sure.

As the Wikipedia article on the hollow earth helpfully reminds us, quote, drilling holes does not provide direct evidence against the hypothesis.

The deepest hole drilled to date is the cola super deep borehole with a true vertical drill depth of around 12 kilometers.

What should we call our super deep hole kind?

Bore hole, super deep.

Let's call it the super deep hole.

Very, very deep, super, super deep.

We're going with super deep.

All right.

And sure, hope no one knocks all the books out of our hands.

Yeah.

So that one's 12 kilometers, 7.5 miles, continuing from the Wikipedia.

However, the distance to the center of the Earth is nearly 6,400 kilometers or 4,000 miles, end quote.

And that's true.

We haven't drilled deep enough to confirm there's no giant scorpions down there.

Technically, we haven't done that.

There are other lines of evidence, though, like seismic activity.

Wait a minute.

So this is the bong, bong.

It doesn't bong bong when you knock on it.

Yeah,

it is actually.

Okay, all right.

Eli nailed it.

All right.

So when an earthquake hits, even a small brains of the podcast, everybody, we can measure the impact of the earthquake all over the globe.

And we can tell from the speed and direction of the vibrations echoing through the planet that it had a solid substance to echo through.

There's also the fact that, you know, gravity is and works.

If the Earth was hollow, it wouldn't have anywhere near enough density to account for the amount of gravity that we have.

There's also the simple issue of structural integrity.

If the Earth was hollow, it would just cave in and form into a solid object.

Okay, so if it's so easily disproved, why is the theory so enduring?

Because it gives you a place for all your bullshit to hide.

Why can't we find Bigfoot?

How are these UFOs crossing interstellar distances?

Wouldn't the Jewish lizard bases show up on Google Earth?

These are the kinds of questions that can shake a conspiracy to its core.

Core.

But luckily,

there's this convenient 8,000-mile-wide ball to hide shit in right under your feet.

Okay.

And you mentioned Nazis at the beginning.

I did.

I did.

You'll be surprised to learn that there's a lot of overlap between conspiracy theorists and white supremacists.

No, indeed, there is.

Indeed, there is.

And one of the consistent fantasies that white supremacists like to indulge in is the idea that Hitler secretly survived and somehow won, or whatever.

So there's a popular conspiracy trope that has Hitler escaping to the inner earth and living out his days in some kind of science fiction paradise down there.

Okay, I thought the Nazis lived inside the moon.

That's another popular variation on it.

Yeah.

I mean, he's getting old now.

Well, yeah, well, sure, yeah, yeah.

Well, so I guess the only question left to ask is,

How bullshit is it?

It's Hitler and Jewish lizards together just high-fiving in a hamster ball being like, got him.

Now they don't know what to think.

Well, I guess that we're going to wrap on the depressing realization that if you want to achieve immortality, having brilliant ideas and deeply stupid ones is approximately tied for effectiveness.

So thanks for that, Heath, and we'll look forward to more bullshit to come.

Should we tell Noah that it's not even close to tide?

It's kind of taken

back to the cats this week.

I want to let you know that things are really heating up over on season two of DD Minus.

If you're not listening along, we are currently trapped in a constipated dragon over there.

In case you needed any more motivation to get caught up.

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 able to look out for a brand new episode of our sister show, The Skeptic, Day being at 7 a.m.

Eastern on Monday, and even newer episodes of our Sister Soul's Hot Friend Got Off on Movies Day being at 7 Eastern on Tuesday.

Tuesday, and an even newer episode of Our Have Sister Soul Citation Needed Day being at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, this episode couldn't achieve its true potential if I neglected to thank Keith Enright for his willingness to dig through a little bullshit for the sake of our listeners, Eli Bosni for insisting that that's what he was digging through the shit for too, and Lucinda Lusions for continuing to partner with me in life despite how often I revert to poop jokes.

I also want to thank Best Case Jesus for providing this week's Farnsworth quote/slash call for solidarity in seizing the means of production.

But most of all, of course, I want to thank this week's best bipeds, Greg, Friend, Liz, Aaron, Steve, Michael, Sidney, Terry, and Connor.

Greg, Friend, and Liz, who are so bright people flash their high beams at them when they think too hard.

Aaron, Steve, and Michael, whose collective ejaculations could put out those wildfires if only we could time them all, right?

And Sidney, Terry, and Connor, who are so cool, global warming would get worse if they visited the ISS.

Together, these nine beloved barbarians backed up our bellowing belligerence of believers bullshit this week by giving us money.

Not everybody has the money it takes to have less of it on our accounts, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com/slash scathing atheists, whereby you'll learn 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 not in a money way, you can also help a ton by leaving a five-star review, telling a friend about the show, and following us on social media and speaking to social media.

Tim Robinson 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.

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

If I'm bad at talking this time, Morgan, it's Lucinda's fault because she came up and smoked a bowl with me right before I was going to record this.

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

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