655: Tarot Bull Edition

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Warning the profanity comes early and often in this one.

This week's episode of The Scathing Atheist is brought to you by Mint Mobile and by Chocolate Chip Mobile.

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This season on Will of the Dice, a DD actual play,

the gods grew prideful, the gods lost their way, and now they suffer.

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It's Thursday.

It's September 18th, and it's chiropractic awareness day.

If you're not careful, sometimes you end up Kevin Swim.

I'm no illusions.

I'm Eli Bosnick.

I'm Heathen Wright.

And from John DiMaggios, New Jersey, Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Wake Rust, Georgia, this is Skating East.

On this week's episode, the nation casts its tiny face upwards towards the heavens.

God continues having a mediocre 500 winning percentage at football.

And we discovered that random janitors often give the best psychiatric advice.

But first, the diatron.

This weekend, I'm giving a talk for the Central Florida free thought community on my days as a tarot reader.

Sunday, 2 to 4 p.m., University Club at Winter Park near Orlando.

Suggest a donation of $10.

Info in the show notes.

Be there or be square.

And of course, as I'm putting the talk together, I'm left reflecting on all the dumb shit that I wasted my time reading back when I was buying into neo-paganism.

So for those of you who are unaware, my path towards atheism detoured through hippie-witchy bullshit on its way.

I got introduced to it through a friend's copy of Raymond Buckland's complete book of witchcraft.

And at the time, I lived in a very Christian little town, so you couldn't actually find books on that subject in the local libraries or at the local bookstores.

Hell, the bookstores around me wouldn't even order books about witchcraft and tarot for you.

If the title sounded satanic to them, they would just give you a stern look and recommend a good church.

And of course, my thought at the time was, well, this must be some pretty powerful shit if they're trying to keep it away from me like this.

And what I should have thought was, well, here's a bullshit peddler with a monopoly trying to protect their interests.

But I was young and I was naive.

So I set about tracking down this forbidden knowledge.

And of course, as we olds most constantly remind everyone when we share our youthful memories, there was no internet back then, or no consumer internet anyway.

So the shit that I was trying to find was hard to find information about, all the more so since my mom also bought into the satanic panic and was trying to keep all the demonic witchery away from me.

But very slowly, I started to amass a small library of books on neo-paganism and spellcraft.

And once I got old enough to move away and buy whatever the fuck I wanted, it grew into a large library.

Dozens of books with titles like Lid Off the Cauldron, Drawing Down the Moon, and To Ride a Silver Broomstick.

I devoured the works of Aleister Crowley, Israel Rigardi, Scott Cunningham, and I didn't just read this shit.

Like I studied it.

I memorized mystic alphabets.

I photo copied references at libraries.

I hunted down obscure articles and out-of-print magazines.

I went through this shit like I was going to get a Ph.D.

in it.

Of course, the key to breaking this obsession is the obsession itself.

You read enough of these books, and you can't help but notice how the various experts are constantly contradicting one another.

They try to maintain a more or less coherent web of bullshit, but there's no objective truth to check it against and no all-powerful Vatican to dictate doctrine.

So there's no way to resolve differences but clout tenacity and force of personality.

My inevitable apostasy was also helped along by the fact that that none of the spells or potions they offered actually did anything.

Now, you would think that that'd be really obvious early on in the same way you'd think that Christians would notice that prayer doesn't work early on.

But if you've ever read these books, you know that they're clever enough to couch their bullshit really well, right?

So the spell never has an outcome.

It increases the likelihood of that outcome, right?

Or it does something that can't be directly measured or whatever.

Now, to be honest, I realized it was bullshit way before I gave up on learning more about it.

By then, way too much of my life and social circle was invested in this shit, and I was intellectually pot committed.

I'd spent years developing expertise in this shit.

So the idea of admitting that I'd been that dumb for that long and just giving up on all those years of study was unthinkable at first.

And like even when I did wean myself off those books, I ended up donating my library to a pagan commune in Tennessee.

It was still several more years before I could admit that I'd actually just wasted all that time.

I think, honestly, that's the seed of my anger at religion.

You know, I feel my rage day to day with the rampant abuses of faith against minorities and women and science and the future of democracy.

It's not hard, you know, to keep fueled up these days.

But I think the kernel that started it all was the realization that I'd spent about 10 years of my life in deep study of absolutely nothing.

Putting that much effort and study into virtually any other subject would have imparted at least some kind of benefit.

But instead, I came away empty-handed, bareheaded, whatever.

But it's not just that those books were a waste of my time.

They also, for a while anyway, made me stop believing in truth.

I had been so thoroughly lied to by so many sources for so long that I just started to assume that everything I was reading was thinly veiled bullshit.

And I'm sure a lot of people who were raised Christian can relate to that, right?

Once the rug is pulled out from under you, your first thought isn't necessarily, well, I guess these other guys over here have been telling the truth the whole time.

It can also be, well, I guess there is no truth, or I guess nobody knows the truth and they're all lying.

And this hits a lot harder if like me you'd already been through it once with your parents' faith.

Twice my worldview had been pulled out from under me by just like thinking about it a bit.

For years afterwards, I didn't bother to learn much of anything or, you know, nothing of the how the world works variety anyway.

It wasn't until a decade later that I realized those boring nerds over at science had it right the whole time, but I'd lost so much fucking time by then.

Even now, when I try to shove new shit into my brain, I have to push aside some fucking runic alphabet to make room for it.

We spend a lot of time as atheists answering what's the harm type questions about seemingly innocuous bullshit.

Wicca, for example, never took away a gay couple's rights or operated a child rape cabal, so what's the harm in believing that your herbal concoction increases the chance of peace in the Middle East or whatever?

But anything that disguises itself as truth is a weapon against real truth.

Lies don't need to do anything to be immoral.

They're already immoral on their own merits.

And even if you only judge them by the time and intellectual capacity they've wasted, it would justify a hell of a lot more opposition than we've ever been able to muster.

They're talking about your Jesus.

Joining me for headlines tonight are the Mac and Cheese of This Podcast, Eli Bosnick, and Heath Enright.

Heath, sorry to give you a second billing this time, but there's no fucking way you're not the cheese, right?

And

I'm not going to say cheese and Mac like a fucking communist.

I hope you don't mind.

All gouda.

Cheddar.

It's all cheddar, gouda.

Yeah, yeah.

I bet Andrew Cuomo says cheese and Mac.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

And Curtis Silwa just eats the raw noodles with the dust on them.

So it's a good mix.

All right.

Well, now you've made me hungry.

So we're going to pause for a word from this week's sponsor, Mint Mobile.

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Yeah, someone emailed me that one.

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All right, Keith.

Thanks.

I guess you could say now I'm a pro crass saver.

I don't, I don't get it.

What?

Because we swear on the pot.

So the crass.

Right.

And now back to the headlines.

In our lead story tonight, Charlie Kirk's killer had no consideration of our release schedule at all.

Ridiculous.

Yes.

Shot the motherfucker on a Wednesday after we were done with all the recording for the week.

And on a week, we weren't even scheduled to do a chapter of Ross Douthlett's book.

Now, to be honest, I don't think I'd feel right doing a son of obituary about a murdered guy anyway.

So we probably wouldn't have preempted that C-segment anyway.

But it would have been nice to at least give us the option, Tyler.

Yes, thank you.

We set up the calendar on the Antifa Slack channel for a fucking reason, Tyler.

Use the calendar.

In his defense, we have not yet upgraded that to the pro account.

We should use one of the checks from George Soros.

You always say that.

You always want to use the George Soros money for every fucking thing.

That's true.

We're trying to save it.

There's so much of it.

Well, yeah.

Now, as of the time of this recording, nothing is actually known about the killer's motivations, despite very confident declarations from both sides of the aisle.

On the left, people who have never heard the term Groiper before three days ago are entirely convinced he's one of those.

And to their credit, he did once crouch down in a black track suit.

But they've used that knowledge to conclude that the killer was on the right and murdered Kirk for being too liberal.

On the other side, people were pretty sure the killer was trans, and then that the bullets were trans, and then that there were trans people, though.

And they've used that knowledge to conclude that the killer was on the left and murdered Kirk for virtually everything he ever did publicly in his life.

Sure.

Yeah.

And it doesn't matter what political angle is in the brain of the murder guy with the gun.

Not really.

Murder guys with guns aren't usually, you know, awash in coherence.

So it doesn't really say anything about either side necessarily.

Also, hating Charlie Kirk does make perfect sense.

Also, and get ready for a maze of nuance,

the murder of the guy I hate was bad.

That was a bad thing to do.

And

even if you take away the morality part or immorality part, it wasn't even a good strategy.

No.

Also, don't take away the morality part.

Just importantly, go to that.

If I had a nickel for every dunk, it's honestly

a lot of people.

I I got to circle back to that a lot.

It's important.

Also, though, one more thing, when I, immediately after this happened, got a text that said, Charlie wouldn't want us to feel empathy, party popper emoji.

That was funny.

That was just objectively a funny thing.

Also,

those things I said can all be true at once.

They are all true at once.

You have to say all of them too, including the circle back for the morality part.

But circling back for one other thing to the speculation about the shooter's politics, the fact that it's even theoretically possible for Charlie Kirk to get attacked from the right is pretty telling about the right.

Yeah,

that's fair.

And look, just because the wildly vast, overwhelming majority of mass shooters in this country's history have been explicitly right-wing doesn't mean we don't get to start caring when it's not one of them.

This is what I'm saying.

You know, now is when it matters.

This is when we care.

Now, of course, just because both sides are pointing fingers at one another doesn't mean this is a both sides are the same kind of issue, right?

Because importantly, the people confidently declaring the killer to be a Republican are not political leaders in positions of power promising to crack down on unrelated conservative groups.

Pretty big difference.

Yeah.

But vice president and man who unsuccessfully lobbied to get half of them named lazy girls so he wouldn't feel as gay, J.D.

Vance,

did exactly that.

Waste of a parenthetical.

Waste of a parenthetical.

But Vance, so Vance did exactly that to liberal groups when he hosted a posthumous episode of Kirk's podcast and posited a vast

posited a vast left-wing terrorist conspiracy that's promoting the murder of right-wing voices.

Stephen Miller appeared as a guest and referenced an illissory vast domestic terror movement on the left and said, quote, with God as my witness, we are going to use every resource we have at the Department of Justice, Homeland Security, and throughout the government to identify, disrupt, dismantle, and destroy these networks, end quote.

Cool.

Yeah.

Good luck with that.

All we do is wake up, be bisexual, eat hot chip and lie.

Maybe like charge your phone, do a crime.

It's all on the Slack calendar.

You can check it out.

Also, don't be silly, Heath, bisexuals don't charge their phones.

That's crazy.

Crazy accusation.

And look, vast domestic terror networks on the left in this country don't exist.

Or they're the least effective networks in the history of vast domestic terror.

But much like voter fraud and Christian discrimination, their witch hunt will turn up some witches.

And they'll probably be brown people that will lose their freedom, their citizenship, or whatever else it takes to keep them from voting.

Advance also encouraged listeners to keep up their campaign of doxing and harassing anybody found to be insufficiently mournful of Kirk Online because the free speech absolutist anti-cancel culture crowd is hypocrisy incarnate.

Oh, yeah.

You guys want to tell on each other?

Like, I'll tell on you.

Yeah, well, there you go.

Oh, I know.

I actually had a guy who threatened to tell my boss.

He said, he said he was going to find out who my boss was, who I really was, and he was going to tell my boss.

Now I'm just picturing him sitting at a desk with Lucinda at it, and then

she shoots him in the neck.

Can you put the miniatures down?

Yours was better.

And in for us, bias news.

That's great.

People won't understand it because they won't see it written down, but that's really fucking good.

That's why you got to be a patron, people.

Access to the script, my best work.

You might have forgotten with the sometimes literal parade of horribles that has made up the Trump presidency, but one of the more insane and draconian actions the administration has undertaken was the formation of a task force at the Justice Department with the explicit mission of eliminating anti-Christian bias within the government.

Well, they released their initial report last week, and you'd think as our government becomes an ever more explicit theocracy, there wouldn't be much to find, but that's because you aren't a bigot who defines oppression as not being completely in charge fast enough.

So we're going to talk about it.

No,

they genuinely operate from a playing field where there's only bias for and bias against.

Those are the only options.

Lack of bias for is bias against, right?

Like equality literally does not exist on their board.

Well, the concept of zero as a number was figured out by Hindu and Muslim people.

It's technically anti-Christian persecution that I'm even talking about this morning.

Right, no, that's fair.

That's fair.

Yeah.

Now, before we dive in, I want to give a shout out to Hemet Mehta over at the Friendly Atheist blog for doing our homework for us, as he so often does, and sending the results in the form of his newsletter to scathingnews at gmail.com.

Hemet, if adulthood had an SAT, we'd totally pay you to take it for us.

Scathingnews at gmail.com.

Yep, speak for yourself.

I think Keith and I are both kind of pissed that adulthood doesn't have periodic standardized testing.

That's like the only part of school I was good at.

Yeah.

I would like that to be a requirement for going on the internet and having an opinion there.

Oh, there you go.

You have to periodically pass a pretty hard test.

All right.

Well, I just got kicked off my own podcast.

Our tears are tough, but fair.

Tough, but can I get one?

Come back next week for the next test.

See what happens.

We'll study real hard.

Study up.

Pay Hem at Meta to take your fucking test.

Yes, exactly.

That's what I would do.

Yeah, exactly.

All right.

So the report, which is dated June 6th, but was only released this week because I'm guessing the government wasn't willing to pay for the pro plan of Claude AI and they were doing this fucking a hundred tokens at a time.

It begins with an ominous forward that promises, quote, a consistent and systematic pattern of discrimination against Christians during the Biden administration, end quote.

Which is impressive since quick reminder, Joseph Biden and most of his administration were in fact

Christians.

Well, look, I could see describing at least their communication strategy as bias against themselves.

Oh, you know what?

That's re-election strategy.

But let's get to some examples.

Now, before I get into these, I want to be clear that I am not like cherry-picking silly claims in between legitimate grievances.

I'm using the examples the task force gave.

These examples are the best they could come up with.

So, first up, quote: during the 2023 Easter season, a public affairs officer was instructed to take down posts on an official HUD office X account relating to Palm Sunday.

In between,

thank you, please.

Good Friday and Easter, because they potentially violated the establishment clause and other federal regulations.

However, similar posts in celebration of Pride Month, Ramadan, and Diwali,

among others, received no scrutiny.

End quote.

Fucking got them.

The community of people who follow the HUD on Twitter.

It's nothing but Hindus, Muslims, and proud gay people now.

Good luck reversing that, Donald Trump.

Fuck you.

Yeah.

And look, I haven't seen the posts from Palm Sunday, Good Friday, and Easter, but I'm guessing they might have been taken down because unlike the Ramadan and Diwali posts, which are still visible and just wish people a happy version of the holiday, they explicitly endorse one religion over another, something that the government used to be against.

Yeah.

First of all, I love that they included Pride Month in the list of religious holidays and celebrations.

But I also look, we need to be clear that the actual texts of the posts that were taken down were not included in the report, right?

So if they backed up their claim of bias, those would have been included in the report.

Show your work.

Yeah.

But that's not all.

Good, because that's nothing.

Literally nothing.

Well, to be clear, I don't have anything.

No, it continues to be nothing.

That's not more of the nothing.

It turns out that the Biden administration also came after Christian universities, all because of the

crimes they were doing.

Demonstrable and provable crimes.

Yes.

Quote, the Biden administration weaponized the Department of Education, E.D., and attempted to impose record-breaking fines on some of the nation's largest Christian universities, including Liberty University, $14 million, and Grand Canyon University, $37.7 million.

End quote.

Quick reminder, Liberty University was fined for creating an environment where students were afraid to report when they were sexually assaulted, and Grand Canyon University fraudulently lured students in with lower admission fees only to raise those fees once students were enrolled.

Yeah.

No, yeah, we're more criminal than average.

Usually that's more of a liability than it is in this instance.

Okay.

And the record-breaking part of that seemed like a big deal to them.

Do they think the record-breaking nature of the fines against them is an argument for their side?

Clearly.

If anyone deserves a slap on the wrist, it's Christ our Lord and Savior.

Am I right, everybody?

And look, we don't have time to go into all the silly examples this task force found, like the oppression of,

I love this one so much, not being able to have an open flame next to an oxygen delivery system at a hospital.

Wait, that's a real one?

Yeah, that's one of them that I literally could not get to.

I thought that was like the ultimate sarcastic thing that you

thought, okay.

It's a real thing.

Wow.

The point is this report served its purpose.

As Hammett points out over on his blog, this nothing of a report resulted in a headline on Fox News that read, DOJ task force finds numerous instances of anti-Christian government bias under Biden because that's what they were hoping for, right?

A made-up report to support their made-up crusade against an administration that dared to put a four-year gap in their rise to complete and total power, or as I'm sure it will someday be known, high crimes and treason.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Next up in headlines in going hard in the saint news.

Fantastic.

The Catholic Church is squanching up the Riz no cap to attract the youths of the world to their pyramid scheme.

And they officially minted their first ever millennial saint last week.

Oh, shit.

Pope Bobby Southside held mass in St.

Peter's Square for 80,000 people, during which he canonized Carlo Acutis, a kid who died of leukemia at age 15 in 2006, and then completed two posthumous miracles.

Carlo was also very importantly a pioneer on the bleeding edge of Catholic technology.

He created a worldwide website in 2004 that listed all the cracker-based miracles in history with links to encyclopedia entries taken from, I'm pretty sure, interactive CD-ROMs.

So that's cool.

And that's why Carlo is being called God's Influencer.

Huh.

All right, look, I just want to point out, God's influencer is an anagram of for indulgences and

fondle securing.

I'm sorry, that is some Illuminati-level grift right there.

By the way, I also noticed what I was doing, was right in that joke, that it's also an anagram of unlicensed frog.

I couldn't fit that into the joke, but I just had to share that.

It's important.

It's important to know.

Hannah would be really mad if I didn't put in the work.

I'm conjuring conspiracy theories now.

Like, that's some good stuff, that's some Illuminati stuff for sure.

Four indulgences.

Wow.

Interesting.

So, apparently, the shameless exploitation isn't just coming from the Vatican directly.

I actually went to CarloAcutis.com, which seems to be run by a group called Friends of Carlo Acutis that's finding ways to solicit donations using the legacy of a kid who tragically died.

And they're also doing a petition to get Pope Bobby to name Carlo the universal patron saint of internet users.

Huh.

Okay, so fun fact.

In the Middle Ages, it was believed that if you you were the saint of something, you were the literal heavenly witness to all instances of it.

And I know that's not like Catholic canon or anything, but have the friends of Carlo considered just how much jack in it they're sentencing this kid to watch for all eternity?

I mean, there's really.

Yeah.

Well,

you guys keep making this sound bad, but of all the ways the Vatican has profited off the death of a teenager, this is one of the least fucked up, right?

That is true.

That is true.

The ranking is true.

Sure.

And also worth mentioning, because the Vatican barely mentioned it, there was another guy who got canonized on the same day as Carlo.

That would be Pierre Giorgio Frasati, an Italian activist and mountaineer who died from polio in 1925.

He did a bunch of work helping the poor and opposing the rise of Mussolini, which sounds pretty good, but he doesn't pull especially well with the 18 to 35 demo, I guess.

So he got fucked on the sainting attention with all the PR going to Carlo.

Frasati was about to get canonized back in 1941, but all of a sudden, some rumors popped up that said he was going to the mountains in, quote, mixed and questionable company.

And Pope Pius XII, the Pope at the time, suspended the sainthood process.

Now, you might be thinking, hey, that sounds like the Vatican was cooperating with Mussolini in 1941, but according to the Catholic Church, you need to shut your fucking whoremouth.

And

all their interactions during World War II and the aftermath were super above board.

No more questions, please.

All this Jewish artwork was in the basement when we bought the place.

I don't know what you guys are talking about.

Your teeth are a really pretty railing now, guys.

You'll just be in your graves.

Yeah.

So the Catholic world, they're very excited about their new Saint Carlo and Saint the other fucking guy.

But we did get some pretty shocking bad news right afterwards.

And a big thanks to Bryce for sending a link about this to scathingnews at gmail.com.

Bryce gets a virtual dap.

Dap.

Boom.

Right there.

Still waiting on my boops.

Boop.

That was for.

There you go.

Boop.

Eli, did you want one?

I gave you one.

I'm good.

Wow.

I'll take Eli's.

I'll take Eli's.

Okay.

No answer.

It was the virtual.

It was the boldest choice.

It was the boldest.

It was the move.

I get it.

Boop.

Fuck you.

So

two days after.

It was great, everybody.

It was fantastic.

I should have said yes the first time.

Two days after the big sainting ceremony in Vatican City, here's that bad news.

A parish in Venezuela reported that a relic of Saint Carlo had been stolen from their magical.

Tchotchki area that they have.

The relic is a small circle of cloth, and it was kept in a glass reliquary because this is very serious.

Somehow that got taken.

And apparently there's a black market for saintly cloth scraps.

How?

In order for you to believe that that's valuable, you also have to believe that there's a God that's really pissed at you from like stealing it from a church.

I genuinely don't get how that would work.

Yeah.

Also, this raises the question of modern saints and branding, right?

Like in that photo that Heath was talking about earlier, he's wearing a Nike shirt.

Don't they have dibs on the marketing for that shirt?

You can't just

use

Nike shirt.

Yeah.

Also, I learned that the cloth is officially a third degree relic.

Oh, like Eli's black belt.

Yeah.

Right.

You might be thinking, don't be scared.

What?

Like Eli's black belt?

So I looked up degrees of relics, and here's how it works.

First degree relics are the body parts of a saint, like bones and locks of hair and harvested pericardia.

Yeah, no, all normal and show things to say, for sure.

Yeah, that's that's a real thing.

Also, any piece of the actual cross that was used to crucify Jesus Christ is officially a first degree relic as well.

A second degree relic is any item that a saint owned or physically touched, like a shirt or a book or even a scrap of those things.

And here's the official definition of a third-degree relic, according to the Catholic news agency, my amazing source on this.

Quote,

third-class relics are items that a saint has touched or items that have been touched to a first, second, or another third-class relic.

What?

For example,

touching a first-class relic with your own personal rosary would make your rosary a third-class relic.

End quote.

Well, and your hand.

No less.

Because look, if touching something that touched a third-class relic makes that a third-class relic, literally everything is a third-class relic, right?

All physical objects that have come in contact with Earth or its atmosphere, even first and second-degree relics would also be third-class relics.

It's truly insane.

And you could just sit there and like saying you're stealing shirts for no reason.

Yep.

And the person who stole this one scrap is just minting like infinity third-class relics.

I don't know.

Right.

Yeah.

So anyway, congrats to Carlo on a tough accomplishment, I guess.

I mean, you got to die of blood cancer as part of God's plan while you're still a child.

And then it really gets difficult after that.

It really ramps up.

Carlo pulled off the first miracle using his dead hair as a magical item and then using his entire corpse, I think, as a magical item for the second miracle.

And then from there, it was just miles of red tape.

A lot of paperwork.

It really is.

Bureaucracy.

So much.

Thousands of dead people have been nominated for a sainty, but only a select few end up at the top of the admissions pile for serious consideration.

But luckily for Carlo, he was a perfect candidate.

He's skibbity riz, obvious.

His family is rich.

That's very important.

So they paid for all the miracle vetting that has to happen.

And the cracker miracles on his website are a big focus for the church right now.

The Vatican noticed that, according to recent polls, the majority of Catholics do not believe that Jesus Christ of Nazareth is literally present inside the communion wafer.

No.

Yeah.

So the church.

I feel like the whole thing kind of falls apart if you don't believe that.

It does.

It does.

Well, they heard that about the polling.

So the church has been promoting Eucharistic adoration extra hard recently to try to reverse that, I guess.

Just leaning into their strength, the cracker stuff.

We'll see how it goes for Catholicism at the midterms.

I don't know.

Yeah.

We'll see.

And finally tonight in Kennedy disaster news.

When the conservative Supreme Court handed a victory to professional victim and hobbyist high school football coach Joe Kennedy, we on this podcast and the remaining sanity on the Supreme Court warned that this wasn't so much a slippery slope as it was a welcoming Christmastime sled trail into theocracy.

Well, the first red-cheeked child is lined up to slalom in the form of a Tennessee high school football coach who spent the entire game and school day praying with and proselytizing to children.

So we're going to talk about it.

I have to be honest, man, not the Kennedy I was expecting when you said Kennedy's Aster.

I know, right?

Head on a swivel.

Head on a swivel.

Right.

So first off, big thanks to Sanguin the Penguin for sending us this story to scathingnews at gmail.com.

I'm not sure if Sanguin is an actual penguin, but just in case, that sledding metaphor, top of the story, that was for you, Sanguin.

Scathingnews at gmail.com.

Pretty sure is a skiing metaphor.

It's slalom in it.

But regardless, a penguin with lots of dominant blood humor is winning everything, winning the good vibes every time.

Thank you, Sanguin.

So the coach in question is Northwest High School Volunteer Assistant Football coach Trey Campbell.

And if you remember, the whole fake argument about Joe Kennedy was that he was praying with students who wanted to on his own time.

Now, it's worth pointing out, no,

he wasn't.

There's a photo of him praying in the middle of a fucking football field in the Supreme Court decision that says he's not doing that.

But that was the alleged lie, right?

Campbell has engaged in no such lie.

According to news reports, Campbell spent the first half of the game, quote, holding a Bible and leading players in prayer.

And when asked about his behavior, he openly admitted it, saying, quote, I stood by my faith because that's what I told my boys they needed to do.

I told them I love them, but this was just the beginning of their journey with Christ.

And that this is what it looks like when you're doing right by the Lord.

The enemy does whatever he can to draw you from the Lord, end quote.

Yeah, also worth noting, the Lord really bad at football.

They lost 35-0.

nothing

maybe if he'd been coaching football that whole time

yeah it's very funny do you think there was a student who was like oh yeah no jesus christ our lord and shaved we're coach show flea flicker or what are we thinking there's

i had to google football plays for that joke but that's not all the school did their own investigation and found both by his own admission and with video evidence that during the school day, Campbell, quote, carried a Bible with him, spoke with students as they entered the school that morning in the cafeteria and other areas of the school while quoting scripture from the Bible.

And he excused the student for being tardy because the student had been with him in the cafeteria, which, and I love this, is an action outside of his typical protocol.

End quote.

Yeah, eventually the principal told him to stop doing, you know, illegal preaching stuff at school.

And he yelled, My job is to save these babies.

Like exact words.

So pretty much.

Here's how it works if you yell that during your job and you're not like a lifeguard in a really tragic kiddie pool scenario or like a couple of other very specific situations you're fired now you should have been fired way

yeah yeah but of course Reality has never stopped Republicans from crying oppression.

So upon learning that he had been asked to stop, Republicans from all over the state descended on the school to pray against the forces of Satan and church-state separation.

This past Friday, before the football team played its next game at nearby Montgomery Central High School, Campbell and a handful of community members met up outside the field for Friday night lights of faith, a prayer circle meant to honor Campbell's fake sacrifice while passing out Trump Bibles to passers.

Oh my God, that's an absurdly expensive fucking Bible to give away.

My God.

But hey, you know what?

At least folks in Tennessee will finally have access to the most freely available text outside of traffic signs now.

That's fair.

That's fair.

It's worth it.

One last thing about this story.

There are a lot of people, even from conservative sources, dismissing this as just like one lunatic who did stupid shit without consequences.

And now he's going to make a little money from the right-wing Christian oppression machine while he does it.

But if I may be a pessimist, and here I'm a scathing atheist, I may.

That's also what we said about Joe fucking Kennedy.

Yes.

And now the Supreme Court has an enshrined delusion about him in law.

What I'm saying is, don't hold your breath for a good outcome on this one.

Right.

Or any good outcomes, really.

It's bad for your breathing.

And that's all the so that we told you this week.

So we're going to wrap the headlines up there.

Heath, Eli, thanks as always.

Chumanji.

And when we come back, we're going to find out the problem with the movies we watch on Gam is their swollen budgets.

One thing you can say for Christian bullshit is that they cram it anywhere they can find room for it.

Books, movies, TV shows, music, wrestling leagues, burger wrappers, which is why there's always plenty of material for another god-awful many.

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

We watched The Cleaner.

It's the story of how Jesus Christ is Michigan Frog, but invisible and silent to everyone else.

And it causes mental illness for the people who think they're seeing Michigan J Frog.

Right.

It's identical to mental illness.

Yeah.

What a helpful message.

Yeah, if I can part the curtain slightly for you, podcast listener, when I said this is a suggestion for the mini this week, Noah sent back, woof, that could be good.

And Eli, how bad was this mini?

Well, if you've loved your bipolar religious and slow descent into trumpism but you wish it was set on the fucking soundstage they also recorded friends on you will love this movie is there anything you guys want to nominate this one for being the best at being the worst at yeah i'm going to go with it's not in this because this was terrible but best best piano cleaning video that i watched while i was watching i had to take a break okay so there's interest piano in this and somebody cleans it for a second and i was like that's not the way to, that's bad for the piano, what they're doing there.

And then I was like, I want to watch one of those videos of a pro.

And then I watched this delightful video of like kind of time-lapse of somebody very quickly dusting everything and polishing everything, getting it just right.

Noah.

It was so pleasing.

Noah, I would like to tell on Heath for having a best worst that had nothing to do with the movie.

Yeah, no, I'm with you.

He got to watch a fun piano cleaning video.

I tell on Heath.

I like watching those videos as well.

So, okay, I was going to go with Best Worst floor shoe.

You know, because he hit my ASMR.

If he hadn't hit my ASMR, it was so annoying of that review.

I watched some porn while we were going.

God damn it.

I didn't realize we were a lot soft.

You didn't tell me what kind of porn yet.

Sweetie Fox is a talented performer.

Best worst floor shoe combination.

We'll get to that.

And I'm going to go with best worst metaphor.

Look.

If you've never been the victim of a youth pastor, you can't really relate to this as firmly as I need you to, but there's a moment where every youth pastor hits upon a metaphor that they are sure is just fucking awesome because they pause afterwards for your mind to, I assume, physically as well as metaphorically blow.

This is the movie version of that pause.

It really is.

Yeah.

So, okay, so we're going to open up in the room that this entire movie is going to take, this entire video is going to take place in, which is a therapist's office.

The therapist is therapy a young woman named Joy, right?

She's supposed to be, I guess, college age.

Yeah, something like that.

She has her fucking shoes on the couch, which grosses her.

She does have her shoes on the couch.

I like her Converse high-top shoes, but yeah, they're right up on the couch.

Also, I didn't love the couch itself.

I feel like, shouldn't therapists have a lot of effort put into the couch?

Because that's like the whole thing.

That really felt like the last tenants left it, so kind of a couch.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

But you don't want an overly comfortable couch because then you're just inviting clients to net their fault.

You know what I'm saying?

you got to hit that balance it's tough I'd be picking a therapist mostly couch based for sure okay makes sense can I say that says a lot of things okay a lot of things not all of them are couch based or chair if it's a good chair like i'm cool with chair team jd vance

and the therapist opens this conversation by saying you know these sessions would go a lot faster if you talked to me which implies that for however many sessions of therapy they have just sat there in silence, which I want to be clear, this movie doesn't know a lot about therapy.

Surely they know that's not how therapy works.

You just sit there waiting for one of them to talk, you know, or whatever.

Yeah.

So yeah, but she's like, you know, I only come to therapy because my mom makes me.

And the therapist is immediately like, well, your mom's probably right and you're probably wrong.

Did you think about that?

Yes.

Her first overture is, have you considered like what a huge burden your mental health is on your mom?

She's right about everything.

You're right about it.

You're wrong.

I was shocked.

So I didn't go with Best Worst Therapist because I wanted to save that.

I didn't want to make it too hard onto you guys.

I was shocked that no one took that, though.

Yeah.

This was a bad therapist?

Yes.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

Well, did you see the couch?

No, I love the couch.

I like the voice, and that's like the other thing I'm basing it on.

Oh, okay.

I want like a good therapist ASMR voice.

Not too much that I like.

Fall asleep.

Also, this is such a minor fucking point, but when they cut to like just the, so we have the two shot of Joy and the therapist, and then we cut to just a shot of the therapist.

And when we do, we cross the midline, which is a no-no, but also the camera's like up above her, looking down on her like she's a bad guy or something.

Like the person who was filming this obviously had no idea what that shot would generally signal, but it's the most weird horror movie angle to suddenly keep taking on her.

Yeah, I kept, and this will happen throughout the movie.

Like, I kept waiting for it to pan over and for there to be a fucking Baba duck in the corner being like, I don't really know what method method you're using here this feels feels like you saw a movie where someone did db weird maison sand i don't like a couch either

i'm heathen right

so the therapist is like so you know your mom sounds like you've been talking to yourself an awful lot and i wrote in my notes a lot of perfectly sane people with their shit together talk to themselves all the time movies real fucking judgy shit yeah i actually wrote are you not supposed to do that i talk to you

that's fine it's not necessarily a problem, right?

The therapist is like, Somebody say right.

Yeah, right?

Yeah.

Somebody with a really nice couch.

Say right right now.

I need a therapist or a bartender, or I don't care either of you to say right right now.

Tarot reader.

So, but the therapist is like, well, you know, your mom thinks your behavior is weird.

And I'm like, what?

Unorthodox technique, lady.

Your mom reports to me that you're being gay.

So, yeah, but then there's a knock at the door and she just calls the person in and I'm like, this is such a terrible fucking therapist.

She's just like, who is it?

Come on in.

Okay.

In the middle of our therapy session.

I wasn't sure, but like, I don't think you're not supposed to invite other people inside, right?

Like, that's not the same thing.

No, you can just go to the door

if you have to.

And then mom fucking clomps into the room and we get my best words.

Cause, look, you're stuck with the fucking floor that you're stuck with, but you're not stuck with Dutch fucking clogs on the way in, right?

You could have got this way.

She could be barefoot.

Nobody would have fucking said shit.

Right.

She agreed to shoot the movie on her way to tap dancing practice.

I guess, yeah, right.

She's just hard line in the sand.

Plumps her way in and she's like, I feel like that's plenty of therapy for my daughter.

I have shit to do.

Right.

Are you fucking done yet?

God.

Right.

The therapist is like, oh, you know, I lost track of time because my clock behind me isn't moving and it's perpetually set to 3 p.m.

So actually, how about we step out in the hall and have a chat, you and me?

Yeah.

And look, as a troubled youth who absolutely had several therapists at various points in my life go, can I talk to you outside for a second to my parents when they walked inside the room?

Can I say this woman has the least amount of chill?

No, Joe, I've ever seen out there.

Usually they're like, oh, I want to go over the schedule.

She's just like, danger.

I mean,

danger.

Would you like to tell secrets about Eli in the whisper zone?

Cool.

Yeah, right.

It's over here.

So, okay.

So mom and the therapist step out of the office.

We stay back with Joy and a janitor comes in to tidy the place up.

Right.

Now, look, we know that this janitor is going to turn out to be Jesus, but like, Joy doesn't.

This is like, you don't just, this is unusual, right?

I don't feel like you leave like a rando janitor in there unsupervised with a teenage fucking girl in therapy.

Not just a janitor, a uniformed janitor, right?

This is a therapist's office, not a fucking corporate office building.

The idea that there would be a befitted janitor in the space without announcing himself, very bizarre.

That's weird.

And to be clear, he is a dedicated piano janitor because that is all he brings.

He brings

a thing of Windex and a rag.

And all he does is try to clean a piano, which you would never clean with fucking Wind.

Windex and a rag.

Yeah.

So as he's cleaning the piano or, you know, wiping the piano, Joy says, do you love your job?

And I'm like, terrible opening question for a janitor.

Okay.

I did.

I did enjoy his response.

She's like, yeah, you like being a janitor?

And he's like, you like being fucking mentally ill.

And I I was like, Okay, oh, wow, touche janitor or Jesus or whatever you are.

Got him.

But here's the weird thing.

He then sits down and says, You never answered my question with no dialogue in between those two sentences, right?

So it's like, Yeah, man, she never answered your question because it's been the only two sentences said between you.

You have to wait for her to answer.

She goes, I've never seen you before.

And he goes, But I've seen you.

And we're like,

like he's been,

yeah, right.

But she doesn't like therapy.

She explains to him, she doesn't like therapy, but her mom makes her come.

And he goes, well, if you don't like it, why don't you stop coming?

And I'm like, because her mom makes her come.

Jesus, pay attention.

Aren't you fucking omnipotent?

And this is Jesus saying, stop doing therapy.

Yes.

Because it's nothing.

That's what's happening now and for the rest of the thing.

That's the message.

That's the whole point of the video.

Yeah.

So Janitor Jesus is like, do you mind if I sit down and like tag in and be the therapist for a little while?

Yeah.

And she's like, won't you get in trouble?

And he's like, won't even notice that I'm here, Wink.

No, it's fine.

It's fine.

I'm in the speaking chair, so I'm the therapist now.

He's like, it's about the chair, and I'm taking it.

Now I therapize in your life.

Yeah, it's like the January 6th guys that stole Nancy Pelosi's gavel and thought they were in charge of the country then.

Country now?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, it turns out they were.

Oh, yeah.

It wasn't because of the magic gavel.

They still don't have the gavel.

It's because your lazy cousin didn't vote in Pennsylvania.

Yeah.

So, okay.

It is, though.

Yeah, it is.

So now the janitor's going to try his hand at being the therapist, right?

And he's, he says, this is such a fucking clumsy line.

He says, people tend to open up to people who seem invisible.

Do they?

I don't.

Is that the talking to yourself thing again?

I guess that's what it would be.

Yeah.

I don't know what it is that makes me trust you so much, but I I think it's your lack of opacity.

So, but then, so he, he says he's like hey why don't you tell me all your deepest secrets what's the worst that can happen and she's like i guess you're right there's nothing bad that could come from telling all my deepest secrets to a stranger i should try that on more strangers just like come back

tell me your deepest secrets

hey folks bring it in if there is a young woman in severe concentrated therapy after a hospital visit her deepest secrets are not going to be the fun ones they are not going to be slumber party shenanigans.

Okay.

Let's keep it.

Let's keep it surface level.

Yeah.

So this, it's a very poisonous message here about therapy being fake and Jesus being real.

But it did help me personally as a human because my dumbass first instinct is like, oh, therapy's fake.

I was a bartender.

I did that.

I can do it just as good.

It's the same.

I'm a therapist.

Because like, I think me and a lot of other bartenders secretly feel like we are quite a good cheap therapist and Jesus Christ, or like openly that.

But good lesson, it's not that because I was like, oh, it's okay, Chris G, I'm agreeing with the Christian movie.

I have to stop.

Oh, right.

Yeah, yeah.

No, what's the difference between a guy who has a license to pour drinks and a person who's had eight years of education, is licensed by the state, and has a license.

He's licensed to prescribe something that's similar.

Exactly.

A license to fucking steal.

Am I right?

Fucking.

Sorry, I didn't follow quite what was going on in that exchange.

So I just thought if I made no nonsense,

I was pretty much a part of it.

That was a

dynamic of the show right there.

I've been working for a decade.

Why are you trying to break everything this week, Keith Henry?

We're not allowed to kill people we disagree with.

Sorry, was that a little too meta for you, Eli Bosnick?

Yes.

Okay,

there's the dynamic of the show.

Thank you, Carl.

All right, but so then we get this incredible fucking line where he's like trying to convince her to tell him all the secrets.

And she goes, and I quote, well, why don't you help me then, Mr.

Helper?

If you write that down with a pen and paper, someone should come through and blue underline it for you.

Right.

Jesus.

Delete document.

But then he's like, he's like, hey, look, we've got a 12-minute runtime.

Let's hurry up with this reveal.

I'm Jesus, right?

So he starts like telling her like her name, which she hasn't said before, and exactly when she was born and everything.

Which, again, to be clear, is like medium magician.

Like her file is there.

Yeah, right.

Right.

Yeah.

I know it's supposed to be the revelation that this guy has got, but like I am now regularly helping other people do this on television.

This is not top five birds of God.

Yeah, if this happens to me, I'm like, oh, it's a really good fucking mentalist piano janitor.

I like the necklace.

Or something.

Like, this is really good.

Yeah, no, yeah.

He tells her all about her necklace that's her most prized possession that her mom gave her

and then he comes over and he sits on the fucking couch with her, which is creepy as fuck, right?

But also, like, that's right where her shoes were.

So now he's got probably dog shit on his butt.

So fucking gross.

Are therapists allowed to sit on the couch with you?

I feel like that's allowed to sit on the couch with you.

Like a HIPAA violation or not.

Eli, you've done therapy.

Are they sitting on the couch with you?

I mean, not with me.

I'm not allowed to ask you that.

I'm not super high.

Are they ever like, all right, scooch it over?

Oh, yeah.

for well no my cuddle therapist oh he was always on the couch with me but so okay

but the thing is so at this point right like we again we know he's jesus but the most plausible answer for her is stalker right yeah right like that would be that would fit in with all the things that he's known so far she he goes you know some people call me the comforter and i'm like That's a blanket, man.

Like, that's a word we already use.

Also, she doesn't look comforted by that.

So I don't think that's right.

And then he's like, some call me the carpenter.

And he's like, wow, still not getting it.

Wow.

Of Nazareth named Jesus.

Jesus,

the carpenter.

Fuck fucking kids these days.

Watch a David A.R.

White film.

Yeah.

But then Janitor Jesus explains how hard Joy's mom had it growing up and how really, if you think about it, it's mostly.

It's mostly Joy's fault for being such a pain in the ass.

And really, mom is the one who's got her shit together, right?

And she should stop being such a pain in the ass so again we started with the therapist saying hey has it occurred to you that you're the problem and you're a huge burden on your mother and now jesus christ of nazareth has the exact same opinion yeah look look honestly if it's this blatantly old lady porn i should have to use my vpn i'm in georgia

Yeah, it's like when I used to watch Noah win Facebook fights and then I would just tap in to like heart all of his comments and not heart someone else's comments.

That's what God is doing in this show.

Yeah, right, right, yeah.

So meanwhile, mom and the therapist are outside the office watching her talk to nobody in the room and wondering if they need to have her fucking committed or something.

Right.

So the therapist goes in and then fucking Jesus disappears.

He Batmans.

Right.

She's like, oh, I was just talking to your cleaner.

And the therapist is like, I don't, you know, the cleaner died 30 years ago this very night or whatever.

Right.

The jumpsuits there, they pan over, he's just naked.

But there actually is a little bit of shenanigans with the chair pan, right?

Because like they pan over to the left as the therapist walks in and they pan back over to the right to the empty chair, but only a little bit as though the actor hadn't cleared the frame yet.

And then they pan back to Joy and then all the way to the chair.

This is fucked up, though.

Like if you weren't already having mental illness, Jesus is definitely going to create some for you.

Right.

For sure.

That's what I'm learning.

Or make it look like you've got mental illness in front of your therapist at the very least.

Yeah.

So the therapist is like, you know, oh, wow, I probably should get you on some fucking meds or something.

Meanwhile, outside the office, Janitor Jesus comes up and appears to mom.

Right?

He tells mom, he's like, hey, your relationship with Joy is going to be restored.

Whatever the fuck that means.

Yeah.

And then the therapist turns to the door and she goes, well, now who the fuck are you talking to?

Are you both in psychosis?

Right.

So, but then she goes in, she's like, No, I was talking to your janitor.

And Joy's like, You saw the janitor too.

And then they bond over their shared imaginary friend.

Are we both hallucinating the same thing?

Did we just become best friends?

Yeah, come on,

oh, come on.

We've all done salvia.

That's a fun time.

Hey, hey, hallucination buddies is a great way to describe Christians, right?

Yeah.

But the therapist just doesn't know what to think, and we get a big mutual hug, like a mutual delusion hug, I guess.

And then, okay, so we haven't pointed this out at this point, but the entire time that this has been going on, there's been a piano background that's like, it's like the fucking pianist was charging them by the key press, right?

It's like one note, two over here, and then one over here or whatever.

You ever have someone at a party be like, I didn't ever learn to play piano, but I play a little bit and then they just sort of like doodle and you're like, sure, yeah.

Technically, you are

that version of a soundtrack.

We all can press buttons.

Yes.

The piano works by itself.

You mean the piano works?

I dabble in buttons myself a little bit here.

Would you like to watch a 45-minute video of someone cleaning it?

I mean, you can both get on the same page there.

Is Heath's favorite thing about this movie?

But then we watch the therapist playing the piano, right?

Well, while Janitor Jesus like talks in the background, like desperately clawing for something profound.

Oh, God.

I have to admit, I was on on the verge of being like, hey, this doesn't have enough content.

I'm not sure that we should do this for the show.

But when Janitor Jesus sat down to do his spoken word poem, I knew we had to cover this.

Well, it's being subtitled like a TikTok video the whole time, but he's like, it's, it's a long monologue that imparts absolutely no information.

Yeah.

Right.

It's like, it's like Mike Lindell's proof of election interference.

Yeah, it's almost impressive.

It's like two minutes of word salad that like eats itself along the way, like an orborus of words and there's nothing there at the end.

Yeah.

I did enjoy that some guy, somebody else, I'm assuming, made a YouTube video and he's just spraying Windex bottles while this monologue plays.

It's pretty fun.

Well, so and of course, the point of the little spoken word poem is he's like, you know, they call me the cleaner, but I am the one who stands behind you and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And at the very end, the fucking punchline of the video I love so goddamn much.

After this whole big long, like, I am the metaphor or whatever, he says, I'm the Holy Spirit.

In case you didn't see it,

the Holy Spirit.

Yes.

There are two metaphor offs in this movie, and both times they lose the courage of their convictions and are like, It's the Holy Spirit.

I mean, our religion.

I do mean our religion.

I'm screwing.

Metaphors and lies.

This is real.

Stupid.

I'm worried.

God, no one's going to get it.

All right.

Well, I'm pretty sure the moral of this story is: don't be so sure what they're calling psychotic hallucinations aren't really Jesus disguised as a janitor.

And it's probably best for all the world that atheists know Christians are getting that message.

So you're welcome.

Crazy like a fox.

All right, well, I guess that means our work here is done, but we'll do it again on the next.

God awful many

Before we lower this episode's casket tonight, I want to remind you one more time that we do have a live show coming up in New Orleans the weekend after next.

General admission tickets are still available, and any excuse to go to New Orleans is a good one, but getting to celebrate Eli and Lucinda's birthday at a live show?

That's a hell of an excuse.

Anyway, that's all the blast movie we've got for you tonight, but we'll be back in 10,022 minutes with more.

If you can't wait that long, be on the lookout for a brand new episode of our Sister Show, The Skeptic, debuting at 7 Eastern on Monday, and an even newer episode of our Sister Show's Hot Frank, God Awful Movies, debuting at 7 Eastern on Tuesday, and an even newer episode of our Half Sister Show Citation Dida debuting at noon Eastern on Wednesday.

Obviously, this show wouldn't count towards our stats if I neglected to thank Heath Enright for always being a steady voice of reason.

I also want to thank Eli Bosnik for also being a voice.

I want to thank the lovely and talented Lucinda Lusions for more shit than I can fit into this outro.

And I want to thank the Will o' the Dice podcast for providing this week's Farnsworth quote.

Be sure to check the show notes for a link to their show if you need more D ⁇ D in your life.

Also, happy to help keep you even in Piat cred with your bestie, bro, anytime.

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

Greg, Eric, Sine, the ether addict of Stormvale, Andy, David, Bo, Barret, Amina, Kathleen, Tim, James, Ezra, Daniel, Jamie, motherfucking Summerblaze, Swinky, Jodi, MR, Andrew, Other, David, Shannon, Ryan, and Audrey, Sarah, Nina, and damn appropriate given the week's diatribe, Liber Chaos, whose names are written in the stars.

Inevitably, from some perspective, given the universe's size.

Together, these 25 ferociously falsome free thinkers forfeited some fortune this week to give us money.

Not everybody has the money it takes to do that, but if you do, you can make a per-episode donation at patreon.com/slash scathing atheists, whereby you'll earn early access to an extended average version of every episode.

Or you can make a one-time donation by clicking on the donate button on the right side of the homepage at scathingadius.com.

And if you'd like to help, but you can't afford this giving your money to other people when you don't have to shit, 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 Robertson handles that for us.

Our audio engineer is Morton Clark, who also wrote the music that was used in this episode, which was used with permission.

If you have questions, comments, or death threats, you can find all the contact info on the contact page at scathingidius.com.

I'll forever be haunted by the fact that five is optional.

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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We're talking spills, stains, pets, and kids.

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