Evidence4Faith

INTRO
9:00 of "Choosing Among the World's Religions":

Clip of them saying "faith without evidence is just religious wishful thinking, it's not what Christianity is all about!"

>> {OBJECTION!} <<

Joe: Present evidence--Doubting Thomas story, John 20:29!

Then a clip of Jesus going "Blessed are those who believe without seeing!"

{PW music starts playing}

Evidence 4 Faith.

A podcast that marries the limp and stagnant tone of a stuffy academic with the delusional confabulation of a brimstoney priest. A podcast that truly embodies the worst of both worlds.

There are no jokes here. I just want to fulminate against the absurdity that is the very premise of E4F before we get to the lulz.

This is a podcast so utterly confused and at odds with itself, its NAME doesn't gel. "Evidence 4 Faith," an oxymoron that captures the world of apologetics with stunning succinctness. The hosts affect the intellectual as they sputter on through any and every obstacle of common sense on the way to their predetermined conclusion. They pride themselves as thinkers and respecters of reason, when they only ever receive their information from sources they already approve of, and never apply scrutiny to their own position because IT'S TWUE.

Seriously. Their motto is "The best reason to believe is because it's true." They've taken the veracity of the dogma at face value as their first step. And cruelly distorting and bending everything they see to fit that mold they've arbitrarily decided is the truth. They spit in the face of the reason and logic they claim to cherish.

And what a dim, evil little dogma it is they've sworn their allegiance to. Americonservagelicalism is a blinding blight, wrapping a substantial portion of the public in enduring darkness--both of the soul and of the mind. It would be difficult to find any Christian school of interpretation more distant from the Gospels' core message of fellowship, charity, humility and nonviolence than America's modern fringe right, which has oh so conveniently taken up a renewed position of power in recent decades. Christ's teachings from the get-go are twisted in some ways without anybody mangling and manhandling them, and Americonservagelicalism manages to take everything about that's good about the Gospels and grind it into unrecognizable half-acknolwedged crumbs. The pettiness and infinite injustice of Hell, the willful insularity and incuriosity, the arrogant posturing as God's chosen for whom the very Earth and cosmos were created, everything's there--and if you question any of it, well you must be a sad, stupid sack of a human being because, well, you MUST: you don't have the celestial dictator drilling through your heart.

Of course, all this means the hosts of E4F think they know far more than they actually do, leading them to confidently spout off some of the most laughable and preposterous thoughts--sorry, did I say thoughts, I meant betrayals of life and existence. Once again, our namesake, "Meat Mutant," comes derived from one of these bouts of lamebrained bilge. And that's just one of several meme-worthy blunders that came into light during the legendary E4F/Irreligiosophy debate, including the memorably bald-faced pretext that "water bottle fell on the keyboard" when the E4F hosts needed a time out, unprepared as they were.

Think I've reached the bottom of my antipathy for this podcast? Think again. I have yet to get into the hosts. Especially one Kirk Hastings, who demonized an erstwhile host of Irreligiosophy in their correspondence, and proceeded to punch out dozens of (template) three-panel comics rehashing the same attacks on their characters over and over again. One of the former hosts of Irreligiosphy, Chuck, recently received a stray potshot from Hastings since his vow to review Hastings's vanity-press published book, "What Is Truth," apparently raised its sales count on Amazon. This is the level of emotional maturity we're dealing with here. Our podcast is immature, but always in a joking matter--E4F is dead serious in their immaturity.

We have no interest in debating them. We have no interest in taking them seriously in any way. We harbor not the meanest shred of respect for them. We loathe every facet of their beings, from their smugness to their small-mindedness to their secretly sinister worldview. They deserve to be shredded by every skeptical/atheist podcast and publication out there, except that that would be giving them more attention than anyone could stomach. So we'll be the heroes humanity needs.

JIS
http://jesus-is-savior.com/Womens%20Page/purpose_of_a_wife.htm

Let's do a feminism article for Hottpockettt. To match a theme of E4F's extremely progressive perspective on gender relations (which Ems will tackle in no time), here is a page from JIS's wonderful Women's Page, entitled:

THE PURPOSE OF A WIFE.

The purpose of a wife is to be a HELP MEET to her husband. This is the plain teaching of the Scriptures. The word “help” in Hebrew is ezer, meaning, “aid,” i.e., “The work of caring for or attending to someone or something; give help or assistance; be of service.” The word “meet” in Hebrew is neged and means “a counterpart, or mate.” Hence, a wife's Biblical purpose is to assist and help her husband in life.

Enlightening! Man, if you hadn't explained what the word "help" means about five times in that sentence, I would have been in trouble! Thanks for the... oh fuck what was that basic concept again...

So, feminism is blasphemy against the Holy Word, according to Titus 2:5, “To be discreet, chaste, keepers at home, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God be not blasphemed.”

The word “blasphemed” here is the Greek word  blasphemeo and means “to vilify; specifically to speak impiously.” Impiety is lacking respect and reverence for God, which is what a woman does when she wreaks chaos in the home and marriage by being lazy and failing to do her duties. And then to add injury to insult, she files for divorce and drags her husband before ungodly sinners to be harassed and crucified in a feminist-biased court system. In many cases, a lesbian judge oversees the case. The American court system laughs and ignores God's command for women to be keepers at home, to obey her husband and to be discreet (in mind, i.e., self-controlled) and chaste (clean, innocent, modest, perfect).

"I watched Judge Judy the other day, and that's proof enough to me that our court system is INFESTED WITH LESBIANS! You know, I bet in the country of Europe, EVERY judge is a lesbian, and those jurors are pretty suspicious looking too I might add, you can't even be sure the male jurors aren't lesbians. And that's not even getting into the non-lesbian demographic of shameful menstruating sinners, which comprises around 1% of feminists. Damn harlots, not being perfect''', what is this, some kind of REALITY!? Back in my day, every woman I saw was a perfect never-frowning, apron-wearing mother of two point five who never lost her figure and unflinchingly solved every miniscule problem and handled the taxes and did the laundry and washed the dishes and scrubbed the toilets and replaced the carburetor and scrubbed the laundry, all at once; of course, all the women in my day I saw were on sitcoms. The feminist menace scared me too much from going outside, what if I inhaled dangerous bra ash?"'''

We all know DJS's perfect helpmeet is around one foot six and has just mastered the letter J for Jesus. And you can bet the lesbian court system knows it, too.

The Bible exalts womanhood and teaches for women to behave accordingly; which is far different than the feminist indoctrination that the Bible degrades women. Feminism teaches women to act insanely—while claiming liberation and freedom from oppressive male authority, feminists murder their children, steal the happiness from their home, and kill their marriage (John 10:10). Is the Bible really that bad? The Bible teaches life for babies, happiness in the home, and a lifetime commitment in a marriage. Consider the insane paradox of feminists—who murder their children by abortion (thus stealing the right to life of a human being that God created), who despise and resist an authoritative husband, who gossip about their husband, who destroy their marriage by quitting and filing for divorce, who despise an authoritative preacher who shouts against sin from the pulpit, and who despise the King James Bible's masculinity.

Here's John 10:10-- "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." What this has to do with feminism is anyone's guess.

Also, God is that a stupid Jesus quote. What about Depression Era thieves who needed to feed their little brothers or something?

I guess the quote is referring to his bizarre notion of feminists as inherently murderous; apparently, in his mind, feminist is synonymous with abortionist. What about feminists who never conceived in the first place? What about feminists who never married? DJS's reasoning has all the scope and flexibility of a micron of carbon nanotube.

[[The satanic NIV 2011 caters to lesbians and feminists. The word “men” appears in the King James Bible's Old Testament 2416 times, and 806 in the New Testament. That's  3222 times that the King James Bible mentions the word “men.” But in the feminist perversion of the NIV 2011, you'll only find the word “men” 1027 times in their entire Bible. Pretty sad huh? The word “man” appears in the King James Bible's Old Testament 3105 times, and 1433 in the New Testament. That's  4538 times that the King James Bible mentions the word “man.” But in the feminist perversion of the NIV 2011, you'll only find the word “man” 1989 times in their entire Bible.]]

I wonder if DJS did a curse tally for the Bible. In any case, DJS seems awfully keen to read gritty tales about tons of men, tons of men who are no doubt sweaty under the harsh desert sun, and wow, maybe we should start taking these garments off...

What am I saying, DJS isn't interested in how many men are touching pecs while slaughtering infidels, he just feverish scans Leviticus to find the proper procedure for circumcision by puckering of the lips and bobbing up and down.

Most of the article isn't so lulzy--we'll be skipping that shit--although there is a paragraph tangent where he seriously accuses "the Banksters" and the Federal Reserve Bank for deliberately "luring and forcing women into the workplace" in order to lower the average national family size. Towards what end? To keep you in poverty, lol. Apparently no double income plus no cap to the number of kids to feed = prosperity.

[[Back to the main subject, God created women to be a help meet to a husband, with few exceptions. Some women are born with disabilities or have suffered a tragic accident. God certainly has a different will for her life. She has been chosen to a ministry of suffering. If a woman is a quadriplegic, obviously she likely will never marry. God doesn't expect her to be a help meet. Please don't abandon common sense when you open the cover to the Bible. However, young women who are healthy and able, ought to pursue marriage and motherhood to fulfill God's perfect will for her life. To me there is nothing more laughable and repulsive than a career women wearing a suit, carrying a briefcase, talking with authority, and fulfilling the role of a man. Such women have turned aside after Satan. ]]

Woman's quadriplegic? EWWW, uhh God just wants her to suffer, that's it!

As for repulsive women who don't cede to the authority of men...

Let us talk about the world's most successful female entrepreneur, Cher Wang. She is a self-made multi-billionaire whose business accounts for 20% of the smartphone market. Smartphones have been instrumental in disaster relief and emergency response, unquestionably altering society for the better by leagues.

Aung San Suu Kyi is an imprisoned activist for freedom who is the shining light and the heroine of the people of Burma. She stands at the top of her political party, which emphasizes nonviolent civil disobedience, and represents real hope that Burma's insane junta will collapse sooner rather than later.

Marie Curie. Helena Rubinstein. Harriet Beecher Stowe. I could go on and on, and those are just the famous people.

Now for a google search for "successful quadriplegics." Why why, what's this?

http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1126538--special-delivery-quadriplegic-gives-birth-to-twins-in-hamilton-hospital

A quadriplegic woman, enjoys a successful career as a SPEECH PATHOLOGIST. While still raising TWINS. And you would have had the poor woman wallow in saintly pure misery for the rest of her life, you sub-sub-scum loser. What exactly have you done with your life, with your great male authority, your divine mandate to change the world, DJS? It's doubtful you've converted a single soul. Is your plan to implant the Lord's truth via anal violation? If so, spectacular job, time to wipe the child cum and do up your business suit as you sit in front of your computer and chastise the world for offending you.

Now to move on to a different breed of stupid and infuriating. We're only going to be bashing two episodes of Episode 4 Faith; I did notes for one, Ems for the other. We tried listening to more, but, trust us, not worth it in the slightest. You'll take what you get and enjoy it, and then we'll never speak of E4F again.

20th CENTURY SCIENCE
48 minutes

OK, here’s my bit. This podcast shits me – it angers me, frustrates me and bores me. However, I don’t have Joe's balls, and also I've been told I'm too forgiving and too patient, and that I just put up with too much crap. I think this is true of me, and I should really grow a pair.

So, I will. Here I critique the content of this podcast and its validity and reliability. I will critique the hosts’ presentation style and explain why it is not to my taste--with my own personal professorly panache. I will try and make it clear as to when I am offering an opinion, and when I have actual facts to back my statements up; I'll be the owl to Joe's wolverine.

The first point I must make is this: There must be some people who love E4F, and some like myself who hate it. I am sure the same applies to Meat Mutant. Whatever floats your boat.

However, Joe and I do not proclaim to have THE answers. We produce entertainment, and if you learn something, then great. We know we are giant, immature dicks who do this for fun. You know that too.

My biggest gripe with E4F is that what they call evidence is not evidence. It is anecdotes and stories. So when I take this shit down today, I will try and avoid ad hominem arguments and personal slurs – I will try and find fault with their arguments, not with them as people.

But I will fail….. Given my passion for evidence based practise, I am going to be enlightened by E4F on the subject 20th Century science. All cylinders, ahoy.

1:45

So these two knobs start the episode with a follow up on the prior episode on marriage, a Benjamin Franklin quote: this won't be the only appeal to authority. One person’s opinion (no matter who they are), is not evidence. You may agree with that person’s opinion, but it does not make it fact, and it does not make it right. And, think about what the quote is actually saying before you use it to support an argument that you say you support. INSERT CLIP >> {OBJECTION!} <<

WHAT THE FUCK – so all you single or widowed people out there, you are USELESS. BUT, any MAN AND WOMAN who are married are all good (I guess regardless of issues like domestic violence, arranged marriage, emotional abuse, mail order brides etc etc). Oh, and you GAY people, you are all just totally useless forever because you can’t get married because you have the same chromosomes as each other.

So Joe, you’re fucking useless. Mum, you’re fucking useless. My sister, fucking useless. Oh, and who else wasn’t married……JESUS!!! Fucking useless. BTW, you can still cut your wrists with one scissor blade, which I am about to do right now. Useless my arse.

Joe: How naive are these guys? They just take it for granted, off one stupid quote or one stupid article, that the proposition "only a married man and woman can be happy/complete" must be true, without actually finding out for themselves. These guys are children in oversize tweed jackets and pipes in their mouths, playing at wizened scholars. What a joke. back to you

The next segment they have is a news segment. The story they are discussing today relates to a study by Professor Christie Davies of Reading University that supposedly demonstrates a relationship between numbers enrolled in Sunday School classes and crime rates. There is so much wrong here that I don’t know where to start.

INSERT CLIP

{TAKE THAT!} + some PW music They also talk about a book “More God, Less Crime” that uses the results of 273 studies to support the hypothesis that increasing “religiosity” reduces crime, and also comment on a study re chaplaincy programmes in prisons reducing recidivism rates (8% compared to 20% in the control group). Joe, how would you define “religiosity"?
 * I was unable to locate this original article, so I cannot comment on its methodological rigour and reliability and validity. However, I would like to know the following about it.
 * I was under the impression that the majority of people enrolled in Sunday School were under the age of 18. So, for there to be a CHANCE of a CAUSAL relationship between Sunday School attendance and lower crime rates, we would need to be looking at juvenile justice records, right? Otherwise, you would have to go back and see what percentage of the population attended Sunday school at a certain age, and compare that with the age at which they were committing crimes. Unless this is a well designed longitudinal study with a control group, then I would question the validity of its findings.
 * I cannot stress enough that correlation does not equal causation. You cannot infer a causal relationship just because two factors appear to be related. Otherwise, it could be said that eating rice or using chopsticks causes people to have straight, black hair. CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT?
 * I would also be interested in the demographics of families who send their children to Sunday School. Are they from high socio-economic backgrounds? Are these children more likely to attend private schools, and/or finish secondary school? Are these children more likely to have parents with a tertiary education? I have no idea, because I would like to know. I would also like to know the relationship between variables like these and crime rates, so I can better interpret the results of the Sunday School study that I can’t find anywhere.

Joe: In my eyes, the term "religiosity" is a scientifically measurable ratio of really goofy rituals to the adherence of the actual meat and potatoes doctrine. Like a dude who says twelve Hail Marys before going to bed and gets up the next morning to study his horoscope.

back to you

Again, without actually seeing the studies, it is impossible to comment on the reliability and validity of their findings. Somehow, I don’t think the hosts have critically reviewed these studies either. So their concluding statement “So parents, send your kids to Sunday School” (as in "if you do they won’t commit crimes)" is a little too much of a generalisation in my view.

However, my FAVOURITE news item is about the effects of the oral contraceptive pill on men and women.

INSERT CLIP

>> {OBEJECTION!} <<

Here are the main points: Joe: What charismatic confidence, what dizzying insights. Joe: It's Americonsevagelicalism, Ems, in this world Brand America hard right conservatism and FAITH NOT WORKS evangelicalism go hand in hand, with all the attendant bone-headed macho bullshit of both pretzeled into a neat package. They're a beast with two backs, if you will.
 * Taking the OCP makes women more attracted to less “masculine” men.
 * Women on the OCP prefer men whose immune systems are similar to their own (not sure how immune systems differ.
 * Women like men to be jerks ( INSERT CLIP 11:18 “You want the women, you gotta be a jerk”), except if they are on the pill (INSERT CLIP 12:00 "So this kind of genetic screening that goes on when a woman smells a man, is gone.”
 * Women are more attracted to men who are more genetically different to themselves.
 * Men prefer the smell of women who are not on the pill and who are ovulating.
 * And the best point of all, which sums up the whole review of the news item is: INSERT CLIP 13.50 “I guess I’m not sure what the message this gives us except that we need to be careful about what pills we take, and for what season………and that science can really mess with your head……and medications…..”
 * Um dude, if medications don’t change the way your body works, then they wouldn’t be medications, would they?
 * And keep in mind their comments about the pill actually suppressing some of the “genetic screening” that women “normally do” when it comes to their rant about 20th Century science.
 * It would have been nice if they had mentioned some benefits of the OCP, not just trivial factoids about pheromones and sexual attractiveness.
 * How is this a news item, and WTF does it have to do with Evidence 4 Faith? Do they think they are making a legitimate, convincing argument against the use of contraception? Because a woman on the pill is may find less “masculine” men more attractive or choose men who are more similar to them genetically? Wha……????? This is sounding a little like natural selection talk…..which they don’t believe is true. Otherwise, who cares? "That gave me a lot to think about.” As in WTF did we discuss this?

back to you

Anyway, here we go with the meat of the podcast – 20th Century science.

I was actually expecting and hoping to hear a bashing of the scientific method and how science destroys faith, but I did not.

What I heard was, that, the main (if not only) contribution of 20th Century science to the world was “eugenics”.

Now, can you guess whose name we are gonna hear? You got it – HITLER. You can not have a discussion about 20th Century science without including Hitler, one of the greatest scientists of the 20th Century.

INSERT TWIN HITLERS CLIP {Don't you know anything about SCIENCE!?}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgR3N8y4boQ

This was based on a talk that one of the hosts heard at a convention called “Science and Faith, Friends or Foes?” which was put on by The Discovery Institute and held at a seminary in Philadelphia. Now you must note, that this convention involved some of the Discovery Institute’s top scientists (!!) who are involved in intelligent design.

This how the hosts describe the “Discovery Institute”: 14:45 INSERT CLIP

Needless to say, the so-called "Discovery Institute" is nothing more than an "intelligent design" think tank; it was they who masterminded the "teach the controversy" campaign in the States. They're also quite up in arms about "academic freedom," which in actuality means "we can't stand to be shut out of academia for being troglodytes with no credibility, so let's whine about how it's a conspiracy." Academia doesn't accept dogmatic agitation and rank cluelessness, boo fucking hoo.

I dug into their site a little... Dr. John West (Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute). An expert on the Hx of science. He has studied the impact of Darwinism on public policy and culture.

And…….this is where I had to stop making notes on each point of the podcast that I disagreed with. I had listened to about 15 minutes and spent about 2 hours making notes. And, the themes are mostly the same throughout the rest of this episode. And, srsly, listening to this show made me feel a very strange and unpleasant combination of bored out of my skull and enraged. Not a good combo.

Joe : That's the ultimate nugget to take from this episode, folks: E4F is a uniquely awful reminder of what NOT to do while hosting a podcast. Don't parrot the same points over and over and over and over. YOUR LISTENERS AREN'T RETARDED, believe it or not, Hastings, Kendricks, you don't necessarily have to rehash the same point ninety million times before it sinks in. They're so tedious that if you listen to more than one episode in a single sitting, the universe spontaneously springs a consciousness to senf you and angel of dark silence to whisk you away to merciful purgatory. Listening in, hell, promising to cover E4F in the first place, is akin to self-inflicted torture.

So yeah, let’s summarise the discussion on 20th Century science.

Behold, the great list of canards. Scientists in the 20th Century are responsible for the following things: Now I am not arguing that (some of) these things didn’t happen. Yes, they did. People were forcibly sterilised, and people were killed because of their race and/or (cough cough) religious beliefs. And those things were awful. Many things have happened during the 20th C that were awful say, like, 9/11, the Spanish Inquisition, the Salem Witch Trials, and the invention of the bagpipes. Some of these were to do with science, some were to do with religion, and some were to do with people just being uber arseholes, regardless of their belief in either/or religion and/or adherence to the scientific method.
 * As I have said, eugenics (forcibly sterilising hundreds of thousands of people, and killing handicapped people or people they didn’t like). Which, by the way, is a natural consequence of believing in Darwinian natural selection.
 * A failed expectation that science would create a utopia by controlling everybody and everything. (34 mins) atheist doctors and death/misuses of science (34:50)
 * Treating people like objects.
 * Absolving criminals of all responsibility for their actions
 * A crap tonne of American boys being on Ritalin (WHOLE THOUSANDS) INSERT CLIP
 * The 20th Century being the most deadly century ever (obviously because of scientists)
 * A technocracy (science ruling over social policy)
 * Embryonic stem cells being used to clone humans
 * Crappy architecture that is devoid of beauty
 * Teaching us that “greed is good” (because of evolutionary free markets)
 * Dehumanisation (e.g P Veg State - yep, Terri Schavo was a carrot), and abortion (coz like how come it's OK to kill a baby 5 minutes before it is born, but not 5 minutes after? - IT'S NOT OK OR LEGAL TO DO THAT. PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH MURDER FOR DOING THAT).
 * Science being immune from criticism.
 * Science STOPPING independent enquiry (wha?) by making EVERYTHING about faith vs science. Like, the whole teaching creationism thing is all bad only b/c of it's religious background. If people looked at the SCIENCE, then they would be OK with it. Um....THERE IS NO SCIENCE - THAT'S THE POINT.

But this kind of cherry picking and self contradictory poppy cock really gives me the shits.

The funniest and most frustrating thing about this podcast is, that according to these two dicks, the moral of the story is “don’t trust the 'experts' just because they tell you something. They may be wrong.”

What they don’t seem to understand is that this is a fundamental tenet of scientific method, and that they are biting off their noses to spite their faces.

The “evidence” they cite to support their arguments comes in the following forms:
 * Quotes from famous people (like Benjamin Franklin)
 * A study that they heard about once from somewhere or was quoted as a secondary source in something like a newspaper article or a book (that I can bet you they have never read)
 * Quotes from The Bible
 * Presentations by people who have an obvious, blatant bias towards supporting a particular hypothesis or belief (such as the “scientists” from “The Discovery Institute”)

Sorry guys, not good enough.

This is not high quality evidence, and it is definitely not evidence for faith.

Well, it actually may be evidence for faith, if you take faith to mean just believing in something.

Here are some comments I would like to make, using the E4F evidence based criteria:

There was a paper in the BMJ that said dogs bite children. Therefore, people with children should NEVER have dogs.

Some E4F comments I want to pick apart in particular


 * “Experts can be wrong” – yes they can, that’s why we have the scientific method, peer review and a need for findings to be replicated before they are accepted as possibly true.


 * They missed the Kinsey “Insects/In Sex” joke – how could you miss that? 30:30 “In sex education…”


 * People falsify their data – yep, sometimes they do. Like Andrew Wakefield whose MMR/Autism study was retracted.


 * Homosexual prison data – how was “homosexual” defined? Ever participated in a homosexual act? Probs gonna be higher in prisons.

Oh hang on, I missed some quotes (put in quotes SUPPORTING 20th C Science from the aging podcast). But oh wait, they were on another episode about aging, gee, could have been really useful to add those things into this ep. too guys.
 * Lobotomy – sold as a miracle cure (unlike prayer/evangelical laying on of hands etc). “You basically become a vegetable, I think.” You think, therefore you are…..someone who has no appreciation of the scientific method or experimental rigour.

Joe: Nothing stabs me in the cochlea quite like "the 20th century was the bloodiest because of scientists." There sure were a lot of people in the 20th century, weren't there? Maybe there was something that caused that population boom... Like, improved medical science, vaccines and germ theory? Damn scientists, trying to control everyone and treating people like objects to hasten the utopia!! That's GOD's job! If there was some twist of the timestream and you divine bollocks garglers lived in the turn of the century, you'd be picketing vaccine centers for contaminating the population with FAR EAST POXES in collusion with Satan. You tap a tap tap away at your computers so hard you spill over your water bottles, without ever stopping to reflect on the bounty of science and the hard work of scientists, which landed you both the keyboard and the water bottle. But I guess back when GOOD OL' AMERICAN FAMILY VALUUUUES triumphed over silly things like washing your hands and basic hygiene, God was making sure everything ran A okay, right? Just glance away from the mound of babies with preventable illnesses, just glance away so you can continue to live in wonderful FANTASY LAND, I'm sure all those whooping cough infants are playing the maracas and doing up coloring books up in heaven!

Scientists actually fucking try to improve the world. You two slack-jawed saints are just twiddling your thumbs in anticipation of the Rapture. And you expect skeptics to respect your intellectual wherewithal? You expect us to treat you with anything but the basest contempt? You sewer whirlpools of personalities? You inert blobs of perfectly oppressive inanity? Stop dreaming.

Ems: What really shits me is that they raise some interesting points for discussion such as the science behind global warming, when human life begins, nature v nurture in terms of behaviour, but they don't discuss them. They just cherry pick one source that supports their point of view and go "See?" What a waste of time.

WAS JESUS REALLY DURN SMART?
Okay, my turn. The episode I picked was "Was Jesus the Smartest Man Ever?" Gee, I wonder what they'll conclude on the amazingly open-ended conundrum! Jesus shit, don't make believe you're actually going to be mulling over the issue at hand.

Anyway, I'm just going to be taking random clips and ripping through them with as much sardonic hate as I can muster before my animal instinct to run away from E4F kicks in.

>> {HOLD IT!} <<
 * Jesus ain't on the list of the most influential and smartest men in the last century!? Well maybe because he wasn’t operating in the last century. But still... so many Bibles! INSERT ACTUAL CLIP ~8:00

Muhammed: What about me, Muhammed!? My brilliant and bold war tactics catapulted Islam into a major world force in only a few years! What did Jesus do, bleed a lot? And before you go all "martyrs spark movements" on me, you're really going to swing your cock against my religion when it comes to martyrdom!? If it's anybody who's got real influence in the 20th century, it's me, not Jesus. If you think about it NOBODY follows his doctrine, but the letter of the Quran is put into real world practice even today!

God : Play nice, Mo. You know Jesus doesn't like it when you boast.

Muhammed: Fucking nepotism, I swear.

Jesus: Peace, bro.

Muhammed: Come back to me when there's definitive evidence you even actually existed in the first place.

Jesus: YOU WANNA TAKE THIS OUT BACK!?


 * Kids ages 15-19 have to have abstinence drilled into them because--Jesus Christ fuck these people--because their "frontal cortexes aren't developed until around the age of 21 or 22" (INSERT ACTUAL CLIP ~11:00)

Well, it took 11 minutes but there it was, a statement that made me want to strangle them. My recently developed cortex wants to marshall arguments but my fists want to pummel them in the Adam's apple (simulatenously, say my fists).

The casual arrogance, the tendency to dismiss teenagers as "inherently stupid, wish they had our super frontal cortexes huh?" when they're the ones that are lifeless sardines, I just, it's so infuriating.

And let's not even get into how wrong that statement is. The brain NEVER, repeat NEVER "stops developing." Read up on neuroplasticity. We'll wait.

PAUSE FOR BEAT.

Actually no we won't wait, because neuroplasticity is really fucking complicated, just like the entire brain is. It's literally the most complex thing we know of. But "frontal cortexes aren't developed until around the age of 21 or 22," right? I think I've just developed your cortexes a bit. Though I imagine for you guys it's like trying to mold a rectum to become a sunflower dispenser, your brains just aren't neuroplasticking anyplace anytime soon.


 * Not safe sex, but “saved" sex!! INSERT ACTUAL CLIP

Die.


 * (INSERT RELEVANT CLIP ~28:00) Have it humorously interrupted by my impotent cry: JESUS REVEALED RELATIVITY TO EINSTEIN. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME. before resuming the rest of the quote.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

FUCKING. YOU. ARE ME KIDDING.

I've cracked, Emma, I've cracked and I'm only 23, saaaaave meeeeeee

So. Okay. All right. How did this Jesusly information transfer go down, hmmm? Dancing in my head is the image of Einstein shaking down the robed apparition of Jesus at his bedside till Jesus coughs up the secret of space-time, with Einstein scribbling furiously using his other hand. But that's probably not what our illustrious hosts had in mind. And something tells me it wasn't a touching-foam-foreheads Star Trek mind meld that went down. Did old Albert attend Jesus's physics cram school at the bottom of the Dead Sea? Wait, Einstein never acknowledged Jesus' tremendous contribution to his development of the theory of relativity, what a dick--and after going through all that effort to hunt down our perfect savior! Unless, of course, Jesus, while tracing the lines of YHWH's right palm he's always sitting on, one day aribitrarily decided hey, that one Austrian guy should know this right about now, and beamed that information to just this one guy's head for no particular reason--but that would be stupid. I'll give you guys the benefit of the doubt, it was the mind meld.


 * Do you really respect Christ in your field? (INSERT CLIP ~29:00)

>> {TAKE THAT!} <<

Meanwhile, at Jesus' employment office

Jesus: Neeext. Profession?

Alejandro the poor farmer boy: I am seeing but am not believing. You are Jesus?

Jesus: *exasperated* Yeeees.

Alejandro: DIOS MIOSSS!

Jesus: Exactly. Now tell me your profession, Alejandro the poor farmer boy.

Alejandro: I am but a poor farmer boy.

Jesus: Did you give the clothes off your back to the beggar?

Alejandro: Well, no, but I have 34 children to fee--

Jesus: What part of "hate your family" didn't you understand, Alejandro?

Alejandro: But--

Jesus: Don't make me spit out my Book of Revelation double-edged sword at you, Alejandro. I may turn the other cheek, but that doesn't mean I can't SLICE YOU IN HALF while turning my cheek.

Alejandro: You are crabby today, senTILDEor.

Jesus: Yeah, well, even infinite patience and love can't last a three minute conversation with a certain Alaskan governor. Okay, so, skipping to Question 7, does your job involve bumming around living on alms while crossing your arms and wishing REALLY HARD that the world ends today?

Alejandro: No... I would never loaf around like a pitiful vagrant when there's so much I could be doing for my fellow man!

Jesus: Then it's not a job according to my living word, now, is it!? *rubber stamp* NEEEEEXT.


 * Jesus pulls cord, VERY DISTURBING INDEED clip plays as Alejandro falls down the trap panel into Hell*

Alejandro: I thought it was faith not woooooooorksssss

Jesus: Nope. C'mon, move the line, I don't have all eternity. Yo, you, profession?

Some dude who doesn't have a name: Carpenter.

Jesus: *rubber stamp* Congratulations, you passed. Neeeeext!
 * INSERT RELEVANT CLIP (~36:00)

The entire idea that “past folks weren’t ready yet for life-changing data” really ticks me off.

1) People in the past weren't stupid--they were just uninformed. Maybe a little INFORMATION could have tipped them in the right direction. If they're not ready for whatever stupid reason you want to trot out, how about, I don't know, MAKING THEM READY? New York's inner city has a better educational track record than the creator of the cosmos.

2) THEIR LIVES REVOLVED AROUND GOD. The Hebrews, GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE, were scholars who treasured learning and arcana. What were they going to do, scoff at information from on high?

3) I think a font of information that always proved true 100% of the time would be difficult to doubt after a while, don't you think?

4) Ems: I wonder when he's gonna give us the cure for cancer.....obviously we're not ready yet.

I hate that presentist smugness ("Oh, they *just weren't ready,* those poor primitives!")


 * FIND RELEVANT CLIP (sorry) Really hard questions from the Sadducees might be easy to answer with “incredible mental agility” when

 a)   a) You’re GOD.

 b)   b) You’re GOD. You fucking know everything.

H Ems: How is this even an episode, I mean really.

 c) c)   I’m sure those Sadducees’ questions, and Jesus’ responses, were written down completely faithfully, and there was no artifice of the author or his opinions whatsoever. As we all know, it's really damn difficult to set up straw man opponents to debate!


 * “It’s really easy for people to spew logical fallacies when they talk at length.” (INSERT ACTUAL CLIP ~41:00)
 * audible sigh* "It’s really easy for people to spew logical fallacies when they talk at length. Now for how many hours have we broadcasted our opinions?"


 * So sayeth somebody: Socrates died like a man, Jesus died like a God. (FIND RELEVANT CLIP)

Just not a particularly manly god. All the other manly gods laugh at what a pussy YHWH’s son was, and then they all lined up to give Socrates the straightest of handies with the hands that high fived him. Meanwhile Jesus sat in the corner reliving his glory years like a high school dropout, thoughts ringing "I'll show them all, I'll second come and show them ALLL."


 * Better yet, he asserted things that Sadducees disagreed with, and we're following Jesus, therefore he's really smart. (FIND RELEVANT CLIP)

No bias here, no sirree. Why didn't Jesus' repartee with the Sadducees fail to impress the rest of the world, who are preoccupied with inferior ethical and philosophical thinkers who do trivial things like SAY SHIT THAT MATTERS, yeah diatribes on obscure scriptural legalese from millennia ago, so useful.