Chariots of Iron

In the news this week: Piloting aircraft via the power of prayer; Diamond Rio: bad band name, worse lyrics; honor killing yourself to save your dad from jail; science > Texas and finally: we discuss the fact that the UK has lost its freaking mind. Not the Irish Posse, though. They are still sharp as a tack.

In our main segment we discuss two lists we found authored by two well known fundies, Glen Beck and Ray Comfort. The first one, Glen Beck and his “9 wankerisms” (this one sort of evolves into a political discussion–but hey, you get what you pay for.) Next we dissect Ray Comfort and his “82 Womitations,” which he is using to promote his new book “You Can Clap in Front of a Zombie’s Face, but you Can’t Make Him Blink” (or something like that.)

We seriously couldn’t make some of this stuff up.

But some of it, we could.

And did.

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This week we were privileged to have Brother Sam Singleton, Atheist Evangelist co-host with us through the news. We talk about the Catholic’s soft stand on genocide, the “reform” of the Afghani justice system, more good news for people who like it when Muslims stone illiterate rape victims to death, the impending doom of evangelical Christianity, atheist altruism and we announce the winner of the British Whine-A-Thon.

For our main segment, Sam Singleton’s creator Roger Scott Jackson walks us through why and how he created Sam. We discuss the merits of atheist evangelism and we explore the differences between the kind of satirical atheist outreach that he does with Sam and the nicer face that other atheist activists sometimes prefer. He also talks with us about his upcoming comedy tour (come see him when he’s in Portland, we’ll all go out for beers!) Also, Eli is not addicted to heroin. That was just a joke. Probably. Well, as far as you know, anyway. No, but seriously. He’s not.

The Man
His Twitter
His Causes

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Mr. Mehta sits in as co-host as we plow through yet another week of ridiculous yet highly entertaining and/or depressing and/or infuriating news. This week: the Catholic Church makes an almost totally unintelligible statement about harm prevention, the UN get’s on Joe’s doodoo-list, Richard Dawkins is called out by a guy who was made famous by brainwashing Kirk Cameron and we discuss the genius behind using the internalized guilt of others to bilk more money out of them. Also: it becomes apparent that Saudi scholars have run out of things to talk about, the Supreme Court flubs a no-brainer and we discuss how your dental history might impact your track record handling wild animals.

For our main segment, we talk about Hemant’s book, about his experiences, about his blog and about the people that he’s met and worked with there. The over-arching topic is how we interface with the faithful and the merits of various approches to this particular endevour. With Hitchens and Harris and Dawkins you have a more direct and–some would say–abrasive approach. Hemant, on the other hand, goes about things from a different direction; letting theists know what he expects from a civil, meaningful and ultimately progressive discourse and sharing with them what he sees as ineffective about their approach. He was a lot of fun to have with us and the topic he picked was outstanding. And please, don’t forget to visit the friendlyatheist.com and check out Hemant’s blog!

The Man
The Book
The Secular Student Alliance

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