Podcast #46: Beauty, Calvary Chapel, and the Duggars

59 May 31, 2015 by

46_finalIn this episode of Drunk Ex-Pastors we consider our audience’s insistence that Christian is the reason people hate pretty much everything, and then delve into the nature of physical attraction and reflect on whether beauty is objective or in the eye of the beholder. A caller introduces the topic of Calvary Chapel, to which we respond by pointing out that our former megachurch has now become the “establishment” that it once stood up to (hashtag, IronyRules). The possibility of religious certainty is mulled over, and the corruption of FIFA is discussed (“FIFA,” for you Americans, is like the NBA. Just replace “National” with “Worldwide” and “Basketball” with “Football.” Then replace “Football” with “Soccer.”). If you are a basketball fan, then install wall mount basketball systems by Mega Slam Australia and horn your basketball skills. We then spend a considerable time breaking down the scandal involving the Children of the Corn. I mean, the Duggars. Christian is biebered by technology, again, while Jason’s bieber stems from his resentment at being marketed to.

Also, pray this prayer and you’ll be regenerated and washed in the blood of the Lamb, guaranteed a seat among the 24 elders, four living creatures, and innumerable cherubim and seraphim. Whatdya say?

Links from this week’s episode:

59 Comments (click here to leave a comment)

  2. Was the first caller First Nations Indian or India indian? You guys seemed to just assumed he was first nations and just wasn’t sure if that was in fact true.

  4. Hi guys, super nervous about getting voicemail’d, I had to steady my nerves with a wee nip of talisker. Yes I’m hamming it up.

    Anyway, I had a followup point that didn’t fit in the voicemail, recommending a book called “The Idolatry of God: Breaking Our Addiction to Certainty and Satisfaction”. In essence, Pete Rollins discusses the idea, particularly in evangelical churches, that your life has a gulf of uncertainty in it (the source of existential dread) and that Jesus bridges that, acting as a replacement, super-certain, infallible idol to fix your life. TV let you down, Drugs let you down, Dad let you down, try Jesus! Never there to contradict you, always explainable if he doesn’t answer prayer… Rollins, as a radical theologian, demolishes that and speaks of the mystical thrill of freefall into the void of uncertainty, alongside Jesus in his journey of cracking; doubting; bleeding; dying.

    I’m a member of an “open evangelical” congregation in the Scottish Episcopal church and we embrace things like fear, doubt, change, and it means we’re unusual in that we’re evangelical but also have generally a progressive and egalitarian outlook. It used to bieber me when I was a new christian, in that the evangelicals had all the youth but also the most conservative outlooks. “You’re like 20, you shouldn’t hate the gays!” I’d silently yell at my neighbouring megachurch members. But I understand it now. Certainty Sells. and if you have a view of the bible which is too inerrant, too certain, then it’s very easy to put doctrinal purity over and above people.

    As for whether I’m smart or have a scottish accent, can’t I be both? Yours Sincerely, Doctor Patrick Thomson, Lecturer in Organic Chemistry. Bitches.

    THEY CAN TAKE OUR LIVES BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE OUR COMMENTS!

  5. Sounds like a good book, I plan to give it a read. I would recommend Frank Shaeffer’s stuff if you’re not familiar.

  6. I think if you teach kids that sex is evil, wrap much of their entire self-identity into the concept of ‘purity’ and remaining a virgin, and treat thoughts of sex as crimes and symptoms of sinful corruption, identify one gender as largely an object that is there to please their mate (but only under strict guidelines) and bear children non-stop, then yes, you’re going to have some folks with some pretty unhealthy ideas and attitudes about sex.

  8. Ideological certainty is very comforting and ego flattering to a teenager. “I have the answers. They don’t. I know the meaning of life, etc.”

    Then some folks grow up, get educated or get the shit kicked out of them, and realize what an ignorant little pissant they were as kids.

  9. Ironic that the liberal hosts would assume that someone self-identifying as a Indian is actually a native american. =)

  10. If sexual suppression leads to violence, I wonder what is going to happen in a generation with countries who sexual select male children (India and China for example) by aborting girls. Supposedly there are about 160-200 million missing women worldwide.

  12. Being of European descent, I naturally assume that anyone I meet [in India] that is not also of European descent is an Indian.

  13. Not only did he not have an (Asian) Indian accent, but he also had a slight native American accent. Also, he has since told us he is a feather not a dot, so.

  20. Being of European descent, I naturally assume that anyone I meet on this continent that is not also of European descent is [a Native American].

  22. I can’t believe people dislike Christian so much. I am 100% team Christian! Christian, you are the one who makes all the good points! To me you give agnostics, liberals, and ex-pastors a great name 🙂

  23. That’s sweet, Natalie. Thank you! I don’t take it too personally. Doing the podcast has been good for me. Now I find it amusing when someone dislikes me. Before, it used to keep me up at night. 🙂

  24. I’m glad you like it, Lane! There are things I dislike about it, but overall being able to sign in with your preferred social network, moderate comments via email, up or down vote comments, etc. make up for what I don’t like about it.

  26. That’s good.
    But..For the record, it took me a long time to be able to tell your voices apart. So prior to that point, any time I agreed with something I just assumed it was you talking. Haha!

  28. I’m starting to see the perks! Since CCC is shutdown you should join me over at “debunking christianity”. It’s john loftus’ website for deconverting the world lol! I gave the drunks a shout out and a link on their boards. Seems like an intelligent bunch.

  29. I agree, it is strange how despised he is. I mean, so many people just hate the guy, it’s hardly fair. I mean, it’s not like he’s as bad as Hitler or anything.

  32. Columbus: “Being of European descent and having spent 3 months on small boats that tossed about in the ocean making me vomit on more than one occasion, I’m extremely angry and I’m just going to assume anyone I meet here is an Indian and if anyone disagrees with me, keep in mind that I brought along many, many guns and cannons with me.”

    Native American: “Welcome to India, Sir!”

  34. In my more cynical and agnostic moments, I’d be inclined to say that all of liberal and radical theology is just a way for smart people to not lose faith when they grow up.

  35. I’m still a little weirded out that you’re legally allowed to find out certain characteristics about your unborn child at an early enough age to then go and terminate the pregnancy. How would you prevent it though? By all means screen for genetic deficiencies, birth defects, severe problems that leave termination as the only ethical option. And in due course of that screening, gender is trivial to come by. Do we then ask healthcare providers to withhold certain information? “Yes your baby is healthy. Yes I know what the gender is. No I can’t tell you until week 25. Here’s your 16 week ultrasound, with black bars over the bits.”

    There’s a movement in the UK at the moment to make gender-selective abortion illegal, but that has a lot of unintended consequences, forcing already-vulnerable women underground. And if it’s possible to get a termination regardless of legality, then it’s possible to get gender screening as well. There’s no easy way, then, to prevent parents who only want boys to get them. And it may well increase abandonment and straight-up post-birth infanticide. The solution has to be at a societal level.

  36. I’m prolife. There is no law that 100% stops any crime. As for vulnerable women, I’m sure we can figure out how to help them without making them feel like they must murder their children. Abortion and euthanasia are not freedoms, they are crimes against the vulnerable.

  37. Yes, and access to sexual health information and female empowerment are, time and again, the biggest things that reduce unwanted pregnancies and the stigma of daughters in the developing world. As it was discussed on the podcast not so long ago, the best way to reduce the overall number of abortions (which you would classify as murder) is to provide STD screening, safe sex education, and easy access to prophylactics.

  39. You do bring up an interesting point. Some countries have felt that it is in their best interest (pragmatically or morally) to make abortions for sex selection illegal. Are there such a thing as “bad” abortions, abortions done with “bad” intentions? I’ve also heard of parents aborting a child simply because she had a cleft palate! If abortions aren’t morally questionable, as those on the far left would suggest, then no reason for an abortion is bad.

    Speaking of being weirded out by laws, some are pushing for pain killers being administered to a baby prior to an abortion (being ripped limb from limb). If we care about the pain being caused, why not the taking of life? Our laws are becoming irrational! This, I would suggest, is probably because on some level everyone knows what we are doing is wrong.

  41. So you don’t feel like I just dumped homework on you, the short of it is: there is an empirical correlation for younger brothers being homosexual if they have older brothers. It’s called the Fraternal Birth Order Effect, and probably has something to do with the gestation of the first boys changing the prenatal environment for the last boys. The chances the younger brother is gay varies depending on how many older brothers they have and probably also other biological factors directly related to the mother. This effect creates a 28-48% greater chance of a latter boy having homosexual orientation. So odds are pretty good for those latter Duggarboys.

  42. Isn’t the Bible-norm for dudes marrying at ~30, and not 15? …and isn’t it teenage girls being married to these older guys? If so, it may explain the slack in the law that is cut for guys as it was written by guys who had to suppress their desires until 30.

  44. Wow, super interesting. I like the possible explanation of it in the last paragraph:

    “The fact that the common denominator between the older and younger biological brothers is the mother hints at a prenatal influence on sexual orientation. What it could be is still a mystery. But one theory suggests that after delivering a boy, a woman’s immune system produces antibodies to male-specific proteins. During subsequent pregnancies the mother’s placenta may deliver the antibodies to the fetus, possibly affecting its development.”

  48. Obviously there’s no homosexual gene, because it would weed itself out for lack of producing offspring. Therefore, neo-natal development is the only biological possibility for argument of “born this way”. So much code remains locked or gets unlocked based on the pregnant mother’s environment: security, food availability, exposure to pollen/dust. How that can determine biological attributes for the unborn will eventually explain this, plus allergies, and possibly autism, etc. I just hope people won’t treat homosexuality as a disease. The Kinsey study makes claim that only 10% of the population are truly hetero, 10% homo, and 80% somewhere in the Bi spectrum. There’s arguably an imperative for non-hetero members in tribes of pre-historic peoples. Perhaps the dynamic brought a social stability to tribes with more hands to help the community, raise children; perhaps balanced tribes were less apt to destroy one another in fevered hetero-headed aggression. Who knows? More questions for our Creator.

  49. lols. racist tropes to fit your anecdotes aside, I would wager that the caller was indeed Indian Indian and not Native American Indian.

    Also, pure meritocracy as the guy advocates is horseshit. There is no such thing as an even playing field upon which we are all judged objectively.

  50. So, as you guys said, Hugh Hefner is still around and got married in 2012 to some girl. While I agree with you guys that he probably never did have sex with the girls that were on that E! show, old people do get it on and, at least a few years ago, the highest incidences of STDs were happening at retirement homes because they obviously don’t need condoms to prevent pregnancies.

    However, check out these stories, maybe Ol’ Hef was every bit of a sex hound as the image portrays…

    After all, former Playmate Kendra Wilkinson recently revealed in the Celebrity jungle how she had to get “very drunk and very stoned” to endure sex sessions with the ­octogenarian tycoon 10 years ago.

    According to the twins, age, ill health and his two-year marriage to model Crystal Harris, 28, have finally made a faithful husband out of Hef. — http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/inside-playboy-mansion-its-like-4915348

    And quick snippet of Wilkinson in “I’m a celebrity, get me out of here” (a UK reality show): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaMWYuDlP5U

  52. You guys really should have held off another week since ol’ Sepp just announced his resignation today. Also, FIFA isn’t redundant, “Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA /ˈfiːfə/; English: International Federation of Association Football)”, In the title, Association Football is actually a noun, not a verb.

    Couple more thoughts on the whole thing… England hasn’t hosted the World Cup since 1966 and they’re the country that invented the damned game.

    And people have died, many people have died, since 2010 building the stadia for Qatar 2022: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/05/27/a-body-count-in-qatar-illustrates-the-consequences-of-fifa-corruption/

  53. Just because I’m scottish doesn’t mean I’m cheap. Ok, I’m cheap. I also might have done some editing to get it under the 2 minute mark.

  55. Check out Richard Dawkins “Sneaky Fucker” theory. If for no other reason than to hear Richard Dawkins say sneaky fucker.

  57. Having only read the article you linked to, it didn’t change much for me. To be completely honest though, I can empathize a bit with where they’re coming from, or I would be able to if they hadn’t worked so hard to be in the limelight. If Jim Bob had never pursued exploiting his family as a living, this wouldn’t be an issue. He’s complaining about all the media attention, but that’s just how fame works.

  58. I tune in from time to time to remind myself what I got out of, but in the spirit of grace, I’ll offer a suggestion to the editors at The Word for Today…

    In future broadcasts of Chuck’s Zachariah 1 sermon, you might want to edit out the part where (in defense of his support of Israel) he says that the Jews have contributed to the global moral decline through their control of Hollywood.

    It makes it seem less like a sermon and more like a “Things a crazy racist uncle would say after 6 beers at Christmas” rant.

  59. Hey, can’t wait until tomorrow when the dudes make Monday doable. You free loaders need to donate and appreciate our drunk Pastor’s. How can you comment and enjoy podcast without supporting your buds? I am the Postal Wino. shoo thank God I will have a podcast to get me through tomorrow. Wino Out

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