"Baby Moses" laid to rest

A tragic story in Indianapolis:  a dead baby was found in a creek.  The mother has still not been identified.

In the old days, babies like this would be named "Baby Doe" and laid to rest by the city.  When the family is identified, the baby would join the family plot if that's the wish of the family.  The family would have the right to name the baby if they wanted, too.

Today the little guy was laid to rest by some arrogant Christians who took on the right to name him and bury him:

http://www.wthr.com/story/21835067/memorial-held-for-newborn-found-in-creek

Linda Znachko named the baby Moses, and her ministry, "He Knows Your Name" organized Saturday's funeral.

"I have dressed Moses in a white garment. I did that to symbolize his spiritual freedom that he know has with Jesus Christ," said Znachko.

Some Christian group was able to take possession of the body, give the baby a name, and conduct a service in their denomination.  This just strikes me as so arrogant, yet the city released the baby to these people who have NO CLAIM to it!


grrrrrrr


I know that some so-called Christians will take issue with my anger about this but I don't care.  This was a selfish selfish act conducted by self-congratulatory people who really believe they are doing something right... and of course let the cameras show it on television.

It's certainly possible to be respectful toward an unknown person's body without claiming it for Christ:

March 30 link round-up

This is mostly news but I got tired of trying to sift through the Easter crap and the Supreme Court stuff and that stupid trial that a certain supposed "news" station is obsessed with.  So I offer up a mixture of the sublime, ridiculous, scary, and icky:

In Egypt, women are being blamed for an epidemic of sexual assaults against them.

Also in Egypt, a lady cartoonists takes aim at fundamentalists.  She's been charged with blasphemy.  And I worry about offending my fundie coworkers!

Malala signs a book deal.  Good for her!

In Bangladesh, Islamic protesters demand blasphemy laws against BLOGGERS!  OMG we're dangerous!

Berlin's Jew-in-a-Box exhibit more controversial than expected.   

About damn time!  Baptists finally take on something that's actually immoral:  predatory payday loans that hurt the poor. 

Man gets probation in mercy-killing of his wife.

Hindus celebrate the festival of Holi.  Yes, their holiday is Holi day!

A fat naked man called "Billy the Fridge" sat on a fake Phelps family member and yelled "Who's your daddy now?"  The rest is impossible to summarize so I'll leave it to you to read the rest.

Ladies, here's one good reason not to go skinny dipping.
Men, you're not safe, either.

The Huffpo's public service post of the week:  How to be a bitch, bitch! (I'm a natural, so I won't read any of those books!)

Randomly found video:  Scientologist corners James Randi between bites of something that looks rather tasty:

Good Friday, Friday, Gotta Die on Good Friday ...

Happy Good Friday!

Richard Carrier Interview

Excellent interview with Richard Carrier. If you haven't been listening to The Thinking Atheist (a.k.a. Seth Andrews) podcasts, I highly recommend them. He mixes up interviews with atheist celebs and callers, and he even had a great interview episode with a Methodist minister.  He's in Texas right now at the American Atheists Convention.  Send him my regards if you see him!  I am one of his most loyal subscribers.

In this interview, Richard Carrier summarizes quite a bit of the scholarship about Christianity and the Bible, not just the question of whether Jesus existed.

Taking Apart the Nicene Creed

This statement of beliefs is supposedly the minimum necessary belief set that one must agree with to be considered a Christian.

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds (æons), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father;By whom all things were made;who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man;he was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, and suffered, and was buried, and the third day he rose again, according to the Scriptures, and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father;from thence he shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead;whose kingdom shall have no end.And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; we acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins; we look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen. 

Let's take this apart.  The first part reaffirms monotheism and The God is the creator of everything: We believe in one God.  So far so good.  Christianity is indeed an outgrowth of Judaism, right?

Not so fast, buckaroo.  Christians worship more than just this one God.  Christians also believe in the son, so apparently they're not monotheists after all:  And in one Lord Jesus Christ.  Well, he's the son so maybe he doesn't really count.  After all he's really only half-god, right?  Like the old demi-gods of Ancient Greece.

Not quite.  ...Very God of very God, begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.  So Jesus was his own father, and we now apparently have the answer to the question "Who made God?"  God made God, of course!  He just didn't tell Moses because that would have confused the old codger. 

SO ... God made himself, at least once.  But wait... came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost...  So God made himself at least twice, first making the Holy Ghost and then making Jesus, and a third time if he made himself too.  This is the ta-da... *drumroll* .... TRINITY!




At the beginning of Christianity there was no such concept.  Jewish Christians believed Jesus was an ordinary man until his baptism.  Gnostic Christians believed he was 100% spirit.  How do you combat "heresy?"  Make them all only partially right!

The next bit rehashes the basic "facts" of the Gospels, Jesus was crucified, died, then came back to life.  The four Gospels agree on the crucifixion at least. 

The sacrificial stuff is a little more muddled and you have to wonder what the writers were thinking.  They've already said that God "Came down from heaven... for our salvation."  This is already a little messed up, as we're being saved from his own punishment, which he could easily have just decided to drop. 



But no... he had to crucify himself to appease himself.  And then after this horrendous death, he sits at his own right hand, judging people, though he had been sacrificed for us....  so what's to judge?

Now, to part three, because threes are holy in Catholicism.  And in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets.  So when the prophets were speaking (are speaking?) this ghost is doing the speaking, but it's not really the ghost it's really God because he comes from God just like Jesus did. 


Or perhaps it's a she, because of course Jesus was the only-begotten son, so if the ghost proceedeth from the Father, that sort of means it's the child of the father.  Conveniently, the creed in English doesn't use a gendered term.  Sadly, my theory doesn't work because spiritus, the Latin term, is a masculine word (fourth declension masculine to be precise).  It derives from the word for "to breathe," which explains why it powers the speech of prophets.  So... God has two sons, not one.

...In one holy catholic and apostolic Church; doesn't really mean not protestants.  Catholic means for everybody, and apostolic means they derive their authority from the apostles.  Even if you accept that Matthew and John actually were apostles and actually wrote the gospels attributed to them, this doesn't compute because Mark and Luke weren't apostles.  Also, Paul never knew Jesus and his writings (and writings falsely attributed to him) constitute most of the rest of the New Testament.  Luke was Paul's pal, so we have even less "apostolic" -ness than the creed would suggest.

One baptism for the remission of sins always struck me as a funny concept, because Jesus' sacrifice was supposedly the mechanism for that.   But then after you've been baptized, and Jesus has been sacrificed for you, you still get judged by Jesus.  That's all in this one little creed.  Gives you some idea of what the Bible is like!

We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.  I never understood what this delay was supposed to be about.  Christ supposedly went right up into heaven, as did his mother.  Why can't the rest of us?  Why have all the bodies laying around in cemeteries, or worse... at the bottoms of seas or out in the woods... waiting for centuries for the resurrection?  In the literalist Catholic theology the actual bodies have to stay intact to be able to get up and move about after the resurrection.  That's why they're buried rather than cremated.


But what about the people who died without being buried?  What if wild animals made off with the bones and scattered them in all directions?  What if they burned up in a forest fire?  They'd be cremated, then.  Could God resurrect those people but not intentionally cremated dead people? 

Eek!  A Zombie!!!

And what if someone drowned at sea and their body is under hundreds of feet of water?  Will they have gills long enough to get up onto dry land?  What if they drowned because they were crappy swimmers?   Wouldn't they still be crappy swimmers? 



And what about all the amputees and people born with birth defects?  Wouldn't these be some scaryass zombies?  If a deformed baby died because it couldn't survive its birth defects, would it be resurrected as a healthy adult?  It died before it even learned language.  Wouldn't it be a zombie, or at best an automaton?

This creed wasn't codified until almost the end of the Fourth Century.  It was supposed to unify Christian thought, but I think it was more of a brainwashing tool.  If you say this every week, or every day if you're in a monastery or cathedral, the repetition would numb out the parts of your brain that would pick up on the inconsistencies and illogic of it.

 

Wikipedia on Nicene Creed.
Old Catholic Encyclopedia (1911)
Old Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)
Wikipedia: English Versions of the Nicene Creed

March 23 Links

Camp Pendleton ceases support for "sectarian" concerts (rather than allow a 2nd Rock Beyond Belief concert).  Now the Rock Beyond Belief blog will take a much-deserved break. 

The oldest Duggar boy is expecting his third child.  Hooray for mass breeding of glassy-eyed Christians!  They are on the road and the telly promoting their trip to Asia.  Apparently it's not much like Arkansas.  And they disagree with China's one-child policy, surprisingly.

Two people involved in the ACORN scam will pay a former employee a total of $150,000 for causing him to lose his job.

Evolution in action!  Birds in Nevada are evolving shorter wings.  Birds with longer wings hav a harder time taking off from the roads to escape traffic and get killed.  Birds with shorter wings can take off and escape faster.

Malala's first day of school in the U.K.  YAY!  Some kids her age think they'd rather die than to go to algebra class.  She's willing to risk her life to be there.

Not new, but I found myself rereading this fascinating interview about the moral differences between liberals and conservatives.  Liberals lean toward compassion as a defining moral characteristic, whereas conservatives have a more multi-faceted approach to morality.  Interesting quotation:

there’s something weird in the human mind that makes people, and especially men, able to bind themselves together really, really tightly in order to compete violently. And you look at the rituals around sports and sporting teams. There’s just all this weird stuff about how groupish and tribal we are. And once you see that, then religion is the next obvious step.

Australian prime minister apologizes for forced adoptions of babies born to single mothers.

Mom & two children found naked and dead in a creek, with nothing but a baby sling and a Bible nearby.  Dad and the pastor of the church they moved halfway across the country to be near say religion couldn't be a contributing factor.  Uhhhh sure.

Megachurch pastor pleads guilty to statutory rape of a vulnerable 16-year-old honor student, who was subsequently expelled from the church's school and whose family was excommunicated from the church after this came out.  100 letters of support were sent to the judge.  Really?  How could they still support this predator?

Fundy singer aptly named "Shocked" discovers that people in San Francisco don't find anti-gay rants humorous.  Perhaps she should change her name to "Clueless."

Mennonites & Catholics will join to mark Martin Sattler's martyrdom.  Rather odd pairing there.

The Evangelical mini-series on the "History" channel hired an actor who just happened to resemble Obama to play Satan.  The producers claim that wasn't intentional but Glenn Beck thinks it's good casting.  Nobody thinks to call them on the choice to have a black actor play Satan at all?  Sheesh.  (Please post a link in the comments section if you find someone making that point!)

In case you have missed it, Dusty Smith summarizes parts 3 and 4 for you this week. Way to take one for the Team, Dusty!

Steubenville Rapists = Pedophile Priests?

The teens who violated a teenaged girl were found guilty on Sunday, and Sunday is when television journalists and pundits are live for hours on end.  They had plenty of time to say things they no doubt regret now.  Many of them empathized with the boys, who were tried as juveniles and will serve just a few years in detention.  If they had been tried as adults their lives may indeed have been "ruined."  Because they were tried as juvies, their college football careers are "ruined," but not their lives.  They will have decades of freedom after they get out, at the tender age of 21.

CNN's Candy Crowley announced the verdict just before Reliable Sources, the show I watch because it (used to) cover the media.  How ironic. I'm sure they'll be discussing their colleagues next week, if they really want to discuss the press.  The link below has video of the objectionable stuff:

http://mashable.com/2013/03/18/cnn-rape-apologist-steubenville/

Later, the father of one of the boys admitted to not being much of a father and to having regrets for not helping the boy to develop better morals.  I wanted to reach through the telly and hug that guy!  And the journalist on the scene did point out that the girl was violated.  So I'd rate CNN just a smidge higher than the wailing classes, but only a smidge.

Now, some pundits are talking about a "Rape Culture," which I think is purely ridiculous.  There is plenty to decry in this situation all around, but is there really a rape culture?  Is there a whole group of guys who go around raping as a lifestyle?  Do they have a clubhouse?  Do they have a handshake?  (Oh wait... bad question)

So anyway, I had to ask why was there so much sympathy for the boys and not for the victim?  The telly and blogs and Facebook weren't cutting it for me.  It's another Rorschach test in the media.  What people have been saying says more about themselves than the situation.

So why not just jump in and risk revealing more about myself than enlightening the situation?  I do have a few thoughts, and I did give this some thought.  No knee-jerk reaction here.  (I was still too sleepy to be outraged at the time)

For one, the boys were on TV and the victim wasn't.  Her face is never shown on TV.   We sympathize with people we SEE.  One boy broke into tears in court.  Big strapping football-playing girl-raping macho boy turned into a ball of boo-hoo.  We're not used to seeing guys cry.  We're not used to seeing anybody cry, really.  So... we saw him cry when he received his verdict.  We didn't see the girl cry when she learned that pictures of her naked body were on the internet.  So naturally, people reacted to what was shown to them.  It takes a further leap of imagination to consider what the girl felt about the whole thing.  In the heat of the moment, the excitement of "BREAKING NEWS" and all, they didn't go that extra step.

For another, the damage done to a rape victim isn't what it used to be.  We no longer stone rape victims or force them to marry their rapists.  Her her pain will be internal and invisible.  The boys' loss of freedom is visible- we see them cry, we see or can imagine them in handcuffs or behind bars.  We can imagine their future as convicted sex offenders.

But perhaps the most important reason the press sympathized with them is the social position that athletes, especially American football players, enjoy.  Sports are supposed to teach good values like teamwork, perseverence, and the ability to handle disappointment.


These are indeed very good values, but they are not moral values.  They are life skills.  On the other side, they get special favors and are cheered by their school, the local paper, and boosters (community fans).  Their elevated status gives them a sense of privilege and innoculation against the consequences of destructive actions.  They operate as an island culture, far removed from the rules of everyday society.  The football team has special perks, a group of cheerleaders (who cheers at science fairs?), and an audience to show off in front of.  When a sports hero, even a small-town minor one, turns out to be immoral, the media are shocked.

I'm not.

If you are the graduate of a public high school in the United States (or a Catholic one, if you grew up where I did), you don't need to be told this.  At the college level it's even worse.  At my small liberal arts school, the football players were the worst behaved students at the school despite our perpeturally low standing in our "league" and the total lack of a future in football for those guys.  They were held in some regard for the mere reason that they played football.  We had some truly stellar genius-level students in other fields.  They didn't have their own frat house, and the newspaper didn't write about them. The football team had a culture of its own, marked by cheating and drinking and drug-dealing.  As a team, they were "cohesive," and none of this ever came out though it was a well-known "secret."  One of my friends was the girlfriend and later wife, of one of these guys. Out of deference to her I won't go into more detail.  Suffice it to say, they are not the pillars of the institution that our society wants to believe them to be.

So.... a sports "star" getting a jail sentence is a kind of a man-bites-dog story if you've bought into the lie that sports builds character and if you don't question their privilege.

And then we have the priesthood.  They live in a fraternity house, have ready access to all the wine they want, enjoy (at least until recently) automatic respect and trust of the community by virtue of membership on a revered "team," and they are presumed to be exemplars of morality for the community.  Like football players, they got away with sex crimes and for centuries nobody dared question them.  If they did get caught, their bishop or cardinal or pope smoothed things out for them or blew off the victims' concerns just as the Steubenville coach did.  (Want to bet that coach dropped Rohypnol into a few girls' drinks when he was in college?)

I have often heard it said that football is a religion.  It seems even more so this week.