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.

Reason Rally Videos

Boy howdy did we miss a good time!  Right after the Reason Rally I saw some of the speeches online, but there was a a lot of good stuff happening in the crowd too.  There were professional videographers, uppity would-be videographers hired by uppity creationists, and a bunch of people with off-the shelf Best Buy cameras recording all the goings-on.  Here are a few that I found on Youtube.

Brilliant take-down.  Best line:  (Q: What is your name?) A: "All I know is Jesus died for your sins." 




Aron Ra vs Christian dumbass. Best line:  "Abra Fucking Cadabra"

Aron Ra vs another Christian dumbass: 

Best lines:  "Gullibility is the ONLY criteria" (to get into Heaven)  and "If you don't believe that monkeys MIGHT fly out of my ass can I consider you irrational?"

Idiot who thinks the King James Bible is the best version of the Bible vs. ordinary atheist who knows the Bible chapter & verse, and knows that if a servant is considered "property" that's called SLAVERY: 





Atheist in the military: 



Fox News interview and the story they ran on O'Reilly later: 

Reason TV: What We Saw at the Reason Rally: 

Best sign: "Freedom requires freethinking."

Thunderf00t and ...?  vs. preacher who claimed it was okay for God to kill babies in Noah's Flood. Best line: "The Bible is clearly a borderline incoherent [inaudible] series of stories"  The best part of this video is the audio.  The rain sounds like the crackling flames of Hell!

Thunderf00t vs Eric Hovind, with Thunderf00t's commentary:  http://thunderf00tdotorg.wordpress.com/2012/04/05/eric-hovind-confesses-to-being-an-atheist/  or more briefly http://youtu.be/ZiqTU7N9EY8 with commentary/review.

Hovind tries to bait PZ Myers too:


(Cheesy "Creation Today" commercial begins @ 2:35)

He also stalked James Randi: 

(cheesy commercial begins at 5:20)

Randi shuts him down.  Hovind's pal is even lamer.  They were way out of their league.  Best line: "This is very juvenile and I don't get involved in juvenile arguments."

The cameraman couldn't resist flipping the bird in this one: 

Best line:  "If I wanted to walk around dressed as a pink unicorn all day... it would be no different in 100 years than if I stared at a blank wall and died of starvation."  


That's supposed to be some kind of argument for Christian morality.  Well, if he believes that making idols to false gods is immoral, and he dressed like the invisible pink unicorn, making it therefore visible and an idol, then uhh yeah he'd still be immoral according to his code.  I'd like to see him explain that to the fellow inmates in Hell.  "Why are you here?  I'm here for fucking 10-year-old boys up the ass."  "Oh, well I'm here for dressing up like a pink unicorn."  "Is that a metaphor?  *wink wink*"

No Reason Rally would be complete without the Westboro Baptist Church and their hateful signs:



Photo slideshow with rather good atheist rap soundtrack:

March 16 Links

 

Ancient mummies had hardening of the arteries. 

Woman sues Catholic Church to have headstone with sports logos
"the council determined the monument wasn't acceptable because of its secular nature. He said he informed Carr of the decision."  Secular?  NASCAR and the NFL are religions!

Freedom from Religion Foundation and 19 other plaintiffs are suing to take In God We Trust off of U.S. currency.

Study finds that atheists become emotionally aroused when imagining God doing something horrible.   I'm too cheap to pay $37.00 to read the article, but there's a summary here.

I've had some memory problems ever since a bad contrecoup concussion years ago.  Now studies show that this is not uncommon.

Inside the peepal conclave.

Ex-Westboro member outs Fred Phelps as racial bigot.

Fellow woman atheist blogger cuts to the chase about patriarchal atheist communities.  (found via Pharyngula, where another woman called me an asshole).  In response to her responses she's offered some advice to atheist men.

Baptists didn't get the answers they'd hoped for when they polled Americans on their attitude toward gays.

Christian missionaries in China promise practice learning English but are really trying to convert... to bring about Armageddon:  "radical evangelists believe in the biblical notion of the “Great Commission” — that Jesus can only return when preaching in every tongue and to every tribe and nation on earth is complete."


40 freethinkers protest a Good News Club's deceptive practices.

Homeschoolers want their kids to learn evolution, no really -- learn EVOLUTION, not learn about the evils thereof.

If Darth Vader had become an Evangelical Christian...

Did you know there are Jews in Iran?  I know one who left and now lives in Indiana.  I should ask him how he feels being surrounded by fundy Christians here.

A mother and her two kids are found dead in a creek... with a Bible nearby.  How many more religious nutters have to take children's lives before we stop saying religion is "beneficial?"

Bart Ehrman Lecture on the King James Bible

Fundies believe the KJB is the definitive text, which of course it's not.  But don't take my word for it, skip to 9:30 (unless you want to hear a lot of speechifying) and check out what Bart Ehrman has to say about it:

March 9 Links, a rather motley assortment

 Texas Christians teach the Bible in public schools, but they teach it objectively and they're inclusive.  Uhhh yeah right.

The Scarlet S:  Getting Branded for Being Single.  I didn't write it, but I could have.

Evolution in action:  one invasive species of ants seems to be doing better than another invasive species of ants.

I think the woman who got killed by a lion deserves a Darwin award.   Seriously.  Look at these pictures.  Just because you love big cats doesn't mean big cats love you!

Make your own fossils!  (shhh don't show this to creationists!)

Kansas Republicans pass an anti-abortion bill that includes a provision preventing employees of clinics that provide abortions from bringing cupcakes to their children's schools.  Yes.  Really.

Amnesty International calls on Bangladesh to protect minority Hindu population

Meanwhile, in India, Hindu radicals are reportedly attacking minority Christians.  They claim they only do "moral policing" and speak up for their gods and goddesses. 

Bulgaria "expresses regret" for deportation of 11,000 Jews during the Holocaust.  Better late than never?  Fortunately for 45,000 other Jews, the public didn't want them to be deported.

Muslim teens in the Netherlands think Hitler didn't go far enough.

At least the Jews of Venezuela can breathe easier now that Chavez is dead.... or can they?  If they are descendents of the Sephardic Jews who were kicked out of Spain in 1492, they are now welcome to come back.  Better late than never?

Turn off your irony meters!  The ambassador attending a ceremony to honor a French woman who saved Jews during the Holocaust is named "Bigot."  Really.  Looky here.

Bill O'Reilly sows a tiny seed of accommodation in an interview with creationist Jeffress.  Ken Ham fries his bacon.  Hilarity ensues.  Pop the popcorn this hatefest is just heating up.

"Club Beyond" is beyond the pale in prosletyzing to military youth.

How Trustworthy is the Bible?

Can anything in the Bible be considered well.... gospel truth?  Christianity is based on the factual truth of most of the New Testament, leaving aside the parts that are inconvenient to one's prejudices, of course. 

People who want to take the Bible literally should be aware of some well-known facts about their favorite book: 

• No part of the Bible survives in manuscript sources from the time they were supposedly written.
• None survive in copies that agree 100%
• None are error-free in any copy
• There are many, many contradictions in the Bible, even in the most "recent" parts
• The New Testament wasn't codified until 325 C.E.
•  The Torah (First Five books) took final form ca. 900 - 450 BCE
•  The Talmud was completed ca. 200 CE & 500 CE (two parts)
• The Old Testament was codified after the New Testament was
• Writings that were widely believed to be legitimate were not selected for inclusion
• Writings that have proved to be forgeries were selected for inclusion
• The Synoptic gospels were written at least 50 years after the death of Christ
• The Book of John was written almost 100 years after the death of Christ
• Mark, the earliest Gospel, says Christ will return before the apostles' demise, but he didn't
• Mark, Mathew, Luke and John didn't actually write the books named for them, nor do they have any connection to them whatsoever
• Paul went against Jewish law, insisting on Baptism rather than circumcision, in order to appeal to gentiles.
• Paul was not the undisputed leader of early Christians
• Paul never met Christ in person, and he was at odds with people who did
• Many of the letters attributed to Paul are forgeries
• The Gnostic Christian theology was suppressed because it disagreed with the idea that Jesus could be both God-spirit and human (they thought he was God-spirit only)
• The Ebionites were suppressed because they disagreed with the idea that Jesus could be both God-spirit and human (they believed he was human only)
• The places mentioned in Exodus were only settled at the same time during the 7th Century B.C., not during the supposed time of the Exodus
• Old Testament stories made Israel look bad because the final editors were residents of Judah and were trying to establish Judah as the true heart of the Jewish faith
• The New Testament's anti-Jewish bias dates each part - the more anti-Semitic, the later the book was written, because the earliest Christians considered themselves Jewish
•  Old Testament law was only thrown out so that gentiles didn't have to get circumcised or change their diets to become Christians, i.e., the O.T. laws were inconvenient
• Mathew & Luke are based on Mark, with some embellishments that seem to have specific agendas.

If your history textbook had this many problems, you would throw it out!

The Bible, on The "History" Channel

I was hoping for a history of the Bible, but no, it's a depiction of the Biblical stories.  Phooey.

Here's the Huffpo write-up:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/01/the-bible-history-channel-miniseries_n_2767706.html

Part entertainment, part evangelism, "The Bible" is accompanied by a tremendous commercial push, with trailers in movie theaters and ads across A+E Networks channels, including Lifetime. There are also three books based on the series and a DVD study kit....The series' website includes lesson plans for pastors who want to incorporate the show into Sunday sermons and study groups.

I think I'll pass.

Links for March 2

Just a few somewhat random links:

Take-down of William Lane Craig's position on morality.   (WLC doesn't participate and why should he? He phones in the same tired "answers" in every debate anyway)

William Lane Craig is organizing a Roots of Christian Civilization Cruise.   Israel is not on the tour.  Really.

Indiana drunk arrested after calling 911 (repeatedly) for a cheeseburger.  Funny but pathetic.

Woman sues prior employer, whom she says fired her because she voted for Obama.

Procrastination is not laziness.  It's neurosis.  So the blog author will get started working on it... on Monday.  Sheesh. Hey, whether you're a loser because you're lazy because you're neurotic, you're still a loser!

After losing his court case for assisted suicide, This man stopped eating and died.  He should have been helped to die with dignity.  h/t Naturalistic Atheism

National Geographic looks at the decimation of the African elephant due to poaching for Chinese purchase.  They interview a Buddhist art dealer who tells himself that the elephant died to donate its tusk to statues honoring Buddha, and that they are happy in the afterlife because of this.  (PBS page here)  Buy the DVD here.

A new book says the early Christians were not persecuted, at least to the extent they claim to have been.  Early Christians were liars?  Say it ain't so!

8 Reasons the Duggars are a creepy cult.  Brilliant breakdown of the "family" values in that crazy baby-factory family.  I found them creepy from the start, but I admit I couldn't stand to watch them enough to deconstruct their Godspeak.

Things are not looking good for private corporations suing to deny birth control to employees.

Ignorant Christian thinks he has "unanswerable" (scientific) questions for atheists.  And they call us arrogant!

David Barton got his quotation about 19th Century schools being defended by gun-toting students FROM A LOUIS LAMOUR NOVEL!!!!  Argh!  What a tool.

Ten "Cardinal" Sins Taint Pope Vote  And these are only the dirty child-raping rapist-protecting scum that we know about in the College of Cardinals.

Scientology reports on people who report on Scientology.

Edited to add:
Check out the comments for this post from the Why Evolution is True blog!

Useful things religion gave us

That religion gave us some wonderful cultural or personal goodies is no argument for religion being true, or even useful.   Without religion we would still come up with whatever our psyche demands because our psyche demands it.  People are people.

One example is meditation.  It was developed in Buddhism, migrated around the world, and now can be  completely divorced from the religion that developed it.

I have used it at points in my life and I find it very calming and focusing.  Awhile ago I ran into this article in the L.A. Times about meditation led by a former Buddhist nun.  The local museum here offers it unguided except for downloadable tracks to help you destress at the end of the week.

I'm an art lover, and I can get into a trance state at a concert or at a museum just from the art.  I can also meditate without tibetan chimes or an mp3 over earbuds.  This makes me think that meditation and the resulting feelings could have come about without religion, but without neuroscience people wouldn't understand their illusory mental state.

Neurologists have managed to study the effect of meditation (.pdf) on the brain.  Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows the brain in action, and studies have shown that meditation affects many parts of the brain.  Occam's razor would suggest that meditation is "all in the mind," and not at all supernatural.  I've heard the argument that neurological phenomena that have been interpreted as religious experience are evidence that God has made the human mind such that he can dial in, when the human has made his/her brain receptive of course.  But the same people who make this argument also believe that babies with undeveloped brains, brain-dead people, and people with severe brain damage have souls.  How conveeeenient.  So the soul is in the brain when it's having a religious experience, but it's also in the brain when it's incapable of having a religious experience.
So... religion may have invented meditation, or at least developed it, but it's all-natural and would probably have been discovered at some point anyway.  We discovered mind-altering drugs all over the world.  We would have discovered mind-altering practices, too.  Not to mention, it's possible to have a mental state that feels divine in many different cultures, with many different deities messing with the brain.  If there were one true deity, wouldn't everyone have the same interpretation of their weird neurological states?

And speaking of art, if not for religion, would we have Bach's B Minor Mass?  What about the Sistene Chapel?



Because I'm an art and music lover, this has been lobbed at me by believers more often than any other "argument."  Or perhaps "jabbed" would be the better word, since it is usually said with an implied "Touché."  I try very hard not to sigh before I point out that Bach also composed the Brandenburg concertos and the Mona Lisa is not a religious painting (not by Michelangelo, but still... )

In the past, artists did not have the artistic freedom that they do now.  Michelangelo and Bach had employers, and they had specific job duties.  In some eras, artists worked on commission, but they didn't have a free hand then, either.  They were the best of their generations, so they had employers or patrons with the means to give them a broad canvas so the products were pretty spectacular.  Michelangelo had many "canvases" and Bach had fine singers and instrumentalists to work with.  But Michelangelo didn't have the freedom to paint pagan stories at the Vatican and Bach couldn't tamper with the words of the Mass.  So the argument falls apart because of patronage.  You can turn it around and say something like this:  "Without the greediness of The Church, the best artists of Western Europe would have had the freedom to execute their own vision rather pander in religious sentiment."

The ultimate utility of religion is social control, especially supposed control of supposed morality.  This one gets trotted out often in the letters to the editor in the local paper, and probably all over the country.  A favorite version is: "Since they took God out of the schools there's been a decline in morality and society's going to hell in a handbasket."  Not to mention, Newtown happened because God was expelled.  There are a lot of problems with this, but foremost is that there are two Biblical moralities:  in the Old Testament, God punishes the whole species, or a whole country, or a whole city, based on what only some people are doing.  This terrifies the "good" people who think the rest of us are going to get them into trouble with their brutish sky daddy.  In the New Testament, morality is a total mess, because salvation is based not on works, but on belief, but the main idea is forgiveness.  Except in old-fashioned Catholicism, anything can be forgiven, including murder  (but not butt-sex!)

There is something to the idea that religion influences morality, but not as much as believers think.  First, not hurting other people is something you learn as a child in your family and then extend to your fellow humans in wider and wider circles.  Whether you learn not to hit other kids in school, Sunday school, or the soccerfield, you still learn that lesson.  Likewise, if your family is messed up or you have some brain malfunction and you turn out to be a sociopath, it doesn't matter if you go to church.  A church-going sociopath has a ready-made pool of gullible suckers to take advantage of, and the unchurched sociopath has to make mayhem somewhere else.

Fear of the wrath of the invisible sky-daddy does seem to help some people stay on the "right" side, but only because their beliefs in the supernatural have been a crutch preventing them from developing their natural moral muscle.  Those in the middle, a.k.a. those the Devil and God are battling for, will be influenced by whatever social force is most important to them, regardless of their religion.

So.... does the utility of a religion make any difference in whether it should be followed?  If you think that atheists should join a church even though they don't believe in any of the tenets, then maybe yes (though I strongly disagree on that point)  But if you think that the utility of religion is some kind of proof that atheists should believe in that religion, then the answer is NO!  It's just proof that money, power, and human evolution can sometimes result in something useful.  It's not proof of the supernatural.

Grandma Kills Grandkids, Mom Thinks They're With God

http://news.yahoo.com/cops-grandma-shot-self-young-grandsons-car-145334468.html

PRESTON, Conn. (AP) — A woman who picked up her two young grandsons from daycare and was supposed to bring them home so the 2-year-old could open his birthday presents instead drove them to a neighboring town and shot and killed the children and herself, state police and family members said.

The bodies of 47-year-old Debra Denison and her grandsons, 2-year-old Alton Perry and 6-month-old Ashton Perry, were found Tuesday night in a car parked near Lake of Isles in Preston, in the southeastern part of the state.

...Family members said Denison, the boys' maternal grandmother, had a history of mental health problems.

...Denison also had a 13-year-year-old son and, in her suicide note, she said in part that God was watching over him on Tuesday, White [the other grandparent] said.

In Facebook postings late Tuesday and Wednesday morning, Brenda Perry [the mom] thanked people for their prayers and said she loved her sons.

"God (has) two beautiful angels helping him now," the postings said. "My boys are in an amazing place we got a few great angels watching over us. love you Ashton and alton."

Well naturally you're going to go right into the God-talk when you yourself allowed your mentally ill mother to be on the approved list of people to pick up your kids even though the kids overwhelmed her.  And did mom know that grandma had access to a gun?  How did that happen?

Guilt and grief are terrible things, but how does imagining that God has enslaved a toddler and infant make things better?

Grandma left a suicide note, acknowledging that she is leaving her youngest child motherless.  God is watching over him?  God couldn't prevent her from offing the toddler and the baby, what good will God do for the teenager?

I seriously hope for the teen's sake that he gets placed in a foster home far, far away from his nutty Christian family.  As crazy as they are, he'd be better off being sent to a Catholic boarding school and being fucked up the ass by a pedophile priest.  At least those priests aren't murderers.

My interview at Deity Shmeity

http://deityshmeity.blogspot.com/2013/02/an-interview-with-lady-atheist.html

There are quite a few interesting interviews there (besides my scintillating one).  We atheists are a diverse bunch.

CNN Interviews: The Amazing Atheist & William Lane Craig

William Lane Craig wants Dawkins to debate him.  Dawkins won't.

CNN has WLC on, and who is the opposition?  Not someone with a Ph.D., but a vlogger who has a propensity to rant.  No offense to Mr. Amazing, but I wonder what Mr. I-want-to-debate-Dawkins felt when he found out CNN was putting up an unlettered vlogger against him.  Yes, even CNN knows that WLC's arguments are so weak that he's on the level with someone who rants in front of a webcam.  What's that in the background?  Could the disciples be carving up some Humble Pie for WLC?

WLC & The Amazing Atheist on the pope's retirement and the rise of atheism in the U.S.:

Links 2/23

Cut the shit and vaccinate your kids!  This means YOU, Catholics.

That Awkward Moment When Anti-Immigration Protesters Realize They're Immigrants too.  Priceless.

Arizona's attempt to take Medicaid funding away from Planned Parenthood patients gets the axe.  I wonder what would happen if Medicaid were withheld from Catholic hospitals.

CNN offers its Ten Rules of the Internet

Stumbled onto the improbably titled blog, Experimental Theology, which has some posts on something called "Christian A/Theism."   This blog reminds me of the Upton Sinclair quote:
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."   The corollary could be "It is difficult to get a theologian to admit to being an atheist when his salary is paid by a religious institution."  This poor soul is twisting into knots trying to craft a theology he can believe in.

Huffpo blogger thinks sciency atheists should be nicer to sciency religionists.  As a politically expedient tactic, maybe.  But does religion have a role in science?  uhhh NO!

The Anti-Science Left:  Author Alex Berezow on Why Both Parties Fail at Science.

Salon's list of 10 Celebs You Didn't Know Were Atheists.  I knew about Seth McFarlane and Angelina Jolie & Harry Potter.  Hugh Hefner being on the list is just what we need for the "You just want to sin" argument.  How about "You just want to adopt brown-skinned babies?"   Don't hear that one much.

How the U.S.'s five most numerous denominations view homosexuality (with promo of show about Methodists' dilemma)

George Costanza look-alike neo-nazi opens a yeshiva in Ohio.

Anti-Semitism is up in France.  Do the French like anybody?  Jews are leaving France, and they're also leaving Hungary.  In Tunisia, anti-semitic activity is on the rise.  What year is this?  1933?

Meanwhile, a film documents how The Philippines rescued 1300 Jews during the Holocaust.

New Video: "Sophia Investigates the Good News Club"

hat tip: The Thinking Atheist podcast. He interviews Katherine Stewart, who wrote The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children.  She also has a blog.  The Good News Club (not a club, really fundamentalist education with a five-year curriculum aimed at elementary children in public schools, even kindergartners) came to her hometown of Santa Barbara, California.  They're probably in your town too, or they want to be.  They're in 3500 schools nationwide.

She's not the only one drawing attention to this menace.  Check out "Good News Club: A Critique."

Saturday Night Live: "DJesus Uncrossed" Movie Trailer

Hilarious!

Random Links

7 Habits of Marginally Effective People  I've known a few of these


Wisconsin Republicans tell fundies that transvaginal ultrasound is their top priority.   Total lack of imagination.  I'm sure every unemployed undereducated Wisconsite would be happy to know this... if they could afford the interwebs or could read long words.

Cruise ship is study in dystopia society.  Christians get credit for being the good guys.  I'd love to know how many of the food-hoarding drunkards were Christians and how many of the good guys were atheists.

...and in dystopian India, where drugs are manufactured for American companies, there is only one school of pharmacy, and a government program gives six menstrual pads per cycle to rural teens.  When I was that age, those would have lasted me two days, max... or maxi.

The Vatican is full of old Italian men who don't like change.  And being sent to the United States is punishment.  *lol*

And in more Vatican news, they stonewalled a bishop who tried to get rid of a pedophile priest.

Perhaps they were unconcerned because a Buddhist teacher in L.A. is also a sex offender.

Emory University president praises the slavery-era decision to value blacks as 3/5 the value of whites.  It was a compromise "both" sides could agree on, but if I recall correctly, black people were not consulted on this.

The 30 y.o. pentecostal who headed the Office of Faith-based (and Community-based wink wink) Initiatives, is on his way out.  He e-mailed daily devotional passages to the president... as part of his job duties?  How was any of that Constitutional?  Or for that matter the whole office.  It should close.

Teenage girl gets thousands of dollars for obeying one stupid line in Deuteronomy.

In Missouri, a bill proposes to redefine "science" in a way that permits "intelligent" design in schools.

Epic Rap Battle: Adam vs. Eve

It looked like Adam was winning but then he went too far and it was downhill from there!

Video & Response "Jesus Christ is my Nigga"

Oh my my my my

Richard Dawkins on Al-Jazeera English

His answers should be familiar to most atheists, but it's unusual to see him being questioned by a Muslim:

The Week in Women

Lately, there have been so many stories that are really about women & girls that I decided to do a link round-up just of stories about women this week:

Drop in NYC teen pregnancy rate proves that sex education and availability of contraceptives 1) reduces unwanted pregnancy and 2) does not increase sexual activity.

Mary Ingalls, one of the real-life girls in the Little House series, did not go blind from scarlet fever, but most likely from "brain fever," a.k.a. viral meningoencephalitis.

Serial flashers in Houston spend little time in jail.  Creepy!

 Al-qaeda goons rape the women of Timbuktu.  Jihad is just a cover for men behaving badly.

Poor women in India receiving unnecessary hysterectomies for the insurance money.

Ministry reaches out to strippers to help them get out of the biz.  Now this is a cause secularists should take on!  Instead of asking "what does God want you to do?" we should reach out to these women and say "imagine your income if you earn a scientific or engineering degree!"  Of course, there are a lot of women stripping for their tuition money (I knew one personally in Texas), so it would be tough to top that money.

In Egypt, women protesters have been raped at protests.  Now they have even more to protest about.

Women and young people in Saudi Arabia are working against extremism.   Women can't even drive a car there.  They have a long way to go.

Biblical justification for women in combat.  Let's hope this trend doesn't slide down the slippery slope to justifying slavery, genocide, and capital punishment for minor offenses.

The best news, Malala goes home after successful surgery.  I wish she hadn't credited prayer for her recovery, but from the point of view of her cause that's the best thing she could have said.  Women have much greater chances of equality if it can be presented as compatible with religion.  Religion is just a tool for weak men to suppress women.  Strong men don't feel threatened by an educated woman.

Five Bad Arguments for Christianity

These bad arguments come from theistic sources trained in the field of Philosophy, which right there makes them suspect in my mind.  Philosophy only proves or disproves something within its own framework.  It doesn't account for evidence, which is a huge problem.  It also doesn't provide a method for taking down an argument based on faulty premises.  Some Christian arguments have such faulty premises that they're obviously flawed, but I chose these because they're often brought up in debates with atheists.  Some (Christian) philosophers will even snootily put down "evidentialism" or "naturalism" as if the basis for science (a.k.a. the study of reality) is a faulty reasoning system.  They know that the existence of God can't be proved by the scientific method so they fall back on philosophical argumentation.  They live in their own little world and they play by their own rules then claim they win because the rest of us live in reality.

Ontological Argument:  "I can imagine a God so great that there can't be anything greater, therefore God."  Or maybe "The idea exists therefore it's real."  The problem with this is of course the hubris of the philosopher thinking that his mind is so great it can define reality.  In The Forest People, by Colin Turnbull, an anthropologist studying Mbuti Pygmies in Africa travels with his guide to a hill overlooking a savannah, something the guide had never seen before.  Animals in the distance appear to get bigger as they approach the hill.  The guide is terrified.  He's never seen an animal grow before his eyes. He had never seen anything at a distance because he lived his life in forests.  Was he stupid?  No, his imagination was limited by his experience.  That's true of all of us, even people who have Ph.D.s in philosophy from Cambridge or Harvard.

Argument from Ignorance:  "I can't imagine there's another explanation for [fill in the blank with almost anything from nature], therefore God."  This argument also sometimes gets used by "UFOlogists" and other delusionals.  This argument proves nothing except the limited imagination of the person making the claim.  It's a favorite of creationists, who will say "Scientists don't know everything, therefore God."   Creationists' favorite is the gap between species in the fossil record.  Fossils don't document every tiny stage of evolution for each species, because 1) fossils are rare and 2) fossils rarely get discovered even if they survive the millenia.  The biggest problem with this argument is that if there's something that's not known, how could it not being known it be proof of anything at all?  It's not known!  You could make up almost anything!  "Scientists haven't discovered the missing link between Austrolopithicus and Homo Sapiens, therefore man is the product of space aliens breeding with Austrolopithicus."

Argument ad Populum:  "Religion is popular, therefore it's true."  A billion believers can't be wrong... unless they're the billion or so who are Muslims.  Or the combined four billion (at least) who aren't Christian.  A variation is the number of people over time who have believed something.  "People have been devout Christians for two thousand years, therefore it must be true."  If time were the main proof of validity of a belief wouldn't Zoroastrianism or Buddhism have a leg up on Christianity?  (This is also called Appeal to Tradition)  This argument never works on me because my grandmother said to me at least once a week all through my childhood "If [kid I liked] jumped off a bridge would you jump off too?"

Cosmological Argument: "The stars, therefore God."  Also, "The Universe, therefore God." This is a favorite of William Lane Craig, "professional philosopher," or more properly "master debater."  (Note, I think Craig is a dumbass)  He wins debates by cluttering up his arguments with red herrings, but the essence of his argument is that it's absurd to believe the universe could come into being without a mind whipping it up.  (Perhaps a kind of ontological argument by proxy)  He conveniently doesn't think it's absurd to believe a god could come into being without some other greater mind whipping it up or else he wouldn't be able to make a living.  Note, this argument has been around for centuries and it's still the best thing WLC can come up with.  With all that populum being believers for all those centuries, shouldn't there be a few good ideas surfacing eventually?

Pascal's Wager:  "If I'm right I win!  If you're wrong you burn!  therefore, God"  (Named for the medieval dude who came up with the idea)  Again, lack of imagination.  There may be more than two possibilities, and betting on only one of them isn't that smart if you haven't investigated every one of them thoroughly.   If someone throws Pascal's Wager at me, I answer: "What if you're wrong and Buddhists are right and you'll have to live through 500 lifetimes as a cockroach because you claimed to know something you couldn't possibly know?"

Christians really believe that these are closers.  It's the best they have, which is really sad.  Well, they sometimes pull out the "I feel the presence of god in my soul" crap, which isn't really an argument as much as an admission of neurological disturbance.  (I've blogged about that here and here)

Fortunately, the Everyday Atheist doesn't have to get a Ph.D. in philosophy to shoot down Christian argumentation.  If this post has put the debating fire in your belly, there's plenty more to stoke it out on the interwebs:

• Twenty Arguments for the Existence of God Theistic but much less rabid than the typical Christian apologetics page.  Atheists offer advice on rebuttals here.
• Timeline of World Religions
• Nizkor exhaustive list of fallacious arguments
• Cosmological Argument:  articles at infidels.org
• Video: A Universe from Nothing, by physicist Lawrence Krauss, introduced by Richard Dawkins, biologist and atheist who famously refuses to debate William Lane Craig.  Krauss puts the kibosh on the kalam in the video and in the book.

Dangerous Persuasions: Scientology on Investigation Discovery

Dangerous Persuasions.  Season One.  Episode One.

Wow.  This woman joined Scientology, got exploited doing crazyass work, then was promoted to being a spy.  On orders of Scientology, she got a job in a psychiatry office, and she took documents home, had them copied, then sneaked them back into the files.  She also spied on an author, Paulette Cooper, who wrote a book against Scientology: The Scandal of Scientology.  (Available for download at her site)

After spying on a Suppressive Person , she gets transferred to headquarters (Sea Org), and enjoys only a brief period of having some bit of respect.  But at HQ any misstep can result in being rehabilitated.  This rehabilitation consists of menial jobs at HQ, such as janitorial or food service.  The only way out was to write an essay saying how horrible she was and getting everybody else to sign it.  Everybody!  They imposed this ridiculous punishment on her while she was pregnant.

Humiliation served its purpose, making her duly afraid to piss off the superiors.  After this, she and her husband get transferred to Hollywood to oversee the fleecing of celebrities.  They get called back to Sea Org for more rehab, but this time they decide to leave Sea Org and just be regular Scientologists, like regular Catholics, I guess.  She deconverts, and Scientology can't tolerate that.  They subject her to brutal interrogation techniques, or more properly, psychological torture.  After being sent back home, the poor thing snaps completely, and winds up in a mental hospital.  This gets her husband's attention, and he also deconverts.

At the very end, she says how she's at peace, but she looks a little drugged and creepy, which is unfortunate.  She was probably just a little tired, or maybe she was trying to convince herself that she really was on the other side of her experiences.  I wonder how truly peaceful a person can be when they know they are a "Suppressive Person" in the eyes of such an evil organization.

Piers Morgan advertised having a former Scientologist on tonight.  I wonder if it will be her.

A few links

Extreme Sports "star" dies.  Now the only prize he can win is a Darwin Award.

Abortion protester banned from all of D.C.  I wonder how that will stand up in court.  I think considering his latest stunt was climbing a tree in the freezing cold without gloves, he could easily be committed for being a danger to himself or others.

Lawrence Krauss on the difference between science and religion (from the Why Evolution is True blog)

Live by the Sword, die by the sword...  this murder is a shame, but the real question is, will conspiracy theorists blame Jesse Ventura?

India will have a Violence Against Women act finally.  Perhaps they will shame Congress into reauthorizing the U.S.'s Violence Against Women Act.

Perhaps that's because one of Hinduism's sects is called "Smartism."

Pedophile priest still gets a promotion in Newark, N.J.  His name is "Fugee."  Wyclef Jean could not be reached for comment.

The Los Angeles Archdiocese released info on 122 pedophile priests, and relieved Cardinal Mahony of his "duties" for his role in covering up sex abuse.  Better late than never?  (the L.A. Times has some of the documents online here)

There's a new book out on Scientology, but you can't get it in Canada.

Next weekend is Evolution Weekend... in churches!

Links Links Links

Just a few this week:

Atheist mom blogs on CNN, with excellent list of things that are wrong with "God."   (h/t Kriss!)

Dolphin swims up to divers for help with fishing line!  Amazing video.   People like this are the reason why I really really really hate the Christian notion that humans are evil depraved sinners.  I disagree.  We can be totally awesome.

India has naked nuns...  well, they could go naked 24/7 but they don't.  Still, it's an interesting sect within an interesting sect.

Why Jews gravitate to Buddhism.  Don't miss the punchline of the opening story!
United Methodist online bookstore pulls its Lego assault rifle manual.  I feel safer now.

The only survivor of the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing tells her story.

Oh rats!  Now I have to go back to Paris.  The Louvre just opened its new Islamic Art wing.

The LA Archdiocese of the Catholic church is releasing information on its pedophiles.  Well, really they're releasing documentation about how they hid the information from the public.

Is the YMCA just "The Y" now?

I grew up in a city that had only one health club:  the YMCA.  If you wanted to be a competitive swimmer or one of the cool kids or prove that your parents were richer than my parents, you belonged to the Y.  Then when I grew up I moved to Brooklyn, where there was a YMHA.  The "H" was for Hebrew.  They didn't exclude non-Jews but it was clear they wanted to do for Jews what the YM"C"A did for Christians -- provide healthy activities.  Good for them.  I joined a for-profit health club so I didn't have to explain myself at the H.  It never made any sense to me why there had to be a religious affiliation to swim laps or do jazzercize.  Over the years I've joined other clubs, but never had any religious entanglements.  Even Krav Maga, which is based on Israeli military self-defense training, had no religious significance except that some of our classes were at the local Jewish Community Center.

Meanwhile, from the web, or maybe TV, dunno... I got the idea that the YMCA was trying to dissassociate from the "C" and just call itself the "Y."

I looked up the local "Y" on the web because I want to swim laps.  I see the logo on the front page.  So far so good.  Mostly Y.  No emphasis on the "C."  They even state their purposes in secular terms:  For youth development, For healthy living, For social responsibility.

Well this sounds nice doesn't it?  I decided to check out the adult programs.  As I read down the list, it looked like the usual health club offerings but then...

• Wellness
• Basketball
• Volleyball
• Swim Lessons
• Private Swim Lessons
• CPR Training
• Bootcamp
• Group Exercise
• Tennis
• Bible Study
• Strength Training
• Personal Training
• Climbing Wall

 What what WHAT?  Bible Study???  There's no book club (for other books) or GED class or any other kind of "study."  But they seem a little embarrassed about it, and they just bury the Bible Study in between Tennis & Strength Training.  

I couldn't resist.  I had to look it up, and it cracked me up.  Here's the description of the downtown "Prayer and Share" class:  Our non-denominational adult fellowship group meets Wednesday mornings at 9-10 in the Downtown Y conference room. Led by Karen Wenger, the group shares payers, praises and concerns, a devotion and meaningful fellowship. No books or fees required.

No books at all?  Not even a Bible?  That's rich.  Here's the other "Bible" Study: This session's theme is "The Patriarch" by Beth Moore All are welcome! We are not affiilated with a specific church or denomination. We enjoy a variety of participants from all around the Muncie Community. Come join us!

Okay, so they have a couple of watered-down Christian feel-good "classes" for personal well-being.  Or maybe all those jocks who play basketball and lift weights won't go to a Bible study that actually requires studying the Bible. So maybe this Y isn't necessarily a Christian thing with a big "C" is it?  Anyone can rent space or set up a class in a library, too.  The "Bible Study" might not mean anything...

So I move on to the page with the membership fees.  And then it's very clear that this is indeed a Christian organization.  The "Y" may be their biggest letter but it's right here in black and white:

• FAMILY MEMBERSHIP CATEGORIES ARE DEFINED USING IRS STANDARDS
• FAMILY MEMBERSHIP - HUSBAND AND WIFE PLUS TAX DEPENDENTS
• SINGLE PARENT FAMILY - UNMARRIED ADULT PLUS TAX DEPENDENTS
• HUSBAND & WIFE - LEGALLY MARRIED MAN AND WOMAN

http://www.muncieymca.org/membershipfees/ 

This means you, GAYS!  Register separately and pay twice you sinners!

Seriously?  They felt they had to say that?  Did they think that single people would fake being gay to get a discount?  Or are they just trying to scare the gays away?  I've seen some pretty buff gay people.  If you are the type of person that believes you can study the Bible without actually reading it, I can only imagine what your work-out routine is like!  The gays would put you to shame!!!

So in the end, I've decided to just do some walking around the neighborhood for and then in the summer possibly join one of the local private pools (assuming they let gays and black people and other types of mutants join).

If they're going to make a statement on their membership page, then I'll make a statement by not joining.

...and by blogging about their bigotry.



.

Domincan Friar fired for Mythicist book

http://www.thesun.ie/irishsol/homepage/news/4754775/Pulpit-Fiction.html

Thomas Brodie's book Beyond the Quest for the Historical Jesus is now high on my must-read list!  It's the ultimate in courage when someone whose livelihood depends on a religion comes out against it.  It's costing him his life-long profession and probably dozens of personal relationships.  I applaud his courage "coming out," though apparently he's been dancing around the topic in his publishing career.

In general, I'm surprised at the total-mythicist stance, i.e. that Jesus never existed at all.  I had kind of assumed that Jesus had been a rabbi with a bit of a following who did get crucified, but whose "resurrection" was more like Elvis sightings.

I'm currently reading a self-published book that synthesizes the research and arguments behind the mythicist position:

Nailed: Ten Christian Myths that Show Jesus Never Existed by David Fitzgerald.

I just finished the section that rips apart the gospels.  I never knew that Mark gets details wrong that a Jew would have known.  Then, Matthew comes along and corrects it and Jewifies Christ a bit more.  Luke meanwhile makes Jesus a bit more like the Jebus we know and love, and then John is off-the-charts nutty for Christ and at the same time anti-semitic despite worshiping a Jew.

Fitzgerald also validates my opinion that John is the Republican gospel.  I've noticed that the least "Christian" Christians tend to put more faith in John and quote John more often than any of the other gospels.   Quite the eye-opener, with references for deeper reading. John's Jesus is no poor-loving meek-inheriting Jesus. He's Superhero Jesus!

I was planning to review this book by Fitzgerald but every page (or Kindle screen) is so packed with information I'll just recommend it for anyone wanting an overview of the problems in the whole "Christ was a Real Person" idea.  (There are many!)

Link of the Week!

I published the round-up too soon!  A Bulgarian politician is almost assassinated but 1) the gun misfires, 2) he redirects the gun WITH ONE FINGER (krav maga teaches redirecting guns the other way but ya gotta do what ya gotta do) and 3) security guards and audience members take down the assassin and beat the crap out of him.

Okay, I'm a pacifist, but I will make an exception for people who put guns to other people's temple:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2265002/Ahmed-Dogan-Heart-stopping-moment-man-pulls-gun-Bulgarian-opposition-leader-makes-speech-live-TV.html?ICO=most_read_module

Link round-up

"Spiritual Healer" needs cabbage juice to cure cancer. Why not just zap the cancer away with a few voodoo words?

NYT: Warning Signs of Violence Often Unclear  “But most mass murders are done by working-class men who’ve been jilted, fired, or otherwise humiliated — and who then undergo a crisis of rage and get out one of the 300 million guns in our country and do their thing,” Dr. Stone said.

Chilling memoir of militant Islamists in Kashmir forcing Hindus into exile.  (I had to look up the word "Pandit," which is the origin of the word "pundit."  It means learned people)

Catholics amend unsanitary practices during flu season.  I always thought drinking from a common communion chalice was creepy but I was assured the alcohol in the wine killed the germs.

Catholic churches in Germany turn away rape victims rather than deal with the question of abortion. 

Disgraced gay cross-dressing suspended priest busted on meth charges.  What I don't understand is how you can tell if a priest is a cross-dresser when they are required to wear something resembling a dress at work!

Brooklyn is still Jewish!  There are 561,000 Jews in Brooklyn, 1/3 of New York's Jews, and the Jewish population is very diverse.  It was very diverse when I lived there in the 1980s.  That's why Jewish stereotypes make me facepalm.  I knew ultra-orthodox, Hassidic, and ham-eating shiksa-dating reform Jews there.

Evangelicals are starting to come around and drop their bigotry against gays.  Not only have they figured out that gay people are just gay, not evil, they've also figured out that the Bible is ambiguous.

Meanwhile, Untouchable Hindu "Dalits" can finally enter a temple, thanks to the deity setting a price for their sins: a little assistance with funds for decorating.  Anti-gay Christian denominations should pay attention.  This could be the path to rapprochment for them!

It's not just the Catholic church that's been covering up a pedophilia problem.  Evangelicals are being taken to task for it too.

Atheist Experience Classic!

The latest episode had a classic caller and classic closer.  Apparently it even attracted the attention of the Huffington Post!  For those without the patience to watch the whole painful thing, here's the gist:  Shane from Phoenix claims to have a proof of god via morality, but his ideas are all over the place and he keeps moving the goalposts, resorting to straw man arguments, and in general being a very poor debater.

Tracey's final point is the closer to close all closers:

"If I were in a position to prevent a child from being raped, I'd intervene.  That's what makes me different from your god."

My new hero! Mike Lee, the "Religious Antagonist." Now this is what I call "militant" atheism:

A few links...

Catholic preaches to Mormons about evangelizing and says "faith's beauty can lead even athiests to God."  I guess if you can believe in a talking snake and Paul's psychotic experience on the road to Damascus you can believe that too.

 Thursday's school shooter had been bullied.  CBS belittles the kid's experience then quotes witnesses confirming it.   Well, so much for anti-bullying campaigns's effectiveness.  Of course lessening the anguish of the victims was never the true inspiration for those campaigns anyway, it was just to keep kids from snapping and killing the cool kids.  Seems it didn't work at all!

Perhaps evangelical leaders supporting more gun control will keep the cool kids safe from the revenge of the nerds.  ...assuming evangelicals will still call themselves evangicals.  This WaPo editorial says the word needs to be rebranded.

Not new, but new-ish:  Mormon women declare "wear pants to church day."  I have always found the insistance on dresses for women and pants for men really stupid, considering Christ is always pictured in a caftan, a.k.a. a dress!

I ran across the above link after reading this article about the religious objection to contraception coverage at the same site.  The author is Howard M. Friedman, of The Religious Clause blog, which I follow.  I highly recommend the blog and the article.

Catholics and Protestants are going at it again in Ireland.

Being "spiritual" without having someone else's ancient delusional writings to frame and justify your magical thinking is supposedly related to mental illness.   (This article includes a link to a Businessweek page of LOL graphics about Correlation vs Causation)

Huge study being headed up by atheists.  This guy calls Dawkins "philosophically uninformed," which makes me wonder about his aim to study religion's place in human evolution.  I look forward to Dawkins' review of their publication.

Ex-Scientologist talks about how she stalked suppressive persons

A new series on Investigation Discovery channel called "Dangerous Persuasions" opens with an episode on Scientology. Wednesday, December 16, 10:00 p.m. ET/PT Here's the blurb:

Devoted Scientologist Nancy becomes an undercover spy to root out The Church's enemies. Little did she know she'd become immersed in the organization's secret war against its critics. Will her mission lead to her mental breakdown?

It's very courageous of her to do this.  I think this one is worth DVR-ing in case Scientology gets to the owners of Discovery channel!

Amazing Crash Video

This is so scary. I have driven many many miles on roads in this condition (but I don't tailgate, which is what the SUV driver was doing)

One time I was on I-71 in Ohio during a blizzard, and a Chevy Suburban crossed a very very wide median, came within feet of front-ending me, then veered back onto the median. They were so close I could see the driver's & passenger's faces, and I had nowhere to go! This video reminded me of that time.

LOL wut?

I don't know if this has been turned into a meme yet, but It got me photoshopping as soon as I saw it.

The Original:

My immediate thought:

...and I couldn't resist:

...and then I thought the pope needed commentary:

Fox and (Best) Friends?