But I thought religion helped people live a moral life! We’re going to have to really struggle to find an ethical rationale for this pastor’s monstrous behavior.
A Baltimore pastor who worked with developmentally disabled people was charged Friday with befriending a blind and disabled man in his care, then paying a hit man $50,000 in church funds for an execution so he could collect life insurance money.
Police say Kevin Jerome Pushia, 32, who worked for four months as an operations manager for the Arc of Baltimore before abruptly quitting in January, confessed to plotting to kill Lemuel Wallace.
Pushia told police he persuaded Wallace and “numerous” other mentally challenged individuals to list him as a beneficiary on insurance policies.
A terse notation in Pushia’s planning calendar for Feb. 5, the day after Wallace was found dead in a Leakin Park bathroom stall from multiple gunshot wounds to the head and back, reads: “L.W. project completed,” police said.
Errm, Pushia must have wanted the money so he could perform good works, and he was helping Lemuel Wallace to be happier in heaven with Jesus?
Maybe it would be easier to admit that religion is ineffective at imposing any kind of socially useful moral code, but is a handy disguise for the amoral among us.
Jumpin’ Jeezus, this guy must’ve been taking a cue from the god of the bible to be that nasty & amoral.
May I just say: Holy Shit!!!
What a horrid creature…
In politics or in everyday life, people still take the faith card as some fail-safe proof of morality…
I mean really… They have warnings about it in the Bible… Wolves in sheep’s clothing, etc…
But I guess that any system of morality which makes credulity a virtue is destined to be manipulated, it’s almost as if it were ‘designed’ to be taken advantage of. Faith is such a wonderful justification for anything, is it not?
Holy shit
That’s insane
Guess he’s got some of that mutated immoral DNA. :-
Take a crazy man, add religion, and you have a sociopath. After all, if they do it for god they will still get into heaven. Sigh.
But he wasn’t a True Christian™.
My favorite stories are the ones where the clergy are villains–those stories are honest and tell it like it is.
Oh heck, this is small potatoes. You really want to get your hair curled? Join the FFRF and you will get their monthly newsletter, at least a page of which is always dedicated to the Black Collar Blotter, a compendium of pastoral malfeasance from around the country. It’s actually quite depressing to read, but a constant reminder that we all need to keep up the fight.
Yet another case of someone using religion to cover their criminal activities. How horrible.
It’s like using a broom to sweep, isn’t it?
The good rev kept Lemuel from living a life of sin and and, as PZ points out, got him into heaven that much faster. What more can you ask for?
I smell a No True Scotsman rationalization coming from the religious set.
Just consider the mindset behind murder as “project” – the kind of project that has to be recorded on a calendar, apparently.
And what kind of a person do you have to be to accept money to murder a stranger?
There’s a blog out there that posts all the stories of priests and clerics getting busted for sexual abuse of a minor, rape, etc. I’ve got to forward this link to him.
But it’s true, faith lets people overlook a lot of stuff.
Can I paraphrase Obi Wan Ken-obi?
And, a bit off topic. In regards to Your talk at SOU, Thursday night:
Professor Myers, again, thank you. Your talk was, as I said when I intruded upon your packing up to steal a handshake and utter a few kind words on my way out, Entertaining and Informative. I believe that was the order in which they stumbled out of my mouth. Although the other way around is more fitting.
I wish the talk could have gone one for a bit longer. What I found interesting, apart from Your talk, were the questions of others, particularly the questions that seemed subtly (or not so) crafted to trip you up, which didn’t happen owing to how rather well you handled them. That being effectively and affably I would say.
I would have loved to hang about for a beer or three at The Standing Stone, but I had a bit of a drive. Thus, next time I find myself with a flagon of ale/lager/stout or whatever in hand, I’ll shall face Minnesota and imbibe with gusto.
And thanks for informing us of Nylonase and Trichoplax. Very interesting.
Sam the Bone Oboe.
Okay, weird blast of virtual apple polishing ended. I suppose I could have said banana, but the polishing of bananas could be construed to have more personal connotations and thus is one’s own business. And besides, I think that Ray Comfort has had them all polished already anyway.
The good rev kept Lemuel from living a life of sin and and, as PZ points out, got him into heaven that much faster. What more can you ask for?
Totally OT, but this is just so cool I couldn’t resist!: ACDP ‘devastated’
Ok, “ACDP”=African Christian Democratic Party.
We (South Africa) are a totally backward country, but we’re nowhere near as bad as the US, hehe.
What’s really striking is that the guy was stupid enough to note it in his calendar. What he really afraid he’d forget that he had a hit done on a blind guy? And did he wrap an actual ribbon around his ass before the cops came?
I am ashamed, but not suprised, that this fucker is from my home state. I can only wish him years of unwelcome sodomy in the state-pokey.
I’ll bet the pastor uses religion to try to get a lenient sentence.
Good luck in prison padre, I’ve heard inmates don’t like those who commit crimes against the vulnerable.
[sarcasm]
Obviously he wasn’t a True Christian™
[/sarcasm]
I think this man should be hung upside down via fish hooks through his testicles and beaten like a pinata with a mace until all his skin comes off.
Wait, I take it back. That’s too merciful for him.
(meaning that maybe his bible god will send him to hell for eternity)
To be fair, this is the sort of heinous crime that God of the Old Testament would punish with a plague of locust to munch on everything from your crops to your genitals, coupled with an especially virulent strain of magical leprosy.
dude, wake up! there is simply far too much money involved… just like the tobacco lobby won the war until the insurance lobby pumped more money in… look at the developing world for proof.
only when the unbeliebers among us put more cash into the effort than churches can muster will we open the chink in their armour…
he who has the most cash wins.
Wow. I’m rarely shocked by stories like this anymore, but this is insane
@LRA – Your suggestions of vengeful retributions are absolutely appalling. No crime is deserving of torture or eternities of it. In addition, as has been suggested, this man is likely a sociopath, and probably needs psychological help. He is responsible for what he has done, but violent revenge will not resolve anything. I don’t know how serious you are, but you should know that if you reject the morality of the Old Testament.
Good point.
@28
While I’m horrified at the torture LRA would visit on this paragon of religion, your squishy “he needs help” baloney is just the other side of the pendulum. What this murderer needs is to be locked away from a society that he is not willing to be a cooperative part of. Would you show compassion to a torturer who enjoyed his work? I would not. He would forfeit his place in society and be warehoused until his natural demise. A sociopath deserves no better, especially those that prey on the weak or enjoy inflicting pain or death.
Sounds like a story for next year’s Law and Order series.
Give him a fair trial; euthanize him like any other rabid animal if found guilty.
LRA @ #23
Watch it, dude. You are slobbering all over your keyboard…
@29
There is no vindication in punishment for the sake of vengeance. Of course this murderous hack should be put away for the good of society… But, if he does need psychological help, that should not be denied him.
If the sickest of torturers can be reformed or helped through compassion, I would not deny it, difficult though it may be. Granted, violent psychopaths still have to be kept away from the general public, but it should be done reasonably.
By learning about the motivations and thought processes which lead to such horrendous acts, we can prevent them. And yes, I think that compassion is an important part of an honest inquiry into preventing violence.
But let’s not forget, the pastor was ‘very distraught’ that he had, uh, hired a hitman to have someone murdered for money. That should be enough, right? We can let him off, because he’s *religious* and thus *morally upstanding*.
(Lest this seem ridiculous, they[1] regularly claim that we who do not believe are not morally upstanding in the total absence of evidence, so why should it stop them continuing to claim that an actual murderer-by-proxy is morally upstanding in the face of contrary evidence? Reasoning from the evidence is really not their strong point.)
[1] generic asshat-religious They
from #14
“And what kind of a person do you have to be to accept money to murder a stranger?”
A person like Dick Cheney and his friends at Haliburton, Kellogg,Brown,& Root.
I have to question the judgement of the life insurance companies in all this. A beneficiary of a life insurance contract has to demonstrate an insurable interest in the life of the policyholder, not in his death. This guy obviously did not–the disabled man was worth more to him dead than alive. When I was a life insurance underwriter, this arrangement would not have flown without severe scrutiny.
Is this surprising? After all religion is about taking advantage of the weaknesses of people; this guy is just being creative.
He obviously wasn’t a True Christian™ – if he was he would have just prayed to the holy hitman upstairs to do the killing.
Yep, it’s probably safe to say that he wasn’t a True Christian™ (btw I like the trademark sign, nice touch)
“Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.” Matthew 7:15 KJV
Since when was religion *not* the domain of murderers, perverts, thieves, megalomaniacs, and an assortment of other lowlife? The history of the catholic church is full of stories worthy of biblical status; the wanton murder, hypocrisy, and voluminous crimes would surely please the Old Testament god.
@41
Mad Scientist, I don’t think it necessary to single out the Catholic church, just because it has the longest history. ISTR blood on the hands of many Christian sects, like our home-grown Mormons. Murder, molestation, and megalomania are a staple of organized religion wherever and whenever it takes root.
Wowbagger, OM writes:
He obviously wasn’t a True Christian™ – if he was he would have just prayed to the holy hitman upstairs to do the killing.
Thank, uh, monkey!!! The holy hitman has really poor fire control and probably would have taken out Richmond, Va, with a tsunami or something, in an attempt to get the job done.
This post and its thread are kinda silly since it doesn’t really signify much if a single cleric acts badly, especially since nobody can reasonably claim that either he or his church would claim that it’s OK to hire hit men and off the homeless for the insurance money. At least if you complain about R.C. priests abusing children you could make a case for some connection between enforced celibacy and sexual acting out. All the snark in this thread amounts to a complicated and obviously unfair way of saying, “preachers, we don’t like ’em.” As if anybody hadn’t noticed that.
Pharyngula’s Fallacy
So Pharyngula says, “I thought religion helped people live a moral life.” Are you getting that from studies comparing two populations? If so, quoting one anecdotal story is an argumentation fallacy.
Of course, I know everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.
But if Christian site put up a story of an atheist serial killer, as proof that Christianity is better, wouldn’t you object?
No one seems to have turned off the “Sign My Guestbook” link at the Rev’s website yet …
Obviously. How can lacking a belief in something inspire action of any kind? Pointing out the the atheism of someone who does bad things is as valid as pointing out they don’t believe in unicorns, leprechauns, mermaids or minotaurs.
My favourite christian story of the week was of the President of Paraguay,actually,a former bishop,who seemed to have had quite a few worldly urges:
http://en.mercopress.com/2009/04/15/paraguay-bishops-ask-forgiveness-for-the-sins-of-church-members
Sabio @ 45,
remember,atheists are not the ones claiming that religion and faith are a needed ingredient to be moral human beings in the first place.
Actually, I think one could very reasonably claim that he thought it was OK to hire hit men and off the homeless for the insurance money since, you know, that’s what he did.
Hey Sabio @45, I read this post as a reply to those that claim that religion is a necessary precondition for morality. Often supporters of this claim will conflate necessary with sufficient. I think of today’s anecdote as a counterexample of the sufficiency claim: obviously, this particular religious figure did not behave in a morally acceptable way.
Of course you must be more rigorous when refuting the claim that religion is necessary for morality, but as for sufficiency, I say only one counterexample is enough.
I’m not speaking for everyone, but surely I’m not the only person who read the post this way?
also, in case it is unclear from my previous post: I don’t think religion is necessary for morality… and now that I’ve thought about it further, perhaps showing that it is possible for an atheist to behave morally would refute that claim as well. I’ve seen tons of examples. Heck, I wouldn’t call myself religious and yet I’m pretty sure I can tell right from wrong.
Maybe you’re thinking of some weaker claim, like “some people need religion to behave morally,” but I still don’t think that’s what prof. Myers is trying to say with his anecdote.
@ 45
He used his ministry to make contact with the vulnerable.
The non-minister of the non-believing non-church likely would not get people to sign beneficiary agreements.
The whole point here is that predators have a handy hiding place in church.
make that, I don’t think that’s what prof. Myers is trying to REFUTE with his anecdote.
sorry, not used to proofreading my own posts, it seems.
This post and its thread are kinda silly since it doesn’t really signify much if a single cleric acts badly
Yep. It’s like pointing at Stalin and saying “naughty atheist!”
The point is that people appear to do horrible vile stuff regardless of whether they are faithful or not. That is pretty strong evidence that faith has no affect on whether or not you do vile stuff. Which has implications for theologists but is mostly a “well, duh” for atheists.
Ding ding ding!
Folks, it’s not a secret to religious people that clergymen do evil things so if it “has implications for theologists,” you’d have to assume they’d have noticed ’em already as indeed they have. There are long (and very boring) discussions of the issue beginning with the writings of the church fathers of the first few centuries A.D.
By the way, how can anybody think that what this guy did was “pretty strong evidence that faith has no affect on whether or not you do vile stuff?” After all, an experiment with an n of 1 is bound to have rather large error bars. I don’t know whether religious personnel are more or less likely to do various unpleasant things. Surely, it’s an empirical question that ought to addressed with something better than the ESP approach of adding an anecdote to a prejudice.
They do that constantly. They even change monsters into atheists by lying they are so desperate. Hitler was a catholic and his legions of followers who did all the actual work were Lutherans and catholics. According to fundie lies, they were all atheists even though the huge amount of data says the opposite.
Hmmm, lying is a sin, that 10 commandments stuff. That never stops them, lying for the fundies is the norm, not the exception. No one has been able to find the the mythologica xian morality.
Jim @56,
That’s close to a quote-mine. Here’s the original proposition by Marcus.
The point is that people appear to do horrible vile stuff regardless of whether they are faithful or not. That is pretty strong evidence …
He’s referring to a pattern in the data, of which this is a datum.
The fact that more than one person (or parson) has done wrong is also not news to anybody. What would be strong evidence “that people appear to do horrible vile stuff regardless of whether or they are faithful or not”are data (not anecdotes) that show that clerical people are more likely to do wrong than others. I don’t know if religious personnel are more or less likely to do unethical or criminal things than others or whether getting the faith (as defined by some consistent, verifiable measure) tends to increase or decrease a person’s preexisting tendencies to engage in deviate behavior, which might be the more relevant question.
A more objective study to demonstrate the Religion -> Evil hypothesis would be to
a) Estimate the ratio “a = believers : atheists” in an entire society.
b) Estimate the ratio “b = believers : atheists” in prisons
If a < b, that's strong evidence in favor of that hypothesis, because if you have 10 % atheists in a society, but only 1% of prisoners are atheists, that tells a lot.
Woah, teh internetz eated my post.
If b is greater than a, it is strong evidence for the hypothesis that Religion -> evil.
No, it’s not that (religion → evil), but that ¬(religion → ¬evil).
Which would be completely missing the point.
The point is not that the propensity of RC priests to rape children is greater than the general population (it isn’t), the point is that the Pope, cardinals, and bishops of the Church — who claim exclusive moral authority to tell us what’s right and wrong — continue to run an international criminal conspiracy to protect and shelter child rapists from the due process of law.
C’mon, this is adaptationist. You kill the guy to send him straight to heaven, get $50K in bling for a mistress to have a couple of your babies with your traits.
More reasons that I will never respect religious beliefs. Ever.
@62 Clemens
that’s a very simplified way to look at things because in prison sometimes all you have is geezuz.
the line is more likely to be drawn by intelligence/education than criminal record.
stupid people don’t know the difference between good and evil or right and wrong and those same people seem easy to entice into religion, go to prison or vote republican.
If this was evolution in action, it was a miserable failure. This scheme was clumsy enough that the minister got caught. And it is being hashed out to death on the internet.
That data in meaningful form exists.
1. Red states (the fundie heartland states) have higher levels of the usual social problems, divorce, child poverty, teen age pregnancy, substance abuse and so on. A lot higher. Fundies score lower on educational attainment, higher on ignorance measurements, and lower in per capita income.
2. More relevant, the modern strongholds of commie atheists include such countries as Canada, UK, the Scandinavian countries, and Japan. Their crime rates are an order of magnitude or more less than the USA. The strongholds of the Talibani include such countries as Somalia and Afghanistan. Lifespans are 30 years less than ours and violent death is common.
Wouldn’t it be great if his defense lawyer offered a case of “the devil made him do it”, the jury were all christian morons and came back with a not guilty because he was a mere human mortal and the devil is more powerful and can control his acts in collusion with his god who is just as powerful? Not guilty by reason of divine insanity.
In response to Rave (#67) your statistics are a classic example of misusing statistics and logical fallacies, mostly concerning correlation vs. causation. For the first one, it coudl be living conditions and lack of education that contribute to higher crime rates and social problems.
It’s really a stretch to try to argue that religious belief causes immoral behavior, since all cause-result arguments about social behavior is based on a lot of assumptions.
In case you haven’t heard: correlation does not equal causation.
It annoys me that atheists make this argument while claiming to be more rational than religious people…
I hope Raven isn’t planning on a career in the social sciences. Drawing general conclusions from impressionistic data and coarse and poorly defined correlations isn’t informative: it’s little more than a propaganda technique.
If I had to guess–and I’m aware I’d be guessing–I’d suggest that the prevalence of fundamentalism in the red states is more the effect than a cause of poverty, poor education, and social disorder. Whether it makes things worse or better is a separate question, and one that probably doesn’t have a simple answer since the impact of religion will differ from place to place depending on historical factors. I think you can make a pretty good case that Methodism played a positive role in the development of a self-respecting working class in Great Britain, for example; and even Mormonism apparently keeps Glenn Beck from drinking himself to death.
Considered as accounts of how the world actually is, all religions may be utterly false–that is certainly my opinion–but the fact, if it is a fact, that they are erroneous doesn’t imply much of anything by itself about their social and psychological effects. You’d have to look and see, but the people who are actually doing that kind of research aren’t likely to be much impressed by newspaper stories about hypocritical priests.
Clerical collar fails to instill goodness
How is goodness supposed installed by said collar? I kindof thought choking off the blood flow to the remnants of the brain‡ ensured zombie-following-dom, which don’t seem very good, for any value for good?
‡ Ok, I exaggerate. Some wanna-be priests et al. are not completely brainless. In theory.
And your rant is a classic case of delusional christofascist lying. Religious fanatics when faced with facts that they don’t like always lie. So much for the mythological xian morality no one has been able to find.
Correlations don’t necessarily imply causation. But they can. Fundies typically avoid education because believing dumb things like the earth is 6,000 years old, the moon is a light rather than a reflector, and evolution doesn’t occur takes hard work to remain that ignorant and crazy.
To take just one example, the New England states have normal sex ed and low teen pregnancy rates as do the Europeans. Texas and the red states go for abstinence only sex ed based on religious kookery. Their teen pregnancy rates are way higher and going up not down. Teen pregnancy rates are important because they are highly correlated with lifelong poverty and social problems. In these cases, toxic religion is causal.
You ignored the European, Asian, and New Zealand examples of commie atheist countries with much lower crime rates. At the least, one can say that areligion does not cause amoral behavior. Which is not what the fundie Death Cultists say every day.
At least the fundie xians are predictable. They always, always lie a lot while claiming that atheists are all immoral.
The point is not that the propensity of RC priests to rape children is greater than the general population (it isn’t)
Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if it is. I’ve seen more than one child-molesting priest admit in interviews that they joined the clergy in the first place specifically because they knew they were pedophiles and foolishly believed that devoting themselves to God would keep them from acting on their desires.
If such a systematic causation really exists, I wonder how large its effect is, and whether any statistical studies have been conducted.
This does not suprise me in the least. Humans just do this kind of stuff now and then, regardless of faith or ethnicity or what have you. I don’t think this is more significant because he was a pastor, it would be practically the same no matter who had done it. I think this is just another example of human greed and apathy