Poor Vatican

The Pope must be wearing ratty, ragged underwear under those silk robes; all the fancy gold statues in the Vatican must be gilt over rotting wood; the famous paintings are all cheap reproductions. The place must be on the verge of economic collapse. At least, that’s what I assume must be the case, since the UK government paid for the Pope’s visit out of Department for International Development funds, a part of the budget that is normally earmarked for aid to “war-torn or fragile states” as part of a commitment to fight global poverty.

So the Vatican must be sort of like Somalia. I had no idea they were in such a dire state.

I’m a middle-class kind of guy who is doing all right economically right now. But I think next time I visit Minneapolis I’m going to get my gas money by beating up some homeless folk, and then I’m going to eat by crashing a soup kitchen…oh, and I’m bigger than those scrawny half-starved old codgers, so I’m going to demand double helpings of everything. Don’t think badly of me, I’ll just be trying to live up to the Catholic ideal.

Oh, yeah?

A trite phenomenon is taking place in a church in Bakersfield:

According to Tom Dorlis, the vice president of the parish council for St. George Greek Orthodox Church, back in 2007, around the time of the financial crisis, a portrait of the Virgin Mary, from Hawaii, started to cry an oily substance that smells like roses. Parishioners at the church, located at the intersection of Truxton Avenue and ‘U’ Street, said there’s no doubt that the weeping icon is a gift from god, whether you’re a believer or not.

I doubt it.

That phrase, “around the time of the financial crisis”, tells me everything I need to know.

It’s a regular business.

The icon- originally from Hawaii- is a smaller copy of the ancient original which has been at a monastery in Greece for over a millennium. Other copies have been produced in Montreal and Moscow. Some of those weep myrrh as well.

I wonder if they come with instructions on how to put a drop of a thick, oily substance on the painting at night, when no parishioners are around, so that it will ooze fragrantly during the day, when they are? Seriously, anyone taken in by the ancient stunt of the weeping/bleeding statue/painting is a frackin’ moron.

Christian leader is hypocritical abusive homophobe. Since when is that news?

Lots of people are sending me this news story about Stephen Green, the British evangelical Christian fanatic. In case you’ve never heard of him:

Green, 60, is founder and director of Christian Voice, a fundamentalist group he set up in 1994, whose website thunders against the vices — family breakdown, crime, ­immorality and drink among them — that are ruining the lives of ‘real people’. Green’s ­pronouncements are often outrageous. For example, after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005 and killed more than 1,600 people, he claimed it was a result of God’s wrath and had purified the city.

I could stop right there, couldn’t I? You already know how this will end: Green will turn out to be some kind of pathological monster when the cameras aren’t rolling in his face.

Caroline Green was often punished by her husband Stephen for failing to be a dutiful, compliant wife, but his final act of violence against her — the one that prompted her long-overdue decision to divorce him — was all the more chilling because it was coldly premeditated.

Stephen Green wrote a list of his wife’s ­failings then described the weapon he would make to beat her with.

‘He told me he’d make a piece of wood into a sort of witch’s broom and hit me with it, which he did,’ she recalls, her voice tentative and quiet. ‘He hit me until I bled. I was terrified. I can still remember the pain.

‘Stephen listed my misdemeanours: I was disrespectful and disobedient; I wasn’t loving or submissive enough and I was undermining him. He also said I wasn’t giving him his ­conjugal rights.

‘He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed. He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.

‘But the beating was the last straw. It ­convinced me I had to divorce him.’

Ah. So he was a vicious judgmental control freak who felt a profound sense of privilege for being a Christian man. But you could already get that from the first paragraph I quoted.

Next big item of non-news: the media continues to flock about Stephen Green, flogging his sensationalist hatred to the public, despite his patent hypocrisy.

Someone explain this to me

The Vatican claims to want to talk with atheists, so they’re having a conference. How nice.

The Vatican announced a new initiative aimed at promoting dialogue between theists and atheists to be launched with a two-day event this March in Paris.

The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture will sponsor a series of seminars on the theme of “Religion, Light and Common Reason,” at various locations in the city, including Paris-Sorbonne University.

The odd thing is that I don’t know of any atheists who’ve been invited, nor has the Vatican made any mention of who will be there. So who is this for? Are they going to actually bring in some of the argumentative atheists who have deep differences with religion, or will they just stock the place with atheist-butteries and nice atheists who love the church?

And what will they do there?

The events will conclude with a party for youth in the courtyard of the Cathedral of Notre Dame, followed by prayer and meditation inside the cathedral.

Oh, right. Two days in Paris and we’re going to hang out in a medieval church and pray. If they want to have a dialogue, they should split the events between religious la-de-da, organized by the Catholics, and secular indulgences in the fleshpots of the city, organized by local atheists. Then we’ll see which worldview wins.

But this isn’t about learning anything about how us atheists think. It’s about converting us, and is fundamentally inimical to atheism. It’s definitely not about “promoting dialogue”.

The pope has made turning back the tide of Western secularism one of the major campaigns of his papacy. The Vatican last year established the Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization to focus especially on promoting Christianity in Europe.

Good luck with turning back secularism by burying yourselves in an old stone relic and mumbling at Jesus, fellas!

A death in Uganda

Uganda is currently undergoing conflict over civil rights: a number of influential Christians in the country, under the influence of American evangelicals like Scott Lively and Rick Warren, have been pushing to have homosexuality condemned and people who love other people of the same sex arrested or executed. It’s an ugly place where the dreams of the Christian right are actually being realized, but of course our evangelical leaders are denying their responsibility. Just last night on CNN I caught a bit of a nauseating interview with Joel Osteen, the smirking prosperity gospel pitchman, and he came right out and smilingly declared homosexuality a sin…but his wife just loves Elton John, so it’s all OK. Rick Warren is also similarly a moral coward who will happily trigger the landslide, but refuses to involve himself in the consequences.

But Warren won’t go so far as to condemn the legislation itself. A request for a broader reaction to the proposed Ugandan anti-homosexual laws generated this response: “The fundamental dignity of every person, our right to be free, and the freedom to make moral choices are gifts endowed by God, our creator. However, it is not my personal calling as a pastor in America to comment or interfere in the political process of other nations.” On Meet the Press this morning, he reiterated this neutral stance in a different context: “As a pastor, my job is to encourage, to support. I never take sides.” Warren did say he believed that abortion was “a holocaust.” He knows as well as anyone that in a case of great wrong, taking sides is an important thing to do.

Our good, kind, sinner-loving, sin-hating Christianist monsters have more blood on their hands now. David Kato, a Ugandan civil rights leader who fought for tolerance for gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered people, has been beaten to death. This event followed after many death threats, and after the publication of a hit list in a local magazine.

The fight against the bill has also pushed Ugandan activists to the fore, raising concern for their privacy and safety. These deepened in late 2010 when a local tabloid called Rolling Stone, unconnected to the US magazine, published pictures, names, and residence locations of some members of the LGBT community, along with a headline saying, “Hang Them.” Kato’s photo appeared on the cover, and inside another photo appeared with his name.

Couple religious certainty and an atmosphere in which religious leaders are assuring everyone that certain people are less than human, damned, or criminal, and this is what you get: vigilante injustice. And Uganda loses another force for justice and humanity.

Australians are laughing at us Americans!

It’s shocking. How dare they. The Australian writes about our puritanical television viewers and how British television has to be stripped of religious criticism before it’s aired here, or our citizens get all Muslim-cartoon-rioter over it.

It’s not as if those real Americans are pretending to be thin-skinned. This is not faux outrage. They are genuinely shocked that outsiders do not take Christianity as seriously as they do.

Oh, yeah? We’re thin-skinned zealots from the land where “God can’t take a joke”? We’ll teach you what’s funny. The cruise missiles and predator drones are standing by on our aircraft carriers.

(Hmm. That would be funnier if it weren’t a little bit true.)

Christians depict Christians as delusional

A few Christians are indignant over this video mocking Pollyannaish theology.

Unfortunately for them, and to our increased mirth, their excuses are just as ridiculous as Suzie.

Dr. Normal L. Geisler, author of If God, Why Evil?, said the video contains a lot of misconceptions.

“You look at all of that [and] you sympathize with Susie because you think they (disasters, illnesses, etc.) are evil,” he said. “But if it’s evil, then there must be a standard for good. If there is a crooked line in this world then there must be a straight line. If there is a straight line then there must be God.”

Actually, I don’t sympathize with Suzie at all. The whole point of this video is that she’s silly and clueless.

I do have a standard for good: does it cause me or others harm? If not, it’s good. If it does, it’s bad. I don’t need a god to define this for me; humans are the yardstick. The existence of straight and crooked lines do not imply the existence of intent, but only that there are lines.

The video also gives a very limited picture of God’s presence in Suzie’s life, said Geisler, who is a Christian apologist and philosopher. When it comes to Suzie’s recovery from sickness, for example, the video fails to acknowledge that God is the one who designed her body with properties to heal naturally, said Geisler.

BECAUSE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE THAT A GOD DESIGNED HER BODY. Jebus, he’s a philosopher…you’d think he’d be competent to recognize a circular argument when he saw one. There are alternative explanations with evidence in their support for the presence of self-repair mechanisms in evolved organisms, you know, so just point to the fact that someone can heal is not automatic evidence for the existence of a magic man in the sky.

The title of this article at the Christian Post is “Atheist Depicts Christians as Delusional”. Yeah? Depiction confirmed.