Apparitions and distractions

Lawrence Murphy was an evil man. He was a Wisconsin priest who molested over 200 boys, and just to make the story particularly deplorable, they were deaf children. Preying on the weakest and most vulnerable was apparently his life’s mission. Furthermore, this was the scandalous case that was reported directly to then Cardinal Ratzinger in his role as the Vatican enforcer; his enforcement involved shuffling the guilty around to hide their crimes and give them fresh opportunities in new hunting grounds.

Well, the Vatican has finally found it in its black (but gold-plated!) and shriveled husk of a heart to do something for Wisconsin: they’ve blessed a ghost sighting as genuine. Woo hoo! That’ll fix everything right up!

The church has declared that a sighting in 1859 of a blond Mary hovering between two trees was real and worthy, and the local Catholic church is now busily expanding their parking lot to cope with the expected influx of gullible suckers pilgrims who will flock to the site to imagine a floating cheerleader for Jesus.

i-036d050127aeff19c8e8ed51b91bd1d5-blondmary.jpeg

It’s a funny story, too. A Belgian immigrant, Adele, claimed to see this:

As they approached the hallowed spot, Adele could see the beautiful lady, clothed in dazzling white, with a yellow sash around her waist. Her dress fell to her feet in graceful folds. She had a crown of stars around her head, and her long, golden, wavy hair fell loosely around her shoulders. Such a heavenly light shone around her that Adele could hardly look back at her sweet face.

You know what really made it miraculous? Adele was accompanied by two other women, who couldn’t see or hear the floating lady.

” ‘Adele, who is it?” said one of the women. ‘O why can’t we see her as you do?’ said another weeping.

” ‘Kneel,’ said Adele, ‘the Lady says she is the Queen of Heaven.’ Our Blessed Lady turned, looked kindly at them, and said, ‘Blessed are they that believe without seeing. What are you doing here in idleness…while your companions are working in the vineyard of my Son?'”

That settles it. It must have been a magical manifestation if it was invisible. Invisible and blond, just like I always imagined a Middle Eastern Semitic peasant woman. And the statement that you’re blessed if you believe without seeing is pitch-perfect Catholicism.

Another funny thing is that the priests are obviously uncomfortably aware that this all sounds like rather convenient timing.

Catholic leaders described the decree in Wisconsin as a bolt of joy at a trying time for the Catholic church, which is troubled by revelations of sex abuse.

“This is a gift to the believers,” said the Rev. Johann Roten, director of the International Marian Research Institute at the University of Dayton.

“It would be devious to say that this was somehow pulled out of the attic to exorcise the problems of the church today,” Father Roten said in a telephone interview. “But hopefully this will have a beneficial impact on the people, showing them that there are ways of living with faith that are very pure.”

Yeah, how?

Never mind that! We’ve got child-raping priests! This calls for an immediate distraction in the form of invisible blond women, bugger the blatant nature of the ploy, and pass out the platitudes!

BBC gives child rape apologist air time

The Pope had a Christmas message for the world this year: we should forgive Catholic priests for raping children because everyone else was doing it. He invented a peculiar history that bears no resemblance to the late 20th century I lived in.

“In the 1970s, paedophilia was theorised as something fully in conformity with man and even with children,” the Pope said.

“It was maintained — even within the realm of Catholic theology — that there is no such thing as evil in itself or good in itself. There is only a ‘better than’ and a ‘worse than’. Nothing is good or bad in itself.”

The Pope said abuse revelations in 2010 reached “an unimaginable dimension” which brought “humiliation” on the Church.

I grew up in the 1970s. Some of you did, too. Does anyone remember anyone influential saying that child-rape was a reasonable practice? How about anyone on the fringe making vague suggestions that children can give permission to participate in sexual activity? I don’t know of any substantial culture at that time that would have endorsed such a thing; NAMBLA was little more than a freakish collection of perverts who got far more attention than their numbers warranted. If there was anything that was universally reviled, it was the creepy pedophile.

So here’s the Pope pretending that they were living in an environment that somehow condoned child abuse, so the priesthood somehow went along with it? Madness.

I also am not impressed by his regret that the church was humiliated. That’s not an appropriate response at all: church members were the perpetrators of the crime, and the Pope still can’t seem to empathize with the victims…you know, the kids. They always seem to get forgotten when the pontiff pontificates on the abuses of his church.

The other night, I saw this ghastly little documentary called Hell House, about fundagelical nutcases who put on these elaborate morality plays around Halloween, to scare people into Christianity. They have this same moral blindness. I was struck by all the horrible little scenarios they put on: woman goes to rave, is given date-rape drug and is raped; woman gets pregnant, has abortion, bleeds to death; etc., etc., etc. In every case I was struck by the fact that it is the victim who suffers and is abused and dies, and who is then sent to hell for eternal punishment because she doesn’t believe in Jesus. I was expecting in these cases to see them end in an orgy of punishment for the drug-dealer, the rapist, the abortionist (all played by men, by the way), but no…they all get forgotten in the denouement, their behavior isn’t damned, it’s all about the victim being punished for her victimization. That’s religion for you.

Anyway, after listening to this ethical rapscallion invent fantasy stories to justify the abuse of innocents, the BBC, in a fit of moral blindness themselves, offered him a radio spot to blather on some more. What were they thinking? The good news, though, is that he didn’t flaunt his moral turpitude this time. Instead, he highlighted the intellectual vacuity of the church, by talking about the nonsense of their beliefs.

He added that God “often surprises us” in the way he fulfils his promises.

“The child that was born in Bethlehem did indeed bring liberation, but not only for the people of that time and place — he was to be the saviour of all people throughout the world and throughout history.”

It was not a political liberation, achieved through military means, he added, but rather “Christ destroyed death for ever and restored life by means of his shameful death on the cross”.

I just wish people could see through the platitudes and realize that these oft-repeated claims make no freakin’ sense. A guy getting killed 2000 years ago did not end death, you may have noticed, a shameful death is not turned into a point of pride by waving corpses-on-a-stick in our faces, and Christianity has been an agent of ignorance and servility for millennia now, never a cause for liberation.

Shame on the BBC for giving this flabby-brained antique a megaphone and a spot on the airwaves.

Bad diagnosis

Tim Moyle (I will not call him “Father”; I have a lot of respect for my father, none of it transfers to the clergy) wonders why atheists are so grumpy, and offers some explanations. He apparently does not know any atheists and is completely lacking in self-awareness, so his arguments don’t hold up very well.

Why is it that so many in the atheist community cannot bring themselves to get past their anger whenever they engage in discussion about religion? The language of many of atheist contributions in public debate is laced with venom and dripping with sarcasm.

Well, actually, when I consider religion, I feel two moods: either anger or hilarity. The reason we tend to feel that way is because religion is so damned ridiculous, full of crazy doctrines and absurd assumptions, and yet people believe in it so fervently. Look at Moyle’s version of Christianity: it’s an ornate death cult that makes up stories about an afterlife to justify servility in this one, and its major premises are that we’re all evil because an imaginary distant ancestor listened to a talking snake rather than god, we’re all damned, and the only way we can rescue ourselves from an eternity of sadistic punishments from our benign deity is to believe without doubt in a magic Jewish carpenter who was nailed to a stick and came back to life.

That makes no sense. It’s stupid. It’s funny, because it is so crazy.

But it’s also infuriating, because people are indoctrinated into this myth from an early age, they are closed-minded to any objections to the absurdity of the belief, and it sucks away time and resources from our culture that could be more productively invested in something useful and true. And, oh, yeah, it ruins people’s lives.

The explanation for why atheists are often exasperated is that simple: people believe in something that isn’t true. Worse, it’s not just false, it’s stupidly false. We’re people to whom the truth matters.

Moyle is incapable of seeing that, though. Instead, he makes excuses for his faith.

We speak not to the culture of death that grips our world but rather for the culture of life and light that ends with the gift of eternal life.

Sorry, no, Catholicism is a death cult and he just confirmed it. That “eternal life” they’re always talking about? We call it “being dead”. Religion invented this marvelous euphemism for death in which they refer to it as being alive in heaven (or hell), but really, it’s still just dead. To an atheist, death isn’t something to be celebrated but to be avoided, and dressing it up in silly stories about paradise doesn’t help.

Why are believers so confident? It’s because even though we have suffered the wounds of sin from various clergy, we know that they not the totality of our experience. There have been times when we stood as a paragon of grace for believers. Even today there are times when the voice of the Church has truly spoken to the core of many, moments when the transcendent presence of God is visible despite our sinfulness and brokenness for anyone who has both the eyes and heart to see it.

Who else read that question and the first answer that popped into your head was “Dunning-Kruger”?

I’ve never seen a priest stand as a paragon of grace, and it’s telling that Moyle assumes that role. I’ve found that human beings are capable of grace and goodness, and they don’t need to be propped up by mystical ju-ju to do good — and in fact it detracts from virtue when it has to be cajoled into existence with promises of rewards or retribution in an imaginary afterlife.

Besides, some priest getting a holy tingle is not sufficient compensation for one raped child.

Atheists tend to see the state of their personal world as being limited to the best they can achieve. Life’s injustices will never ultimately be surmounted and they are limited to a ‘what you see is what you get’ assessment of life’s trials. Believers know that things will be better. They know that following the teachings of the church can bring them closer to that promised ideal in the here and now, and that any justice denied them by the events of their personal lives as a result of their fidelity to God will be theirs to enjoy in the life to come.

Wait. Limited…to the best we can achieve? So to a Catholic, the best we can achieve is inadequate and futile, and we need the assistance of some invisible cosmic spook to achieve justice? This guy has everything backwards. That makes the Christian perspective the one that is limiting and futile, because when I look at all we can do and all the potential of future knowledge, I find myself far more uplifted than any reassuring lies from the church can ever accomplish.

And once again, “life to come” is a euphemism for “death”. Moyle is basically saying he believes we’ll find justice in our death, which is a rather grim sentiment when you see through their fabrications.

See what I mean? Death cult. Belittling human accomplishments and celebrating an imaginary life for corpses — is it any wonder we can’t decide whether to laugh or rage at these antic ghouls?

No loss. No loss at all.

St Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Arizona was a Catholic-affiliated institution, and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix has just made a major strategic error: they have stripped the hospital of its affiliation.

There are two reasons this was a bad idea for the church. One is that it exposes them as callous, evil bastards who don’t care for their patients as much as they do their invisible, nonexistent souls. The reason the church took this action is that doctors there performed an emergency abortion on a woman who was 11 weeks pregnant and dying. The choice was to stand by and do nothing while watching the mother and fetus die, or abort and treat woman and let her live. The Catholic Church believes the doctors should have taken no action and allowed her to die.

The second big mistake is that the fraud of the Catholic hospital charade stands exposed. This was an incredibly revealing statement:

St. Joseph’s does not receive direct funding from the church, but in addition to losing its Catholic endorsement, the 697-bed hospital will no longer be able to celebrate Mass and must remove the Blessed Sacrament from its chapel.

In other words, the Catholic church has benefited from the association with an actual house of healing, while providing nothing but magic crackers and the recommendation of local priests.

No loss. If that’s all the saint’s name tagged onto a hospital provides, they’re all better off leaving that nonsense behind.

But the shepherd never gets fleeced…

Soon, it will be the end of the year. Soon, all those various forms will come trickling into your mailbox, telling you how much money you earned. Soon, you will have to fill out a whole bunch of other forms and pay out your share to the state and federal government. For most of us, it’s a big bite, but if only we were ministers of the lord, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

Read this summary from a tax preparer who did a local priests taxes, and feel your wallet cringe.

The minister gets paid from his church, from which he received cash of $105,000 in 2009. He received a W-2 with wages of $40,000 and a “housing allowance” of $65,000. First, ministers, along with other state workers, are allowed to elect out of social security and Medicare. By electing out, they don’t have to pay into the programs and they don’t ever get to draw from the programs either.

Next, of his housing allowance of $65,000, he only has to recognize as income the portion that he did not spend on ANYTHING related to his house. So, he can essentially deduct mortgage interest, mortgage principal, taxes, utilities, HOA fees, insurance, furniture, appliances, silverware, napkins, gardeners, soap, towels, etc, etc, etc from his income. Normal people can only deduct their interest and property taxes. So, after all of his expenses, he only had to recognize about $9,000 of his housing allowance as income, for a total income of $49,000 ($40,000 in wages and $9,000 of excess housing allowance).

Next, even though he already deducted all of his housing expenses, including interest and property taxes, he still gets to use Schedule A like everyone else. So he is able to deduct his mortgage interest and property taxes again. (Technically, the first time was just an exclusion from income, so he’s not getting double deductions. But essentially he is. The end result is a double deduction).

Final tax bill for Mr Holy-Come-to-Jesus: $740, on an income of $105,000. Final bill for a secular citizen of equal financial status: $18,826.

So the US subsidizes the rich and the pious. Does anyone else see something wrong here?

Also, here’s the kicker:

To top it off, he wrote a letter to our firm asking for a discounted preparation fee because he is a minister of humble means. It made me sick to my stomach.

Who is to blame for all those priests raping children?

The pope has the answer, and it’s not the priests. Can you guess whose fault it all is?

If you guessed godless secular society, you’d be right. It doesn’t count for much, though, because you know it was an easy question.

I’m not sure how it works, though. He claims that secular society was making excuses for pedophiles, promoting moral relativism, which I don’t think was at all true…but let’s pretend it was, just to give him the full benefit of the doubt. Then what? A priest sees George Carlin, Richard Nixon, and George Wallace all busily promoting a lifestyle of hedonism and disregard for others, so he is unable to resist buggering the choir boys? Hey, I saw KC and the Sunshine Band live once, so now I have a penchant for cannibalism? Westboro Baptist Church pickets against gays, so suddenly I want to have sex with chickens?

Catholic logic doesn’t seem to have much to do with real logic.

I think they’re getting more and more easily offended

This is getting ridiculous. Now people are getting irate at the use of a common word.

The teacher…was explaining to the class how the cold climate in Trevélez, Granada province, aided in the curing of the village’s most famous local product, jamón serrano. The boy told his teacher that hearing the word ‘ham’ in class was offensive to him because of his religion and asked his geography teacher to stop referring to the product which caused him offence.

El Mundo newspaper reports that the boy’s parents then reported the teacher to both the National Police and to the courts. It’s understood that an internal investigation is also underway by the education authority in Cádiz province.

Personally, I only have temper tantrums over “ham” when it’s preceded by “ken”.

Ricky Gervais can’t just say “Merry Christmas”, now can he?

So instead, he’s written a Christmas essay about why he’s an atheist. It’s not bad. He pegs why people get so sniffy at innocuous words from an atheist, and what we all have to live for, so there’s that.

So what does the question “Why don’t you believe in God?” really mean. I think when someone asks that they are really questioning their own belief. In a way they are asking “what makes you so special? “How come you weren’t brainwashed with the rest of us?” “How dare you say I’m a fool and I’m not going to heaven, f– you!” Let’s be honest, if one person believed in God he would be considered pretty strange. But because it’s a very popular view it’s accepted. And why is it such a popular view? That’s obvious. It’s an attractive proposition. Believe in me and live forever. Again if it was just a case of spirituality this would be fine. “Do unto others…” is a good rule of thumb. I live by that. Forgiveness is probably the greatest virtue there is. Buts that’s exactly what it is -­‐ a virtue. Not just a Christian virtue. No one owns being good. I’m good. I just don’t believe I’ll be rewarded for it in heaven. My reward is here and now. It’s knowing that I try to do the right thing. That I lived a good life. And that’s where spirituality really lost its way. When it became a stick to beat people with. “Do this or you’ll burn in hell.”

You won’t burn in hell. But be nice anyway.

You know, that would be a nice cheery message to slap on the side of a bus or a billboard: “You won’t burn in hell.” Somebody ought to do that just so we can see a few angry Christians bluster about how you will too and you must really hate God to say something so sacrilegious.

The commonality of bad movies and bad religion

Face it. Star Wars sucked. Even the original movie, which I remember fondly and vastly enjoyed watching, was horribly written — that George Lucas did not have an ear for dialog, and once he drifted away from a simple mythic archetype couldn’t put a plot together to save his life, was something that became increasingly evident throughout the series.

And Star Trek? Embarrassingly bad science, hammy acting, and an over-reliance on gobbledygook and the deus ex machina. There was maybe a small handful of episodes that were more than cheesy dreck.

So why do people adore those shows so fanatically?

Here’s one interesting explanation: cult movies plug into the same cognitive keyholes as religion does. The article is a bit superficial — comparing Star Wars to Catholicism, Star Trek to protestantism, and the recent Star Trek retcon/reboot to Mormonism is stretching the analogy way too much. But there’s something to it.

The Star Wars/Star Trek phenomena are a bit odd; I watch bad movies sometimes for entertainment, but I never lose myself in apologetics for them. They’re bad movies. They’re fun for the comic opera klutziness of them, and half the pleasure is being able to stand above them and outside them, and appreciate the sincerity of the exercise in slapping together a weird piece of crap in spite of little obstacles, like a lack of money or talent. But Star Wars/Star Trek have serious fans who devotedly study the lore and get into arguments about which is better, and even think they represent some high quality story telling.

I will boldly predict that some people will be arguing for that in the comments. Of course, they’re wrong. They sucked. Just like religion.

So the question is why do people cling to them…and it seems to me that our brains are equipped with a kind of ideological inertia, which is probably a good thing, since you don’t want to too casually flip-flop on ideas before you’ve worked out their viability. But sometimes we seem to be prone to a pathological degree of attachment, where because once we favored some strange object of worship, whether it’s Jesus or Spock or America or the Green Bay Packers, we can’t let go. Changing our minds would be an admission that we were wrong and could be wrong about something we regard as important in our lives, and there’s a reasonable fear that opening the door to that kind of uncertainty might lead to chaos.

There’s also a peculiar inability to separate the parts from the whole. You can like classical sacred music without endorsing the silliness about magic crackers and Original Sin, just as you can enjoy a light sabre battle on the screen without getting goofy over The Force.

So what is religion? It’s a parasite on a couple of useful features of how the mind works, its tendency to try and model the world around us as a coherent whole and its reluctance to abandon models that fail to work. It’s a particularly successful parasite because it can be introduced early, with mother’s milk, well before they get plonked down in front of the boobtube, and so it generally outcompetes Captain Picard…and it also gets relatively little pushback from the culture once the child leaves the breast to spend more time with outsiders, who are all praising the same mysterious being, and so far Yoda worship isn’t very common.

The first persuasive argument for Christianity that I’ve seen

I was sent this link to an apologist defending Christianity against rationalist requests for evidence, and I was unimpressed — all he’s got is repeated claims that the Bible says Jesus was lord of the universe, which is not a good argument. I can also point to the Lord of the Rings, which says Gandalf was a powerful wizard, but that doesn’t even begin to support any claim that he actually existed.

But I read on, and it got weird. Read this, and somebody explain to me…is he arguing for or against Christianity?

As for the empirical and falsifiable evidence scientists and atheists demand, let’s just say it might never be found, at least not on this side of the grave. It may not even exist. And even if someone does find it, along with the missing link, it will probably be like nothing they ever expected.

But if you look up in the sky some cold winter’s night around the 25th of December, you just might catch a glimpse of it. No, it’s not the space shuttle, or a Russian spy satellite; nor is it an Iranian missile with a nuclear warhead or some other terrorist attack; it’s certainly not Louis Farrakhan’s mothership, or any other extraterrestrial spacecraft. Is it a myth? Is it science?

No — it’s Santa Claus! And if you don’t believe that well, you just ain’t trying. Or maybe what you really need is a little less science, and a little more myth.

OK, I give up. He has convinced me. Jesus is just as real as Santa Claus.