The inconsistency of Hamza Tzortzis

This is an interesting clip of Tzortzis first rebuking Lawrence Krauss for his lack of an objective morality in admitting that there are certain conditions under which he could not condemn incest, and then, in a different debate, Tzortzis defending sex with children and rationalizing the lack of a taboo in the Qu’ran against it.

It’s so hypocritical, and so lacking in a rational morality. Krauss’s argument has a clear foundation in mutual consent and a lack of harm; we should not prohibit private actions of consenting adults that do not cause harm to others.

Tzortzis tries to claim that the Qu’ran uses similar principles in accommodating sex with children, by claiming that it should only be done when the child is physically and emotionally ready. But he ignores the concept of consent, and in fact flouts it when one of his points in favor of some cases of child marriage is that the father was willing to give away the child. And of course he doesn’t bother to mention the disturbing fact that he’s not discussing cases of kids exploring their sexuality together (I suspect he’d be dead set against that), but of grasping old men taking ownership of little girls and using them as sex toys.

The Catholics are still pulling this stunt

The lesson is never learned. MPR is running a local story on a St Paul parish which was afflicted with another of those perambulating pedophile priests. Curtis Wehmeyer was a known sexual predator to the Catholic church, and they sent him to St Paul and didn’t tell any of the locals.

Curtis Wehmeyer kept his white 2006 camper parked outside Blessed Sacrament Church in St. Paul where he served for six years, three of them as pastor.

With the shades drawn, Wehmeyer could avoid the obligations of priestly life. He got drunk, smoked pot and looked at child pornography. He also lured to the camper two boys whose mother worked at the parish, plied them with alcohol, turned on pornography and told them to touch themselves. Several times, he touched one of the boys, according to police records.

The family trusted "Father Curt." As a priest, he had special powers. He could anoint the sick and baptize the young. Maybe, the mother hoped, he could inspire one of her sons to become a priest.

Why would anyone want their child to become a priest?

The St Paul/Minneapolis archdiocese had a “delegate for a safe environment” who actually wrote a letter concluding that he would “recommend against any disclosure in his workplace” — apparently, “safe environment” means safe for priests, because they did a remarkably good job covering for a nasty man who was exploiting the children of his parish. The coverup has been unambiguously documented in a memo posted at the link.

Thomas Doyle, a Dominican priest who was one of the earliest national whistleblowers on clergy sex abuse in the 1980s, said the memo shows that parents cannot trust the archdiocese to protect their children.

“Celibate clergy who aren’t trained in psychology are in no position to make that kind of a judgment call over someone like Wehmeyer,” he said.

Yet they all assume that their training in theology, or perhaps it is their imaginary direct line to a god, gives them the expertise to be counselors, psychologists, and therapists. It does not. These people are quacks and frauds who let a child molester have access to children for a decade — and even now they’re unapologetic about it.

The media have become Jesus-stupid

OK, this is just stupid. A lawyer is trying to get the conviction of Jesus overturned. The state involved no longer exists, the man has no living kin or friends to carry the case forward, and it’s not even certain the individual actually existed…not to mention that the case is 2000 years old and is only one of many thousands of similar executions carried out by Rome. Dumb, a total waste of time, something to laugh at briefly and then dismiss.

But the article goes on and on, at overtly theological length. I had just clicked through when someone sent me the link, and as I was reading this, I was wondering…what is the source here? Is this one of those wacky religious newspapers or something? No serious secular source would give a good god damn for this nonsense.

So I looked. This was from Time magazine.

As oddball as the case may be, Indidis’ effort does raise a larger theological question that Christians have long debated: Why did Jesus have to die? Theologians have argued that his death was required for salvation to actually happen and that it was important for Jesus, who claimed to be the Messiah, the God-man, to experience human suffering and death.

TIME devoted a cover story to that question in 2004, when Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ premiered. Theories of atonement, the theological term for the meaning of Jesus’ death, have varied throughout Christian history, and the story is a deep dive into how the doctrine of atonement changed over time:

What was the cosmic reason for his agony? What is its purpose, its divine calculus? How precisely does his death, usually referred to in this context as the atonement, lead to the salvation of humanity?

The atonement “is the centerpiece of Christianity, and it’s what distinguishes it from all other religions,” says Giles Gasper, a religious historian who has written a book about one of the topic’s great medieval interpreters. Without at least an intuitive comprehension of atonement, a believer stands little chance of making sense of the faith’s promises of redemption and eternal life.

It is a question believers will continue to ponder. But as the Apostle Paul explained, in the New Testament’s Book of Romans, the atonement comes with rewards: “If we have been united with [Christ] in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.”

How does the execution of some guy lead to our salvation, and what cosmic purpose did his agony have? It doesn’t, and none. Case closed. Bye.

I knew there was a reason I haven’t read Time in years.

I’m happy to make a deal with theists

LET'S MAKE A DEAL

Oh, hi, Rachel Held Evans. I hear you’d like to make a deal with us atheists. That’s rather sweet! Let’s hear it.

Dawkins is known for pushing his provocative rhetorical style too far, providing ample ammunition for his critics, and already I’ve seen my fellow Christians seize the opportunity to rail against the evils of atheism.

As tempting as it is to classify Dawkins’ views as representative of all atheists, I can’t bring myself to do it.

I can’t bring myself to do it because I know just how frustrating and unfair it is when atheists point to the most extreme, vitriolic voices within Christianity and proclaim that they are representative of the whole.

So, atheists, I say we make a deal: How about we Christians agree not to throw this latest Richard Dawkins thing in your face and you atheists agree not to throw the next Pat Robertson thing in ours?

Uh-oh. Did you really just compare Richard Dawkins to Pat Robertson? Really? I mean, because that gets your “deal” off on the wrong foot straight away. I do agree that Dawkins has been prone to gaffes, especially on twitter — he’s a master of thoughtful lucidity when he takes the time to write in the long form, as in a book, but oh, boy, do I agree that he has a knack for blowing it in the short form.

So you want to compare: on our side, a brilliant fellow with a long career in science who carries some unfortunately antiquated attitudes and has a tendency to be blunt on twitter; and on your side, a lifelong con artist who bilks little old ladies out of their life savings so he can buy diamond mines, to which he ships mining equipment under the guise of charitable rescue. Hmmm. This isn’t exactly a fair exchange that you are proposing.

And it’s not an exceptional choice you’ve made in Pat Robertson. There’s the Pope and his gang of child rapers, there’s Oral Roberts and Jerry Falwell and Billy Graham and the guy with the giant teeth — Joel Osteen — and Creflo Dollar and Robert Tilton and Jim Bakker and Paul and Jan Crouch and Ted Haggard…I could go on and on. Richard Dawkins is well off because he has earned his money with his writing talent, and by writing a number of critically well-regarded books. But he’s a peon compared to these pirate extortionists that use your religion to bilk thousands out of their cash. You might fairly argue that some of his personal views are a bit old fogeyish — he’s only human — but to compare one of ours, who has worked hard to disseminate good science, to one of yours, who has lived fat off the hate and fear of humanity…well, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t take your offer seriously. Or perhaps laugh in your face and snarl and sweep the table clear before stomping furiously out the door.

I suspect that you aren’t negotiating in good faith, ma’am.

But you’re in luck! I’ve already voluntarily given away the store. I have this book, The Happy Atheist, and right there in the very first chapter I say this:

There is nothing unusual about my town. This is perfectly ordinary, rural midwestern America, like thousands of other small towns all across the country. We’re just immersed in religion, like every other god-soaked spot in lightly-populated, Republican-leaning, Real-Live Genuine USA.

I would even say that these are good people, like most human beings, who are mostly concerned with getting along, doing well for their families, and seeing their community thrive as a safe and stable place. I don’t accept the common atheist line that religion is a phenomenon that makes men do evil acts, like fly airplanes into buildings or start holy wars; it can and has, of course, but those are the pathological extremes, and it isn’t right to judge an idea by the excesses of those maniacs who turn a belief into a cause for violence. Mainly what religion does is make people believe in ludicrously silly things, substitute dogma for reason and thought, and all too often, draw people down into self-destructive obsession as they fret more over their reward in the next life than their accomplishments in this one.

See? I already agree that my mother and your beloved relatives and maybe you and Richard Dawkins and the Unitarian church pastor and the guy who fixes my plumbing aren’t all equivalent to a moral fuckwit like Pat Robertson! You didn’t have to offer anything, and your insults to atheists were completely unnecessary! Doesn’t that make you feel good?

So, agreed, I won’t mischaracterize all Christians as being war-mongering terrorists and greedy exploiters and unethical damaged goods. I’ve never thought that, and will try to take greater care to avoid rhetorical excess. That’s a deal.

But…

We’re still going to jump on you all for the nonsense and bullshit you do believe. And boy oh boy, there is a lot of that.

For instance, you claim to be a skeptic and a follower of Jesus. You probably are skeptical about many things, but to say so in the same sentence in which you announce that you actually believe a first century Jewish mystic actually had magic powers worthy of your allegiance…the incongruity is hilarious. Even if you claim it’s his philosophy you love, well, that’s a chickenshit excuse used by a lot of people who want to hew to the in-group of Christianity. There is no coherent philosophy there: it’s a cobbled-together mess thrown together by proselytizing religious fanatics. And really, if you’re going to sneer at Richard Dawkins for a few bad tweets, are you willing to stand up for the Apostle Paul? Or perhaps Augustine or Luther? Which have been more influential in shaping the beliefs that millions of people actually have?

I agree that Christian beliefs are complex and scattered all over the map — Calvinists are different from Mormons are different from Baptists. But there are still these common absurdities that clutter the brains of their adherents.

They believe in a guiding intelligence in the universe that is especially concerned with the sexual behavior of one species on one small planet.

They believe that they must spend time and money placating this intangible being by worshipping it or, preferably, giving money to its self-appointed intermediaries.

Christians believe that the universal sentient principle that rules the universe somehow condensed itself down into the form of one man, and that because he was killed (only not really), this god is now able to forgive us for an act of willful frugivory by one of our distant ancestors.

And the reward for this forgiveness is that some undefinable fraction of our consciousness will be permitted to live forever in an invisible church in the sky, rather than being set on fire and suffering eternal torment.

I am quite able to agree that you Christians are mostly harmless. But when you look objectively at the goofball ideas that you consider to be essential core beliefs of your religious philosophy, it’s a fair cop to say that you also look like freakin’ idiots.

Were you hoping that that was on the negotiating table? Because it’s not.

I get email

Aww, I don’t get as much furious Catholic email as I used to, so this is just a sentimental blast from the past.

www.vaticancatholic.com I hereby declare- you to be – – an unlawful obstructionist. I order all those assembled to immediately disperse. I repeat- to immediately disperse. I order all your activity to immediately cease. I repeat-to immediately cease. It is not in accord with the ordinances of Canon Law. Due to your catalytic tendency of disseminating objectives adverse to Christendom – you are therefore ordered to discontinue your illegal profession. Failure to do so will result in proactive, responsive, and co-active measures. I judge, adjudge, adjudicate, deem, determine and declare your thoughts, words, actions, public or secret, and omissions, biological and spiritual property, subject to the Jurisdiction of the Unfathomable, Infinite, and Ineffable Excellence of OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. Further, your humanist anachronism, obscurantism, absurdum, intent, mission, and schemes, are henceforth proscribed and condemned. You may be arrested and or subject to other police action. It has so been declared: It is declared that all non-Catholic government exists in a state of inauthenticity. It is thenceforth declared that all modern constitutional states lack canonical legitimacy. It has therefore been thenceforth declared that their existence is an offense to the Divine Majesty and a crime against humanity. The aforesaid Freemasonic corporations are hereby declared anachronical to true human progress. It is decided in order for modern constitutional states to gain authenticity they must recognize the Supreme Jurisdiction of the Papacy and all Papal Dogmas. As a failure to do so will only inflame the Catholic against such blasphemous tyrannical backwards regimes. Lord God is due to make Visitation to such blighted and noxious governments and tyrannies. He will Visit the iniquities upon the infidels and the Anti-Church bigots. Terror will overtake the faces of the unwashed masses. These exquisite bigots against the Papacy will know that the Lord God Himself has done it. The infidel are richly fattened for such Visitation. It is hereby determined. ‘Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo, et in terra’. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven. Libertarianism (and the constitution) are simply tyrannical failures and instruments that lead to false flag attacks and government-run pedophilia through their Manual (and Visual) Body-Cavity Searches of Juvenile Hall youth. A Catholic Monarchy simply is the answer to today’s varied and many problems. There is Absolutely No Salvation Outside the Catholic Church see www.vaticancatholic.com

So when did the Catholics declare paragraph breaks to be heretical?

There are good Catholics. There is no good Catholicism.

Kristen Ostendorf was a teacher at a Catholic school in Minnesota for 18 years. Then one day, in a workshop with 120 other teachers, she openly confessed how she lived her life.

It wasn’t planned. It was a very surreal moment when I heard myself saying the things I tried not to say. And I was at once terrified and really glad and proud. I didn’t just say, “I’m gay, I’m in a relationship with a woman, and I’m happy,” and sit down. That really wasn’t the point of what I was saying. It was, “This is my prayer for all of us: That we mean what we do.” Then I sat down and I thought, “I wonder what’s going to happen next?” I hadn’t considered [the repercussions], but I didn’t know I was going to say what I said.

Take a guess what happened next. Go on, I bet you can do it, no problem.

The next day, not even after any significant deliberation, but the very next day, she was called into the office and asked to resign. She refused, so they fired her.

This is the same school that recently compelled their president to resign when it was discovered that he was in a long-term relationship with another man.

Ms Ostendorf seems like a good person with a great deal of personal integrity, yet, unfortunately, much of her discussion in that article is about how Catholicism is such a positive, affirming force in her life, and how she loves the scripture and has been inspired by it.

The evidence says otherwise. I think too many people look into religion and see a mirror, reflecting their good values and their personal aspirations, and they fail to see that they’re holding up a burden and a distraction and a poisonous delusion, and that, as good people, they’d be even greater when free of that ugliness. They need to realize that they are not the church, and the church is not them — and that separating oneself from an edifice of lies is actually a virtue.

Karen Stollznow has a new book coming out soon

Now this looks interesting: God Bless America: Strange and Unusual Religious Beliefs and Practices in the United States.

God Bless America lifts the veil on strange and unusual religious beliefs and practices in the modern-day United States. Do Satanists really sacrifice babies? Do exorcisms involve swearing and spinning heads? Are the Amish allowed to drive cars and use computers? Offering a close look at snake handling, new age spirituality, Santeria spells, and satanic rituals, this book offers more than mere armchair research. It takes you to an exorcism, a Charismatic church and a Fundamentalist Mormon polygamist compound. You will sit among the beards and bonnets in a Mennonite church, hear the sounds of silence at a Quaker meeting, and listen to L. Ron Hubbard’s sci-fi stories told as sermons during a Scientology service. From the Amish to Voodoo, the beliefs and practices explored in this book may be unorthodox, and often dangerous, but they are always fascinating. Some of them are dying out, while others are gaining popularity with a modern audience, but all offer insight into the past, present and future of religion in the United States.

My only question would be…are there religious beliefs that aren’t strange and unusual?

Catholics really do despise women

If only I’d read this information before I sent my daughter off to college! Apparently, it was a bad idea — according to Fix The Family, I shouldn’t have done it, and they have six seven eight absolutely solid reasons. (It’s so well-written: the title is “Six reasons to not send your daughter to college”, but it actually lists eight.)

  1. She will attract the wrong types of men. Apparently, the universities are full of “lazy men who are looking for a mother-figure in a wife are very attracted to this responsible, organized, smart woman who has it all together along with a steady paying job with benefits.” I think it’s nice that this web site is so egalitarian: not only do they want to deprive women of an education, but they also have nothing but contempt for the men who are getting one.

    Clearly, I’m going to have to have a little talk with my daughter’s boyfriend.

  2. She will be in a near occasion of sin. This is my favorite excuse: sex produces hormones that befuddle the female mind, making them overlook the faults in those horrible lazy college men.

    Catholic OB-GYN Dr. Kim Hardey notes that a woman is naturally very observant of a man’s faults as long as she is in a platonic relationship with him. Once she becomes sexually active with him, she releases hormones that mask his faults, and she remains in a dreamy state about him. We can see why God would arrange things in such a way so that when in a proper state of holy matrimony, she would be less sensitive to his faults and thereby less tempted to be critical of him.

    I have relied on surges of estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin to keep my wife in a confused state for years. How else would she stay with me? So this must be true.

  3. She will not learn to be a wife and mother. Yep, that’s right: we don’t offer college courses in cooking, cleaning, changing diapers, all that womanly work. So what good is it?

  4. The cost of a degree is becoming more difficult to recoup. “Like anything that is subsidized by the government, the cost of a college degree is inflated.” Wait, what? Subsidized education is more expensive? That makes no sense. Besides,

    It makes much more sense for a young couple to have a husband with a skill that brings value to the marketplace that has reasonable compensation to go along with it and a wife who is willing to be frugal especially during the early years of starting their family.

    So send the man to school to acquire skills that have value, but don’t send the woman to school because schools don’t teach skills that have value. Mmm-k.

  5. You don’t have to prove anything to the world. Women only go to school to show off.

  6. It could be a near occasion of sin for the parents. School is so expensive, you know. “So parents may avoid having more children with contraception, sterilization, or illicit use of NFP to bear this cost.” Investing in your children compromises your ability to have more children.

  7. She will regret it. In years to come, they will be so sad about wasting their most fertile child-bearing years improving their minds instead of their uteruses.

  8. It could interfere with a religious vocation. This is the most terrible one of all: Catholic seminaries will not accept you if you have a load of college debt!

And there’s more! If you watch this video from Fix the Family, you also learn that “We have a little problem with depopulation, and we need these young ladies to be havin’ babies.”

Avicenna beat me to it!

Dangerous nerds

Behold four scary criminals:

Asif Mohiuddin, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Moshiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez

Asif Mohiuddin, Subrata Adhikari Shuvo, Moshiur Rahman Biplob and Rasel Parvez

Their crime:

Yesterday, four Bangladeshi atheist bloggers were indicted for posting derogatory material about Islam and the Prophet Muhammad online. The bloggers, who were first arrested in April, will now face up to 14 years imprisonment and hefty fines. They are the first people to be tried under the country’s new Information Technology Act, which bans the publication of online material that “causes hurt to religious beliefs.”

Wait until they get a load of me. Don’t they realize there is a whole wide world out here that says mean things about Mo?

I’m tired of Fox News Christians

What awful, horrible people. And they’ve got a whole network full of them! Here, they’re commenting on the Massachusetts case to have “under God” removed from the pledge of allegiance.

All the news is about the first woman speaking, but really what astounded me was that they took turns going around the panel, and every single one of them said something incredibly stupid. They’re 0 for 5.

Dana Perino: I’m tired of them…they don’t have to live here.

Neither do you, lady.

Eric Bolling: It was added, but it doesn’t matter. It’s on our currency…they can choose not to take it.

It was also added to our currency in the 1950s, guy, at the height of Cold War fervor that couple religiosity to patriotism. It’s a relic of the same phenomenon that fostered McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist. It’s not a history to be proud of.

Greg Gutfeld: they can…give thanks for giving us the freedom to be an atheist.

Oh, yeah, I should also get down on my knees and praise Jesus for allowing me to be an atheist now.

Kimberly Guilfoyle: Why should they be catered to? It is offensive that a few people…inflict their belief system. It is incredibly selfish, small-minded…

Guilfoyle was furiously indignant. She seems to think it is OK if a majority of small-minded people use their kids as pawns to force their Christian belief system on others, but if the minority resist, they must be ignored.

And finally, Bob Beckel. I despise Bob Beckel. When conservatives go looking for a nominally liberal person they can prop up as a figurehead who will reliably agree with them, they search for the dumbest person around, and there’s good ol’ Bob.

Bob Beckel: interesting that it’s in Massachusetts, where the Salem witch trials, remember that’s when there was an intolerance about not being religious.

I don’t think the women were hanged for being atheists, Bob. Retire, Bob. You’re too stupid to be humiliating yourself this way on TV.