Category: religion

9 Movie Friday: Surviving ex-gay ministries

June 24, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · forces of stupid · hate · LGBT · religion

A commenter asked yesterday what was wrong with so-called “ex-gay ministries”. For those of you that don’t know, these are programs that are set up to ‘re-train’ homosexual men and women, to convince them that their sexual orientation is either a weakness of the mind, or the influence of Satan, or both. Words cannot express how contemptuous I am of the rank and foul arrogance required to tell someone that their sexual identity is evil. Then again, this kind of moralizing arrogance comes naturally when one considers oneself a direct emissary of the creator of the universe.

Ex-gay ministries are founded on the lie that sexual orientation is a choice, and that accepting Jesus will cleanse you of the sin of being “abnormal”. Of course, accepting Jesus is entirely orthogonal to being gay – there are many gay Christians (a fact that baffles me, but then again there are black Christians and female Christians too, so humanity clearly has a blind spot for its own hypocrisy). However, desperate people who have been convinced that they are disordered due to a lack of faith will grasp at all kinds of desperate straws to regain YahwAlladdha’s favour. They will completely abandon their rationality, frantic to prove their worth in their invisible tyrant’s eyes. And what does the religious establishment do with desperate people?

It fucks them:

Yep, it’s pretty much exactly as you’d expect. Jayden was molested by someone claiming to be able to ‘fix’ his homosexuality. The problem with this mindset is that it’s built on a series of falsehoods. First, it claims that homosexuality is evil or ‘unnatural’ – in that homosexuality in and of itself is no more harmful to people than heterosexuality, and we see examples of homosexuality often in the natural world, this first claim is a lie. Second, these ministries claim that one can simply ‘reprogram’ gay men by introducing them to ‘manly’ activities – I guess the number of gay men in the Marines and other Armed Forces just aren’t manly enough…

Village People - In the Navy — Hmm... okay maybe they have a point

The third and final lie that makes up the foundation of “ex-gay” ministries is that accepting Jesus will cure you of your homosexuality. This is the cop-out lie that all religious faith enjoys – if it fails, you can blame the victim because their faith “wasn’t strong enough”. No matter what happens, their asses are covered – if they appear to succeed then it’s because of the program, and if they fail it’s because of the individual in the program. Imagine if we explained away government programs or modern medicine in this way.

Oh, and did I mention that when people are blamed for something they can’t control, and told that their feelings are evil, even though they’ve never hurt anybody… they sometimes hurt themselves?

Of course the commenter then asked me where I got the gall to force my morals on everyone, so maybe I should have just laughed it off. Some lies need to be confronted, exposed, and destroyed. Ex-gay ministries are among them.

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30 Passing through the eye of the needle

June 21, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · news · religion

One of the funny things about the Bible is how regionally-specific its allusions are. Jesus is described as a shepherd, a potter, a sower of specific types of seeds… all references that would be readily understood by those living in the Middle East. Of course a culture that has no sheep wouldn’t really understand the reference, likewise with cultures that don’t use pottery, and has anyone ever seen a mustard seed grow into a tree? I’ve only ever seen them on a sandwich.

One of my favourite Biblical allusions comes from the book of Matthew:

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

Any of you shocked by the fact that a confirmed and vocal atheist would quote the bible need not be: I quote Shakespeare, Nietzche and Orwell too. A good phrase is a good phrase, regardless of how bat-shit insane the author may be. This particular quote, replete with its regional dialect (why a camel? why a needle?) suggests that rich people, or more specifically people tied to material and worldly goods would find getting into heaven very difficult. ‘Abandon your material possessions and focus your attention on Yahweh’ is the bedrock of Jesus’ theological position.

They must make those needles pretty big in Nigeria:

Nigeria’s pastors run multi-million dollar businesses which rival that of oil tycoons, a Nigerian blogger who has researched the issue has told the BBC. Mfonobong Nsehe, who blogs for Forbes business magazine, says pastors own businesses from hotels to fast-food chains.

“Preaching is big business. It’s almost as profitable as the oil business,” he said. The joint wealth of five pastors was at least $200m (£121m), he said. Evangelical churches have grown in Nigeria in recent years, with tens of thousands of people flocking to their services.

The wearisome part of blogging about religion is the depths of hypocrisy that one finds among believers, especially those that lead the flock (of camels?), becomes almost cliché after a while. It becomes repetitive and rather thin gruel for people who have been paying attention to religious establishments. It is pretty much de rigeur for those who claim a superior level of morality, purity, and righteousness (as given them by strict adherence to YahwAlladdha’s commands and the power of the Holy Spirit) to be caught, sometimes literally, with their pants down in violation of some stricture or other. Another religious zealot violates the strictures of her/his own purported beliefs? Ho hum… where’s my Congressional cock shot?

The reason I think this stuff bears repeating is twofold: first, because there are people who honestly believe that these kinds of things are isolated indiscretions rather than exactly what happens when human beings give other human beings power that is not only unquestioned, but fundamentally unquestionable. Criticizing the god-man is a good way to get ostracized and run out of the community, and when you depend on that community for your survival, you’re even less likely to raise an eyebrow when your hard-earned dollars are going to buy his… what did these guys buy again?

Bishop Oyedepo owned a publishing company, university, an elite private school, four jets and homes in London and the United States, according to Mr Nsehe.

“Oyakhilome’s diversified interests include newspapers, magazines, a local television station, a record label, satellite TV, hotels and extensive real estate,” Mr Nsehe said.

Ah yes, the kinds of necessities that are needed to support and develop the communities from which the funds come. Authority derived from religious faith is basically a blank cheque for corruption and abuse. It requires the engagement of the rational part of your brain to recognize and critique hypocrisy – faith actively encourages the suspension of the rational mind. The next thing it actively encourages is for you to make a show of sacrificing your material possessions to gain an afterlife reward for which no evidence is offered (“you just have to believe!”). We have to begin to recognize that the only legitimate reason to believe in a leader is a proven track-record of effectiveness and honesty – piety shouldn’t enter into it.

The second reason I bring this up is that it is usually the people who can least afford to give away their money that are most susceptible to these hucksters. It’s the poorest and least-educated that have the greatest level of desperation, and who are therefore most likely to abandon what little they have for the promise of something greater in the future. Conversely, it is those who have the most to gain from fraud and deception that prey on that same desperation to make what is a huge amount of money in a place like Nigeria. And of course religious organization like the Vatican can’t say anything, lest they open themselves up to more accusations of gross hypocrisy about how much money they take in from ~~gullible suckers~~ pious believers.

It is a great shame that these funds are being used for the exclusive benefit of the pastors. Had the people in these communities instead invested in themselves, they could have built their own schools, newspapers, and real estate. Imagine for a moment if they had pooled that money to attract skilled tradespeople to teach community members how to build businesses and develop commerce. That’s how wealth gets built. Instead, they happily threw it into the pockets of the first hypocrite to cross their path.

Or maybe they just have tiny camels.

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4 The normal kind of crazy

May 31, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion · skepticism

I might be the only atheist blogger in the world that hasn’t yet talked about the absurdity of the Family Radio rapture announcement last Saturday. For those of you that didn’t read my post that preceded the event, a radio host from the United States (of course) named Harold Camping performed a rigorous mathematical analysis of the Bible (read: pulled some numbers out of his ass) and announced that the world would be judged on May 21st, 2011. Jesus would return in glory and take faithful to heaven. He also ‘prophesied’ that there would be massive earthquakes and millions of deaths on that day, which would continue until the world actually ends in October of this year.

As you’ll remember, he was totally correct, and that’s exactly what happened.

Well, no. What actually happened is that the universe has existed for billions of years. For some of those billions, there has been one star among trillions that had a handful of planets. On one of those planets existed the proper chemical conditions for self-replicating molecules to form and propagate. Some of those molecules spontaneously organized to form multicellular organisms, one of which eventually became capable of organizing into units capable of exchanging ideas. Among the thousands of stupid ideas that this random process inevitably spit out, one of them was about a man who was the son of one of the gods who was killed but promised to come back and avenge his death in a most bloody fashion.

One of the multicellular organisms took the stupid idea to a wacky conclusion based on weird information, and got it dead wrong. Instead of being among the small minority of multicellulars that is willing to admit when it does something wrong, this one decided instead to engage in stereotypical hand-waving and try to change its story:

As crestfallen followers of a California preacher who foresaw the world’s end strained to find meaning in their lives, Harold Camping revised his apocalyptic prophecy, saying he was off by five months and the Earth actually will be obliterated on Oct. 21. Camping, who predicted that 200 million Christians would be taken to heaven Saturday before global cataclysm struck the planet, said Monday that he felt so terrible when his doomsday message did not come true that he left home and took refuge in a motel with his wife. His independent ministry, Family Radio International, spent millions — some of it from donations made by followers — on more than 5,000 billboards and 20 recreational vehicles plastered with the Judgment Day message.

First off, I have a bone to pick not only with this article, but with the slavering hordes of people eager to make jokes at Camping’s expense. Strictly speaking, he did not predict the world would end on May 21st; he predicted that Jesus would judge mankind on that day. All along he said that the final day of the Earth would be in October, and he hasn’t changed his mind about that.

Secondly, there’s a larger point to be made here. Harold Camping is a guy with really weird ideas. They’re bizarre and nonsensical and have only a fleeting and occasional relationship with observable reality. He has taken those beliefs out of the privacy of his head and has decided to plaster them all over the place, gathering followers and collecting vast sums of money in the process. The people who follow him appear to be earnest and kind but simple-minded fools who have fallen victim to Camping’s particular brand of lunacy.

Here’s the point: what Harold Camping believes is different from what the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or Billy Graham or (insert famous religious personality) believes only in terms of magnitude, not type. Belief in a supernatural entity in the absence of evidence is what licenses all kinds of weird beliefs, even those as extreme as Camping’s. I will avoid, for now, the obvious temptation of comparing his nuttiness to fanatics like Ayatollah Khomeni or Joseph Kony – Camping did not advocate violence or totalitarian rule. However, the fundamental basis of his position is rooted on identical grounds: the will of an undefinable and unobservable supreme being.

And so while believers and non-believers alike spent the day laughing at the stupidity of the May 21st Rapture, we were laughing at two different things. Believers (the Christian ones, anyway) were yukking it up at the audacity of trying to pick a date for the return of the human son of the supreme being on the universe:

Tim LaHaye, co-author of the bestselling Left Behind novels about the end times, recently called Camping’s prediction “not only bizarre but 100 per cent wrong!” He cited the Bible verse Matthew 24:36, “but about that day or hour no one knows” except God. “While it may be in the near future, many signs of our times certainly indicate so, but anyone who thinks they ‘know’ the day and the hour is flat out wrong,” LaHaye wrote on his website, leftbehind.com.

Everyone else was laughing at how stupid the idea is.

When black people in the United States jumped on the Proposition 8 bandwagon to pass an amendment to ban gay marriage, I couldn’t fathom how a group that has experienced (and continues to experience) the suppression of its civil rights would be so eager to take the same rights away from other people. It was the same blindness I saw at work in believers who were happy to deride Camping but couldn’t see that their own religious beliefs were simply a diluted aspect of the same irrationality at work. While I’ve discussed the recalcitrance of the religious to examine their own behaviour, I am slowly learning that this is simply a product of human brains, not something unique to religious faith alone.

So what happened on the 21st? As it had for the past billions of years, the particular planet orbited about the particular star in the particular far-flung region of the universe, completely oblivious to the stupidity happening on its surface. Who wants to take bets on what’s going to happen in 5 months?

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0 Catholic Church: Not getting it since 500 A.D.

May 25, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Catholic church · religion

This is one of those stories that seems like it is good news, so long as you only read the headline:

Vatican: Bishops should report abuse to police

The Vatican told bishops around the world Monday that it was important to co-operate with police in reporting priests who rape and molest children and said they should develop guidelines for preventing sex abuse by next May.

I like to at least pretend to be even-handed. While I am in no way ashamed of explicitly stating my biases and positions, I try to give my opponents an even shake – misrepresenting the positions of others only serves to undermine one’s own credibility. It is for this reason that I have tried my best, in all of my discussions of the Roman Catholic Church’s wheelings and dealings in this ongoing abuse issue, to give credit where it’s due. However, the underlying problem with their response to the ongoing revelations has been their staunch refusal to take responsibility for their own actions – first blaming gay people, then “Sin”, then the free-love 60s, on and on ad nauseum. They’ve been happy to cast the blame pretty much everywhere rather than themselves:

There cannot be any more proof in my mind that the Catholic Church does not understand why the world is upset. It doesn’t get that its claims to supernatural authority are meaningless, and increasingly rejected by the world at large. They can’t comprehend the fact that it’s not the simple matter of abuse that is making the world so angry – it’s the repeated attempts to cover it up and defy secular authority. They don’t get it, and it looks like they never will.

But again, the above snippet does suggest that the Vatican is starting to recognize the fact that compelling priests to recognize their lay duty of care to their fellow human beings might be a good thing, and being subject to secular authority would ensure that abuse would at least be addressed more quickly, if not reduced immediately. That is, until you plumb the depths of what that word “should” means:

Critically, the letter reinforces bishops’ authority in dealing with abuse cases. It says independent lay review boards that have been created in some countries to oversee the church’s child protection policies “cannot substitute” for bishops’ judgment and power. Recently, such lay review committees in the U.S. and Ireland have reported that some bishops “failed miserably” in following their own guidelines and had thwarted the boards’ work by withholding information and by enacting legal hurdles that made ensuring compliance impossible.

In the letter, the Vatican told the bishops “it is important to cooperate” with civil law enforcement authorities and follow civil reporting requirements, though it doesn’t make such reporting mandatory. The Vatican has said such a binding rule would be problematic for priests working in countries with repressive regimes.

Once again – this is a non-move by the RCC. It still asserts the primacy of the Church in matters of management. Civil authority is to be consulted only when it is convenient to do so, and this decision is left up to the individual discretion of the bishop – a decision-making process that has been shown to be corrupt through history. I can certainly appreciate that a blanket requirement to report to the civil authority might be problematic to those priests living in places where that authority is not to be trusted, but making no changes is not the answer. If there are special circumstances, there can be allowances made for that, but the countries in which these cases are arising are not the kinds of places that one would expect to worry about that (Ireland, New Zealand, Belgium, United States, Canada…).

This is a failure to understand the fundamental problem – it’s not simply the abuse. It’s the attitude of secrecy and moral arrogance that comes with asserting that only the hierarchy is in a position to make these kinds of decisions rather than lay authority. Anything short of dramatic policy changes that signal the Vatican’s understanding of the actual issue will simply be spraying perfume on a turd.

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12 Pol Pot, Stalin, Mao… all irrelevant

May 23, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · crommunism · religion

Anyone who has ever watched a debate between a theist and an atheist has seen this familiar scene: 1) the atheist points out that religion, despite its claims to inform human morality, has been (and continues to be) responsible for many atrocities and moral outrages; 2) the theist counters that the greatest mass murderers in the history of mankind (usually some combination of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao) were atheists; 3) the theist wins the argument (note: step 3 may or may not be completely made up). Like the sun rising in the morning, the leaves changing colour in autumn, or the Rapture happening two days ago (remember how awesome that was?), this line of argument is so predictable as to be almost laughable.

There are so many flaws with this argument that it makes the head spin, so I am going to try and walk you, the reader, through them sequentially.

Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were atheists

This is debatable. Leaving aside Hitler for a moment (who was baptized Catholic and used Christian religious imagery extensively as the justification for his racist political ideology), there certainly have been leaders that have killed many of their own people, many of whom were openly atheist. However, none of the people that are commonly listed (and some that are less commonly mentioned like Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, and Kim Il-Sung) left religion out of the picture. Instead of worship of a supernatural deity that speaks directly into the ear of the leader, these men simply bypassed the middle man and pronounced themselves akin to the deity.

Without exception, if you look at how these men ruled their countries, they made themselves a figurehead and object of worship. Even today, there are pictures of Castro and Guevera plastered all over Cuba. Idi Amin was Uganda and erected a quasi-religious framework around him; ditto for Stalin (but even more so). Pol Pot and Mao, arguably the closest to being truly atheistic dictators, still installed themselves as nearly-supernatural beings whose word was divine law; in the case of Kim Il-Sung this is quite literally true. Strictly speaking, this doesn’t qualify as atheism. There is a world of difference between saying “there are no gods” and “I am a god”. It exploits the seemingly-innate propensity of human beings to subjugate themselves to something – far closer to the religious position (“I speak for the gods”) than the atheist position.

But, even if that were true…

Let’s pretend for a moment that we can accurately label the above listed dictators as being atheists (in the interest, perhaps, of avoiding being inaccurately accused of using the “No True Scotsman” fallacy). The argument is still invalid because the crimes these men committed were not done in the name of atheism. Whereas theistic murderers often use religious scripture and theological ‘reasoning’ to justify why suchandsuch group of people are deserving of the end of a sword, I know of no examples where someone has said the following:

Because there are no gods, we have the right to murder/oppress this group.

Such a statement would be on par with the justifications that come from religiously-justified crimes against humanity (“God hates fags”, “Unbelievers deserve hell”, “Jews killed Jesus”). And while there have been many atrocities that have happened for non-religious reasons, it is not reasonable or consistent to classify anything that is not pro-theistic as being atheist. The statement “there are no gods” could be twisted to support the murder of people if one was particularly psychopathic, but I don’t think it ever has.

But, even if that were true…

But let’s for a moment imagine that someone unearthed such an example, where the lack of god belief was used as a justification to commit a crime against humanity. Even then, this argument would have no value, since atheism is not a morality claim. The whole purpose of raising the atrocities committed with religious justification is to poke holes in the argument that religious faith is the source of morality, or that adherence to religious codes makes humanity more moral. If this were the case, it would be a rare exception that religious fervor could be twisted to serve a genocidal purpose – people’s faith would steer them away from the clear evil of mass murder.

The fact that even ‘atheistic’ mass murderers used the trappings of religious adherence and unwavering faith to rally people to their clearly immoral cause suggests that, if anything, religion makes people less moral. At least it seems to be useful in getting people to short-circuit their critical thinking faculties and engage in behaviour that, if they were to sit and think rationally about it (or, in hindsight) they would rightly recoil from. Even so, the cup of religion overfloweth with claims of superior morality – claims not supported by the available evidence. Atheism has no such morality claims; it is simply the lack of god-belief. It is entirely incidental (or, more likely, due to a third variable like propensity for independent introspection) that atheists are less likely to murder, rape, etc.

But even if that were true…

Even if we, for the sake of argument, granted all of the above (untrue) assumptions – that atheistic dictators committed their crimes from a position of atheistic moral authority – this argument would still be completely worthless. The issue of whether or not atheism is nice has absolutely no relationship to whether or not atheism is true. Even if we were to grant that atheists are just as shitty are theists, that doesn’t say anything about which of the two positions of correct – all it says is that people suck. Making the assertions that morality comes from the divine assumes the existence of the divine. Failure to demonstrate the existence of the divine (we’re still waiting, by the way) completely invalidates the theistic moral position. Saying that theists are super-nice doesn’t mean that the gods exist any more than saying atheists are shitty people does. Both positions are entirely orthogonal to the central claim of whether or not gods are real.

In summary

I’m honestly not sure why this argument is perceived to carry any weight in a serious debate. Surely respected theists are aware of Godwin’s Law, and while I hold out no expectations for people debating issues on Reddit or on someone’s Facebook wall, I would imagine that enough people have at least thought through their position long enough to realize that such an assertion has no bearing whatsoever on their position. And yet, keep your eyes and ears open for the next big debate between an atheist and a believer – I’ll be willing to bet cookies that the rotting, shuffling corpse of this thoroughly-useless argument will rise again and attempt to devour the brains of the audience.

Remember, aim for the head.

TL/DR: People are often pointing out that some of the greatest mass murderers in history are atheist. Even if they were, they didn’t kill in the name of atheism. Even if they did, atheists don’t make claims of superior morality because of atheism (whereas religion does). Even if they did, that is irrelevant to whether or not atheism is true.

0 Movie Friday: Sodom and Gomorrah

May 20, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · funny · hate · LGBT · movie · religion

Anti-gay agitators like to bring up a particularly monstrous story from the bible (and there are many to choose from) as an example of God’s perfect mercy. They use this story to demonstrate that God is not okay with buttsecks, or really anything that isn’t face-to-face vagina/penis intercourse with the lights off and while a woman is ovulating. Rather than trying to retell it in my own inimitable style, I’ll let The Professor Brothers do it for me (video and audio NSFW):

They kind of leave it as a tease at the end, the way that the tribe gets repopulated. Let’s just say that for the (by my count) third time so far in the book, Yahweh is super pissed off that people do things against his will, but has zero problems whatsoever with incest.

Yahweh also seems to be a bit of a plagiarist, unashamedly ripping off the tragic climax of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and adding an oddly (un?)savoury twist. Just another example of where the Bible seems to encourage completely blind faith over reasonable skepticism or even human decency: surely Lot’s wife (who apparently doesn’t deserve a name) had some friends in town whose fates she was upset about; apparently Yahweh’s not big on compassion either.

So this is the example we’re supposed to hold up – the rigorous moral standard that we poor wretched sinners can’t ever even hope to aspire to, save through the oddly-specific requirements of Jesus. We are to villify gay people (not rapists, incidentally – anti-gay crusaders will specify that the crime wasn’t rape, but secks in teh butt) because they are more evil than a mass murderer that permits drunken incest but whose wrath is so moved by a single moment of doubt that he will transform you into a kitchen condiment?

You are right to laugh.

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1 So predictable

May 19, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · forces of stupid · religion · science · skepticism

One of the first posts I ever wrote for this blog was discussing why belief based in science is much better than belief based in religious faith. Even if we were to grant the wildly unsupported and ridiculous assertion that religious narratives and scientific observations are equally accurate methods to describe the way the world came to be, the fact remains that religious narratives are consistently inaccurate when it comes to predicting the future. For all the talk of ‘prophecy’ that is in the Bible, most of it is simply an expression of rudimentary understanding of human nature. If you couch your predictions in vague enough language, everything becomes a ‘fulfilled’ prophecy.

Of course those who do dare to tip-toe outside the safe boundaries of non-specific prognostication and actually put their reputations on the line by selecting a specific date and location for an event are always proved wrong. Predictions of this specific type would actually be useful – being able to, for example, know when a plague or a famine or a natural disaster was going to strike a certain region would be incredibly useful. Assuming for a moment that religious truth picks up where science leaves off, and science isn’t capable of predicting these events, using this other ‘way of knowing’ would be an incredible boon to mankind. We could use the Bible (or Qu’ran or Vedas or whatever you want to use) to predict when this would happen, and then use science to minimize the damage such things would cause.

However, that’s not the case. So instead we get stuff like this:

More than 22 earthquakes struck Italy by noon on Wednesday, as is normal for the quake-prone country but none was the devastating temblor purportedly predicted by a now-dead scientist to strike Rome. Despite efforts by seismologists to debunk the myth of a major Roman quake on May 11, 2011 and stress that quakes can never be predicted, some Romans left town just in case, spurred by rumour-fueled fears that ignore science.

Many storefronts were shuttered, for example, in a neighbourhood of Chinese-owned shops near Rome’s central train station. And an agriculture farm lobby group said a survey of farm-hotels outside the capital indicated some superstitious Romans had headed to the countryside for the day.

Some people I know are superstitious, or believe in horroscopes and the like. Contexually, it is a harmless enough fancy – for the most part they use logic and good sense to make their life decisions. In principle however, these kinds of beliefs can be incredibly destructive. When people begin abandoning their homes and work over a superstition that violates scientific principles it’s not simply something to laugh off. People leaving their jobs means a serious burden to the national economy; people leaving town ties up roads and puts an additional strain on emergency services; the efforts spent trying to disabuse people of a false belief could have been better spent in any number of fields. I’m not saying that people can’t take a day off, but when hundreds do so at the same time for an extremely poor reason, you kind of have to give your head a shake.

When those same people spend millions of dollars to propogate a superstitious belief, you kind of wish you could shake them instead:

Billboards are popping up around the globe, including in major Canadian cities, proclaiming May 21 as Judgment Day. “Cry mightily unto GOD for HIS mercy,” says one of the mounted signs from Family Radio, a California-based sectarian Christian group that is sending one of its four travelling caravans of believers into Vancouver and Calgary within the next 10 days. Family Radio’s website is blunt in its prediction of Judgment Day and the rolling earthquake that will mark the beginning of the end. “The Bible guarantees it!” the site proclaims, under a passage from the book of Ezekiel, which says “blow the trumpet … warn the people.”

You didn’t misread that – Family Radio (why is every fundagelical group ‘Family’ something – as though only Christians have families?) has determined through some serious Biblical research that the final judgment of all mankind is happening two days from now (or maybe less, depending on when you’re reading this). Oh, and when I say “serious Biblical research”, I mean some random shit that he’s made up:

I remember a few years ago, I was reading an article by a Rastafari preacher in a Bajan newspaper. He was telling people that you shouldn’t eat ice cream, because it sounds like “I scream”, and therefore it meant that your soul is screaming when you eat it.

Year earlier than that, a guy in one of my high school classes used the same ‘logic’ as Harold Camping to demonstrate that Barney the Dinosaur was actually the devil – apparently the letters in BIG PURPLE DINOSAUR, when converted to Roman numerals (substituting ‘V’ for ‘U’, as is the style in Latin), and removing all letters that don’t correspond to numerals, add to “666”. At least when Lee said it, he was joking. The followers of Mr. Camping are selling their homes, quitting their jobs, and basically giving themselves no Plan B. This is seriously disruptive not only to their lives, but to the lives of those that depend on them. The sad part is what will happen to all of these people when the sun rises on May 22nd and nothing’s changed.

If I am moved by a spirit of uncharacteristic generosity, I will grant that religion helps people deal with existential crises by giving them convenient and non-falsifiable answers to complicated questions (by teaching them not to deal with them at all, but whatever). However, when it comes to making claims about the material world, religion can and must be completely ignored as a source of reliable information. Faith is simply one of the remainders that falls out of the long-division of our evolution-crafted mental processes. Just like we can control our urge to defecate on the ground and have sex with teenagers (well… most of us anyway), we can control our urge to believe in ridiculous claims of superstition when it comes to answering the only questions that matter – how are we to live in the world?

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2 Yeah THIS guy needed to be fired…

May 17, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Catholic church · crapitalism · religion

Pretend for a moment that you’re the head of a major international organization worth billions of dollars (hey, congratulations!). Unhappily, however, your organization is facing overwhelming international criticism for a series of egregious ethics violations. Some of these violations implicate you personally, but the majority of them refer to the general standards of practice and the organization’s history of secrecy and evading prosecution. As the leader, you have complete and total authority to change the rules and standards of practice of the organization to respond to this criticism – criticism which, incidentally, is severely impacting your bottom line.

Have you got that in your head? Good. Moving on.

Now imagine that you hear that someone in middle management somewhere in the organization has advocated changing a company policy on the grounds that it is both unpopular and unfair. This manager has bypassed the usual chain of command, which is most certainly a violation of the rules. However, in the larger scheme of things he has articulated a position that many of your shareholders advocate and that would certainly go a long way in rehabilitating your international image. What do you do with this manager? Do you call him in for discipline? Do you say that while you respect his right to speak, you disagree with his position and here’s why? Do you use the criticism as an opportunity to change direction and show the public that your antiquated policies can be changed for the better when the times call for them? You’ve got lots of options; which one do you pursue?

If you picked anything other than ‘shitcan his ass’, the congratulations: you are smarter than the Pope:

Pope Benedict XVI has sacked an outspoken Australian bishop who had called on the church to consider ordaining women and married men. The Vatican said in a statement Monday that the pope had “removed from pastoral care” Bishop William Morris of the Toowoomba diocese. That language was unexpectedly strong by Vatican standards. However, no explanation for the move was given.

There are many people that need to be fired in the church (the Pope being chief among them), for doing things that make a person with any sense of humanist morals shudder. It is one thing to know someone who rapes children and not do anything to stop it. That’s pretty bad (even writing that sentence seems ludicrously evil). It is another thing entirely to aid the rapist in covering up his crime, allowing him to repeat it again and again. It is another thing to threaten the victims of your friend’s crime with eternal punishment if they speak out about it. It is another thing to allow all of this (and actively participate in it), whilst simultaneously holding yourself up as an example of morality and ruin the lives of millions of people, sacrificed in the name of your moral posturing.

But yeah… fire the guy who says that women should be allowed to be priests.

The level of evil is almost cartoonish with this organization, and the rabbit hole goes deeper:

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has arrived in Rome for the beatification of the late Pope John Paul II. An EU travel ban forbids him from visiting member states but the Vatican, where the ceremony will take place, is a sovereign state and not in the EU. Mr Mugabe, a Roman Catholic, has been allowed to transit through Italy. Italy’s foreign ministry said it had requested an exemption from the EU travel ban for Mr Mugabe.

Yep. The gross pig-fucker himself is welcome in the Vatican’s hallowed chambers. A man whose exploits have earned him the just condemnation of the international community for bankrupting his country, attacking political appointments with violence, and repeatedly violating the human rights of his own people… but he’s got a friend in Rome! To the point where government officials have to ask the EU to suspend its own laws so that he can come watch a fraud passed off as miraculous. You’ve got to imagine how uncomfortable that conversation must have been.

EU: Sorry… we must have a bad connection. It sounded like you said you wanted an exemption to allow Robert Mugabe into Europe. Heh heh, but that’s just ridiculous.

Italy: Um… yeah. You got it right. We want Mugabe.

EU: WHY?

Italy: The pope wants him at the beatification of John Paul II

EU: WHY?

Italy: Well the Vatican has diplomatic relations with Zimbabwe, and he’s the leader, so he’s invited

EU: WHY?

Italy: Is there someone else I can talk to?

Some people wonder if the Pope and other religious leaders do not actually believe the things they say, but perpetuate the lie to gain power. It’s certainly a reasonable suspicion, given that the claims religious leaders regularly make are so bizarre and contrary to the basic rules of logic. However, when you look at the actions of these people, it becomes abundantly clear that they really do believe that their deity is speaking directly to them. It’s the only way one could justify such unrelenting and convoluted evil – license from the supernatural.

This is why enshrining ‘faith’ as a virtue is dangerous. People can trick themselves into believe just about anything, especially when they are told by the culture surrounding them that it’s good enough to just believe something, facts be damned. Once you’re willing to completely blind yourself to the effects of your actions by telling yourself that justification for your evil comes from on high, anything is possible. There is some truth to the old adage that ‘faith can move mountains’ – it can move mountains of inconvenient evidence and logic out of the way, so that the believer can commit any crime she/he wants without utterly devastating her/his own self-concept.

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0 Believers are still out there

May 10, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · news · religion · skepticism

Being a skeptic is incredibly hard work. I’m not referring to the fact that many people have a completely vacuous and dizzyingly inaccurate idea of what ‘skepticism’ means – that it’s simply the refusal to entertain or accept new ideas – that’s tough enough. No, even if everyone had the definition right (skepticism being the practice of questioning all assertions about reality and apportioning the strength of one’s belief to the strength of the available evidence), it would still be a slog. Not only does a skeptic have to question the opinions of others, she/he must repeatedly check her/his own assumptions and thoughts constantly.

Skepticism, like the concept of ‘enlightenment’ found in Zen teaching, is an abstract; a goal that can never be fully attained but which should be constantly pursued. Nobody can ever be a ‘true’ skeptic, as we constantly find ourselves falling back into our human failings. One of the things I keep finding myself blindsided by is the occasional realization that while, as far as I’m concerned, the supernatural aspects of religious belief are the stuff of juvenile fantasy, there are still lots of people out there that really do believe that shit:

Belief in a god, or a supreme being, and some sort of afterlife is strong in many countries around the globe, according to a new Ipsos/Reuters poll. Fifty one per cent of the 18,829 people across 23 countries who took part in the survey said they were convinced there is an afterlife and a divine entity, while 18 per cent said they don’t believe in a god and 17 per cent weren’t sure.

But only 28 per cent believe in creationism, the belief that a god created humans, compared to 41 per cent who believe in human evolution and 31 per cent who simply don’t know what to believe.

From my personal experience, even those religious people I regularly spend time with say that most of their beliefs are more allegorical than literal. They believe in ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ in abstract terms representing a belief in some sort of ultimate justice. They believe in ‘god’ as a vague description of some kind of greater organizing force that permeates the universe. As such, they describe themselves as ‘religious’ in the sense that they do not accept that the universe can be entirely explained through cause/effect chains. If you really drill down to the core of modern theology, it eventually becomes various forms of this kind of ecumenical refusal to be certain about anything.

While infuriating from a rationalist point of view, this kind of belief system is not the kind of thing that inspires people to go out and murder their fellow man or oppress her rights, and often these people are able to pivot that kind of fuzzy ‘religion’ into something constructive (which, I think, points even more strongly to the fact that belief is entirely ancillary to human virtue). And while I think this kind of belief is an intellectually lazy way of having your cake and eating it too, I can at least appreciate the impulse to retain some kind of belief in the supernatural.

That’s why I am gob-smacked when I am confronted with the fact that more than half of my fellow creatures believe in the literal truth of life after death and an ultimate supernatural entity. Not as a vague abstract notion, but as a real being with conscious decision-making abilities and a penchant for judgment. I can handle the abstract concept of people who believe this kind of stuff, but from time to time my brain grabs onto it semantically, shakes my conscious mind and says “can you believe this shit?”

And of course, they do:

Mexicans were the most likely to accept the idea of an afterlife, but not heaven or hell, followed by Russians, Brazilians, Indians, Canadians and Argentines. Believers in creationism were strongest in South Africa, followed by the United States, Indonesia, South Korea and Brazil.

Of course there are two different ways of looking at these findings. Yes, depressingly 3 or 4 billion people in the world think that their entire lives are nothing more than the staging area for some post-mortem talent contest judged by the ultimate Simon Cowell. However, it’s almost perfectly balanced by people who either recognize that there’s no evidence for such an assertion or simply reserve judgment on that particular issue. Nearly half of my fellow creatures live their lives under the operating assumption that this life actually matters, not as a screening process for some kind of real life that happens after you die, but to the planet they live on and the beings that share it. Even if it turns out that there is an afterlife (although the very idea seems preposterous – what part of you goes to the afterlife? And no, ‘soul’ isn’t a meaningful answer to that question), the world we do know exists is made better through the actions of people that live as though their existence matters now.

Opinion polls are largely unimportant when it comes to determining truth about reality (saving those exceptions where we are trying to describe the reality of human belief), but they do give us a pretty significant nod in the direction that our policies and decisions will take us. It’s crucial to never underestimate the fact that while I (and many of you, I’d imagine) have abandoned the false promises given by those who claim knowledge of the afterlife, we share our space with literally billions of other who every day trade the cow of their life for the magic beans of faith.

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0 Atheist bus ads get raptured

May 5, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · religion

I’ve written about the mysterious disappearance of two bus ads from the Atheist Bus Campaign in Kelowna, BC. You can read the writeup here:

It’s not like they’re held on with velcro or chewing gum – these bus ads are meant to withstand winter weather, rain, wind, and exposure. They are held on with strong adhesive – they don’t just slip off on the side of the road somewhere. They certainly don’t just slip off in pairs. There’s only one logical, rational explanation for this disappearance: they were taken into the sight of Jesus in a localized mini-Rapture. How else can you explain them vanishing without a trace (a source inside the bus company said that it looks like they were ‘professionally removed’ due to the lack of residue – who’s more professional than Jesus?)

Sometimes it’s nice to cut loose and let the ridicule fly.

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