Category: religion

3 The ongoing battle for cultural accommodation loses two skirmishes

February 17, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · cultural tolerance · culture · law · politics · racism · secularism

Regular readers may recall last month’s discussion over the kirpan, a piece of Sikh religious iconography that has been the subject of recent debate in the Quebec legislature:

While it would be a complete failure on our part to refuse to recognize the impact on the Sikh community (as a manifestation of privilege) of such a ban, we also must respect the fact that Canada is a secular nation, meaning that religious symbols are not to be given any kind of legal standing.

Finding equally compelling arguments on both sides of the issue, I was forced to swallow the bitter pill of compromise and suggest that a reasonable accommodation would be to allow kirpans that could not be used as weapons – either because they were locked or because they were too small (some are worn like lockets around the neck and are less than an inch long). I dislike advocating compromise, because it is usually a sign that both sides have given up trying to convince the other and are trying to get out of the room in time for lunch. In this case, I found myself stuck between two secular principles and unable to arbitrarily pick a side.

It seems that the Quebec legislature suffers from no such quandary:

Quebec’s governing Liberals voted in favour of an opposition motion to ban ceremonial daggers from the provincial legislature. The Parti Québécois tabled its motion Wednesday — requesting the government prevent Sikhs from carrying their ceremonial daggers into the national assembly building — and the legislature voted unanimously in favour.

The Opposition PQ was more strident and applauded the building’s security details, while stressing the party’s view that multiculturalism is a Canadian but not a Quebec value. PQ MNA Louise Beaudoin urged Sikhs to make a “little bit of an effort” and demanded the Liberal government clarify its position on religious objects in the legislature.

It’s nice to see that despite our differences, lawmakers can all agree that there is no room for accommodation of any of those weird foreign practices. Certainly no middle ground to be found between respecting individual freedoms and the secular nature of the state – that would be ridiculous.

Sikhs, predictably, are unhappy with the ruling:

The World Sikh Organization of Canada is disappointed with the Quebec national assembly’s decision to ban Sikhs from wearing a kirpan in the legislature. Arguing that multiculturalism is under threat, Canadian Sikhs pointed out that the Supreme Court of Canada decided in 2006 that the ceremonial dagger, traditionally worn underneath the clothing, is an article of faith — not a weapon.

While I sympathize with their feelings on this issue, I can’t help but roll my eyes whenever someone tries to claim that the kirpan isn’t a weapon. It is true that the religious dictates requiring Sikhs to wear kirpans do not require them to be viable as weapons, but to say that the kirpan isn’t designed with that purpose in mind is willful ignorance masquerading as tolerance. The question is whether or not the religious belief surrounding the weapon allows it to be exempted, under the assumption that nobody will ever use it for violence. That would be a stupid decision made for a stupid reason.

There have been accusations of racism/xenophobia that accompany this decision, and for the most part I tend to agree. There have been exactly zero incidents of someone being attacked in the Quebec legislature by a kirpan, so passing a law that bans them isn’t motivated by self-preservation so much as the wish to make a statement that people who look and behave different must fall in line. Again, I think a reasonable accommodation could have been made here, and failing to pursue that (with a unanimous decision it’s hard to argue otherwise) is strongly suggestive to me of a pervasive attitude that precludes the idea of accommodation.

This issue of religious behaviour functioning in secular society may become the defining issue of our discourse in the next little while. With the Supreme Court wrangling over the constitutionality of bans on polygamy, the Ontario provincial court grappling with veils on testifying witnesses, and now the kirpan issue, can we throw one more log on the fire?

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney says a private members bill that would force people to show their faces when they vote is “reasonable.” A Quebec Conservative backbencher, Steven Blaney, rekindled the debate over veiled voters on Friday with the tabling of a bill that critics decry as an attempt to divide the electorate.

It is tempting to try and weigh the merits of this kind of issue and try to figure out if it is indeed reasonable. I would argue that asking someone to identify themselves in order to vote is very reasonable, and if that cannot be done by means of facial identification and there is no other alternative, requiring someone to show their face is perfectly fine. However, such a view of this issue ignores the real purpose – this is simply an attempt to find wedge issues in anticipation of an upcoming election. Unless there is a suspicion that voter fraud is happening at such a level that national-level legislation needs to be enacted, then this is simply an argument for argument’s sake. It’s a typical tactic of the Harper government that is about as transparent as it is utterly meaningless.

However, there is a larger point to be gleaned in all of this. Canada has to decide how it wants to define itself – as a rigidly secular nation where immigrants have to learn to adopt our customs, or as a place where accommodations are made as often as possible to ensure that everyone feels welcome. Both of these approaches have their merits, but I’m more optimistic about the second one working out as a long-term strategy.

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2 The religious right

February 16, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · civil rights · funny · law · religion · secularism

Section 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (also sometimes called the Constitution of Canada) guarantees all Canadians the following:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;

(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;

While there is a great deal of haggling over what this actually means (more on that in a second), at the very minimum it says that any Canadian person is entitled to hold their own private beliefs (whether religious or otherwise), and is allowed to express those beliefs openly without fear of official government infringement. This is the part of the Charter that gives me warm fuzzy feelings, incidentally. Pretty much everything else is good also, but this particular part makes my nature rise.

Personally, I favour this minimum definition – you’re allowed to believe and say anything you like, just so long as you don’t a) break the law in doing so, and/or b) try to forcibly compel others to adopt your beliefs. Other interpretations of the “freedom of religion” clause seem to think that you’re allowed to do pretty much whatever you want as long as you can find a religious justification for doing so. Both interpretations are, strictly speaking, in line with the wording of the Charter; however, the second one is both dangerous and stupid. Dangerous, because pretty much anything can be justified by claiming religious origin, and stupid because it leads to things like this:

A judge has thrown out a legal challenge that claimed Canada’s marijuana laws violate the freedom of religion provisions of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The challenge was brought by two Toronto men — Peter Styrsky and Shahrooz Kharaghani — who are reverends in a group called the Church of the Universe… The church uses the drug as a sacrament and argues the law infringes on their freedom of religion rights under the charter.

Trying to claim that the right to religious freedom grants religious adherents freedoms that transcend those of the general populace is absurd. This particular church is obviously a bunch of crazies who think that marijuana is God’s “tree of life” (I am not making that up), but that’s really not that far a step above Rastafari who believe in ganja’s powers to cleanse and refocus the mind. Rastafari isn’t too many steps beyond Orthodox Judaism or anyone who keeps kosher, believing that the milk of a animal cannot be consumed with its meat through some kind of totemic magical properties that make it “unclean” to do so. Orthodox Judaism lies well within the mainstream view of religion, and its dietary restrictions are surely no more absurd than the requirement for Muslim women to cover up, or the Catholic admonishment to abstain from meat on certain days of the week.

Happily, the judge appears to agree with my assessment of where “religious freedom” begins and ends, which is that even the most pious and sincere religious conviction does not trump the law:

“I do not accept that providing cannabis to people in the basement … was a religious act,” she wrote. “They may well believe that providing [marijuana] to others is a good thing to do. That does not, however, transform its distribution into a religious belief or practice.”

This applies in equal measure to all attempts to circumvent the laws and statutes of society in the name of “religious expression”. Christians like to claim persecution when they have to treat LGBT people as though they are full human beings, entitled to the same level of jobs, services and treatment that anyone else is. This ruling speaks to that issue as well – your beliefs are fine so long as you keep them in the comfort of your own head. The second you bring them out into the open and begin contravening the laws of the land, you’re no longer entitled and must obey the same rules as everyone else. The irony is of course lost on the religious that the same rules that prevent them from discriminating against others also protect them from the selfsame discrimination they worry that we secularists are going to inflict upon them.

I think they should relax – the Charter already prohibits the things they’re worried about. Can’t relax? Ask the guys at the Church of the Universe – they might be able to help you out…

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4 iGuilt

February 15, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Catholic church · crapitalism · religion

I loved the first Austin Powers movie. The world was abundantly ready for a spy parody, and Powers hit the mark perfectly. Since its rapid decline (along with the equally rapid decline of my respect for Mike Myers, I’m sad to say), I don’t think about the franchise much. However, a recent news item reminded me of one particularly outrageously funny scene from the first movie.

The story? This:

An iPhone and iPad app that helps Roman Catholics seek forgiveness for their sins has been sanctioned by the Catholic Church. Confession: A Roman Catholic App, developed by Little iApps in South Bend, Ind., received an “imprimatur” — an official publication licence from the church — from Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Indiana Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend, the company said in a news release.

The scene? This:

It’s a little too on the nose, actually. The decrepit old man chasing around a younger one in a vain attempt to convey both paternal authority and familial affection. The Church has been chasing its own youth for years now, to no avail (and no, that is not an abuse joke – those aren’t funny; people were really hurt by that shit). The ultra-conservative attitude of the church toward pretty much every topic under the sun continues to alienate their younger members, to the point where some of their formerly-revered institutions are starting to resort to means of recruitment that are… less than dignified.

I remember my last confession. It was just over 10 years ago at a Holy Thursday mass that I attended with my parents. For those of you who don’t know, Holy Thursday commemorates the Last Supper before Jesus’ arrest, torture and execution at the hands of the Romans. It was a custom at our church to engage in feet washing, to emulate the portion of the last supper when Jesus washed the feet of his disciples. Basically, the act is supposed to be a form of humility before your fellow man – a recognition that we are fundamentally no better than each other and a reminder to do service to one another. The religious overtones aside, it is actually a really nice gesture that is at least 2 degrees of separation from worshiping God.

At any rate, after the foot washing, we were all encouraged to complete the sacrament of Confession in preparation for Good Friday. Traditionally, confession is done behind a screen to protect the anonymity of the confessing parishioner, but given the sheer number of people, the priest decided to relax that rule and offer confession in the open. If you didn’t feel comfortable, there was no coercion, and priests were brought in from other parishes if you didn’t feel comfortable talking to someone who knows you personally. Being 16 and having pretty much nothing of real substance to confess, I went to Father Peter (his line was shortest – I guess not everyone had consciences as clean as mine). Halfway through confessing my “sins” (jealousy, the occasional porno), I realized I felt a lot better about the whole thing. Before the penance and the absolution that followed, I realized that confessing my inner turmoil to another person and having him listen and sympathize (although I hated Fr. Peter’s guts, he was remarkably tolerant and understanding toward me) was a great help.

Any actual value that can be drawn from confession of “sins” (a concept I don’t personally believe in anymore) comes from having a sympathetic ear. As useless as having God forgive your sins is, confessing to a phone strips away the only part of the act that has any merit whatsoever. The Vatican apparently thinks so too:

The Vatican put its foot down Wednesday over the idea of “confessing” by iPhone, after news that U.S. users can now download an application for the Apple gadget that helps the faithful gain absolution. “It is essential to understand that the rites of penance require a personal dialogue between penitents and their confessor . . . It cannot be replaced by a computer application,” Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told journalists.

Of course Fr. Lombardi and I likely agree for strikingly different reasons. I think that talking to someone about your problems helps put them in perspective and helps you to put words to your feelings. Both of these things are wonderful and important steps to resolving problems. The mumbo-jumbo about God forgiving you and the token penance of a few muttered prayers is just dross plastered over the process to reinforce the Church’s superiority complex. If you’re going to replace the one part of the process that makes it at all worthwhile, you might as well save $1.99 and just forgive yourself.

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0 Movie Friday: Melon proves there is no God

February 11, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · funny · movie · religion

See, when we watch this video, we laugh:

But when religious people actually do it, we take it seriously?

Well, nobody reading this blog does… probably.

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0 I now have a bit of a crush on Greta Christina

February 9, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · religion · skepticism

I hope that she won’t take that the wrong way. I do not mean to demean, but I do want to take her brain out to dinner and a walk along the seawall. Why? Because she wrote this:

But it’s disingenuous at best, hypocritical at worst, to say that criticism of other religious beliefs is inherently bigoted and offensive… and then make an exception for beliefs that are opposed to your own. You don’t get to speak out about how hard-line extremists are clearly getting Christ’s message wrong (or Mohammad’s, or Moses’, or Buddha’s, or whoever) — and then squawk about religious intolerance when others say you’re the one getting it wrong. That’s just not playing fair.

And, of course, it’s ridiculously hypocritical to engage in fervent political and cultural discourse — as so many progressive ecumenical believers do — and then expect religion to get a free pass. It’s absurd to accept and even welcome vigorous public debate over politics, science, medicine, economics, gender, sexuality, education, the role of government, etc… and then get appalled and insulted when religion is treated as just another hypothesis about the world, one that can be debated and criticized like any other.

In her piece entitled No, Atheists Don’t Have to Show “Respect” for Religion, she hits the ball out of the park in identifying the complete lack of merit in the position of “everyone’s entitled to their opinion“, the topic of one of my very first thought pieces. She really tickles all of my skeptical pleasure-centres when she writes stuff like this:

In my debates and discussions with religious believers, there’s a question I’ve asked many times: “Do you care whether the things you believe are true?” And I’m shocked at how many times I’ve gotten the answer, “No, not really.” It leaves me baffled, practically speechless. (Hey, I said “practically.”) I mean, even leaving out the pragmatic fails and the moral and philosophical bankruptcy of prioritizing pleasantry over reality… isn’t it grossly disrespectful to the God you supposedly believe in? If you really loved God, wouldn’t you want to understand him as best you can? When faced with different ideas about God, wouldn’t you want to ask some questions, and look at the supporting evidence for the different views, and try to figure out which one is probably true? Doesn’t it seem incredibly insulting to God to treat that question as if it didn’t really matter?

There are profound differences between different religions. They are not trivial. And the different religions cannot all be right. (Although, as atheists like to point out, they can all be wrong.) Jesus cannot both be and not be the son of God. God cannot be both an intentional, sentient being and a diffuse supernatural force animating all life. God cannot be both a personal intervening force in our daily lives and a vague metaphorical abstraction of the concepts of love and existence. Dead people cannot both go to heaven and be reincarnated. Etc. Etc. Etc.

When faced with these different ideas, are you really going to shrug your shoulders, and say “My, how fascinating, look at all these different ideas, isn’t it amazing how many ways people have of seeing God, what a magnificent tapestry of faith humanity has created”?

Do you really not care which of these ideas is, you know, true?

Read the whole article, but be prepared for the need to sneak off to enjoy some “personal time” afterwards.

1 Please don’t be… aww crap

February 9, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · critical thinking · news · politics · racism · religion

There’s a phenomenon in the black community, whenever someone sees a headline like this:

Man, 21, arrested for drug possession and assault

We immediately flinch and say “Please please please don’t be a black guy.” It’s a reaction to the fact that, nearly without exception, whenever a black man makes the news it’s because he’s a gang-banger arrested for some crime. The problem is that this event reflects such a small proportion of the black population, and yet the fallout is something we all must deal with. We are all tagged with the crime, as our culture unconsciously (in most cases) links the man’s skin colour to his propensity to commit crime. As a result, I get distrustful looks from old ladies when walking the streets at night, and am assumed to be the one in my group of friends who sells drugs.

I’d imagine that Christians are starting to get an appreciation for that phenomenon when they see headlines like this one:

Charity chief convicted of sexual assault

Given the number of Christian organizations, leaders and celebrities that have been exposed doing decidedly un-Christlike things in the past little while, you’ve got to imagine that Christians are more than a little concerned every time someone makes the news for doing something really evil.

I guess we can both say “oh shit” in unison:

The head of two Toronto-area organizations that were stripped of their charitable status after submitting “falsified” documents to federal regulators was sentenced this month for sexual assault for inappropriately touching a teenager, CBC News has learned. Daniel Mokwe was sentenced Jan. 13 to time served — two nights in jail — and given two years probation.

The victim, a minor at the time of the assault, told Det. Richard Petrie of the Toronto Police Service that she knew Mokwe was a pastor. As a result of the incident, she lost her faith in God and would never enter another church again, she said.

Yep, he’s black and Christian. His “charity organization”, Revival Time Ministries (which sounds like a children’s television program on a god-bothering channel) had its licensed revoked after Canada Revenue (the Canadian equivalent to the IRS) found a series of irregularities in their bookkeeping. Mokwe had another charity called “Save Canada’s Teenagers” – the irony should not be lost on anyone.

If I were a lesser blogger, I could score a few cheap points off of pointing out that Jesus didn’t keep Mokwe from being both financially and sexually corrupted, and that this is “proof” that Christianity is just as empty as all religions. I think the point to be made here is larger than that one though. Daniel Mokwe is undoubtedly a bad person, using the auspices of a charitable organization and his position as an authority figure to abuse both the tax code and, more devastatingly, a young girl. The problem is the source from which Mokwe derives his authority – namely, his position as a pastor. His parishoners, and likely those who donated to him, placed trust in him at least partially based on the fact that he claimed a personal relationship with YahwAlladdha. They essentially granted a portion of the trust that they placed in the deity itself in the hands of a man who told them he is tight with the almighty.

I can’t harp on this issue enough, it seems. The problem is not religion per se. The problem is that we take it seriously. If I told you I had a special insight into a voice in the sky, as revealed through interpretation of Beowulf, you’d (quite rightly) think me a lunatic in need of some therapy. However, if I tell you instead that I am granted authority by Yahweh based on the Bible, all of a sudden my cup doth overflow with credibility. Why? Why do people who claim a particular brand of magical thinking get a free pass into positions of trust? Why indeed, since they seem to have no lesser frequency of violating that trust than someone who is a non-believer?

It is there where the difference between the “don’t let him be black” and the “don’t let him be Christian” arises. Black people don’t claim to be morally superior, or to have a conduit to absolute truth based on the colour of our skin. Christians, however, do claim such superiority. Christianity has been made synonymous with honesty and righteousness over generations, despite all evidence that such association is a big steaming pile of turds. It relies on this borrowed heft of asserted uprightness in order to be made a member of the conversation. Why on Earth would we listen to a bunch of nutjobs who think that the only possible explanation for a woman giving birth without having sex with her husband is that God did it, or who think that a book written by amassing the third-hand account of people who claim to have known a particular Palestinian carpenter decades before the fact is the literal word of the almighty? When evaluating those claims at face value, they can be, and should be, dismissed as nonsense.

As long as we keep re-applying the thin varnish of respect to the rotting woodwork of religion, we will see scam artists like this perpetrate their fraud again and again.

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6 Movie Friday: God is not good

February 4, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · critical thinking · ethics · religion

At the time of writing, some of you are reading last Friday’s edition of Movie Friday (I haven’t quite got back to my 2-week buffer, and since 2 weeks is too short a time to really respond to news I am making some slight adjustments to how I handle the writing). For those of you who are not regular readers (welcome!) and didn’t feel like clicking on the link (lazy!), last week I showed a couple examples of what I thought was an interesting development in hip-hop music: the introduction of the idea of religious doubt.

The reason why it’s particular interesting (to me at least) is that the black community is stereotyped as being particularly religious – traditionally Christian and more recently Muslim. Both of these faiths and their stereotypical overlap with the black community have good historical and sociological explanations. What’s even more interesting is the clip I want to show you today:

I’m not sure why all the Jews in this film clip have English accents, but whatever.

Jews are, from a sociological perspective, an incredibly interesting group of people. Judaism is an ancient religion that is not simply a philosophical belief, but a “live-in” religion with several traditions and rituals. Even people who are not religiously Jewish follow its traditional practices (I’m not completely sure, but I strongly suspect that all of my Jewish friends are atheist, but they all observe in one way or another). The story of the Jews is one of the oldest we have, and yet there is a lot in it that we would not, if given the opportunity for sober contemplation, consider good. Ultimately, historically, the story of the Jews is the story of a people that nobody wanted and many tried to wipe out.

What we see in this clip is an exploration of the kinds of questions that come with a sober contemplation of the story as it is given. A jealous, petty, vengeful and cruel god makes outrageous and illogical demands of a group of frightened people, and exacts lopsided and chillingly evil revenge against even slight transgressions. In return, he helps them kill and destroy entire cultures for having the temerity to either refuse to give up their land, or for following a different system of belief. It really is a shocking tale when it’s all stitched together.

So when people tell us that they get their knowledge of right and wrong from the Bible (or worse, that everyone should), I get the shivers. It’s a horrendously evil document that can be used to justify all sorts of things. It certainly demands that followers call evil things good and pretend that being punished by an abusive and jealous father is some twisted form of benevolence.

There are important questions that are asked by this clip. Anyone who believes that Yahweh is just and good, and bases that belief on the Bible needs to allow themselves to ask those questions. Those of us who don’t recognize the existence of Yahweh (or any other god) in the world around us already have answers.

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0 And in case you thought I was being unfair…

February 2, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · forces of stupid · news · religion · secularism

In addition to the majority of my family, I have friends who are Catholic. A person with whom I did my undergraduate degree, who I have a great deal of affection for, reacted strongly to one of my previous posts about the ongoing stupidity present in the Catholic Church. She did not appreciate my characterization of the Church’s policies toward sex and sexuality as destructive and backwards, suggesting that perhaps I lacked understanding of why it was actually God’s manifest will that people in Africa get AIDS because condoms are a greater evil than human suffering.

When I explained to her that I was very familiar with Catholic doctrine, having been an active participant in the Church for the first half of my life, she intimated that perhaps my upbringing was part of the reason I was unfairly targeting the Church. This is a pretty popular attempt to derail a discussion that is common to believers in any kind of deity – you really do believe but you’re just angry so that’s why you’re speaking up. I don’t think it was Mary’s (not her real name) intent to make this argument explicitly, but the subtext was pretty clear.

If I haven’t made this clear before, I will absolutely own up to the fact that I have a particular axe to grind with the Roman Catholic Church. I had great trust in the institution when I was young, but the more I learned about it the more it let me down. I can’t help but feel a sense of personal betrayal that a group that preached morality to me for years is, in fact, so shockingly immoral that it beggars belief. The schadenfreude part of my lizard brain does take some personal delight in their hypocrisy and evil being laid bare. However, as I try my utmost to be a fair journalist in all matters, I take the utmost care to prevent too much of my personal beef from leaking into my analysis of events.

My criticisms of religion, like the one from this morning (which I’m sure Mary will hate, although it’s doubtful she’ll even read it) are about religion, not about a particular religion. I am equally incensed by the stupidity of Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, new-age “spirituality” and any other invocation of supernatural nonsense that drapes itself in the robes of undeserved respect that we call “religion”.

An Indian court has remanded in custody a Hindu holy man accused of a string of bomb attacks previously thought to be the work of Muslim militants. Swami Aseemanand allegedly admitted to placing bombs on a train to Pakistan, at a Sufi shrine and at a mosque. He has also allegedly confessed to carrying out two assaults on the southern Indian town of Malegaon, which has a large Muslim population.

There is no religious tradition that is immune from the kind of abuse of its power that is the hallmark of religion. Hindu and Muslim violence is tearing Southern Asia apart, much the way that Buddhist and Muslim violence tore apart the country of Sri Lanka. There is no special status granted to Buddhism or Hinduism (despite what Sam Harris would try to convince you) – supernatural claims and their associated tribal affiliations are not unique to the Abrahamic religions.

Men and women have been banned from shaking hands in a district of Somalia controlled by the Islamist group al-Shabab. Under the ban imposed in the southern town of Jowhar, men and women who are not related are also barred from walking together or chatting in public. It is the first time such social restrictions have been introduced. The al-Shabab administration said those who disobeyed the new rules would be punished according to Sharia law.

Is there any way in which this nonsense makes for a better world? The Orwelian doublethink of the religious would have you believe that such ridiculous restrictions are the way to instill a sense of dignity in the women of Somalia (at least that’s what Mary tried to convince me) – ultimately opening the path to their gaining civil rights. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for a rational mind to look at this kind of abject nonsense and have to square the circle of clear maleficence being committed in the name of morality. Well, actually I can imagine because I did it myself for the better part of a decade.

An Indian shaman who allegedly forced women to drink a potion to prove they were not witches has been arrested. Nearly 30 women fell ill after they were rounded up in Shivni village in central Chhattisgarh state on Sunday and made to drink the herbal brew. A senior police officer told the BBC that six villagers had also been arrested. Witch hunts targeting women are common in east and central India, and a number of accused are killed every year.

This isn’t happening because of a religion, or a particular religious tradition. This is what happens when people actually believe the ridiculous superstitious nonsense that is the bread and butter of faith. When we are told that belief without evidence is some kind of virtue, we open a dangerous door – a door that permits us to murder those who believe differently, to outlaw completely harmless and potentially beneficial practices in the name of an unseen deity, and to poison people on the suspicion of heresy. It is only by throwing out the need for logic and evidence in the name of “faith” that such things are permissible – I don’t care what religious tradition that kind of brainlessness manifests itself as.

Of course the real problem isn’t the religious – it’s us. The emperor’s clothes only exist because we willingly insist that because he believes that he’s not nude, we must do so too. Any respect we grant to the bare naked stupidity that is “faith” is too much. While I’m perfectly willing to respect my neighbour’s right to believe whatever she likes, I will confer no such deference to how I treat the lunacy itself.

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3 Abuse? What abuse? Quick, look over there!

February 2, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · Catholic church · crapitalism · critical thinking · forces of stupid · news · religion

The long, depressing collapse of the Church of Rome continues unabated, as close scrutiny keeps turning up case after case of child abuse and systematic attempts to shield the perpetrators from punishment. The latest piece of evidence is a letter from Vatican to the bishopric of the Irish Church:

The letter, obtained by Irish broadcasters RTE and provided to The Associated Press, documents the Vatican’s rejection of an Irish church initiative to begin helping police identify pedophile priests. The letter’s message undermines persistent Vatican claims that the church never instructed bishops to withhold evidence or suspicion of crimes from police. Instead, the letter emphasizes the church’s right to handle all child-abuse allegations and determine punishments in house rather than hand that power to civil authorities.

Anti-church forces were quick to claim this letter as some kind of “smoking gun” implication of the Church’s hand in covering up the crimes. People have known that this practice was going on for a long time, to the point where it has become a sort of running gag. What the Church long denied was that these kinds of practices were done with the knowledge and implicit approval of the Vatican, and the use of Church political power to shield the guilty from prosecution. That claim has been repeatedly put to the lie by the increasing number of revelations against the Church.

I took the liberty of reading the letter. It is far from definitive proof of anything, let alone the “smoking gun” that conclusively demonstrates that the RCC was taking an active role in shielding child rapists. It is, more or less, consistent with the Church’s ongoing stance of insisting that canon law supersedes secular law. Abusers should be, according to the letter, handled by Church authorities rather than being treated like one would treat any other criminal – automatically turning them over to police. While it’s possible to connect the dots between an exhortation to circumvent the law and a de facto cover-up, this isn’t the document that’s going to pull the whole case together I’m sorry to say.

What’s more interesting than the emergence of this letter is the way the Church is reacting to it. I’m not really referring to their perfunctory and depressingly-predictable denial of reality:

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said the letter was genuine. But he told the New York Times: “It refers to a situation that we’ve now moved beyond. That approach has been surpassed, including its ideas about collaborating with civil authorities.” Fr Lombardi said the letter was “not new”, and insisted that “they’ve known about it in Ireland for some time”.

That kind of response is predictable – “oh yes we knew about it the whole time, but that was the old church! This is the new church!” Never mind that the letter isn’t even 15 years old, just keep sweeping that evidence under the rug. But as I said, this kind of response is exactly what you’d expect from a corrupt organization whose misdeeds are finally coming to light.

This is something only the Church could come up with:

Pope Benedict XVI on Friday attributed a miracle to the late Pope John Paul II, which moves the former pontiff one step closer to sainthood. Benedict declared that the cure of a French nun who suffered from Parkinson’s disease was a miracle. A Vatican-appointed group of doctors and theologians, cardinals and bishops agreed that the cure of a French nun, Sister Marie-Simon-Pierre, was a miracle because of the intercession of John Paul.

Two months after John Paul’s death, the nun claimed she woke up feeling cured of her disease. The nun and the others in her order had prayed to John Paul, who also suffered from Parkinson’s. In a statement issued Friday, the Congregation for the Causes of Saints said Vatican-appointed doctors “scrupulously” studied the case and found that the nun’s cure had no scientific explanation.

Imagine for a second that you read this in the newspaper:

Former BP CEO Tony Hayward and a team of company-appointed scientists announced today that the catastrophic oil leak that caused irreversible damage to the Gulf Coast of the United States was, in fact, caused by Mole Men.

“We have long suspected,” said Hayward in a prepared statement “that Mole Men live below the surface of our planet. Given that BP has scrupulous safety standards in place to prevent leaks like this from happening, it is therefore impossible that anything could have gone wrong that was our fault. The only logical conclusion we are left with for this disaster is that Mole Men did it.”

In order to pull that kind of shenanigans, BP would be relying on the fact that everyone in the world is a complete and utter moron. That’s the only way that a line of bullshit that long and stinky could possibly hold up to even the most casual level of scrutiny. But that’s exactly what religious belief does to people – it erodes our ability to hold ridiculous supernatural claims like “a woman got better from Parkinson’s… therefore it was the result of the direct intercession of a particular dead person” up to appraisal. We are expected to simply nod and accept it with open arms.

This kind of ridiculous diversionary tactic should not work. The fact that it does is why I, and other anti-theists, are vehemently opposed to the exalted position of religion. It turns people into idiots who willingly swallow crap and tell you it’s caviar, while all the while committing unspeakable acts of evil and calling it virtue.

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6 Movie Friday: Show me a God

January 28, 2011
by Crommunist
· blog · bmusic · movie · religion · skepticism

There’s never been a conscientious believer who has gone through life completely free of doubt. There is an interesting passage in Mark 9 in which Jesus is asked to heal a child with epilepsy, and the father is told that all he has to do is believe hard enough, and his son will be cured (Jesus was an early Deepak Chopra, apparently). The distraught father says “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief!” and his son is immediately cured.

The story is complete bullshit, to be sure, but that line “I believe, help me overcome my unbelief” has been uttered, in various permutations, by the lips of the faithful for as long as people have been told to believe in ridiculous stories and impossible propositions with no evidence.

Tech N9ne turned it into a song:

There is an entire branch of theology called “theodicy” that is devoted to trying to square the circle of things in the world that are evil with the idea of a benevolent creator. Guys like Ken Ham, Ray Comfort and Hugh Ross make the claim that suffering is intentionally introduced into the universe to test mankind’s resolve to turn away from sin. If mankind is able to bear up under the crushing weight of temptation and overcome evil, then he is rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven (citation needed). Of course this is a facile explanation that falls apart under even casual scrutiny. Why would a loving god make such a test? Why not make it easier to be good? Why not create mankind with an inner drive to be good? Why punish those who are innocent of any misdeeds, while rewarding those who sin? Why bother testing us at all if it knows who will pass and who will fail a priori?

The other explanations are that YahwAlladdha is not good at all, but a petty heartless trickster who delights in human suffering, or that it is completely indifferent to the suffering of its creation.

Or, more parsimoniously, that it doesn’t exist at all and you’re wasting your time asking stupid questions.

While there are a lot of reasons to hold onto religion in the black community (community organization has traditionally centred on church groups, the belief in ultimate justice helps you ignore many of the day-to-day injustice you see around you), I am glad to see/hear influential voices within the hip-hop community begin to broach the taboo around criticizing religion. Maybe none are so poignant as this track from The Roots:

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P.S. Sorry about the embedding. VEVO is… I have mixed feelings.

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