Scientologists prominently dissed

There are two very encouraging facts about this article on scientology in the NY Times.

One is that it got published. Once upon a time, newspapers and magazines hesitated to criticize scientology at all, because they’d immediately sic an army of lawyers on the publication, and any journalists involved face some fierce harassment. They probably still do that, but their triumphantly oppressive days are over.

The other is this fascinating disclosure.

The church is vague about its membership numbers. In 11 hours with a reporter over two days, Mr. Davis, the church’s spokesman, gave the numbers of Sea Org members (8,000), of Scientologists in the Tampa-Clearwater area (12,000) and of L. Ron Hubbard’s books printed in the last two and a half years (67 million). But asked about the church’s membership, Mr. Davis said, “I couldn’t tell you an exact figure, but it’s certainly, it’s most definitely in the millions in the U.S. and millions abroad.”

He said he did not know how to account for the findings in the American Religious Identification Survey that the number of Scientologists in the United States fell from 55,000 in 2001 to 25,000 in 2008.

That’s a rather precipitous fall. If they can keep shedding believers at that rate, this will be scientology’s last decade.

Suffer the little children

A young child at a Boulder pre-school has been kicked out for an awful crime. The child was enrolled in a Catholic preschool, and also has two mommies. I’ll leave you to guess which of those two is the awful crime.

According to teachers at Sacred Heart of Jesus Catholic School, a meeting was held Tuesday to discuss the issue. The staff was told a student would not be allowed to re-enroll because of his or her parents’ sexual orientation. The staff members were also told not to talk to the media.

Another interesting twist is that the staff at the school are described as “disgusted” with the decision; it came from on high, straight from the priests at the archdiocese. It’s a case of the more secular staff knowing what the decent thing they ought to be doing is, and the religious buffoons using their holy dogma to do evil.

The biggest, gayest brothel in the world

Back when we bought our house, one of the things that we liked about it is that it’s a somewhat quirky place, with an odd layout and a few old 50s touches. One thing I didn’t care for is the decor of the upstairs; it’s got this vivid scarlet carpeting everywhere, and one of the bedrooms was (it’s been repainted now) wallpapered with bright green shamrocks. I joked that we could open a brothel for leprechauns up there if we wanted to make a little extra money.

You know, if I’d been moving into the Vatican, instead, I’d probably have made a similar joke — all that garish, gaudy excess and all the men wondering around in flamboyant dress would have probably moved me to joke that we could open a brothel for gay priests here.

What do you know, it’s true. There is a gay prostitution scandal in the Vatican right now. I am in awe. On top of the child abuse scandals in Ireland and Germany, this is just icing on top of a rotten, wormy, corrupt cake.

And this afternoon, I’m going to have to sweep the upstairs bedroom for any sneaky leprechauns.

Injustices and ironies

Allow me to purge a few interesting stories from my mailbag:

  • Keshia Canter was working the drive-up window at a burger joint when a sanctimonious customer handed her a pamphlet.

    Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin. By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?

    To answer the question, yes. Yes we can. If a woman walks in front of me stark naked, and I rape her, it is entirely my fault. I have will and a desire to treat people fairly, and no amount of sexual provocation justifies violence and abuse.

    This particular attitude is another reason to throw “scripture” in the trash.

  • In a scenario that plays out all the time, a student at a private Christian school was outed as gay. The kid was ordered to the school office and summarily kicked out.

    There is a poll with this story, asking whether the school can kick students out for their sexual orientation. If it’s a private school, yes they can — it’s a silly question. The only answer, of course, is simply to never send your kids to private religious schools. You should recognize the problem with a school established to promote superstition anyway.

    Unfortunately, that isn’t all there is to the story. The parents are religious morons, and instead of loving their child for who he is, they want him to “repent” and plan to send him to a church “cure”.

    You can choose your school, but you’re stuck with the parents you get. Isn’t that a shame?

  • There is an airport in Liverpool named after John Lennon, which is nice. Not so nice is the fact that the UK has a law, the Crime and Disorder Act, which apparently makes religious irreverence illegal — which ought to mean John Lennon is illegal, too. Anyway, Harry Taylor left some cartoons mocking religion at the airport, and then…

    The leaflets were discovered by Nicky Lees, the airport chaplain, who told the court she felt “deeply offended and insulted” by their contents.

    She has a right to be offended. Being offended does not justify what happened next: Taylor was arrested and charged with three counts of “religiously aggravated harassment, alarm or distress”. I guess you can offend atheists in Great Britain, but offend a chaplain, and you’ll find yourself in court.

    Good one, UK. You’ve got insane libel laws, and now it turns out you provide special privileges to shamans, too.

  • I suppose it’s not fair to pick on the English when we’ve got our share of idiots in Minnesota. Our governor, Tim Pawlenty, has been trying to destroy something called General Assistance Medical Care, which provides support for 30,000 of the poorest people in the state (of course — he’s a Republican!) Among the many inane excuses Pawlenty gives us that the state of our citizens is God’s will (of course — he’s a Republican!). Seriously. He’s making it an important principle of his administration.

    One of the first principles that we should turn to always, and remember, is that God is in charge.

    Now here’s the ironic part. Many religious leaders are opposing Pawlenty’s heartless campaign, and I commend them for it. Keep fighting for the poor — I would have thought that that was an important principle in Christianity. However, this reason, from Lutheran pastor Grant Stevenson, is ridiculous:

    Governor, please stop talking to us about God. The governor is going around saying, ‘God is in control.’ We elected you to be making decisions for this state that will help everyone in this state. Things that will lift up the poorest in this state. Don’t pass this off on God. That’s no God we’ve ever heard of. And please stop lecturing us about God. It’s offensive.

    All right, pastor, come down from that pulpit. You lecture your flock every week about God, and you have no better knowledge of that imaginary being’s will than does Governor Pawlenty.

Repent, Amarillo!

Or you will be exterminated! You know, Texas has a reputation of being a nasty place full of particularly ignorant rednecks, which I don’t blindly agree with — I know too many smart Texans, and it does have many good organizations, like the Texas Freedom Network — but this is a blight that smirches even that already sooty name. I am speaking of a vicious vigilante organization called Repent Amarillo. Look upon that link and quiver with disgust.

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It’s saturated with military imagery: men in uniform, humvees, helicopters, helmets; they compare themselves to special forces; they call themselves the Army of God, and sport Bible quotes glorifying warfare. They aren’t military, but they pretend they are, and bring shame to both our soldiers and their faith. They’re actually just cowardly busybodies who snoop and whine at their neighbors, and harass their employers until they get fired. They are not nice people. They’re actually some of the worst kind of people.

They are a “rabid group of religious nuts” who object to the usual targets of fundie hatred — gays — but also harrass people who visit sex shops, engage in consensual heterosexual activity outside the bounds of traditional marriage, and…well, here’s a list of their targets.

1. Gay pride events.
2. Earth worship events such as “Earth Day”
3. Pro-abortion events or places such as Planned Parenthood
4. Breast cancer events such as “Race for the Cure” to illuminate the link between abortion and breast cancer.
5. Opening day of public schools to reach out to students.
6. Spring break events.
7. Demonically based concerts.
8. Halloween events.
9. Other events that may arise that the ministry feels called to confront.

They also plan to hit:

1. Sexually oriented businesses such as pornography shops, strip joints, and XXX-rated theaters.
2. Idolatry locations such as palm readers, false religions, and witchcraft. Many of the smaller missions listed above may be just prayer oriented missions for tearing down demonic strongholds or they may involve more aggressive use of soldiers and prayer warriors. Some other missions occasionally employed may be “undercover operations” where the groups show up together but are not publicly visible together to effect the outcome of a public meeting such as city commissioners meetings, etc.

Check out their Warfare Map. It includes local Buddhist churches (“False god”), the Islamic center (“Allah is a false god and Muhammad is a false prophet”), the Masonic Lodge (“Masonic rituals and teachings in the upper ranks is based on Egyptian paganism. Full of secrecy. Only evil hides in the dark”), the Universalist Church (“Teaches that everyone is going to heaven. This calls Christ a liar. You cannot be a Christian if you call Christ a liar”), the Unitarian Universalist Church (“Pagan and witchcraft headquarters for Amarillo. Pagan and witchcraft celebrations and rites are performed here”), St Andrew’s Episcopal Church (“Referred to an OUTstanding Amarillo’s (Homosexual activists) website as a ‘gay friendly’ church. In other words, they do not tell homosexuals who attend this church that they must repent of the sin of homosexuality. This is a serious violation of scripture”), and Beavers Gentleman Club (“Total nude strip club”), among many others.

“Repent or perish” is their message. They show up dressed in army fatigues, carrying bullhorns, with ghetto blasters blaring Christian music, and they write down license plate numbers and photograph people doing anything they disapprove of. They are our American Mutawwa’in, petty tyrants of propriety with a bloated sense of their own importance. They are our self-righteous wanna-be oppressors.

Keep this in mind. This is the future the Pat Robertsons, the James Dobsons, the Sarah Palins want for us — a kind of Saudi Arabia that differs only in the name we give our prophet.

The problem with science journalism…

…is that too often newspapers think you don’t need a science journalist to write it. Any ol’ hack will do. Take this article on evolution in the Vancouver Sun, which distills modern evolutionary biology into 12 theories, which happens to include Madame Blavatsky’s Theosophy as well as Intelligent Design creationism — which, at least, is pairing intellectual equals. The author, Douglas Todd, is speaking High Crackbrain and making stuff up. It’s all garbage from a buffoon who knows nothing about the field. What, you have to wonder, qualifies him to be writing on science?

Jerry Coyne has the answer.

He has twice taken first place in the Templeton Religion Reporter of the Year Award, which goes to the top religion reporter in the secular media in North America. Todd is the only Canadian to have received the Templeton.

Hey, the Templeton Foundation puts it right at the top of their web page: they are SUPPORTING SCIENCE. They are all about sponsoring the reconciliation of science and religion (although, perhaps, that should be written as “science and RELIGION“, since we all know where the emphasis lies). It’s just too bad that the results so often belie their claims.

In which I am convinced I’ll never get any money from  the Templeton Foundation

It’s tough to tread that line between contempt and admiration: Jerry Coyne writes about the Templeton journalism awards. It really is a smart move on the part of the Templetonites to coopt journalists to sell their bankrupt line by tossing a good-sized chunk of money at them.

One interesting revelation is that the journalism awards aren’t simply handed out by cunning Templetonistas who spot a promising compromiser in the ranks of reporters — you have to apply for the fellowship. Hey, should I? They’re closed for now, but I imagine there will be a bunch of 2011 fellowships awarded, and I wouldn’t mind spending time in Cambridge.

All I have to do is write an essay “outlining [my] interest in science and religion and detailing a specific topic [i] hope to cover”. Here’s my start:

Religion is the antithesis of science, an anesthetic for the mind that disables critical thought and encourages the acceptance of inanity as fact, and wishful thinking as evidence.

Do you think it will appeal to their review panel?

Oh, probably not. Here’s John Horgan’s experience.

One Templeton official made what I felt were inappropriate remarks about the foundation’s expectations of us fellows. She told us that the meeting cost more than $1-million, and in return the foundation wanted us to publish articles touching on science and religion. But when I told her one evening at dinner that — given all the problems caused by religion throughout human history — I didn’t want science and religion to be reconciled, and that I hoped humanity would eventually outgrow religion, she replied that she didn’t think someone with those opinions should have accepted a fellowship. So much for an open exchange of views.

Oops. And John is so much more polite than I am.

Now I really wish those application essays were available for public reading. I’m sure they’re exceptionally entertaining.

Mooney ‘fesses up. I’d love it if he’d post his application essay!

Shepherd’s Hill Farm is a hell-hole

Got problem kids? Man, when they hit those teenage years they all get rebellious and willful, and start thinking independently, and often start doing things their parents would rather they didn’t. This is one of the tough responsibilities of being a parent — you have to be willing to let your children grow into independent human beings.

But let’s say you never got that memo, and you think your job is to raise children who are just like you: insecure, a little bit angry, shackled tightly into a fearful belief system that says all human beings are evil. Independent thinking is the last thing you want in your obedient little repressed child-slave! Well, there’s help for you: Shepherd’s Hill Farm, an accredited Christian boot camp that will stomp his wild soul right back down into the mud of conformity and obedience.

It’s way out in the middle of nowhere, so there will be no place for the wayward teen to escape to…and no one to hear them scream.

Shepherd’s Hill Farm is a counseling center, so they will also take care of the mental health of your child. Trace Embry, the director, knows absolutely nothing about mental health and even gives dangerous advice against all the evidence, but you don’t have to worry — he’s a very vocal Christian. God will forgive him.

We have testimonials from inmates residents of the camp about the other benefits of attending. Does your child have special medical needs, like seizures? They will take his medicine away, but their staff is well-trained in being able to simultaneously wrestle a child to the ground and pray for him. Is your child a bit on the hefty side? He will get ‘special meals’ — a can of beans, a bit of vegetable, and a piece of bread — until they reach that ascetic ideal. Your child will be ‘brainwashed in the blood of the lamb,’ so it’s all OK — even the beatings serve to transfigure hooligans into robots for Jesus.

Don’t worry that your child might fall behind in his classes. They teach science at Shepherd’s Hill Farm!

In their “science” classes we were indoctrinated with the christian story. We were forced to watch Kent Hovind videos, as if he and all his “theorys” have not already been debunked.

He won’t fall behind: he’ll be propelled backwards, as if they’d strapped a rocket to his ass and aimed him right at the dark ages.

For all of this — the cans of beans, the non-existent medical care, the anti-education, the beatings — what do you think you should pay? Nothing? They should pay you? Wrong! You will cough up almost $60,000 a year for the privilege of tossing your child into the hands of a dumb redneck psychopath with a farm in the wilderness. It’s a Christian wilderness, though. That’s the added value you’re paying for, and I’m sure it’s worth every penny…if you’re one of those parents who can’t abide children with personalities or ideas of their own.