A few novel excuses for priestly child abuse

The Catholic Church is getting desperate. All this evidence is turning up of priests physically and sexually abusing young people in their care, and of the church administration being more concerned with protecting pedophile priests and the reputation of their organization than protecting children, so someone has to be blamed. How about the damn dirty hippies and those pesky reporters?

“The so-called sexual revolution, in which some especially progressive moral critics supported the legalisation of sexual contact between adults and children, is certainly not innocent,” he said, adding that the media was also at fault.

That was the excuse of a Catholic bishop to the ongoing discovery of a history of child abuse in Germany. The similar pattern of child abuse in Ireland prompted the Pope to dig up some excuses…in this case, because priests weren’t devout enough.

The pontiff also noted “the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church,” the statement said, adding Pope Benedict “also pointed to the more general crisis of faith affecting the Church and he linked that to the lack of respect for the human person and how the weakening of faith has been a significant contributing factor in the phenomenon of the sexual abuse of minors”.

Who knew the whole Catholic church was infested with free-lovin’ hippies and godless agnostics and atheists?

The way he’ll fix the problem is by calling for “a deeper theological reflection” on child buggery. I really don’t think it takes much deep thought to see that causing harm to children trusted to your care is a bad idea.

By the way, in an interesting side issue, the papal nuncio was asked to appear before an Irish committee on foreign affairs to talk about this problem. He haughtily replied that it was “not the practice of the Holy See that Apostolic Nuncios appear before Parliamentary Commissions”, which is rather interesting. The Vatican has a rather interesting status as a sovereign, independent state with membership in the UN, and pretends to be a participating nation in the world community of states. But apparently they also feel that they are not bound by secular obligations.

The Templeton Foundation plays some more games

It’s just sad. The arguments the apologists for religion make seem to be getting more and more pathetic, and more and more unconvincing. There is going to be a lecture, announced in the Times Higher Education supplement, by someone trying to reconcile science and religion in the history of the Royal Society. How is he going to do it? By arguing that members of the society in 1663 were religious. Woo hoo. They also wore funny powdered wigs, treated syphilis with mercury, and argued that there had to be precisely seven planets because it was a number sacred to geometers, but I doubt that he’ll be resurrecting those old ideas.

While an early memorandum of the Royal Society declared that fellows would avoid “meddling with divinity, metaphysics, morals”, its 1663 charter stated that its activities would be devoted “to the glory of God the creator, and the advantage of the human race”.

Officers were even required to swear an oath on “the holy Gospels of God”.

In reality, Professor Harrison said, “almost without exception, early modern natural philosophers cherished religious convictions, although these were not invariably orthodox. Some – but by no means all – made the point that they were motivated to pursue scientific inquiry on account of these religious commitments.”

Far from being militant atheists, they “believed that the disinterested study of the structures of living things could offer independent support for the truth of the Christian religion, and refute atheism”.

Yes, so? They were wrong.

Believers have been trying for centuries to find objective evidence for the truth of Christian mythology. The fact that they’ve been searching is not in itself evidence for their superstitions. The fact that they have not come up with such evidence, though, and haven’t even made any progress in coming up with a convincing argument, does suggest that they’ve failed. It’s simply meaningless to declare that people 350 years ago felt that their religion motivated their pursuit of science; it does not support the validity of the religious part. They might as well argue that the people who built Stonehenge 5000 years ago were motivated by their pagan beliefs to study astronomy — the astronomy is cool, but animism is not hallowed by its antiquity.

It’s an unpersuasive mess. It’s also tainted by association; the lecture is sponsored by the Faraday Institute, which is just a mouthpiece for the Templeton Foundation. Ho hum. Get some new arguments, guys.

Exorcism is a booming business

Hard to believe, but this medieval nonsense is still going on. Poland has more than 100 professional exorcists, and they recently met in a conference.

Congress participants argued that demonology lessons should be treated more seriously in seminaries and that ordinary people, too, would benefit from knowing more about exorcisms. During the congress, the priests discussed the main causes of possession by demons such as occult, esoteric beliefs like magic, eastern meditation and homeopathy.

Oooh, demonology lessons. Those should be good. Don’t forget to take them seriously when some geezer tells you that your wicked thoughts about Scarlett Johansson are the work of the minor demon Booglebegonzapootie.

I do appreciate that they’re updating the list of demons to include the ones drawn to homeopathy. I wonder if you get rid of them with a fully succussed 100C dilution of holy water?

Allah hates masturbation

You all know that if you masturbate, you will become feeble, blind, and incontinent, right? Well, at least according to folk wisdom shouted at you by grandmas and grandpas (who, I will assure you, masturbated: it’s a nearly universal practice.) As it turns out, a compendium of Islamic thought on masturbation agrees on all points, and adds a few other consequences of the practice I bet you never thought of.

Atta (Rahmatullahi alaihi) says: “Some people will be resurrected in such a condition that their hands will be pregnant, I think they are those who masturbate.” (Tafsir Mazhari, vol 12, pg 94)

I am trying to visualize that, and failing. Fortunately.

Have no fear, though, there is a remedy! Under Islam, you are not allowed to masturbate, but you are encouraged to have sex with your slave girls!

God is the god of death and destruction

I’m home again from Iowa, but there was a moment where I just about turned around. Coming up into Minnesota, there is a nice big billboard with the following message on it.

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I did a double-take and thought about going back around to get a photo of it, but decided it wasn’t worth it, as there really wasn’t any place to pull over safely. That was a rather vile message, but then, this is Christianity we’re talking about, and this was on I-35, which seems to be a focus for religious insanity.

Religion: adaptation or by-product?

For years, whenever someone asks me about the evolution of religion, I explain that there are two broad categories of explanation: that religion has conferred a selective advantage to people who possessed it, or that it was a byproduct of other cognitive processes that were advantageous. I’m a proponent of the byproduct explanation, myself; I tend to go a little further, too, and suggest that religion is a deleterious virus that is piggy-backing on some very useful elements of our minds.

Now look at this: there is a wonderful paper by Pyysläinen and Hauser, The origins of religion : evolved adaptation or by-product?, that summarizes that very same dichotomy (without my extension, however). Here’s the abstract:

Considerable debate has surrounded the question of the origins and evolution of religion. One proposal views religion as an adaptation for cooperation, whereas an alternative proposal views religion as a by-product of evolved, non-religious, cognitive functions. We critically evaluate each approach, explore the link between religion and morality in particular, and argue that recent empirical work in moral psychology provides stronger support for the by-product approach. Specifically, despite differences in religious background, individuals show no difference in the pattern of their moral judgments for unfamiliar moral scenarios. These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions, but that it may then have been subject to selection, creating an adaptively designed system for solving the problem of cooperation.

The general argument for religion as an adaptive property is a kind of just-so story. Because humans are dependent on cooperation for survival, religion could have provided an internal bias to promote social cohesion, to promote feelings of guilt and fear about defecting from the group, and also to act as costly signals — you knew you could trust an individual to be a loyal member of your group if they were willing to invest so much effort in playing the weird religion game, just to get along. Strangers will not try to free-ride on your gang if membership involves snipping off the end of your penis, for instance. Also consider the chronic Christian condition of believing themselves to be an oppressed minority—that’s emphasized because if membership is perceived to be costly, even if it actually isn’t, it still can act as an inhibitor of free-riding.

The by-product model recognizes that there are advantages to cooperative group membership, but does not require the evolution of specifically religious properties; these are incidental features of more general cognitive capacities. In this case, we’d argue that such advantageous abilities as a theory of mind (the ability to perceive others as having thought processes like ours), empathy, and a need for social interaction are the actual products of selection, and that religion is simply a kind of spandrel that emerges from those useful abilities.

I favor the by-product theory because it is simpler — it requires fewer specific features be hardwired into the brain — and because it is readily apparent that many of us can discard all religious belief yet still function as cooperating members of a community, with no sense of loss. That suggests to me that religion is actually a superfluous hijacker of potentials we all share.

If you’re familiar with Hauser’s work, you know that he adds another datum: people moral judgments on the basis of a kind of emotional intuition. This intuition is independent of rationalizations and more complex institutional mandates, and is therefore far more deeply imbedded in our brains. We make choices based on feelings first, and the Ten Commandments are invoked later. Religion may work to reinforce some of those feelings, however, so it could act as a kind of cultural amplifier of more intrinsic biases.

To the extent that explicit religiosity cannot penetrate moral intuitions underlying the ability to cooperate, religion cannot be the ultimate source of intra-group cooperation. Cooperation is made possible by a suite of mental mechanisms that are not specific to religion. Moral judgments depend on these mechanisms and appear to operate independently of one’s religious background. However, although religion did not originally emerge as a biological adaptation, it can play a role in both facilitating and stabilizing cooperation within groups, and as such, could be the target of cultural selection. Religious groups seem to last longer than non-religious groups, for example.

In the future, more experimental research is needed to probe the actual relationship between folk moral intuitions and intuitive beliefs about afterlife, gods and ancestors. It seems that in many cultures religious concepts and beliefs have become the standard way of conceptualizing moral intuitions. Although, as we have discussed, this link is not a necessary one, many people have become so accustomed to using it, that criticism targeted at religion is experienced as a fundamental threat to our moral existence.

The idea that religion did not give us an evolutionary advantage, but has been shaped by cultural evolution to better fit and support our productive behaviors, is an interesting one. Of course, it doesn’t make religion right or good; what it suggests is that the strength of free-thinking communities could take advantage of some of the cognitive contrivances of religion, without the extraneous baggage of god-belief. We could just add a few costly signals to atheism, for instance.

So I’m going to have to ask you all to get genital piercings if you want to be a New Atheist.

(Don’t worry, just kidding!)

(via björn.brembs.blog)

Nice euphemism

It’s yet another Catholic sex scandal, this time a chronic pattern of sexual abuse by a few priests in Berlin that was known and tolerated by church leaders for almost 20 years. They’ve got a nice phrase for what was going on: “intimate, fatherly behavior.”

Catholic church: you don’t know what fatherly means, and none of you deserve the respectable title of “father” at all. I’m a dad, please don’t taint me with your skeevy, repellent attitude towards men who actually care for their children.

A reasonable deconversion

Here’s a thoughtful video about one person’s deconversion process: the interesting thing about it is that he was a believer who reasoned himself out of religion.

Although I was brought up in a religion, I’ve discovered that there is a large difference between those who were seriously immersed in a faith, like this fellow, and people who just got a fairly brief and not very deep exposure, like myself. I was rather easily disabused of religion — when I first was taught the tenets of the faith, my reaction was more like, “You believe what? And you expect me to believe it too? That’s batty!” I didn’t need the careful dissection of belief, because what jumped out to me was the raging absurdity of original sin, virgin births, gods manifesting as men, etc., etc., etc.

Don’t pay for Crazy Uncle Ratzi’s pointless tour

Look: the Pope is a crank figure, the head of a weird religious cult who promotes weird ideas, such as that condoms promote the spread of AIDS or more lately, opposes legislation to promote equality. He’s a nasty old bigot from an insignificant municipality who gets far more attention than he deserves.

Now he’s going to be visiting the UK. That’s fine; anyone, even irrelevant old coots, ought to be able to vacation where they please. However, this is being treated as a state visit and the British government is plunking down £20 million for the dubious privilege of having a weird geezer in a dress pretend to be speaking for an imaginary man in the sky to a gullible public. The guy has plenty of money of his own — he should pay for his own damn junket. Or the Catholic churches in England that want his attention should be the ones to cough up.

Speak up against the papal boondoggle. The National Secular Society has a petition — get on it.

Looking for grant money for your research?

Times are tight. It’s tough getting grants from NIH and NSF, but the government has heard your plight and has responded by opening up new avenues to request support: apply for an NCMHD Innovative Faith-Based Approaches to Health Disparities Research grant!

Purpose. The purpose of the NCMHD Innovative Faith-Based Approaches to Health Disparities Research (R21) is to solicit applications that propose translational and transdisciplinary interventions on health disparities, social determinants of health, health behavior and promotion and disease prevention, especially those jointly conducted with faith-based organizations or faith-motivated programs and the research community.  The ultimate goal is to foster empirical, formative, evaluative and intervention research on effective faith-motivated initiatives, concepts and theories that have played an important role in addressing health disparities.  Funding is also intended to provide support for early and conceptual stages of exploratory and developmental research projects.  This focus will allow studies to evaluate the impact of faith-based initiatives and programs in health disparity populations, formulate hypotheses about the role and unique characteristics of faith communities in addressing health disparities, design targeted interventions and track the efficacy of faith-motivated efforts that result from a participatory approach to research in the community. These studies may involve considerable risk but may lead to a breakthrough in addressing health disparities or the development of a model or application that could have a major impact on the field of health disparities research.

It’s not quite as vile as it sounds — they aren’t endorsing the efficacy of faith-based approaches to health, they’re just saying that there are all these churches around and people go to them more easily than they do to clinics, so explore that and see if you can sneak in some science to go with their superstition. Probably. It’s all imbedded in typical murky NIHese, and it does involve forming partnerships with faith-based institutions, so some of your $275,000 direct funds will end up supporting the nonsense we ought to be working against.