Poor, uneducated, obese, and religious

What a horrible, sad waste of a life: Tillmon Webb injured his knee, couldn’t afford to get it treated, and sat in a recliner for 8 months, praying for healing. His saintly (and I don’t mean that in a complimentary sense) wife tended to him as he rotted to death in the chair.

“He read his Bible daily, he spent his full focus on God,” said Webb. “And he was literally waiting and praying for a Job miracle. If anybody knows the Bible and knows Job, he really and fully believed that God was going to heal him just like he did Job, because he said he couldn’t think of a better testimony to go out and to tell people.”

I think two lives were wasted here. His wife took care of this suffering lump for 8 months — he didn’t even get up to use the bathroom, and the neighbors didn’t know she even had a husband — and this is her response after his death:

“If I feel anything right now, it’s envy for him because I wish he had taken me with him,” said Webb.

“Popular religious belief is caused by dysfunctional social conditions.” Their piety didn’t save them and didn’t alleviate their pain or their desperate conditions — it made them worse.

What did she expect? That Jesus would stop by and give her a turnip?

Can you bear yet another case of religion-rationalized child abuse?

Over three months in 2006, as her five children grew more emaciated and listless by the day, Estelle Walker made no move to find a job, no effort to scrounge up a meal, her kids told a jury yesterday.

“We were supposed to wait for God to provide,” said Walker’s oldest daughter, now 21. “And that’s what we did.”

At one point, the daughter said, she and her siblings went 11 days without food. When police were at last summoned to the Sussex County cabin by neighbors, investigators found the children so malnourished they had difficulty talking.

You would think that after watching her own children waste away for months, she’d realize that god will not provide. Never has and never will.

God is a sockpuppet

So true and so hilarious: a study has found that god speaks with a remarkably egocentric voice. In tests that asked people what god’s opinion of various matters was, the unsurprising discovery was that it was the same as the individual’s opinion — and of course every person’s opinion was different. You’d expect some consistency if they were all hearing god’s word, you would think!

It fits with the typical vision of the sockpuppeteer, too: the loser whose opinions are indefensible, so he invents an army of aliases to agree with him. And what more powerful sockpuppet could there be than to have your arm up a god’s butt?

An Australian double standard

In March, there’s going to be a massive atheist conference in Melbourne, Australia. It’s going to be excellent, with speakers being brought in from around the world, and with mobs of delighted godless Aussies gathering to celebrate and discuss secularism (I know some of my readers here will be there!) Reasonably enough, the Atheist Organization of Australia has asked the government to chip in and help them do it right with a request for about a quarter million dollars. The government has been dragging its feet, though, punting the request about and making no promises.

Now you might say that times are tough, the economy is down, the government might just be strapped and is cutting corners. In that case, I’d say, OK, we atheists have to do some penny-pinching too, it’s only fair.

But then how to explain the fact that the Australian government just blithely handed over $2.5 million for a religious conference? And has flatly rejected the bid for funding from the atheists?

Government spokesman Luke Enright said: “The decision not to fund this event has nothing to do with religious ideology – the convention just doesn’t meet the criteria required to receive government funding”.

What’s the Australian word for “bullshit”, people?

Pile it higher, Australians!

Reverend Tim Costello, a patron of the world’s religions event, said it was important to support the forum, as “90 per cent of the world is deeply religious”.

“In a global context, most of the world is profoundly religious, and there literally can’t be peace without religious peace,” Mr Costello said.

Have you ever noticed that Christians like to count Communists as atheists when recounting the evils done in the name of that ideology, but whenever they make the argument from popularity, as Costello is doing here, they suddenly forget the Chinese? It’s very strange.

I also think he’s lying. A majority of the world is casually religious, not deeply or profoundly. I’d go further: most of the people in this world are stupidly religious, with ingrained beliefs that they did not acquire through thought or study, but through regular indoctrination from childhood on.

We also will not have peace through religion. Religion is arbitrary, false, and unverifiable; it is a body of ideas with no empirical restraint, that can be freely invented, and in the worst cases, inspire dangerous fanaticism. We will not have peace while religion is uncaged.

It does not matter, though. The fact that atheists are a minority does not argue that they deserve no consideration at all. I thought this was a well understood principle; the danger in a democracy is the tyranny of the majority, and safeguards have to be put in place to protect the rights of minorities. Since Costello is a “reverend”, unfortunately, that probably means he’s an ignorant ass who has never learned anything that matters.

Try not to think Catholic thoughts today, if you can help it

I know, it’s Thanksgiving in America, and I’ve already been curmudgeonly enough for you—but I have to do you the favor now of ruining your appetite with this tale of institutionalized child abuse in Ireland. It involves the Catholic Church, of course (and isn’t that unsurprising ennui just another indication of Catholicism unsavory reputation?).

Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs, the report said..

Hundreds of crimes against children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law.
 

In a three-year inquiry, the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese uncovered a sickening tactic of ”don’t ask, don’t tell” throughout the Church.

”The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,” it said.

”The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.

There is one bright spot of common sense.

The inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said the hierarchy cannot claim they did not know that child sex abuse was a crime.

That’s good to hear. The spectacle of a gang of gruesome old sanctimonious virgins looking befuddled and trying to claim, “We had no idea that buggering children was a bad idea, your honor” would be a bit much to take.

No jesus meat for you, Patrick Kennedy!

Representative Patrick Kennedy has been barred from taking communion by the Catholic church. This is a politically motivated action to intimidate a politician into supporting a position on a political issue opposed by the church, abortion rights. Hmmm…using religion to commit extortion. How unusual.

I feel for him. I have a few consecrated wafers somewhere around the house; I’d love to send him some so he could cannibalize Jesus, but unfortunately, I also got threats to send me poisoned wafers from a few good Catholics, and I haven’t tested them. I’d rather not be responsible for murdering a Democrat. Maybe some of you could help him out; go to Mass, pocket a slice o’ Jebus, and send it to poor Patrick.

If he’s smart, though, he’ll just desecrate it. The article makes much of the fact that the Catholic church has not excommunicated him, but only denied him the sacrament. A little blatant heresy might be enough to get them to help Kennedy escape fully from the clutches of that cult.

If I were called Rusty Thomas, I might overcompensate a bit, too

Operation Save America has begun. Some of the fundagelicals are hoping to get militant, and I don’t mean in that same sense that some atheists are called “militant”, which generally means “atheists who say something”. No, they are organizing and training kids to get out there and fight spiritual warfare. If you’re wondering what they could be fighting for, we have som choice quotes from Rev. Rusty Lee Thomas, who wrote the manual for young Jesus warriors.

A patriarch is a family ruler. He is the man in charge. Biblical manhood demands men … defend and shield or cover women from injury, evil or oppression.

…

Feminists charge that Christianity promotes a patriarchal religion, which oppresses women and steals their potential. Although it is true that Christianity is patriarchal, the function of true patriarchy is to protect, provide, and care for women and children. Biblical patriarchy is expressed as chivalry.

…

A woman can manipulate, dominate and control a man to the point that his manhood is slowly eaten away like a cancer … Too many women seek value by trying to become men, lead as men, and be aggressive as men.

At least it’s reassuring that they willingly cut their troop strength in half by treating women as servile weaklings who might eat away their manhood. I wonder if “Rusty Thomas” is feeling the effects of a lifetime of subliminal messages every time someone says his name?

He’s vague on the details of the coming War for Christianity, but he is certain about one thing.

Beginning with God slaying the animals to cover Adam and Eve after the fall…to the final sacrifice by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, one theme rings true. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.

How barbarically bloody-minded.

Vote on the Bad Faith awards

The New Humanist hands out a yearly slap-in-the-face to the most deserving noisy believer of the year — last year’s winner was Sarah Palin — and this year they have a full slate of worthy apologists for superstition. It’s an internet poll, but who should win this one isn’t at all obvious — they’re all contemptible. Here are the results so far:

Adnan Oktar, aka Harun Yahya
94 (8%)

Anjem Choudary
72 (6%)

Anthony Bush
22 (1%)

British Chiropractic Association
197 (16%)

Cardinal Cormac Murphy O’Connor
51 (4%)

Dermot Aherne
84 (7%)

Damian Thompson
66 (5%)

Pope Benedict XVI
388 (33%)

Terry Eagleton & Karen Armstrong
57 (4%)

Tony Blair
128 (11%)

I think it’s sweet that the Pope is in the lead, since he is a traditional favorite and the Church has done such a good job of stepping in the malodorous mushy fecal slime of evil this year. I’m also fond of Cormac Murphy O’Connor for decreeing that atheists are “not fully human,” a state to which I aspire but am constantly foiled by my merely human genetics and physiology. My clicky finger was also drawn to Oktar, who is not only a creationist of the foulest, dumbest sort, but may even be clinically insane. I finally voted for Eagleton/Armstrong, simply because I think their brand of gooey, meaningless drivel is far more common than Christian or Islamic fanaticism, and they represent it so well.

But don’t use my choice as a guide! This is one of those polls where it wouldn’t be bad if it ended up in a 10-way tie.

Our American madrassas

I am impressed with the discipline imposed by the traditional madrassas: students are expected to memorize the Koran, word for word, which requires that they spend day after day reading and reciting. I don’t deny that it’s hard work and is a kind of achievement, but it’s not education — it doesn’t teach people how to think for themselves.

So I find this story about kids memorizing the Bible rather dismaying. These are clearly kids with brains, discipline, and a kind of warped ambition, who have the potential to do interesting things, and our Christian leaders have apparently seen some virtue in the madrassas model, so they’ve got them engaged in the pointless and backwards-looking exercise of Bible drills. It’s such a waste.

At least it’s all-American and thoroughly capitalist. The winner of the Bible bee got $100,000. I only hope he takes the money and uses it to get a good secular education so he can do something productive with his mind.