Truth ought to matter

Read this first paragraph of an article on the Book of Mormon. I rather quickly came to some conclusions about the author and the quality of his arguments.

WHO WROTE THE BOOK OF MORMON? For nearly two centuries, faithful members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) have claimed that Joseph Smith translated the text from the writings of ancient prophets, while critics have endlessly recycled inadequate theories of plagiarism or co-authorship. What has rarely been addressed is that for much of his language and narrative structure, Smith turned to the most read and memorized author of the late seventeenth century, John Bunyan. He did so in such imaginative ways that the resulting work transcends any easy charge of plagiarism and calls upon us to reimagine the rich oral traditions of early America.

The rich oral traditions? Is that a new fancy term for “bullshit”?

The premise of the article is that the Book of Mormon is written as a literary homage to Bunyan — now I’m no fan of that pious nonsense Bunyan wrote, but that is perhaps the most slanderous thing I’ve seen written about him. No, Joseph Smith was not consciously emulating Bunyan; Smith was a con man with no literary skill who was mimicking the style of 17th century English to tie his phony story to the religious authority of the King James Bible and yes, other religious authors of that era. It is not an “imaginative” book — it’s pure blithering hackwork that goes on and on, and is a blighted fusion of faux KJV and glossolalia. It is the work of a charlatan shouting into a hat.

I’ve read chunks of the Book of Mormon. It is crap. It’s more poorly written than the Twilight series, or even 50 Shades of Gray. If you’re looking for the primal source of American popular hack literature, there it is in the work of Joseph Smith, and his bad fantasy novel that would have died of contempt if he hadn’t used it to tap into American religious gullibility. It is to Bunyan and the religious literature of the times as Eye of Argon is to science fiction and fantasy literature — a badly written derivative.

Seriously, this is a terrible article that tries to put a thin golden veneer on top of a turd. I don’t know why the LA Review of Books or Salon chose to publish it. The author is pandering to the Mormons, nothing more.

For instance, take a look at this summary of the Mormon story.

To the LDS faithful, the Book of Mormon is the true historical account of a group of ancient Israelites who fled Jerusalem prior to the Babylonian captivity (600 B.C.E.) and later journeyed to the Americas to establish a new civilization. Mormons claim that in 1823 an angel named Moroni revealed to Joseph Smith the location of a set of gold plates – which recorded that sacred history – buried in a hill south of Palmyra in upstate New York, known today as the Hill Cumorah. Six years later, at the age of 24, Joseph translated this ancient record, which he claimed was written in “Reformed Egyptian,” into English by “the gift and power of God.”

A real historian would look at that baldly ridiculous story and dismiss it as nonsense. Just the complete absence of provenance and its foundation in a story made up in a non-existent language and written on mysterious gold plates in New York (plates that no one else has ever seen) ought to mark it as fraud. But no, not to William L. Davis, who is trying to rationalize the story.

This is how he sums up the case against the veracity of the Book of Mormon.

Detractors, on the other hand, assume the Book of Mormon to be Smith’s invention, pointing not just to the improbability of the story, but to the lack of any linguistic, archeological, or DNA evidence tying any tribe of Native Americans to ancient Israelites. Several theories of the origin of the text have emerged, but they lack solid evidence and require leaps of speculation. The wider academic community steered clear of the debate, leaving serious inquiry into the Book of Mormon to a small group of scholars and enthusiasts. Some Mormon scholars, like Grant Hardy, who wrote Understanding the Book of Mormon: A Reader’s Guide, have attempted to move the discussion away from polemics to an appreciation for the book’s narrative complexities. As with most scripture, however, claims to historical authenticity remain a central issue. Joseph Smith stated that the Book of Mormon was “the keystone of our religion,” to which the former LDS Prophet Ezra Taft Benson added, “Just as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the Church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.” Thus the stakes regarding authenticity are high, and the suggestion that Joseph Smith looked extensively to John Bunyan for inspiration to write the Book of Mormon is fraught not only for Mormon scholarship but for the religion as a whole.

No, the argument against the historicity of the Book of Mormon isn’t based on nothing but a lack of evidence supporting it; it’s about a body of “linguistic, archeological, or DNA evidence” that directly contradicts the story. America was not colonized by a group of Hebrew refugees in 600BCE who built a flourishing white civilization that crumbled, leaving modern degenerate tribes of brown people to wander among the ruins. It didn’t happen, period. You want to find the roots of Mormonism, you should be looking to the endemic racism of the Americans of European descent who were trying to justify an ongoing genocide. Not Bunyan.

I do like the remark that “so does all the Church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon.” I’m happy to accept that. It falls.

You know, the truth matters. Religions built on lies, like all of them, do not deserve respect or to persevere. I can see through all the vain striving to find some glimmer of character in Joseph Smith or some shadow of literary quality in his hat-shouting exercise — but what it all ought to come down to is, “IS IT TRUE?” And when it isn’t, it ought to be kicked to the curb and hauled away with the trash.

Romney is a very devout man

Mitt Romney gives lots of money to his church! Sorta. It turns out he’s also a very clever man, with a deep knowledge of the tax code, who has cunningly used loopholes to generate the appearance of giving money to the church while keeping most of it for himself.

Romney reportedly took advantage of a loophole, called a charitable remainder unitrust or CRUT, which allows someone to park money or securities in a tax-deferred trust marked for their favorite charity, but which often doesn’t pay out much to the non-profit. The donor pays taxes on the fixed yearly income they get from the trust, but the principle remains untaxed . Congress outlawed the practice in 1997, but Romney slid in under the wire when his trust, created in June 1996, was grandfathered in.

The trust essentially lets someone “rent” the charity’s tax-exemption while not actually giving the charity much money. If done for this purpose, the trust pays out more every year to the donor than it makes in returns on its holdings, depleting the principal over time, so that when the donor dies and the trust is transferred to the charity, there’s often little left. The actual contribution “is just a throwaway,” Jonathan Blattmachr, a lawyer who set up hundreds of CRUTS in the 1990s, told Bloomberg. “I used to structure them so the value dedicated to charity was as close to zero as possible without being zero.”

Indeed, this appears to the case for Romney’s trust as well. Bloomberg obtained the trust’s tax returns through a Freedom of Information Request and found that Romney’s CRUT started at $750,000 in 2001 but ended 2011 with only $421,203 — over a period when the stock market grew. Romney’s trust was projected to leave less than 8 percent of the original contribution to the church (or another charity that he can designate). This, along with the trust’s poor returns — it made just $48 in 2011 — suggest the trust is not designed to grow for the LDS church but just serve as a tax-free holding pool from which annual payments can be disbursed to the Romneys.

If he’s so willing to screw over the god he worships, one has to wonder what he’s planning to do to the country.

Bad argument #2: No more Poes

(This is part of a list of bad arguments I heard at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

There were a couple of fundagelical fanatics picketing the event. I got a few pictures taken posing with this one guy, and he was standard-issue boring creationist: he kept telling me “Darwin was a big dummy” and otherwise sneering at evolution. I just politely asked him what he’d read by Darwin, and for specific points Darwin made that he rejected, and he shut up hard. He was reduced to muttering “I’ll pray for you, brother” — trying to pin them down to specifics is usually a good tactic for exposing the vacuity of their position.

But the creationist is too obvious a source of bad arguments. I want to complain about a few of the atheists.

I heard several announce “He’s a poe” or “he must be a poe”. Dear god, but I’m sick of that stupid word. It’s become a standard response to batty stupidity — lately, it doesn’t matter how ordinary a comment is or who said it or how well verified it is — there’s always someone in the crowd who has to show off how insightful or cynical they are by declaring that it must be a pretense.

Look, people, we live in a country with Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Joseph Farah as prominent media sources; where Akin and Broun and Jindal get elected to high office; where every newspaper is full of common folk writing in to complain about those gays or those socialist commies or those egghead liberals. There is nothing unlikely or unbelievable about a down-home ministry that announces you’ll go to hell for believing in science. Bat-buggering bullshit is routine.

Declaring something to be a “poe” is a minimizing tactic; it’s a way to pretend that a real problem doesn’t exist. Are you really going to try to delude yourself and others into thinking that the Tea Party, Fox News, and the whole goddamned Repuclican party are an act put on by snarky liberals?

I’m hereby declaring the term “poe” to be anathema here. Don’t use it anymore. We don’t need denial, we need a confrontation with an ugly reality. I’ll probably start leaving rude remarks when I spot people throwing the term around in the comments from now on.

Oh, and for anyone who tries to mimic creationists, Republicans, or Christians as a clever mockery of their beliefs, if it isn’t clear what you’re doing, don’t try to dignify it as a “Poe” — all it is is bad fucking satire. Satire is a good and historically authentic method of speaking against power and foolishness, but if your schtick can’t be distinguished from the real thing, it’s contributing to the crapfest of idiocy we’re already drowning in, rather than opposing it.

So just stop it.

They’re coming to get your kids…and expecting you to pay for their activities

Have you read Katherine Stewart’s The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children? You should. It’s about how Christian evangelicals have taken advantage of a court ruling requiring that schools open their doors to after-school clubs with no viewpoint discrimination…and how they’re exploiting that opportunity to proselytize and indoctrinate children. It’s chilling stuff.

They’re in Minneapolis. One school tried to restrict their activities. Here’s what happened.

The Minneapolis school district will abide by a federal appeals court ruling that the district cannot exclude a Bible-oriented club from its after-school activities program.

The decision not to appeal the ruling clears the way for similar clubs in other schools. A settlement approved by the school board Tuesday will cost the district $100,000 in legal fees to the organization sponsoring the club.

Ouch. Not only do they have to allow this creepy club to recruit children, they’re going to have to cough up a big chunk of money. And what will they do with all that cash?

Dave Tunell, the Child Evangelism Fellowship’s state director, said he hopes three or four more after-school clubs could emerge from summer events conducted by churches in city parks.

Clearly, we need a better strategy for coping with these cultish freaks. They’re not stupid, and they’ve come up with a smart way to exploit the system.

OK, OK…so that cracker really was Jesus

According to Michael Nugent, today is the “Day of Agreement” and we’re supposed to be really really nice and go along with all the nonsense people tell us we’re suppose to respect. Just for today — we can go back to being normal tomorrow.

So I’ll go along with that and agree with the Catholics that the cracker I abused really was of one substance with The Lord Jesus Christ, Ruler of the Cosmos, Grand Judge of All Humanity, Vengeful Enemy of Fig Trees.

I’ll also admit that I really enjoyed stabbing Him, and would gleefully do it again if I had a magic cracker handy.

Christian zealots really can’t identify with anyone else

The Canadian government is firing all their non-Christian prison chaplains. Not all their chaplains, which would be a move that would be both smart and fair, but just the ones who don’t love Jesus enough.

The federal government is cancelling the contracts of all non-Christian chaplains at federal prisons, CBC News has learned.

Inmates of other faiths, such as Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Jews, will be expected to turn to Christian prison chaplains for religious counsel and guidance, according to the office of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, who is also responsible for Canada’s penitentiaries.

Toews made headlines in September when he ordered the cancellation of a tender issued for a Wiccan priest for federal prisons in B.C.

Toews said he wasn’t convinced part-time chaplains from other religions were an appropriate use of taxpayer money and that he would review the policy.

In an email to CBC News, Toews’ office says that as a result of the review, the part-time non-Christian chaplains will be let go and the remaining full-time Christian chaplains in prisons will now provide interfaith services and counselling to all inmates.

"The minister strongly supports the freedom of religion for all Canadians, including prisoners,” the email states. “However, the government … is not in the business of picking and choosing which religions will be given preferential status through government funding. The minister has concluded … [Christian] chaplains employed by Corrections Canada must provide services to inmates of all faiths."

I’d like to know how Vic Toews would react if all the Christian chaplains were kicked out of the prisons and all the Jebusites had to turn towards “interfaith” services provided by rabbis and imams. I suspect he’d suddenly see a major problem with such a decision.

One other interesting note: Canada has about 15,000 prisoners, and their religion breaks down like this:

There are nearly 15,000 inmates in federal custody and a large majority of them identify themselves as Christian:

  • 37.5% are Catholic.

  • 19.5% are Protestant.

  • 4.5% are Muslim.

  • 4% First Nations spirituality

  • 2% are Buddhist.

  • less than 1% are Jewish.

  • less than 1% are Sikh.

Hang on, that adds up to less than 70%. What are the other 30%? Polls show that less than 20% of the Canadian population has no religious affiliation (recent polls bring that up closer to 30%). Have we finally found a country where the criminals are as godless as the general population?

Whoa — they’re literally dehumanizing atheists

I didn’t realize how thoroughly the Catholic church regarded atheists as sub-humans, but Michael Nugent documents it all, straight from the hierarchy’s legion of mouths. It is literally a Catholic teaching that atheists are “not fully human”.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part One, The Profession of Faith, reads: (27) “The dignity of man rests above all on the fact that he is called to communion with God;” and (44) “Man is by nature and vocation a religious being. Coming from God, going toward God, man lives a fully human life only if he freely lives by his bond with God.”

In 2012, Pope Benedict, in a letter to a Catholic meeting in Rimini, wrote that “every person is created so that he may enter into dialogue with the Infinite… To truly find himself and his identity, to live up to his being, man must turn and recognize that he is a creature, who is dependent on God.”

In 1998, Pope John Paul II, in an apostolic message delivered in Croatia, said that “A culture which rejects God cannot be considered fully human, because it excludes from its vision the One who has created man in his own image and likeness, has redeemed him through the work of Christ, and has consecrated him with the anointing of the Holy Spirit.”

In 1995, Pope John Paul II, in a homily at Saint Joseph’s Seminary, Yonkers, USA, said that when he was addressing the United Nations: “My task is not to speak in purely human terms about merely human values, but in spiritual terms about spiritual values, which are ultimately what make us fully human.”

In 1986, Pope John Paul II, in an Angelus statement in Adelaide, Australia, said that “Jesus did not come to lay burdens upon us. He came to teach us what it means to be fully happy and fully human.”

That’s just a small sampling. Fortunately, I don’t share their bigotry: I regard all Catholics as my fellow apes.

AAAAAAAIEE! CATHOLICS!

All right, Deacon Duncan owes me. He cruelly pointed me at a site where a Catholic tries to justify his faith.

Just that phrase alone is enough to send alarms in your head whooping, doesn’t it? You know it’s going to be a pointless exercise in sophistry, and the only reason you might be tempted to follow the link is to see how awful it is. If you are a connoisseur of bad reasoning, go ahead — it’s an excellent example of the genre.

After the prelude, in which he says that he’s trying to explain his belief to atheists why Christians exist, here is his very first sentence.

Any philosophy that claims that there exists nothing supernatural cannot grant purpose to suffering.

I lost my will to read further. He needs to examine his premises: why must there be a purpose to suffering?

I had stopped caring. But I glanced ahead through the long, tortured prose and shameful excuses for logic (purposelessly, I suffered), and found this little jewel of a dingleberry of thought:

All atheism has its ultimate source in Jesus Christ then, for by his death he negated the existence of God. And in his death, sin itself died, for he became sin itself. And if sin died, suffering died, for suffering is the result of sin. And if all suffering died, than death itself — the ultimate human suffering — dies.

What the hell…do not try to understand. It’s a Catholic thing. Just soak your cortex in a childhood of lies, and while it will never make sense, you’ll just accept without questioning, which is all a good Catholic wants.

I gave up. But I thought I’d check the comments to see if somehow, magically, that fecal slurry somehow resonated with anyone, and gosh, it did.

I love how simply you put it when you said “Christianity doesn’t end suffering. It just redefines it as a positive.” I think a lot of Christians don’t understand why they suffer, and knowing that their suffering is united with Christ’s is beyond comforting.

Catholics. Their logic is of another realm.