Jesus heals cancer in New Zealand

There is a church in New Zealand that has a genuinely repulsive billboard: it boldly claims that “JESUS HEALS CANCER“. It’s a lie, of course: they have no evidence of such a power. In an interview with the smiling, cheerful, blithely fuckwitted pastor, he openly admits that the congregants who were “healed” were receiving modern cancer therapy, and that he tells them to stay on it while receiving their magical pretend healing, and not to get off it until the doctors actually verify that they are in remission — so it’s another case of doctors doing the real work, while Jesus just steals the credit.

Do watch the whole video. The television announcer is actually good and critical, which is such a surprise to see for those of us accustomed to the glib gladhanders of American TV. He brings on someone from an organization called Consumer NZ, though, who is a bit slimy and evasive and keeps making excuses for the church.

Oh, man, and at the end of the video, the idjit pastor is doubling down and adding a tally of cures to his billboard.

That anti-intellectual Santorum

Rick Santorum really hates universities.

On the president’s efforts to boost college attendance, Santorum said, "I understand why Barack Obama wants to send every kid to college, because of their indoctrination mills, absolutely … The indoctrination that is going on at the university level is a harm to our country."

He claimed that "62 percent of kids who go into college with a faith commitment leave without it," but declined to cite a source for the figure. And he floated the idea of requiring universities that receive public funds have "intellectual diversity" on campus.

Universities are places where one goes to experience diversity and learn about reality, so we already have opportunities to experience "intellectual diversity" — the problem is that they are places where diverse views are questioned and criticized. What he wants is not diversity, but that his fundamentalist/evangelical Christian views can be presented in a protected environment on campus, where they won’t wither under the scathing light of reality-based scrutiny.

Oh, and I don’t know where his 62% figure came from specifically, but it’s in the ballpark of numbers often thrown around by conservative Christians. It’s total nonsense. 62% of our students don’t graduate as atheists (I wish!); what it means is that large numbers of students come to the university and change their minds. They arrive with a very narrow, very specific version of evangelical Christianity which the antique purists insist they must hang on to, or go to hell…and they leave, usually still entirely Christian and even mostly church-going Christian, but they tend to soften and have more inclusive, liberal views. That constitutes apostasy to these culture warriors like Santorum.

Ken Ham is big on beating his breast over all the defections from literalist Christianity that go on in the colleges. He’s even got a book on it called Already Gone in which he blames it all on “millions of years” and the abandonment of a strict interpretation of Genesis.

(By the way, you can tell an evangelical Christian has a book when they plug it by telling you you can order them in “cartons of 48”.)

Imagine no heaven

It’s been a long day — classes and lots of grading. I was ready to sit back and switch off my brain and take it easy, and then Mr Deity dives into the tangled twisty logic of paradise, and suddenly I’ve got a brain-ache.

I don’t even like Disneyland, why would I want immortality of any kind, let alone one where I’m supposed to be happy for eternity? I think the only afterlife I’d like would be the kind where I get to storm the gates of heaven and end the whole tyrannical empire.

Nasty little man snipes at the brave

I am the father of a non-religious soldier. I take it personally when a cretinous wackjob priest declares that my son is a coward lacking in commitment, damned, evil, and weak. Fuck you, Bryan Griem.

There’s an adage I expect will be repeated by other ministers responding to this question. It goes, “there are no atheists in foxholes.” Meaning, when bombs burst, everyone hedges their bets and prays, “God, save me!” There’s a joke about one combat vet who prayed “Lord, if you’re there, I’ll serve you and attend church every Sunday; just get me through.” The Air Force immediately comes and blasts everything, answering the man’s prayer. He then looks up to heaven and says “never mind….”

I know that religious people have security that atheists don’t. If you believe in life after life, you fight harder, risk more, and serve better than a guy who thinks, “this is it!” If you believe you’re nothing but worm-food at death, you aren’t going to jump on a grenade to save the platoon, or charge a machine-gun nest expecting to meet Jesus. You’re going to be reserved, second-guessing, and probably be a big fat chicken.

Look, you just read the stats: “Researchers have found that spiritual people have decreased odds of attempting suicide, and that spiritual fitness has a positive impact on quality of life, on coping and on mental health.” Atheists be damned. They will be. So I really don’t care what they think regarding these tests. I’m tired of having their constant nagging, their constant opposition against God — their evil. They contribute nothing positive in the long run. Their very name, “a” theist, means they are “against,” with a big “no” regarding America’s “creator” and “Nature’s God” (the one mentioned in our Declaration of Independence). I’m frankly sick of them. Why they are here on the In Theory cast is beyond me. It’s like saying, “I have no spiritual input because I don’t believe in the spirit. So here’s my ignorance….”

I wonder what the military puts on gravestones of atheists, a thumbs-down? Listen, all religions are protected by our laws, but atheists don’t countenance America’s documents that mention God. They don’t actually deserve rights that even bizarre religionists have. If it could be shown that people who deny God create military weakness, however small, what should commanders do when choosing a winning military? I agree with you.

This is what we get when the Army decides to evaluate soldiers’ “spiritual fitness”: scumbags like Griem judging our troops by how superstitious and gullible they are.

You can let Griem know what you think of his attack on our troops. Be civil, but don’t pussyfoot around his douchebaggery.

Poll on a thoroughly sensible comment

Trevor Philips made a number of people very cranky in the UK. He was commenting on a recent legal struggle, in which Catholic adoption agencies fought for the right to discriminate and refuse to allow gay couples to adopt children. There has been a ruling that adoption agencies aren’t exempt from equality laws, which of course pisses off religious bigots no end — they want to claim their superstitions are special and must be propped up by the law.

So Phillips made a simple and obvious comparison.

“You can’t say because we decide we’re different then we need a different set of laws,” he said, in comments reported by The Tablet, the Catholic newspaper.

“To me there’s nothing different in principle with a Catholic adoption agency, or indeed Methodist adoption agency, saying the rules in our community are different and therefore the law shouldn’t apply to us.

Why not then say sharia can be applied to different parts of the country? It doesn’t work.”

He compared Catholics demanding special laws for them to Muslims demanding their special laws? Harumph! Ouch! That was a cruel blow.

“It’s a strange comparison,” says one CoE spokesman.

Lawyers call it “inflammatory!”

Former Archbishop says, “Ridiculous!”

“Looks like the truth hurts,” says I.

There’s a poll, so you get to have a say, too!

Should religion have a say over public law?

No, religion should ‘stop at the door of the temple’ and give way to public law 52.66%

Yes, but as a Christian country only the Christian faith should shape the law 42.33%

All religions should have a say over public law 5.01%

The anti-Ecklund

Ecklund, you may recall, is the sociologist with a fondness for counting anyone who expresses awe at the universe as belonging to the religious camp, artificially inflating the number of Christians around. Now the RDF has commissioned an analysis of the population of the UK to see how many people are really Christian in their beliefs, vs. nominally Christian by heritage. The results probably won’t surprise you.

Not only has the number of UK adults calling themselves Christian dropped dramatically since the 2001 Census – our research suggests that it is now only 54% – even those who still think of themselves as Christian show very low levels of religious commitment:

• Only about a third of what we shall call ‘Census-Christians’ cited religious beliefs as the reason they had ticked the Christian box in the 2011 Census

• 37% of them have never or almost never prayed outside a church service

• Asked where they seek most guidance in questions of right and wrong, only 10% of Census-Christians said it was from religious teachings or beliefs

• Just a third (32%) believe Jesus was physically resurrected; half (49%) do not think of him as the Son of God

• And when given 4 books of the Bible to select from and asked which was the first book of the New Testament, only 35% could identify Matthew as the correct answer.

Also, even self-identified UK Christians do not think religion should have a special influence on public policy.

I think the issue is settled. The UK is a diverse and largely secular nation. All the fanatics who whimper about Europe being Christian need to adjust to reality: they are a minority.

Now I just wish the demographics of the United States had a similar arrangement…but I suspect that a majority here aren’t just Christian, but pig-ignorant evangelical/fundamentalist-leaning Christian. We need a few more years to catch up with European enlightenment.

Poll harder, so religion can reassure itself of its relevance

The Baroness Warsi is visiting the Vatican. Why, is not clear: it seems to be an occasion for two devout believers to get together and congratulate each other on the fervency with which each holds their dogma. And there’s just something weird and wrong about it all.

We will be celebrating the decision Margaret Thatcher took 30 years ago to restore full diplomatic relations between our countries. The relationship between the UK and the Holy See is our oldest diplomatic relationship, first established in 1479.

Right there…Catholicism is a country? Am I the only one who finds that disturbing and weird? It’s not something to envy or aspire to: it means that it’s a theocracy.

It’s also dishonest to blithely announce that the UK and Vatican have a long relationship: it hasn’t always been smooth. People of the country of England killed each other for belonging to the country of Catholicism, and vice versa, and much of that history of a relationship has been driven by the tension between an imperialist Vatican and an independent Britain.

I will be arguing for Europe to become more confident and more comfortable in its Christianity. The point is this: the societies we live in, the cultures we have created, the values we hold and the things we fight for all stem from centuries of discussion, dissent and belief in Christianity.

Also, disbelief in Christianity…although expressing that openly could have got you burnt at the stake, once upon a time. It’s not right to insist that the history of Europe is entirely Christian, when dissent from such views was rigidly suppressed. I’d also argue that the great virtues of European culture arose more from a humanist tradition than any dogma. Art and science, engineering and industry are not religious fiefdoms.

Religion is the diaper of humanity’s childhood; it’s OK to grow out of it.

My fear today is that a militant secularisation is taking hold of our societies. We see it in any number of things: when signs of religion cannot be displayed or worn in government buildings; when states won’t fund faith schools; and where religion is sidelined, marginalised and downgraded in the public sphere.

It seems astonishing to me that those who wrote the European Constitution made no mention of God or Christianity. When I denounced this tendency two days before the Holy Father’s State Visit in September 2010, saying that government should “do God”, I received countless messages of support. The overwhelming message was: “At last someone has said it”.

Yeah, it’s always easy to suck up to the teat of comfortable superstitions, and people will always applaud you for it. It doesn’t mean you’re right.

It’s good that the European Constitution ignores gods; the American Constitution does likewise. These are concepts that are totally irrelevant and often destructive to real world understanding. And it is not militant to suggest that a government of all should avoid endorsing sectarian religion, because we know exactly where that support of specific, untestable, and nonsensical myths leads: to pointless conflict over arbitrary bits of belief. It is also telling that she wants government to fund “faith schools”—what the hell can they teach, if it’s based on faith? Reason and evidence are universal values that everyone, believer and unbeliever, should learn and can use. Teach the core of truth and reality…and yes, push superstitious dogma off to the fringes and marginalize it.

Of course there is a poll, because foolishness loves company to reassure itself that it isn’t quite as dumb as it seems. Maybe you should go over there and marginalize religion some more.

Are you worried by the threat of militant secularism in Britain?

Marginalising religion is a form of intolerance seen in totalitarian regimes 22.04%
People should worship in private and not display religious symbols in public 15.97%
People should feel proud to worship in public and display their faith 15.84%
Secularisation is not a threat to this country 46.15%

What do creationists and other apologists for gods have in common?

Fundamental dishonesty. They both indulge in shameless quote-mining.

Also, I think the phrase “pulling an Ecklund” is going to be really useful. Use it whenever you see someone trying to rope an authority into the pro-religion, god-praising happy-clapping theist camp by pretending that awe and secular ‘spirituality’ are the same thing as going to church and loving Jesus or any other anthropomorphic deity.

Quantum Christianity?

Hallelujah! At long last, we can reconcile Jesus and science — all we need is to know a little quantum physics. Very little quantum physics. So little that we can get it all wrong, and it really doesn’t matter. Heed this call to improve the world by having Christians embrace physics!

It is time for the spiritually faithful to openly support the acceptance of this new science, which is called quantum physics theory. It replaces Newtonian physics theory, which is based on concepts developed in the 17th century when scientists separated themselves from the Church of Rome to avoid being burned at the stake when their discoveries were at variance with the teachings of the church.

Uh, hey, what? I had no idea that Newtonian physics was a cop-out to avoid conflict with Catholicism. The things you learn on the interwebs…

The Newtonian physics the-ory describes most day-to-day physical phenomena well, but does not support concepts of intuitive, spiritual or other "nonphysical" phenomena, such as electricity and field theories.

This is getting weirder and weirder: electricity is non-physical? It’s an intuitive, spiritual phenomenon? I know James Clerk Maxwell was a devout evangelical Christian, but he managed to keep all of that out of his work.

I think you can see where this is going: wicked Catholic-appeasing Newton doesn’t support spirituality (which is already ridiculous and ahistorical), but quantum physics does.

Quantum physics theory sees the universe as an infinite, interactive field of energy patterns (quantum holograms) in which the true intentions of humankind influence the application of infinite sources of energy in our physical world.

See?

I don’t think quantum physics includes human intention as a factor at all. This sounds more like Deepak Chopra’s version of physics, i.e., total bugwackin’ nonsense.

So how does this guy justify this idiosyncratic version of physics? By personal experience, of course.

I have personally experienced and observed the moving of physical objects, the changing of chemical compositions and the healing of sickness by means of true intentions, alone. I foresee a near future in which each of us "who does not doubt in his heart" quietly and without ostentation, helps to keep turning the wheels of industry, transportation and electric generation, as required. How many Christians truly believe in the teachings of Jesus?

I look forward to our bright future in which the prayers of devout Christians cause the turbines of dynamos to whirl about telekinetically, generating free godly energy for us all.

If you doubt this, you do not truly believe in the teachings of Jesus, who was all about magic-powered industrial machinery.

Rarely have I seen the double-standard so clearly stated

You may recall that a Christian group in Bath called “Healing on the Streets” was going about claiming that faith could heal all sorts of ailments: “Ulcers, Depression, Allergies, Fibromyalgia, Asthma, Paralysis, Crippling Disease, Phobias, Sleeping disorders or any other sickness”. They got slapped down for making false claims, as they should have been.

Brendan O’Neill is outraged — this is a violation of freedom of religion! And then he goes on to make a really good analogy.

This is an outrageous attack on freedom of religion, on the basic right of people to express central tenets of their faith. Of course, the authorities have a role to play in keeping a check on the scientific claims made by businesses in their ads. If, for example, Pepsi suddenly announced that a can of its pop can cure backache, that should be challenged; likewise, companies that spout homeopathic claptrap can reasonably be asked to provide evidence for their claims. But the state and its offshoots have no business whatsoever sticking their snouts into the expression of a religious conviction, into the public articulation of faith, which is precisely what the HOTS leaflet was. Monitoring claims that are made in an explicitly scientific fashion is fine, but policing the expression of an inner conviction, of a profound belief in the healing qualities of God, is ludicrous and authoritarian. Not content with policing the public square, the ASA, it seems, now wants to monitor men’s souls too.

Well, yes, that’s a really good example. If Pepsi profited by selling more cans of pop by plastering them with misleading medical claims, that would be wrong, and it would be society’s responsibility to act to protect its more gullible members from predatory lies. But when HOTS tries to profit in its evangelical efforts by lying about their medical benefits, that isn’t offensive behavior because…? “Inner convictions” doesn’t cut it. There are plenty of scams going around with devout proponents — homeopathy, balance bracelets, libertarianism, crystal healing — but we don’t exempt them from laws against fraudulent advertising because their middle management is willing step up and say “I really, really believe”. Why does religion get this free pass?

Here’s another thought experiment. What if the CEO of Pepsi has a conversion experience, sees a vision of Jesus, and Jesus says unto him, “Lo, high fructose corn syrup is the true nectar of the gods, it’s all we drink up here in heaven. It’s what makes us immortal!” Could Pepsi now slap a new label on their cans that says “Now with eternal life!”?

What if all of their ads featured a charismatic preacher with big teeth and big hair and tap-dancing angels all singing about how Pepsi was Jesus’ favorite drink? Would that be sufficient evidence of “inner conviction” and justify any medical claims Pepsi might want to make?