The shocking defense of convicted child abuser cardinal George Pell

Australian cardinal George Pell, one of the most powerful men in the Vatican, was found guilty of child sexual abuse by a court in Melbourne. It was a unanimous decision. During his sentencing hearing, his lawyer made an astounding mitigating argument of his client’s actions.

Cardinal George Pell, the most senior Catholic cleric ever convicted of child sexual abuse, has been taken in custody following a sentencing hearing in which his lawyer described one of Pell’s offences as a “plain vanilla sexual penetration case where the child is not actively participating”.

After the hearing, with Pell’s lawyer, Robert Richter, having withdrawn his application for bail, the chief judge said: “Take him away, please.” Pell was taken to a maximum security facility where he will be kept in protective custody and remain alone for up to 23 hours a day.

He will be sentenced on 13 March after his conviction for sexually assaulting two 13-year-old boys.

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If you are a miracle worker, you should go big or go home

An evangelical pastor in South Africa clearly felt that the usual tricks to persuade people that their god was acting through them to perform miracles, such a healing them of various ailments, was too tame. So he decided to stage the big one, a resurrection of the dead, where a supposedly dead man suddenly sat up in his coffin in response to prayers.

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We can only hope that he is right

Cliff Sims used to work in the White House for the Trump administration and like so many others, is trying to wash himself of the stench of association by writing a book about his experience and trashing others. He is currently making the rounds promoting his book and is apparently a religious person. He had this to say to the Christian Post about the spectacle of evangelical Christian leaders, including those on Trump’s evangelical advisory board, willing to overlook and excuse and even praise the actions of an amoral lying sociopath like Trump.

I found some of the board to be mainly interested in maintaining their proximity to power, even to the point of trashing “rival” faith leaders to keep them from threatening their own position close to the President. There are specific anecdotes in the book that illustrate that point.

I also write in the book that my greatest regret from my time in the White House is that I wasn’t a better picture of my faith to the President and my colleagues. I’m haunted by the late author Brennan Man¬ning’s quote, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Chris¬tians who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him by their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.”

Many of us in the atheist camp have long felt that the biggest recruiters in our favor are the hypocritical religious leaders who are turning away young people especially with their words and actions. It is nice to see that even some religious people share that view, even if they fear it while we welcome it.

Wittgenstein’s ‘defense’ of religion

I really enjoyed philosopher Stephen Law’s 2011 book Believing Bullshit: How Not to Get Sucked into an Intellectual Black Hole where he takes apart many common beliefs, including religious ones, and provides tips about how to deal with the slipperiness of the many arguments put forward by believers. (I wrote three blog posts about it that you can read here.) I can highly recommend the book to those who find themselves constantly drawn into interminable discussions of religion with friends and family.
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Religion’s last refuge in the face of scientific progress

As a result of the rapid advances in science, the explanatory claims of religion for natural phenomena have been all but discredited. But that has not stopped religious people from trying to retain some relevance. Some have taken the tack of arguing that religion ‘explains’ things like the meaning of life that science cannot, a fatuous claim since those ‘explanations’ are simply evidence-free assertions. But others take the position that their ancient religious texts actually predicted scientific phenomena.
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Impressive demonstration by women in India protesting temple ban

The southern Indian state of Kerala has been roiled with turmoil for three months ever since the Indian Supreme Court ruled that a major Hindu temple’s ban on women of menstruating age entering it was unconstitutional. Because of that rule, women between the ages of 10-50 had been barred. The temple leaders and their male supporters have resisted the decision and stopped women from entering and as a result there have been clashes between them and the police trying to enforce the ruling, the latest occurring when two women entered the temple under police protection.


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Bizarre kidnapping case

It is unfortunately not uncommon for the parent of a divorced or separated couple that was denied custody of the children to abduct the children. But one kidnapping case had so many bizarre and disturbing features that it merited some comment, the chief one being that the child who was kidnapped had been ‘married’ to one of the kidnappers, so it was simultaneously a wife kidnapping as well as a child kidnapping.

Four members of “extremist Jewish sect” Lev Tahor were arrested Friday and charged with kidnapping two children in upstate New York, the Department of Justice said. U.S. Attorney’s Office in New York’s Southern District charged Nachman Helbrans, Mayer Rosner, Aron Rosner, and Jacob Rosner with kidnapping two children from Woodbridge, New York and transporting them to Mexico, with the eventual goal of returning them to the sect’s base in Guatemala. The children’s mother had fled the Guatemala compound six weeks before the kidnapping, reportedly fearing for the safety of her children, and gained legal custody of all six. The release notes that “Public news reports indicate that children in Lev Tahor are often subject to physical, sexual, and emotional abuse.”

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The Rapture and The Book of Revelation

Most people are familiar with the wacky ideas about the Rapture, where the chosen are whisked away into heaven leaving those behind to face years of carnage in the battle between good and evil. Into this mix are thrown ideas about the AntiChrist leading the forces of evil against the forces of good that culminates in the end of the world. In his new book The Book of Revelation: A Biography, Timothy Beal, professor of religious studies at Case Western Reserve University, explains that although many people think that these ideas about the Rapture emerge from the Book of Revelation, that is not the case.
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