Category Archives: Religion

Christian Rights

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A few days ago, I stupidly wrote in Militant Stupidity that

Most importantly, though, there are no longer religious rights – i.e. special rights attained only through adherence to a particular religion – in the UK.

And boy, was I wrong. Not in that it shouldn’t be that way, but wrong because I failed to see that obviously, in the UK, as in most other european countries, this unfortunately is not true.

In the UK there actually are some religious rights. For the sake of clarity, with religious rights I mean special rights that you can only claim when you say that you have a certain religious belief. In addition to the fact that it breaks the ‘one law for all’ principle, religious laws have another peculiar property: There is no actual way to prove that you are a believer – you can fake belief as easily as a religion can fake their god. There is no way to prove a negative. This alone should be grounds to immediately deep-six those paragraphs, but I digress.

Anyway, there are two important religious laws in the UK that apply only to self-proclaimed religious people, and they are:

  • you must be a Christian (rather: Church of England-brand Christian) or you cannot become King/Queen of England. Since you must also have a direct blood line to the throne, few people will ever come in conflict with this silly law.
  • Members of the Roman Catholic Christian Belief, and more to point, their Organization, are exempt from a lot of important laws: The non-discrimination acts against women, gays, and people of certain marital status.

Therefore, being a Christian in the UK does indeed engender special privileges; some privileges even allow you to act in ways that would immediately land you in hot water if you weren’t religious – without adding any new responsibilities. How nice is that!

So yes, the UK does have religious rights. How silly of me to have gotten this wrong. Seeing how the US have just screwed their women over the same issue, my oversight is doubly embarrassing.

For the record, I should have said:

Most importantly, though, there should never be religious rights – special rights that apply only to people who claim to adhere to a particular religion – in the UK.

Sorry about that.

SCOTUS schmotus

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The issue is simple, they solution obvious. Then religion enters the playing field, and old men make a silly choice. As a result women are placed at a disadvantage.

That about sums up what just happened at SCOTUS – the Supreme Court of the United States.

The issue: should a privately held company be forced to comply with the law, even if it conflicts with the religious beliefs of their owners?

Obviously, this is a non-issue: When your religious beliefs conflict with the law, you better abide by law, or place yourself in harm’s way. In the civilized world, Law trumps Religion, right?

Well, not so fast. SCOTUS has actually managed to shoot itself in the foot on a very, very simple, clear-cut case.

The Affordable Care Act in the US states that companies must provide contraception coverage in their insurance packages. As it should be common knowledge, ‘contraceptives’ prevent pregnancies from happening, they do not terminate them. Contraceptives include IUD (‘Coil’ or ‘Spiral’) and ECP (‘morning after pill’).

An evangelical Christian-owned company in the US now refuses to cover for IUD and ECP. On the grounds that their religious beliefs prohibits this kind of contraception, they sued the US administration. Today SCOTUS ruled in favor of the company.

There are a number of remarkable items here:

  • A company is a juridical person and, along with some other traits like skin color or sex, can’t have a religion. So even if the owners all adhere to the same religion, this is not true for their company. SCOTUS, it seems, has now ruled against a very simple principle – a ruling that leads to head-scratching and raised eyebrows around the world. How can you screw up something that simple?
  • The complaint against the administration falsely claims that using IUD and ECP are abortions. This is factually untrue. That supreme judges can’t get something right that most female European teen-agers know may have something to do with the composition of the panel; it is definitely not a testament to their knowledge or level of preparedness to rule on such an important issue

SOTUS’ ruling is disquieting because it opens the door to religious discrimination against employees. Here it allows the company’s owners to withhold rights to their employees based on religious beliefs. That is a bad precedent. Even worse, the US uses case law – which is based on precedents. This ruling thus has far greater reach than a boneheaded decision like this would have in a country built on code law.

So women in the US again get to be told by religious people what they may, or may not do.

God bless America – her judges surely don’t.

Big numbers, small minds

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A few years ago I stood outside my tent, at night, in the painted desert. Being a city-dweller, I had never before seen a starry sky like that. It was big. It was unspeakably beautiful. And a bit scary. Although I wasn’t alone that night on the Colorado Plateau, staring at the immense sky I felt lonely, and a bit vulnerable.

I was reminded of this moment by a great article on the fermi paradox. Isn’t it incredible that the awe-inspiring panorama we can see at night, the thousands of visible stars represent only a tiny fraction – much less than a millionth – of the stars of our milky way? And that the milky way is only one in billions of galaxies in the universe?

At the dawn of humanity, our ancestors must have looked up, and realized not just how beautiful the world, but also just how small humans were. Being intelligent, they looked to explain the immensity. Looking for comfort, they invented benevolent gods that sheltered them. People had big minds, but their knowledge was small. It was a natural conclusion that super-human phenomena require super-human explanations.

Today we have immeasurably more knowledge, and we can draw much better conclusions about the world around us. One of the astonishing facts about our universe is that, at a conservative estimate, the universe contains at least 100 earth-like planets for each grain of sand in this world.

For. Each. Grain. Of. Sand.

There is only little scientific controversy about this number – some say it’s a lot higher, some say it’s only half of that. Let’s be even more conservative and say it’s only one. Now go down to the beach, and imagine that for each grain of sand you see there’s an earth-like planet out there.

And now try to reconcile this with the notion that a god made our world – and only this world – special, that after creating earth (and the rest) he now hangs around this one tiny world; to listen to all our thoughts and to judge us based on what we eat, and how and whom we sleep with.

People back then believed it out of necessity: they had big minds, but small knowledge.

People who believe something like that today have small minds, but, unfortunately, big numbers.

The Athorcist

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It’s a strange thing. There are many reports of people having become possessed by demons. Yet, when looking into these possessions, a couple of striking coincidences emerge:

1) all who have become ‘possessed’ are religious; or rather, all who report someone as being possessed, are religious.

2) the ‘demon’ or ‘spirit’ in question is always part of the mythology of the ‘soul’ that is possessed. Although we regularly hear reports of the devil possessing a Christian, it has never been reported, for example, that a demon of the Vishnu mythology has possessed a Christian.

3) There have never been reports of an atheist being possessed by a demon. There have – of course – been accusations that atheists are possessed by the devil; but these accusations were always made by religious people, usually with dire consequences to the atheist – as probably intended; see 1).

So, what can we conclude from this? Statistically, these observations are significant. Let us assume demons exist. If there really were demons, they should affect everyone, not just one particular group of people. Possessions only happening within the sphere of one belief, with no cross-over to other beliefs is statistically unlikely to the extreme. Furthermore, attaining complete immunity to possession through not believing in demons should be impossible. You can’t, for example, become immune to influenza simply by not believing in germs. Something is off here.

Well, you do the math.

In related news, the Vatican is increasing the size for their exorcism department, citing high demand. It’s a successful business model, I hear.

May I suggest an easier, much cheaper vaccination against demons?

Angry Atheists

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Increasingly, atheists are being asked: “Why are you so angry?”

It’s not that difficult to explain. A few days ago, I read the heart-breaking report of adorable little 3-years-old Victoria Wilcher, who a few weeks ago was attacked by three pitbulls. The attack broke her upper and lower jaws, nose, cheek bones, and right eye socket. Victoria completely lost her right eye. Last week, on the way back from a doctor’s appointment, Victoria and her grandmother stopped at a KFC to eat.

They were asked to leave because Victoria’s injuries upset the other customers.

Victoria square 100

Image Credit: Facebook

If you now feel shock and anger, you are not alone. Few people would not get angry when learning about such cruel, hurtful treatment. Rightly so. Little Victoria deserves better, and that is obvious to most.

So why am I telling you this? Because that is exactly how atheists feel about a lot of other things that are happening around the world. Yes, many atheists are angry. But we are not angry at how we are being treated – in most countries, we now can take care of ourselves. Nor are we angry because some god or fairy betrayed us. We are angry at the cruel, hurtful way religious people treat other (mostly) religious people: When women are treated as if they were dreck; when homosexuals are humiliated and killed for being what they are; when religious people callously deny help, or feel they are entitled to tell others what they may, or may not do; when religious people intentionally injure or kill other people.

Unlike the perpetrators and their religious peers, we feel the hurt, anguish and pain inflicted upon helpless individuals, and we are angry at those who inflict it; we are outraged at the ‘justifications’ that believers proffer for their actions: that a god wants it so.

So yes, many atheists are angry. At religious people. But, unlike religious people who feel offended and are angry at us for telling them off, we have legitimate reasons.

Titans of Theology

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Pope Francis recently got his knickers in a twist over the fact that Tycoon Richard “Virgin” Branson (the “virgin” part refers to his company, definitely not a biblical character, nor his procreational status) pays very little taxes.

The Telegraph rightly deconstructed Francis’ outburst. Strangely enough, though, the Telegraph’s Allister Heath needlessly employs some subtle sophistry himself:

There can be no doubt that Pope Francis is a devoted and selfless man […]. A phenomenal theologian, he abhors war and poverty and is an inspiration to hundreds of millions of believers.

There are two items remarkable with above quote:

  • I’m sure it’s meant as a compliment, but complimenting someone on being a phenomenal theologian is very much like calling someone a phenomenal astrologer or alchemist. Theology is no science. When each and every argument can be ended with ‘because God wants it so’ and every contradiction can be resolved ‘because god is mysterious’, there simply is no space for rational, scientific discourse. Plus, someone like Francis pretty much presupposes the conclusion that the Christian God exists, making even that discussion a moot point. If your discussions only revolve around magical beings someone has written about, you might as well discuss who will win: Starship Enterprise or a Star Destroyer. And even I found that somewhat silly back when I went to school.
     
  • Heath makes it sound as if Francis’ dislike for poverty and war is a result of his being a theologian. Unlike the Pope’s grasp of finance, his dislike of war and poverty is in spite of being a theologian. 

Francis’ attack on capitalism was not only stupid, it was entirely misguided. Unlike Heath, who ignores the elephant in the room, I’d like to point out that rather salient fact: Francis is outraged that Branson doesn’t pay taxes. Yet the Pope ignores the fact that his church is not only exempt from paying taxes in most countries – it receives significant amounts of tax payer’s money in those countries.

Only titans of theology can expect to get away with so much hypocrisy.

Because it is expected of them.

MP’s race to IQ bottom

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Former british MP Ann Widdecombe is upset. After some semi-intellectual rhetorical stunts she claims that Christians are persecuted and militant atheists are the reason for her stupidity. You may recall that Widdecombe is the Minister who converted to Catholicism because the Church of England allowed the ordination of women as priests. So she has some serious fundamentalistic street cred to call her own. In a somewhat less endearing continuation of her public performance from the ‘Intelligence Squared’ debate (with Hitchens and Fry in 2009), she begins her rant with a number of astonishing assertions:

Christians now have quite a lot of problems, whether it’s that you can’t display even very discreet small symbols of your faith at work, that you can’t say ‘God bless you’, you can’t offer to pray for somebody, if it’s an even bigger stance on conscience that you’re taking, some of the equality laws can actually bring you to the attention of the police themselves

Not to put too fine a point on this: Widdecombe is lying through her teeth. You can wear a crucifix to work, you can say ‘god bless you’, you can offer to pray. Now, what people think of you if you do one of those things is another thing.
If you are brought to the police’s attention, you may have violated a law – a law that was passed to protect someone: so yes – if you, for example, openly call for discrimination of gays, the police will come knocking on your door. Thank God!

So I think it is a very difficult country now, unlike when I was growing up, in which to be a Christian, an active Christian at any rate.

What she is actually bemoaning is her loss of privilege to insult and shame religious dissenters, something she is trying right now with her outcry of false injury. It’s not difficult to be a Christian in the UK. It’s only become harder to be adored on the grounds of just be a Christian. Today people also look at what you do and judge you by your actions. Being pious alone doesn’t cut it any more. Hurting others because of your beliefs is no longer tolerated. That’s a good thing, Ann.

a concern about “political correctness” meant people were reluctant to express their faith to others because “they think strong belief offends them”.

So that is what bothers her. She’s furious that the empty phrase “I’ll pray for you” no longer engenders respect, but a look of concerned pity instead. She’s angry that it becomes more difficult to get people to admire her, to inflate her ego with vacant pious gestures or meaningless acclamations of faith (like, for example, converting to hard-core Catholicism because women were being ordained as priest).

In short, she blames atheists for the fact that she’s become afraid to say what she really thinks – because people would think she’s an ass.

Well, the reason people think that is not because of militant atheists – it’s because people increasingly employ common sense and reason. People becoming atheists is merely a result of that.

Fifty Percent

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In Ireland, the Roman Catholic Church rules. In 2014, abortion – even after rape – is illegal, and prosecuted. The church claims that this is done to save the life of the unborn. Last week, from a ‘Home for Unmarried Mothers and their Children’, the world witnessed first hand the dark, sinister side of this ‘protection’ and what adherence to Christian moral can result in.

Before we go on, we must recall that between 1930 and 1960 – not only in Ireland, but especially there – Mothers who birthed children out of wedlock were called ‘fallen women’ and were ostracized; with them, their babies:

The children of these women were denied baptism and segregated from others at school. If they died at such facilities, they were also denied a Christian burial.

These women and their children were forced to live in these church-run ‘homes’, where they were constantly shamed, humiliated and degraded, spat upon and punished for their ‘sins’. Harrowing accounts from many independent sources, children who grew up at the same time alongside the outcasts, support their stories:

One woman, who deeply regrets her actions today, recounts how, when she was in second grade, she

wrapped a tiny stone in a bright candy wrapper and gave it to a Home Baby as a gift. When the child opened it, she saw she’d been fooled.

It was a cruel prank, and everyone but the victim laughed heartily. They didn’t know they were cruel; the children of unmarried mothers were scum. Why? Because the Church said so.

Mistreating the ‘Home Babies’ was generally accepted, and pervasive. In what appears to be the tip of the iceberg, a more or less open secret has been dragged into light last week:

Research into the undocumented deaths of some 800 children from 1930 to 60 revealed some shameful results. All deceased were ‘Home Babies’; all died from neglect. The story became notorious when a journalist alleged that the bodies where found in the remains of a septic tank. The authorities knew about this: Child mortality rate among Home Babies was reported as high as 50% and more – much higher than average.

Some people try to defend the neglect as a result of the Nuns who ran the Home being overwhelmed by the sheer number of unmarried mothers and their babies. Perhaps; I don’t want to point an accusing finger at the nuns. But the fact remains that the problem was entirely created by the Church and their doctrine of sin. That nuns perpetrated these atrocities out of their desire to help is tragic. And it certainly does not justify the contempt and injustice these mothers and their children had to endure.

This double standard still persists today. Catherine Corless, a local historian, published her research into the deaths of 796 children at the Tuam Home in a local journal in 2012. This was largely ignored. It was only a few weeks ago when the world started to take notice, and only after it was sensationalized throught the addition of the (probably untrue) septic tank detail. Yet, mirroring the developments around the systematic rape of children by priests, official reaction was slow and hesitant. If anyone except the Church were implicated, the whole area would have been cordoned off immediately and would be swarming with forensic experts. So far, the Irish Government has announced that it was putting together a group to investigate.

Yet, indeed, there is no rush. We all know why these children died: because the majority of the population adhered to a perverse morality, founded entirely on religion.

Heartbreaking.

All about Eve

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For some time I’ve been wondering why religious nutjobs (a.k.a. Young Earthers and other religious literalists) are so dead-set against evolution. For a long time I thought it was just because they are stupid. Well, although their belief certainly is stupid, it turns out that they have no other choice.

You see, ‘Original Sin’ is an important concept of Christianity. It means that all humans are automatically guilty of sin, and need to believe in God/Jesus to be saved. According to Genesis, Adam & Eve rebelled against God, making everyone who descends from them a sinner. And the Bible teaches that all humans descend from Adam and Eve.

Now, modern evolution estimates that 60’000 years ago, when modern humans emerged, the population was around 2’500 individuals of mixed ancestry. This means that humanity does not descend from a single couple, but a much larger pool of individuals.

So? Is it of any importance if there was one or one thousand Eves?

Yes.

The concept of original sin only makes sense if all adams and all eves disobeyed god – at the same time.

Nevermind, a pragmatist may say – so Original Sin is out, lose it. We good?

Nope. That’s where the nutjobs run into a problem: Jesus allegedly died to save us from Original Sin. If we drop it, his death was rather pointless, if not downright stupid.

If you ask me, that may be the reason he returned three days later.

Survival of the dumbest

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Ah, Creationists. If there ever was proof that mankind descended from monkeys, they could be it. But, as Creationist would point out: How come there are still monkeys???

Recently, during a ‘debate’ (not really), I heard a rather odd argument put forward by a devout believer: Since atheists believe (argh!) in Evolution, that means that we must advocate survival of the strongest, making us a bunch of asocial pathological egotists.

Let’s put aside the fact that instead of ‘believing in’ evolution we are convinced by the facts – someone who thinks that faith generates knowledge will not grasp the difference. Furthermore, we’ll also ignore that even if Evolution teaches that only the strong survive, that does not mean that we advocate applying this principle to society. A Christian believes that god created this earth, and therefore all diseases. Yet she does not believe that you should leave a disease untreated just because god gave it to you. So why should someone who thinks Evolution is at work advocate applying it to everything?

What bugged me most, though, was the idea that Evolution means ‘survival of the strongest’. It’s a common misconception, not limited to fundamental believers.

So I tried to explain that evolution actually postulates that instead of ‘only the strongest’, it ‘favors whoever is best adapted‘.

And then I tripped myself up: I tried to illustrate this with how the dinosaurs became extinct; how only small, weak mammals survived while the great, strong lizards died out.

This didn’t go over well with someone who believes the world is only a couple of millennia old.

It’s somewhat gratifying to know that eventually, these nuts will go the way of the dodo.