While discussing Beit Shemesh mayor’s raging homophobic outburst, someone noted:
“It’s always depressing and sobering when our extremists prove to be as ridiculous as their extremists.”
Actually, no. It confirms what we already suspect: they all suffer the same delusion. They are all the same.
In a way, that’s not depressing – it’s reassuring.
Some believers argue that religion is far superior to a rational worldview. Science, they say, has repeatedly admitted to being wrong, while religious values and morals have always stayed the same.
Is that really a good thing?
(Image credit: source unknown)
Ah, bishops. The unending wellspring of good examples. Good examples of what not to do. Today’s exhibit comes from the Twin Cities, where Catholic Archbishop John Nienstedt makes an archass out of himself.
During a meeting with Catholic leaders last August, the perhaps most revered, but definitely not very bright Archbishop thundered righteously:
“Sodomy, abortion, contraception, pornography, the redefinition of marriage and the denial of objective truth are just some of the forces threatening the stability of our civilization. The source of these machinations is none other than the Father of Lies.”
Wow. Sodomy, abortion, contraception, pornography, and homosexuality all in one sentence!
We better take this apart because it seems impossible to pack more misses into a single line:
Yet, his ‘denial of objective truth’ takes the cake. Objectively, gods don’t exist – they only do in this priest’s subjective imagination. More to the point, it’s his priestly job to deny objective truth. Taken in the context of his own speech, that means he’s either denouncing himself, or admitting that he’s working for his ‘Prince of Lies’.
Sometimes I feel there’s an unofficial contest between men of the cloth to find out who can pack the greatest amount of stupid into a single sentence.
A discussion about religious morals made me look at the actions of priests who recently exhibited somewhat questionable behavior: fire someone for converting to a different belief, lie to their flock, preach hate, or discriminate against women and homosexuals.
In all these cases we can objectively say that their behavior was ethically wrong. So why did they do it? Are they bad people? Their actions certainly indicate so.
Well, not always. When you look more closely, a pattern emerges: In general, priests try to avoid unethical behavior. They usually know when they are doing something unethical – and don’t like it very much. Sometimes they just have to do it – it’s expected of them.
Similar to firemen rushing into a burning building, priests sometimes have to do dangerous things. Like bodily harm to a fireman, a priest has to shoulder the risk of destroying his integrity.
For a priest, lying, hate-mongering and spreading homophobia are occupational hazards.
It’s part of their job.
In Oslo, Islam Net – a group of self-described moderate muslims – gathered for a peace conference. A video excerpt from the March conference was published by the organizers on the internet. In it, Fahad Qureshi, one of the hosts, took to the stage to hold a speech that could have been taken straight from The Twilight Zone:
Qureshi protested the fact that many of the invited speakers could not come to the conference. They were barred from entering the country because they were accused of preaching hate. That accusation is false – these people merely preach killing homosexuals, stoning for adulterers, and capital punishment for blasphemy and apostasy.
That’s not hate, Qureshi continued, nor an extremist position. Rather, it’s their religion; the righteous will of God. That’s not hate, it’s virtue. Everyone in the room agreed.
Remember, this was a peace conference.
And people tell me I shouldn’t say that religion makes you stupid.
A recent article reported that Gulf States are working on a medical test to ‘detect’ homosexuality in humans.
A medical test being developed by Kuwait will be used to ‘detect’ homosexuals and prevent them from entering the country – or any of the Gulf Cooperation Countries (GCC), according to a Kuwaiti government official.
First, the consensus among real scientists is that this will be as likely to succeed as trying to find a medical test that detects if you like collecting stamps: Zero. The Gulf states are rich, and can afford some of the best scientific minds money can buy (those aren’t necessarily the best scientific minds, but close enough). It is safe to say that they know that this is a hare-brained idea. So why are they doing it?
Now, it is important to remember that the Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) are deeply islamic countries. Like all deeply islamic countries, they are also deeply homophobic (unfortunately, the same can be said about deeply christian countries). Being a homosexual is a crime in the GCC, in Saudi Arabia it’s even a capital offense.
But I don’t think that they are trying to actually produce a working test. Here, the message is more important than the facts. What The GCC are really trying is to
In short, this is little more than trying to shoehorn science into providing justification for their repulsive beliefs. Something like this has been done before, and resulted in one of the greatest sufferings the world ever endured: the ‘scientific’ racism of the aryan race theory.
On April 4th, 1968 a bullet cut short the live of Dr. Martin Luther King, whose dream transformed the US to a better nation.
Exactly one year ago today, a bullet tore through a child’s head, fired by a Taliban ‘fighter’. He wanted to murder 15 year old Malala for her crime of wanting to go to school.
Malala has a dream – a dream that few women in her part of the world would dare to dream. This dream, too, can transform our world into a better place.
The bullet did not kill Malala. But it extinguished her fear. It gave her purpose. The world noticed.
“The Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends too. They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came, thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage was born.”
Malala, 16, speaking at the UN, July 12, 2013
Few people have the strength, ability, and courage to move the world. Malala dreams of a world where every woman can have the education she wants.
The world should listen when it’s now Malala who says: ‘I have a dream’.