This turns my stomach and sounds even worse than what went on with the Catholic Church here:
A fiercely debated, long-delayed investigation into Ireland’s Roman Catholic-run institutions says priests and nuns terrorized thousands of boys and girls in workhouse-style schools for decades _ and government inspectors failed to stop the chronic beatings, rapes and humiliation.
Nine years in the making, Wednesday’s 2,600-page report sides almost completely with the horrific reports of abuse from former students sent to more than 250 church-run, mostly residential institutions.
It concluded that church officials always shielded their orders’ pedophiles from arrest to protect their own reputations and, according to documents uncovered in the Vatican, knew that many pedophiles were serial attackers.
The commission said overwhelming, consistent testimony from still-traumatized men and women, now in their 50s to 80s, had demonstrated beyond a doubt that the entire system treated children more like prison inmates and slaves than people with legal rights and human potential.
TenguPhule
There but for 2 million votes goes the Palin Adminstration legacy.
That One - Cain
Didn’t someone say something in the California thread that this was happening due to the faith based initialives? Wow.. religious nuts are corruptable? Who would have thunk it?
I hate religion really.
cain
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
Sinead O’Connor was right.
Joshua Norton
I find that quite easy to believe. Priests and nuns can be some of the most abusive petty tyrants ever. All that sexual frustration has to go somewhere.
EconWatcher
I went to a Christian Brothers school here in the US. The Brothers there were the most decent and dedicated people you could ever meet (with one terrible exception, as I later learned). But apparently something was rotten at the core of their Order and had been for a very long time. Of course the kids are the victims we have to be most concerned about. But imagine the decent guys who gave their lives to a cause and must now see their Roman collar as a badge of shame.
Zifnab25
Why would this surprise anyone? American had a catholic church scandal of epic proportions just 3 years ago. Is there really something magical about America that would keep it from happening anywhere else?
Disgusting, but not surprising.
SGEW
Also, from the NYT, via Patrick Appel (filling in for Sully):
Ya know, I try and keep my anti-theism under wraps, most of the time . . . but I gotta say it:
Fuck The Catholic Church.
Lying child-fucking hypocritical monsters, jacked up on the blood of the innocent.
NonyNony
Jesus Fucking Christ.
There are no words. Monsters.
And this makes them even more monstrous:
I wish I still believed in Hell. Because it doesn’t look like justice has a chance of being done on this world.
John S.
It isn’t the fault of religion that human beings are such contemptable wretches. If people actually followed the teachings of the religions they profess to follow, most of these things would not happen. The problem is people pick and choose the parts that suit them, toss out the parts they have no use for and simply make the rest up as they go along.
Atheists can still be contemptable wretches, and I doubt the incidence rate is significantly different than that amongst theists. The major difference is the hypocrisy angle, since many who have found religion claim to be morally superior to the godless heathens.
Clearly, they are not.
TenguPhule
It is long past time churches were taxed and the Vatican treated as a RICO violater.
Breezeblock
Watch the movie The Magdalene Sisters from 2002, for just a wee taste.
One of the most horrific movies I’ve ever seen.
Punchy
Yeah, but they’re pansy-ass Yerpeens, so really a red-blooded American like myself shouldn’t care.
Maybe if they’da done this in France, those hardened frogs coulda fought the Germans insteada bending over.
TenguPhule
But it helps to organize them, which makes them more dangerous.
The fault here with the religious structure is that the churches rushed to protect the reputation of their faith over the victims of their crimes. That in and of itself is on par with the abuse itself as a crime.
geg6
Wasn’t there a documentary a few years ago about this very topic? I seem to remember it that way anyway. I’ll have to look it up somewhere for the title, but I’m pretty sure it had to do with Irish Catholic workhouses and what happened to the young women there. Basically, slavery with a bunch of Middle Age doctrinal justifications about how their suffering would wipe out the multitude of stains on their souls put there by their parents’ sins.
Ah, yes. That lovely Catholic Church of my youth. And people wonder why I disdain religion.
Added: Okay, I looked it up. And it was an investigative series called “States of Fear,” broadcast on Ireland’s RTE in 1999: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0281225/combined. I’m thinking I saw a documentary that was a summary of the original series, but can’t find a reference to it.
Comrade Mary, Would-Be Minion Of Bad Horse
Canada had its share of Christian Brothers scandals, too, most notable Mount Cashel in Newfoundland.
The CBC produced a lightly fictionalized account of the horrific abuse called The Boys of St. Vincent and it’s all on YouTube. Part 1 is here.
John S.
And for all you anti-theists who may not be aware, this is pretty much how the Bible predicts things going down. The Catholic Church has always been the great whore of Babylon (false religion), and in due time all the world will turn on her.
If you believe in such things, anyway.
; )
Nellcote
Can we expect to see all the Catholics that were all over the tube pre-Notre Dame speech on to defend their church once again?
TenguPhule
And a Get out of Hell Free card, provided you donate all your worldly goods to the Church after death.
“The Corp is Mother and Father.”
“In that case, consider me an orphan.”
Eric U.
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: That was exactly what I was going to post, word for word. I have some SO’C on my Ipod, and I was listening to it on Sunday thinking what a travesty it was that she was ruined by her activism on this issue. The Pope should apologize to her.
omen
this is one of the few cases where vigilante justice is called for. this should branded on the backs of offender priests:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/matz/352212989/
random asshole
I want to say that I’m surprised by this.
It’s fun to want things.
JenJen
One of the best jobs I ever had was managing the most amazing Italian restaurant ever, for an amazing, gifted Tuscan chef. I’m salivating just thinking about his creations.
When the Catholic priest controversy first started rearing its ugly head, I was shocked and revolted, and it became quite the topic in my workplace. Being just about the only non-Catholic who worked there, I had a lot of questions. The chef was pretty nonchalant about it, saying several times over the course of days, “If you were an Italian kid growing up in Italy in the 60’s, this was part of your life. And your parents just never believed you, so you dealt with it, and learned to keep your mouth shut, because everybody else did and it was easier that way. It was practically normal.”
Whenever I read new revelations about church abuse, I can’t help but think of him, and the pain behind his eyes that he just never would acknowledge with words.
jenniebee
Not to defend the Catholic Church here, but before you decide that the problem is just that it was a religious institution, it might help to take a look at what damage our secular system of caring for parentless children is capable of.
You could start here…
jrg
These priests are not perfect, just forgiven (r).
lilysmom
Please see the movie The Magdalene Sisters. It will break your heart. The fathers of illegitimate children suffered no such punishment.
pseudonymous in nc
It’s really important to understand that post-independence Ireland was a tacit theocracy until the first cracks appeared in the 1980s. The main political parties weren’t (and still aren’t) left-right ideological, but map to the pro- and anti-Treaty sides in the Civil War; the bishops were not to be contradicted. The last 20 years in Ireland — with EU money and travel and economic growth, however bullshit — was about bringing the country into the 20th century just as was coming to an end.
@SGEW: the US Catholic hierarchy, being primarily “white ethnic”, has a similar rot to that in Ireland. But the clergy and laiety outside of that particular branch can be and has been a force for social justice, to the chagrin of other elements.
John S.
That’s just human nature. People tend to organize (we are a social species). We do it in many ways, and religion is just one of them. But overall, I agree with your point. I have no use for religion because I find it to be terribly divisive and I find that most practitioners of it are hypocrites.
Delia
Something about absolute power and corruption comes to mind. This is why we want religion and state power separated, and different branches of state power divided against itself. And outside oversight on all parties, no matter how good they assure us they are.
kay
@John S.:
Oh, baloney. Look at what went on here. Thousands of individual non-abusing adults are complicit. To put this in the broader frame of religious versus non-religious is giving those individuals a complete pass.
None of them said anything. Not the abusers. That’s not who I mean.
The adults standing around watching with their head up their ass. What were they up to?
It is a natural and essential human trait to ACT to protect those that are smaller and weaker. Only psychopaths don’t have it. Surely you’re not telling me that they’re all somehow helpless? Or are they all mentally ill?
What the Church needs to ask is what powerful force acted opposite that natural, inherent trait. They need to look within, and figure out what they’re teaching that turns non-abusers who might have intervened into willing co-conspirators. Ask that. Start there.
lilysmom
@Breezeblock: Sorry Breezeblock. I was looking stuff up and being horrified by it all over again while you posted
Evinfuilt
No, I’ve read the books. They’d be much worse than they are now.
The Christian God is vengeful and evil, his followers do as told. We should be happy that they are picky, this keeps the shrimp business afloat and keeps me from being stoned every day.
Peace to religion is the same as Clear Skies is to Republicans. Its a code word to trample those that can’t fight back.
shoutingattherain
In other words: “Enhanced Education Techniques”. Glad that stuff doesn’t happen here.
Krista
Absolutely disgusting. There are some genuinely good, giving priests out there, and like EconWatcher said, this stuff must make them question everything they believe in.
I left the Church as a kid, because I thought a lot of its tenets were utter crap, and because even then, I thought it was silly for any of us to think we know all the answers. And my decision has only been reinforced over the years — too many lives have been destroyed, and are continuing to be destroyed, for me to give the Catholic Church even a shred of respect.
geg6
@jenniebee:
The difference is, Jenniebee, that no one in a juvenile or family court system claims to speak directly to god, to Mary, to Jesus. No social worker will claim to grant absolution for your sins or change bread and wine into flesh and blood. No foster parent will credibly claim they hold the key to whether you can go to heaven or will suffer eternally in hell.
All abusers suck and should be strung up in public places by their toes, IMHO. However, a religious institution has, it seems to me, a special obligation to keep it out and to do all it can to punish the perpetrators because of their claims of moral superiority and the unique psychological hold religions have over believers.
Brick Oven Bill
The Catholic Church, in my opinion, has its origins in powerful men of Rome harnessing the Bible and religion to maintain their power. However, my children are being raised Catholic, as I believe that this beats the MTV alternative.
The Catholic Church should place Bibles in the pews. The Bible is the Rock of Ages and contains some very good life lessons. I put much more trust in the Bible than I place in men. There was one time when I was physically removed from a Priest’s office for demanding the same treatment that the Kennedy’s received on one particular issue.
This particular Priest was not a man of God, in my judgment. The next Priest just signed the paper without comment.
TenguPhule
I disbelieve. The human gene pool can’t have reached the level where the algae is developing intelligence.
low-tech cyclist
Too bad no U.S. prosecutor brought a RICO action against the Roman Catholic Church after its pedophile covering-up in the U.S. came to light.
As best as I can tell, the RCC still acts as if the problem was just the pedophile priests, and refuses to discuss the role of the hierarchy in protecting them, covering up their crimes, and even moving them on to fresh new pastures.
So this latest is horrifying, but unsurprising. And of course, the bastards went out of their way to protect the child rapists in their ranks.
Monsters.
kay
Just so you know, the current scholarship looks beyond child abusers, who are sick bullies, and instead focuses on those around child abusers, who are ostensibly not sick bullies.
The question becomes, who failed to protect? There’s a practical reason for that. Prevention. Child abusers are. They exist. They have to be dealt with. What turns an isolated incident into a tragedy like this is a big passive group of non-child abusers who, for whatever reason, have made some calculus that involves not doing anything.
So, who failed to protect? Anything being done to address that issue? Nope.
Persia
@JenJen: “If you were an Italian kid growing up in Italy in the 60’s, this was part of your life. And your parents just never believed you, so you dealt with it, and learned to keep your mouth shut, because everybody else did and it was easier that way. It was practically normal.”
It happened to my DH’s grandfather, who then went on to abuse his spouse and every one of his multiple children. They have a lot to answer for.
I want to shake this stuff in Ross Douthat’s face. “This is why people can believe bad things about your church so easily. Because of what they actually did.”
Tim F.
This story is unbelievably sad, but it nonetheless will help to finally air out the wound.
Win.
SGEW
Yes, those are your only two choices. Catholicism or MTV: there are no other moral philosophies available for child rearing.
Waitaminute . . . B.O.B. has children?! I weep for the future.
MoeLarryAndJesus
The current Pope was at the very heart of the conspiracy to defend and abet these vicious child-rapers. As JPII’s strong-arm goon he insisted that incidents of priestly pedophilia be hushed up and dealt with “in house” and not be reported to civilian authorities who might actually do something about it.
He’s an evil bastard – and even knowing what he was, the cardinals chose him as their new leader. The hierarchy of the church doesn’t give a rat’s ass about this issue. They just want it to go away and stop costing them money.
TenguPhule
Burn the witches.
Stone the Adulterers
Incest is the best, put those daughters to the test.
Kill them all and save their souls from damnation.
Genocide is God Tested and approved.
Women should be bred and not heard.
Persia
@SGEW: It’s true! When I gave birth the nurse handed me a little pamphlet. Either I raised my kid Catholic, or I had to subject them to a 24/7 diet of reality shows, bad music, and slutty behavior.
geg6
@Brick Oven Bill:
LOL, BOB. You should perhaps learn a little something about the institution in which you have placed the well-being of your children. Because putting Bibles in the pews is the very last thing the Catholic Church would ever, ever, ever do.
jrg
MoeLarryAndJesus from the Huffpo way back in the day? No way.
dadanarchist
B-b-b-b-b-but Ron Howard made a mean movie!
TenguPhule
Burn the witches. Stone the Adulterers, Incest is the best, put the daughters to the test. Genocide, God tested and approved. Women are sinners who should be bred and not heard. Kill them all and save their souls from damnation.
Yes, a wonderful role model.
NonyNony
@kay:
I can tell you what I’m doing – unlike my own parents there’s no fucking way I will leave my child alone with a priest for any extended period of time. I’m just damn lucky that the priests that I was around when I was a kid were more into breaking their vows of celibacy with unmarried and divorced adult women in the congregation than they were with molesting kids.
The biggest thing that led to these molestations going unreported and unprosecuted at the time was the culture that surrounded the Church – the Church got a free pass from everyone until well into the 90s. The breaking of these scandals helps dispel the myth that priests are somehow “holier” than everyone else and above suspicion. The more open people are about talking about this stuff, the less likely it will go unreported and unprosecuted.
Notorious P.A.T.
You are wrong. Nothing personal.
Where is the atheist Inquisition? Where’s the atheist Crusades? Is there an atheist concentration camp I don’t know about?
“uh, religion would be great if people just followed its teachings”. Yeah, people should follow the example of God, who slaughtered the children of Egypt because he was mad at the Pharoah, then they wouldn’t feel the need to abuse children. . . oh, wait. . .
r€nato
And yet, there are more than a few fervent Catholics who still claim that it’s “just a few bad apples”, no more so than in any other organization. And/or, they blame it on liberal secular media bias stirring up anti-Catholic hysteria.
No matter how many child buggery and child beating scandals are unearthed – where the Church not only harbored such scum, but in the name of protecting the institution bullied the victims and hid the abuse thereby allowing the victimization to continue indefinitely – there’s no shame whatsoever by these apologists for child rape.
If it were any other person who was serially fucking boys in the ass, any decent person would want the rapist jailed and probably worse. Put a priestly collar on the guy, and suddenly he’s a victim of anti-Catholic bigotry.
Thank FSM I’m agnostic.
TenguPhule
But Our Public School System would deny Creationism!
It’s a war against stemcell embryos!
Abortion Clincs are the new Death Camp!
/fundies
KRK
For those who have seen The Magdalene Sisters, I thought one of the extra features said that there had been a big settlement paid to some of the victims of the workhouses. But maybe it was a settlement from the Irish government for turning a blind eye to the imprisonment and forced labor and not anything from the Catholic church? If I’m remembering correctly, I’m kind of surprised that this investigation continued rather than just being classified as “old news.”
Froley
The actor Gabriel Byrne was recently on “Fresh Air” and he discussed his own experiences with abuse at the hands of priests like these ones. He said that he thought that because the priests and nuns weren’t able to have release of sexual energy in adult relationships, they ended up funneling it into the physical abuse of children (which was an acceptable outlet in their eyes).
dadanarchist
May I recommend Brick Testament – certainly provides an interesting illustration of the Judeo-Christian God’s “love”….
r€nato
@Froley:
I’d be grumpy too if I could not have sex nor romantic love for the rest of my life.
I’d like to think, however, that this agnostic would have the scruples not take it out on somebody’s kids.
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
@Eric U.:
I’m not sure what you mean by “ruined.” The type of folks that did not approve of her protest were never going to buy anything more than the single for Nothing Compares 2 U.
I’ve seen Sinead live 3 or 4 times and she never seemed to have a problem with folks buying tickets to her concerts.
SGEW
@Notorious P.A.T.: Um . . . there are some historical examples, you know. Mao, Pol Pot, and Stalin come to mind, not to mention the French Revolution.
[Yes, yes, I know that they were based on faith in an ideological structure that can be equated to faith-based theism: Sam Harris covered this very well, and is quite convincing imho. But one should be wary of simply stating that an atheistic movement is inherently more tolerant than a theistic one.]
Legalize
The Catholic Church is the most corrupt criminal organization the world has ever known. Sorry, those of you of the Catholic faith, but the organization as a whole is institutionally rotten.
jake 4 that 1
Hey, at least they didn’t take them from their parents and ship them to Australia …
Christ. Every time I read hear some idiot with his shirt on backwards wondering why no one comes to church any more I LAAAAUGH.
Seriously, if law abiding people found out their neighbors were doing half of this crap there would be some serious GBH.
Bill Teefy
Just keep walking.
Another example of how the ‘good ol’ days’ never were. There is no time in history where the world was better. A return to those values is a basic falsehood that underlies the whole conservative fantasy. For many life was once good but that is only because the bad was hidden, ignored, and evil-doers and their deeds were covered up. For many life was a horror and they had no recourse. The people and institutions that should have defended them said, “Just keep walking.”
It is sad that the meme is that liberals only care about the rights of perpetrators and not the victims when the reality is that liberals care about the rights of individuals – and yes, that includes the perpetrator. Conservatives care about victims only when the victim is recognizable as someone like them. But if the perpetrator is like them and the victim is “the other” they rationalize the crime. Also they almost always defend organized and institutional perpetrators who are conservative. Just keep walking.
kay
@NonyNony:
I don’t even think priests are particularly suspect. I see the unfairness in that, although you should certainly use your own judgment.
What worries me is your term, “a culture”. I don’t think cultures that take root and fester for 60 or 100 years just clean up magically. It’s hard. It’s really hard for individual families and this is a huge organization.
The Catholic Church managed to treat whatever this institutional disease was in 10 years? Without directly addressing those who did not protect? I don’t know that that’s possible. How did they do it without admitting culpability on failing to protect these vulnerable people who were put in their care? Because that implicates a lot of people who aren’t ever named.
dadanarchist
But they didn’t kill in the name of “atheism.” Mao, Pol Pot and Stalin had their crimes and had their ideologies, but they did not massacre millions in the name of atheism. They may have killed some priests for being priests but that is not the same thing as an Atheist Inquisition.
The French Revolution doesn’t work as an example at all.
kay
@jake 4 that 1:
Some of them came back from Australia to testify. Not that they were shipped there, but they got the hell out.
jake 4 that 1
@Froley: Nope. There are plenty of people who do have sex lives (with consenting human adults) and the still have plenty of energy to spare for hurting kids.
Some people are just disgusting and if they’re lucky they wind up surrounded by people who think they’re doing the right thing by aiding and abetting.
Bubblegum Tate
@r€nato:
Word to your entire post. I was about to say just that, but you said it much better and without the multitude of four-letter words my version had.
scav
Well, their god hardened Pharaoh’s heart, so just imagine what he’d harden on a good Catholic priest.
And sign me up with the crowd that finds the bystanders that allow this to happen, that willingly cover up what happens, in order to protect their church as the real creepy exemplars of what faith/belief can do.
canuckistani
Still waiting for the day when we strangle the last aristocrat with the entrails of the last priest
Martin
My anti-theism is pretty strong, but I’m going to say this about the Catholic church. It’s the only major religion that is centrally organized. That means that any problem anywhere in the world gets credited back to the church as a whole. Nothing the Catholic church has done, even here, is unrivaled by a protestant or muslim or buddhist church somewhere in the country or the world. We don’t say ‘Fuck the Methodists’ because Fred Phelps does what he does, and we shouldn’t say ‘Fuck the Muslims’ because of what Saudi Arabia does.
I’m not giving the Catholic church a pass here, but I don’t think they’re any more worthy of vilification than organized religion in general, and I will point out that the organized nature of the Catholic church means that they’ve been successful at things that almost nobody else has.
I come from a very long line of very devout Irish Catholics, right up to my parents. I have cousins that are priests. We have tales of sorrow at the hands of nuns but I also know that there are members of my family that would not still be with us if not for the charity and support that the church gave the family which nobody else would have offered – a perfect storm of shit and jewels. I won’t excuse the shit, but I would like to acknowledge the jewels.
I’ve always had faith that the Catholic church would be the instrument to help break the back of the religious right. In spite of their tenets, Catholics in the US support abortion in equal percentage to the general population and they support gay rights about the same or a bit more. Catholics better understand the role of the church vs the state and are more willing to vote with that understanding – that supporting gay marriage doesn’t mean their church would ever need to perform one. No Bibles in the pews has been part of that effort. It’s why Catholics are more progressive on science issues than any other religious group. The church has never opposed evolution, for example. Ever. Catholics aren’t trying to undermine separation unlike quite a few Protestant groups. Again, I’m not endorsing the Catholic Church, but I disagree with efforts to tar the entire institution with the outrage-of-the-day brush. They need to reform *badly* but the elements of the church that are broken are far more easily fixable than the broken elements of most of the other major religious institutions in this country that seem to perpetually be at war with the Constitution. We should try to keep that in mind.
JenJen
@r€nato: Thank FSM indeed. Excellent post, as per usual.
Woody
I graduated from a Christian Brothers high-school which had a residential component, aminly for kids from wealthy Mexican families.
Mostly it was cool.
Except for the chemistry teacher/residence hall proctor who cruised the boys’ (there weren’t any other kind) pissoirs. He said he was able to tell if a boy had been “abusing” himself by the scent of the urine…
no shit
tavella
I’ve had that thought again and again over the last, what, decade? As more and more hideous abuse and especially the hierarchy’s complicity in it at every level came out. That so, so many people owe Sinead O’Connor an apology.
I was aware of some of the problems in Ireland, so I knew what she was talking about, but had no idea of the foul depths of it.
omen
wasn’t abstinence a later development in the church? not an original feature in the early church. where are strict constructionists when you need them?
SGEW
@dadanarchist:
Quite correct, of course: I was simply pointing out that there have been atheistic movements that have exhibited the same bloodthirsty madness that theistic ones have, and that atheism does not necessarily equal enlightened behavior.
And as for the French Revolution, I was referencing the Cult of Reason, which was kind of just as bug-fuck crazy as the Church it tried to replace.
Notorious P.A.T.
Then you must–MUST–advocate the murder of people who touch a menstruating woman, or wear clothes of blended fabrics. Or you are a liar.
EDIT: Did I write “murder”? How silly of me. Murder is killing someone WITHOUT a good reason.
flukebucket
Bill you never, ever disappoint.
kay
I would like something along the lines of “never again’. That sort of intensive analysis.
Not that the church asked me, but that’s what I’d settle for.
I want some tearing of hair and rending of garments. Some soul-searching. I was led to believe this is a soulful group, so I think I’m justified in expecting that. Instead I get court filings to block release, and money damages settled out of court.
I’m not satisfied with that.
dadanarchist
there was an update: humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat…
Woody
Apparently, there’s a similar scandal brewing over similar allegations in the hyper-orthodox Yeshivas…
it’s got a lot to do with the “persecution” mentality, imho…both the abuse and the cover-up
The Very Reverend Battleaxe of Knowledge
@MoeLarryAndJesus:
Only point of disagreement with your post is the word “even.” Ratzi the Nazi was quite deliberately rewarded with the tiara for his very effective organization of the coverup of priestly sexual abuse and the moving around of the perpetrators to new dioceses with plenty of fresh meat.
Xenos
I know two people who attended Christian Brothers schools in Dublin. But were so traumatized they left the country and started over in the new world.
One is an alcoholic, though now in recovery. He said that he and his friends were beaten over and over, day after day, and more than half his cohort was severely screwed up by the experience.
The other one is doing much better, though he is now an Orthodox Jew. He says being a Christian is, for him, an impossibility. He can’t set foot in a church without being violently ill.
I was at BC Law School when the Boston scandal came out. One of the victims was the son of a security guard there. The students loved the security guards, who were all salt-of-the earth middle aged Irish guys who reminded the students of beloved uncles. Since 3/4 of the powerful Massachusetts politicians are BCLaw grads, they promptly took Cardinal Law down. There was a line that had been crossed, I guess, at last. Church authority was permanently broken with the triple eagles lining up against it.
linda
and did you notice in the reporting that those filthy rapists/pedophile priests will continue to be protected from exposure for their depraved deeds. the christian brothers sued to ensure that none of the names will be released.
geg6
@omen:
Not only that, but there were also women priests in the early church.
SGEW
@Martin:
You raise very good points, but I would say that the fact that the Catholic Church is centrally organized is the reason I can say “fuck the Catholic Church”: as an entity.
Same with the Mormons and Scientologists, btw.
Woody
That’s not “atheism.”
That’s “anti-clericism.” Priests are almost ALWAYS agents of the colonizing power…and as such, enemies of the people
asiangrrlMN
Saddened, but not surprised. I don’t think I will ever be surprised–no, I’m not going to say it out loud because the universe has a funny way of making me sorry if I challenge it.
I think the particular dangers with religion is that a practitioner of said religion can pretty much justify anything in the name of that religion–say, invading a country. Plus, with the power that is the church backing up the sick individuals, there is little to stop the abuse if the church has a vested interest in not seeing what’s happening. God is pretty useful when one needs to rationalize one’s bad behavior.
scav
@omen: I thought abstinence was first because they thought the second coming was really just really really really around the corner (minus the spaceships as Sci-Fi was barely into beta release) and that marriage was the afterthought. Wasn’t their big push into presiding at marriages only in the 1500s?
canuckistani
Any respect I ever felt for Madonna was lost when she lined up against Sinead O’Connor over the tearing-up-the-pope’s-picture flap, calling Sinead out for being mean to such a wonderful old man.
I always thought rock and roll was about rebellion (well, rebellion and sex). Not about sucking up to the powerful and corrupt.
Excellent Pogues ref in the title, btw.
Notorious P.A.T.
Did they kill religious believers because they wanted to reduce the number of theists, or did they kill opponents of their political power like pretty much every government in history has done?
The French Revolution? Really? The royals plundered their country for centuries, so the people beheaded them–and this is a black mark on atheism? Even if it is, the French nobility alone killed a hundred times as many innocent people as the Reign of Terror. In one slow year the Nazis killed as many people as Stalin in his entire “career”, and the western colonialists killed more Chinese than Mao, easily.
Where would you rather live: Europe in the Dark Ages, or Europe today?
EDIT: That’s a bad question. Where would you rather live: Periclean Athens or Fulk Nerra’s Europe?
JenJen
@SGEW: I reached the conclusion long ago that the sum of the Church’s efforts among mankind equals pain, misery, deceit, blood and horror.
It may sound strong, but if you look across centuries, it’s tricky to come to a different end.
omen
@scav:
according to wiki, some of the apostles were married.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerical_celibacy_(Catholic_Church)
SGEW
Oh man, how did I miss that? I guess since Attackerman broke his streak I’ve gotten out of the habit of always trying to identify song lyrics in post titles.
[For those who’ve never heard it, check out the song here.]
bartkid
>Sinead O’Connor was right.
Louie CK is right.
NSFW.
Google it yerself.
Comrade Kevin
The Old Main Drag? Are you a Pogues fan, DougJ?
asiangrrlMN
@Martin: No, I don’t have to give the Catholic Church credit for anything, really, There are other charities that will help out poor people, and quite honestly, the Catholics in America who dominate the conversation are the right-wingers like Newt. Yes, they get him now. I would agree with SGEW that precisely because the Catholic Church is centralized that they should be taken to task for this shit. How about the nine-year old girl in Brazil (I think it was) who’s mom got excommunicated because the daughter was raped by her stepfather, pregnant with twins, and the mother and her doctor decided it was best for the girl to get an abortion? That excommunication was backed-up by the Vatican.
This whole system of abuse is so fucked up, pun not really intended, and the Church did its level best to hush it up and protect the priests and nuns who did this shit. Even now, they are trying to do damage control over the issue of American child-raping priests being protected by the Church rather than admitting they were wrong and being proactive about it not happening again.
However, I think you are mistaking the fact that people are picking on the Catholic Church here because I have a hunch that most BJ commenters would be saying the same thing about any church that had a history of covering up this kind of rampant child abuse.
Larv
Great Pogues ref in the title, btw.
Betsy
I just want to Nth the recommendation of the movie The Magdalene Sisters. I was fortunate to see it when it first came out at a Houston museum, with the director present to answer questions. He said, IIRC, that the characters in the movies were composites of the interviews he did iwth many women, and that every abuse depicted in the movie is one he heard from the lips of multiple women. It is an incredibly disturbing but excellent movie, and I highly, highly recommend it.
HumboldtBlue
@Martin:
Fuck the Catholic Church. Fuck every person who donates money, who attends Mass, fuck every Priest, every Nun, every Bishop, Monsignor, lay person and acolyte.
Fuck the Pope, his Cardinals and his ministers. Fuck the Brothers, the Sisters, the Jebbies, the Augustinians, the Fathers of Holy Cross, the Sisters of the Assumption, the members of Opus Dei. Fuck the church from its lowliest parishioner to its highest dressed-like-a-fucking-woman male leader.
The line of Irish Catholics in my clan stretches back at least as long as yours, in fact it goes back so far we run into out Jewish forebears in Dublin, and I don’t care how far back the lineage goes, fuck the Catholic Church and all it represents and does.
Monkeyfister
A Pogues reference! And from one of their best albums, no less.
Cool.
–mf
SGEW
@Notorious P.A.T.:
Sigh. Seeing as how we’re probably arguing from the same perspective, this is kind of tiresome. But here goes.
Precisely. Thus my point: atheistic movements (n.b.: movements that are atheistic in fact but not atheistic in purpose) are as liable to be monstrously unjust as theistic ones.
Oh, and also (as far as I know: no time to google now, as I must be off):
In one slow year the Nazis killed as many people as Stalin in his entire “career”
Incorrect.
. . . the western colonialists killed more Chinese than Mao, easily.
Incorrect.
Where would you rather live: Europe in the Dark Ages, or Europe today?
Thanks for a choice that’s as simple minded as B.O.B.’s. Really.
Betsy
@Martin: That’s why I vilify the Catholic Church, not Catholic people. I think as an institution it is more rotten than most. But of course that doesn’t necessarily reflect on Catholic believers. Many of them are fighting the corrupt elements in the church themselves, while nonetheless being devout. The woman I worked for at the homeless shelter in Santa Fe is a deeply religious Catholic, and is one of the best human beings I have ever known in my life.
scav
Whoo boy, does celibacy/abstinence in the early church bring up all sorts of weedy details. I’m going to have such fun going machete-wacking in here – especially given the nice detail celibacy having its roots in unmarried – cælibatus. Looks like it was an ideal but not a job-requirement at first (here). geeky historical details aside, we’re still talking about folks able to self-justify their behavior while polishing their own self-awarded halos.
Das Internetkommissariat
@John S.:
The great whore of Babylon is MONEY
omen
@Notorious P.A.T.:
religion is just a fig leaf to cover up base human instincts. if the excuse wasn’t religion, it would be tribal loyalties or nationalistic aims. the excuses differ, but the underlying motivation is usually the same: some ahole seeking power. banishing religion isn’t going to erase that lust.
Little Dreamer
There is a theory out there, I was just reading about it the other day when I googled the Inquisitions, that celibacy is the problem. Apparently celibacy is not taken seriously and it creates sexual dysfunctions, such as wanting to rape, use sexual threats and torture, and commit child molestation. I don’t know how real it is, I’ve never been celibate, nor wanted to, but I can understand that knowing the rest of the world is filled with people who get naked and touch each other (and of course, so many people say it’s the best feeling they’ve ever had) that I’m sure someone who has taken a vow of celibacy probably feels pangs of regret for taking that vow and secretly does what they can to alleviate that pain. Of course, they can’t do it in the open, it has to be done in secret, and the only way that can be done is to use the innocent and helpless who would fear retribution if they talked.
I personally believe celibacy is a fucked up idea.
JGabriel
John S.:
Given that the religious are more likely to approve of torture than the non-religious, I suspect that the incidence rate of contemptible wretches is, in fact, significantly greater by at least one standard deviation among theists than atheists.
But I suppose it’s all a matter of what you hold in contempt.
.
Skullduggery
The Catholic Church likes to point out all the good works they’ve done and that they provide morality. Their burden in justifying themselves, however, is to prove that those good works wouldn’t be done in their absence (that people cannot do good alone) and that an equal or better morality wouldn’t exist in their absence.
As far as I know, at least Dan Brown hasn’t created an organization of child abusing publicists and editors.
mongo
The catholic church dumped a molesting priest into our parish while I was in high school. When the heat turned up, the passed him on to another parish. He was the most skilled manipulator of people I have ever met. As part of his screening process, he would scope out kids from troubled families, broken homes, etc.. He would pull in weak kids, promise them love and compassion all in exchange for buggering them on the rectory couch. He was evil, pure and simple.
Little Dreamer
@scav:
I read a few years ago that there were some very randy popes way back in the middle ages, some would actually hold orgies in their abode (which I believe was not the Vatican, but some other place in Rome before the Vatican was built – it was an official statehouse of some sort). I’ll see if I can find the info again.
Did a quick search, came up with this.
eemom
I think there is more likely to be a higher incidence of sick, sociopathic and sadistic fucks among people who choose the unnatural life style of priesthood or nunnery. It’s not scientific, just a theory.
Also I must agree with those who regard the Catholic Church as a uniquely evil, corrupt institution with infinite blood on its hands. It is the verdict from centuries of evidence.
Comrade Darkness
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford, damn straight.
Cheryl from Maryland
This pattern of abuse and cover-up has been a pattern of the Catholic Church for a long time. For a horrifying read on how abusive but well connected priests were given a free pass by the Church hierarchy in 17th C Rome, read “Fallen Order: Intrigue, Heresy and Scandal in the Rome of Galileo and Caravaggio.”
omen
@Little Dreamer:
there was a pope who fathered several sons. they were euphemistically introduced as his nephews.
Little Dreamer
@omen:
The Catholic church takes most of their teachings from Paul’s epistles. Paul was not married, and wrote quite a lot about the subjugation of women in the church. Paul was also Saul the man who persecuted the Christians, he supposedly had a moment of vision where the people he was with either saw a man and heard no voice (supposedly Christ after he died), or saw no man but heard the voice (the account is given two different ways, they don’t match). Paul was responsible for most of what the church practices today (Faith, not Works) and he is a spurious character if you really study* him. He was originally a persecutor of the church, he became the writer of most of the New Testament, and most of it is quite confusing. I don’t think he had a real transformation, I think he went underground by becoming one of those he hated and screwed up the religion on purpose – but then, Jesus is not actually someone who has never broken the commandments either.
*link leads to the outline of an in depth study of Paul which spans several other chapters – look at the bottom of the page for the outline and start at chapter five (chapter seven if you want to skip to the really juicy stuff) and read through to chapter 14, if you care to, I mean.
Have fun!
r€nato
@Little Dreamer: I’m not an expert on the Middle Ages, but the Renaissance popes were experts on the sins of the flesh. Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) was likely the most carnal of them all. He treated the Church and all its possessions as his own personal property, for instance giving his son Cesare papal lands which nominally belonged to the Church. He also left behind a tremendous legacy of art via his patronage, including Michelangelo’s Pietà. Protestants owe the existence of their strain of Christianity to the reaction against Alexander VI’s highly corrupt tenure.
Colette
@Notorious P.A.T.:
As I’m female and was not born into an aristocracy, this choice would represent only slight variations in the degree of suck for me. I agree with you about the French Revolution, but you need to (a) check your facts about mass slaughter – you’re not only wrong, but it’s the other way round by at least an order of magnitude, and (b) try to imagine a world in which not all people are you.
Little Dreamer
@omen:
Yes, that too.
asiangrrlMN
Then, there is Fernando Lugo, ex bishop who became president of Paraguay. I first heard about him on Rachel’s show.
He has admitted to fathering a child when he was a bishop. He was forty-eight when the affair started, and the girl was sixteen. Apparently, it is considered a private issue over there.
Then, he was hit with another paternity claim. She was 21 when she had her child.
But wait. It gets better. A third woman has claimed that the father fathered her child as well. At least she wasn’t in her teens or early twenties.
r€nato
Hmmm. Last I heard, Stalin had the blood of approximately 30 million on his hands. The Nazi toll would include 6 million Jews, 2 million “others” (gypsies, gays, the handicapped, etc) as well as those who died as a result of Hitler’s military aggression.
I’m not sure what that total would be, and a lot depends on which deaths from which causes are attributed to/blamed on these butchers, but I’d say that the Nazis and Stalin were about in the same league.
InflatableCommenter
How dare we criticize Catholics when they are so inerrantly faithful to the Right to Life and all that?
And where is BOB today to tell us that we are making a mistake having that alien jungle bunny in the White House?
Just asking.
asiangrrlMN
I have no idea why I was moderated this time. Oh, I bet it was too many links. Let’s try.
Then, there is Fernando Lugo, ex bishop who became president of Paraguay. I first heard about him on Rachel’s show.
He has admitted to fathering a child when he was a bishop. He was forty-eight when the affair started, and the girl was sixteen. Apparently, it is considered a private issue over there.
Then, he was hit with another paternity claim. She was 21 when she had her child.
But wait. It gets better. A third woman has claimed that the father fathered her child as well. At least she wasn’t in her teens or early twenties.
I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning.
TenguPhule
Only when slow roasted over an open fire.
They scream more that way.
someguy
All the shock and horror and suprise is pretty entertaining to me.
What do you expect out of people who believe in unicorns as the central organizing principle in their lives? Maybe not unicorns, perhaps, but pretty damn close anyhow. Religion isn’t the opiate of the masses, it’s the crystal meth hit with a crack/oxycontin chaser of the masses.
asiangrrlMN
@TenguPhule: No fucking kidding.
someguy, I gotta say, I love your last line about crystal meth/oxy chaser.
Slaney Black
Hey, at least they’re hassling Obama, right?
Little Dreamer
I wrote that earlier, I guess I should have also added “he was for it”.
Farley
@JGabriel: Excellent find.
Unfortunately, I do not think John S. will ever come back and acknowledge that poll. Self-awareness. Sigh.
My father’s family is Catholic. Deeply religious. They give alot to the sick and poor of their community. They are also abject racists. And, John S., they dislike Protestants as much as Protestants dislike them. See, you kids really have so much in common!
Fun times.
Little Dreamer
@Brick Oven Bill:
You mean THIS Bible?
I don’t put a lot of trust in humans either, but, at least for the most part, if you say hello to one of them, they’re probably not thinking of setting up an elaborate scheme to screw you and lie to you endlessly (and threaten you with endless torture after death if you don’t do what they say).
The Other Steve
Man, it’s so hard. Every time I see one of these stories my grandmother’s contempt for Catholics just keeps bubbling up in my memories.
Blue Raven
And when it comes to Ireland post-Republic, the effects of what I can only call cultural PTSD cannot be ignored. Another point on which Sinead O’Connor is correct. Her “This is a Rebel Song” paints the Ireland/UK relationship as abused girlfriend/boy who she never gets rid of after he beats her. Sure, there was an elimination of British Rule in the heavily Roman Catholic areas of Ireland after about 800 years’ worth of varying degrees of repression, oppression, forced servitude, and genocide by Keynesian economic theory. As a culture, you do not snap back from that overnight. It percolates down through the rest of the society. So anyone who thinks it was purely the fault of the Church is not paying more than an ounce of attention.
Rook
And I remember when Sinad O’Connor made these very same allegations and was mocked and ridiculed for being delusional. Gee, turns out she was right.
Comrade Darkness
@r€nato, it’s not the celibacy, or at least, not JUST the celibacy. Jehovah’s witnesses and mormons and others have had not dis-similar scandals. It’s the absolute, unquestionable, handeddownfromgod power that is the problem.
Non-theist
Not saying all child abusers are religious,
but all religious people are child abusers.
slag
Am I the only one who read this quote and thought, “WTF! Don’t prison inmates have legal rights and human potential?”?
Also, yeah, this report will get almost no attention. No surprise. I mean who wouldn’t rather have their kid being raped and abused rather than watching MTV?
gex
@TenguPhule: Moreover, I find comparing the dangers of religion vs. the dangers of atheism related to deranged humans to be pointless. True, atheists can be monsters. But atheism doesn’t claim to be the SOURCE of morality. The reason it is worse for monsters to act within religion is because they are given authority and are presented as moral leaders. Give me the ability to get people to believe absurdities, and I will be able to get them to commit atrocities. It’s not for nothing that the evangelical christians in America are the most strongly for the torture policies.
Is there anything more disgusting than to know that not only did the Catholic Church allow what happened to happen and consistently chose the victimizers over the victims, but they use their TAX EXEMPT money to CAMPAIGN against increasing the statute of limitations. Fucking tax the shit out of these evil bastards, lest they use their extra gains to write laws exempting them from punishment for their crimes.
TenguPhule
It’s not faith in whatever that’s the problem.
It’s organized religion that’s the problem.
We all have a little monster in us. The problem arises when an organization allows those monsters free reign and then deny they exist.
kuvasz
This surprizes people? The nastiest human beings I ever encountered in education were nuns.
omen
@kuvasz:
navy nurses have to come a close second.
Betsy
@Blue Raven:
Um…what? What on earth does Keynes have to do with it? Given that he was working from the early twentieth century through the mid twentieth century, it seems a bit of stretch to saddle him with responsibility for Ireland’s oppression.
Betsy
Also,
is a new one for me. I was not aware that one could effect genocide by increasing public spending in an effort to stimulate the economy.
celticdragon
@ Notorious Pat
You have been moving the goal posts somewhat in your challenge to find the atheist concentration camps.
Yes, I think that atheist atrocities are pretty well established…and the Cult of Reason in Revolutionary France was batshit insane.
WRT whether Stalin, Pol Pot etc were killing theists or enemies of the political order, you should keep in mind that they tended to be one and the same in many instances.
What do you think happened to the Orthodox Priests during the NKVD terror raids of the 1930s in Russia?
Check out the likely end point for theists…and other “Enemies of the State”…
celticdragon
Hmm, it was supposed to give a link to the Kolyma gulag tin mine.
Go ahead and google that.
John S.
Ah, no. But thanks for proving my point that people either don’t follow their religion or just make it up as they go along.
The G-d of the OLD TESTAMENT is vengeful and wrathful. He demands blood and sacrifice on a regular basis.
The G-d of the NEW TESTAMENT offered up his only son for the sake of humanity. A son who espoused peace and humility and the Golden Rule.
Don’t feel bad, though. Your garden variety “Christian” doesn’t seem to realize the difference, either.
chuck
@John S.:
Quoth Robert Ingersoll:
(Sorry about the formatting. WordPress has a special place in hell.)
John S.
That is not a huge difference between theists and atheists, although I’m not really surprised at those results.
As I’ve already said, most “religious” folk aren’t what they espouse to be. They don’t know what their religion teaches, and even less actually attempt to practice what it preaches.
But if you want to make the mistake that the theists do and profess that atheists are morally superior, be my guest.
John S.
@ chuck:
I’m not sure I would be quoting Robert Ingersoll (his views aren’t exactly mainstream).
But as for the foundation of that screed you posted, the New Testament has no threat of “hell” either. In fact, hell is an entirely manufactured construct based on a mis-translation of the Hebrew word gehenna, which is really more of a metaphor than a physical place.
John S.
This.
Tonal Crow
@John S.:
If this is so, it strongly suggests that the theists’ deities don’t exist.
Tonal Crow
@John S.:
But Bush said that SADDAM was the Great Whore of Babylon (or was it the Mother of All Whores of Babylon? Or the Whore of all Mothers of Babylon? Have I pushed the bus under the face yet?)
chuck
@John S.:
God forbid (har har) someone who wasn’t mainstream in the 19th century be quoted today.
Mainstream has nothing to do with it, and neither does the original translation. The existence of an eternal Hell is an official part of Catholic dogma, and millions upon millions of people believe it, and destroy their own lives and the lives of others in fear of it.
John S.
Why is that? Because given free will, mankind took the easy path instead of the difficult path? Sorry, but I don’t think the wickedness of mankind proves that G-d doesn’t exist. It just proves we are lazy.
But such is the nature of these threads. All the atheists want to scream “YOU SEE! THIS PROVES…” whatever it is that they hold true. This is no different than how wingnuts will take something and hold it up as an example of the evils of secularism.
I don’t like to play with the tools of my enemies. I believe in G-d, I think Jesus was a pretty remarkable figure with even more remarkable teachings and I think organized religion is shit. End of story.
John S.
I am not Catholic. AFAIC, Catholic dogma is based on a mountain of bullshit ginned up by the Council of Nicea and has very little to do with the actual Bible or the teachings of Jesus. Much like the belief in the Trinity or Hell.
And just because millions of people believe in something doesn’t make it true.
Krista
Little Dreamer: you’re right about Paul. That man really had a bee in his bonnet when it came to women.
I think that’s my main beef with the Bible — the apostles were human beings, with their own foibles, quirks and issues, and yet every utterance (translated through the years by people who have ALSO had their own foibles quirks and issues) is treated as The Ultimate Truth(tm). It’s a very imperfect document, because it was written by very imperfect people. And yet it is taken so very seriously that people have killed and died over it, ruined their lives and others’ lives over it, and would have governments run by its tenets.
If someone wanted to replace the U.S. Constitution with Aesop’s Fables, nobody would listen. So why is the Bible taken oh-so-seriously and given so much damn reverence?
jy
BOTTOM LINE IF YOU DO ANYTHING TO HURT A CHILD,YOU SHOULD DIE A HARSH PAINFUL DEATH.FUCKING SICK BASTARDS
chuck
@John S.:
No, but it sure does fuck up the works, don’t it?
Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s
Ugh! Does this mean Alan Keyes and Randall Terry are going to go back to Notre Dame to protest again?
Comrade Darkness
@Jay Severin Has A Small Pen1s,
Nah, the children are already born so they have no rights.
Darkrose
@Martin:
I’m glad that individual Catholics understand that, but the Catholic Church as an institution certainly doesn’t. The Roman Catholic Church is right behind the Mormons when it comes to fighting marriage equality. Despite having to close parishes because of lack of money (after paying settlements to abuse victims) the Archdiocese of Boston still found time and money to support a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. That same Archdiocese, which cares so much about children that they knowingly shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish for years, would rather see kids not get adopted and spend their lives in the foster care system than allow for the possibility that they kids might get adopted by a gay or lesbian couple.
I know a lot of awesome Catholics. I will always value my Jesuit education and be grateful for the scholarship from the Archdiocese of Chicago that made it possible for me to go to Stanford. But that doesn’t change the fact Roman Catholic Church as an insitution is run by a bunch of mysoginistic, homophobic, sex-fearing, hypocritical old men who brook no dissent and would prefer to be back to the 11th Century instead of the 21st. And if they want to, then fine–but they’re trying to force the rest of us to join them.
Darkrose
@Xenos:
Since 3/4 of the powerful Massachusetts politicians are BCLaw grads, they promptly took Cardinal Law down.
I was living up the street from BC (Harvard and Commonwealth, right on the B Line) when that story broke. I’d disagree with the idea that Cardinal (Above the) Law got taken down. He got a nice cushy job at the Vatican, and has never had to answer for any of the abuses that he was directly responsible for enabling.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@John S.:
I know. It’s fucking annoying.
This blog used to be something other than an atheist chat-board. Nowadays, every other post is a bash-religion post, followed by 150-200 comments about how everyone who has any sort of faith in ANYTHING is a child abuser or an idiot.
Apparently, once everyone in the world is an atheist, war and greed and stupidity and depravity will no longer exist, and humans will no longer commit evil deeds in the name of lies.
Little Dreamer
@Krista:
Because if we don’t, we’re all going to suffer the never ending angush and tortures of Hell* perhaps?
*A place that doesn’t exist and for all intents and purposes the description of such place could actually suffice right here on earth.
Little Dreamer
@Tonal Crow:
How often did you see Saddam dressed in scarlet and purple?
Little Dreamer
@Krista:
I agree with you completely, but you left out one word: agendas.
TenguPhule
And yet it would be an improvement.
Sad, but true.
Little Dreamer
@chuck:
That’s a lie. There are places in the Bible that curse a man’s sins to the tenth generation of his offspring – but Ingersoll is correct that it’s not eternal damnation/torture/separation forever. Death is the end of the punishment for the one doing the sinning, whether his progeny suffer also is something the OT God decides.
There is one exception to this: A king called Coniah (also called Jechoniah in a couple of places) pissed off the OT God so much that his offspring would never sit on the seat of David (the throne of Judah – the kingdom of Jerusalem). Interestingly enough, Jesus is one of his offspring.
TenguPhule
Kindly Blow it out the other end please.
There is a difference between faith and churches.
Most of us here seem to get that.
Craig
The four most miserable and obnoxious human beings I’ve crossed paths with in the past ten years all have three things in common: they are over the age of 55, and have a fish emblem on their car bumper, and a big Bible under their arms.
I’ve wondered why this is so, and I think that it’s because there was such a stigma attached to having an emotional or mental problem, that older people will turn to religion instead of getting the help they need.
Little Dreamer
I would question whether you know the difference. Jesus cannot be a sacrifice for all sins and Jesus was not perfect.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@TenguPhule:
Clearly, when the world consists entirely of people like you it will be a bastion of tolerance and decency.
No shit.
Really? Well, then be sure to stand up for theists when your friends say things like this:
Little Dreamer
@TenguPhule:
I’ll go one further TenguPhule. There is a difference between faith, churches and good people who mean well by wanting to believe in a man they’ve been taught was perfect and who did things to feed people and clothe people and heal the sick… etc.
Faith is not a perfect thing either, but I do know the difference between those who are peaceful people who want to believe in a man who was humane and perfect (he wasn’t) and those who are crazed lunatics who think he’s coming back to send all non-churchgoers to Hell, as well as the difference regarding the institutions who put all those silly notions into people’s heads (and who was responsible for it as well).
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I agree completely. However, there’s also a difference between respectfully disagreeing with a religion, and with calling everyone who holds those beliefs a child abuser or an imbecile (you weren’t doing that, obviously, but plenty of other people around here have).
Little Dreamer
Perhaps you don’t see the truth in that statement, and I didn’t write it, but I do see the truth in that statement.
Teaching your children about a God who is questionable, who is vicious and maybe has a son (but he actually says he doesn’t – see http://www.geocities.com/upcpitt/Articles/one.html ) who was born via stories out of a fairytale and who the child is told will send him or her to eternal torture in a place called Hell if the child doesn’t conform to certain religious standards IS child abuse.
The statement does not say all people who go to church molest children (although there are some church going parents who do that sort of thing as well).
asiangrrlMN
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: So you take one or two posts out of a hundred and fifty to make your point? Aren’t you then doing what you complain others are doing?
I don’t think atheists/agnostics are any more or less moral than people who claim to have faith–we just don’t use a god to justify our bad behavior or to forgive it.
Given that of all the threads today, this is the only one on religion, I think you’re selectively looking to bash atheists and agnostics. See, I can play that game, too.
And for those of us who don’t belong to any prescribed religion, well, to me, anyway, it’s doubly offensive when a religion touts its moral superiority only while simultaneously condoning or at least not condemning acts like this.
Tonal Crow
@gex:
That won the thread. A false premise can be used to “prove” anything, including that infidels must be stoned to death.
Krista
Actually, I was going to comment on that, but got distracted. A lot of people do throw around the term “child abuse” way too loosely, it seems. They feel that any way to raise a child that is different from how THEY would raise a child is tantamount to abuse. This is patently ridiculous.
My viewpoint on children and religion is this: if people want to raise their children with religion, fine. But they are doing their children and their society a grave disservice if they do not teach the former to be tolerant and accepting of the rights of others to have different beliefs. And if people want to raise their children with no religion, that is fine as well…but they are also doing their children and their society that same disservice if they do not teach open-mindedness and tolerance.
Personally, I would never raise my kids with religion, and part of me can’t help feel a little queasy at the idea of indoctrinating a small, impressionable human. But, the vast majority of people raised in a religious household turn out just fine. It’s not my cup of tea, but hey, whatever works for them.
What needs to be focused upon is not the parent who teaches their child to pray, but the powerful institution that allows its leaders to prey.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Wonderful message of tolerance. I can’t wait until an overwhelming majority of the population are atheists. Then the tolerance will REALLY begin…
What about teaching your children about a God who is Love, and about a Heaven that everyone gets to go to? That’s also child abuse, apparently. What about Unitarians? Child abusers. What about Quakers? Child abusers.
No, it says that everyone who goes to church abuses their children. In fact, it’s even more broad than that- it says that anyone who is “religious” (meaning that they have any sort of religious views, even Deists who’ve don’t even go to church) abuse their children- and it doesn’t even say that they abuse their children by passing their views on to them, but merely by having religious views. So, the parent who has a religion, but lets their child figure out their own beliefs, is a child abuser.
You can construe that statement narrowly, to circumscribe it to your personal level of contempt for organized (Christian) religion. But the language is much broader than your reading of it. Literally, the person is saying that anyone who’s not an atheist or an agnostic is a child abuser. (Not a molester- morally on par with the father who beats the crap out of his kids, not the priest who buggers them.) And you’re defending that, even if you’re not reading it the way that it’s written.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@asiangrrlMN:
No. If I called atheists idiots and child predators, then I would be doing what I complain about others doing.
Little Dreamer
Well, I pulled up a crappy link thinking it had the info I needed and I was wrong, so I found the article I usually share. The problem with the Bible is that so many people interpret it so many different ways (many people do it with lazy words and half hearted attempts to try to get it to say what they were taught to believe when that reality couldn’t be further from the truth).
Most of what people were told to believe is crap when you actually study what’s written.
I submit this link instead to argue my point.
Disclaimer: the guy who wrote this has some pretty unusual beliefs about himself, but his study of the written word is thorough.
canuckistani
@HumboldtBlue:
*clenched-fist salute*
Tonal Crow
@John S.:
The G-d of the NEW TESTAMENT invented Hell, and sentenced nonbelievers to eternal torment there. And anyway, aren’t the G-ds of the Old and New Testaments the same (eternal, unchanging) G-d?
Oy, vey.
Little Dreamer
Look, I am tolerant, but, if you want to teach your children to live in fear of a deity whose book is utter crap when it’s pulled apart and actually read for what it says, I would argue you are the one who is defending the right to abuse your child. At least study different viewpoints about it besides the grape juiced version they give you in church and make an informed decision before you go allowing people to psychologically screw your kids up.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Krista:
Thank you, Krista. You’re the first person to respond to me who’s actually demonstrated the kind of tolerance our civilization requires. Let people believe whatever they want, but for a diverse society to exist with diverse views on religious and other matters, your children must be able to tolerate the views of others. Teaching your kids that all atheists are Hellbound deviants is completely disgusting, as is teaching your kids that all Catholics are kiddie rapers or that anyone who believes in God is a child abuser.
In less than 100 years, we’ll all probably be dead. Then (presumably) we’ll know who was right and who was wrong. Until then, keep an open enough mind to respect that not everyone sees the world the way you see it.
Little Dreamer
@Tonal Crow:
Yeah, his one promise (testament) wasn’t good enough, he had to make another one which says the commandments in the old one might be done away with because faith is all that is needed, except the old promise said to beware of such doctrines.
Oy vey is right!
InflatableCommenter
@Little Dreamer:
Gotta agree with you. The God they taught me about in classes when I was a kid was a sociopathic lunatic, totally self absorbed, ruthless, vindictive, and cruel.
And as this was painstakingly laid out for me, I was expected to see this lunatic apparation as a loving entity with my best interests at heart.
Sorry, no sale, church dudes. What struck me as a kid was that seemingly well meaning adults would try to shove this horseshit down my throat with straight faces. I mean, look, I had already figured out that Santa and the Easter Bunny were bullshit. How hard was it to figure out that this God story was crap? Not rocket science.
Which is why, to this day, the thing that makes me recoil faster than anything else is what I call pissing on my leg and telling me it’s raining. Nuh uh. Been to that hoedown, danced to that tune already. Never again.
asiangrrlMN
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: You’re saying that this whole thread is full of bigotry and bashing of the church. You lump in all the atheists and agnostics. I see a widely-differing viewpoints from the commenters. You, apparently, don’t. That is the similarity to which I refer.
I also find it interesting that you choose to excoriate atheists and agnostics on a thread about how the Catholic Church systematically covered up rampant and sickening child abuse.
You say Krista is the only one to respond to you civilly, but you’re not being very civil yourself. For the most part, agnostics and atheists aren’t the ones pushing their non-religion on other people. I really don’t care what anyone believes as long as they keep their religion out of state (and federal) law. I don’t even care that my niece tells me she’s concerned that I’m going to hell because I don’t believe Jesus is my personal savior. It’s rather sweet.
However, I do feel there’s a double-standard in which religious people say, “I believe such and such”, and there isn’t supposed to be an argument.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Very tolerant. If a Christian said that Muslim families shouldn’t be allowed to raise their children to be Muslim because it’s child abuse, you’d be quick to castigate them; yet, what you’re saying here is functionally identical.
People can raise their children to have whatever belief they want to have. However, they should raise them to respect the viewpoints of others; seeing as how you’re arguing for raising your kids to think that all of the Christian parents in their neighborhood are child abusers, I’m not sure how you’re in any way “tolerant.”
You still haven’t addressed my larger complaint with the quote, though- it didn’t just attack Christians. Your Buddhist, Muslim, and Deist neighbors are also child abusers, according to some.
Xenos
@Darkrose: I did not say Law was brought down, although he was certainly run out of town. The church as a whole, lost its protection, and much of its authority. The laity just won’t take that shit any more.
Little Dreamer
I’ll bet you for every quote you can pull out of the Old Testament showing a God of Love (the one where God speaks directly to the Hebrews and doesn’t do it through his son) there are at least five that are God commanding people to kill others.
Here’s one your kids probably shouldn’t come across.
“Blessed are they that take and dash the little ones against the rocks” – this is a scripture that talks about killing babies and small children by slamming them against large stones. Is that a God of love?
Is that the kind of book (and God) you want to teach your child about?
It’s psychological abuse to leave the messaging to the church and not study these things before introducing your children to them. The same church that has priests molesting children is the one translating your bible for you… for hundreds of years, many of the official church doctrines have found their way even into protestant teachings. Most people are lazy and take what is taught at face value and don’t know even 1/100th of what is in that book. Doesn’t your child deserve better?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Krista is the first person to respond to me who hasn’t argued that people who believe in some form of God aren’t child abusers. I don’t see any particular reason to be civil to people who insult my entire family- a family of Unitarians, I should add.
It’s pretty easy to pick on the Catholic Church. It’s got a bunch of child molesters running it. Child molesters are bad- who’s arguing the contrary? If all people did was write, “Heh, indeed” posts to that point, there’d be no quarrel from me. It’s when people used pedophile priests as a springboard to attack EVERY HUMAN who holds any form of religious or spiritual belief whatsoever that I bother to chime in.
asiangrrlMN
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss: You are setting up a straw argument here. Only one or two people have claimed that all religion is hateful, evil, whatever. Yet, you are saying we all have. I have many issues with Islam, Judaism, and really, many religions because I don’t see them, in general, as preaching love, tolerance, and patience. What I see is moral superiority coupled with a sense of victimhood and rigid intolerance.
I have seen many people damaged because of being raised in religiously-fanatic households. Look at the damage these child abusers in the Catholic Church have wrought. People who mentioned the abuse were ridiculed and shut up. There are many problems with many of (if not all) of the religions, and I don’t think anyone benefits if these problems are swept under the rug. This post was before your last post.
So you are going to be uncivil to people whom you perceive are uncivil to you? Yes, that will make a difference to people who are already predisposed to disliking religion. Again, you are doing what you accuse others of doing. It might make you feel better about your position, but it certainly isn’t going to win anyone over to your side of the debate.
There is a lot more to this post than a few bad priests. THAT is the point. The whole Catholic Church has supported these behaviors and others for decades. I think most of the people here are voicing their frustrations at that reality.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
So? What’s that got to do with what kind of Christian someone raises their kids to be? And what gives you the right to call them child abusers, if they raise their kids to love their neighbors as much as they love themselves?
If you raise your kids to be decent people, what difference does it make that some parts of the book you’re using are contrary to that message? Furthermore, if I raise my kids to be decent people, what right do you have to call me a child abuser? Are all atheists inherently superior parents, now?
We aren’t talking about the Church. We’re talking about every single Catholic family. We’re also talking about Protestants, Buddhists, Muslims, Unitarians, Deists, Quakers- all of them. You’re defending someone who said that every single one of them is a child abuser- even the ones who don’t have kids. So if I go up into the mountains and live a solitary life as a Deist hermit, I’m still a latent child abuser. And you have yet to say anything against that point. And you call yourself tolerant.
Little Dreamer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
No, I’m saying you have never actually sat down and picked the book apart to know if it’s not psychologically damaging, because it actually is.
There are so many contradictions, there is so much death and calls for destruction and this is the God you want to teach your child is Love. It’s a lie.
I’ll bet you that while I realize the muslims have a similar problem with some of their texts, they know a whole lot more about what’s in them. Muslims know enough of scripture to realize that Jesus cannot be a sacrifice. That’s more than I can say for Christians. Muslims know that the apostle Paul was the manufacturer of the doctrines you read today and that if Jesus were alive today and read Paul’s writings, he would be appalled (no pun intended).
InflatableCommenter
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Aren’t you doing a sort of reductio ad absurdum straw thing here?
Little Dreamer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Teaching your children about a God who has so many contradictions and confusing scriptures in a book supposedly written by him IS abuse.
If you are going to introduce your child to it, at least have the guts to read it for what it really says first, look online for different opinions, read and discern. The church doesn’t want you to discern – hell, for hundreds of years you couldn’t even go into a church service and hear it read in your own language. Now people are too lazy to take doctrine apart and discern it for themselves, yet they want to teach it to small children. Brilliant!
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@asiangrrlMN:
Sorry. It’s hard to find the time to distinguish between tolerant and intolerant non-believers. I’m too busy arguing with people who say that everyone who believes in any form of religion is a child abuser, and the only non-believer who’s backed me up so far has been Krista.
Yeah. That sucks. I wouldn’t know anything about it, I wasn’t raised Catholic. Or religious, for that matter.
I’m being polite to the people who are polite to me. I don’t have the time to be polite to everyone, especially people like Tenguphule (whose first words to me were to blow my points out my ass), or to people who accuse me of being a child abuser because they think I have religious beliefs I haven’t even told them about. I haven’t been half as uncivil as some of what I’ve seen in this thread- you being on the other side of the issue, perhaps you didn’t take as much offense at it. And I’m not trying to win anyone over- I’m not proselytizing, I’m defending my views from attack. Stop attacking them, and I’ll shut up about it. I’m too tolerant to try to convert people, and all I’m asking is to raise my kids to believe in some sort of God without being accused of being a child abuser. Is that too much to ask?
Most are, yes, and as I said, I had no quarrel with them. If that had been the sum total of the anti-religious posts on here, I wouldn’t have chimed in. It was the other people I was directing my comments at. Sorry if that was unclear.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I’ve read it cover to cover 3 times. I’ve also read the Koran, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Ramayana, the Tao Te Ching, and more religious essays than I’d ever care to remember. And most of them, fundamentally, are about loving your neighbors. And if you think that compassion and love of your neighbors is child abuse, then I pity you.
You don’t know that. You have no idea. No one living knows what comes next. And that’s the only truth we should all be able to agree on.
What difference does that make, if they’re child abusers too?
Not really. I’d argue that teaching your children to be decent people, by whatever means or spiritual lessons, is a decent thing to do. Apparently, though, only atheists can be decent parents. You’d make a good DCF caseworker, that’s for sure.
I daresay my children will have a far broader religious education than anything yours will experience.
And with that, I’m done for tonight. Have fun carrying on your crusade to take the children from Unitarian households and put them in foster homes.
InflatableCommenter
Hmm. I have to take the hard line with you. First of all, isn’t “converting” exactly what you are trying to do to your kids, before they have had a chance to fully develop their minds, their worldviews, their critical thinking?
Isn’t belief in (typical, mainstream) God a thing of faith, and by definition, an insistence that one believe things even in the face of evidence to the contrary?
Are you sure you are the right judge of whether that is abuse or not? Nobody bothered to ask me when I was eight. Will you wait until your kids are thirty to check that out with them?
Lesley
Noses I’d love to rub in this story: the Catholic priests and other assholes who protested Obama’s speech at Notre Dame.
Little Dreamer
You’ve read it the way you were taught to read it.
Here, I’m going to point you to some useful information and then I want you to perform an experiment. I want you to go to church and sit down and tell me how many times “Paul said” and how many times “Jesus said”. I can assure you Paul will be the focus of the sermon.
Moreover, I do know, Christianity is rigged up paganism. It is completely 180 degrees opposite of the Old Testament laws. Do you know who else was born of a virgin, died on a cross, and started a religion? Read up on this from other sources. It’s not a trick.
Why does the Old Testament say the sabbath is Friday sundown to Saturday sundown and yet Christians believe it’s on Sunday?
What does God say about people who erect Christmas trees in the old testament? (trees decorated with silver and placed indoors?)
Do you know the answers to these questions? I’m sure they didn’t cover this in church.
Lesley
The Catholic Church is in the profitable business of religious monopoly. Always has been, always will be (although it is losing power). The Church engaged in torture, murder, and assassinations for hundreds of years. That’s documented and irrefutable. The current church continues to pass pedophiles from parish to parish, only now, the peds are being transferred to third world parishes. How anyone can defend bringing their kids up in this faith is beyond comprehension. The current pope of the church wrote policy protecting pedophiles and once was a member of the Hitler youth. Come on now, Catholics, don’t even think you can persuade us your org has credibility. As for God, if such an entity exists, it must have washed its hands of the Catholic religion eons ago.
Little Dreamer
Right, because I know about an evil religion that creates havoc on the world which is described in Isaiah as worshipping amongst the graves, praying to a wooden God who cannot save who has his arms stretched out all day (envision the crucifix) and that the man Jesus was not honest, and talks out of both sides of his mouth and the laws of the Bible were changed by a man named Paul.
Your children will have so much more knowledge than mine ever could, because you take what is fed you (including your little wafer – when was the last time you ate Christ’s flesh and drank his blood anyway? Did you know that blood is prohibited by the Old Testament and is referenced in the New Testament book of Acts?
Yes, you eating up the wafer and the lies that the charlatans tell you to believe will profit you and your children so much more than actual study, which is what I’ve done for years.
Funny that!
Comrade Darkness
@Krista: but they are also doing their children and their society that same disservice if they do not teach open-mindedness and tolerance.
Long-term this is always dissuaded. Without a monopoly the Church fades in importance if not dies out.
LD50
Um, good luck with that. I view the modern Catholic church in America as basically trying to catch up with what the Protestant right has accomplished.
When the likes of Randall Terry, David Limbaugh, Richard Santorum and Newt Gingrich are all proud Catholics, that’s ample cause to lower your expectations to nil.
geg6
Scruffy McSnufflepuss: let me say right up front that I don’t care what you choose to believe. And that I know wonderful people who are believers. But I, like many others here, grew up Catholic and was educated by Catholics. I’ll criticize the church all I want since I actually lived it. And I have other experiences with other religions that were more about the bad than the good. If they’d just stay out of everyone’s lives (ie: the government and the law, I’d never say another word about it. But they won’t so I’m going to be out and proud about the evils I see in religion. Which brings me to a beef I have with you. You keep lumping Deists in with religions. Deism is a philosophy, with many degrees of how attached subscribers are to the idea of some sort of higher intelligence or precipitating energy or nothing at all. But the common conclusion that makes you a Deist is that even if you think that may have existed, you don’t necessarily believe it still does or, if it does, that it pays attention to anything we do. That is not a religion and all the fellow Deists I know would resent any such implication quite a bit.
LD50
I’m pleased to see that no one here has tried to claim Hitler was an atheist. I’m going to be annoyed as fuck if anyone tries to make that claim.
Wile E. Quixote
I would cheerfully put on my Stetson and ride a hydrogen bomb down to Vatican city, Jerusalem or Mecca just like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove.
someguy
Wow, you’re leading quite a counterattack on behalf of the Unicorn Brigade there, Scruffy. Nothing personal, but there probably isn’t much room for people who believe in magick in the rational corners of the earth. You’re obviously free to believe whatever you want to believe but tooth fairies, Santa, baptist ministers with hookers, old guys in purple dresses, and for that matter vegans with Wiccan bumper stickers aren’t the answer for what ails man. Dress it up all you like, but it’s a huge force for evil in the world – sure, plenty of followers mean well but in the end it gives us nothing but religious wars, these tales of abuse, hypocrisy, and legions of easily led sheeple.
TenguPhule
Look, just because I call *you* as stupid dick, doesn’t mean I lump all *insert faith of our choice here* in with you.
Darkrose
@Xenos:
Except the hierarchy closed ranks and told the laity to shut their mouths and know their role. At least, that’s the message I got from the way the wouldn’t even let Voice of the Faithful meet in some parishes.
I do agree, however, that the RCC has pretty much destroyed any moral authority they once had. The sad part is that Papa Ratzi doesn’t seem to have figured that out.
Darkrose
@Little Dreamer:
Wow, way to generalize there! Because there’s no such thing as a religious intellectual.
After reading the Bible for junior year religion class, I decided that I couldn’t reconcile Christianity with feminism. My mother was disappointed that I stopped going to church, but she didn’t force me to go, either. How, exactly, is that “abuse”?
Martian Buddy
@TenguPhule: “Abortion Clincs are the new Death Camp!” reminds me of a new wingnut talking point that I’ve seen cropping up lately on the editorial page. Several writers have included the line “if torture is so wrong, then what about the torture of innocent babies in the womb?” I guess they’d rather fall back on the fetus fetishism than try to defend the indefensible.
Little Dreamer
@Darkrose:
Well, excuse me Darkrose, but the Bible is not a children’s fairytale filled with sweetness and kindness and nothing scary… if anyone has thoroughly read the Bible with a mind of their own and claims to have done so and doesn’t have some serious questions that would give them pause as to whether their children should also read it, they belong in an institution.
I suppose having a woman scheme to get pregnant by her dead husband’s father and play the role of a prostitute to get his attention is childhood fare? Yes, that’s in the Bible too, ever heard of Tamar?
But. I’m sorry that’s the Old Testament, let’s find something from the New Testament: how about a story about a woman who was a prostitute and was going to be stoned? Is that childhood fare?
Oh, you mean you only want to teach children about the Ark and how the animals that were indigenous to different parts of the world ended up in the middle east to board Noah’s boat? Or, the story of how Adam and Eve ate an apple and were cast out of the garden of Eden forever because they didn’t please God and so all of their offspring are cursed to live in toil and pain and be guilty of a sin they didn’t commit?
It’s all fantasies.
The “good man” Jesus Christ also stated that he wasn’t there to bring peace, but a sword, that he was not sent to save gentiles, but only the lost sheep of the house of Israel, he calls a gentile woman a dog, and he commands those who want to follow him that they have to hate their families to be worthy of him. This is what should be taught to children? Anyone who thinks so is insane.
Little Dreamer
You are lucky your mother didn’t force you. Many hundreds of thousands of children across the Christian world ARE forced to go to church.
If you’re read the book the way you say you have, are you telling me you have no questions as to what certain passages are doing in there? How about the fact that there are many stories that are recounted more than once and quite often the stories do not match? I guess you’ve never come across any contradictions in the Bible, huh?
I’m convinced those who say they read the Bible and find nothing wrong with it have never actually read it at all. If I were rich, I’d put good money on it.
Okay, you want to prove me wrong? Jesus says with your faith, you can move mountains. I think if this Jesus man is who he says he is, you should be able to do so. How about you try to move Mount Kilimanjaro to Washington State? Too tough? Okay, let’s try smaller, how about Mount Charleston just north of Vegas? Try moving that to Ohio, I’ll expect to see that Vegas is missing a mountain on tomorrow’s news (hahaha, fat change of that happening).
Little Dreamer
if you have actually read the Bible and don’t question it, I wouldn’t call that intellectual, I’d call it robotic.
Little Dreamer
yeah, a God who has a history of calling for entire populations to die is going to give you and your children a free pass if you believe the BS in that book? Is that what you’re saying?
Nevermind don’t answer that, we debate things on this blog, we don’t make excuses for fantasy scenarios.
You are done with this discussion? So am I, I don’t expect to change the minds of those whom the church has ensnared. Enjoy your book of death and fantasies but don’t try to force those who cannot believe in such a deity to do so, it is wrong to expect me to accept as much as it is wrong for me to try to remove your acceptance. If you want to waste your and your children’s lives on the “just in case” belief of heaven and hell because otherwise you might end up frying one day and eternity is a long damned time to fry (why believe in a deity who would do such a thing, honestly? – don’t answer that), your life is already wasted. Enjoy your predicament.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Little Dreamer:
I like the way Lenny Bruce put it. I see what I see and believe what I believe. If my thinking is defective, talk to the manufacturer.
Little Dreamer
@HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker:
Actually, trying to read and understand the Bible with all of it’s contradictions makes reading a warranty for a new purchase an easy task.
HitlerWorshippingPuppyKicker
@Little Dreamer:
Lucky for me, you know all about it and I can just ask you!
Little Dreamer
I’m done with this thread. If anyone wants to actually study the contents of the Bible and understand what’s really in it, please check out this link (with the disclaimer that I don’t agree with everything this man says, but his studies are very well done).
Brachiator
@Little Dreamer:
Where in the Bible does it say that it is acceptable for priests to rape children? Where in the Bible does it say that it is acceptable for people to yield to the authority of any Church, and to turn away from those who have been victimized?
If Bush and Cheney and others should be prosecuted for authorizing torture, then what should happen to those who abused children, and to those who enabled these monsters and then hid them away instead of making sure that they faced justice?
Little Dreamer
Well, Brachiator, I’m not one to answer the “if Bush and Cheney and others should be prosecuted” question, as I don’t think that it would be good for the country to have that happen. Do I think it is correct action? Yes. Do I think it will damage the ability to be citizens of this nation together? Absolutely. I personally just want to see the whole thing completely go away. I surmised on a thread the other night that I’ve got some PTSD from the Bush years and I just want to start fresh. Perhaps that’s not the best option, but honestly, I don’t know if I (or millions of others) can stand to live through more of the BS. That said, I don’t know of any instances where it says that priests should rape or that people should submit to the church for final authority on anything. If anything, the Bible states that one should read it with a discerning mind. Then again, it also says that people should not pray in street corners or public places (isn’t a church a public place?) and that man’s relationship with a deity is between him and God. “Call no man father, for you only have one father, the one who is in heaven” is what it says. What is the title for the priests? “Father”, of course!
People fall for all the BS so easily, I really can’t believe it.
Brachiator
@Little Dreamer:
But of course, this is the same excuse used by those who wish to sweep the issue of rapist priests under the carpet. “It wouldn’t be good for the Church.”
The tortured are forgotten, as are the multitudes who were abused by priests.
Religion is useless if it does not lead you to do justice to those who have been wronged. The reference made earlier in this thread by canuckistani still seems most apt.
— Attributed to Diderot by Jean-François de La Harpe in Cours de Littérature Ancienne et Moderne (1840)
TenguPhule
In an ideal world all of them would receive fair trials, convictions, sentencings and executions.
Failing that, the CIA gets off its ass and bumps them all off quietly and doesn’t get caught.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@InflatableCommenter:
No. You lead your life as you see fit. When your kids ask you questions, you answer them as you see fit. That’s not “converting,” that’s being yourself.
Either the Universe was created, or it wasn’t. Since we don’t know for sure whether it was or not, either is a “belief.” Beyond that bare-bones assertion of a Prime Mover, all theology is window-dressing.
Are you a DCF caseworker? What is your definition of “abuse”? Are you suggesting children be removed from every household in which an adult has a religious view?
America is going to be a tolerant nation, when people like you are in charge.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I don’t know how many times I have to hint at this before you realize it, so I’ll just come out and tell you- I WAS NOT RAISED CHRISTIAN. I’m a fucking Unitarian Deist, and not a very devout one at that.
Do you even read my posts, or are you just looking for some strawman to take down?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Yep. You’re arguing with a strawman. Not me.
Go back and read my posts. Please point out the one where I said I was raising my kids to be Christians.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@geg6:
I could give a fuck less about the Catholic Church. Please point out where I defended them in this thread.
Deism’s a religious view. Just ask your friend InflatableCommenter, he just said that any “belief” is child abuse. Wonderful, tolerant person.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@someguy:
Ooh, does this mean you get to shoot me in the back of the head?
I can’t believe you said sheeple. That’s a Randroid term. Shows what a tolerant person you are.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@TenguPhule:
Fuck you too, asshole.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
As opposed to ignoring the people you’re actually talking to and having an argument with the straw men in your head. That’s the hallmark of intellectualism, there.
People who have faith question it all the time. Then they either stop believing, or they keep believing it. You haven’t said anything about the Bible that didn’t occur to me when I was 17 years old. You’re not offering anything deep or revelatory when you throw quotes out there. (Some of which you mangle and quote out of context, I should note- a quibble, but an important one if the topic becomes intellectual honesty.)
Only in your fantasies are the 7 billion people in the world who believe in something of a religious or spiritual all mindless robots. Only in your imagination are the 1.5 billion Christians of the world all- ALL- mindless morons, to a person.
You have yet to show me any reason to think that when the world is run by people like you, it will be any better off.
Little Dreamer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Interesting that you think we’re all out to steal your children. No, we’re concerned about their sanity telling them because you want to them them feel good fairy tales that have little basis in truth if you really read the book you are suggesting your child should get familiar with. There is a lot of violence, hatred, subjugation, unfairness, threats, death, and a man deity and man at the center of it that have very little basis in fact, but a lot of controversy around them. It sounds like you want to introduce your child to the easter bunny, oh it’s so much fun to introduce your child to the easter bunny! Religion is NOT a game. Then penalty for belief, if the book is to be taken seriously is death for those who don’t qualify. Eternal damnation, Hell, torture, never ending pain. Why would anyone want to introduce their child to something like that?
Much of what is written is controversial, hard to understand, written with double negatives and I got news for you, not one single person on this earth can interpret the entire thing correctly, NO ONE. Why take the risk of psychologically damaging your child with something that has such a track record?
Teach your child that it’s good to love and care his or her fellow human beings, that it’s good to be kind and not mean, greedy or oppressive, but I’m sure there are other sources of that information.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I never even said I was raising my kids to be Christians, Mr. Strawman-Fighter.
Yes, like your fantasy conversation against things I never said.
I was tired, off to bed. Back now.
Where did I say anything in defense of the church? Can you read my posts?
I don’t care what you believe, as long as you’re not working for DCF. If you try and take my children away from me because it’s “abuse” for me to have religious views around them, then I have serious issues with your beliefs. Until then, they’re completely irrelevant to me.
Enjoy having arguments with the voices in your head, instead of the words people are typing. I never said ANY of the stuff you’re taking me to task for.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
In other words, you don’t think people with religious views (including Deism) should be allowed to raise children. How tolerant of you!
Why do you think all religious views are equal to your strawman construction of them?
Sure, when I could have them be raised by a foster parent as perfect as you?
And if the kids get that message, it’s none of your business what tools parents use to teach it.
Little Dreamer
I’m not arguing strawmen in my head, I’m opening you up to facts of the Bible that I have learned through years of study because you engaged me in the conversation. If you don’t want to have that conversation, simply ignore me and go on living in your biblical ignorance. Don’t engage me and then tell me I’m arguing strawmen in my head when I respond to you.
You are ignorant of the Bible though, I can tell you that, because you refuse to even pick apart one single item I’ve proposed and counter it with any information. You are the one who engaged me that you know your Bible. I see you saying you’ve read it, and I see you not willing to discuss what you know. My study has taken me into many deep areas where I have learned a lot of things that over 99% of the people out there will never stumble upon. If you had that information, I’d be asking you to share it and although I might not agree with you, I would at least allow you to present your viewpoint. The fact is my viewpoint threatens you, because I speak about the things that you won’t learn in Sunday services. You want to act like you know that book you are talking about, but the simple fact is you don’t and I’ve been studying it for years, I know quite a lot that you would never imagine is in there. The fact that you aren’t even the least bit curious shows me how afraid you are. Your afraid of what i may have learned, yet you want to present a watered down (read “very untrue”) version of the stories in that book to your kid, without even investigating what another perspective might be. Yeah, I see how much you care about your kid’s psychological well-being.
Have at it, it’s not my kid… you may want to have an explanation on hand when your child comes to you one day though and asks you why you screwed him/her up like that.
Before I finish with you, I want to leave you with a thought: When Jesus was asked by a follower how to know if he was on the path to righteousness, Jesus replied: the past to hell is straight and wide with many people taking that path, the path that goes elsewhere is narrow, and few people are on it. So go ahead, take that popular path, I know how hard it is to be revolutionary, your choice. I choose to not believe in the conventional BS that doesn’t pass muster.
Little Dreamer
No, I’m saying you should get familiar with other viewpoints about how psychologically screwed up a lot of religous belief has been presented and misconstrued in the Bible before you go introducing it to children.
You don’t want to look at alternative viewpoints, your choice, your ramifications, not mine.
I wouldn’t do it, that’s all. I think you don’t realize the psychological damage you are inviting on your child, but I can’t stop you, and you’ll do it anyway. I wouldn’t allow my children to watch the shower scene in Psycho either, because it would give them nightmares. That’s just me making what I believe is making a healthier choice for my children’s welfare.
Krista
I think a lot of people here are really throwing the baby out with the bathwater, here. We atheists and agnostics know damn well what it is like to be scorned and looked down upon, so why should our response be to scorn and look down upon all religions?
I agree that the Catholic Church has a horrible history. It really does. But I’m not going to sit here and say that every single Catholic is evil, or that they are abusing their kids by the mere act of raising them with dogma.
Part of being a parent is raising your kids with certain beliefs and values. That’s not indoctrination — that’s parenting. You can’t raise kids in a vacuum and just say “believe whatever you want” from infancy on. If we raise our kids to be tolerant of other cultures, then guess what — technically, we’re indoctrinating them into a belief system.
So, it comes back to my earlier point. If parents raise kids with religion, or without religion, that’s not doing a disservice to the kid — in either case. What IS doing a disservice to the kid is if you teach them not to question, not to think for themselves, and not to realize accept that other people will disagree with them, and will be perfectly within their rights to do so.
There is NOTHING wrong with exposing a kid to the Bible, or the Qu’ran, or How to Make Friends and Influence People. What IS wrong is teaching the child that these books are infallible, dictatorial, and never, ever to be questioned.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
You weren’t even responding to me. Nowhere did I even say that I was raising my kids to be Christian. I got tired of you trashing the Bible, I’ve read it and I know what’s wrong with it. It has little to do with me. You’re not responding to me, you’re responding AT me- you’re talking past me, to some imaginary Bible-thumper in your head. That’s not a dialogue, that’s you strangling a strawman.
I don’t pick them apart because I don’t care. Because the Bible is irrelevant to my points. Points that you’re ignoring, in your single-minded effort to out-argue this imaginary Bible-thumper.
I don’t really give a shit about the Bible. My quarrel is with people who are intolerant. Atheists can be every bit as intolerant as Catholics- as evidence, I cite pretty much everything you’ve written about how people who have religious views are unfit to raise children.
Why do you address these points to me? You’re not even talking to me! You’re talking to yourself. I’ve never even mentioned raising my kids to be Christian, just that I think Christians aren’t automatically child abusers. Your quotebook familiarity with quirky tales from the OT and with mangled Jesus quotes has nothing whatsoever to do with how I raise my kids- and I doubt it has much to do with how Christians raise their kids, either, judging by the good Christians I’ve seen.
LOL Your kids’ll probably grow up to be Mormons. It would serve you right, too.
Blah blah blah, keep attacking strawmen and thin air. When you’re done having that conversation with yourself, maybe you can tell me why Unitarians and Deists are unfit to be parents. You know, the main point I’ve been arguing against this entire time, and that you’ve been ignoring.
Little Dreamer
Interesting that you want to use a book filled with a lot of unproven truths, controversy, lies and debate to get that point across. I’m sure you could find a better source for that lesson that isn’t in the least bit psychologically damaging.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Man, you sure are doing a good job of taking down that strawman. I’m glad I’m not him.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Krista:
Exactly. That’s exactly right. Thank you!
Little Dreamer
I never said unitarians or deists were unfit to be parents. Go back and show me where I did. You are the one pulling straw out of think air here.
Now, if you don’t mind, I need to tend to a post above yours which is much more important for me to address now.
I’m not out to convert you, I just think you are Biblically ignorant, wanting to argue to prove me wrong, wanting to attack me for knowing more and not saying anything that actually proves you know anything of which you speak.
I know what you know, it’s the same story everyone learns in church. You have no significant knowledge, you just buy the story hook, line and sinker – you want to teach your child that some big invisible man in the sky impregnanted a human being… that’s pretty fucked up.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Well, then there are about 60 million kids you should foster-parent, since you’re such an expert on it. Until you run the DCF gulag facilities, though, I think America’s just going to have to tolerate parents teaching their kids to have religious views. Shame, that. Maybe you can find some other country that will let you abduct/adopt children on the basis of your cultural arrogance.
Little Dreamer
I’m not making attacks on you, I’m speaking of the knowledge that you say you have, yet you don’t show me that you have any knowledge. You are the one who sounds looney here – yeah, you think I’m a DCFS worker wanting to take your kids away. No, I’m actually concerned about the damage of telling children crazy stories that people have been arguing over to the point of death for thousands of years and which have no basis for proof.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
The original post I cited said that people with religious views were child abusers. You defended that post. I asked you repeatedly about people who weren’t Christians, and you responded by insulting me for relying on the Bible. I take that as tacit support of the idea that everyone with religious views is a child abuser.
Was it one an actual person wrote, or one you imagined?
Okay, a strawman.
Was this addressed to me, or to another poster, or to a phantasm in your head? For someone who claims to be grounded in rationality, you argue an awful lot with imaginary people.
bob h
And this is the Church whose members are in high dudgeon about awarding an honorary degree to President Obama. They really do hold the moral high ground.
Little Dreamer
@Krista:
Well Krista, suppose I told you there are a lot of little known facts about the Bible that nobody wants to see the light of day. Would you think I should be shouted down when what I’ve learned is not being addressed by anyone, there are millions of preachers out there selling the same old story which is a complete pack of lies and they would like nothing better than for me to have no one hear the things I’ve learned.
I never said that Snuffy shouldn’t teach his/her child, but that he or she should investigate some alternative viewpoints and make a decision as to whether that kind of thing is what he or she should be teaching their child. That’s all. When did I ever say I wanted to remove the child from their care? I never did. The Bible is not a straightforward and simple (easy to understand) book, I just think it should require some investigation to see if it really is fit for a child.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Yes, persecuted for ignoring the points of the person you’re talking to, and defending the idea that no Christian can ever be a fit parent. Woe is you.
And I never said I was raising my kids to be Christian, so you were fighting a strawman.
Little Dreamer
If you’ll go back and check, I didn’t engage you first, you hounded me about how I wanted to take away your child because I said the book was dangerous, and it is, nothing in that book is easy to understand, it takes real study and I have come to conclusions that are different. You are the one who is pushing all this not me, I’m merely trying to get you to understand that just because millions of people believe one version doesn’t make it true. I have new info, you don’t want it? Fine. I’m done arguing with you.
Little Dreamer
I never said any such thing, I said people just eat up the story they get told in church and never investigate it for themselves. The church advocated that the church was the only place to get the answers (it’s a monopoly, do you know what that is?) and yet so much of it has been rewritten, info inserted that was never in the originals, word meanings misconstrued… but if you trust the church to sell you the history of mankind, go for it. If churchgoers actually studied alternate beliefs with an open mind, they’d have a whole different perspective.
Oh Gosh. You got all upset about the Bible because I was talking about it, you said you’d read it quite in depth (obviously not) and now you want to argue that you weren’t advocating any certain religion? Very disingenuous.
Goodbye.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
You keep saying you’re done, yet you keep coming back to insult me for being things I’m not. But fine, let’s go back to the record.
Me: , at 8:04 pm:
Really? Well, then be sure to stand up for theists when your friends say things like this:
You, at 8:19 pm:
Me, at 8:30 pm:
You, at 8:35:
Have I quoted enough of the thread to make my point, or should I go through the next half-dozen or so posts where I talked about how you were defending someone whose comment meant that Buddhists and Muslims and Unitarians are all child abusers, and you kept haranguing me about the Bible?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Really? Well, then it must have been someone else logged on to your account at 8:19 last night who said that raising kids to be Christian was child abuse.
I’m only defending the Christians because you’re attacking them all as child abusers. If you attacked Muslims, I’d be defending them just as much. (Matter of fact, if a Christian said about Muslims the things you’re saying about Christians, you’d be quick to jump on the Christian for it, so in my mind that makes you a hypocrite).
Please mean it when you say it, this time.
Little Dreamer
@Brachiator:
Now to get the post I really wanted to answer:
Brachiator, I have no love for the church or it’s clergy and I believe those things should be addressed and while I can’t see what sort of restitution should be made, justice should be done.
I do not equate it with the situation under the Bush Administration. First of all it’s kind of hard to argue that children who were molested by priests should be allowed to get away with their deeds and people are and will be horrified with that reality, the clergy needs to pay. That said, the support by those who are misinformed about Bush (those who don’t read blogs, don’t have a lot of the info we get here) will not understand why we’re dragging out criminal prosecutions for a president that congress seemed to approve of doing what they did. It will be bad for the country, as I see it. I am so tired of this country being the crazy sideshow it’s been for the last eight years, I want to get back to normalcy as soon as possible.
The ramifications that the other side gets: their party has become regional, they are not taken seriously, the Bush Administration ruined the GOP completely. That is their punishment and I’m happy with that. I don’t think we want to do anything that gains more sympathy from the uninformed for the Republicans, personally.
Little Dreamer
Please point out where I said “raising your child Christian is child abuse”
I said that teaching them that they could go to hell for sins and be tortured forever is abuse. There is a difference, but… I don’t want to argue symantics with an idiot, so I’m clicking off this thread now.
Little Dreamer
@Little Dreamer:
Turn that around, I haven’t slept.
Priests who molested children should not get away with their deeds and should pay for it.
I need to get some sleep.
Apologies if my meaning was not understood.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Well, things like this certainly seem like they amount to an anti-Christian polemic:
I don’t know of any form of Christianity, however compassionate and tolerant, which doesn’t involve some level of respect (“fear” is the term most often used in translation) of God. If you’re trying to exclude some 12-member Christian sect from your anti-Christian tirades, please say so.
Ah, now you’re backpedaling. So, apparently, when you run state child protective services, it won’t involve prying the kids out of every Christian dwelling in your state (or every non-Christian dwelling where the parents have religious views). Thank you!
Little Dreamer
Scruffy, fuck off.
I do not work for a child protective agency, and honestly I didn’t know you were Deist (sorry, with all the posts going on there, I missed that). I don’t have a problem with Deism, but teaching a child that they are guilty of sins they didn’t actually commit and they can be sent to Hell is the entire reason why we have religious wars. Everybody wants their version of God to be correct, because otherwise, they believe they’re going to Hell and they’re going to suffer eternal torture. I honestly don’t think it’s appropriate for a child to have to be faced with that info (and tell me where you have proof that it’s true, have you talked to anyone who’s been in Hell lately?) If Hell didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have religious wars. Everybody not only wants to make sure their version is the only one that people are spouting, but they feel that their fear of their God justifies them to make everyone else afraid of that situation too. It’s like Dick Cheney saying Obama’s inviting another attack. He’s not proper fare for children either.
Little Dreamer
Let me put it to you this way, I don’t have a problem with Christians who want to believe that Jesus wanted to be a social helper to mankind who helped feed/clothe and heal his followers. I have a problem with proselytes. Why are you advocating that proselytes should have religious freedom to convert everyone? What about my religious freedom to not be converted? I tolerate peaceful religions. I don’t tolerate the ones that are meddlesome, create wars and inquisitions and basically make life miserable for everybody. They are not very tolerant, why should I be?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Dude, I didn’t know you’d been up all night. Go to bed. Get some sleep. We’ll talk later.
And if we didn’t have religious wars, we’d have other wars. That’s my point. People aren’t going to become wonderful once they stop believing in religion. They’ll just find something new to become awful over. Just ask Einstein:
“When posterity recounts the achievements of Europe, shall we let men say that three centuries of painstaking cultural effort carried us no farther than from religious fanaticism to the insanity of nationalism?”
Considering that he wrote that in 1915, the answer to his question is a resounding “Yes! We SHALL allow men of the future to say that!” Furthermore, once nationalism is a spent force, we’ll find some other excuse to commit mass slaughter. Religion, by itself, doesn’t make us murderers; religion is a convenient excuse to commit murder.
Little Dreamer
I’m not a dude. ;)
I also never said there would never be wars. As long as we have humankind there will always be wars. But, that there are millions (if not billions) of people out there who think that all of us who don’t believe as they do need to be converted before we’ll suffer the fires of their hell too is just damned annoying to me. I don’t believe in their pit of hell. I don’t believe in living my life in fear and submitting to a God whose got a lot of very inconsistent stories in his little instruction book.
I don’t have to believe the Bible is God breathed, inspired and every word came down from him, because quite honestly, if every word HAD come down from him, I have enough knowledge to know he’s not worthy of my worship anyway.
I am not falling for “Fear, the Pit and the Snare”
Dayv
RELIGION: A FORCE FOR GOOD IN THE WORLD.
Woo!
Little Dreamer
Religion is a hot topic that gets under people’s collars. That is not to say there will never be any conflict, but, religion has taken mankind to a lot of places we never would have gone without that anger driving force. I don’t know about you, but I took a trip into a torture chamber in Lausanne, Switzerland when I took a trip to Europe in the 1980’s. That torture chamber was run by church inquisitors. I’m not saying torture has never happened before that, but, if you have ever read about the shorts of sexual perversions they performed on women and children, I think it would curl your hair.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Whoops! Sorry for assuming… ;)
I’m just eagerly awaiting the next lie, now that nationalism seems to be on its way out the door. Freedom and democracy? Eco-purity? Corporate loyalty? So many possibilities suggest themselves, and while some of them sound quite silly to us, they may not seem that way to our grandkids as they die for them. (For that matter, I wonder what a 7th century Frank would have made of someone who placed the “nationalism” of the feudal aggregate known as France above the universal appeals of Catholicism. Times change, ideas change, excuses for murder change, people remain the same.)
Get some sleep. We’ll talk later.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Yes, but nowadays we crush childrens’ testicles for freedom and democracy and the American Way. Who knows what they’ll crush childrens’ testicles for 500 years from now?
Little Dreamer
Do you really think nationalism is going to go away? Isn’t that like asking a man to give up rooting for his favorite football team?
The US has more fingers in the pie of political situations all over the world, second only to (perhaps) the Vatican. We will always have a group who thinks we should be the police force of the world who get to make the rules because we have always financed the ability for people to enjoy our products/perks created by our industrialism (not that we have a lot of industry left, but I’m sure the nationalists will never even consider that). I don’t see nationalism going away, sorry.
Little Dreamer
Religious wars have been fought since God said Hello. I don’t see that going away. Nothing will stop it except either the second coming of a man who has been laying in a grave for over 2000 years (if he ever existed at all) or the religious factions deciding to just blow everything the hell up because it took too damned long.
Ask any conservative Christian, they get excited about the idea of being vindicated by having their Jesus come flying down from Heaven and rejecting everyone who didn’t listen to them. (Funny thing, if Jesus really did exist, I wonder if they’d be so hot on the idea once they figured out that the biblical Jesus was someone who cared about not neglecting the poor. Somehow I don’t think so).
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Eventually, yeah. May take a couple centuries, and even a few millenia from now it may have some vestigial relevance (not unlike the vestigial relevance of the Great Schism, say). But sooner or later, some other force is going to supplant it.
I’m reading a book about the IRA now. Centuries of fighting for independence. What was the point? Ireland’s still in the EU, just as if it had stayed in Britain. Both countries’ national identities are going to fade away as the EU grows stronger. It’s like reading about a clamming dispute between Delaware and New Jersey from 200 years ago. Utterly irrelevant, in the long term.
Little Dreamer
On nationalism:
I think I need to clarify. I don’t think that the nationalists were limited to those who were watching Fox News and listening to Hannity and Rush. I am sure there are some people who pulled the lever for Obama out there who thought that whole sea of flags waving all over the country for several months was really cool… and while Iraq turned into a clusterfuck, I’m sure some of those underinformed Obama supporters still saw the nationalistic idea as a good cause and would again. I don’t think they are tied together, the GOP can become insignificant while nationalism may not really suffer all that much.
Little Dreamer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Well, some crazy conspiracy theorists would tell you it’s because they believe the Ark of the Covenant is buried in Ireland.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I mean, to a certain extent I’d consider myself a “nationalist.” I love my country, and I don’t like it when people attack it. But that doesn’t mean I support attacking other peoples’ countries for no reason, either. I’d support another country if I saw it get invaded without just cause, although probably not to the same extent I’d support mine if the same thing happened. (Being an American makes these moral gymnastics especially difficult.)
I suppose nationalism will remain relevant, in the “defense of hearth and home” theory, until some super-national bodies make it irrelevant. In the long run, we may have one world government. Or, we may have multinational oligarchies running nations as fiefs- a millenium or so of high-tech feudalism, maybe. Or, who knows? Maybe Somalia is the way of the future. The death of the nation-state, the return of the warlord. Time will tell. But history indicates that the ideas that motivate one era will not remain in place forever. Nationalism is as transient a motivation as anything else.
Little Dreamer
Well, we’re still living in a system of government that came from Rome back before the time of Christ. I don’t think it will change all that much, but, I’d like to say right here and now that if the GOP wants to all move to Alaska and annex it as their own country, I’m all for it. ;)
And by the way, I don’t consider myself a patriotic nationalist at all. I’m an American, I love my country, but I don’t think that hyping up a war by getting the citizens all up in a roar and using propaganda and symbolism accomplishes anything more than bullshit justification. If there is an attack and we need to defend this country, we should do it because it was the right thing to do, not because some secretary went on television and told us that if we didn’t, we’d be staring at nuclear bombs over our cities. I’m very wary of patriotism and symbolism. I’m not saying we shouldn’t defend our country, of course, but we can do without the propaganda and “go shopping” orders.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
LOL Whatever, and the Magdalenites of Provence think that they’re the descendents of Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ.
Kooks abound. Kooks abide. The kooks will always be with us.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Well, in fairness, the Middle Ages were more of a reign of warlordism than of nationalism. A strongly religious warlordism, and certainly an age in which religion trumped nationalism on many occasions (though, certainly, the more opportunistic of feudal leaders took full advantage of religious excuses to advance their positions and their “states”; on the other hand, you had many, many idiot kings doing something that harmed their “nation” just because it seemed like a good idea to the Pope).
Little Dreamer
Well, as a direct descendent of the royal blood line, I’ve studied a lot of that too. ;) I’m linked in to Henry II through his illegitimate son Stephen Longespee. Yes there were a lot of idiot kings, but America does not rule by the divine right of kings, we live by a system of congress and executive, much like Rome did.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Well, until it became an Empire, anyway. :)
Little Dreamer
George Bush was our emperor, we decided not to do that anymore. ;) Gotta hand it to Bush, he was just idiotic enough to stop that trend quickly. (hahaha!)
He went to visit the Pope and kiss his ring, remember? I sure hope Obama has the good sense to not do that.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Bush was a Catiline; when someone as competent as Julius Caesar comes around, we’re in trouble.
“Awesome speech, Pope!” is one of my favorite Bush quotes ever.
Obama did speak at Notre Dame, I’m sure he’ll make nice to the Pope at some point in the next 4 years.
Dennis-SGMM
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
The Principate begun by Augustus pretty much put an end to the power of the Roman Senate. Once he reserved the title of princeps senatus for the emperor the Senate became a rubber stamp for his bills.
Krista
And there are some people who think that giving your baby formula is tantamount to child abuse. It comes back to my earlier point that people throw the term “child abuse” around way too loosely, and it minimizes the very real suffering of children who are victims of emotional, physical or sexual abuse.
I do agree that it’s awful when parents terrify their children with tales of hellfire and brimstone in order to gain their compliance. I think anybody here could agree that that is a terrible thing to do to any kid.
But, to lump in all religious people with the fire-and-brimstone zealots is not right either. And to say something like this:
Well, that is really offensive, and if anybody said it about atheists/agnostics, it would have us seriously pissed off, no?
A former co-worker of mine is very religious, very devout, and is a fantastic mom to her kids — she raises them to be kind and good to others, to not take their blessings for granted, and all of that other good stuff. She’s an excellent human being, is accepting of other peoples’ beliefs, and if all religious people were like her, the world would be a much finer place. Do her kids know about Hell? Probably — but I would guess that most of the normal religious people tell their kids that as long as they do their best to be good people, and as long as they apologize and try to make up for it when they DO do something wrong, then they don’t have to worry about Hell at all. Any sane religious person isn’t going to tell a kid that he or she is going to Hell for stuff like fibbing, or being mean to their sibling. I learned about Hell as a kid, and wasn’t scared of it, because I was taught that it was for very, very evil people who hurt or killed innocent people and weren’t at all sorry about it.
So to say (or to agree) that “all religious people are child abusers” is not only incorrect, and kind of mean, but it does nothing to help religious people be more tolerant of us, does it?
Little Dreamer
Krista, I didn’t say that all religious people were child abusers, that was somebody else’s post (and at that point, I think we were still talking about molestation), I merely tried to show that perhaps the person who said it wasn’t talking about molestation and that if a parent was getting compliance out of their child by using hellfire and brimstone, that seemed abusive to me.
Moreover, I’m used to the devouts calling me names and making these accusations. I used to spar with them daily for about three years. They already say (and think) those things. To the ones I used to encounter, denying my child the opportunity to go to Heaven (even if he would end up going to Hell instead) would be considered abuse.
Krista
Nice to meet you, cousin. :) Evidently, I’m linked through Henry and Eleanor’s daughter, Leonora of England. It goes down through the de Bourbons until it gets to the Savoies, then the Cormiers and Shannons and eventually, to the LaPointes (my maternal great-grandfather.) So, where I’m descended directly and legitimately from royalty, I want to know this: where the fuck is my tiara, bitches?
Little Dreamer
@Krista:
Hi cousin. ;)
TZ and I are distant cousins too. He’s a legitimate descendant as well. My link is only through an affair with a countess.
My direct descendants who hook into that line were the Baynards. They used to have a castle on the Thames.
I said Stephen Longespee earlier, actually i got that wrong, it was William Longespee, whose son was Stephen. But it hooks me into the Plantagenet connection anyway. ;)
Still, I think if you or TZ went to have tea with the queen you two would have an easier time getting in to see her (or a softer rejection) than I would.
Krista
That is really shitty — and I think that anybody who tells a little kid that he or she is going to Hell deserves a good smiting. I guess I’ve been lucky enough that most of the religious people I’ve met have, overall, been just regular, decent people. They’ll probably think that it’s awful of me when they find out that I won’t be baptizing the baby when he or she arrives, but as long as they don’t get in my face about it, they can think whatever they like.
But if there is a God, may he help them if any of them says anything to my kid about his or her lack of religion dooming him or her to Hell. Hell will look like a vacation after I’m through with them. And that’s before my husband gets to them — he’s definitely more of an anti-theist than I am. I’m more of a live-and-let-live agnostic.
Krista
I’d probably have an even easier time than TZ, as Liz IS our titular Head of State.
Little Dreamer
Perhaps, then again, he might have a more convincing reason than you do, but I can’t go into that. Just trust me, between you being a Queen’s subject and his reason, it might be a toss up. ;)
Little Dreamer
Hell hath no fury like a mommy whose child has been scorned?
I remember feeling that way.
geg6
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
I’ll say it again. Deism is a philosophy. It is not a religion. Some religions have Deist roots, such as your professed Unitarianism. But the Deists were around long, long, long before the Unitarians decided to piggy back on their philosophy. I accept the two main features of Deism and nothing else: a rejection of religion (especially revealed religions) and that reason, and not faith, leads basic truths about morality. Anything else that others attach to the term doesn’t apply to me. Which is sorta the point of Deism and exactly why it isn’t a religion. There may be religions that accept the constructive part of Deism (reason and not faith), but by definition they don’t accept the critical part of Deism (rejection of religion). So I simply ask that if you’re going to drag Deism into your arguments about religion and make it seem as if it is no different from, say, Protestantism, then please be more precise in your wording and say the actual name of the religion that mimics parts of Deism (such as Unitarianism) instead of Deism. Personally, as a Deist, I reject and denounce all religion as immoral and irrational at the core.
As for why I felt the need to discuss my Catholic background, you were getting very snarky about people criticizing the Church and implying that since we are supposedly all atheists and agnostics, we should just shut up. I was simply explaining that I have every right to criticize the institution all I wish since I know it well and was forced into it against my will until adulthood. But I’m guessing you lost track of your criticisms of everyone who doesn’t agree with you, so I’ll overlook that.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@geg6:
I’ll say it again. If you’re a Deist, then you, too, are being accused of having a “religious view.” You, too, are being called a child abuser.
I don’t care how you view yourself, or even how you view religion. There are some people in this thread who have accused you of child abuse. In fact, that insult wasn’t even restricted to whether or not you have children, or whether or not you raise your children with your “belief” in a God. “Belief” in a God is, to some people here, a profession of faith, and as such, a religious view. If you’d like to argue with them that your Deism is wholly rational, and not therefore not religious, then be my guest. But I don’t see why the (admittedly, few) people around here who are calling you a child abuser are going to be too concerned about whatever qualifications you’d put on what they view as a religious belief.
omen
a couple of you need to kiss and make up.
omen
@Little Dreamer:
sabbath is Friday sundown to Saturday sundown and yet Christians believe it’s on Sunday?
not all christians.
Ken
Maybe the good Catholics should be a bit more concerned about this systemic abuse than Obama appearing at Notre Dame.
geg6
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
I don’t accept your attempt to define me and my philosophy based on your own perception of it through your religion. As I remember the discussion, it all had to do with religion. One last time…Deism is NOT a religion. It is a philosophy, one of the central tenets of which is rejection of religion. The fact that some religions such as Unitarianism say they are Deists does not make it so (they only get partial credit). So attacks on religions of any kind have nothing to do with me. Besides the fact that it’s pretty much impossible to be any sort of child abuser as Little Dreamer was characterizing “abuse.” Since I have no children and will never have children and, in addition, I disdain religions of all kinds, it would be pretty hard for me to “abuse” them.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@geg6:
I don’t care what you accept and don’t accept. You’re getting labeled a child abuser, same as me.
Krista
Bow-chicka-bow-bow…
Brachiator
@Little Dreamer:
Every priest who abused a child should be in jail. Every priest or archbishop who protected an abusing priest should be in jail. Every church record documenting the protection of priests should be made public. The Catholic Church should lose its tax exempt status. Restitution should be made to victims even if the Church has to sell the last stick of its property in order to cover the costs.
How’s that for a start?
Here’s the equation. Some people (and I am not directing this at you personally) like to talk about torture as a term or principle. They don’t like to talk about those whose bodies and spirits have been broken.
What is “normalcy” for the victims of torture? And where is justice if you want to sweep their pain under the carpet so that you can be comfortable again?
Fiat justitia, ruat caelum.
Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.
InflatableCommenter
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Meh, you are completely dodging the issues I raised.
If you teach a child about the Bible and the CW view of God, you are teaching that child lies. The layers of cognitive dissonance, the obviously ridiculous claims and assertions, the tales of a cruel and vengeful God who claims to be loving and caring …. it’s a bunch of sociopathic nonsense at best, such a muddled and confusing bunch of crap that almost any advocate for anything can find support for his views somewhere in the giant pile of fairy tales.
This is not particularly aimed at you, it’s aimed at anyone who sits back and allows that crazy bullshit to be taught to a kid, and then tells the kid that they have to believe the stuff even in the face of evidence to the contrary — which is what faith requires — thereby doing a disservice to that kid that I would characterize as abuse. Just as abusive as if the kid were being raised to follow the principles of the KKK or the American Nazi Party. For the same reasons. It’s insane, destructive bullcrap.
The fact that Sunday School teachers are adept at taking that bullcrap and packaging it up into little cognitive cupcakes with icing and sprinkles on them does not change the underlying facts. It’s still abuse.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@InflatableCommenter:
I know your issue- everyone who’s anything but an atheist is a child abuser. Blah blah blah, thank you very much for your input.
Your wonderful message of tolerance is a delight to read.
At least you admit to the strawman argument. If only you’d also admit to being intolerant, we’d be getting somewhere.
I believe Krista’s already smacked you down far better than I could; I’ll simply quote her at you, and be done with it.
InflatableCommenter
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Well, that’s just a lie, and my posts are there for anyone to read and judge for themselves. I have said no such thing, and in fact, have said the opposite, based on specific teachings of specific material. I have not painted with any such broad brush as you describe.
I wasn’t sure whether you were just overreacting and overstating your case on this thread, or just being a lying, rhetorical asshole. I know now. You are being the latter, and I totally reject your entire argument here. It’s just a big strawman troll, repeatedly misstating and mischaracterizing the arguments of others.
Fuck you, man. Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. If you ever decide to actually have a real discussion of these points, let us know. Because right now you are just being a big prick and saying nothing.
When you can explain to me how conventional Christian “education” is anything other than abusive brainwashing, and address that on specifics, then I might reconsider my position wrt you on this thread. Not until.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@InflatableCommenter:
Whatever. You’re a bastion of tolerance and enlightenment, and when people like you are in charge and Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist households are not allowed to raise their own children, everyone will see that.
I care what you think of me about as much as I care what Jerry Falwell’s acolytes think of me. You’re equally intolerant, and you deserve an equal level of respect.
Little Dreamer
In a perfect world, I would ask that those who decided to use, commit and hide torture were at least sent to prison for long sentences but, I don’t think that we should sacrifice a nation to do it. Got it?
If I had been tortured I would expect to know the practice was ended and acknowledged as wrong. That to me is justice (and while I have had my own little ordeals, nothing on the scale of what BushCo did to these prisoners obviously, but I’ve had my ordeals – I recently had those ordeals resolved by someone acknowledging that they occurred and the person who put me through those ordeals was genuinely apologetic and did not realize the pain these things caused.
Now, if I were one of the victims of these torture sessions that occurred, I would never expect Cheney or anyone else in the Bush Administration to apologize for them, simply knowing that the practices were acknowledged by the new executive and re-evaluated and decided it would not happen again, I would be satisfied (along with any medical expenses I needed to make my life bearable, of course).
I do not believe we should tear down the nation to get convictions, personally. I want this nation’s children to have a chance to live their lives with the nation that currently exists, not some fractured piece that creates even more misfortune. The well-being of the country is not a bargaining chip in whether we choose to prosecute. The well-being of the country should come first and foremost.
geg6
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Seems to me, Snuffy, that you are the only one doing the labeling of other people. I’d appreciate it very much if you quit labeling me and start acting like someone who’s even slightly rational. And if not, you really should just quit talking to me. I’m being pretty nice here, for me anyway, but I can start being myself at any time, given the right provocation.
InflatableCommenter
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Oh, so you are just down to personal attack bullshit now?
All this blather and you have never once addressed the only issue I raised with you:
Conventional “christian” education is abusive. It requires stuffing cognitive dissonance, acceptance of disturbing and sickminded stories and parables whose apparent messages conflict with each other, and belief in the entire pile of nonsense even in the face of evidence to the contrary.
If you don’t subscribe to those things, just say so. If you do, own it. Defend it.
But all you can do is keep making this asshole claim that the argument is that “all religious people are child abusers” and then fall back on personal attack when challenged.
Like I said, fuck you. Either you are just doing schtick, or else you are the lying slinger of rhetorical bullshit that you appear to be here.
I overestimated you. You are apparently just another blog crap artist.
Little Dreamer
@InflatableCommenter:
Scruffy gets points for being the most difficult person to try to come to agreement with, I couldn’t continue anymore and decided to not leave the thread angry. He’s insufferable in this argument, and I’m sure that if we ended up with the right wing of the Catholic Vatican (which happens to hold the seat of the pope now, as i understand it) decided to set up new inquisitions, I’m sure Scruffy would be sitting here telling us that to question inquisitions would be intolerant as well.
Scruffy is not serious, Scruffy is doing performance art.
Don’t get yourself all worked up over it, close it down and move on.
The problem with Scruffy’s argument is that he treats his child(ren) as if they are his property and not a person/people with a thinking brain that might suffer a fragile breakdown with the kind of information he wants others to be tolerant about, but you’ll never convince him of that, so it’s not even worth the effort. Let Scruffy’s child be Scruffy’s chattel to do with as Scruffy pleases, his kid can thank him later.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@geg6:
Seems to me you haven’t read the thread, then. I’m not the one who called people with religious views child abusers, and I’m not the one who defended that. So if you don’t want to talk about slurs and labels, stay out of the debate.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@InflatableCommenter:
LOL As opposed to calling people with religious views child abusers, and you calling me an asshole?
You’re a wonderful, tolerant person. You’d make a great Torquemada.
1.2 billion Christians don’t feel that way about it, and unless you have a time machine so that you can go back and disprove the miracles they talk about, you can’t conclusively disprove their religion. It’s rude of you to call them all idiots and child abusers, and if they said the same thing about you, you’d be up in arms about it.
Best of all, you keep defending that comment. It’s worthy of a Jerry Falwell, and you deserve much more abuse than I’m giving you for defending it.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Are people with religious views all child abusers or not? Yes or no. If you say no, we agree. If you say yes, then you’re on par with Jerry Falwell as far as I’m concerned. It’s really very simple.
Please show me where in this thread I have defended the Catholic Church. You’re way out of line, but that’s okay. You also haven’t had any sleep, and probably shouldn’t even be posting anymore.
I assure you, I’m quite serious.
Yeah, fuck it. I’m not backing down on this one.
LOL What bullshit. You’re back to arguing with strawmen. Are you going to call me a Bible-thumper again because I don’t think every Christian, or Muslim, or Jew, or Sikh is a child abuser?
Little Dreamer
Accepting that a person deserves to burn in the fires of Hell for eternity (any person, for any reason, eternal damnation is NOT justified by any means) is NOT “religious views” it’s ludicrous on it’s head.
You attack others, mislabel their arguments and don’t understand the concept of your own religious approach, (geg is right, it’s still accepting of religion, it’s not the absence of religion as Deism would imply) – but you use petty assertions that others here are out to take your children away (no one is) and you give a pass to anything that may be written in the Bible and act like it it has about as much potential to do harm as eating a bowl of soup, and you don’t consider that wars have been fought over such nonsense for centuries. Believe what you want to believe, but you are being an insufferable ass on this thread.
You are not to be taken seriously .
geg6
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
One last time and I’m done with you. I never called anyone anything, let alone a child abuser. But to be honest, I fall into the crowd that sees teaching children religion in any other way except as a curious phenomenon that frightened, superstitious, uneducated, or weak-willed people use to get through the vagaries of life is a complete disservice to that child, much as if you neglected to point out that astrology is not really something you should use as your roadmap to planning your life. So if that makes me one of those calling you a child abuser, so be it. It’s something you’ve brought on yourself at this point since you insist on calling me names and pigeonholing me as somehow being a religionist or Christianist or whatever the hell you seem to think Deism is (which it, once again, IS NOT). Perhaps you need to read up on some of these subjects because it seems to me that you only argue from emotionalism and, at least as far as Catholicism and Deism go, not from any base of knowledge whatsoever.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Krista already addressed this point. I’ll quote her again:
“And there are some people who think that giving your baby formula is tantamount to child abuse. It comes back to my earlier point that people throw the term “child abuse” around way too loosely, and it minimizes the very real suffering of children who are victims of emotional, physical or sexual abuse.
“I do agree that it’s awful when parents terrify their children with tales of hellfire and brimstone in order to gain their compliance. I think anybody here could agree that that is a terrible thing to do to any kid.
“But, to lump in all religious people with the fire-and-brimstone zealots is not right either. And to say something like this:
“Well, that is really offensive, and if anybody said it about atheists/agnostics, it would have us seriously pissed off, no?
“A former co-worker of mine is very religious, very devout, and is a fantastic mom to her kids—she raises them to be kind and good to others, to not take their blessings for granted, and all of that other good stuff. She’s an excellent human being, is accepting of other peoples’ beliefs, and if all religious people were like her, the world would be a much finer place. Do her kids know about Hell? Probably—but I would guess that most of the normal religious people tell their kids that as long as they do their best to be good people, and as long as they apologize and try to make up for it when they DO do something wrong, then they don’t have to worry about Hell at all. Any sane religious person isn’t going to tell a kid that he or she is going to Hell for stuff like fibbing, or being mean to their sibling. I learned about Hell as a kid, and wasn’t scared of it, because I was taught that it was for very, very evil people who hurt or killed innocent people and weren’t at all sorry about it.
“So to say (or to agree) that “all religious people are child abusers” is not only incorrect, and kind of mean, but it does nothing to help religious people be more tolerant of us, does it?”
Geg hasn’t read the thread, particularly where it was said that any form of acceptance of the idea of God was a religious belief. So Geg’s input is meaningless.
Then why label anyone with religious views a child abuser? Do you agree with that? If you do, then you must not want people with religious views to raise children. Or, you’re condoning child abuse.
Wars have been fought over everything, and will be fought over everything. If everyone in the world’s ever an atheist, wars will be fought over other stupid nonsense.
Whatever. You’re operating on a sleep deficit, and your friends are operating on a bigoted intolerance.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Obama’s written that he talks to his children about God; is Obama a child abuser? Yes or no?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@geg6:
I know, and I wasn’t talking about you.
Two points:
a) we’re not talking about me, or my kids, or even my beliefs;
b) you’re on par with Jerry Falwell.
Actually, if you read the thread you’d see that I was arguing with OTHER PEOPLE who were doing that. I was DEFENDING YOU, although I don’t know why I bothered if this is the thanks I get.
You don’t know anything about what I know about anything. You don’t even know anything about the thread I’ve been arguing in.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
I’ll ask again: Obama’s a Christian. Obama’s written that he talks to his kids about God. Is Obama a child abuser? Yes or no.
InflatableCommenter
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Heh. Well, first things first. You are an asshole. You know and I know it. And so am I, and so what? I get paid to be an asshole. But that’s a style thing, not a content thing. I am pretty much mainstream lefty in terms of content, with a few twists here and there that make life and blogging interesting.
But to the real point: I am not aware that I called you a child abuser. Nor did I call people with religious views child abusers. Almost everyone has some sort of religious view, even agnostics and atheists. Those are religious views of a sort. Branding all people with religious views with a general stamp would be a pretty dumb way to ground any argument. You might be having that argument with someone else, but not me.
My position is specific and clear: Conventional, mainstream Christian religious education is basically resting on material that smacks of insanity, and sociopathy. Further, having advanced those toxic ideas, it insists on belief even in the face of evidence to the contrary. I call that abusive … in fact, abusive whether the target is a child, or an adult. But more so if it’s a child, because a child doesn’t have the tools to fight back yet.
And finally, this point, as if I haven’t been clear enough so far:
That question cannot be answered without knowing what he has told them. If he tells them the cognitive cupcake stories from mainstream Sunday school, glosses over the crazy and violent and sociopathic details, and insists on belief in the teachings despite evidence to the contrary, then in my view, he is making a mistake with his kids, yes. It’s not an uncommon mistake, but it’s a mistake.
Kids should be taught how to think, not to believe things that cannot be true despite what their eyes, ears and minds are telling them. The fact that a lot of people don’t get that explains most of what the Republican party is today, and the resulting crap that we rant about here every day.
Little Dreamer
There is a significant difference, other wars get resolved without spanning thousands of years. The only way this war will end is when the Jesus man flies down from heaven and throws a bunch of people into the firey pits of Hell (as Revelation predicts) or man figures out a way to produce that movie all by himself, at the expense of the lives of billions of people on Earth.
The arguments for such beliefs are both irrational, and there is much evidence that the Bible is NOT the inspired word of God (if it was, it wouldn’t be fraught with mistakes).
I don’t oppose people talking to children about God, I do not butt into such conversations, but to teach children that the Bible is the inspired word of God (without even the willingness to study the errors when brought to one’s attention) is ignorance and stupidity.
By the way, you’re not a deist, it’s obvious. If you were, you wouldn’t be fighting so hard to make the points you’re making. A deist rejects that necessity for religion while still acknowledging that a God may exist. You’re arguing from a truly threatened position created by the idea that someone questions the authority of the Bible, and I’ve referenced many errors in this thread, but you refuse to even look at them… yet you want to teach a child that a supposed loving and perfect God wrote those things. Complete and utter nonsense. But you do as you wish, your child, your right to screw up his or her head with whatever nonsense you choose. I just hope this person doesn’t regret you later for your choices.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@InflatableCommenter:
And I’m a lefty too, and in person I’m not an asshole at all.
You defended that comment. It really offends me. That comment is the reason I jumped into this thread- notice, I didn’t say mum for the first 160 comments of Catholic-bashing.
I used to tell that to atheists and agnostics, and I got called an idiot for saying so. And a bigot.
Good to hear it, then. That comment was posted. It’s asinine and offensive. That’s all I’m trying to say.
You may think so. I may think so. Hundreds of millions of Christians don’t. Most of them are decent people.
In other words, it’s child abuse to teach your children Christianity. What about Islam? Does anything make Islam less abusive? Or Judaism? Or Buddhism? Are some religions okay to teach, but not others?
As far as I know, he’s taught them the beliefs of mainstream Christians. Assuming that’s child abuse, I voted for a child abuser to go to the White House (presumably, you did too).
I think Krista already addressed this point. You’re going to pass on some values to your kids- that’s called parenting. If your values are Christian values, it’s essentially illegalizing Christianity to call those values abusive. (Because that immediately implies that Christians should not be permitted to raise their kids.) But as Krista also pointed out, everyone’s going to have their own values, and as long as they teach their children to respect others and that the values of others are different, there’s nothing abusive about it.
Frankly, I’d be far more concerned with an atheist who taught his or her children that everyone believing in religion is an imbecile who doesn’t deserve any respect than I would be with a Mormon, an Islamic fundamentalist, a Scientologist, or a Satan-worshipper who taught their kids to respect the diverse views of their fellow citizens.
Brachiator
@Little Dreamer:
I don’t see that we would be sacrificing anything other than your sense of comfort by prosecuting torturers. What exactly is it that you fear?
Is this your general feeling about crime? Somebody rapes a woman and apologizes and then it’s OK?
This is why we have a justice system outside of you and me. The question remains, why don’t you want it applied?
We return to the issues brought up originally, and correspondences to the Catholic Church issue. You fear some vague, unspecified damage to the country, as pedophile-priest defenders feared some damage to the Church.
But you do acknowledge some responsibility to relieve the suffering of torture victims, which is much, much more than some have admitted to, even among those who would like to see everyone in the Bush Administration prosecuted. I thank you for this.
But just as I would suggest that a religion has no value or purpose if it permits people to be victimized when it should offer them protection, I would also suggest that this country, its values and its Constitution exists to serve the individual, not the other way around. That’s kinda why the document begins, “We the people.” Unlike the noxious formula offered by the GOP in the general election, it is not “Country First.”
By the way, no one expects the world to be perfect. But again, as the Constitution notes, the idea is to actively work for “a more perfect Union” and to “establish Justice.” It is a duty.
The question is, as always, are you and I up to the challenge? It is not often that historical turning points occur in which the average person has a chance to do something which furthers justice. The Civil War, the Civil Rights movement. In France, the Dreyfus Affair, perhaps.
And as always, as the union song goes, sometimes you have to answer the question, “Which side are you on?”
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Open a history book. Study history. Wars have been fought over random European geographical features for longer than there have been Christians.
Some people say so, sure. You and I would call them morons.
Maybe God wants there to be mistakes in there. Maybe they’re translation errors. Maybe they’re in there because God doesn’t care that fallible men wrote in irrelevant errors, while God’s larger message still manages to shine through some how. I don’t know. I’m not going to quarrel with my friends’ belief systems. It’s rude.
Sure, that’s a valid point. But that’s still not child abuse.
No, I’m defending Christianity because you’re attacking it. If you attacked the Koran the way you attack the Bible, I’d be defending my Muslim friends.
And I’ve never once said anything about raising my kids to be Christians. The fact that you keep assuming that anyone who disagrees with you MUST be a Christian only highlights your own prejudices.
InflatableCommenter
I have no particular beef with your last post, except for this one passage, which again tries to take my rather narrow point and broaden it to fit your argument.
First of all, I don’t know enough about the teachings of Islam to argue that point. Judaism, I’d say, has the same sort of flaws as Chritianity, although there seems to be more room for intellectual elbow room there, at least in practice if not in text. That’s just an impression, I am not an expert on Judaism.
Buddhism … eh. Buddhism seems to me to be centered on ideas that sound like a search for truth, not so much in forcing people to believe particular narrow things and not ask questions. Which strikes me as as an intelligent approach. If I weren’t lazy, I might explore Buddhism a lot more. One of these days I might when I have time.
Specifically to your exact reference, I have already stated what I think about mainstream Christian education. About what, six times? With the necessary background. We can either agree or disagree on that point, I don’t see the need to keep restating it.
Little Dreamer
Scruffy, your problem is that you are equating anyone who has ever believed in God to those who believe that the Bible has no errors.
Are you going to tell me that the Bible has no errors? If you say the possibility of errors may exist, then I don’t have a problem with what you believe, got it? You said you believe in an all loving God. How an all loving God could send his creation to a firey pit of eternal damnation is beyond me, but that’s your own problem to wrestle with God. If you are not going to teach your child that absolutely ever word of the Bible is true and good and recommended reading for a child, I am not arguing your choices at all.
The problem is you’ve been figuratively holding your hands over your eyes in this thread saying “nope, I won’t look at any evidence that doesn’t conform with my belief” and that is where you’re wrong. The readers are instructed in the Bible you are defending to read and discern (that means to address evidence that argues contrary to what is written as well). To hold your hands over your eyes and reject any argument that doesn’t conform with church doctrines without even looking at the evidence is ignorance. If you choose to be ignorant and still want to teach your child that the Bible is the inspired word of God, you are doing damage to your child’s psyche. Your child deserves truth, not contradiction, lies and confusion. If you choose to not study the errors, and yet still want to argue that the Bible is perfect and teach your child to open it and read it, you are taking a risk with your child’s cognitive abilities.
Little Dreamer
Oh, and what if Christianity is wrong? You argue any point that someone attacks?
Oh, I see, you think religion cannot be damaging to anyone in any way? Right, I see now. You’re absolutely sure there are no errors in the teachings of that religion, yet I’ve referenced several and since you refuse to look at them, you think you can get away with being correctly arguing your point. You just lost the argument.
Krista
Jeez, I was wondering why my ears have been buzzing — I’ve never been quoted so much in my life. :)
Anyhoodle, I think it all boils down to this:
Raising your kids with religion, or with any other particular value system, is fine, as long as these kids are taught to not hurt others and to respect their rights to have differing viewpoints.
Raising your kids with religion, or with any other particular value system, is wrong if you teach them to not think independently and if you teach them that your way of thinking is the ONLY way to think.
I am sure that there are some parents out there who think that it will be abusive of me to not baptize my kid, as I’ll be putting his or her immortal soul in danger. I vehemently disagree. And there are some people out there who think that it is abusive of a parent to baptize their kid, as they are indoctrinating them into a belief system based on shaky pretenses. Once again, I would vehemently disagree.
Parents have a lot of tools at their disposal. All of those tools can be used for good or for ill. You can make a child sit down in the time-out chair, or you can beat him over the head with it. That does not make the chair good or evil — it is all in how it is used.
The Bible is the same way. If parts of it help a parent in their intent to illustrate a point about loving their neighbour or turning the other cheek, then hey, who am I to quibble? If parts of it help a parent in their intent to scare the living shit out of their child with tales of hellfire and brimstone, then yes, that can definitely be considered emotionally abusive.
But the Bible, in and of itself, is just a book. And religion, in and of itself, is not evil — it’s how it is USED, and for what ends.
So that is why it is flat-out wrong to say that all religious people are child abusers. They’re not. And to say that they are is to make oneself no better than the religious zealots who say that atheists are a danger to society.
Little Dreamer
Yes, because while God is not the author of confusion, none of the sects completely agree on anything, but instead of being true to the God you say you believe in, it’s more important that your friends have the right to proselytize anyone who doesn’t believe in their religion. What about the tolerance I should enjoy for what I believe? What, because your friends are in a more popular sect they should get the benefit of the doubt and I should be silenced? I got news for you, almost nobody is teaching the stuff I discuss. The world should have MORE FACTS and MORE TRUTH, shouldn’t it? Or is the right of the conventional religions to gain converts the only thing that is important here?
InflatableCommenter
@Little Dreamer:
Well, if Scruffy is as imprecise about religious teaching as he is in an argument here, you are not going to get anywhere.
As for Christianity, I think you guys are talking past each other now. Popular xtianity is about cupcakes and flowers, which are stories that are deliberately crafted to hide the ugly stuff under the hood.
It’s a little like labeleing a carton of milk “96% Fat Free!”
Well, whole milk is just under 4% butterfat. So technically, it is 96% other than fat. But whole milk is also toxic to most adults, if consumed in quantity, because that 4% butterfat will turn into a cholesterol problem which can contribute to killing you.
Sure, popular xtianity is 96% insanity free. Maybe, I haven’t actually put it into the mass spectrometer.
But telling anyone, especially kids, that they must believe in stories that are patently ludicrous on their face, and brushing off gigantic cognitive dissonance and apparent sociopathic references and maintaining belief in these things despite evidence to the contrary is absolutely abusive. It’s a lie, and a destructive lie. There’s no way to dance around it with “how dare you” type arguments.
Telling us that not all of these people are doing something bad is a little like saying not all smokers will die from smoking. Or that carbon dioxide is not a pollutant since people breathe it out. These are the kinds of ideas that happen when you tell people that you can believe any bullshit as long as you can tell a good enough story around it. That’s why it’s abuse, because that is a toxic lie.
geg6
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Okay, I lied. I’m not done with you because now you have good and pissed me off.
Scruffy, mirror. Mirror, Scruffy. I’m Jerry Falwell because I think religion is garbage and wouldn’t subject a child to it except as something to understand but not subscribe to. Hmmm, I’m thinking Falwell, if he were alive, would beg to differ.
I have read the entire fucking thread, both last night’s posts and today’s. You were arguing with me. And I don’ t see how you were defending me. I am not a religionist and I have no contact with children, voluntarily at least. So I have nothing from which to be defended. And even if I did, I don’t need an asshole like you to do it.
I know that you know nothing about Deism And I know, because you said so above, that you know little to nothing about Catholicism. And I’m beginning to wonder if you know anything about the Unitarianism I believe you claimed as your religion above. What is quite obvious is that you want to argue something that pretty much most of us in this thread have not really said, i.e., that you are being called a child abuser on the same par as the pedophile priests. Which, from reading the entire fucking thread twice now, is such an oversimplification of what people are characterizing as the “abuse” they allege that I can only conclude that you are arguing with us just because you are some kind of compulsive contrarian or you are just insane. I haven’t decided yet which you are, but I’m leaning toward the insane.
For the record, I am against teaching religion to children except as a subject of academic study but since I don’t have children and the public schools are not currently teaching such things, it really doesn’t matter much. I feel the same way about all religions–no exceptions. I am a Deist, which is not a religion and, in fact, explicitly denies religion’s influence and validity of purpose. I don’t need defended when people attack religion because I don’t have one. I don’t care what stupid shit people choose to believe in the privacy of their own little pea brains. I only care about such things as “faith” when the faithful try to impose it on others or use that “faith” to ruin other peoples’ lives. Or when commenters wield it as a cudgel in blogs in the mistaken notion that continually beating people over the head is a convincing argument.
Little Dreamer
Krista, none of the religions agree on anything, except that there supposedly is a God, he befriended a man named Abraham and the Jews went to Israel. There is a whole lot that is up for interpretation.To argue that they’re all right is utter nonsense.
I am not saying that people can’t believe what they want to believe, but to have evidence presented, refuse to look at it and then say that they believe a book filled with violence, sex, and details of stories written many times by different writers (often referencing the same stories with details that when studied show that all the stories cannot be true), – are you saying it’s not irresponsible to teach a child about religion in that environment? How about if the child learns that eternal damnation and Hellfire is involved?
Little Dreamer
@InflatableCommenter:
Yes, I know, truth is not tolerated, only the continuation of the fairy tales so nobody who believes in a religion can be said to be unacceptable. It’s not a problem if they are in error and believe a bunch of lies so long as we don’t try to correct the record. It’s not a problem that there is very little common belief, much of the beliefs of the religions are disputed and exclusive and they can’t all be right.
The truth will never be accepted.
(and I am not stating I have ALL of the truth, but I got a lot of it and it’s completely opposite of what the preachers are preaching – but got on and enjoy the fairy tales, I won’t point out that there are errors, because truth is not what’s needed, feel good religion is what’s needed.
Funny, for me to be tolerable, I have to be simultaneously not tolerated. I thought this was a place where people discussed ideas.
Go ahead and tell the children a bunch of lies, when these things can be proven easily to be lies, it’s not a problem.
Krista
I’m not going to get into a theological argument with you about the value of religion, as I certainly don’t believe in any religion, and as the ludicrous nature of many of the beliefs of the RC church are why I left it in the first place. BUT, what some people arguing here seem to ignore (although InflatableCommenter touched upon it) is that the vast majority of people who are raising their kids with religion are NOT zealots. I’d venture to say that most of them don’t even look at the Bible. They were simply raised with a certain faith, and think that passing that faith down to their kids, by way of bringing them to church and to Sunday School, is a good way to help instill morals in their kids. I disagree with it, as I think that morals and values come from the parents. However, I think it’s going way too far to say that your average, bring-the-kids-to-church-on-Sunday Christian is abusing their kids by doing so.
Shit, my mom brought me to church every Sunday and I got sent to Sunday School too. First confession, Confirmation, the whole enchilada. But our house was not a particularly religious one. We’d say Grace usually only at Christmas and Easter, and I don’t think we even HAD a Bible in the house. After I was confirmed, I told Mom I was done with Sunday School because it was boring as hell. I continued to go to Christmas Eve service because I knew it meant a lot to her. I no longer go, and she accepts that. Let me tell you, it’s definitely news to ME that I was abused. So like I said, to say that to raise your kids with religion is abusive is a silly statement, because there is such a broad variance between your Christmas Catholics and your Hellfire-and-damnation zealots who scare the piss out of their kids and teach them blind obedience to a certain faith.
Little Dreamer
Well, when you consider that the apostle Paul wrote about half of the “New Covenant”, never met Jesus while Jesus was still alive and you set the parts Jesus supposedly said next to the things that Paul wrote (which are completely 180 degree difference) it comes down to about 50%, then tack on the fact that Christianity attached their “New Covenant” to the “Old Covenant” which was originally called “The Covenant” by the prophet who wrote it saying God said his covenant would never fall and was presented to the Jews as their promise (but Christianity believes they are the new Jews and basically what they have done is hijacked a religion to gain the rewards for themselves) and it comes down to about 25%, then when you factor in that so many people wrote accounts of the same stories with details that could not all be true, and it comes down to about 5%. Then factor in that Jesus spoke both about being the loving son of God who taught us to love one another and who told his disciples to treat others as they would want to be treated, but then he also said that he was there to set brothers against each other and he came to bring violence upon the world and the book of Revelation says he’s going to judge the world and send a large number of people to Hell, I think the final tally is about 1%. The book is filled with utter confusion.
Krista
You sound like a friend of mine, who thinks that it is the height of evil for a parent to teach a kid to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. ;) I say it’s only wrong if the kid finally clues in and you STILL keep insisting that those entities are real. Methinks that when it comes to religion, it’s the latter that you really oppose — the insistence upon belief in the lie, in the face of evidence to the contrary. And if that’s the case, well…I really wouldn’t say that all kids raised by religious parents grow up to be brainless automatons who can’t think for themselves. A lot of them DO still grow up and develop their own belief system (or lack thereof.)
InflatableCommenter
@Krista:
I really have no disagreement with anything you’ve said on the thread, Krista. But this particular blurb always sort of catches me up short.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but what if, say, 25% of those kids grew up to be damned fools who won’t think for themselves. Okay, I made that number up … but it’s about the number of people who believe that the last eight years were an example of America following God’s plan. If you get my drift.
So, is it safe to say that teaching those people, as kids, to stuff thinking, and science, and reason, and go with feelgood ideas instead of reality ….. is abusive?
I guess what I am saying is, if that is not abusive …. what is?
(No, I am not asserting that Christian teaching explains all stupidity. I am just drawing a convenient line between two dots and posing a hypothetical question).
Little Dreamer
@Krista:
Well, I’m not denying what you’re saying about those who are not really involved in religion, but we are talking about a religion here that says a child is guilty for something he will never remember doing because he didn’t do it, and according to the book if he doesn’t do exactly what God intends by picking apart a lot of confusing material in a very confusing book (it’s taken me several years to learn the material I’ve learned, and this is very important material) to find out what God wants (and it’s not all cut and dried) he’s going to burn in a lake of fire forever, that’s gotta be scary as hell for a child.
Little Dreamer
@Krista:
Well that’s all well and good, but when I have a lot of info that could be important and I’m shouted down because I have evidence that the common beliefs are in error, and it threatens people’s feel good religion, I’m the one who is creating problems for others religion. No one even supposes that perhaps I’ve got information that might be valuable and is not being taught.
Where’s the tolerance for me? I got a lot of material people don’t have a clue is in that book.
Yes, I disdain people who insist on believing lies (some of which can be easily shown to be false) and yet, people both want to 1. ignore what I have to say in deference to those who want to believe lies and 2. teach children things which I know (and have proof) are lies.
InflatableCommenter
If religion is taught as a model or one of several models for ways people try to work out an understanding of the world and themselves in it, I have no real problem. In that context, religion is a set of parables and stories not unlike Aesop’s Fables. I don’t think people actually believe that those fables are true stories.
If religious is taught as THE way to see the world and ourselves in it, then I have a big problem. If kids are taught that the hare and the tortoise actually got into a race because the hare mocked the tortoise …. and then that they have to believe this is literally true … then I have a problem.
InflatableCommenter
I think we killed this thread.
Little Dreamer
Question for Scruffy (if you’re still around):
You said you believe in a God who is love. Do you tell your child that he has to just believe in that God and he’ll end up going to heaven or does he have to do a lot of nice things for people first? (Careful, this is a very important question which could send you and your child to the firey pit if not answered correctly).
Little Dreamer
What if at least one of those models contains evil intentions against another religion, do you still have no problem with it?
InflatableCommenter
@Little Dreamer:
I’m a meta guy. Teaching that a model exists and comparing it to other models is not advocacy of the model. If the model is rotten, then that rottenness is part of the lesson.
It’s a way to learn to compare and think critically. That can only be good.
LanceThruster
I wonder when William Donohue of the Catholic League will send out the memo saying this is just Catholic bashing?
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Krista:
Exactly my point. Thank you, Krista.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I know a lot of Sikhs, Buddhists, Hindus, and Wiccans who think you’re full of shit.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
I don’t even have any kids yet. But when I do, I very seriously doubt that I’m going to be teaching them anything along the lines of your hysterical, anti-Christian stereotypes.
Mock away.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
Things I learned from this thread:
1) Atheists are much more tolerant than people with religious views.
2) People with religious views are child abusers who shouldn’t be able to raise their own children.
3) President Obama is a child abuser who shouldn’t be able to raise his own children.
4) Anyone who believes in religion has to believe in the Judeo-Christian God.
InflatableCommenter
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
What an asshole. You just make shit up and keep saying it over and over.
Fuck you, dude. You suck.
LD50
Good lord. You guys need to get whatever the opposite of a room is.
Little Dreamer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Funny, the most basic question regarding Christianity is Faith Alone vs. Works. Since you are defending the Christian religion, the question regards the Christian religion you’re defending.
The Apostle Paul stated that works are not necessary, that all one has to do to get into Heaven is to confess Jesus is your savior and believe (right-wing Christians take this approach and some draw it out to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter what evil thing you do after you confess Jesus, you’re still saved).
Jesus stated one will not get into Heaven without doing the works that he would do (that means to give to the poor, feed people, clothe people, heal the sick).
You have no real understanding of what you’re even defending if your response is what it is. I didn’t make this choice up as some critical trick – it’s the most basic question that people argue regarding the Christian religion. I didn’t start this fight, it’s been going on for 2,000 years. It’s not my stereoptype, do a search of “Faith Alone vs. Works” and you’ll see that people have been arguing this point forever and still are.
Additionally, I did not realize that teaching a child that he should do nice things for people is a hysterical anti-Christian stereotype.
Little Dreamer
@Scruffy McSnufflepuss:
Scruffy, we were arguing the Christian God, which you defended. I was not including the Buddhists and the Sikhs and such for that reason.
If you want to defend those religions in this way, then you have to agree that the Israelite God is quite different from the God or Gods that these other religions believe in. The God of the OT would not qualify for the kind of God the eastern religions believe in, a loving God. The God of the Old Testament instructed his believers to go out to all the other tribes of nations that were in the area and commit genocide.
Furthermore, this thread was regarding the Catholic Christian priests and my entries that you were arguing against were regarding the confusing texts of the Bible – a book that the other religions you mentioned don’t even believe in or use.
You can’t have it both ways without admitting your ignorance.
Little Dreamer
So basically, this entire argument with Scruffy has been about:
1. Someone said something that wasn’t nice so Scruffy decided to get involved in the argument
2. Scruffy doesn’t understand the arguments of the Christian religion but wants everyone to believe he does, even though he can’t cite any of the arguments and doesn’t even recognize the Faith v. Works argument as anything more than “hysterical anti-Christian stereotyping”
3. Scruffy wants to believe that all religion is good, all the time and should be always tolerated, even when these religions defend a ruthless and unloving God who orders his people to kill those who don’t qualify for membership in his organization (the qualification which was race).
4. Scruffy uses bait-switching tactics to win his arguments and doesn’t stay on topic because he wants to believe all religion is always good and should always be tolerated.
We’re done here.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@InflatableCommenter:
The feeling is mutual.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
No. You have no fucking idea what I’m defending, or why. My arguments have nothing whatsoever to do with the specific tenets of Christianity. That’s the exact OPPOSITE of what I’m defending, here. I’m saying that anyone- Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Atheist, Unitarian, Satan-worshipper- has the right to raise their kids as they see fit, so long as they don’t abuse them in some genuine sense and so long as they teach them to respect other religions. That’s ALL I’m saying. You wish I was some kind of Christianist, so that you could get into a squabble about the Bible with me. I’m not, and I’m pretty much out of patience for your bullshit misreadings.
If you teach your kid that no Christian can be a good or decent person, or that they’re all child abusers, then that’s not what you’re teaching your kid. You’re pretty pissed off that some Christians teach their kids that all Atheists are deviants, aren’t you? Same fucking thing, only there aren’t as many of you guys.
I haven’t been defending the Christian God. I’ve been defending the rights of Christians to be Christians without getting called child abusers.
Totally and utterly fucking irrelevant to my point.
Notice, I didn’t chime in until others used it as a springboard to attack everyone of any religious view whatsoever.
Scruffy McSnufflepuss
@Little Dreamer:
Exactly.
I’m not arguing about Christianity with you, because I don’t give a shit. The rest of your point is a bullshit smear-job, but it’s also irrelevant.
Is Obama a child abuser? Yes or no. Others have said yes. What is your take on it?
And yes. We have a tolerant society, so we have to tolerate religious views. If we didn’t, I’m pretty sure the Christians outnumber you guys, and you’d be in a lot more trouble than they are.
And you’re an intolerant bigot who doesn’t think people with religious views should be allowed to raise children. You’re thumping the Bible, too, only your Bible is a Richard Dawkins book.
Good. Fuck off.
SGEW
Well, that was interesting.
. . .