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With such a deluge of stupidity and hate coming from fundamentalist groups and religious zealots, it’s easy to get caught up in all that and begin to generalize.  I just listened to a wonderful interview on Free Thought Radio with Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, concerning Bill Donohue and his reactionary group The Catholic League.

It was particularly insightful because O’Brien was very progressive and tremedously logical, reasonable, and smart.  His stance on religion and the protection of secular society was refreshing and thoughtful, and it reminded me that not all religious people are insane or stupid.  I’ve been so innundated with the barrage of fundamentalist idiocy that rules the airwaves and drives …read more »

Ben Stein is back for more, this time again blaming the Holocaust on Darwin and accusing science of murder. Here’s a tidbit from his interview with TBN founder Paul Crouch:

Stein: Love of God, compassion, and empathy leads you to a very glorious place; and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Sound too stupid and irresponsible to be true? See for yourself:

I do find it odd that Ben was on TBN, a Christian network, since the Jews killed Jesus and all. Maybe what they have in common are their extremist, fundamentalist viewpoints. Fundamentalist Christianity hates science as we’ve seen from the persecution of Galileo to the preposterous idea that Darwin is responsible for the holocaust. If science differs from scripture, they reason, then scripture wins out, regardless of the facts. At least the Catholic church is behaving just a little better lately but it’s primarily because they don’t hold the power they once held. If they did I’d wager we’d see a significant rise in witch burnings and heretic killings. The Dark Ages 2.0, so to speak, but that’s my opinion.

Even the Anti-Defamation League doesn’t want to be associated with this lunacy. They’ve issued an official statement denouncing the association of Darwin to the Holocaust as presented by Stein in his film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed. From the ADL’s site:

The film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed misappropriates the Holocaust and its imagery as a part of its political effort to discredit the scientific community which rejects so-called intelligent design theory.

Hitler did not need Darwin to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness.

Using the Holocaust in order to tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution is outrageous and trivializes the complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry.

I have two schools of thought on how to handle delusional and potentially dangerous people like …read more »

I read an article while I was waiting to get my hair cut a couple weeks ago in AARP magazine that featured a survey of the religious opinions of people over the age of 50. They took 50 people and asked them basic questions about their belief in an afterlife, God, etc. Not surprisingly most of the people interviewed said they believed in God (more women than men did actually) but one interviewee surprised me a bit. This guy said that he did not believe in an afterlife although he went to Catholic church every Sunday and went through all the motions anyway. On the surface he looked just like everyone else but inside he was very, very different. Not surprisingly he did not provide his name for fear of reprisals, not uncommon to non-believers.

This guy was using Pascal’s Wager, which essentially says this: I’m not sure I believe but I’m going to pretend I do just in case. If I’m wrong nothing’s lost; I’m going to die anyway. But if I’m right then I have a wonderful afterlife to look forward to. Some have mentioned …read more »

Good-Time Boy

I found this article on the web today describing the Pope’s visit to the US during which he met with some victims of sexual abuse by priests in the Catholic church. I find this excerpt most shocking:

The scale of the abuse is still the subject of some uncertainty, but the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, which did a study for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, found that 4,392 priests had been accused of abusing 10,667 individuals between 1950 and 2002. The crisis led in December 2002 to the resignation of Law, who was criticized for failing to remove abusive priests from ministry. John Paul II named Law to oversee a prominent basilica in Rome and appointed O’Malley to replace him as archbishop of Boston.

I still can’t wrap my head around 10,000+ victims. That’s staggering. What’s more unbelievable is …read more »

Good-Time Boy

Here’s an article from the Washington Post online that caught my attention today. Here is the most frightening and disturbing piece:

As recounted by former speechwriter Bill McGurn, who was at the meeting, Bush told Cardinal Joseph Zen Ze-Kiun that “the church is the rock — it is the only thing that can withstand the wave of secularization, which says you can kill someone else to make your own life more convenient. He said the Catholic Church must never give in on this.”

This is an obvious attack on secularists with an implicit threat …read more »

Here’s your warning: if you’re easily offended by the “F” word or criticism of the Catholic church then turn away now.