Dwindling Catholic Devotion is a Good Thing, Says Some Catholic

Leave it to Slate writer Harold Fickett to put a hopeful spin on a story about a dying breed. But behind the spin, this article reveals what I've been saying, and seeing, for years: Belief in religion is dwindling, and the importance of religion is also decreasing within the minds of its adherents.

Though the number of young people entering monasteries, convents, and the priesthood has drastically dropped from the mid-20th century, some new approaches to religious vocations have inspired some young people in America to embrace this idea, replenishing several of the older religious orders and filling new ones.

In other words, a smaller proportion than ever of faithful youths are trying to keep the old gray mare alive. But she ain't what she used to be.

The growth in these orders provides a striking contrast to the continuing decline in Catholic monastic and religious life generally. In 1965, there were twice as many religious priests and brothers as today. There are just one-third as many nuns. According to Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University, the average monk is in his early 70s, the average nun in her mid-70s. The mission of many orders has become simply caring for their aging populations as they sell properties and consolidate with others.

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The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles are the most famous example of the combustible combination of the times and the dissatisfaction of many religious. In 1966, humanistic psychologist Carl Rogers led a series of "encounter sessions" with the sisters, urging them to seek personal fulfillment. Within the next several years, the order nearly vanished. In many orders at the time, the vow of chastity was widely ignored.

I especially like the idea of nuns abandoning their chastity vows. How deliciously blasphemous. It's like a bird unbinding its wings and, ignoring the demands of the invisible bird cage, taking flight into the clear blue sky.

Father Anderson says, "We were only a bunch of bums, but by becoming nothing, you can be a part of something great."

Way to go, Father Anderson. Tell us over and over again that the way to worthiness in life is by believing yourself to be a worthless bum. And after that, maybe you can explain to us why drenching oneself in blood will result in a "cleansing." Down is up, and up is down, and like Mr. Fickett says, there is hope for Catholicism in it's current withering on the vine of society. Yeah, right!

Bill Maher and Religulous

Salon.com has an article and interview of Bill Maher for his just-released film, Religious.

Religulous is a documentary similar to one of those Michael Moore films, but instead it's making fun of faith. I plan to see it later this week, and I encourage atheist and theists alike to see it too.

Anarchism, the New Atheism

An excellent post from Anarchy in Your Head entitled, "Anarchism, the New Atheism":

I can remember a time in my own lifetime when freedom of religion was frequently interpreted to mean you could be whatever flavor of Christian you wanted to be. In time, the language of religious freedom generally started to include non-Christian religions. It was still more time before the notion of religious freedom began to include the notion of freedom from religion altogether. Atheism used to be a much more fringe viewpoint, so much so that many people didn’t even fully understand what it meant. Atheists with the courage to speak up back when it was still a largely fringe viewpoint played a significant role in promoting freedom of religion. This applies even to those who, while not atheists themselves, held minority and perhaps unpopular religious views.

...

I see many similarities now in the emergence of anarchy as a personal view. It still appears to be a fringe viewpoint. However, just as I suspect there are and were a number of atheists who didn’t label themselves or desire to speak up and subject themselves to ridicule by a theist majority, there may now be many closet anarchists. The word “anarchy” still means chaos to the general public largely ignorant of the subject...

Go and read the rest of this excellent essay.

The Gerin Oil Anagram

Richard Dawkins wrote a scathing attack on Gerin Oil (aka religion). It promted some disturbed Gerin Oil/religion addict to write Dawkins a very angry letter in response. Interestingly, the ornery theist's letter only seems to confirm Dawkin's criticisms, similar to Muslims who call for the beheading of anyone who accuses Islam of being violent.

Richard's article text:

Gerin Oil
by Richard Dawkins
Gerin Oil (or Geriniol to give it its scientific name) is a powerful drug which acts directly on the central nervous system to produce a range of symptoms, often of an anti-social or self-damaging nature. It can permanently modify the child brain to produce adult disorders, including dangerous delusions which are hard to treat. The four doomed flights of September 11th 2001 were Gerin Oil trips: all nineteen of the hijackers were high on the drug at the time. Historically, Geriniolism was responsible for atrocities such as the Salem Witch Hunts and the massacres of Native South Americans by Conquistadores. Gerin Oil fuelled most of the wars of the European Middle Ages and, in more recent times, the carnage that attended the partitioning of the Indian subcontinent and of Ireland.

Gerin Oil intoxication can drive previously sane individuals to run away from a normally fulfilled human life and retreat to closed communities of confirmed addicts. These communities are usually limited to one sex only, and they vigorously, often obsessively, forbid sexual activity. Indeed, a tendency towards agonized sexual prohibition emerges as a drably recurring theme amid all the colourful variations of Gerin Oil symptomatology. Gerin Oil does not seem to reduce the libido per se, but it frequently leads to a preoccupation with reducing the sexual pleasure of others. A current example is the prurience with which many habitual 'Oilers' condemn homosexuality.

As with other drugs, refined Gerin Oil in low doses is largely harmless, and can serve as a lubricant on social occasions such as marriages, funerals, and state ceremonies. Experts differ over whether such social tripping, though harmless in itself, is a risk factor for upgrading to harder and more addictive forms of the drug.

Medium doses of Gerin Oil, though not in themselves dangerous, can distort perceptions of reality. Beliefs that have no basis in fact are immunized, by the drug's direct effects on the nervous system, against evidence from the real world. Oil-heads can be heard talking to thin air or muttering to themselves, apparently in the belief that private wishes so expressed will come true, even at the cost of other people's welfare and mild violation of the laws of physics. This autolocutory disorder is often accompanied by weird tics and hand gestures, manic stereotypies such as rhythmic head-nodding toward a wall, or Obsessive Compulsive Orientation Syndrome' (OCOS: facing towards the east five times a day).

Gerin Oil in strong doses is hallucinogenic. Hardcore mainliners may hear voices in the head, or experience visual illusions which seem to the sufferers so real that they often succeed in persuading others of their reality. An individual who convincingly reports high-grade hallucinations may be venerated, and even followed as some kind of leader, by others who regard themselves as less fortunate. Such follower-pathology can long post-date the original leader's death, and may expand into bizarre psychedelia such as the cannibalistic fantasy of 'drinking the blood and eating the flesh' of the leader.

Chronic abuse of Geriniol can lead to 'bad trips', in which the user suffers terrifying delusions, including fears of being tortured, not in the real world but in a postmortem fantasy world. Bad trips of this kind are bound up with a morbid punishment-lore which is as characteristic of this drug as the obsessive fear of sexuality already noted. The punishment-culture fostered by Gerin Oil ranges from 'smack' through 'lash' to getting 'stoned' (especially adulteresses and rape victims), and 'demanifestation' (amputation of one hand), up to the sinister fantasy of allo-punishment or 'cross-topping', the execution of one individual for the sins of others.

You might think that such a potentially dangerous and addictive drug would head the list of proscribed intoxicants, with exemplary sentences handed out for pushing it. But no, it is readily obtainable anywhere in the world and you don't even need a prescription. Professional traffickers are numerous, and organized in hierarchical cartels, openly trading on street corners and in purpose-made buildings. Some of these cartels are adept at fleecing poor people desperate to feed their habit. 'Godfathers' occupy influential positions in high places, and they have the ear of Royalty, of Presidents and Prime Ministers. Governments don't just turn a blind eye to the trade, they grant it tax-exempt status. Worse, they subsidize schools founded with the specific intention of getting children hooked.


I was prompted to write this article by the smiling face of a happy man in Bali. He was ecstatically greeting his death sentence for the brutal murder of large numbers of innocent holidaymakers whom he had never met, and against whom he bore no personal grudge. Some people in the court were shocked at his lack of remorse. Far from remorse, his response was one of obvious exhilaration. He punched the air, delirious with joy that he was to be 'martyred', to use the jargon of his group of abusers. Make no mistake about it, that beatific smile, looking forward with unalloyed pleasure to the firing squad, is the smile of a junkie. Here we have the archetypal mainliner, doped up with hard, unrefined, unadulterated, high-octane Gerin Oil.

Whatever your view of the vengeance and deterrence theories of capital punishment, it should be obvious that this case is special. Martyrdom is a strange revenge against those who crave it, and, far from deterring, it always recruits more martyrs than it kills. The important point is that the problem would not arise in the first place if children were protected from getting hooked on a drug with such a bad prognosis for their adult minds.

Now click here to see an image of the afterlife-addict's response (via Pharyngula).

Offspring Murder Club: Prayer Never Ever Works

Prayer never works. Just ask Javon Thompson and 1 Mind Ministries:

Baltimore, MD and Philadelphia, PA - When Javon Thompson died, he was only about 18 months old. Sometime between December 2006 and February 2007, the toddler was killed and left in a green suitcase in a shed in Philadelphia. Little Javon was starved to death by the members of his mother’s cult because he wouldn’t - or couldn’t - say “Amen” at mealtime prayers. Now Javon’s mother, Ria “Princess Marie” Ramkissoon, and four other cult members are charged with his murder.

Queen Antoinette’s punishment for Javon not saying “Amen” was simply to withhold food and water until the next meal, when he was given a chance to say it again. When he couldn’t or wouldn’t comply, Javon got no food and water for that meal either. At no time did Ria Ramkissoon pick up her baby and get the hell out of there. At no time did anyone call for medical assistance. The group watched baby Javon’s eyes go dark. They watched him dehydrate and starve. And they watched him die.

Once Javon was dead, Queen Antoinette put him in a room and told the cult members that God would resurrect the toddler. But she was apparently unclear on the resurrection process, and Javon did not come back to life.

Unclear on the resurrection process? Quite. Specifically, she was unclear that resurrection doesn't happen, and prayer never does shit!

What a stupid bunch of people. Jevon would have been better off if he were put in a basket and floated down a river than left in the care of his own mother, that's how bad Ria's brainwashing was.

Ria made an incredibly stupid series of mistakes. First of all, she believed in and prioritized her religion and her God over her own child (the mere fact that all religions require you to prioritize the faith over your own family should have been a big enough warning). Secondly, she made the mistake of thinking that prayer can somehow override the need for food. Third, she mistakenly thought that prayer could overcome the biological facts surrounding death. For these reasons, Ria Ramkissoon and 1 Mind Ministries are the newest members of the Offspring Murder Club!

Holy shit. A fully grown adult woman was unable to discern the facts of reality and, despite her good intentions (trying to bring her baby closer to God), she was unable to properly care for her baby's life. Indeed, she was the direct cause of the death of her baby. I think some well known words of wisdom are appropriate here: Good people do good things, and evil people do evil things, but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion!

The Offspring Murder Club is only a couple years old, and its membership roster is already bursting at the seams. Why don't we try to convince people to stop applying for membership in this club? Why don't we help spread the word that this is not a good club to belong to? Why don't we teach people to Kill the Afterlife, and kill prayer, rather than kill children?

God the Terrorist

Someone is suing God for making terrorist threats:

A Nebraska Senator who filed a lawsuit against God appeared in court Tuesday and ordered the defendant to "cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats."

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The lawsuit accuses God "of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent." It says God has caused "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like."

Apparently the lawsuit is only an exercise to show some point about frivolous lawsuits, and isn't really meant to criticize religion. Bummer. But it's still funny to see the concept of god being put on trial.

California Invokes God's Wrath

As I was walking back to the office from my lunch break moments ago, I witnessed firsthand God's righteous wrath. God struck Southern California with a magnitude 5.8 earthquake, and it is painfully obvious that He did so because of California's recent legalization of gay marriage.

Unfortunately for God, there are not yet any reports of queer-deaths. It seems that He may have missed, or only have given us a "warning," which means that He will likely strike again with even greater vengeance.

Attention all queer-hating, Abrahamic-religion-believers: What should I as an atheist do now to protect myself from future earthquake-assaults from God almighty? And has God given you any revelations or hints as to when and where he will hit us next for our gay-marriage-allowing ways? Please, please provide a response to these questions in the comments section below. Do it for your fellow human beings that they might be saved from future earthquake-wrath attacks from omnibenevolent God!

LOL Cat Bible

Some LOLCat fans have been translating the Holy Bible into LOLCatSpeak.

Let's take a look at Genesis Chapter 1

1 Oh hai. In teh beginnin Ceiling Cat maded teh skiez An da Urfs, but he did not eated dem.
2 Da Urfs no had shapez An haded dark face, An Ceiling Cat rode invisible bike over teh waterz.
3 At start, no has lyte. An Ceiling Cat sayz, i can haz lite? An lite wuz.

Finally, a Bible that makes sense!

The Godly Smiting of Reverend Timothy Wright

What did Rev. Timothy Wright do to bring about God's almighty wrath? Timothy Wright is a preacher and gospel singer from New York, and last Saturday, July 5th, God stuck Timothy and his wife with a vengeance. Rev. Wright and his wife were involved in a brutal car accident in which another vehicle drove the wrong way down the street and caused a head-on collision with the Wright's vehicle. The Reverend was critically injured, and his wife was killed.

While authorities are still investigating the cause of the accident, God recently announced that it was He who made the accident happen. While He refused to give any specifics, He did tell the press:

"Rev. Wright is a sinner, just like everyone else, and his day of punishment was at hand. In my almighty wisdom and benevolence, I have unleashed massive physical injuries upon Rev. Wright, and in order to ensure that his emotional trauma matches his physical trauma, I smote his wife completely and sent her to Hell for all eternity. Let this be a reminder to you all that even when it comes to preachers, I giveth, and I taketh away."

While speculation abounds as to which sin in particular may have caused God to unleash His almighty fist of omnipotent fury, the Reverend's neighbors reported that they saw him talking to his secretary on his cellphone about business related matters the previous Sunday. According to contemporary Biblical scholars, Sunday is known as the "Sabbath," and working on the Sabbath is a "sin" in the eyes of God.

Both God and Jesus declined repeated requests for further comment, and instead instructed the press to wait for more details which would be revealed on the crispy surface of an overcooked bagel that will be put up for auction on Ebay "in due time."

Faith Fails Again and Again and Again

...and it failed one too many times for Neil Beagley, member of the Followers of Christ Church:

Authorities say a teenager from a faith-healing family died from an illness that could have been easily treated, just a few months after a toddler cousin of his died in a case that has led to criminal charges.

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An autopsy Wednesday showed Beagley died of heart failure caused by a urinary tract blockage.

He likely had a congenital condition that constricted his urinary tract where the bladder empties into the urethra, and the condition of his organs indicates he had multiple blockages during his life, said Dr. Clifford Nelson, deputy state medical examiner for Clackamas County.

"You just build up so much urea in your bloodstream that it begins to poison your organs, and the heart is particularly susceptible," Nelson said.

Nelson said a catheter would have saved the boy's life. If the condition had been dealt with earlier, a urologist could easily have removed the blockage and avoided the kidney damage that came with the repeated illnesses, Nelson said.

Benton said a board member of the Followers of Christ church contacted the authorities after Beagley died at his family's home. The teen had been sick about a week, and church members and his family had gathered to pray Sunday when his condition worsened, Benton said.

In March, the boy's 15-month-old cousin Ava Worthington died at home from bronchial pneumonia and a blood infection.

Her parents, Carl and Raylene Worthington, also belong to the church. They have pleaded not guilty to manslaughter and criminal mistreatment, and their defense attorneys have indicated they will use a religious freedom defense.

The damn kid bet on the wrong horse. Instead of betting on God, and on faith, he should have bet on a hollow rubber tube being shoved up his pee-hole.

Do you understand the implications here? A hollow rubber tube is more powerful than prayer. Faith was called to task, and faith failed epically.

I'm not surprised, and it's a shame that these faith healers had to be surprised. If only they were regular readers of my blog, they would have already known that faith fails again and again and again and again and again...

Offspring Murder Club: California Chapter

When stories like this appear, as they so frequently do, what else nees to be said about the danger associated with the belief in ghosts, demons, and the like?

Some 27-year-old man in California beat his 2-year-old son to death on a rural road before being shot by cops. The man was heard saying that his toddler son was infested with demons, CNN reports.

Sergio Casian Aguilar, 27, parked his truck on an unlit road Saturday night, removed a 2-year-old boy from his car seat and proceeded to stomp, kick and punch the boy to death, authorities said. The boy was unrecognizable when he was pronounced dead at Emanuel Medical Center, the Stanislaus County Sheriff's Department said.

Authorities have not released the boy's name but say they believe he was Aguilar's son. The Stanislaus County coroner and the California Department of Justice are testing DNA to confirm the relationship.

Several motorists called 911 and tried to stop the beating, authorities said.

Dan Robinson, a local volunteer fire department chief, told The Modesto Bee that at first glance, he thought the child was a dead animal in the road. He said when he realized it was a child, he tried to stop Aguilar.

He said Aguilar had a "total hollowness in his eyes" and talked calmly of the boy being filled with "demons."

Witness Lisa Mota told the San Francisco Chronicle that Aguilar told people who tried to stop him that the boy was "trash."

Hey, genius! Even if demons were real, they can't be killed by physical means, right? So what good does killing your son do, even if he was infected with demons? Well I suppose it's like those pigs that Jesus had cast into the ocean, lemming style. He probably thought that the boy would be freed, or would transition to the afterlife, and not have his consciousness totally terminated from any and all existence.

That's what afterlife belief does. It makes the thought of infanticide more bearable because death isn't really death, but just a transition to another life in another dimension. Afterlife belief removes the finality and profundity of death from the equation.

If there's an afterlife, then people can't really "die," can they? And killing your 2-year-old son isn't really an evil act then, but a way of freeing him from demon infestation, right?

This man was a fuckwit and the only shame here is that the cops weren't able to gun him down in time to save the toddler. A 2-year-old is now a victim of afterlife belief.

Welcome to the Offspring Murder Club, Casian.

Jesus' Thought Police

I just found this iReport video of some Kristian Krusaders harassing attendees of a gay marriage ceremony. Listen to the confused words coming out of the guy's mouth with the Jesus shirt on.

He seems harmless enough now, but how much would more it take to get to the point where Kristian Krusaders like these end up having their own anti-gay kristallnacht event?

The Kristian declares at one point that this gay marriage ceremony, where he himself is not getting married, somehow persecutes his faith! Fine. Two can play at that game. Let's assume that this guy's religion is being persecuted by two non-Kristians who are having a gay wedding. Using that logic, it can be demanded in return that all Kristians stop wearing clothes and stop reproducing because doing so likewise persecutes my faith.

If only the government didn't stick its nose into marriage either way, then everyone would be free to recognize or not recognize whatever marriages they want.