Pope Rat and Pedophlia

Over here in America, Pope Rat deigned to talk about the pedophilia scandals that have rocked the US Catholic Church. What he said is very interesting. He said that the Catholic Church would not tolerate pedophile priests. He said that the real problem was the complicity of the Church hierarchy.

Well, what was his position, then, when he was in position to say? When it was in his hands. Well, let's find out. Apparently, in 2001, the Observer newspaper got a secret memo from then Cardinal Ratzinger, a letter sent to every bishop in the world, when he was chief in the Inquisition – the Catholic Church organization which oversees these things. The memo “asserted the church's right to hold its inquiries behind closed doors and keep the evidence confidential for up to 10 years after the victims reached adulthood.”

Huh.

“Ratzinger's letter states that the church can claim jurisdiction in cases where abuse has been 'perpetrated with a minor by a cleric'.”

Huh.

“It orders that 'preliminary investigations' into any claims of abuse should be sent to Ratzinger's office, which has the option of referring them back to private tribunals in which the 'functions of judge, promoter of justice, notary and legal representative can validly be performed for these cases only by priests'.

“'Cases of this kind are subject to the pontifical secret,' Ratzinger's letter concludes. Breaching the pontifical secret at any time while the 10-year jurisdiction order is operating carries penalties, including the threat of excommunication.”

Huh.

So, at least in 2001, Pope Rat was, on possible pain of excommunication, which is the worst thing that can happen to a Catholic and is functionally (in their eyes) a ticket to eternal damnation, ordering church officials to obstruct justice in the cases of pedophilia. Is it just me, or is this not the problem? That these cases are secrets of the Catholic Church, and even the victims are sworn to secrecy under threats of the most dire punishment possible from the Catholic Church?

I mean, if you want, read the memo! It's . . . fucked up.

On page 2 it has a real gem. After talking a bit in Catholicese about how it's the responsibilities of the Church to punish the rapists, they actually advises the bishops (to whom the letter is written) to “transfer him to another [assignment]” if the rapist priest isn't doing the penance directed by the Church! Wow.

On page 3 on bullet point 11, it says that everyone in the Church that knows about the rape, again under threat of excommunication, must forever be silent about the crimes.

It just goes on and on. It repeatedly stresses the secrecy of everyone involved, including the victim, it has creepy stuff like . . . if two witnesses can't be found not only do the accused get away scot-free but all evidence is to be destroyed. I read it and grow more horrified!

On page 11 on point 52, okay, I'm not making this up, it says, “In every way the judge is to remember that it is never right for him to bind the accused by an oath to tell the truth”! I have rarely read such a depraved document.

But, there, that's the story behind the story. This sonofabitch comes here and pretends that everything is nice, everything is wonderful, but he's personally given orders that the Catholic Church is to obstruct justice, swear everyone to secrecy under the most dire threats, transfer guilty priests around.

To me, that memo proves that Pope Rat is a criminal, guilty of a massive obstruction of justice, of massive criminal conspiracy including racketeering. He shouldn't be lionized. He should be arrested.

The Two Sides – Atheism vs. Religion . . . Oh, Really?

In my experience, most folks, when they talk about atheism do so from a position that I am considering increasingly, well, bizarre. It's the position of religion on one side and atheism on the other. What strikes me as bizarre is that ignores the actual way that actual religions behave. Because it isn't really that it's atheism vs. religion, or not just that, it's that it's Jews vs Muslims vs Christians vs Hindus vs all the other mutually incompatible systems that exist out there. Atheism is really just one more into the mix – we reject religions pretty much to the same extent that they reject each other. (This is even ignoring how members of the same broad religion often reject their co-religionists. It happens all the time on this blog - “Oh, but they're not real Christians”. Or Scotsmen. Or whatever.)

Oddly, however, save when they're in the presence of an atheist. Then, it's like they're somehow presenting this unified front to atheism. So, religious people talk about religion like it's this one, singular unified thing with this single, unified worldview against which atheism is its chief opponent. Which is foolish. A Muslim rejects a Christian's worldview as much as an atheist. If that Muslim is correct, the Christian is going to fry in the same grease I do. I don't even know what's going to happen if the truth is that Zeus is up in Olympus shaking his head at how stupid we all are for ignoring his divine power. I guess it'd be Tartarus for the lot of us. My point being that most of the world's religions are pretty mutually incompatible, so it's pretty hypocritical to act like it's really atheism vs. religion. It's more like atheism vs. [a bunch of people who also hate each other's guts, as evidenced by all the religious conflicts going on in the world].

Interestingly, most atheists are also caught up in this – we often forget that people who defend religion aren't really defending religion in a generic sense, but are really defending their particular religion under the umbrella of some generalized, and almost wholly non-existent generalized religion.

What this allows them to do is argue from a position of false generalization. All religious people believe in their god or gods from a very particular viewpoint that is not generally served by the very idea of a defense of religion. The fact that there might be someone, somewhere who has a brand of religion that isn't logically incompatible with rationalism doesn't mean that almost all actually religious people belong to a heavily supernaturalist religion, generally believing in one or more anthropomorphic divine beings to which superhuman magical powers are routinely attributed. But not the same ones, not the same beings, not even the same superhuman magical powers.

Indeed, someone who believes in “god” in the sense that it is the universe, whatever that universe might be, is far closer to the position of atheism than to fundamentalist Christian religion. But it also ignores the fact that public face of religion isn't a materialist pantheist who doesn't believe in supernaturalism and calls the universe and laws of nature god, but largely Christians, Hindus and Muslims who believe in all manner of supernaturalist claims. It's curious that even atheists often let this slide and argue a position that almost no one who engages an atheist in discussion actually holds. They do not defend “religion” in some generalized, holistic sense, but their own religion - after all, almost all of them condemn each other to some form of misery at least as much as they condemn atheists.

So, I think atheists should stop that. We should clearly ask what religion a person belongs to before engaging them in conversation about religion. I think that's fair. It'd be nice to know what you're really talking about, right?

Another little pet peeve in language!

One of the things that vexes me most when getting into discussions about religion is how many religious people will totally ignore that 3/4ths of the world's population belongs to three religions (Christianity, Islam and Hinduism), and talk about how small to fringe religions are as socially meaningful and important as the big three.

It drives me nuts! Yes, I know that Baha'i people aren't particularly crazy as religious people go. Too bad there are only about six million of them. I know that Unitarian Universalists aren't whack jobs. Too bad there are so few of them, then! To act as though these small, politically impotent and socially irrelevant faiths (sorry, all you Baha'i and UU people out there, it's . . . true) are the normal way religion gets done in the world, or America, is nuts. Absolutely nuts.

It is also this total conversation stopper! Because, well, if I was Baha'i or a UU member, I'd be clear in distinguishing how my religion is different from those other crazy people religions out there. I would say, "Well, while it is true that currently religions are parochial and close-minded in large, that does not have to be the case" or something like that. I wouldn't defend religion generally by pretending my tiny minority religion somehow represented religion overall.

But it one of my linguistic pet peeves. How religious people defend the whole of religion by acting like mainstream Christianity, Islam and Hinduism don't exist or aren't particularly meaningful to general discussions about religion. It is a dirty trick that decontextualizes discussions about religion in absurd ways.

Disappointed in Sam Harris . . . by which I mean he's a gutless chicken

I'm not very fast with the news, sometimes. I don't like reading the news, because I feel most of it is just retreaded lies. Even tho' it makes me quite a bit behind the times, I like reading about things in books where people have had the time to actually get data rather than producing copy for the news cycle. However, it has come to my attention that noted atheist proponent Sam Harris has opined about the Democratic nomination contest.

Apparently he supports Barack Obama. The article is What Barack Obama Could Not (and Should Not) Say. It's a fascinating article. I'm easily fascinated by newspaper pieces, but some of this stuff just really thrills me.

Being a reasonably insightful person, Harris makes some astute observations - in particular the extent to which American politicians feel obliged to bow down to fundamentalist religious figures.

The stultifying effect of religion is everywhere to be seen in the 2008 Presidential campaign. The faith of the candidates has been a constant concern in the Republican contest, of course--where John McCain, lacking the expected aura of born-again bamboozlement, has been struggling to entice some proper religious maniacs to his cause. He now finds himself in the compassionate embrace of Pastor John Hagee, a man who claims to know that a global war will soon precipitate the Rapture and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ (problem solved). Prior to McCain's ascendancy, we saw Governor Mitt Romney driven from the field by a Creationist yokel and his sectarian hordes. And this, despite the fact that the governor had been wearing consecrated Mormon underpants all the while, whose powers of protection are as yet unrecognized by Evangelicals.

Like every candidate, Obama must appeal to millions of voters who believe that without religion, most of us would spend our days raping and killing our neighbors and stealing their pornography.

Absolutely true. I wouldn't care about religion at all - any more than I care about various other delusions and fantasies that people have - except for the tremendous social power religion has in America. Including the fact that even very secular candidates like Obama have to kowtow before some religious nutjob. Religion twists the social fabric of America into bizarre knots.

Yet, Harris goes on to say . . .

The problem of religious fatalism, ignorance, and false hope, while plain to see in most religious contexts, is now especially obvious in the black community. The popularity of "prosperity gospel" is perhaps the most galling example: where unctuous crooks like T.D. Jakes and Creflo Dollar persuade undereducated and underprivileged men and women to pray for wealth, while tithing what little wealth they have to their corrupt and swollen ministries. Men like Jakes and Dollar, whatever occasional good they may do, are unconscionable predators and curators of human ignorance. Is it too soon to say this in American politics? Yes it is.

Ignoring for a second that I feel the biggest problem with religion isn't the ignorance and false hope, but the promotion of fantasies above the evidence of one's senses, one's experience and reason (which isn't the same as ignorance - but something beyond it, I feel), he says that religion is run by poltroons for profit, that it's generally bad, it's obviously and demonstrably bad but . . . Obama shouldn't say it. Because it's "too soon".

Man. What a gutless load of crap! This is the problem with the Democratic Party - they're a bunch of gutless fucking wimps that won't fight for what they believe in! I mean, here's Sam Harris, who's career is basically pointing out how horrible religion is - that nothing religion does can't be done better without religion, who points out that religion is organized delusion, that it's responsible for innumerable horrific acts around the world, blah, blah, blah. And this man, this deeply atheist man, this man who in every other way I can find is committed to atheism is willing to, because of Presidential politics, abandon his principles.

To me, that's abandoning them when you need them them most! Here he is, in the position to come out and take a stand, but the stand he takes is, basically, atheists shouldn't bother to stand up for their political beliefs because "America isn't ready". How gutless! Rather than calling on atheists in the Democratic Party to band together to stop this craven toadying to religion, he says America isn't ready.

How long do atheists have to wait? He's not even proposing some sort of plan. He's not saying, "Well, thirty percent of the Democratic Party is atheist or strongly agnostic, and if we gather that energy up into a voting bloc, we can really get something done in the party - really make them notice us." No. He just praises that chump Obama and says we've gotta wait.

He knows the stakes. Not just those profit preachers, but the extent to which America's military actions around the world are guided by religion - fundamentalists just love it that good Christian soldiers are over there fighting Islam. There are lives at stake - thousands, maybe millions, over the next four years. But we've got to wait. Disappointing, weak and hypocritical.

Interestingly enough, the religious right in America doesn't have that attitude. They don't go to their constituents, "Wait." They go, "Now is the time, because now is always the time to stand up for what you believe." And it's worked splendidly for them. So, y'know, in addition to be weak ass hypocrisy, it's also not good advice for atheists to wait. No one gets anything by waiting, not in politics, and everyone knows it.">

Edit: Apparently the Friendly Atheist is also in the camp of atheists who justify voting for a religious man. In this case, it's because he has a gut feeling about Obama. Perhaps that gut is right and Obama is not terribly religious (few Presidents are in any meaningful sense), but that's almost as bad, hell, maybe worse than if he was religion. If he's not religious, Obama's a hypocrite. If Obama won't stand up on this, what else won't he stand up on?

Increasingly, it also reminds me of the utter denial of the anti-war people last time around. I remember, time and again, from anti-war people and organizations such as MoveOn.org how, despite Kerry's words to the contrary, Kerry was the anti-war candidate. It's insane how people are willing to ignore the words and deeds of candidates to invest them with all their hopes and dreams!

I mean, hell, we don't have much of a choice. If you're going to hold your nose and vote for any of the major party candidates, at least say it because, y'know, you're more concerned about Iraq, or health care, or the environment, than you are about religion. Say that, despite your atheism, the religion of the candidate isn't that important. Don't ignore the candidates words and deeds, tho'. That's crazy.

Chav

My new favorite word is chav. Someone used it in a response to me and I didn't know what it was, so I had to look it up. A chav refers to people "who mainly derogatory slang terms in the United Kingdom for a stereotype fixated on low quality or counterfeit goods". What a great word. I can see the exact sort in my mind's eye - some kid with more money than sense mindlessly aping hip-hop culture at the food court of the local mall.

It apparent derives from the Romani word chavi, meaning child. Related is the the word charva which means prostitute. Anyone with real experience with urban culture then should know immediately the deep meaning of the word as a spurious rip-off. A fake. A poseur. Someone who superficially adopts the outwards signs of a misunderstood culture in order to be seen as hip by equally clueless people.

These are the kinds of words I love. Things with Latin and Greek roots and eat me - all those guys who pepper their speech and writing with Latin and Greek words are total chavs. :)

JK Rowling is Crying

JK Rowling is in America to testify on the publication of an unofficial encyclopedia of Harry Potter material, as found here in this BBC article. The case is about this fella who runs a Harry Potter website and wants to use the compiled material from his website to publish his unofficial encyclopedia of Harry Potter-ana.

The article is fascinating. It almost completely ignores the question of the legitimacy of unofficial guides of published material. Hitherto, it has been commonplace for there to be a plethora of unofficial guides, encyclopedias and the like published. Go down to any bookstore in America, and you'll probably be able to find a dozen different guides to Tolkien's works. Go to the philosophy section of any school library and you'll routinely find third party analysis of published philosophical writing that is also copyrighted. Honestly, insofar as I can tell, it's a pretty simple issue. Third-party guides to literature have been commonplace since before the printing press. Which doesn't mean that Rowling is going to lose. She's got a billion dollars, and the overwhelming trend in copyright law is to give more and more power to the owners of copyright.

What I find fascinating is the utterly emotionally manipulative character of the article. So, we leap straight into it. In paragraph two, "She said she had stopped work on a new novel because her legal concerns had 'decimated my creative work'." And then in paragraph three, "'I really don't want to cry,' she said as she gave evidence in her copyright infringement case against writer Steve Vander Ark and his publisher RDR Books." OhmyGOD. Are we really supposed to feel sorry for this billionaire?! I mean, that's what she is. A billionaire.

Well, in paragraph four we get, "Ms Rowling, who denied the case was about money, accused Mr Vander Ark, a librarian, of 'an act of betrayal' in using her fiction as the basis for his guide." It's a guide about HARRY POTTER . So, yes, it's going to use her work as it's basis. That's what literary guides do. They use the literature that they pertain to guide as the basis for the guide. It's sort of like using France as the basis for a guide about France. What else are people who are going to write about Harry Potter supposed to use as their guides? But also note the note of manipulation. It's betrayal. Like these people owe her something? Who betrayed her and what was the betrayal? Especially she she claims it's not, oh no, not about money - even tho' the guide has largely existed on the Internet for years, it isn't an issue until it's to be printed, but it's a betrayal and not about money. Ugh.

And then, "The author said she is not sure if she now has 'the will or the heart' to write her own definitive encyclopedia, the proceeds of which she had intended to donate to charity." So, in addition to again harping on how emotionally effected this billionaire woman is, they have to throw in the suggestion that in addition to the publishers of the proposed guide being horrible people who have badly hurt that nice Ms Rowling woman, they're also going to starve babies. If they hadn't hurt her so, she really, really would have donated the proceeds from those book sales to charity.

It is only in the last two paragraphs of the article, after wading through the rest of that dreck, that it was mentioned that . . . maybe the other side has a point. That the publication of literary reference guides is normal, and if Rowling wins it'll broaden copyright protection to include reference guides to published material. That, despite Rowling's tears that she dabs away with solid fucking gold handkerchiefs, there are actual legal issues to be addressed in this case, and it simply isn't those nasty colonials wanting to betray Rowling (remember, it's not about money . . . even though the very idea of copyright protection is very much about money and always has been, but let's not bring that up, either) but maybe, just maybe, there is an actual legal issue at stake.

Still, I'm pretty amazed at the shoddy coverage and blatant emotional manipulation of the piece. And, more generally, I think it's representative of the sort of free pass that Rowling gets in the media, which is largely responsible for her success, I feel. She can do no wrong. Somewhere along the line, it simply became meaningfully impossible to talk about Rowling in anything other than the most glowing of terms - and if one does chance to dislike her (deeply mediocre) books, it's not that you just dislike her books, it's that you're a terrible curmudgeon trying to ruin everyone else's fun. Likewise, if you do something that stands against the Harry Potter financial empire - an empire of increasingly Star War-esque dimensions - it isn't just a legal proceeding with the other party merely disagreeing, you're hurting JK Rowling's feelings! I mean, go and read the article! It's mostly about how all of this has hurt her feelings. All of this, of course, serves to increase my intransigence towards her on all levels. I think she's a deeply mediocre author that has just happened to be used by publishing firms as a vehicle for them to make a lot of money, so right from the onset she represents what I dislike about the publishing industry. But over and above that, she is apparently a whiny little girl who substitutes pouting for reason.

Religious folks who believe in evolution and why I think they're basically . . . silly

Now and again, I'll get someone who says to me something along the lines of, "Not all religious people are like those crazy people who want to throw evolution out of schools. We are the intelligent, reasonable religious people and nothing like those other people." Then they almost always go on to say that since there are some religious people who believe in evolution it is unfair and/or illogical for atheists to say religion is ridiculous.

A freely concede that some religious people believe in evolution, but the rest . . . doesn't follow. The reason why atheists - or at least this atheist - oppose religion and think it's goofy isn't because some religious people are intellectually dishonest about evolution. It's annoying when they are, and not just because they're religious but because they all too often outright lie and manipulate in order to justify their absurd beliefs. But, really, in any big movement you're going to have some lousy people who lie and twist things around. Atheists have them, too, the mouth-breathers who have read Nietzsche with all the comprehension of a fundamentalist flipping through the Bible, or middle-class kids who just ohmygod love Stalin or whatever.

What really gets me aren't the silly, stupid and unscrupulous people, but the absurd beliefs. Even if a religious person agrees with evolution, they're still believing in some other equally absurd miracle!

I mean, it's wrong to think that their god intervened in the manipulation of genetic material to create human life, but it's okay to believe their god is an omnipotent being that created reality? What religious people who believe in evolution are saying is, "Oh, our miracles are better than the miracles of the people over there. They have silly, stupid miracles, as opposed to our splendid and amazing miracles."

It's daft! The giant sky pixie argument is daft for whatever it is they use it for, equally daft in all cases, because there's no proof that any god exists or has existed. That is the real problem with religion - that on the basis of some generally pretty lousy book people are saying that things you can't see, and make no real sense, are more important and more real than things you can see and things that do make sense.

So, c'mon, guys, just because you believe in religion doesn't mean that you should get any slack. All the miracles are stupid. All of them.