Rachel’s Musings

“Deliver us from Evil” is the title of a documentary that uses the case of one Catholic priest to unravel the whole story of Catholic cover-up of the extend of child sexual abuse committed by priests. According to Patrick Wall, a theologian and former priest, the Catholic church knew that they had a problem with priests abusing children way back in the 4th century, when the first attempts were made to force priests into celibacy. Another report was published (and ignored) in the 11th century. Then in the 12th century, celibacy became official. According to Father Thomas Doyle, a very outspoken critic of the Church hierarchy, the Church’s view on sexuality goes back to the Stoics who introduced the mind-body split (soul and corporeal). Anything corporeal was bad. The Church hierarchy adopted that view. Sex was bad no matter what. It was permissible – though still bad – only if it produced children. Doyle remarks that we need to remember that this kind of anti-sex view produced by a bunch of celibate men is what influenced us all if we grew up in a European-ancestry home!

Wall stressed that about 10% of the graduates of one of the major Catholic seminaries in the US have been convicted as pedophiles (sorry, I don’t recall the name of the seminary). 10%! As Wall rightly points out, if Yale had a similar disgusting track record, it would’ve been shut down! Yet, the Catholic church manages to survive. They’ve paid more than a billion dollars in fines and reparation. There are at least 100,000 victims who have come forward – this is an estimated 20% of the real number of victims. Yet, the Catholic church goes on. How can an institution not loose all its credibility when there is such an extent – both in numbers and in time – of a problem that is systematically covered up? Doyle even blames the very essence of the Catholic hierarchy for this. A priest is considered more valuable than a child, so it is logical to cover up for the priest rather than to protect the child. And if all sex is considered bad, as Mary Gail Frawley-O’Dea explains, it is difficult to distinguish child sexual abuse from adult consensual sex because it’s all bad. The Catholic hierarchy had lost their moral compass – that how Frawley-O’Dea puts it. And after that, they still have moral credibility left? That seems more mysterious than the conversion of a cracker into a piece of flesh! How much has to happen before people will stop trusting sexual advice from people who have pledged not to have sex? How much has to happen before people will stop following moral doctrines from a deeply immoral hierarchy? Only if the priests lose their supposedly god-given power will they stop abusing it.

Robin Wilson writes in the LA Times: “As a growing number of states stand poised to pass interracial marriage laws, they should consider this: It’s possible to legalize interracial marriage without infringing on religious liberty.” Okay. It’s not quite the actual quote. I replaced “same-sex” with “interracial” to point out that the cry for “religious liberty” is really a cover-up for a cry for allowing continued discrimination based on outdated (and sometimes absurd) rules that have no place in a secular world. Yet, despite this country’s claim that religion and state are separated many call for bending over backwards to enable the continuation of this discrimination. The solution, imo: Make legal marriage a state institution. If people want to discriminate in their religion they can set their own rules for marriage but this marriage is not the legal institution. If they want to take advantage of the more than 1,000 legal benefits, they better accept reality and secular law.

Of course, the best solution would be to do away with all those legal benefits that come with marriage and instead turn marriage into the symbolic institution that many people claim it is and stop discriminating based on marital status (or better yet based on conjugal status).

I admit it. I am angry. Not exactly sure what precisely I am angry about but it’s a reaction to a talk Michael Mamas gave at the Commonwealth Club. I think what I am angry about is how he can present such nonsense so authoritatively and get people to believe it. Nonsense? Who am I to say something a DVM espouses is nonsense? Well, I don’t know it for sure but I have a pretty good hunch that his mixture of quantum physics, evolution, relativism, and hope is nonsense. Sorry. The universe is not filled with a consciousness that is in all of us – it is “supremely hostile to life,” a fact that Neil deGrasse Tyson emphasizes frequently. Susan Blackmore eloquently shows that the idea of consciousness is, uhm, a helpful construct but doesn’t really exist. The unified field that physicists talk about is not the same as a soul. And, btw, Einstein did not support quantum physics – and he was the one who came up with the idea of the unified field. It sounds like he later rejected the very idea of a unified field:      Continue reading this post » » »

The Pew Forum presents an interesting chart showing what people think about global warming: If it occurs and if so, what causes it. All this is broken out by religious affiliation. Overall, 71% of the US population agree that the average temperatures are rising but only 47% of the population (or two-thirds of people who agree with a warming trend) think that this is mostly due to human activity. So, one-third of those observing the warming trend think it’s caused by natural patterns. Apparently, they know better what’s going on than the experts… But fully 21% don’t even notice that there is warming going on – I guess it’s cooler when your head is firmly in the sand.

If you look only at the religiously unaffiliated, the percentage of warming by human activity folks increase to 58%, or 77% of those who think there’s global warming. Looking at the chart, clearly religion has an influence on temperature perception and attributed cause. The more religiously conservative, the less likely a person is to notice the warming and attribute it to human activity. Religious influence is endangering our life support system in (at least) two ways: Ignoring the problem of climate disruption (if you think that it’s either not happening or we’re not the biggest contributor, you’re not going to do anything about it) and multiplying fruitfully without regard to overpopulation (the more people there are on the planet, the more consumption happens, contributing more CO2 to the atmosphere).

Did you hear that President Barack Hussein Obama mentioned the unbelievers in his inauguration speech? He said:

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness. We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers. We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.

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I’ve been puzzling over the claim that Christmas is now largely a secular holiday ever since I first read it (I can’t recall where but here’s an example). Secular means “denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis.” Clearly, Christmas has a religious basis. If it weren’t for the claim of the Catholic Church that Jesus was born on December 25th, there would not be a Christmas (there would be other holidays but not Christmas). It does not matter that they usurped other holidays to do that. It does not matter that Jesus was very likely not born that day if he ever was born at all. I find it absurd to claim that Christmas can be a secular holiday. And “secular Christmas” is an oxymoron.
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