There are a million reasons I am not a “believer.” I remain open to the possibility that there is some sort of god, if not the big-G variety, and I also think it would be awfully arrogant of me to think that a human being is the tippy-top of evolution. But I get almost daily reminders of why I think that if there is a “God” out there, humans have for the most part gotten Her entirely wrong.
I stumbled across an illuminating story yesterday (mind you, it’s on a site which I have not fully perused, so I can not vouch for the spin in any way). Please be warned, unless you have absolutely no soul, the pictures will upset you.
Muslim Women Disfigured By Acid – by Phyllis Chesler
I hear the sympathizers now…”Oh, that’s just the work of radicals who misinterpret the holy scripture and twist it into something evil.”
I say bull pucky. From my experience I draw the honest conclusion that those who conduct the most heinous acts in the name of religion are that religion’s strictest followers, those who read the text literally and don’t cherry-pick their favorite parts and forget the nasty stuff.
It’s easy to find news stories about these types of things being committed by Muslims. It’s harder to find quotes about such things, as they appear to be less loquacious. As for Christians, while there seem to be less stories of actual acts (though they make up for the lull from time to time by doing something really outrageous), it’s super-duper simple to find amazing quotes by Christians.
The most highly-regarded Christians, as well as the garden-variety believers, are capable of the most horrifying and mystifying beliefs. And never are they satisfied with following their own paths, they seem to feel obligated (and elated) to drag others onto the same road.
At the top of this icky food chain are the shepherds. Those who lead the flock and advise the President and influence policy and public opinion. Here’s what some of them have to say.
"Sex education classes in our public schools are promoting incest." --Jimmy Swaggart
"AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharaoh's charioteers ... AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals."--Jerry Falwell, 1993
"I'd like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don't turn to God, you just rejected him from your city. And don't wonder why he hasn't helped you when problems begin, if they begin. I'm not saying they will, but if they do, just remember, you just voted God out of your city. And if that's the case, don't ask for his help because he might not be there." --Pat Robertson, after the city of Dover, Pennsylvania voted to boot the current school board, which instituted an intelligent design policy that led to a federal trial
In the middle of that range is Kent Hovind, creator of Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, FL, who claims to have a PhD in something, and is apparently also a self-appointed medical advisor.
[Advice to the daughter of a woman with breast cancer]
HOVIND: One thing is for sure, if you do nothing it will probably get worse. But it is surprising, if you do nothing with cancer your life expectancy is somewhere between 6 and 10 years. If you take chemo your life expectancy is between 1 and 2 years.
WOMAN: They want her to take radiation. And that is my greatest fear. I believe the FDA about as much as I believe in evolution.
HOVIND: There you go. [...] I think the last thing I would do would be to take the medical profession's approach.
WOMAN: Well, that's what I'm saying too.
Truth Radio 27 June 2006 @ 54:40 (Tape 2)
Or how about this gem from the founder of Operation Rescue:
"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good... Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called on by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."
--Randall Terry, The News Sentinel, (Ft. Wayne, IN.), 8/16/93
Then you have the average Joe Blow, who has less time on his hands to think this stuff up, but still manages to come up with some zingers.
“I am a bit troubled. I believe my son has a girlfriend, because she left a dirty magazine with men in it under his bed. My son is only 16 and I really don't think he's ready to date yet. What's worse is that he's sneaking some girl to his room behind my back. I need help, God! I want my son to stop being so secretive!” --quoted on several sites as being from a person in a Christian chat room
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”--Ann Coulter, journalist (sort of)
And then there’s the good ole Word itself. I’ve never understood the willingness of some folks to disregard the parts they don’t like, yet tout the validity and holiness of the whole.
How this god treats women…
“If no proof of the girl’s virginity can be found (no cloth with vaginal blood provided by her father) she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house, the men of her town shall stone her to death. You must purge the evil from among you.” --Deuteronomy 22:13-21
"Samaria shall become desolate; for she hath rebelled against her God: they shall fall by the sword: their infants shall be dashed in pieces, and their women with child shall be ripped up." --Hosea 13:16
…and babies and children…
“Wail, for the day of the Lord is near; it will come like destruction from the Almighty. Their infants will be dashed to pieces before theirs eyes; their houses will be looted and their wives raped. Their bows will strike down the young men; he will have no mercy on infants nor will he look with compassion on children.” --Isaiah 13:16
“This is what the Lord Almighty says: ‘Go, now, and attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death every man and woman, child and infant, cattle, sheep, camels and donkeys.’" --1 Samuel 15:2
"So we cooked my son and ate him. The next day I said, ‘Give up your son so we may eat him.’ But she had hidden her son." --2 Kings 6:29
I’m just not inclined to feel such a god is worthy of worship. God should be better than me, and so should the “Word” attributed to God. And most definitely, the actions committed in the name of God should not have anything to do with throwing acid or eating people. Call me crazy.
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Comments
First, there is a difference between doing something, and talking about something. The fact is that whatever wacky things some Christians might say, they are not throwing acid on women, flying planes into buildings, sending terrorist teams into Mumbai to shoot down innocent people, bombing hotels, killing young people who have sex, and so on. Of course if you look hard enough you can always find a Christian who is doing some awful thing, but it is not typical of the religion as a whole.
If you want to talk about atrocities, nothing can match the officially atheistic countries. Stalin's Soviet Union, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia are guilty of atrocities on an industrial scale, in comparison with which the atrocities of religious people are barely a blip on the radar.
Second, Jimmy Swaggart is not exactly "highly-regarded," nor is Kent Hovind, and the others you mentioned are protestant fundamentalists. Jerry Falwell is dead you may have noticed, and the quotation from him is 16 years old. Ann Coulter claims to be a "Christian," but is unable to articulate any particular church involvement. Randall Terry is on the far right fringe, and certainly is not the average Christian, nor is his 16 year old quotation representative of typical Christian theology.
Notably missing from your list is any Christian (or Jew) who ever did or said something nice. People such as Mother Teresa, Albert Schweitzer, Elie Wiesel, Martin Luther King Jr., etc., are totally missing in action.
And then we come to the Bible. Conveniently not mentioned in your post is the little fact that neither Christians nor Jews are eating people, stoning them to death, and so on. Missing from your list is any and every biblical passage dealing with caring for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger, a list that would be difficult to compile because it would be so long.
You complain about people who "cherry pick" the "good" parts, and you proceed to "dirt-pick" all the "bad" parts.
Your post proves that one can dredge up old quotations from dead or discredited right-wing ministers and others, extract obscure Bible passages out of context, and intentionally ignore everything that doesn't support your point. Which leads me to this question: what exactly is your point?
I might, in fact, conclude that many business people these days would almost count as examples of this. Those that pray to Ayn Rand, for example, have constructed for themselves almost a religion, and one that promotes a doctrine perilously close to “consequences to real people matter.” The irony is that many of these people purport to be religious, so you have to sift that data pretty carefully. Certainly it argues that religion is insufficient to hold people back or else that you have to evolve a more elaborate theory of which of several religions dominate.
Your assertion that there's a lack of listing people who ever did anything nice also implies that it would be of no import to find that there are nice atheists. The real question is what statistical distribution of Good/Bad there is in religious/non-religious contexts, if that were a meaningful question to ask. Whose definition of Good/Bad, for example. :)
(I heard once, I don't know if it's true, that Amazon, when people criticized it saying it was recommending things they didn't like ultimately decided that it knew better than the people what they did and didn't like. That is, that their predictions about what people would buy were more statistically accurate than the person's own guess. It calls into question the definition of “like”. Whether or not it's true, it might be worth a similar analysis of people's religion and/or faith to really sort this out because maybe alleged religious really aren't. But the practice of classifying this way would be controversial, and moreover it's not clear it could be done objectively because the fundamentalism question would come immediately into question: Are most people not religious because they pick and choose their requirements (omitting the bloodthirsty ones) or are most religious because they conform to variations on what God allegedly asks of them. That's a very personal question that makes it hard to classify religion, and that reminds us religion is a personal choice. But it certainly makes a mess of the ability to analyze the data.)
I think the real value in a piece like Dayna's is not to say “this is true” or to have you say “this is not so clear” but to have the people about whom this is written say “Oh, goodness, might this be true? I must watch myself better and think more about this.” It's doubtful it will happen that way, of course. And hence the frustration. Having to answer for bad things is something that is kind of an intrinsic good, I think. There may be an answer, but the mode of your reply is to pick at the question rather than to say that perhaps this is a legitimate question and we should answer it even in the ragged and unscientific way it is asked.
But certainly we can all look to this analysis and say that whenever anyone talks about making a governmental body founded on religion (something routinely suggested in American policy and something actively sought by numerous groups), we should think quite carefully about whether that will bring the Good it seems on paper like it might ought to. That's why we have separation of Church and State. For all the Republicans love to talk about the founding fathers, the truth is that many fled their home countries to be in the US so that they couldn't be told by some very religious government how to conduct their own religion. That isn't an attempt to get to a religious state, but an attempt to get away from one. Not away from religion, but away from religious states.
Myself I’m less concerned about the quotes from the radicals and more concerned about the mainstream.
We see an endless parade of mainstream Muslims and Christians protesting those things they find “offensive” to their religions. Cartoon images of Muhammad, gay marriage, abortion, atheist bus campaigns, etc. They picket, they protest, they urge their comrades to boycott companies.
What we don’t see are an endless parade of mainstream Muslims and Christians protesting when the pope promotes the spread of AIDS in Africa by deliberately spreading the falsehood that the use of condoms will increase the spread of HIV. Where were the protesters? Not outside the Vatican.
What we don’t see are an endless parade of mainstream Muslims and Christians protesting at Ann Coulter’s book signings.
What we didn’t see was an endless parade of mainstream Christians urging their comrades to boycott any tv and radio stations playing the hate speeches of Falwell or Swaggart.
What we didn’t see was an endless parade of mainstream Muslims protesting the 9/11 attacks and explaining exactly how their faith did not condone this action.
What we did see was an endless parade of mainstream Christians stating here on OS and in a plethora of other sites who claim they could see the righteousness of the murder of Dr. Tiller by Scott Roeder.
What we do see is an endless set of complaints like one you received to this post. Dogmatic defense mechanism with no introspection.
When the mainstream religious start taking their de facto leaders to task, the rest of us won’t have to fill that void.
Rated.
My point is that Christians and Jews aren't doing the kinds of things that the "proof-texts" cited in this post might indicate. Christians and Jews aren't slaughtering Amalekites. They aren't stoning people to death. Some of the passages aren't even commandments to do those things; they are prophetic descriptions of what would happen to "wicked" nations.
The quotations by what are called Christian "leaders" all happen to come from people who are on the political far right. I would argue that their statements are driven more by political views than by religious views. In other words, someone such as Pat Robertson has much more in common with non-Christians Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage then he does with millions of moderate or liberal Christians. I've actually seen a right-wing Eastern Orthodox web site that spoke favorably of Ted Nugent and Ayn Rand, two people about as far from traditional Christianity as you could get.
Kent: "Your assertion that there's a lack of listing people who ever did anything nice also implies that it would be of no import to find that there are nice atheists."
Of course there are nice atheists, and it would be wrong to assume that Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot exemplify all of atheism.
Mark writes: " . . . What we don’t see are an endless parade of mainstream Muslims and Christians protesting at Ann Coulter’s book signings," etc.
That's because abortion, gay marriage, and other social issues are things on which people feel they can have an influence. They are active issues that they can vote on or appeal to their elected representatives. Protesting papel pronouncements, or Ann Coulter's attention-seeking would be waste of time.
Mark: "What we did see was an endless parade of mainstream Christians stating here on OS and in a plethora of other sites who claim they could see the righteousness of the murder of Dr. Tiller by Scott Roeder."
Non-Christian drug abuser, cigar-smoking, viagra-toting hedonist Rush Limbaugh called Tiller "Tiller the Killer." A lot of this stuff is more related to right-wing politics than it is religion. To a significant extent, conservative Christians have gotten in bed with right-wing political leaders. The result is a kind of bastard child in which these so-called Christians have contempt for the poor and talk about how Jesus doesn't like labor unions. I would say that this represents a perversion of Christianity, not something that is inherent in Christianity.
One a more general note, I would say that I'm always stunned when people mention Christian fundamentalists and Islamic terrorists in the same post. It's like comparing lemons to land mines. Many conservative Christians don't think that gays should be allowed to be married. Many conservative Muslims don't think that gays should be allowed to live.
This is actually what gay author Bruce Bawer found. He went to live in Holland in order to get away from Christian fundamentalists, and found in Holland a far worse kind of Islamic fundamentalism. There is a worldwide movement of violent Islam that has launched terror attacks throughout many countries. There is nothing remotely like that in the Christian world.
I agree. The Pope is a far more dangerous and sadistic character than any Muslim fundie. His lies about condom use will kill more people in Africa than the terrorists responsible for 9/11 could even dream of.
No they did it because of the second fucking commandment. The same stupid reason that they went on a murderous rampage about the danish cartoons and the same stupid reason Christians destroyed pagan idols.
Some would have you believe that the religous are capable of picking out the good from the bible while leaving the bad behind, but I call bullshit. The commandments are pretty clear and are probably the only writings from any scripture that all three of the monotheisms agree to be the direct word of their deity. If they can fuck that up they can fuck up anything. If they are misreading a commandment then ANY reading of ANY part of the bible is subject to doubt.
Well nbf, I can see you've thought this through. What do you think bin Laden uses? He uses words. Specifically the words of Muhammad, and he specifically aims them at believers.
Exactly what the pope did. He used words and aimed them specifically at believers. Thousands will die and suffer as a result.
You can use as many ad hominem arguments as you want against me, but to be taken seriously you should lay out your own arguments (if you actually are trying to make a point). And BTW I was using sarcasm in my response to mishima, in case you are unable to pick up on the subtlety.
I see no value in trying to rank the evilness of the ‘bad’ elements of religions and was simply trying to point out the absurdity of trying to promote one’s religion as being better simply because the worst parts of it are not as bad as the worst parts of another.
NBF, as I admitted, I have zero understanding of the nature and doctrines of buddhism. You brought up buddhism, not me.
My comment about the pope was in response to another commenter who wanted a distinction made between the worst of Islam and the worst of Christianity. I think that is nonsensical.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that the pope's teaching on condoms is totally wrong -- wrong in its details, in its summary, wrongheaded, wrongly argued, etc.
In order to blame the spread of AIDS on the pope you'd have to assume that someone who ignores his teaching on sex outside of marriage is going to follow his teachings on condoms. It seems to me that's kind of like saying that someone would follow the pope's teaching on shoplifting, but not on armed robbery. Be that as it may, it is still the individual's choice to have sexual relations outside of marriage, and not to use a condom.
Even when condoms are freely and easily available many choose not to use them. There are over a million cases of sexually transmitted disease annually in the U.S.. In 2007 the Centers for Disease Control reported over 16,000 new cases of AIDS among male homosexuals. This is a population that has literally been bombarded with information on AIDS and condoms for years, and yet many do not heed the warnings. Short of forcing gay men to use condoms at gunpoint, I'm not sure what more could be done. But people are free to do what they want. In the U.S. the great majority of Catholic married couples simply ignore the church's teaching on birth control, condoms included.
But my main point is that however wrong, misguided, or misinformed the pope might be, I don't think anyone would claim that he's actively trying to kill people, unless you think he's HIV positive and out tom-catting at night, having unprotected sex with people.
Compare that with Islamic terrorists. Their goal is actually to kill people, and to kill as many as possible. They plan for it, train for it, intentionally do it, and rejoice when it happens.
So if you think there is no difference between the pope and Islamic terrorists, I would ask this: would you rather endure a papal lecture on condoms, or would you rather be blown to pieces by a suicide bomber? I know what I would choose, but you may have a different preference.
The pope did not just reiterate the church’s stance on the morality of condom use; he went much further than that. He claimed that the distribution and usage of condoms would aggravate or increase the proliferation of AIDS. He lied. He is attempting to use fear to influence the behaviour of others. Sound like a definition of anything to you?
Mishima says “In order to blame the spread of AIDS on the pope you'd have to assume that someone who ignores his teaching on sex outside of marriage is going to follow his teachings on condoms.”
That is just flat out wrong and even a little disingenuous. It is wrong on two fronts.
The first, being that it ignores consequences. The consequence for a good catholic for having sex outside of marriage is the need for repentance. It was the same for using a condom. Now the pope has escalated the consequences of using a condom to include AN INCREASED risk of AIDS. That surely will influence at least some.
The second, being that it ignores that there are many other victims in other scenarios (some not even involving sinners) where the pope’s lie has influence. Imagine a pious catholic married woman whose husband had a sordid past. She now feels that she would be more likely to get sick if she uses a condom than if she doesn’t. Imagine as well the poor married couple in the refugee camps. No money, no access to medical care, convinced by their pope that they are more likely to get AIDS by using a condom, so they don’t. The result; another unwanted baby dying of malnutrition.
Mishima jumps to the pope’s defense with the following “But my main point is that however wrong, misguided, or misinformed the pope might be, I don't think anyone would claim that he's actively trying to kill people”. Again wrong on two fronts.
The first, while he is wrong, the pope is not misguided or misinformed, and even if he was, he has the resources to get informed before making such dangerous statements. He deliberately ignored fact and acting on dogma.
The second, that’s not the way the law works and it is not the way most people base their morality either. If you are in a position of power or influence, and your actions or inactions cause others to die, you are culpable. Just as when you crawl behind the wheel of a car when drunk and you kill a pedestrian you are culpable even though you weren’t actively trying to kill people.
Mishima’s closing question was “would you rather endure a papal lecture on condoms, or would you rather be blown to pieces by a suicide bomber”. What a ridiculous false dichotomy. I might just as well ask “would you rather endure a Muslim lecture on abortion or would you rather be Dr. Tiller in his church with his back turned to another Christian like Scott Roeder”.
The real question(s) should be: would I rather be the pious catholic wife killed by dogma or the Jew in the marketplace killed by dogma? Would I rather be the poor dead malnourished baby killed by dogma or the businessman in the towers killed by dogma.? I would rather neither I nor any of these victims is affected by dogma or effected by the dogma of others.
As I said before, I think it is nonsensical to place these acts on some sort of scale of barbarity and to judge their dogmas as a result. However if one were to force the issue I would propose the following thought exercise:
Think of a child killed (by violence, neglect or inaction) by the following people:
a stranger; a care giver (nanny/guardian/teacher); a parent.
And then order them from lowest to highest in terms of how egregious the crime is.
I think most would end up with pretty much the order as listed. We are more repulsed when people we trust, people who are supposed to care for someone breaks that covenant.
Now ask yourself, who self-proclaims to be, and who is more likely to be described as, a guardian or father, bin Laden or the pope?
Would you prefer your terrorists to announce themselves so you know who they are? Or would you prefer they come to you disguised as a shepherd?
I would pick being sent to Vatican City. And my rationale is very simple. I’m not a target of the terrorism exerted by the Vatican. I am a target of the fundamentalists who may or may not be present at those other locations. How do I know this? For the same reason you were able to pick those locations. Those fundamentalists have explicated said they are at war with people of my origins and beliefs.
Instead of making a game of it, I’ll come right out and ask you directly. How do you judge the relative severity of different forms of terrorism? Is it by the number of innocents who suffer? The randomness? The degree of violence? The level of despair the victims suffer? The betrayal the victims may have felt? By how much the victims resemble you?
I don’t feel like putting the various forms of terrorism on a scale. I prefer to just point them all out and deal with the root causes if we can. And I will reemphasize my point that moderates within these groups need to do their part to control the radicals. Silence does not accomplish that.
Show me a single point where I defend radical Islam or even Islam for that matter. I fail to see how pointing out the failings of one faith in any way props up the validity of another.
I would propose that by your criteria we could eliminate all monotheisms and be better off. And I would agree whole heartedly.
I will repeat for the last time, my position and my reason for pointing out the pope’s shortcomings was simply to point out the stupidity of arguing the relative merits of any faith by the degree to which you may classify the vileness of its terrorism. It is like arguing about the relative enjoyment of tasting food by the degree to which its waste smells. If you disagree so be it.