Miscellanea Agnostica

Conservative columnist Rod Dreher wrote a piece for USA Today’s “On Religion” blog which is about as reprehensible a piece of journalism as I have ever seen. He actually believes that, because knowing the truth about a religious organization can break its followers’ faith, it is best for them to know nothing about that group’s corruption (in the piece, he speaks here of Father Richard John Neuhaus, a Catholic priest who vociferously defended his Church over its cover-up of the priestly-pedophilia scandal some years ago):

The details of the Catholic sex abuse scandal nearly destroyed my Christian faith. In a painful spiritual epiphany, I learned that the whole truth does not always deliver a greater good. …

Are there things people don’t need to know? I do not believe Father Neuhaus was a cynic; he really did believe that there were certain things that ought to be concealed from the public for the greater good. And though it might be heresy for a journalist to say, as a matter of general principle, I agree with him.

Here is the comment I posted, in response, on that blog entry:

It is staggering that a journalist could actually argue that an active cover-up of definitely-immoral and possibly-illegal activity, within a large multinational organization — with complicity going on at all levels of said organization — is actually a good thing.

Sorry but I do not get it. Dreher needs to resign as a journalist and never work in that field again, if he truly believes this. Moreover, any religion that demands its believers never question it — as Dreher believes the Catholic Church requires, and which he believes to be a spiritual benefit to its followers — is not one to which any moral human being ought belong.

It’s absolutely pathetic the depths people will dive into, in order to maintain and rationalize their religious beliefs. If religiosity can overcome a journalist’s own desire to uncover the truth of human affairs, then it is something that humanity can and must reject and learn to do without. Immediately.

The government of Argentina has looked into the raving lunatic Bishop Richard Williamson, and decided he no longer should be in their country, as CNN reports:

Bishop Richard Williamson, who last month denied the existence of the Holocaust in an interview with Swedish television, was ordered Thursday to leave Argentina within 10 days, the Ministry of Interior said.

“The bishop has repeatedly forged the true motive for his stay in the country, having declared that he is an employee of ‘La Tradicion’ Civil Society when, in reality, his true activity was as priest and seminary director of the Society of Saint Pius X in the neighborhood of Moreno,” Interior Minister Florencio Randazzo said in a written statement. …

“Williamson has had public notoriety following his anti-Semitic statements to Swedish media in which he questioned whether Jewish people were victims of the Holocaust,” Randazzo continued.

“For these reasons, along with the strong condemnation from the Argentine government of how statements like these harm Argentine society, the Jewish community, and all of humanity by trying to deny a historic truth, the national government has decided to demand that the Bishop leave the country or be expelled.”

Please note the initial reason given for Williamson’s expulsion: that he had come to Argentina under false pretenses. How nice of a Catholic bishop — someone whose morals, ethics and conduct should be above reproach — to have defrauded a country in his immigration papers. I’m not quite sure why a Catholic cleric, even an excommunicated one, would have needed to conceal his affiliation in a Latin American country, since the Roman Catholic Church has a massive presence in that part of the world, and lots of controversial clerics live there. It might have made more sense, had he done so in a country hostile to the Catholic church or to religious folks generally, such as China.

Given no apparent reason for his dishonesty, one must again wonder what it is that the Vatican sees in Williamson.

One would think that the United States in the 21st century is immune to phenomena such as honor killings — but that, as it turns out, is just not the case (as Reuters reports):

The founder of a U.S. Muslim television network has been arrested and charged with murdering his wife by beheading her, the network’s Web site and local media reported.

Muzzammil Hassan, founder and CEO of Buffalo, N.Y.-based Bridges TV which launched in 2004 with a mission to show Muslims in a more positive light, was charged after reporting the death of his wife, Aasiya Hassan, 37, on Thursday night.

After Hassan, 44, told police his wife was at the Bridges TV offices, in the village of Orchard Park, they found her body there, beheaded, The Buffalo News reported.

Hassan, notably, is originally from Pakistan, that hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism which recently capitulated to the Taliban and will be making the barbaric shari’a law legal. An added irony here is that Hassan had founded his TV network as a way of making Islam look good to Americans. Too bad he managed to live down to everyone’s expectations.

The situation is worse than we’d thought, about Bishop Richard Williamson. He might already sound like a Holocaust-denying kook, but as this New York Times Lede blog entry reports, his views are even loonier than that. Among them:

Read the Lede blog entry for details on all of these, and also to see Williamson denying the Holocaust on Swedish television.

I’m not sure what’s worse, that he’s as insane as he sounds, or that there is actually an organization that ever made this guy a bishop (as schismatic Archishop Lefebvre and the SSPX did).

By now you’ve probably heard about the Holocaust-denying erstwhile-renegade Catholic bishop who, a few weeks ago, was reinstated into Catholicism by the Vatican, along with the rest of the group known as the Society of St Pius X. The SSPX (as it has been acronymed) was founded in opposition to a number of the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and therefore was an ultra-conservative group. The reconciliation between the Vatican and the SSPX last month had been the culmination of many years of negotiation and discussion.

Bishop Richard Williamson, originally from the UK but living and working more recently in Argentina (not coincidentally, Latin America tends to be ultra-conservative in its Catholicism, thus the SSPX had been at home there) has denied the Holocaust on multiple occasions, and very publicly. This speaks to the heart of the rift between the SSPX and the Roman Catholic Church, because one of the canons of II Vatican to which the renegades had objected, had been the doctrinal denial of collective Jewish guilt for the crucifixion of Christ. While the SSPX did not make much of this particular aspect of the Vatican reforms, it did acquire something of a taint of anti-Semitism nonetheless — an accusation which the group has denied, but cannot seem to shake, especially since the Holocaust-denier Williamson ranked so highly in their organization.

In its effort to reconcile with the SSPX as a group, the Vatican appears not to have investigated the individual members of SSPX, though, since it was caught off-guard over Williamson’s Holocaust denials. After a couple weeks of trying to act as if there was no controversy, the Vatican finally ordered Williamson to recant his Holocaust denials, as the Boston Globe reports:

The Vatican, facing the biggest controversy to confront the papacy of Benedict XVI, yesterday called on a bishop who has denied the extent of the Holocaust to recant his views. …

The Vatican’s action yesterday came in the form of a statement from its secretary of state’s office. The statement said that Benedict was unaware of Williamson’s comments — some of which were made recently on Swedish television, but some of which date back much further — when he decided to lift the excommunication. The statement also said that in order for the Society of St. Pius X to be fully reconciled with the Vatican, it must accept the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, which include the church’s renunciation of anti-Semitism.

Sounds good, but to date, Williamson has not done so, and is resisting having to do so, as Deutsche Welle reports:

A bishop recently rehabilitated by Pope Benedict XVI said he want to “examine the evidence” of the Holocaust before possibly recanting his statement that no Jews died in Nazi gas chambers, a German newsmagazine reported.

Even as Vatican officials were working to control the damage caused by Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to rehabilitate a Richard Williamson, a bishop who denied the Holocaust in an interview, with papal meetings and inter-faith dialogue, Williamson told Germany’s Der Spiegel news weekly he needed time to scrutinize data surrounding the Holocaust.

Note that this rhetoric is very typical of Holocaust-deniers. They frequently claim to have “examined the evidence” but they are simply not persuaded by it; if anyone gives them more evidence — they claim — they are certainly willing to change their views. Only they never do — no matter what evidence they’re given. Thus, they posture as though they are somehow “open-minded,” but never actually behave as though they are.

But Williamson was not directed by the Vatican to re-examine the evidence and reach a new conclusion; rather he was told explicitly and plainly to repudiate his Holocaust denials and reject anti-Semitism. He is not obeying the Pope. As a clergyman newly restored to the Church’s graces, it is a violation of his vows as a priest not to obey.

This in turn led SSPX to fire him from the seminary they’d set up, as the BBC reports:

An ultra-traditionalist British bishop who denies the Holocaust has been removed from his post as the head of a Roman Catholic seminary in Argentina. …

In a statement, the head of the Latin American chapter of the Society of St Pius X, which runs the seminary in La Reja, said Bishop Williamson had been relieved of his position as director.

My guess is that the SSPX, newly accorded with the Vatican, will dump Williamson altogether, unless he stops being a good little Holocaust denier, because right now the SSPX’s standing depends on his doing so.

Sure, the ferocious fundamentalist Muslim cadre known as “the Taliban” led by the one-eyed freak Mullah Omar — has been out of power in Afghanistan since late 2001, but they’ve made a resurgence over the last couple of years, and let’s be honest, their hyperfundamentalist mentality hasn’t remains in place, as vigorous as it was back when the Taliban were welcomed by Afghans as their rulers back in the ’90s:

No one knows who brought the book to the mosque, or at least no one dares say.

The pocket-size translation of the Quran has already landed six men in prison in Afghanistan and left two of them begging judges to spare their lives. They’re accused of modifying the Quran and their fate could be decided Sunday in court.

The trial illustrates what critics call the undue influence of hardline clerics in Afghanistan, a major hurdle as the country tries to establish a lawful society amid war and militant violence.

So while the country has a new government — a more democratic one, led by President Hamid Karzai — it seems that Afghanistan is still enslaved to fundamentalist thinking, to the point of killing people over scripture. Is that progress? I don’t see how it could be called that; the Taliban may as well still be in charge, if that’s the case.

So much for Barack Obama’s vaunted plans to “change” the country. Rather than shutter Bush 43’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives — a bad idea if ever there was one, which necessarily entangled religion and government — Obama plans to keep it in place, as Politico reports:

Obama plans to install a principal campaign adviser on religious affairs, Joshua DuBois, to lead a revamped office of faith-based initiatives, according to sources familiar with the decision. …

Aides are nearing the final stages of discussions on how to structure and staff the White House faith-based program and religious outreach. Faith leaders who have been consulted by the White House said they expect an announcement within a week. The New York Times first reported the appointment Thursday.

That’s the way to “change” the country, Mr President … keep in place one of your predecessor’s worst ideas, ’cause we gotta keep pandr’in’ ta dem dere believer-folk.

The Washington Post’s On Faith site poses an interesting question for its panelists:

Is it better to challenge or ignore Holocaust deniers such as Catholic Bishop Richard Williamson and Iranian President Mahmoud Amadenijad? Why?

A lot of the responses are moralistic in nature, and although mostly written from the religious perspective of their authors, not far off base. However, for me — although Holocaust denial is rooted in anti-Semitism and therefore has a mostly-religious basis — the question of whether or not the Holocaust happened, is inherently historiographical, not religious. That is, the most important question is the veracity of the Holocaust and what we have since learned about it.

So in a way, the question of “engaging” Holocaust-deniers is not a sound one. It’s premised on the idea that Holocaust deniers have something to say that’s worth hearing, or that their opinions are worth wrestling with.

This is not a safe assumption, however. Not all views have any validity, nor is there always an “equivalence of viewpoints.”

Let me use a different example. Say you meet someone who thought the earth was flat, not round. (Not a kid in school just learning about the shape of the earth … I mean an adult who has been educated in physics but has chosen, for whatever reason, to believe the earth is flat rather than a sphere.) Would you bother arguing the shape of the earth with such a person? If so, why? What reason would any rational person have, to “engage in dialog” with someone whose beliefs are obviously contrary to science (and have been for the many centuries that have passed since the ancient Greeks, among other peoples, determined the earth is a sphere)?

I suppose if the person is a friend, you might want to straighten him/her out, but otherwise, why bother? The idea that the earth is flat, is not a view that’s worthy of any discussion. It is not a notion that could be “balanced” somehow with the (correct) notion of a spherical earth. There is no equivalence, no “balance point,” and no merit to entertaining such a view.

The same goes for Holocaust denial. There is no merit to even discuss the possibility the Holocaust didn’t happen, since it did — and we know it — just as surely as we know the earth is a sphere.

The cold hard fact is that Holocaust denial has no historiographical basis any more. It is motivated solely by hatred of Jews and/or Judaism, and a desire to rob them of their heritage. In this regard it’s no different from, say, British-Israelism, which claims that modern Jews are not actually Jews; rather, the peoples of Britain are descendants of the “lost tribes of Israel” and therefore the British — not the Jews — are God’s “chosen people.” In the same way, Holocaust-denial is a way of eliminating any consideration of the Jews as a distinct people (whether ethnically, socially, culturally, or religiously).

When people are motivated to believe something because of religion or hatred, there can be no “reasoning” with them, no constructive dialog. There is nothing that Holocaust-deniers can say about the Holocaust that’s worth hearing, because it has no basis in fact or rationality.

The only reasonable way to deal with Holocaust-deniers, is to marginalize them. Laugh at them. Dismiss them. Call them kooks, cranks, or wing-nuts. But don’t do anything that even implies they have anything worthwhile to say — because nothing good can come from hearing what they say.

I’ve previously blogged about the anti-vaccine crowd and its too-often-heard Hollywood-based spokespersons. Well, in addition to the forces of reason and science fighting back, as I remarked, the anti-vaccine fortress is beginning to crumble, as Newsweek reported:

This week, Alison Singer, the executive vice president of communications and awareness at Autism Speaks, one of the nation’s leading autism advocacy groups, announced her resignation, citing a difference of opinion over the organization’s policy on vaccine research. “Dozens of credible scientific studies have exonerated vaccines as a cause of autism,” she wrote in a statement. “I believe we must devote limited funding to more promising avenues of autism research.” …

The Newsweek article includes an interview with Ms Singer, in which she says, among other things:

In general, I disagree with a policy that says, “Despite what this study shows, more studies should be done.” At some point, you have to say, “This question has been asked and answered and it’s time to move on.” We need to be able to say, “Yes, we are now satisfied that the earth is round.” …

Over and over, the science has shown no causal link between vaccines and autism. …

I think that there’s this feeling [among some parents] that the vaccine decision is a choice between, “Do I want to risk measles or do I want to risk autism?” That’s not a good characterization. We know for a fact that the measles vaccine reduces the risk of getting measles. One choice is backed by science, one choice isn’t.

Emotional thinking — which is what fuels the anti-vaccine crowd (e.g. “I know vaccines cause autism ’cause my kid is autistic and s/he’s been vaccinated, and you can’t tell me it’s not true ’cause s/he’s my child and I just know it!”) — has no place in science. It is, instead, merely sanctimony, and is even a bit childish. Having a feeling that two things are connected, does not mean they are. Being the parent of an autistic kid, does not make one an expert on the causes of autism. I know it sounds heartless, but emotions are not as important as fact, veracity, or verifiability.

Things are not looking up, over at the monstrosity of the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California. Even the church built by the famous “Hour of Power” pastor Robert H. Schuller, is feeling the pinch of America’s recession. As the Orange County Register reports:

Crystal Cathedral’s executive pastor, who was brought on board by the church’s former senior pastor Robert A. Schuller, was let go this week because of financial issues, church administrators said.

Jim Poit and his wife, Linda, who was director of children’s ministries at the cathedral, were both laid off. Deb Yurk, who had been brought on board by Poit as pastor of congregational life, was also released from her job, according to a news release by the Church Executive magazine based in Arizona.

Clarification: Like the two presidents George Bush, the two pastors Robert Schuller have different middle names; the elder is Robert H. Schuller and the younger is Robert A. Schuller. It was the latter who, having taken over the family business some time ago, abruptly resigned at the end of November last year. The departure of his successor, Poit, leaves the Crystal Cathedral without a leader. But is the recession the cause of this vaunted congregation losing money? CBS News reports a very different possible cause:

The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt. Revenue dropped by nearly $5 million last year, according to a recent letter from the elder Schuller to elite donors. In the letter, Schuller Sr. implored the Eagle’s Club members — who supply 30 percent of the church’s revenue — for donations and hinted that the show might go off the air without their support. …

The Crystal Cathedral blames the recession for its woes. But it’s clear that the elder Schuller’s carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade, has stumbled badly. …

Members often tie their donations to the pastor, not the institution, said Nancy Ammerman, a sociologist of religion at Boston University.

Could it be that the billions of dollars the Crystal Cathedral collected over the last several decades, came in due not to the “loving message” of Christianity, but instead because of the elder pastor Schuller’s personal style? If so, this would tend to undermine the presumed power of Jesus’ message, would it not?

But even if the recession is to blame for this, it tends to undermine the “conventional wisdom” that churchgoing increases in troubled times (presumably because people are looking for “guidance” of some kind).

Whatever the cause of the Crystal Cathedral’s financial woes, it does my heart good to see that one of the greatest monuments to religious ostentatiousness has run aground on its own excess. I’m no Christian but I’m fairly sure I saw nothing in Jesus’ career that he ever intended for his followers to build such colossal, splashy edifices in his name.