Miscellanea Agnostica

There’s something odd going on in the worldwide Sikh community. (Sikhism, in case you didn’t know, is a Dharmic faith strongly influenced by Islam, particularly Sufic Islam.) It began in Vienna (Austria) and has already spilled over into Sikhism’s native land, India, as the AP reports (via Google News):

Sikhs wielding knives and a handgun attacked two preachers at a rival temple in Vienna in a brawl that left one of the victims dead Monday and at least 15 others wounded, police said. A related clash later broke out in northern India.

Witnesses said a group of bearded and turbaned men attacked the religious leaders at the temple in Austria’s capital on Sunday and their followers moved to defend them. …

Police spokesman Michael Takacs earlier said the scene was “like a battlefield.” Six suspects were in custody with more arrests possible, he said. …

In India, fighting between mainstream Sikhs and followers of the guru broke out in the northern city of Jalandhar several hours after the Vienna clash, in what locals there described as an apparent reaction to the melee in the Austrian capital. Sanjiv Kalra, a senior police official at Jalandhar, said that protesters had set fire to a number of vehicles and erected several roadblocks across the city. He gave no other details.

Reasons for this bloody attack are not all that clear, at least not to me. The AP report offers what explanation it can:

Witnesses said the perpetrators were fundamentalist Sikhs from a higher caste, who accused one or both of the preachers of being disrespectful of the Holy Book. Indian news reports said the attackers were incensed that one of the preachers was given a ceremonial shawl considered a high Sikh honor.

I can’t even begin to guess as to how, exactly, a savage mass attack like this is a reasonable response to being given a shawl. It’s also not clear to me how Sikh temples have managed to divide themselves along caste lines, since I’d thought that Sikhism denounced caste distinctions (see e.g. this Sikh-written Web page, and keep in mind that Sikhs have a ritual called Langar, in which free food is eaten by those of all castes, side-by-side. The ancient Hindu caste distinction — whose evils I blogged about before — appears to be inflicting yet more harm on people, even in the 21st century, and even in a religion which branched off from Hinduism centuries ago.

George W. Bush took a lot of heat for referring to the fight against terrorism — especially of the Islamic fundamentalist sort — as a “crusade.” Some Muslims reacted badly to that; for them the word “crusade” means “the series of western European military expeditions, ordered or endorsed by the Popes, which attacked the Middle East during the Middle Ages,” and thus carries a specific, and very-religious, connotation. (This is, of course, not a reasonable association, since the Crusades have been over for centuries, and the war on terrorism does not carry the Roman Catholic Church’s approval.) In the English-speaking world, the word “crusade” carries a much more generic and non-religious meaning; stern prosecutors, for example, might he referred to as “crusaders for justice.” So it might have been natural to view Bush’s use of that word in its generic — and decidedly secular — sense.

Of course, we all know that Bush was a religious man. Very religious. Obviously religious. In 1999, for example, he declared Jesus to have been his favorite political philosopher (even though Jesus himself disavowed politics utterly). He could hardly open his mouth without “God” or “Christ” coming out of it.

Well, it turns out that perhaps he had been viewing “the war on terror” as a religious expedition. GQ, of all outlets, reports that Donald Rumsfeld seasoned his intelligence reports to his hyperreligious president with Bible quotations (GQ has materials on its Web site, and this Boston Herald story explains it):

One passage plucked from the New Testament’s Epistle to the Ephesians instructs believers to “put on the full armor of God.” An excerpt from the Old Testament’s Isaiah directs them to “open the gates that the righteous nation may enter.”

As American soldiers fought in Iraq in 2003, these biblical verses and others reportedly prefaced intelligence reports approved by then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. …

First reported last week by Robert Draper, author of “Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush,” dozens of biblical passages accompanied by images of soldiers knelt in prayer or marching across the desert adorned the covers of classified documents prepared for Rumsfeld and Bush. Although they have strongly defended the decision to go to war in Iraq, neither Bush nor Rumsfeld has commented on the GQ report.

Religious pundits have been quick to declare that Rumsfeld used these Bible quotations “improperly”:

Several clergy members say many of the biblical quotations used to condone war were distorted when taken out of context. Ephesians, for example, makes clear the armor of God refers to the virtues of truth, justice and peace.

It’s not just Bush and Rumsfeld who viewed the struggle as a religious mandate, as the Herald goes on to explain:

In 2005, Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, then-deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence, compared the war against Islamic militants to a battle against Satan.

It turns out there was a religious subtext running behind the war, within the halls of power in Washington. Now, rather than just a couple of quotations (i.e. Bush’s “crusade” reference and Boykin’s “Satan” remark). GQ has added documentation that shows it was more extensive than that.

You know, it’s a bit odd that the Religious Right in the US is so bothered by the jihad or “holy war” concept to which the Islamic fundamentalists cling. They believe themselves to be “above” that. Unfortunately, some of them have been caught expressing an eerily similar sentiment. Could it be, they’re being hypocritical?

Answer: Yes, damn right they are! Hypocritical to the core!

Despite the usual, expected sanctimonious outrage by some paleolithic thinkers, the Church of Scotland voted to accept a gay man as a minister (as reported by CNN):

A gay minister at the center of a row about his appointment to a church in a Scottish city said he was “humbled” after the Church of Scotland upheld his appointment.

In a ground-breaking move, the church’s ruling body voted by 326 to 267 in support of the Rev. Scott Rennie, the church said in a news release Sunday.

This vote happened in spite of what might be characterized as extortion, by gay opponents:

The 37-year-old’s appointment at Queen’s Cross Church in Aberdeen, on Scotland’s northeast coast, provoked opposition from traditionalist members of the church and has led to fears it could cause a damaging split.

Threats of schisms are not unknown and have historically been used to prevent changes that “traditionalists” don’t like. Fortunately the Church of Scotland did not knuckle under, in this case.

This is one of those stories that has a backstory to it. The US military had to burn a batch of Bibles that had been sent to Afghanistan, and the Religious Right (such as the American Family Association) is furious about it. First, the story about the burned Bibles, as reported by CNN:

Military personnel threw away, and ultimately burned, confiscated Bibles that were printed in the two most common Afghan languages amid concern they would be used to try to convert Afghans, a Defense Department spokesman said Tuesday.

The unsolicited Bibles sent by a church in the United States were confiscated about a year ago at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan because military rules forbid troops of any religion from proselytizing while deployed there, Lt. Col. Mark Wright said.

US military personnel in Afghanistan are specifically forbidden to attempt to proselytize there. While one could suppose these Bibles were intended for the troops, it just so happens that they weren’t in English, so they would not have been used by US military personnel:

The Bibles were written in the languages Pashto and Dari.

This means they could only have been intended for distribution to the locals. That’s forbidden … hence the confiscation. The Bibles were then burned by the military for show, to demonstrate to the Afghanis that US military personnel won’t proselytize there.

The backstory to this is that the Pentagon admitted to this — it happened about a year ago — only after Al Jazeera English broke a story, a couple of weeks ago, about evangelical Christian personnel, led by their chaplain, whom they had video of, discussing how to missionize to the locals:

Note in the video the chaplain discussing “hunting men.” (What a fabulous way to win friends and influence people, in the heart of a country which can be hostile!) Also note that the soldiers specifically mention General Order 1, which among other things prohibits the proselytizing they plan to engage in, and cook up a rationale to get around it. Now nice!

By releasing news that the Bibles shown in the video had already been destroyed, the Pentagon hoped to quell the inevitable outrage in the Muslim world. Unfortunately this also kicked up the outrage among the Religious Right, here in the US, that I mentioned earlier. They’re actually lying about it, in fact, e.g. in the AFA report I linked to:

Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) is a Pentagon adviser and military and national security analyst. He finds it mind-boggling to think that military officials would allow Al Jazeera to walk through the front gate of a forward operating base and videotape soldiers conducting a Bible study.

Unfortunately, Maginnis is in error. The video footage of the chaplain-led Bible study was not made by Al Jazeera personnel. Rather it was filmed by an American, who’d caught wind of what these guys were doing and taped them (covertly, I assume, but perhaps not).

I hate to say it but the Religious Right is, itself, directly responsible for this Bible-burning episode. Had an evangelical Church not shipped Bibles translated into Pashto and Dari — to their cohorts within the military in Afghanistan who knew about General Order 1 expressly forbidding this activity — it never would have happened. The R.R. needs to grow up and take its lumps on this one. Then again, the R.R. is not generally known for its maturity, so I suppose this would be too much to expect of them.

Of course, if the Muslims of Afghanistan were more mature about things, there would be no need for the Pentagon to have made such a big point of destroying the Bibles. Their sensitivity to the possibility of missionary activity by US military is entirely unnecessary and is itself and a product of their own insecurities and immaturity.

This whole compound story exemplifies what a colossal waste of time and energy all this metaphysics is. Haven’t you had enough of it, yet? (I know I have.)

The headline of this press release is alarming enough:

A Call to Christian Revolution

On Monday, May 18th, 11:00 AM, Christian leaders from across the nation will come to our nation’s capital to stand for Jesus and oppose Senate “Hate Crimes” bill (S.909) at the U.S. Supreme Court.

“America will learn the hard way that you cannot make straight what God has called crooked, or tolerate what God deems intolerable, or turn moral wrongs into civil rights, and thrive as a people.” Rev. Rusty Thomas, Director, Elijah Ministries.

“This bill seeks to shut down the message of hope and deliverance from the chains of homosexuality through Jesus Christ. It criminalizes Christians who reach out in the love of God to save those trapped in sexual perversion.” Michael Marcavage, Director, Repent America. …

On Monday, May18, 2009, 11:00 AM, we will ask American Christians to consider and pledge their allegiance to Almighty God, His Law, and His Son. We will offer a new Declaration of Dependence to be read from the steps of the Supreme Court of the United States of America.

Wow! In the name of stopping passage of this law, these people are using incendiary and revolutionary language. I’ve blogged before on why these people are so vehemently against “hate crimes” laws. In their idiotic minds, they interpret all “hate crimes” laws as outright attacks on their religion … without regard to whether or not the laws in question are actually “attacks” on anyone.

Their vehemence is unmistakable here and they don’t hold back at all. They want “a new Declaration of Dependence,” one that, I assume, places them in control of the country.

Folks, these people are theocrats, and I suspect most of them are part of the Dominionist (or Christian reconstructionist) movement that wants to dispose of the US Constitution and establish a new, Protestant-fundamentalist Christian government patterned after the “Judges” period as found in the Old Testament (in the book of that name). They want — no, they demand rather — that their religion become the law of the land, imposed on every American. By force, if necessary.

They are, in a word, dangerous … as dangerous as the Islamist fundamentalists (of which al-Qaeda is a part) who slaughter people in the name of promoting their own religion. Of course, these people believe themselves to be much better than said Islamic terrorists, but really, their philosophy — that their religion (whichever it is) must control humanity, even if brute force is required to do so, is the same thing, even if its outward appearance is different — in this case, an army of militant Christians rallying in front of the US Supreme Court, instead of sniveling little killers cowering deep inside caves in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Beware the Religionazis, folks. They’re coming, and they aren’t surrendering.

The case of Daniel Hauser, about whom I’ve blogged already, gets weirder by the day. His mother fled with him so that he missed a court appearance on Tuesday. Since then the father’s responses as to where his wife and son are, have been rather cute and non-revealing.

CNN reports on the latest in this story:

A 13-year-old Minnesota boy whose family has rejected chemotherapy to treat his cancer is near Los Angeles, California, with his mother, and the pair may be planning to travel to Mexico, authorities said Thursday.

Brown County, Minnesota, Sheriff Rich Offmann cited “reliable information” in making the announcement to reporters, adding that Colleen Hauser may be seeking treatment for her son’s lymphoma in Mexico, just south of San Diego, California.

Oh great. Mexico. A country on the cutting edge of medicine … not!

On top of that, authorities made an incongruous statement about the father:

Anthony Hauser, Colleen’s husband and the boy’s father, has been cooperating with law enforcement, Offmann said.

This, however, is contradicted by the father’s dodginess and defiance earlier in court, as reported by the Star Tribune:

Anthony Hauser said he last spoke to his wife about 4 p.m. Monday as he milked cows at the family farm near Sleepy Eye. He said his wife told him she was going to leave and “That’s all you need to know.”

The words he said to the judge are certainly not those of someone who’s being “cooperative.”

The CNN report also shows the family being inconsistent:

Family spokesman Dan Zwakman told CNN Thursday that Anthony Hauser was not aware that his wife was taking the child.

This claim is — again — contradicted by what Anthony Hauser had told the judge. So this “spokesman’s” claims cannot be accepted at face value.

In addition to being dodgy and lying to people, the family still appears to be in denial about the nature of Daniel’s illness, as CNN goes on to report:

But Zwakman told CNN’s “American Morning” program Thursday that he knows five people who have been cured with natural healing.

“Yes, it’s happened many times,” he said.

So Zwackman and the Hausers “know” chemotherapy won’t work because they know of cases where alternatives have. I guess they never heard of the placebo effect, and have verified that in all of these cases the diagnosis of Hodgkin’s lymphoma had been correct in the first place. Hmm. Why do I doubt both of these? The rationalizing and justification for killing their kid are elucidated at the end of the CNN report:

Mankato, Minnesota, lawyer Calvin P. Johnson, who identified himself as the Hauser family’s attorney, has declined interviews but issued a statement “by way of clarification and hopefully to aid your understanding of the procedural nuances in the Danny Hauser case.”

The statement listed 12 points. Among them:

• The first and foremost important principle is: It is a violation of spiritual law to invade the consciousness of another without their consent.

• This is a case of Love vs. Power. Love gives. Power takes.

• The state does not have a right to take.

• A parent’s love and affection is a positive social right we all share.

• The court compelled Colleen Hauser to make a decision between three chemotherapy providers. Apparently, she didn’t like the list.

• The court was forcing her to decide.

• The decision for treatment cannot be forced.

• Anthony and Colleen Hauser share Danny’s viewpoint: They do not approve of chemotherapy. Under the circumstances of this case, chemotherapy constitutes assault and torture when given to a young man who believes that it will kill him.

Note that many of these “points” have absolutely no bearing on the validity and effectiveness of chemotherapy, so they are irrelevant “fluff.” And if chemotherapy constitutes “assault and torture,” what then would one call allowing a child to die, in order to avoid it? How is that any more moral? (Answer: It’s not.)

An additional note as clarification: The idea that the Hausers are following some kind of spiritual or religious mandate, is absurd on its face. As I blogged before, the “Nemenhah Band” is not a religion per se; it is, instead, a marketing gimmick cooked up in 2001 by a naturopath, Phillip “Cloudpiler” Landis, in order to sell naturopathic (i.e. useless) remedies. It claims to be a traditional native American religion, however, it has no native American members, and no other native American religious groups recognize it; and while it includes various Christian and especially Mormon ideas, other Mormons as well as the LDS Church also do not recognize it. It is, therefore, a non-religion, which the Hausers have used as a pretense for not treating their son’s cancer. All the talk about “spirituality” and “religious freedom” is, therefore, a lie. Plain and simple.

I also question why authorities in Minnesota are now saying that Anthony Hauser is “cooperating.” Clearly he was defiant — to the judge’s face even — so this is not a credible claim on their part. Either he’s done a unilateral turnaround on the matter — which again is contradicted by what the family’s spokesman and lawyer are saying — or he is not, in fact, cooperating at all. Clearly the authorities were taken by surprise and are now engaging in the well-worn practice of “covering their asses” to make it appear they know what’s happened, in spite of having let the Hausers pull the wool over their eyes.

A commission in Ireland — appointed some 9 years ago to catalog and report on abuses by Roman Catholic institutions meant to house “wayward” children — has finally issued a report on the matter. Though the institutions in question were all closed by the 1990s, revelations of these abuses were a scandal in Ireland that the commission had been appointed to address. It is a damning report listing indescribable abuses, and shows how both Roman Catholic Church officials, and the government of Ireland, cooperated in a scheme which in some cases amounted to institutionalized slavery. The New York Times reports (WebCite cached article):

Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.

The 2,600-page report paints a picture of institutions run more like Dickensian orphanages than 20th-century schools, characterized by privation and cruelty that could be both casual and choreographed.

“A climate of fear, created by pervasive, excessive and arbitrary punishment, permeated most of the institutions,” the report says. In the boys’ schools, it says, sexual abuse was “endemic.”

The length of time it took to produce this report is, perhaps, a reflection of internal interference within the Irish government, which had actually cooperated and fueled the Church’s institutions, as well as a lawsuit by a Church order:

It was delayed because of a lawsuit brought by the Christian Brothers, the religious order that ran many of the boys’ schools and that fought, ultimately successfully, to have the abusers’ names omitted. In 2003, the commission’s first chairwoman resigned, saying that Ireland’s Department of Education had refused to release crucial documents. …

It exposes for the first time the scope of the problem in Ireland, as well as how the government and the church colluded in perpetuating an abusive system. The revelations have also had the effect of stripping the Catholic Church, which once set the agenda in Ireland, of much of its moral authority and political power.

The report singles out Ireland’s Department of Education, meant to regulate the schools, for running “toothless” inspections that overlooked glaring problems and deferred to church authority.

It’s understandable, then, that some in Ireland’s government had tried to hinder this investigation … their culpability in this scheme to abuse and enslave children has been exposed.

The reality of this systemic abuse got major international attention in 2002 with the release of a movie about the so-called “Magdalene asylums” (or “Magdalene laundries”), called The Magdalene Sisters. News programs in the US followed this with presentations on the issue. But while the Magdalene asylums were scandalous enough, the abuse, it turns out, was much wider in scope than that.

Given that the Roman Catholic Church holds itself up as the sole arbiter of morality and ethics in the world, one would think the Church has something to say in the wake of the commission’s report. An apology at the very least. But guess again:

The Vatican had no response. But leaders of various religious orders — who often argued during the investigations that the abuse was a relic of another time, reflecting past societal standards — issued abject apologies on Wednesday, taking care to frame the problem as something that is now behind them.

Cardinal Sean Brady, the Catholic Primate of All Ireland, said in a statement that he was “profoundly sorry and deeply ashamed,” adding, “I hope the publication of today’s report will help heal the hurts of victims and address the wrongs of the past.”

Essentially the Vatican is ducking the issue completely, and the religious orders that orchestrated these crimes are mouthing mild admissions and insincere well-wishes for the abused, in order to evade civil lawsuits that have been filed against them. (The Vatican officially condemned The Magdalene Sisters when it was released, and called for a boycott of it, so silence from the Holy See is an improvement on that … I guess.)

The next time the Roman Catholic Church tells you what’s moral and what isn’t, remember their ineffective, insincere and evasive response to this travesty. Oh, and when a Catholic tells you that atrocities such as the Inquisitions are “a thing of the past,” you might remind them that there are very likely still Catholic nuns, priests and brothers in Ireland, who’d once been part of this slavery scheme — one for which they have not even yet been brought to justice.

The case of Daniel Hauser — the Minnesota boy I blogged about already, whose family has used its (questionable) Nemenhah “religion” as a pretense for not treating his Hodgkin’s lymphoma — has taken a strange turn, as the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports:

The father of Daniel Hauser said today he believes his son and his wife have left the country, but won’t say where he thinks they have gone to keep out of reach of authorities.

“I have an opinion where they are, but I can’t say I know,” said Anthony Hauser, adding that he has placed a call to a telephone where he believes he can reach them. …

Despite state and national crime alerts that were issued Tuesday afternoon, the Brown County sheriff’s office reported late this morning that the boy and his mother haven’t been found. Daniel’s case is attracting intense worldwide news media attention.

Colleen Hauser defied a court order when she disappeared Monday.

The family, of course, still is in rigid and fierce denial that there is anything wrong with Daniel:

Hauser said he and his wife are open to treating Daniel with a combination of low doses of chemotherapy and alternative medical treatments.

“Where’s the reasoning here?” he said of the doctors’ position. “There is none.”

Mr Hauser, let me help you with the doctors’ “reasoning.” They are the credentialed medical experts. You are not. They are the ones who’ve successfully treated other people for Hodgkin’s lymphoma. You have not.

Was that simple enough for you to follow, Mr Hauser? Good.

The Star Tribune goes on to say that officials claim they guessed the Hausers might pull a stunt like this:

County officials had “kind of suspected this would happen,” Hoffmann said of the Hausers’ disappearance. “But we had no legal grounds to do anything” preemptive.

Actually, there’s no reason they could not have staked out the Hausers’ home — if they truly suspected this — so they’d know their whereabouts at all times and could intercept them if needed. What I suspect is that officials were caught off-guard and are only now claiming to have been suspicious of them.

The Hausers are apparently getting help in killing their kid:

t said they may be in the company of Susan Daya, also known as Susan Hamwi, a California attorney who accompanied them to a medical appointment Monday.

It also said they might be with a man named Billy Joe Best, who appeared at a news conference held by the family in early May to say he supported the Hausers.

How wonderful of these two people to be complicit in the attempted (so far) killing of Daniel Hauser and defiance of a Minnesota state court.