Miscellanea Agnostica

A couple months ago I blogged about James Dobson’s final and total departure from the evangelical group he founded, Focus on the Family, and the end of the last job he had with them, as a radio-show host. Back then, the New York Times had suggested this had happened because he wanted to work with his son Ryan, but Ryan had divorced a few years ago, and the group’s bylaws prevented divorcees from working for them. But preacher Ken Hutcherson — a friend of the elder Dobson — writes for World Net Daily that this is not quite the case (screen shot of article):

Of all the people I know, in an effort to find some semblance of reality about what really happened [at FotF], I am the only one who has talked to both sides — Dr. James Dobson and Jim Daly, the new president of Focus on the Family who also represents the board.

I think that Focus does have a new focus; an image change designed to make them accepted and well-liked rather than standing for righteousness in an unrighteous society. …

The current emphasis at Focus is on being loved and understood.

Hutcherson doesn’t say it explicitly, but based on what he’s suggesting, Ryan Dobson’s involvement with FotF as a divorcee was not really an impediment to his father staying on, it was merely a pretense they used to justify forcing him out.

A rigid and fierce preacher, Hutcherson does not approve of this “new & improved” Focus on the Family, and he vents angrily about it:

A great example of the products currently coming out of the new Focus on the Family is the Tim Tebow ad during the Super Bowl. It said nothing. What a great opportunity that was to promote the pro-life position by revealing what abortion really is. But I guess they didn’t want to offend the world and wanted to make sure everyone loved them. …

I am not very happy with the new, progressive, “loving” leadership at Focus on the Family.

Like a lot of “armchair quarterbacks,” Hutcherson thinks he can do a much better job of running FotF, than its current leadership:

To be perfectly honest, what Focus should have done is give someone like me the leadership over the ministry.

Wah wah wah. They ousted your friend, Mr Hutcherson, and they dared not select you to replace him! Gasp! Horrors!

I can taste the sour grapes from here. What a crybaby!

Hat tip: iReligion Forum at Delphi Forums.

Yes, you read that headline correctly. This is not a joke. It’s deadly serious. The reactionary, Religious Right-led Texas Board of Education has just ordered Thomas Jefferson, one of the most important of the Founding Fathers, from the Texas social-studies curriculum. The Texas Freedom Network has been at the proceedings and reported on this live, as it happened (WebCite cached article):

9:30 – Board member Cynthia Dunbar wants to change a standard having students study the impact of Enlightenment ideas on political revolutions from 1750 to the present. She wants to drop the reference to Enlightenment ideas (replacing with “the writings of”) and to Thomas Jefferson. She adds Thomas Aquinas and others. Jefferson’s ideas, she argues, were based on other political philosophers listed in the standards. We don’t buy her argument at all. Board member Bob Craig of Lubbock points out that the curriculum writers clearly wanted to students to study Enlightenment ideas and Jefferson. Could Dunbar’s problem be that Jefferson was a Deist? The board approves the amendment, taking Thomas Jefferson OUT of the world history standards.

TFN has even more to say on this:

9:40 – We’re just picking ourselves up off the floor. The board’s far-right faction has spent months now proclaiming the importance of emphasizing America’s exceptionalism in social studies classrooms. But today they voted to remove one of the greatest of America’s Founders, Thomas Jefferson, from a standard about the influence of great political philosophers on political revolutions from 1750 to today.

9:45 – Here’s the amendment Dunbar changed: “explain the impact of Enlightenment ideas from John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, and Thomas Jefferson on political revolutions from 1750 to the present.” Here’s Dunbar’s replacement standard, which passed: “explain the impact of the writings of John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, Voltaire, Charles de Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin and Sir William Blackstone.” Not only does Dunbar’s amendment completely change the thrust of the standard. It also appalling drops one of the most influential political philosophers in American history — Thomas Jefferson.

9:51 – Dunbar’s amendment striking Jefferson passed with the votes of the board’s far-right members and board member Geraldine “Tincy” Miller of Dallas.

This is just unbe-fucking-lievable. Have these people no shame? They’re so desperate to promote their religionism in Texas schools that they have written out mention of “the Enlightenment” and of Thomas Jefferson, in favor of Thomas Aquinas!

Hat tip: Religion Dispatches.

A high-ranking Roman Catholic exorcist claims that the Devil is alive and well in the Vatican, and that recent scandals result from it. The (UK) Times reports on this apparent revelation (WebCite cached article):

Sex abuse scandals in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that “the Devil is at work inside the Vatican”, according to the Holy See’s chief exorcist.

Father Gabriele Amorth, 85, who has been the Vatican’s chief exorcist for 25 years and says he has dealt with 70,000 cases of demonic possession, said that the consequences of satanic infiltration included power struggles at the Vatican as well as “cardinals who do not believe in Jesus, and bishops who are linked to the Demon”. …

Father Amorth, who has just published Memoirs of an Exorcist, a series of interviews with the Vatican journalist Marco Tosatti, said that the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981 had been the work of the Devil, as had an incident last Christmas when a mentally disturbed woman threw herself at Pope Benedict XVI at the start of Midnight Mass, pulling him to the ground.

Not everyone is impressed, and a Catholic priest interviewed for the story denied Fr Amorth’s claim:

Father José Antonio Fortea Cucurull, a Rome-based exorcist, said that Father Amorth had “gone well beyond the evidence” in claiming that Satan had infiltrated the Vatican corridors.

“Cardinals might be better or worse, but all have upright intentions and seek the glory of God,” he said. Some Vatican officials were more pious than others, “but from there to affirm that some cardinals are members of satanic sects is an unacceptable distance.”

I’m no fan of the Roman Catholic Church, it’s true, so the allegation that the Devil is there and is to blame for its recent problems, is one I find amusing, to say the least. That said, I also happen to be no fan of people who — on the cusp of releasing a memoir, some other book, or a movie, etc. — make some kind of eye-catching, outrageous claim or other, in order to increase sales. To say that I take Fr Amorth’s claim with a grain of salt, is putting it mildly.

OK, so perhaps this is not news, in predominantly-fundamentalist thinking, majority-Mormon Utah. But a law was passed there, and signed by the state’s governor, which effectively pushes the state backward in time, closer to the Dark Ages than it had been previously. The New York Times reports on this development (WebCite cached article):

The origins of Utah State House Bill 12 lie in an act of dark and desperate violence.

Last May in a small town in eastern Utah, a 17-year-old girl, seven months pregnant, paid a man she had just met $150 to beat her up in hopes of inducing a miscarriage that would resolve her crisis. He obliged, taking her to a basement and kicking her repeatedly in the stomach.

The fetus survived the assault and was born in August. The attacker went to jail. And the girl, whose name was never released because she was under age, became the center of a legal debate — and the piece of legislation now awaiting the governor’s signature or veto. The bill would formally criminalize what she did, that is, to seek an illegal abortion.

This law effectively raises the possibility that any woman who has a miscarriage, might be prosecuted:

“Prosecutors have a lot of discretion, and miscarriage is a sad but common event in connection with pregnancy,” said Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group for birth control and abortion rights. “This bill would cast suspicion, potentially, on every single miscarriage.”

Almost any kind of activity might be deemed sufficiently “negligent” or risky, to justify prosecuting a woman who miscarries … even if she did not intend for the miscarriage to occur, and even if she had no reservations about her pregnancy.

The effort here, as usual, is not to protect the unborn, as the law’s proponents claim. It is, instead, to reduce women of childbearing age to second-class citizens, whose legal rights, freedom and even their lives are compromised by the fact that they might become pregnant and thus have their actions limited by law or be prosecuted for doing nearly anything. Christians — especially of the Religious Right and Roman Catholic varieties — do not view women as “equal persons,” and laws such as this are their intended means of getting the inequality they worship enshrined in the US legal system, which otherwise affords women civil-rights protections (such as equality before the law as guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment among other places).

It’s often joked that the Religious Right and its various constituent groups are a “Christian Taliban,” effectively no different from their Afghani counterparts of the same name, except for 1) Their religion (Christianity instead of Islam); and 2) Their existence as a militia within a lawless country. Well, in Amarillo Texas, that latter difference no longer exists. There truly is a Christian Taliban-style militia at work there … and woe to anyone they deem “unworthy.”

Note: I’m posting this in spite of the fact that I am still not 100% sure this story is genuine. It reads too much like something from The Onion for me to be totally confident in it. Nevertheless, it’s getting some play on the Internet, and the more I hear about it, the more certain this story seems to be.

The Texas Observer reports on the the group known as “Repent Amarillo” and its activities (WebCite cached article), beginning with the protest they staged at a “swingers’ club”:

… [I]magine the swingers’ surprise when they arrived at their New Year’s Eve bash to find two dozen protesters, local media in tow, holding signs and singing songs. This was a most unwelcome coming-out party.

Some protesters, mostly young men in their teens and early 20s, wore black hoodies and military fatigues. The men, Amarillo would soon learn, were foot soldiers of Repent Amarillo, a new, militant evangelical group that advertises itself as “the Special Forces of spiritual warfare.” Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. “We’re here to shine the light on this darkness,” Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News. “I don’t think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There’s no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how many abortions.” The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the swingers’ souls, but to shut the club down.

Local Amarillo authorities have — effectively — granted this group their blessing, and will not intervene:

For the past year, this Bible Belt city of 200,000 has been consumed by a culture clash between Repent Amarillo and their targets, a list that includes everything from gay bars to liberal churches. For the Route 66 swingers, Grisham’s “special forces” have been a near-constant presence. Jobs have been lost, families estranged, assault charges filed and businesses shuttered. So far, no public official has stood up to defend these businesses, which operate legally. To the contrary, Repent Amarillo has managed to turn the city’s own laws and employees into an effective weapon. Amarillo, it turns out, doesn’t have the stomach to stick up for gays, swingers, strippers or even Unitarians. Absent a peacekeeper, the conflict might end up being settled the old-fashioned way, frontier-style. “This will not end until somebody gets hurt, either us or them,” one swinger warns.

The lax enforcement is seen in how differently local law enforcement, and Texas state troopers, handled one event:

It’s debatable whether all of Repent’s actions are legal. In January, six Repent members showed up at a weekend swingers party at the private home of Cristal Robinson, Route 66’s attorney. During the party, Robinson says the group trespassed on her property and tried to block cars from entering the driveway. She called the police. Sheriff’s deputies showed up, followed not long after by a state trooper.

The two law-enforcement groups apparently had different ideas about how to handle Repent, according to a Potter County incident report. The state trooper took photographs of the Repent vehicles and filled out suspicious activity cards, which go to the state’s intelligence center. The deputies, on the other hand, dismissed Robinson’s account and left Repent to carry on.

Repent Amarillo is not backing down and is not limiting its attacks to just swingers’ clubs:

What’s next for Repent? They’ve posted a “Warfare Map” on the group’s Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park’s Walmart-funded “Earth Circle,” used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (“Allah is a false god”), and “compromised churches” like Polk Street Methodist (gay-friendly).

It is fairly easy for a group like this to operate in Texas, where county sheriffs are effectively sovereign princelings who have the power to permit people they like to operate with impunity, and who can also destroy people they dislike. So long as the sheriff of Potter county (in which Amarillo lies) chooses not to stop Repent Amarillo, they will continue their militant activities, and will ruin more lives.

I’m curious to see how truly committed these people at Repent Amarillo are, to their cause. Would they be willing to engage in this behavior in some other region where they don’t have the protection of local law enforcement? My guess is that they have neither the courage nor integrity to do so.

Hat tip: Unreasonable Faith blog.

The Roman Catholic child-abuse scandal has reached into yet another country … the Netherlands. The NRC Handelsblad reports on the most recent expansion of what is becoming one of the worst ecclesiastical scandals in history (WebCite cached article):

Child sex abuse in Dutch Catholic Church revealed

Amid the high-profile child sexual abuse scandals in the United States and other European countries, the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church in the Netherlands has remained unsullied. A joint investigation by NRC Handelsblad and Radio Netherlands Worldwide shows this is unjustified. …

At the boarding school in ’s-Heerenberg, 80 to 100 boys between the ages of 12 and 18 slept in four large dormitories. “Sometimes you knew for sure: there’s something going on between that boy and that priest,” said [abuse victim Janne] Geraets. It happened on a large scale. Several of the priests were involved. Some priests were more popular than others. You could tell because more boys visited them.” The priest who abused him is now 98 years old. “Everything I held sacred turned out to be a facade,” said Geraets. “It was a huge blow to my self-confidence.”

The article goes on to relate several examples of abuse by Catholic priests, as well as failures to deal with it. It concludes with denials of anything wrong by the Catholic hierarchy in the Netherlands:

In the period that Janne Geraets was abused at the Don Rua school, the current bishop of Rotterdam, Ad van Luyn, was working there as a teacher. In the 1970s, Van Luyn was provincial head of the Salesians. Since 2008 he has chaired the Netherlands’ Synod of Bishops.

Ad van Luyn declined to discuss “past issues”. Through a spokesman, he said that “matters relating to the congregation are the responsibility of the current father superior, even if they relate to previous governors”.

Father Herman Spronck, currently the most senior Salesian in the Netherlands, denies all knowledge of abuse in ’s-Heerenberg, and refers all inquiries to his predecessors. He is not opposed to an investigation and is keen to emphasise that sexual abuse goes against the vow taken by the fathers of Don Bosco. “At Don Bosco, the inviolable sanctity of youth is key to our system of education.”

Well, I guess that concludes the matter. Child abuse is against their vow so it cannot possibly have happened! Thanks for clearing that up for us, Fr Spronck.

Not only has the scandal of abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests struck Pope Benedict XVI’s native Germany, as I blogged already, the most recent revelation from Germany has come even closer to the Pope … by surfacing in a cathedral choir which had been run by the Pope’s brother. Reuters reports, via the New York Times, on this development (WebCite cached article):

Germany’s Roman Catholic Church revealed charges of priests beating and sexually abusing boys in at least three schools in Pope Benedict’s native Bavaria on Friday, one linked to a renowned choir once led by his brother.

The charges at the cathedral choir in Regensburg, the Benedictine monastery school at Ettal and a Capucian school in Burghausen came to light after abuse cases revealed at Jesuit schools around the country shocked the country last month.

Rev Georg Ratzinger, 86, who led the choir from 1964 to 1994, told Bavarian Radio he knew nothing of any abuse at the “Regensburger Domspatzen” (Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows) choir, which regularly performs on tours in Germany and abroad.

At this point the Pope’s brother is not implicated in any of the abuse. The Regensburg diocese admitted to some abuse, decades ago, which had been prosecuted:

The diocese said in a statement that one priest had abused two boys sexually in 1958 and was sentenced to two years in jail. Another clergyman served 11 months in jail in 1971 for abuse. Both men have since died.

It said three men claimed to have suffered sexual abuse as well as beatings and humiliation in the early 1960s while at boarding schools connected to the choir. The diocese was investigating these cases and more could be revealed, it said.

My point is that the scandal of long-term abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests has become so epidemic that it has veered uncomfortably close to the Pope himself.

In a development which — unfortunately — I don’t find surprising in the least, religious leaflets being distributed in Virginia are blaming the victims of rape for the crimes committed against them. The Bristol (VA) Herald Courier reports on this (WebCite cached article):

Blame the victim: Religious leaflet claims ‘ungodly’ dressed women provoke rape

Nineteen-year-old Keshia Canter handed three burgers, fries and milkshakes to a car-load of Tuesday afternoon customers at the Hi-Lo Burger’s drive-though window. A lady sitting in the backseat leaned forward, between the two men in front, and handed her a leaflet: “Women & Girls” it said across the top.

“Even though nothing is showing, you’re being ungodly,” Canter recalled the woman telling her. “You make men want to be sinful.” …

Minutes later, Canter’s mother, Pam Yates, who owns the restaurant, returned from the bank. Canter handed her “Women & Girls” and Yates started reading.

“You may have been given this leaflet because of the way you are dressed,” it begins. “Have you thought about standing before the true and living God to be judged?”

It continues with one essential theme: The sins of men are, in part, the fault of women, specifically women in tight-fitting clothing. Yates was annoyed. Then she got to a section on page two:

“Scripture tells us that when a man looks on a woman to lust for her he has already committed adultery in his heart. If you are dressed in a way that tempts a men to do this secret (or not so secret) sin, you are a participant in the sin,” the leaflet states. “By the way, some rape victims would not have been raped if they had dressed properly. So can we really say they were innocent victims?”

The hand-out is signed “anonymous.”

In the eyes of religionists like this, crimes like rape are not the result of sociopathic thinking or criminal behavior. They are, instead, compulsions forced on unwitting men by their wily and wicked victims — sort of like invisible puppet-strings. Blaming the victim for crimes is not new, and it’s not even always religiously-motivated … but when it’s rationalized by religion, that tends to prevent people from seeing how invalid this sort of thinking is.

Note also how eerily similar this is to the mindset behind the Catholic Church’s approach to handling the abuse of children by its clergy, as I blogged previously: “It’s the kids’ fault … they — and the Devil within them — made me do it!”

Taken to its extreme, this kind of thinking leads to customs such as compelling women to shroud themselves entirely in a burqa, or even preventing them from going out in public at all, as was common in Afghanistan under the Taliban regime. This robs women of any sense of identity or individuality and reduces them to the level of mere property.

Hat tip: iReligion Forum at Delphi Forums.

Gee, it seems only a short time ago that I blogged about the Church of Scientology’s failed “investigation” of the St Petersburg Times, which late last year ran an extensive multi-story exposé of that so-called religion. This weekend, the estimable New York Times ran its own single-story (to date) exposé of Scientology (WebCite cached article):

Defectors Say Church of Scientology Hides Abuse

Raised as Scientologists, Christie King Collbran and her husband, Chris, were recruited as teenagers to work for the elite corps of staff members who keep the Church of Scientology running, known as the Sea Organization, or Sea Org.

They signed a contract for a billion years — in keeping with the church’s belief that Scientologists are immortal. They worked seven days a week, often on little sleep, for sporadic paychecks of $50 a week, at most.

But after 13 years and growing disillusionment, the Collbrans decided to leave the Sea Org, setting off on a Kafkaesque journey that they said required them to sign false confessions about their personal lives and their work, pay the church thousands of dollars it said they owed for courses and counseling, and accept the consequences as their parents, siblings and friends who are church members cut off all communication with them. …

They soon discovered others who felt the same. Searching for Web sites about Scientology that are not sponsored by the church (an activity prohibited when they were in the Sea Org), they discovered that hundreds of other Scientologists were also defecting — including high-ranking executives who had served for decades.

The large number of recent defections from the CoS likely explains this rash of newspaper stories on Scientology’s abuses. At any rate, the story acknowledges that the “average” CoS member may not be aware of all of this:

The defectors say that the average Scientology member, known in the church as a public, is largely unaware of the abusive environment experienced by staff members. The church works hard to cultivate public members — especially celebrities like Tom Cruise, John Travolta and Nancy Cartwright (the voice of the cartoon scoundrel Bart Simpson) — whose money keeps it running.

But recently even some celebrities have begun to abandon the church, the most prominent of whom is the director and screenwriter Paul Haggis, who won Oscars for “Million Dollar Baby” and “Crash.” Mr. Haggis had been a member for 35 years. His resignation letter [cached version], leaked to a defectors’ Web site, recounted his indignation as he came to believe that the defectors’ accusations must be true.

The Times continues by relating the Collbrans’ harrowing story of trying to leave Scientology, which included impediments such as taking their passports so they couldn’t travel. It also recounts things like beatings of Scientology members and employees, some at the hands of the head of the CoS, David Miscavige.

Marvelous people, eh?

I wonder if the CoS will try the same stunt they attempted with the St Petersburg Times and try to hire other reporters to investigate the New York Times. Even if they do, I’m betting they will also refuse to reveal the contents of that investigation.

You’d think that religious fundamentalists would have more to worry about, at the moment, than the tragic death of Sea World Orlando orca trainer Dawn Brancheau at the hands of orca Tilikum (WebCite cached article). But you’d be wrong to think so. The militant Christians at the American Family Association have decided to weigh in on the matter, and decided that — had scripture been obeyed, as they read it — Brancheau would still be alive. They posted the following on their own blog (cached article):

Bible ignored, trainer dies

You are aware by now that a 12,000 pound killer whale at SeaWorld Orlando killed his trainer Dawn Brancheau yesterday by pulling her into a pool and dragging her around until she drowned, in front of a crowd of stunned guests.

Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture. …

The Sentinel then recounts that Tilly, as he was affectionately known, had killed a trainer back in 1991 in front of spectators at a now defunct aquarium in Victoria, British Columbia.

Then in 1999 he killed a man who sneaked into SeaWorld to swim with the whales and was found the next morning draped dead across Tilly’s back. His body had been bit and the killer whale had torn off his swimming trunks after he had died. …

If the counsel of the Judeo-Christian tradition had been followed, Tillikum would have been put out of everyone’s misery back in 1991 and would not have had the opportunity to claim two more human lives.

Says the ancient civil code of Israel, “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.” (Exodus 21:28) …

But, the Scripture soberly warns, if one of your animals kills a second time because you didn’t kill it after it claimed its first human victim, this time you die right along with your animal. To use the example from Exodus, if your ox kills a second time, “the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (Exodus 21:29)

(Links to scriptural citations in the NASB added by me, they were not provided by the AFA. They used the ESV, it appears.)

After dispensing its bizarre theological pronouncements, the AFA proceeds to dispense ersatz legal advice to Brancheau’s family:

If I were the family of Dawn Brancheau, I’d sue the pants off SeaWorld for allowing this killer whale to kill again after they were well aware of its violent history.

As if I actually believe the AFA is truly concerned about the surviving family. Have we finally figured out how pathetic these creatures (i.e. fundamentalist Christians like those at the AFA, not the orca) are?