The Lasso of Truth

The true nature of God

I don't have much time for a kook like Pat Robertson.  Most decent people don't.

But the good Christians who get frustrated whenever his caustic delusions gain traction have to understand something:

In the Bible, there's a whole lot of smiting going on.  Time and again, the tale has been told of civilization going astray and being wiped out by an act of God, to start over.  The fate of Sodom as well as the story of the flood in Genesis, are iconic examples of the destructive brutality of God's wrath, as it's related through the sacred text.

So, don't be surprised when even the unbelievers among us hear a creep like Robertson profess the intentions and motivations of God, and figure that matches pretty well with the image that even his own spokesmen have put out there.

Instead of taking issue with the messenger, perhaps the more rational among you should start taking issue with the message.

This is why I'm not a Catholic

Because according to them, this man would be eligible for forgiveness and redemption...

A former Catholic bishop from Nova Scotia faces child pornography charges after being stopped by authorities at the Ottawa Airport last week.

News of the charges broke just days after Raymond Lahey, 69, stepped down as bishop of the Diocese of Antigonish, citing time needed for personal renewal.

Not in my book, and not under any God I'd want to follow.

Must be a slow news day

Especially for a media that usually tends to be more hostile than deferential, to Catholic religious practice...

A senior New Brunswick Roman Catholic priest is demanding the Prime Minister's Office explain what happened to the sacramental communion wafer Stephen Harper was given at Roméo LeBlanc's funeral mass.

During communion at the solemn and dignified service held last Friday in Memramcook for the former governor general, the prime minister slipped the thin wafer that Catholics call "the host" into his jacket pocket.

In Catholic understanding, the host - once consecrated by a priest for the Eucharist - becomes the body and blood of Jesus Christ. It is crucial that the small wafer be consumed when it is received.

Monsignor Brian Henneberry, vicar general and chancellor in the Diocese of Saint John, wants to know whether the prime minister consumed the host and, if not, what happened to it.

If Harper accepted the host but did not consume it, "it's worse than a faux pas, it's a scandal from the Catholic point of view," he said.

Which leads one to wonder what the reaction would be had he chewed it up and spit it back out.

The Catholic Church really needs to get a grip, if this is what ruffles feathers over there.  As for demanding that the PM's office spend valuable time issuing a statement to address this concern...don't you think they just might have more important matters to address?

h/t

A higher authority?

Apparently, if a man confesses to a priest that he has committed or will commit a murder, the priest is duty bound under the constraints of Catholic doctrine, to take that information to the grave.

Which begs the question:

What is the purpose of offering penance and forgiveness to someone who can escape taking actual responsibility for a crime, under the shield of confession?  And if an innocent man goes to jail for the crime, while the "holy father" in the know keeps his lips sealed, is all still forgiven in the eyes of God?

Does anyone still have a question why so many people (including myself) can no longer reconcile their faith with their common sense and morality?

I live in a system of morality where I suffer consequences for my actions, in the here and now.  But the Catholic religion puts your consequences off into a distant afterlife and offers absolution and forgiveness now, no matter how heinous the act.

It is a despicable permission under the guise of a higher morality and is one of the main reasons I chose to leave my faith behind me.

Not very Christian of you

A sounder flogging hasn't been seen since Boy George got a little frisky...

Boy, how about us militant secularists, huh? You may not have heard the news (it's elsewhere on this page), but according to Jonathan Kay, we "want everyone in society to dogmatically subscribe to [our] views." Apparently we do not merely hold a set of opinions and wish, like anyone, that others would come to uphold them with us:We insist that they must do so "dogmatically." Yes, that's really the term he used. Perhaps a slightly awkward choice, considering the subject matter?

Kay's petulant gripe with "militant secularists" can be found here.

Religious conservatives lose valuable ideological allies when they take gratuitous, uninformed pot shots at those of us who do not subscribe to religious mysticism.  I have seen many who, when talking about liberal colleagues, will couch their criticisms with caveats of personal respect and admiration, but when addressing fellow conservatives who are secularist or -- Heaven forfend!, Atheist -- show nothing short of outright contempt and derision.

Short sighted and closed minded.

Yes Michael, I mean you.

Think about it.

Hallowed be thy name

If the Vatican ever takes the time to wonder why the Catholic church is hemorrhaging members, perhaps they could spare a moment of remorse for their damnation of a nine-year-old sexual abuse victim…

Archibishop Jose Cardoso Sobrinho of the coastal city of Recife announced that the Vatican was excommunicating the family of a local girl who had been raped and impregnated with twins by her stepfather, because they had chosen to have the girl undergo an abortion. The Church excommunicated the doctors who performed the procedure as well. "God's laws," said the archbishop, dictate that abortion is a sin and that transgressors are no longer welcome in the Roman Catholic Church. "They took the life of an innocent," Sobrinho told TIME in a telephone interview. "Abortion is much more serious than killing an adult. An adult may or may not be an innocent, but an unborn child is most definitely innocent. Taking that life cannot be ignored."

Please note the reason for the family’s excommunication is not the sexual abuse of the girl, at the hands of her stepfather.  The church is far more concerned about the abortion which was performed to likely save the girl’s life.

This is why I am pro-life but I am not religious.  Because religion compels us to set aside simple common sense for the sake of adherence to religious dogma that would condemn this girl to death in childbirth.  I am against abortion as a social culling measure.  I am also opposed to using abortion as a catch all for irresponsible behavior.  But this is not that.  In this case, it is justified, which is why an exception was made to the law in Brazil, making abortion illegal.  Because they get it.

For the church to curse this girl and the adults who helped her to eternal damnation does nothing more than sanction the actions of the pervert who forced them into this predicament, while subjecting the Catholic religion to some well-deserved ridicule.

Thanks for clearing that up

Dutch Christians now have an answering machine where they can "leave a message for God"...

but Atheists are the ones who are "absurd"?

"There's probably no God"

"...Now stop worrying and enjoy your life."

No wonder people think atheists are all bonkers.

The Omnipresent God question

A psychologist examines the question of why people believe in God...

All we can ever know for certain about death is that a living person grows strangely still. We each have a fantasy about what happens after death and this fantasy determines how we see the purpose of life. If we see death as the end of our identity, the purpose of our life becomes making this life satisfactory.

There is an infinite number of ways in which we might choose to define "satisfactory", but whichever we choose becomes our purpose.

If we see death as the doorway to another life, we have to decide whether this next life will be better than this one. To give us hope, we decide that the next life will be better. This raises the question of justice. Do all people go on to this better life, or are there standards that have to be met?

A sense of justice leads us to choose standards, and in doing so we condemn ourselves to living this life in terms of the next. If you set standards which you can easily reach, you limit the amount of self-inflicted pain you will suffer, but if you acquire, say, a Calvinist conscience you set yourself impossible standards, and berate yourself for your constant failure to live up to them.

I have argued in the past that religion as I have known it, is arranged to ensure you never measure up.  The concept of original sin is a primary example of the inherent bias within Christianity that assumes mankind as automatically fallible and unable to reach by any means, the level of goodness expected to win the grace of God.  While many think this is a means of motivating good behavior through humility, I see it more of a self-defeating concept that causes many to give up hope of ever being good enough.  After all, when the standard is being measured against an unattainable constant, the strain of reaching becomes a discouraging and futile effort.  Add to this, the stipulation that it is not one's place to question God's plan, and it suddenly becomes a prison of condemnation without explanation, from which no escape can be made.

I spent many years there.

My metamorphosis from doubt-filled God-fearing uncertainty, to the logic and serenity of atheism, was a sudden and final rejection of the burden of guilt and irrationality I always felt in the practice of religion.  Many have judged me harshly for this.  None the least of which have been my own fellow Conservatives.

In light of the subject at hand, I delved into the archives to revive my original post on the subject here:

The Godless Conservative