To quote Michael Shermer, I “investigate paranormal claims, pseudoscience and fringe groups, and cults and claims of all kinds between science and pseudoscience, and non-science, and junk science, voodoo science, pathological science, bad science, non-science, and plain old nonsense.”
Yesterday, I blogged about how the Catholic Church was getting away with covering up hundreds of child abuse cases despite investigators’ having no reasonable doubt of their crimes.
The author reveals that she herself was such a victim of sexual harassment, having been propositioned in the confession box by a priest who cited biblical references to “divine kisses.”
Later she was cornered by a lesbian nun at a college where they were teaching. “She would come to my bed in the night and do lewd acts and I could not stop her,” she claims.When she was sent to Bangalore to stay with a priest known for his piety, he lectured her about the need for “physical love” and later assaulted her.
“Back in his room, he tried to fondle me and when I resisted, got up and asked angrily if I had seen a man. When I said no, he stripped himself, ejaculated and forced me to strip,” she writes.
According to Sister Jesme, senior church officials twice tried to admit her into rehabilitation clinics and claimed she had mental problems after she complained about the scale of sexual abuse and the number of illicit affairs between nuns and priests.
And like in Ireland and the rest of the world, this is only the tip of the iceberg with regards to Catholic sex abuse:
The Catholic Church in India is mired in a series of sexual controversies, and has only just begun to recover from the dismissal of a senior bishop who “adopted” an attractive 26-year-old female companion as his “daughter”.
Oh, and the best part comes at the end of the Telegraph article, when one church official is quoted as saying something so delusional and repulsive that it just further proves yesterday’s thesis that Catholic Church is an evil organization that must be destroyed:
Dr Paul Thelekkat, a spokesman for the Syro-Malabar Catholic church said he had some sympathy for sister Jesme, and respected her freedom to express her views, but he believed her claims were trivial. “How far what she says is well-founded I can’t say, but the issues are not very serious. We’re living with human beings in a community and she should realise this is part of human life,” he told the Daily Telegraph.
You said it, Dr Paul Thelekkat. What’s this chick’s problem? Rape is such a trivial matter hardly worth anybody’s attention. It was probably her own fault anyway for being such an attractive temptation. Besides the Bible clearly says women ought to be submit to men.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Catholic Church.
I’ve blogged before about the case of the Catholic-run reform schools in Ireland that were exposed to have covered up many decades of child abuse (here, here, here, and here). And that’s when I guess Ireland concluded that while massive conspiracy to cover up child rape is bad, it’s not nearly as bad as criticizing the organization responsible for said conspiracy and child rape, so they decided naturally to pass blasphemy laws forbidding the insulting of such an institution.
Authorities enjoyed a cosy relationship with the Church and did not enforce the law as four archbishops, obsessed with secrecy and avoiding scandal, protected abusers and reputations at all costs, the report said..
Hundreds of crimes against children from the 1960s to the 1990s were not reported while police treated clergy as though they were above the law.
In a three-year inquiry, the Commission to Inquire into the Dublin Archdiocese uncovered a sickening tactic of ”don’t ask, don’t tell” throughout the Church.
”The Commission has no doubt that clerical child sexual abuse was covered up by the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities,” it said.
”The structures and rules of the Catholic Church facilitated that cover-up.
”The State authorities facilitated that cover-up by not fulfilling their responsibilities to ensure that the law was applied equally to all and allowing the Church institutions to be beyond the reach of the normal law enforcement processes.”
Four archbishops – John Charles McQuaid who died in 1973, Dermot Ryan who died in 1984, Kevin McNamara who died in 1987, and retired Cardinal Desmond Connell – did not hand over information on abusers.
The first files were handed over by the Cardinal in 1995 but even then he had records of complaints against at least 28 priests.
The primary loyalty of bishops and archbishops is to the Church, the report said.
Bishop James Kavanagh, Bishop Dermot O’Mahony, Bishop Laurence Forristal, Bishop Donal Murray and disgraced Bishop Brendan Comiskey, a reformed alcoholic who failed to control paedophile priests when in charge of the Ferns Diocese, all knew about child abuse for many years.
The inquiry, headed by Judge Yvonne Murphy, said the hierarchy cannot claim they did not know that child sex abuse was a crime.
The facts are these:
While the Dublin Archdiocese inquiry found no evidence of a paedophile ring, some of the most shocking findings included:
One priest admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children;
Another accepted he abused on a fortnightly basis during his 25-year ministry;
One complaint was made against a priest who later admitted abusing at least six other children;
It took police 20 years to decide on a prosecution of one priest.
The inquiry said it uncovered inappropriate contacts between authorities and the Archdiocese.
And that’s just the beginning. There’s so many more examples of Church officials and police officials looking the other way while children were raped and abused at the hands of this organized crime syndocate known to the world as the Catholic Church. Nowhere but the Catholic Church will you find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
After the recent news of Australian government officials going after Scientology’s tax exempt status and labeling them a criminal organization, the more we learn about the mass child abuse cover-ups by the Catholic Church, the more obvious it becomes that Scientology’s abuses are a drop in the bucket next to that of the Catholic Church. Not only does the U.S. have a moral responsibility to revoke Catholic tax exemption but anyone who continues to support the Church after learning how willing its high-ranking officials are to sacrifice hundreds if not thousands of children to protect the Church’s reputation, should be considered complicit in these crimes. It is no wonder that Christopher Hitchens and Stephen Fry were so effective in convincing a recent debate audience that the Catholic church is far from a force for good in the world. Every Catholic should be outraged at their church’s hypocrisy as well as its utter lack of humanity and remorse for the unspeakable, unforgivable atrocities it’s committed.
Every sane individual on Earth should be demanding justice for these victims of Catholicism. It shouldn’t just be the atheists calling for action. Every person with even an ounce of compassion should be shouting for the Church leaders to stand trial for their crimes against humanity. Where is the outrage?
1. Suicide bomber Barbie – Okay, actually it’s just Barbie in a burqa. This only goes to show that Barbie will never stop keeping women down in society. But I guess at least it’s for a good cause:
Wearing the traditional Islamic dress, the iconic doll is going undercover for a charity auction in connection with Sotheby’s for Save The Children.
2. War on Christmas continues with new athvertisement – And though I really shouldn’t have to say this, of course there’s no such thing as the “War on Christmas.” But it’s fun to play along with Fox News’ little conspiratorial delusion. The American Humanist Association is sponsoring a new nation-wide campaign involving ads with the slogan, “No God? …No problem! Be good for goodness’ sake.” This is the latest variation on a common theme. And despite the fact that it doesn’t say anything negative at all about anyone’s religion, I guarantee that it won’t be long before we hear from outraged Christians who feel personally slighted by the ad.
3. Marietta, Georgia considers dropping “so help me God” from police officer oath – Of course there’s some strange controversy over it. Councilman Van Pearlberg apparently just inquired as to whether it had ever been challenged, which somehow led to the option to remove it being considered. Pearlberg, however, claims he never actually objected to it and thinks it should not be removed, while also saying, “I don’t think anybody should be forced to say anything…I just don’t know what the alternative would be.” Keep it as part of the oath or give people the freedom to say what they want? Which is it? They’re mutually exclusive positions. If what you’re saying is that people should not be required to say it but they can should they be so inclined, then why not just obey the Constitution and remove it while leaving open the option for individuals to unofficially include it should they desire to do so?
4. Matt Barber blames everyone for Will Phillips’ decision except Will Phillips - Matt Barber of the Liberty Counsel, a Religious Right organization, has publicly come out to respond to 10-year-old Will Phillips’ decision to not stand for the Pledge until gay marriage is legalized. Basically, that response is simply ranting about how all of Barber’s ideological opponents are responsible for brainwashing the kid. He’s apparently a pawn of his evil parents, liberals, atheists, gay activists, Hollywood, etc. To whoever that newscaster was who asked Will Phillips what a gay-wad was, Matt Barber’s your man. Hopefully Jon Stewart can dispatch some pro wrestlers to force an apology. What I want to know is, who is responsible for Matt Barber’s being a flaming moron?
5. Small children prove more knowledgeable about evolution than Ray Comfort and Kirk Cameron:
6. Chris Matthews vs. Bishop Tobin over recent Catholic extortion tactic:
Four years after cartoons of the prophet Muhammad set off violent protests across the Muslim world, Islamic nations are mounting a campaign for an international treaty to protect religious symbols and beliefs from mockery – essentially a ban on blasphemy that would put them on a collision course with free speech laws in the West.
2. Texas bans all marriage – Religious fanatics aren’t the only ones who can slip nonsense into a bill:
When the people of Texas passed a 2005 constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage, those clever, clever gays somehow forced them to word it poorly enough that it might prohibit ALL marriage in the state, same-sex or otherwise:
The amendment, approved by the Legislature and overwhelmingly ratified by voters, declares that “marriage in this state shall consist only of the union of one man and one woman.” But the troublemaking phrase, as Radnofsky sees it, is Subsection B, which declares:
“This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.”
Architects of the amendment included the clause to ban same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships. But Radnofsky, who was a member of the powerhouse Vinson & Elkins law firm in Houston for 27 years until retiring in 2006, says the wording of Subsection B effectively “eliminates marriage in Texas,” including common-law marriages.
1. MILF cleared of abduction charges by Irish priest – Okay, get you minds out of the gutter. Of course I’m talking about the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF). In the Philippines, Irish Fr. Michael Sinnott was held hostage for 31 days and after being freed, said that his abductors were the original lumad of Mindanao who lost their homeland and everything else when the merchants came in, but not the MILF. In fact, the MILF Central Committee are credited for effecting his release.
Led by Elena Rozhkova, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Chicago’s Brain Tumor Center have developed the first nanoparticles that seek out and destroy glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) brain cancer cells without damaging nearby healthy cells.
Nanomedicine, an offshoot of nanotechnology, refers to highly specific medical intervention at the molecular scale for curing disease or repairing damaged tissues, such as bone, muscle, nerve, or brain cells. Nanoparticles – anywhere from 100 to 2500 nanometers in size – are at the same scale as the biological molecules and structures inside living cells. Cancer detection using nanoparticles shows great promise as a therapy for certain types of cancer. And the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH) is taking nanoparticles very seriously. The NIH has established a national network of eight Nanomedicine Development Centers, which serve as the intellectual and technological core of the NIH Nanomedicine Roadmap Initiative.
When State Sen. Yance McGill was asked by the Associated Press in May 2009 whether he would support a Wiccan tag, he said, “Well, that’s not what I consider to be a religion.”
When asked about a Buddhist tag, he said “I’d have to look at the individual situation. But I’m telling you, I firmly believe in this [Christian] tag.”
Rep. Bill Sandifer also backed the “Christian” plate, but emphatically asserted that he would never do the same for a plate featuring Islamic symbols and language.
“Absolutely and positively no,” he said.
And, let’s not forget, [ed: Lt. Gov] Bauer himself also said no to the same question.
“I would not [support a tag for Islam] because that is not the group I support,” he said.
5. Catholic Church gives Washington D.C. an ultimatum – The Catholic Archdiocese of Washington threatened to pull aid to homeless if the state doesn’t change a proposed same-sex marriage law. Yay extortion!
6. Cincinnati Coalition of Reason billboard taken down due to death threats - And while extremely unfortunate, it both illustrates why these completely unoffensive ads are so important in the first place and on the plus side, the billboard was just moved to a new location. And this will no doubt generate more publicity than the billboard itself.
7. Alabama Atheists and Agnostics get publicity - Last month, they went around chalking their university to advertise their upcoming meeting. Then it got erased and so they chalked everything again, only to have that erased to. And now the story has gotten them some great new publicity, which like the Cincinnati billboard incident, will likely reach a much larger audience than originally intended. Thanks assholes!
“I’ve always tried to analyze things because I want to be lawyer,” Will said. “I really don’t feel that there’s currently liberty and justice for all.”
…
At the end of our interview, I ask young Will a question that might be a civics test nightmare for your average 10-year-old. Will’s answer, though, is good enough — simple enough, true enough — to give me a little rush of goose pimples. What does being an American mean?
“Freedom of speech,” Will says, without even stopping to think. “The freedom to disagree. That’s what I think pretty much being an American represents.”
Scientists suspect that part of the answer to the mystery lies in a gene called FOXP2. When mutated, FOXP2 can disrupt speech and language in humans. Now, a UCLA/Emory study reveals major differences between how the human and chimp versions of FOXP2 work, perhaps explaining why language is unique to humans.
Published Nov. 11 in the online edition of the journal Nature, the findings provide insight into the evolution of the human brain and may point to possible drug targets for human disorders characterized by speech disruption, such as autism and schizophrenia.
Now that Ms. Prejean’s book has hit shelves, she’s being interviewed all over the place, including Larry King, where she did her best impression of the alien woman from ABC’s show “V” during the interview (or was it a Tommy Davis impression?), by at least threatening to walk out on the interview after being asked legitimate questions by King and having to face random callers:
Of course she’s too much of a media whore to actually walk out, so she just threatens to walk out while still glued to her chair so tightly that even the jaws of life couldn’t pry her loose.
But then came her interview with the publication Christianity Today (an oxymoron if I ever heard one). In that interview she essentially rationalizes her controversial and even scandalous behavior (only scandalous in that it exposes the hypocrasy of her self-righteous, “traditional Christian values”) by saying that the Bible allows breast implants and that she’s not homophobic because she has gay hairdressers whom she presumably doesn’t burn at the stake (which even makes the “I have gay friends” defense seem brilliant by comparison).
Oh, and she also gives an account of her self-sex tape story that doesn’t corroberate her ex-boyfriend’s version of the story. Her boyfriend said the incident took place when she was twenty. She now says it was when she was seventeen. I’m not mathematician but if my calculations are correct, that’s almost like three years off.
The interview also reveals how she became Jesus’ bitch, which not surprising, is one of the six classic reasons people become “born-again.” I would have pegged her as the party girl who started to tire of the lifestyle by the time Christians confronted her about Jesus. But no, turns out that she was one of those who didn’t fit until the Christian vultures showed up to shower her with love on the condition that she joined their cult.
Then comes the obligatory line where she projects her own faults onto Parez Hilton:
Oh yeah. I actually feel really sorry for him. I really do. If you look at his website, it’s kind of scary what he does.
Yeah, it’s scary what he does.
Then comes this little gem:
No, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with getting breast implants as a Christian. I think it’s a personal decision. I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says you shouldn’t get breast implants.
That’s funny, because I don’t see anywhere in the Bible where it says anything about gay marriage, abortion, stem cell research, either. So I guess that means Jesus is cool with it, huh. And what about that part in the Bible that says women have to go out into the forest while menstruating? That’s something that the Bible DOES say. I don’t see you following that rule.
Oh yeah, and did I mention that Ms. Prejean’s ex-boyfriend (the one she allegedly sent her solo-sex tape to is now claiming that her people contacted him and specifically told him to lie and say she was 17 when she shot the video.This is kind of confusing to me because on the one hand, as long as she was “seventeen,” it makes it easier to write it all off as a minor child indiscression. But doesn’t her being “seventeen” eradicate the whole wholesom, “brought up on traditional Christian values” card she’s been trying to play? If I were her, I’d prefer everyone believe it happened when I was twenty because at least I can play the “we were both consenting adults who didn’t actually have any premarital sex” card. And while her ex-boyfriend is in trouble given the whole no-wasted-seed and no coveting passages in the Bible, there’s nothing in the Bible as far as I’m aware that necessarily condemns her videotaping herself masturbating.
Of course among the already indoctrinated, all she seems to be able to get an amazing level of traction by just diverting the discussion to attacking the evil liberals for picking on her and all the other conservative women. In fact, if her book jacket is any indication, that’s the whole thesis of her book. As long as conservatives focus on the alleged liberals who are just out to get her by airing her dirty laundry in public, they won’t be thinking about what it is that’s actually being exposed and whether or not it’s actually true. So congratulations to Carrie Prejean’s PR people, who truly are brilliant manipulators.
Recently, University of Missouri researchers have developed a pupil response test that is 92.5 percent accurate in separating children with autism from those with typical development. In the study, MU scientists found that children with autism have slower pupil responses to light change.
New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed approximately constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.
This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO2 than had been previously expected.
She admits that, on the surface, EBF3 reminds many people of a Star Trek replicator in which, for example, Captain Picard announces out loud, “Tea, Earl Grey, hot.” Then there is a brief hum, a flash of light and the stimulating drink appears from a nook in the wall.
In reality, EBF3 works in a vacuum chamber, where an electron beam is focused on a constantly feeding source of metal, which is melted and then applied as called for by a drawing — one layer at a time — on top of a rotating surface until the part is complete.
5. Did Glenn Beck rape and murdere a young girl in 1990? – I’m not saying he did, but like a lot of other people, “I’m just asking questions.” And these are apparently questions that Glenn Beck doesn’t want to see asked because he tried to shut down the satirical Beck-mocking site glennbeckrapedandmurderedayounggirlin1990.com. But Beck couldn’t silence the questions and the so mirror sites using this Fark-inspired meme applying Beck’s own “I’m just asking the question” tactic remain on the web. What are you trying to hide, Glenn? And why haven’t you denied that you raped and murdered a young girl in 1990? Huh?
Kiddos to South Park for nailing this particular Beck tactic on tonight’s show.
6. Mormons becoming pro-gay rights? – Last week I blogged about how filmmaker Paul Haggis left $cientology largely because of their unapologetic anti-gay position. Well now the Mormon church is coming out in support of gay rights. Seriously.
7. E.T. phone Rome – The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is holding its first ever conference to discuss the possible ramifications for the church should extraterrestrial life be discovered. Maybe they’ll finally pardon Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk, who was put to death by the Inquisition in 1600 for suggesting life might exist somewhere else in the universe.
I’ve blogged about the Christian Persecution Complex before in relation to the former Miss. California, Carrie Prejean. She made her bigotry known and lost the crown when judges saw how ugly she was on the inside. But it wasn’t her fault; it was those damned liberals!
Then she defended her bigotry with self-righteous platitudes of her strong, traditional, Christian values while America and the pageant committee learned that she’d violated the rules of the pageant and the “Christian value” of modesty by posing for sexually explicit photos, not showing up for pageant-scheduled appearances, and appearing on political programs that weren’t approved by the pageant committee. But it wasn’t her fault; it was those damned liberals!
And now that “her” book, which no doubt is filled with more of her self-righteousness is coming out while controversy ignites over a authenticated “sex tape” (though not actual sex apparently) of her has reached the press, that too apparently isn’t her fault. It’s those damned liberals!
Yeah, how dare all those evil liberals point out my hypocrisies and expect me to accept responsibility for my actions! Wah! Wah! Wah! Liberals! Wah!
Glad to see that Fox clearly brought out their most objective reporter to interview her. He only wrote the forward of her book. Whereas Ann Coulter probably wrote the rest of it. But is there any doubt that this girl could have committed first degree murder and Hannity would be defending it as a minor childhood indiscretion?
We get it. Nothing’s ever your fault and you should never be held responsible for your own behavior, regardless of how much your actions directly challenge the holier-than-thou personna that you’ve invented to further your celebrity. You can do no wrong, Carrie. Because you’re just a stupid kid, and because you love Jesus, and because no matter what you do, it can never be as bad as criticizing you about it. Nothing’s ever your fault. It’s all Them!
1. Atheists help the homeless - On Sunday, atheists in the Austin, TX area are giving away free toiletries to homeless people. You can donate the items or money to the cause by going to their homepage. Or if you’re in the area and would like to help, they’ll be under I-35 at 7th Street in Austin at 8:00 a.m.
3. Like with California’s Prop 8, we lost Maine’s Prop 1 – Once again, the Religious Right has stolen the civil rights of gays to marry. Fortunately, as Greta Christina explains, there is reason to stay optimistic.
Yesterday, I blogged about how the Catholic Church was getting away with covering up hundreds of child abuse cases despite investigators’ having no reasonable doubt of their crimes.
You said it, Dr Paul Thelekkat. What’s this chick’s problem? Rape is such a trivial matter hardly worth anybody’s attention. It was probably her own fault anyway for being such an attractive temptation. Besides the Bible clearly says women ought to be submit to men.
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
Posted by mjr256 
