Official – Vatican does compare child abuse with ordaining women

Apologists for the Vatican have recently claimed that the Catholic Church does not compare sexually abusing a child with attempting to ordain a woman, but that it merely included both crimes in the same document as a procedural matter.

However, this is not true. A Vatican official has explicitly described the crimes contained in this document as being “on the same level” of seriousness. They are the “Delicta Graviora”, the crimes which the Catholic Church considers the most serious of all, and which are reserved to the Holy See for judgment.

In 2007, the Vatican published a pamphlet on Paedophilia and the Priesthood, written by Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and member of the editorial commission of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet explicitly states:

“The seriousness with which the Church evaluates and judges acts of pedophilia is shown by the fact that with a new law passed in 2001, the Holy See (and not the local bishops) decided to reserve the right to judge those crimes…

The fact that the Pope wanted to reserve to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — a dicastery of the Holy See — judgment of the acts of pedophilia committed by priests, shows that the Church considers those acts to be very serious, serious crimes on the same level of the other two serious crimes — reserved to the Holy See — that can be committed against two sacraments: the Eucharist and the holiness of confession.”

In 2010, with the updated document Normae de Gravioribus Delictis, the Vatican has now added the attempted ordination of women to this strange list of the most serious crimes of all.

And the direction of the comparison is not that they consider these theological crimes to be as serious as sexually abusing a child, but that they consider sexually abusing a child to be as serious as these theological crimes, to be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be the Congregation of the Inquisition.

For example, sexually abusing a child is listed not as a crime against the child, but as a crime against the Biblical commandment forbidding adultery. And attempting to ordain a woman attracts a more serious punishment than sexually abusing a child. This is the type of morality that results when people put theology ahead of reality.

Ethical issues should be evaluated on the basis of human rights, compassion, well-being and suffering, not on the basis of theological dictates from people who believe they are getting messages from the creator of the universe.

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Read the Bible: The Resurrection of Jesus

One of Atheist Ireland’s campaigns is to encourage people to read the Christian Bible and the sacred texts of other religions. The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central tenet of Christianity. But the evidence for this extraordinary claim is nonexistent outside the Christian Bible, and contradictory within the Christian Bible.

In the earliest written Biblical reference, Paul says the risen Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people at one time [1 Cor 15:3-8]. Yet in the earliest written Gospel, called Mark, the allegedly risen Jesus does not appear to anybody. A different writer later added that part [16:9-20] to the Mark story, with the risen Jesus saying that people who believed in him could safely drink poison.

The Gospels called Matthew and Luke, written a decade or more later, were the first to include the risen Jesus physically appearing to people. But in Matthew, this seems relatively commonplace, with the bodies of many dead people being physically resurrected, coming out of their tombs, and appearing to many people [27:52-53]. None of the other Gospels mention this incident.

Nor do the Gospels agree on where and how many times the risen Jesus physically appeared. In Mark he does not appear at all. In Matthew he appears twice, to the two Marys on a road [27:8-9] and to his disciples on a mountain in Galilee [27:16-17]. In Luke he appears three times: to a man and his companion on a road [24:13-32], to Peter in an unspecified place [24:33-34], and to his disciples and others in a house [24:36-53].

In John he appears four times: to Mary Magdelene who thinks he is a gardener outside his tomb [20:11-18], to his disciples twice in a house [24:19-23, 26-29], and to some of his disciples for breakfast after a fishing trip [21:1-12]. None of the Gospels include Paul’s remarkable claim that the risen Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people at one time.

These fantastic and wildly inconsistent stories may have seemed convincing in more primitive times, written as they were as standalone stories in different places for different audiences, many of who believed the world was coming to an end within their lifetimes. They are no basis today on which to build a worldview about the nature of reality or how we should live together as sentient beings.

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Jesus the raging ruler of Revelation

Moderate Christians sometimes argue that Jesus changed the violent message of the Old Testament God. But this argument ignores the New Testament portrayal of Jesus as the raging ruler of Revelation.

A prophet called John believed that Jesus appeared to him on the Greek island of Patmos, to show him what the end of the world would be like. Jesus had white hair and eyes like flames, a sharp two-edged sword came out of his mouth, he wore a golden sash over a full-length garment, his feet were like brass, he carried seven stars in his hand to represent seven angels, and he stood between seven golden candlesticks that represented seven churches in Turkey. Jesus dictated letters to the angels of each of these churches. These included some strong rebukes. He told the angel of one church that a woman called Jezebel had seduced his servants to fornicate, so he was going to kill her children with death.

After dictating these letters, Jesus brought John to Heaven through a door in the sky. God was sitting on a throne being worshipped by twenty four elders with gold crowns, and four beasts with six wings each. God had a book sealed with seven seals, and nobody was worthy enough to open it except Jesus, who now appeared as a lamb. Jesus took the book from God, and opened the first six seals. Four horsemen brought disasters to the earth, but 144,000 Israelites were saved. Jesus then opened the seventh seal, and seven angels brought more disasters to earth, with various beasts killing some people and torturing others but not letting them die.

The angels in Heaven then cast the Devil down to earth in the form of a dragon with seven heads and ten horns. The dragon attacked a pregnant woman, but the earth protected her. Then a beast arose from the sea, and the dragon gave the beast his power and authority. The number of the beast was 666. Seven more angels then poured seven golden vials of God’s wrath onto the earth, bringing seven more plagues. The seas and rivers turned to blood, people were scorched with fire, and giant hailstones fell from the sky. A woman, the whore of Babylon, was sitting on the back of the beast, and an angel destroyed the city of Babylon.

Jesus himself then went to war with the beast. Jesus was on a white horse, and his robe was soaked in blood. Jesus cast the beast and his false prophet into a lake of fire burning with brimstone, and killed the beast’s army using the sword that came out of his mouth. An angel then jailed the Devil in a bottomless pit for a thousand years, after which the Devil returned and deceived various nations. God cast those nations, the Devil, Hell and Death itself into the lake of burning brimstone for eternity. God then sent a new Jerusalem, made out of gold, from Heaven to earth, and the righteous lived there in peace for eternity. Finally, Jesus assured John that the time for all of these prophecies to happen was soon coming.

Jesus as the raging ruler of Revelation is inconvenient to moderate Christians, because he is just as vengeful and violent as was the Jewish Jehovah of the Old Testament. Even before he brought John to Heaven, Jesus was threatening to kill the innocent children of the prophetess Jezebel because of the sins of their mother, which is straight out of Old Testament morality.

Of course, this Jesus may have been just a vision that appeared to John on the island of Patmos, but he was either as real, or else as imaginary, as the Jesus that appeared in a vision to Paul on the road to Damascus. There is no valid reason to give either of these hallucinations any more or less credibility than the other.

And this Jesus was adamant that his message was not to be revised: before he left, he told John that God would curse anyone who either added to or removed any of his words. So there’s not much room there for cherry-picking the bits that sound nice.

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Visionary has double vision of Virgin Mary

Joe Coleman claims to get messages from the mother of the son of the creator of the universe. People who believe him have damaged their eyes by staring into the sun. Last Friday Coleman was on RTE’s Late Late Show, promoting a book about his alleged visions. But his stories while being interviewed do not match up to what he has written in his book.

Let’s start with page one of chapter one. Coleman says he had his first apparition of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the age of twelve, when he was looking at a picture of her in his grandmother’s house. Now, you would imagine that such a momentous event would be indelibly imprinted on his memory. But you would be mistaken.

In his book, Coleman describes the event as “a scene of utter silence” in which the image of Mary seemed to float towards him in a hazy cloud, then beamed at him with a beautiful smile, and “then it was over just as quickly as it had begun.”

But on the Late Late Show, Coleman says “She told me she was my blessed mother, and I was going to work for her in years to come, and I have to prepare myself”. When Ryan Tubridy volunteers the phrase “She said brace yourself”, Coleman replies “She said brace yourself, my child. It was the first time she called me my child. She said, you have come back to the earth, you have to work for me, but I didn’t understand that, because I didn’t even know who she was.”

So, based on his Late Late Show interview, Coleman believes the image of the Virgin Mary told him specific things when she first appeared to him, things that were central to his later role as a messenger of her visions. Yet he fails to mention any of these comments in his book. Instead, he specifically describes “a scene of utter silence” in which the apparition smiles at him and “then it was over just as quickly as it had begun.”

This leaves three broad possibilities: (a) while writing, revising and editing the first page of chapter one of a book about being visited by the mother of the son of the creator of the universe, Joe Coleman forgot that she had told him these very important things; or (b) he remembered that she had told him these things, but thought this too trivial to include in his book; or (c) he is making up or embellishing his stories as he goes along.

I know which option I am leaning towards.

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Moral without God? Video of debate

I recently debated with John Murray, director of the Iona Institute for Religion and Society, on the motion that one cannot be truly moral without God. The debate took place on 30 March 2010 in Maynooth University, and was organized by the Maynooth Christian Union and the Maynooth Literary and Debating Society.

(if you can’t see any of these videos, please go here to the original post.)

Here’s my opening contribution:

And here is a playlist of the full debate, which takes about an hour and forty minutes:

If you want to skip to any particular section, you can use the arrows on the right and left of the above playlist to view any of the following parts of the debate:

Opening speeches
1/12 – John Murray opening speech
2/12 – Michael Nugent opening speech
3/12 – Student speeches for motion
4/12 – Student speeches against motion

Questions and answers
5/12 – Relative morality in the Bible
6/12 – Can we live without God?
7/12 – Interpreting morality in the Bible
8/12 – Human rights and true morality
9/12 – Can we be moral with God?
10/12 – Science, morality and animals

Closing speeches
11/12 – John Murray summary
12/12 – Michael Nugent summary

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Catholic magic tricks #2 – the Resurrection

Here’s another magic trick from The Catechist’s Magic Kit: 80 Simple Tricks for Teaching Catholicism to Kids. To repeat, this is not satire. It is from an actual book, published this year with the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Brooklyn, New York.

This week I am featuring some of my favourite tricks from this delightful book. Yesterday I showed you a card trick to encourage children to consider becoming Priests by lying to them. In today’s trick, you will learn how to persuade children that the Resurrection was real by showing them a faked illusion.

To perform this trick, you need a cutout of Jesus which is provided in the book, plus some crayons, an envelope and a pair of scissors. You start by asking a volunteer child to colour in the cutout picture of Jesus. You then put the cutout Jesus into the envelope, and cut the envelope in two with the scissors, before showing the children that Jesus has emerged unharmed from the cutting.

As before, you start by setting the scene: “When Jesus said that he would destroy the temple and, in three days, rebuild it, He wasn’t speaking about the actual temple in Jerusalem where the Jews would make sacrifices to God. Instead, Jesus was referring to His body, which would be crucified and then resurrected. let me show you an example of what Jesus meant.”

You now take the coloured-in cutout of Jesus, and slide it into the envelope. Or so the children think! Actually, you are sliding the cutout Jesus in and out of two slits that you have secretly cut in the back of the envelope. As the book warns: “Make sure that you don’t flash the back of the envelope or the illusion will be destroyed.” This is great advice, because who would want illusions about the Resurrection to be destroyed?

You continue: “When Jesus was killed, His body stayed in the tomb for three days,” and you illustrate the killing with the rather gruesome metaphor of cutting the envelope, inside which lies Jesus, in two with the scissors. Or so the children think! Instead, somewhat like Penn and Teller sawing a lady in two, you are actually cutting the envelope without harming the cutout of Jesus.

You then ask the children: “But do you know what happened after those three days?” And you show your delighted audience that the coloured-in cutout Jesus has not been destroyed. Lest they miss the theological significance of the parlour trick, you explain: “This is what Jesus meant. His body might have been destroyed, but He lives forever with us and the father.”

To convince any skeptical children that Jesus is really unharmed, you pass out the cutout for them to examine. But heed the final warning in the book: “And rip up the envelope to destroy any evidence of the trick.” Again, this is great advice, because if people have evidence that something is not true they are much less likely to believe it.

It’s a good trick, albeit with some practical and theological flaws. Based on the illustration, nobody would believe that the cutout Jesus has been put into the envelope. It is protruding from two ends where the envelope is sealed. And cutting Jesus in two is not really the same as crucifying him. But at least the book makes clear that, when Jesus talked of the temple, the temple that he referred to had nothing to do with those pesky Jews.

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Catholic magic tricks #1 – Holy Orders

Warning: this is not satire. This is from an actual book, published this year, called The Catechist’s Magic Kit: 80 Simple Tricks for Teaching Catholicism to Kids. The book is written by Angelo Stagnaro, and has the Imprimatur of the Bishop of Brooklyn, New York.

The blurb reads: “Simple magic tricks for teaching spiritual truths to children are explained in precise detail in this distinctive compendium. The lessons faithfully follow the catechism of the Catholic Church… The strongest element of this book is the explanation of the theology and spiritual truths that underlie each trick in a simple and inspiring way.”

This week I will feature some of my favourite tricks from this delightful book, starting today with a simple mathematical card trick to encourage children to consider becoming Priests by lying to them.

To perform this trick, you need six profession cards, which are included in the book. Though the book does not refer to this, I assume there is no significance in the fact that the doctor looks slightly like Bono and the priest looks like a black Larry David. You also need an envelope, a black magic marker, and a photo of a small boy with a priest image glued on the back.

You start by setting the scene: “It is through the Sacraments that we principally experience God,” you tell the children. “Our Priests, our Bishops and the Pope get their authority from the Apostles, and they got it from Christ Himself. It is God that sustains our leaders.”

Now that you have set the mood, you place the six cards in a row, face down, on the table, placing the Priest card third from the left. You then ask a volunteer from among the children to pick a number between one and six.

If they pick three, you count out the number starting from the left, and turn over the Priest card. If they pick four, you count out the number starting from the right, and turn over the Priest card. If they pick one, two or six, you spell out the number starting from the left, and turn over the Priest card. If they pick five, you spell out the number starting from the right, and turn over the Priest card.

You then turn over the other cards and tell the child: “You have chosen the Priest card. You could have chosen any of these others…” (technically, of course, this is a lie, but that’s not important and the children will hopefully trust that you are telling them the truth).

You then say: “let’s look at my prediction,” and you open the envelope. The children are surprised to see a picture of a small boy. Has the catholic magician got it wrong? You then say: “Ah, this is a photo of a Priest long before he was ordained…” and turn it over to reveal the image of the Priest glued to the back.

Then comes the lesson of the trick. You say to the children: “Does anyone here know a Priest? Who here wants to be a Priest? Being a Priest is an important job in the Church. WIthout them we wouldn’t be able to experience the Sacraments. The Church community needs Priests. Always keep Priests in your prayers.”

Finally, and again I stress that this is not satire, the explanation ends with following advice: ”TIP: When looking for volunteers for this trick, it’s best to ask a boy to assist you rather than a girl as only males are allowed to become Priests in the Catholic Church”.

One threat that the book does not mention is that you have to make absolutely sure that you get this trick right. If you mistakenly turn over the wrong card, a child might end up wanting to become a doctor or a fireman or a teacher or an artist or a chef, which would of course be a disaster for society.

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New Hitchens Vs D’Souza debate

This is Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza debating in Orlando last week. In part one, they debate God, Christianity, and Science and Reason. In part two, they respond to questions from each other and the audience.

(If you can’t see the videos, go to this page.)

Part One: Topics

On God, Hitchens argues that the idea of God, unlike philosophy and science, provides only guesses and undeliverable promises based on faith. D’Souza responds that science answers the question of how, and God answers the question of why. Hitchens responds that these are linguistic superimpositions on things we don’t understand. D’Souza says he is arguing on reason alone, not on Biblical revelation, for intelligent design.

On Christianity, D’Souza argues that Islam is unusual among religions in creating suicide bombers. Hitchens responds by citing Christianity’s links with European fascism, and says there is no link between virgin births or resurrections, and preaching the truth. D’Souza argues that freedom is at the heart of Christianity.

On Science and Reason, Hitchens argues that scientists throughout history could be great scientists while also mistakenly believing in gods. D’Souza argues that we can infer that the play Hamlet was designed, even though we do not see Shakespeare today, and we can also infer that the universe was designed.

Part Two: Questions

Hitchens asks D’Souza would he rather that Hitchens stayed as an atheist, or became a non-Christian religious person. D’Souza responds that he feels safer debating him as an atheist.

D’Souza asks Hitchens if he has ever had any doubt about his atheism, and if so, what caused it. Hitchens responds that Pascal’s Wager is immoral, and that if he is honestly mistaken he is proud of that mistake.

In audience questions, Hitchens is asked about Stalin’s murders. He responds that Stalin was connected with the Russian orthodox Church, and that a fair comparison would be with a society that followed values from greek philosophy to Thomas Paine. D’Souza replies that if the Muslims are blamed for Bin Laden, and Christians for the Inquisition, then Atheists should be blamed for Stalin. Hitchens responds that Stalin did not act in the name of atheism.

D’Souza is asked whether god was not invented because of fear of the unknown. He responds that religions do not provide wish fulfillment, because Hell is the ultimate fear. Hitchens responds that not all of our wishes are benign, and that some people fear being free.

D’Souza is asked why God won’t heal amputees. He responds that amputees still have life, and that paraplegics and lottery winners are both as happy a year later as they were before their changes. Hitchens responds that D’Souza missed the point of the question, which was that miracle healers make untestable claims, not testable ones. D’Souza responds that miracles are spiritual ministry, not physical healing.

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Ten funny anagrams for rational people

Creationism = I’m so certain

Intelligent design = Deleting listening

Evangelical Protestantism = Plainest, lamest overacting

Roman Catholicism = Criminal homo acts

Islam = I slam

Homeopathy = Empty hoo-ha

Alternative medicine = Tame evidence in trial

Faith healer – Hail the fear

Transubstantiation = Stuns brain to attain

The Rapture = Pure threat

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The false flow of the Biblical Jesus stories

Imagine you have never heard of the Bible, and you are given the 27 books of the New Testament and asked to put them in order.

You would probably come close to the order they appear in today: the four Gospels that tell the story of Jesus, then the Book of Acts that tells how the early church developed, then various letters by Paul and others, then the Book of Revelation that tells how the world will end.

If you did this, you would have created a continuous narrative, each book being a chapter, each building on the previous one, to create one grand story. You would also have created a false impression of how and why these books were written. And you would have obscured the sequence in which different writers gradually introduced the various elements of the Jesus legend.

Written in a Different Sequence

Firstly, these books were written in a very different sequence. Paul wrote his letters first, about 48-62 CE, and he wrote almost nothing about the earthly life of Jesus. Starting maybe in the 50s CE, someone compiled sayings attributed to Jesus into a text called Q, which probably became one source of two of the later Gospels. The book of Revelation, with its violent avenging Jesus, was written in stages between about 60-95 CE.

The Gospel called Mark was written about 65-70 CE, and it has no virgin birth and no detail of the resurrection. These stories first appear in the Gospels called Matthew and Luke, which were written about 80-85 CE, as was the Book of Acts, some of which contradicts what Paul earlier wrote about himself.

The Gospel called John was written about 90-95 CE, and it is the first book that suggests that Jesus was actually God, as distinct from a human being who had a special relationship with God.

Written as Standalone Books

Secondly, these books were not written as part of a grand meta-story. They were never intended to be read as continuous chapters of the same book. Their writers wrote them as standalone books, at different places and times, to convey different political and theological beliefs, for different audiences and reasons. This is one reason for the many contradictions in the New Testament.

And so, over a period of fifty or more years, these different individual writers separately created the apocalyptic apparitions of Paul, the eloquent quotations of Q, the raging ruler of Revelation, the marginalized messiah of Mark, the Moses-like messiah of Matthew, the all-inclusive leader of Luke, and the Jehovah-like Jesus of John.

The writers of those contradictory stories did not foresee that their texts would become part of a book centuries later. Indeed, many of them believed that the earthly world would have ended within their own lifetimes.

Written Alongside Rival Books

Thirdly, these books were only some among many rival Gospels that early Christians wrote and read. As well as political and practical differences, there were many theological arguments among early Christians about the nature of Jesus.

The Ebionites believed Jesus was totally human and not divine, and that the Jewish God had adopted him at his baptism. The Marcionites believed Jesus was totally divine and not human, and had come to save people from the Jewish God. The Gnostics believed that one of many Gods had used Jesus to convey special knowledge to save human souls from the material world. And the faction that eventually won out argued that Jesus was both totally human and totally divine.

This policy of Jesus being “both totally human and totally divine” enabled this faction (which evolved into today’s Christianity) to include contradictory versions of Jesus into what has become the New Testament.

How Jesus Gradually Became God

To help understand the New Testament stories better, read them in the sequence in which they were written, instead of the sequence in which they appear in the Bible. Doing this may change your beliefs about not only the Jesus of history, but also the Jesus of theology.

You will see how a human Jewish preacher gradually evolved into being part of a newly-invented Christian God, and how his relationship with this God gradually started earlier and earlier as time went on: from his resurrection in the letters of Paul, to his baptism in the Gospel called Mark, to his conception in the Gospels called Matthew and Luke, to the start of time in the Gospel called John.

For a comprehensive analysis of these and similar themes, read the work of Bart Ehrman and other academic textual critics of the New Testament.

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Top ten kinky quotes by Pastor Anderson

Steven Anderson is the Phoenix Pastor who recently asked his parishioners to pray that God would kill President Obama, by giving him brain cancer so that he would die like Senator Ted Kennedy.

Anderson has since followed this up with a radio interview in which he calls for gay people to be executed, and insists that the host of the show Michelangelo Signorile, must be molesting children because he is gay.

(If you can’t see the video, go to the original article here.)

Anderson’s church website provides endless amusement in the form of transcripts of his sermons and essays.

Here are my Top Ten Kinky Quotes by Pastor Steven Anderson:

10. Pastor Anderson on perverted male gynecologists

“Because of years and years of looking at and touching scores of women inappropriately, the male gynecologist no doubt has a seared conscience and a perverted mind… Any doctor that looks upon and touches a woman’s private parts in his office “hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”  Sir, if you let your wife go to a male gynecologist, you need to get right with God.”

9. Pastor Anderson on the Beatles as God-hating communist devils

“If music without drums, syncopation, or a rock beat is acceptable music, then “Yesterday” by the Beatles would be suitable for a Christian. This song has no drums, syncopation, or rock n roll beat – so what’s wrong with it? It doesn’t talk about drugs, illicit behavior, or violence – so what’s wrong with it? What’s wrong with it is the source. It was written by God-hating communist devils. Rock n roll music was pioneered by ungodly sinners like Little Richard, a sodomite filthy animal, and Ray Charles, a heroin addict. The source of rock n roll music is ungodly.”

8. Pastor Anderson comparing Letterman and Leno unfavourably to Jesus

“God, please just help it to be real to us. Help us to realize that David Letterman and Jay Leno just aren’t that funny.  The sitcoms and the TV shows and the movies just aren’t that cool.  The rock music just isn’t that great anymore when we realize that there is a far greater purpose for our lives; to win souls to Jesus Christ.”

7. Pastor Anderson on sinful sports heroes

“Other Christians only use the television to watch sports, but are the typical athletic superstars of our day the role models we want for our children? Aside from the numerous beer commercials, not to mention the scantily clad cheerleaders at half-time, they are also being taught to idolize whoremongers like Coby Bryant and Michael Jordan, freaks like Dennis Rodman and Magic Johnson, and drug-users like Jose Canseco and Mark McGuire.”

6. Pastor Anderson on married sodomite perverts who molest children

“Every Sodomite in the Bible is a rapist or molester… A common misconception is that homosexuals are only attracted to and only prey on men. It is clearly seen in the Bible that homosexuals are perverted in other ways and are always bisexual… Just because a man is married and has children does not rule out the fact that he is a sodomite pervert. This is one reason why small children should not be left alone with a man that is outside their immediate family.”

5. Pastor Anderson on the evils of The Odd Couple

“Consider the show “The Odd Couple” from the 1960’s. Aside from sinful content, we are being exposed to an alternative lifestyle of two men living together as roommates. Genesis 2:24 tells us God’s normal plan, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Although neither man in the show is a homosexual, this show was obviously a forerunner of the sitcoms of today which feature homosexual characters.”

4. Pastor Anderson on Ellen Degeneres and other perverts

“I am not a fool. Don’t tell me that Sodom is not on the TV because it is. I mean, don’t tell me that there is a prime time show that doesn’t have these filthy sodomite queer characters, because it does.  I remember when I was in high school.  I was 17 years old. The show came out Ellen. Ellen, the first… was going to be the first lesbian sitcom. It was ripped off the air. That was in 1999.  That was 1998 or whatever it was.  They ripped it off the air.  And they said, “No.  People couldn’t handle it.” Twelve months later it was back on the air.  And twelve months after that, every prime time show had sodomite characters.  That’s how fast it happened.”

3. Pastor Anderson on the bunch of queers on the cooking channel

“You say, “Well, I don’t watch that stuff.  I just watch the weather. I just watch the cooking channel.” Those guys cooking on the cooking channel are a bunch of queers.  You know they are. “Oh, you know, I just throw in a little bit of this.” Good night.  Be a man.”

2. Pastor Anderson on his desire to beat Christopher Lowell

“You say, “Oh, I just like…I just watch the home decorating show.” Oh, good night.  What’s that guys name? This guy was on when I was a teenager.  Christopher Lowell.  And who has ever heard of that guy?  Is that what his name is?  I got the name right?  Christopher Lowell. That gay little piece of trash.  I would like to beat the fire out of him. Somebody needs to beat him with the ugly stick.”

1. Pastor Anderson comparing hell to being locked in a closet (Hmmmmm….)

“And this is what thought entered mind. I thought to myself… I looked over at the closet and I thought to myself, “What if I were locked in that closet for 100 years, nothing to do, nothing to see, the closet is dark.” … And then I thought, “What if you never get out of that closet.” That would be awful, wouldn’t it, just locked in a closet forever and you knew you were never going to get out.”

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How to have faith in your football team

The story about the American High School football coach who brought his team to church during a school trip, and had nearly half of them baptized, reminds me of a story about the father of a friend of mine in Ireland. He too coached a junior football team, who played on a Sunday morning, and he regularly brought them to church to attend Mass on the day of their matches.

When the Mass schedules did not fit in with the football schedules, he devised an improvisation. He would bring the boys to an early Mass, they would leave halfway through the Mass to play their football match, then he would bring them back to church to catch the second half of a later Mass.

Whatever your views about him bringing the children to Mass, you’ve got to admire his ingenuity.

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The garden of Eden court case

A courtroom. There are two snakes. One is sitting at a Barrister’s bench. The other is lying on the ground.

BAILIFF
Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye. The Court of Appeal of Biblical Decisions is now in session. All rise for the case of The Snake versus God at the Garden of Eden.

The judge enters. The Barrister-Snake rises and stands upright. The Defendant-Snake stays lying on the ground.

JUDGE
(to Barrister-Snake)
Why has your client not risen?

BARRISTER-SNAKE
He has been cursed by God, your honour, and he must now…
(looks at papers)
‘Go on his belly and eat dust’. He wishes to appeal that decision.

JUDGE
Very well
(to Defendant-Snake)
Do you swear to tell the truth, so help you God?

DEFENDANT-SNAKE
Well, he hasn’t really helped me so far.

JUDGE
(looking at papers)
I see you were convicted of deceiving a Mr. and Mrs. Adam.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
And it is they who I shall call as my first witnesses.

Adam and Eve enter. They are wearing only fig leaves.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
Mr and Mrs Adam, can you please tell the court what you were doing on the day in question?

ADAM
Well, I was very tired, because I’m only made out of dust, and God had just ripped out one of my ribs to make her.
(Eve giggles)
So I had sent her to get some food.

EVE
And then I met him
(points to the Defendant-Snake)
And I told him that we couldn’t eat from the tree in the middle of the garden, because we would die if we did that.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
And was that true?

ADAM
Well, that’s what God told me anyway. He said we would surely die on the same day that we ate from it.

EVE
But he
(points to the Defendant-Snake)
said that we wouldn’t die, that we would just know the difference between good and evil.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
So you ate from the tree.

ADAM
Yes, we did.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
And did you die on that same day?

EVE
Well, no.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
And how long ago was that?

ADAM
(Counts on his fingers)
Just over nine hundred years ago.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
And you are both still alive.

EVE
Yes. I just recently gave birth to our last child.

BARRISTER-SNAKE
(to Judge)
So I put it to you, your honour, that my client did not deceive the two witnesses, but that God deceived them, and my client told them the truth. If anything, my client should be commended under the recent legislation for the protection of whistleblowers.

JUDGE
(looking through papers)
Well, the Genesis transcript does seem to verify your argument. Very well. Mr Snake, you are free from the curse of going on your belly and eating dust.
(hits bench with gavel)
Case closed!

DEFENDANT-SNAKE
Yessssssssssssssssssss!

Emotional music as the Defendant-Snake rises from the ground in slow motion and runs to the Barrister-Snake. They both embrace by intertwining their bodies.

ADAM
Actually, before we go, can I just say that God cursed us as well.

EVE
He made childbirth painful for me. And he put him
(points to Adam)
in charge of me.

ADAM
And he made the soil barren, so now I have to work to earn a living.

JUDGE
Very well. You are all free from your curses.
(hits bench with gavel)

DEFENDANT-SNAKE
Yessssssssssssssssssss!

Reprise of emotional music as Adam and Eve run in slow motion into the embrace of the Defendant-Snake and the Barrister-Snake. As everyone leaves:

ADAM
Can I still be in charge of her, though?

JUDGE
Of course you can.

SCENE ENDS

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The fanciful first page of the New Testament

First fiction in the New Testament

How soon is the first fiction in the New Testament? Try the first page. The title is the Gospel of Matthew. In reality, nobody knows who wrote any of the Gospels, other than they were Christians who spoke Greek and lived outside Palestine between about 65-95 CE. It was much later, maybe as late as 180 CE, that the names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were attached to these books, in order to give them credibility and authority.

At that time there were many rival Christian Gospels, only some of which ended up in the Bible. The main theological dispute among early Christians was whether Jesus was totally human or totally divine. The faction that eventually won out, and that evolved into today’s Christianity, argued that Jesus was both totally human and totally divine. This enabled them to include contradictory stories about Jesus into what became their New Testament by about 300 CE.

First contradiction in the New Testament

How soon is the first contradiction in the New Testament? Again, try the first page. It begins with a lengthy genealogy of Jesus, to prove he was descended from David and Abraham. The list starts when Abraham begat Isaac, and ends when Jacob begat Joseph, the husband of Mary. But the very next paragraph tells us that Joseph was not the father of Jesus, which means Jesus was not related to anyone in this lengthy genealogy.

In reality, this is a clumsy attempt to merge two contradictory myths: that the Jewish messiah would be descended from King David, and that Jesus had a virgin birth. And the virgin birth myth has a mix of two sources: somebody mistranslated the Old Testament Hebrew word for ‘young woman’ into the New Testament Greek word for ‘virgin’, and early Christians were seeking converts among Greek and Roman Gentiles who were familiar with existing gods who were believed to have been born of virgins.

First absurdity in the New Testament

How soon is the first absurdity in the New Testament? Again, try the first page. It introduces the central theme of the Christian story. We are so used to hearing this fantastic story, and we know so many people who sincerely believe it to be true, that we can easily become desensitized to how utterly absurd it is.

The story suggests that the creator of the universe deliberately interrupted the laws of nature, in order to impregnate a virgin female of one specific tribe, of one of millions of species of sentient life, on one small planet in one small solar system, in one of hundreds of billions of galaxies in an ever-expanding universe, in order to give birth to himself, so that he could die and return to life and write his story in a book, in order to save the descendants of this human virgin mother from the spiritual consequences of a talking snake persuading one of her ancestors to eat a piece of fruit, and furthermore the creator of the universe wants me personally to benefit from this.

In reality, none of this ever happened. It is a cumulation of fictional stories, invented in more primitive times to convey messages through metaphor.

Fanciful first page sets the tone

That fanciful first page sets the tone for the unreliability of the New Testament as a coherent guide to who Jesus was or how Christianity evolved. Many scholars have researched the historical Jesus, and their quest has been well recorded by writers like Albert Schweitzer, David Boulton, and Bart Ehrman.

All of these studies faced the same underlying problems: nobody wrote anything about Jesus during his lifetime, none of the writers of the New Testament had never met him, none of their original texts exist, and the copies that do exist are riddled with centuries of errors in both transcription and translation.

It is on such shaky foundations that the Christian faith is built.

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Stephen Fry on religion

Here is a wonderful reply by Stephen Fry when asked if secularism leads to a world without imagination and beauty.

(If you can’t see the video, follow this link to the original article.)

Fry begins: ‘I don’t think we should ever allow religion the trick of maintaining that the spiritual and the beautiful and the noble and the altruistic and the morally strong and the virtuous are in any way inventions of religion, or particular or peculiar to religion.’

He then compares the Genesis myth of Christianity, which leads to humans apologising for being sinful, with the Prometheus myth of the Greeks, which leads to humans believing that whatever is divine is within us.

And he concludes: ’That’s what religion has become, a feeble and anaemic nonsense, because we understood that the fire was within us. It was not in some idol on an altar, whether it was a gold cross or whether it was a Buddha or anything else. We had it. The fault is in us and not in our stars but also the glory is in us and not in our stars. We take credit for what is great about man and we take the blame for what is dreadful about man. We neither grovel and apologise at the feet of a god, or are so infantile as to project the idea that we once had a father as human beings and we therefore should have a divine one too. We have to grow up.’

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