New campaign website for secular education

Atheist Ireland has launched a new website as part of our campaign for a secular Irish education system based on human rights law.

http://teachdontpreach.ie includes information, resources and a discussion forum about secular education, and sample letters to help you to opt your child out of religious education classes in your current school. It also contains a draft document arguing that secular education is a human right, and that the Irish Government denies that right to its citizens. It covers the following issues:

1. Secular Education is a Human Right
2. Structure and Patronage
3. Access to a School of One’s Choice
4. Information and Knowledge Conveyed
5. Second Level Schools
6. Teacher Training
7. New VEC Community Schools
8. Child Sexual Abuse
9. Conclusion
10. Appendices

We will be sending the final version of this document later this month to the Irish Human Rights Commission, which is preparing recommendations for the Irish Government on the place of religion in education from a human rights perspective. The Commission has asked for the opinions of citizens and groups before 31 January 2011.

Please have a look, and let us know what you think of it. Please also send a submission yourself to the Irish Human Rights Commission telling them that they should prioritise secular education as a human rights issue.

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Vatican compares 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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Moral without God? Video of debate

Many people mistakenly believe morality comes from religion. In March 2010, I 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 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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New blasphemous art exhibition opens in Dublin

A new art exhibition titled Blasphemous opened on Good Friday in the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art (IMOCA) in Lad Lane, off Baggott Street, Dublin 2. It’s the second art exhibition to highlight and challenge the new Irish blasphemy law, which became active on 1st January 2010.

Since then, the Irish Justice Minister has responded to the campaign against the law by saying that he will propose a referendum, later this year, to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution, thus enabling the blasphemy law to be repealed.

This makes the new exhibition in IMOCA not just a challenge to the blasphemy law, but also a celebration of artistic freedom, and freedom of expression generally. The exhibition runs until 25 April and is open from 12 noon to 5 pm every Friday, Saturday and Sunday, or by appointment through contacting IMOCA.

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Pope’s letter protects church, not its victims

The Pope’s letter on child sexual abuse holds lessons for civic society.

What he writes to Catholics about religion is a matter between him and them. But the Catholic church also operates within civic society, acts as a quasi-State at the United Nations, and sends ambassadors to real States.

And the Pope’s letter includes assertions about secular society that are factually wrong.

Having read the full letter, the following seems clear:

1. The Pope’s main priority is to protect the church, not its victims
2. The Pope wrongly blames secularism for priests raping children
3. The Pope’s apologies are incomplete and his appeals are self-serving
4. The Pope’s “concrete initiatives” are a distraction not a solution
5. The Pope is evading the church’s responsibilities to civic society

1. The Pope’s main priority is to protect the church, not its victims

In a letter of close to five thousand words, the phrase “sexual abuse” appears only three times, and nowhere is it used as an active verb describing an action that Catholic priests have done to children. Instead it is twice described abstractly as “the problem of child sexual abuse”, and once passively as “the victims of child sexual abuse.” By contrast, the word “church” appears more than fifty times. Needless to say, the words “rape” and “cover-up” do not appear anywhere in the letter.

One of the three uses of the phrase “sexual abuse” is: “Since the time when the gravity and extent of the problem of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions first began to be fully grasped, the church has done an immense amount of work in many parts of the world in order to address and remedy it.” This assertion is simply untrue. The Catholic church has known for centuries that some priests have been raping children, and they have known for centuries that raping children is gravely wrong, both as a sin in their religion and a crime in civic society.

The Pope does not even acknowledge (never mind apologise for) the Catholic church policy of bishops covering up the repeated rape of children by priests. Instead he refers euphemistically to “mistakes” made by bishops in responding to allegations, and he does not even include the Vatican or himself as making any of these “mistakes”. In using this evasive language, he is actually moving the church backwards from last December, when the Irish bishops admitted that the Murphy report indicated a widespread culture in the church of covering up child sexual abuse by priests.

In a statement issued during their December 2009 meeting in Maynooth, the Irish bishops said: “We are deeply shocked by the scale and depravity of abuse as described in the report. We are shamed by the extent to which child sexual abuse was covered up in the archdiocese of Dublin and recognise that this indicates a culture that was widespread in the church. The avoidance of scandal, the preservation of the reputations of individuals and of the church, took precedence over the safety and welfare of children. This should never have happened and must never be allowed to happen again. We humbly ask for forgiveness.”

Despite this explicit admission last December by the Irish bishops, the Pope’s pastoral letter begins with some subliminal hints of what concerns him most about this issue. In Section 1, the Pope writes: “I have been deeply disturbed by the information which has come to light regarding the abuse of children…” How much stronger that opening sentence would be if it simply read: “I have been deeply disturbed by the abuse of children…” How much stronger it would have been if he had then used the same type of language as the Irish bishops did last December.

Instead, in Section 2, the Pope writes that: “In order to recover from this grievous wound, the church in Ireland must first acknowledge before the Lord and before others the serious sins committed against defenceless children. Such an acknowledgement, accompanied by sincere sorrow for the damage caused to these victims and their families, must lead to a concerted effort to ensure the protection of children from similar crimes in the future.”

On the face if it, this looks commendable. But read it again for its nuances. The reason that sins against children must be acknowledged is to allow the church (not the victims) to recover from “this grievous wound”. It is only as a follow-up point that this must be accompanied by sorrow for the damage caused to the victims. If you parse the language throughout this letter, these same priorities are repeated again and again. The priority of this letter is to revitalise the Catholic church, not to pursue justice for or make reparation to its victims.

2. The Pope wrongly blames secularism for priests raping children

Section 3 is a brief potted history, from the Pope’s perspective, of Irish Catholicism and the impact of Irish Catholic missionaries on Europe and other continents. As an overview, he suggests that, for centuries, Irish clerics “dedicated their lives to Christ, sharing the gift of faith with others, and putting that faith into action in loving service of God and neighbour.”

In Section 4, the Pope asserts that this has all changed in recent decades, because of “new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society.” He writes that “fast-paced social change” has led to Irish Catholics going to confession less often and praying less often, and Irish priests “assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel.” This included “a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations.”

This, the Pope writes, is the “overall context” in which “we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the church and her teachings.” Look again at the nuances of this language. The pope is suggesting that secularization of society is the context in which we must understand priests raping children, which in turn weakens faith and respect for the church. This is self-serving nonsense. The reality is almost the exact opposite.

Catholic priests were raping children, and Catholic bishops and the Vatican were covering up these crimes, long before Irish society became more secular. What secularisation has done is empower the victims of these crimes to speak out about their experiences, and more importantly be heard and believed. And secularisation has helped to reveal the traditional methods used by the Catholic hierarchy to cover up these crimes, such as swearing children to secrecy and moving the criminals to another parish, diocese or country where they could rape more children.

The Pope then lists four specific factors that he says contributed to the problem. Three are within the control of the church: procedures for selecting priests; training in seminaries, and a misplaced concern for the reputation of the church and the avoidance of scandal, resulting in failure to apply existing canonical penalties. Notably, he does not include as a factor the failure by bishops to report serious crimes to the police. And the Pope’s fourth contributory factor is “a tendency in society to favour the clergy and other authority figures”. But how could secularism possibly cause this tendency? In fact, it has done almost the exact opposite.

The Pope’s muddled and manifestly false claim about secularism is part of a pattern of the Catholic church denying responsibility for its own actions. Earlier this month the Vatican’s official exorcist (!) blamed “Satan at work in the Vatican” for priests raping children. And last September, the Vatican’s representative at the UN argued that child sexual abuse was common among Jews; that fewer than 5% of Catholic clergy were sex abusers; and that most of them are actually ephebophiles and not paedophiles, because they are attracted to adolescent males. This evasion has to stop. It is time the Catholic church stopped blaming others for its own crimes.

3. The Pope’s apologies are incomplete and his appeals are self-serving

In Section 5, the Pope writes that he has met with victims of sexual abuse, and is ready to do so again. He says that he has already asked the Irish bishops to establish the truth of what happened in the past, to prevent it from happening again, and to bring justice and healing to the victims of these crimes. He then introduces a series of paragraphs aimed directly at victims, their abusers, parents, children and young people, priests and religious, bishops and all the faithful in Ireland. None of these serves the purpose of bringing justice and healing to the victims of these crimes.

3(a) Victims and priests who abused them

In Section 6, the Pope finally addresses the victims of abuse and their families. He apologises for their suffering, but describes the abuse in the passive tense: “You have suffered… the wrong you have endured… your trust has been betrayed… your dignity has been violated…” He seems unable to bring himself to directly take responsibility for the church actively doing things. This would take the form of “We have caused you to suffer… we have betrayed your trust…” etc. The Pope then moves away from the real world by telling the victims that Jesus understands their pain because he too was a victim of injustice, but that the very wounds of Jesus broke the power of evil and people were reborn. He concludes that the victims can find peace “by drawing nearer to Christ and by participating in the life of his church.” Two points arise here: firstly, the Pope should have apologised to the victims at the start of the letter, not as point number 6. And secondly, the suggestion that they can best find peace, by participating in the church that is still covering up the crimes against them and other children around the world, is deeply offensive.

In Section 7, the Pope addresses priests and religious who have abused children. He says they have betrayed the trust placed in them by children, and “must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals.” He does not specify what the ambiguous phrase “properly constituted tribunals” means. He tells them they have done great damage to the church and the public perception of the priesthood. He says that Christ can forgive them for the gravest of sins, but that “God’s justice” demands they conceal nothing about their actions. He urges them to “openly acknowledge your guilt, submit yourselves to the demands of justice, but do not despair of God’s mercy.” Given that the preceding sentence refers to “God’s justice” it is unclear whether or not the “submitting yourselves to the demands of justice” means handing yourself in to the police and admitting your crimes.

3(b) Other Irish priests and Irish bishops

In Section 10, the Pope addresses the Irish priests and religious. He tells them that: “All of us are suffering as a result of the sins of our confreres who betrayed a sacred trust or failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse.” Notably, the Pope does not include himself among those who “failed to deal justly and responsibly with allegations of abuse.” This is perhaps the most significant sentence in the letter, with a crucial point hidden away indirectly in the making of a different point. Because, until the Pope accepts that he bears ultimate responsibility for the cover-up of these crimes, both as Pope and in his former roles as Cardinal and Bishop, he will be unable to address this issue in the way that it needs to be addressed.

In Section 11, the Pope finally addresses his “brother bishops” in Ireland. This should really be Section 2, after the apology to the victims, which should be Section 1. In this Section, the Pope writes that some bishops “failed, at times grievously”, to apply canon law to the (presumably canon law) crime of child abuse. He adds that: “I recognize how difficult it was to grasp the extent and complexity of the problem, to obtain reliable information and to make the right decisions in the light of conflicting expert advice.” This is complete nonsense. The “problem” was not at all complex. If you are aware that a man is repeatedly raping children, and you have even a minimally functioning moral compass, you know that this is a serious crime that you must report to the police.

The Pope then tells the Irish bishops: “Besides fully implementing the norms of canon law in addressing cases of child abuse, continue to cooperate with the civil authorities in their area of competence.” We can note here the order of priority: canon law first, civil authorities second, and civil authorities is qualified by the condescending phrase “in their area of competence.” The priority of canon law appears again the next sentence: bishops are to ensure that child safety laws be applied fully and impartially “in conformity with canon law.’ There is no parallel reference to “in conformity with civic law.” The pope then asks for “decisive action carried out with complete honesty and transparency,” but the stated purpose of this decisive action is not to bring about justice or reparation, but to restore the reputation of the church.

The Pope does not repeat to the bishops the things that he said to the priests whose crimes the bishops covered up. He does not tell the bishops that they have betrayed the trust placed in them by children, and “must answer for it before Almighty God and before properly constituted tribunals.” He does not tell the bishops that “God’s justice” demands they conceal nothing about their actions. He does not tell the bishops to “openly acknowledge your guilt [and] submit yourselves to the demands of justice.” This is because the Pope sees “the problem of child sexual abuse” as being caused by individual priests, and he clearly does not accept the findings of independent inquiries that the church, on an institutional level, covered up these horrific crimes.

3(c) Parents, children and the faithful

In Sections 8 and 9, the Pope addresses parents and young people. He says that parents are in the first place responsible for bringing up their children, educating them in authentic moral values, and inspiring them with the truth of the Catholic faith. He says that parents should do this while the church “continues to implement the measures adopted in recent years to protect young people in parish and school environments.” And he tells children and young people to seek a personal relationship with Jesus within the church, because Jesus will never betray them. He concludes by asking young people to be faithful disciples in rebuilding and renewing the church.

In Section 12 and 13, the Pope addresses the Catholic faithful in Ireland. He again attacks “our increasingly secularised society, where even we Christians often find it difficult to speak of the transcendent dimension of our existence.” This is simply not true, and the Pope must know this. A secular society does not prevent people from speaking of any transcendent beliefs they may have. It simply prevents such beliefs from being the basis on which civic policy is formulated. The Pope then writes that, while “measures to deal justly with individual crimes are essential, on their own they are not enough.” as they must be augmented by a new vision based on following the commandments of the Gospel. The Pope concludes by saying that he is praying in solidarity with all of his brothers and sisters in Christ.

4. The Pope’s “concrete initiatives” are a distraction not a solution

In Section 14, by far the longest Section, the Pope proposes what he calls “some concrete initiatives to address the situation.” These initiatives turn out to be: asking all Irish Catholics to pray more often and go to confession more often for a period of one year; having an apostolic visitation of certain dioceses and seminaries in Ireland; having a Mission for Irish bishops and priests through the intercession of a 19th century French priest who preached total obedience to the hierarchy and who engaged in bodily mortification; and writing a new prayer for the church in Ireland. That is the sum total of the Pope’s “concrete initiatives”.

4(a) More prayer and more confession

The Pope’s first “concrete initiative” is to ask all Irish Catholics, for a period of one year, between now and Easter 2011, to devote their Friday penances to praying for “an outpouring of God’s mercy and the Holy Spirit’s gifts and strength” upon the church in Ireland. He asks Irish Catholics to fast, pray, read scripture and do works of mercy for this specific purpose; to go to Confession more frequently; and to worship the Holy Eucharist outside of Mass. The Pope says that, by such intense prayer, all Irish Catholics “can make reparation for the sins of abuse that have done so much harm”.

Let’s examine each aspect of this proposal. All Irish Catholics are asked to pray more often and intensely, not for the children who were raped by Catholic priests, but for a rebirth of the Catholic church in Ireland. They are asked to offer up works of mercy, not for the purpose of being merciful, but again for a rebirth of the Irish church. The Pope says that this, plus more Confession and more worship of the Eucharist, can “make reparation for the sins of abuse”. But why should all Irish Catholics be responsible for making reparation for priests raping children and bishops covering up those rapes?

This is not a concrete initiative at all, but an abstract appeal to all Irish Catholics to share the blame for the crimes of priests and the cover-ups of bishops. Scientific studies have shown that prayer does not impact on the natural world. The Pope’s proposed prayers have an arbitrary timetable of “a period of one year”, which coincidentally matches his arbitrary one-year offer of free plenary indulgences to Catholics who visited Lourdes during 2009. And the focus on worshiping the Holy Eucharist outside Mass highlights the most superstitious aspect of Catholic teaching.

4(b) An apostolic visitation and a mission

The Pope’s second “concrete initiative” is that Vatican officials will visit certain dioceses and seminaries and religious institutions in Ireland. The stated purpose is not to make reparation to children raped by priests, but “to assist the local church on her path to renewal.” The Pope’s third “concrete initiative” is that all Irish bishops, priests and religious should attend a nationwide Mission at which they could re-learn about their vocations and recent pontifical teachings. Here the Pope commends to Irish bishops and priests the example of Saint John Vianney, and says that the proposed Mission should operate through Vianney’s intercession.

So who is this model saint whose example the Pope commends to Irish bishops and priests? A Vatican encyclical by Pope John XXIII says that Vianney was “outstanding in the virtue of obedience… we are offering clerics this total obedience as a model… the effectiveness of any apostolate has constant and faithful obedience to the hierarchy as its solid foundation”. The same encyclical says that Vianney was “outstanding in a unique way in voluntary affliction of his body… this led him to abstain almost completely from food and from sleep [and] to carry out the harshest kinds of penances… he brought his body into subjection through voluntary mortification”. Is this type of fundamentalism really the foundation on which to revitalise the Irish Catholic church today?

The Pope concludes his letter with a prayer for the church in Ireland. He wants Irish Catholics to make use of this prayer in their families, parishes and communities. The prayer asks God to renew Irish Catholics in faith hope and charity. It asks Jesus to help the Catholic church in Ireland to educate young people in the way truth and goodness. It asks the Holy Spirit to inspire a new springtime of holiness and apostolic zeal in Ireland. It asks that the sorrow and tears of Irish catholics as they attempt to address past wrongs, should cause grace that will deepen the Catholic faith in Ireland. And it ends by entrusting to the Triune God “ourselves, our children, and the needs of the church in Ireland.” Nowhere in this prayer do the words victim, sexual abuse, rape, crime, cover-up or apology appear. Unsurprisingly, in tune with the overall tone of the letter, the prayer concludes by focusing on “the needs of the church”.

5. The Pope is evading the church’s responsibilities to civic society

Having read the full pastoral letter, the following seems clear:

1. The Pope’s main priority is to protect the church, not its victims
2. The Pope wrongly blames secularism for priests raping children
3. The Pope’s apologies are incomplete and his appeals are self-serving
4. The Pope’s “concrete initiatives” are a distraction not a solution
5. The Pope is evading the church’s responsibilities to civic society

All of the Pope’s proposed initiatives are a distraction from the types of initiatives that could really make a difference. These could include voluntarily acknowledging that the church is subject to the same democratic civic laws as the rest of us; openly accepting the findings of the various Irish enquiries; voluntarily acknowledging that the Catholic church at an institutional level has covered up crimes by priests against children; voluntarily making public all church files that victims wish to have public about these crimes and about the cover-up of these crimes; voluntarily selling church property to voluntarily compensate victims; voluntarily reporting to the police all priests who have committed crimes and all bishops who have covered up these crimes, and voluntarily pleading guilty to whatever crimes were committed.

The Pope may conclude his letter with a prayer, but his church continues to switch between being a religion when it suits them to being a State it suits them. The mechanism for this is its quasi-State in the Vatican City, which has none of the attributes of a State such as citizenry, territory and economy, but nevertheless sends ambassadors to real States and is treated almost like a real State by the United Nations. What the Catholic church does as a religion is its own business. But it is clearly still in deep denial about the impact of its behaviour on wider society, so the rest of us should recognise that in our interactions with this church.

The Irish DPP and police should take steps now to ensure that bishops who covered up serious crimes against children are brought before the law. The Irish Government should take steps to remove the influence of the Catholic church on our health and education system. In particular, the human rights of nonreligious parents to have a secular education system should be vindicated in every area of the country. The Government should review its relations with the Catholic church’s quasi-State in the Vatican City. The Government should seek to have the United Nations treat the Catholic church like any other religion, by listening to it as a nongovernmental organisation, and not by treating it as a quasi-State.

If the Catholic church will not voluntarily face up to its responsibilities within civic society, then the institutions of State must ensure that it does so. And we the people should lobby our politicians to make this happen sooner rather than later.

Photo: Pope Benedict by Roblisameehan (cc)

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The case for a secular education system

This is the second in a series of articles on secular education and human rights law. The first article is here.

Secular schools are neither religious nor atheist

There are two reasons why State schools should be run on a secular basis. But first, it is important to explain that a secular school is not the same thing as an atheist school.

A religious school teaches that a god exists, an atheist school would teach that no gods exist, and a secular school is neutral on the question of religion: it does not teach that gods either do or do not exist.

Instead, a secular school teaches children in a neutral, objective way about the different beliefs that different people have about gods, and leaves it up to parents and churches to teach specific religious beliefs outside of school hours.

As a symbolic example, a recent European court case ruled that Italian schools should not display crucifixes on classroom walls. But removing the crucifixes would not turn the school into an atheist school: that would require replacing the crucifixes with signs saying that there is no god. A classroom wall with no religious symbols of any type would symbolise a secular school.

Secular schools are good for society

That said, here are the two reasons why State schools should be run on a secular basis.

Firstly, it is good for society for children to be educated together. We in Ireland can see from the recent history of Northern Ireland how separate schooling contributed to the problems of children understanding and respecting each other across religious divides.

Secular schools bring children together. They teach them the normal subjects that have a basis in scientific fact, like mathematics and languages and history and critical thinking. They teach them about different religious beliefs and help them to understand other beliefs and respect other people.

And, outside of school hours, the children’s parents and churches can teach them more about their own specific beliefs about the nature of reality and personal morality.

Secular schools respect human rights

Secondly, in practical terms, secular schools are the only way to ensure that everybody has their human rights respected with regard to education.

Under international human rights law, parents have a right to have their children educated in a way that is consistent with their religious or philosophical beliefs. I will outline in a later article the reasons why this is so.

At a minimum, this means that schools should not indoctrinate children with religious beliefs that conflict with those of their parents.

In theory, this could be done by having schools based on every religious view and atheism, and to have enough of these schools spread around the country so that, in practice, each child can attend one suitable to their circumstances.

In practice, this impossible to do. There is simply not enough money to provide so many schools, and even if there was it would be an administrative nightmare.

So that leaves the other option: have secular schools that are neutral with regard to religious beliefs, as I have described above. This option respects the human rights of all children equally. That is what a fair and just society would do.

The case for secular education

Combine both reasons, and the argument is clear. Secular schools are good for society, because they help children to understand differences and respect other people; and secular schools are the only way in practice to respect the human rights of all of our parents and children.

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Atheist Ireland’s 25 blasphemous quotes

From today, 1 January 2010, the new Irish blasphemy law becomes operational, and we in Atheist Ireland begin our campaign to have it repealed. Blasphemy is now a crime punishable by a €25,000 fine. The new law defines blasphemy as publishing or uttering matter that is grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby intentionally causing outrage among a substantial number of adherents of that religion, with some defences permitted.

This new law is both silly and dangerous. It is silly because medieval religious laws have no place in a modern secular republic, where the criminal law should protect people and not ideas. And it is dangerous because it incentives religious outrage, and because Islamic States led by Pakistan are already using the wording of this Irish law to promote new blasphemy laws at UN level.

We believe in the golden rule: that we have a right to be treated justly, and that we have a responsibility to treat other people justly. Blasphemy laws are unjust: they silence people in order to protect ideas. In a civilised society, people have a right to to express and to hear ideas about religion even if other people find those ideas to be outrageous.

Publication of 25 blasphemous quotes

In this context we now publish a list of 25 blasphemous quotes, which have previously been published by or uttered by or attributed to Jesus Christ, Muhammad, Mark Twain, Tom Lehrer, Randy Newman, James Kirkup, Monty Python, Rev Ian Paisley, Conor Cruise O’Brien, Frank Zappa, Salman Rushdie, Bjork, Amanda Donohoe, George Carlin, Paul Woodfull, Jerry Springer the Opera, Tim Minchin, Richard Dawkins, Pope Benedict XVI, Christopher Hitchens, PZ Myers, Ian O’Doherty, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor and Dermot Ahern.

Despite these quotes being abusive and insulting in relation to matters held sacred by various religions, we unreservedly support the right of these people to have published or uttered them, and we unreservedly support the right of any Irish citizen to make comparable statements about matters held sacred by any religion without fear of being criminalised, and without having to prove to a court that a reasonable person would find any particular value in the statement.

Campaign begins to repeal the Irish blasphemy law

We ask Fianna Fail and the Green Party to repeal their anachronistic blasphemy law, as part of the revision of the Defamation Act that is included within the Act. We ask them to hold a referendum to remove the reference to blasphemy from the Irish Constitution.

We also ask all TDs and Senators to support a referendum to remove references to God from the Irish Constitution, including the clauses that prevent atheists from being appointed as President of Ireland or as a Judge without swearing a religious oath asking God to direct them in their work.

If you run a website, blog or other media publication, please feel free to republish this statement and the list of quotes yourself, in order to show your support for the campaign to repeal the Irish blasphemy law and to promote a rational, ethical, secular Ireland.

List of 25 Blasphemous Quotes Published by Atheist Ireland

1. Jesus Christ, when asked if he was the son of God, in Matthew 26:64: “Thou hast said: nevertheless I say unto you, Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” According to the Christian Bible, the Jewish chief priests and elders and council deemed this statement by Jesus to be blasphemous, and they sentenced Jesus to death for saying it.

2. Jesus Christ, talking to Jews about their God, in John 8:44: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him.” This is one of several chapters in the Christian Bible that can give a scriptural foundation to Christian anti-Semitism. The first part of John 8, the story of “whoever is without sin cast the first stone”, was not in the original version, but was added centuries later. The original John 8 is a debate between Jesus and some Jews. In brief, Jesus calls the Jews who disbelieve him sons of the Devil, the Jews try to stone him, and Jesus runs away and hides.

3. Muhammad, quoted in Hadith of Bukhari, Vol 1 Book 8 Hadith 427: “May Allah curse the Jews and Christians for they built the places of worship at the graves of their prophets.” This quote is attributed to Muhammad on his death-bed as a warning to Muslims not to copy this practice of the Jews and Christians. It is one of several passages in the Koran and in Hadith that can give a scriptural foundation to Islamic anti-Semitism, including the assertion in Sura 5:60 that Allah cursed Jews and turned some of them into apes and swine.

4. Mark Twain, describing the Christian Bible in Letters from the Earth, 1909: “Also it has another name – The Word of God. For the Christian thinks every word of it was dictated by God. It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies… But you notice that when the Lord God of Heaven and Earth, adored Father of Man, goes to war, there is no limit. He is totally without mercy – he, who is called the Fountain of Mercy. He slays, slays, slays! All the men, all the beasts, all the boys, all the babies; also all the women and all the girls, except those that have not been deflowered. He makes no distinction between innocent and guilty… What the insane Father required was blood and misery; he was indifferent as to who furnished it.” Twain’s book was published posthumously in 1939. His daughter, Clara Clemens, at first objected to it being published, but later changed her mind in 1960 when she believed that public opinion had grown more tolerant of the expression of such ideas. That was half a century before Fianna Fail and the Green Party imposed a new blasphemy law on the people of Ireland.

5. Tom Lehrer, The Vatican Rag, 1963: “Get in line in that processional, step into that small confessional. There, the guy who’s got religion’ll tell you if your sin’s original. If it is, try playing it safer, drink the wine and chew the wafer. Two, four, six, eight, time to transubstantiate!”

6. Randy Newman, God’s Song, 1972: “And the Lord said: I burn down your cities – how blind you must be. I take from you your children, and you say how blessed are we. You all must be crazy to put your faith in me. That’s why I love mankind.”

7. James Kirkup, The Love That Dares to Speak its Name, 1976: “While they prepared the tomb I kept guard over him. His mother and the Magdalen had gone to fetch clean linen to shroud his nakedness. I was alone with him… I laid my lips around the tip of that great cock, the instrument of our salvation, our eternal joy. The shaft, still throbbed, anointed with death’s final ejaculation.” This extract is from a poem that led to the last successful blasphemy prosecution in Britain, when Denis Lemon was given a suspended prison sentence after he published it in the now-defunct magazine Gay News. In 2002, a public reading of the poem, on the steps of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, failed to lead to any prosecution. In 2008, the British Parliament abolished the common law offences of blasphemy and blasphemous libel.

8. Matthias, son of Deuteronomy of Gath, in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, 1979: “Look, I had a lovely supper, and all I said to my wife was that piece of halibut was good enough for Jehovah.”

9. Rev Ian Paisley MEP to the Pope in the European Parliament, 1988: “I denounce you as the Antichrist.” Paisley’s website describes the Antichrist as being “a liar, the true son of the father of lies, the original liar from the beginning… he will imitate Christ, a diabolical imitation, Satan transformed into an angel of light, which will deceive the world.”

10. Conor Cruise O’Brien, 1989: “In the last century the Arab thinker Jamal al-Afghani wrote: ‘Every Muslim is sick and his only remedy is in the Koran.’ Unfortunately the sickness gets worse the more the remedy is taken.”

11. Frank Zappa, 1989: “If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine – but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you’ve been bad or good – and cares about any of it – to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.”

12. Salman Rushdie, 1990: “The idea of the sacred is quite simply one of the most conservative notions in any culture, because it seeks to turn other ideas – uncertainty, progress, change – into crimes.” In 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issued a fatwa ordering Muslims to kill Rushdie because of blasphemous passages in Rushdie’s novel The Satanic Verses.

13. Bjork, 1995: “I do not believe in religion, but if I had to choose one it would be Buddhism. It seems more livable, closer to men… I’ve been reading about reincarnation, and the Buddhists say we come back as animals and they refer to them as lesser beings. Well, animals aren’t lesser beings, they’re just like us. So I say fuck the Buddhists.”

14. Amanda Donohoe on her role in the Ken Russell movie Lair of the White Worm, 1995: “Spitting on Christ was a great deal of fun. I can’t embrace a male god who has persecuted female sexuality throughout the ages, and that persecution still goes on today all over the world.”

15. George Carlin, 1999: “Religion easily has the greatest bullshit story ever told. Think about it. Religion has actually convinced people that there’s an invisible man living in the sky who watches everything you do, every minute of every day. And the invisible man has a special list of ten things he does not want you to do. And if you do any of these ten things, he has a special place, full of fire and smoke and burning and torture and anguish, where he will send you to live and suffer and burn and choke and scream and cry forever and ever ’til the end of time! But He loves you. He loves you, and He needs money! He always needs money! He’s all-powerful, all-perfect, all-knowing, and all-wise, somehow just can’t handle money! Religion takes in billions of dollars, they pay no taxes, and they always need a little more. Now, talk about a good bullshit story. Holy Shit!”

16. Paul Woodfull as Ding Dong Denny O’Reilly, The Ballad of Jaysus Christ, 2000: “He said me ma’s a virgin and sure no one disagreed, Cause they knew a lad who walks on water’s handy with his feet… Jaysus oh Jaysus, as cool as bleedin’ ice, With all the scrubbers in Israel he could not be enticed, Jaysus oh Jaysus, it’s funny you never rode, Cause it’s you I do be shoutin’ for each time I shoot me load.”

17. Jesus Christ, in Jerry Springer The Opera, 2003: “Actually, I’m a bit gay.” In 2005, the Christian Institute tried to bring a prosecution against the BBC for screening Jerry Springer the Opera, but the UK courts refused to issue a summons.

18. Tim Minchin, Ten-foot Cock and a Few Hundred Virgins, 2005: “So you’re gonna live in paradise, With a ten-foot cock and a few hundred virgins, So you’re gonna sacrifice your life, For a shot at the greener grass, And when the Lord comes down with his shiny rod of judgment, He’s gonna kick my heathen ass.”

19. Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion, 2006: “The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.” In 2007 Turkish publisher Erol Karaaslan was charged with the crime of insulting believers for publishing a Turkish translation of The God Delusion. He was acquitted in 2008, but another charge was brought in 2009. Karaaslan told the court that “it is a right to criticise religions and beliefs as part of the freedom of thought and expression.”

20. Pope Benedict XVI quoting a 14th century Byzantine emperor, 2006: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” This statement has already led to both outrage and condemnation of the outrage. The Organisation of the Islamic Conference, the world’s largest Muslim body, said it was a “character assassination of the prophet Muhammad”. The Malaysian Prime Minister said that “the Pope must not take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.” Pakistan’s foreign Ministry spokesperson said that “anyone who describes Islam as a religion as intolerant encourages violence”. The European Commission said that “reactions which are disproportionate and which are tantamount to rejecting freedom of speech are unacceptable.”

21. Christopher Hitchens in God is not Great, 2007: “There is some question as to whether Islam is a separate religion at all… Islam when examined is not much more than a rather obvious and ill-arranged set of plagiarisms, helping itself from earlier books and traditions as occasion appeared to require… It makes immense claims for itself, invokes prostrate submission or ‘surrender’ as a maxim to its adherents, and demands deference and respect from nonbelievers into the bargain. There is nothing-absolutely nothing-in its teachings that can even begin to justify such arrogance and presumption.”

22. PZ Myers, on the Roman Catholic communion host, 2008: “You would not believe how many people are writing to me, insisting that these horrible little crackers (they look like flattened bits of styrofoam) are literally pieces of their god, and that this omnipotent being who created the universe can actually be seriously harmed by some third-rate liberal intellectual at a third-rate university… However, inspired by an old woodcut of Jews stabbing the host, I thought of a simple, quick thing to do: I pierced it with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash, followed by the classic, decorative items of trash cans everywhere, old coffeegrounds and a banana peel.”

23. Ian O’Doherty, 2009: “(If defamation of religion was illegal) it would be a crime for me to say that the notion of transubstantiation is so ridiculous that even a small child should be able to see the insanity and utter physical impossibility of a piece of bread and some wine somehow taking on corporeal form. It would be a crime for me to say that Islam is a backward desert superstition that has no place in modern, enlightened Europe and it would be a crime to point out that Jewish settlers in Israel who believe they have a God given right to take the land are, frankly, mad. All the above assertions will, no doubt, offend someone or other.”

24. Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, 2009: “Whether a person is atheist or any other, there is in fact in my view something not totally human if they leave out the transcendent… we call it God… I think that if you leave that out you are not fully human.” Because atheism is not a religion, the Irish blasphemy law does not protect atheists from abusive and insulting statements about their fundamental beliefs. While atheists are not seeking such protection, we include the statement here to point out that it is discriminatory that this law does not hold all citizens equal.

25. Dermot Ahern, Irish Minister for Justice, introducing his blasphemy law at an Oireachtas Justice Committee meeting, 2009, and referring to comments made about him personally: “They are blasphemous.” Deputy Pat Rabbitte replied: “Given the Minister’s self-image, it could very well be that we are blaspheming,” and Minister Ahern replied: “Deputy Rabbitte says that I am close to the baby Jesus, I am so pure.” So here we have an Irish Justice Minister joking about himself being blasphemed, at a parliamentary Justice Committee discussing his own blasphemy law, that could make his own jokes illegal.

Finally, as a bonus, Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009: “We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.” Just months after Minister Martin made this comment, his colleague Dermot Ahern introduced Ireland’s new blasphemy law.

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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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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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Same sex ice cream

Ben and Jerry’s has changed the name of its Chubby Hubby ice cream to Hubby Hubby, in support of the legalisation of marriage for gay and lesbian couples in Vermont.

Here’s the footage from a CBS news item on the name-change, in which free ice-cream is given to the public. (If you can’t see the video, go to the original post.)

Listen out for the woman at the end, whose taste-buds are more powerful than her conscience: “Homosexuality is wrong and disgusting, but I’ll take the free ice cream.”

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True as God? Strange Bible Quotes Part 1

The Christian Bible contains many assertions that are either silly or unjust. I’ve been posting them one at a time on Twitter. Here are the first ten together:

1. Dragons and owls honour God because he puts rivers in the desert (Isaiah 43:20) 

The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.

2. Dwarves or flat-nosed men may not offer bread at the altar of God (Lev 21:16-23) 

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto Aaron, saying, Whosoever he be of thy seed in their generations that hath any blemish, let him not approach to offer the bread of his God. For whatsoever man he be that hath a blemish, he shall not approach: a blind man, or a lame, or he that hath a flat nose, or any thing superfluous, Or a man that is brokenfooted, or brokenhanded, Or crookbackt, or a dwarf, or that hath a blemish in his eye, or be scurvy, or scabbed, or hath his stones broken; No man that hath a blemish of the seed of Aaron the priest shall come nigh to offer the offerings of the LORD made by fire: he hath a blemish; he shall not come nigh to offer the bread of his God. He shall eat the bread of his God, both of the most holy, and of the holy. Only he shall not go in unto the vail, nor come nigh unto the altar, because he hath a blemish; that he profane not my sanctuaries: for I the LORD do sanctify them.

3. King Saul gave his daughter to David for 200 foreskins (1 Sam 18:25-27) 

And Saul said, Thus shall ye say to David, The king desireth not any dowry, but an hundred foreskins of the Philistines, to be avenged of the king’s enemies. But Saul thought to make David fall by the hand of the Philistines. And when his servants told David these words, it pleased David well to be the king’s son in law: and the days were not expired. Wherefore David arose and went, he and his men, and slew of the Philistines two hundred men; and David brought their foreskins, and they gave them in full tale to the king, that he might be the king’s son in law. And Saul gave him Michal his daughter to wife.

4. God sends bears to kill children for mocking a bald man (2 Kings 2:22-24) 

So the waters were healed unto this day, according to the saying of Elisha which he spake. And he went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare forty and two children of them.

5. God will bring so much evil that it will make your ears tingle (Jer 19:3) 

And say, Hear ye the word of the LORD, O kings of Judah, and inhabitants of Jerusalem; Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will bring evil upon this place, the which whosoever heareth, his ears shall tingle.

6. When Jesus died, many local corpses came back to life (Mat 27:50-53) 

Jesus, when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the ghost. And, behold, the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and the earth did quake, and the rocks rent; And the graves were opened; and many bodies of the saints which slept arose, And came out of the graves after his resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many.

7. New brides must prove their virginity or be stoned to death (Deut 22:13-21) 

If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city.

And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

8. God tells Isaiah to walk naked and barefoot for three years (Isaiah 20:2-3) 

At the same time spake the LORD by Isaiah the son of Amoz, saying, Go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot. And he did so, walking naked and barefoot. And the LORD said, Like as my servant Isaiah hath walked naked and barefoot three years for a sign and wonder upon Egypt and upon Ethiopia;

9. It is okay to kill your slave if he takes a few days to die (Ex 21:20-21) 

And if a man smite his servant, or his maid, with a rod, and he die under his hand; he shall be surely punished. Notwithstanding, if he continue a day or two, he shall not be punished: for he is his money.

10. If you disobey God, he will make you eat your own children (Lev 26:27-29) 

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Debate – is God fraud?

There is no creator god, and no supernatural moral guide and lawgiver. I recently took part in a debate in University College Cork on the theme God is Fraud. You can see the contributions of the British humanist philosopher and author Peter Cave, and of the Irish religious correspondent and author TP O’Mahony, on the Atheist Ireland YouTube channel. Here is the text of my contribution:

Thank you for inviting me, and it is a pleasure to be here. I would like to start with a repudiation of Pascal’s wager by the great theologian Homer Simpson, who, when Marge was trying to get him to go to mass, replied “but what if we’ve picked the wrong religion? Every week we’re just making God madder and madder.”

I am going to suggest this evening that the ideas of God as an intervening personal supernatural being, and God as a moral guide and lawgiver, are both false. And I am going to suggest that the ideas of God as a personal commitment to unconditional love and goodness, and God as an impersonal force, are separate ideas that need to be disentangled from the first two false ideas.

God as a supernatural being

Let’s start with the false idea of God as an intervening supernatural being.

I’m including in this all of the supernatural claims attributed to God, from creating the world out of nothing, to impregnating a virgin in order to give birth to himself, to answering or ignoring millions of prayers every day, to turning pieces of bread and volumes of wine into his own body and blood every time a validly ordained priest of the human species on the planet Earth chooses to pronounce a certain set of words.

This type of thinking exists in the same intellectual realm as magic and superstition and witchcraft and sorcery. Last year the Pope announced a special promotional offer: if you visited Lourdes during 2008, you would get a free ‘plenary indulgence’ which would give you early release from a place called Purgatory after you die, and this would get you to a place called Heaven faster.

In any other field, making claims like this, particularly claims aimed at sick and vulnerable people, would be clearly seen as fraudulent. And I suggest that we should apply the same criteria to fraudulent claims about Gods.

God as a moral guide

Now let’s look at the second false idea, which is that of God as a moral guide

Wherever we get our morality, we do not get it from books like the Bible and the Koran, regardless of whether we read these books literally or metaphorically.

Here’s what happens what we read these books. When we see passages telling us that it is good to love your neighbour as yourself, and to be kind and forgiving to each other, or we read the story of the good Samaritan, we say: yes, those are morally good ideas.

When we see passages telling us that it is good to stone a man to death for gathering sticks on the Sabbath, or to stone a woman to death for not being a virgin on her wedding night, or to kill Babylonian infants by dashing them against rocks, we say: no, those are morally bad ideas.

Let’s be clear about what is happening here. In each case, we are applying our own sense of morality to the passages that we read in this book, and not the other way around. At best, you can use the supposed words of God, to selectively vindicate your already-existing sense of right and wrong, but not to get your sense of right and wrong.

God as a personal commitment

Thirdly, I want to look at the idea of God as a personal commitment.

To contextualise this, in recent centuries, at least in the western world, science has weakened the idea of God as a supernatural being, and secular democracy has weakened the idea of God as a moral guide. And so today there is a greater emphasis on the idea of God as a personal commitment to universal values such as unconditional love and goodness, as reflected in ultimate reality.

This can be a useful belief. It can give a sense of meaning and hope. And it can lead to helpful behaviour such as people being kind to each other. But the problem is that this useful idea has become entangled with the first two false ideas of God. So, in order to manifest your personal commitment to unconditional love and goodness, you have to reconcile it with the creation myths and underdeveloped morality of Bronze Age and Iron Age tribes.

And so you end up with tragic situations like Mother Teresa, the world’s most famous closet atheist, who we now know spent the last fifty years of her life in continual inner torment because she did not believe in God, yet also fervently believed that she had to believe in God in order to manifest her personal commitment to unconditional love and goodness.

She wrote regularly to her superiors, asking them for advice, but all that they could tell her was to offer her spiritual dryness to God as a special gift. Whereas they could and should have been able to say: you know about Adam and Eve and the talking snake and the burning Bush and the flood, and how we now recognize that these are all only metaphors? Well, the same is true about God. God is also a metaphor. He doesn’t really exist. Now continue on with the good work that you are doing in helping sick and vulnerable people.

God as an impersonal force

Finally, I want to look at the idea of God as an impersonal force.

This is a very different idea to any of the first three ideas of God. At its broadest, this idea can be that the universe and the laws of nature are God. This idea is harmless in itself. But it creates an illusion that there is greater support for the idea of a personal God, because it uses the same label to describe a very different idea.

For example, surveys show that approximately nine in every ten Americans and Europeans believe in God. But when you go beneath this question, you find that only two thirds of Americans, and just over half of Europeans, believe in a personal God. So, for the sake of clarity, we should stop attaching the label God to the very different idea of an impersonal force.

Conclusion

I want to close by saying that I am not suggesting that people who believe in these ideas are themselves fraudulent. There is no doubt that the Bible itself has been deliberately and fraudulently altered over the centuries. There is even a word for this: pious fraud. But false ideas of God are usually spread more like a pyramid scheme, with innocent people unwittingly passing on false ideas to other innocent people.

However, underneath that, I want to make the following suggestion: if you make claims about the nature of reality, particularly if you make unlikely claims about the nature of reality; and if you encourage other people to change their behaviour, or indeed change their lives, based on those claims; then you take on the onus of proof that the claims can deliver what they are promising.

Otherwise, the claims are fraudulent. And so I second the motion that God is fraud.

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Ethics of the Ten Commandments

The ten commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are laws for regulating the conduct of one Bronze Age tribe.

When you read them in the context of the Bible stories from which they emanate, these are the underlying reasons and messages behind them:

1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt.
2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything.
3. Do not swear by saying the word YHVH in vain.
4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death.
5. Honour your parents, because you will live longer.
6. Do not kill people, unless God arbitrarily allows you to.
7. Do not commit adultery, because men own their wives.
8. Do not steal things or people owned by your tribesmen.
9. Do not lie to or about members of your own tribe.
10. Do not desire things or people owned by your tribesmen.

These laws are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are not based on universal values of right and wrong, because they were never intended to apply to all people. They were designed to protect the stability and interests of one Bronze Age tribe, specifically because this tribe was set apart from all other people. The first four are arbitrary rules for how this tribe should worship its God. The next six regulate the tribe’s day-to-day conduct, mainly by protecting the position of its adult males, and also by treating members of the tribe differently than strangers. Most of these laws were enforced by the tribesmen stoning lawbreakers to death.

These laws demand unthinking obedience, based only on desire for amazing rewards and fear of horrific punishments meted out by this God. If you obey his laws, you will be his chosen people, and live in a land flowing with milk and honey (Lev 20:24), where a hundred of you will kill ten thousand enemies (Lev 26:3-9). But if you disobey his laws, he will bring upon you sudden terror and wasting diseases, send wild animals to kill your children, make you eat the flesh of your children, and make you so fearful that you will flee even when nobody is chasing you (Lev 26:14-39). He will punish not only you, but also your children, your grandchildren and your great-grandchildren (Ex 20:5).

Regardless of whether you believe this to be literal truth or literary metaphor, it is no basis upon which to build an ethical moral code. This becomes even more evident when you look at the Biblical background to each of these ten laws.

1. Worship only the God who proved his power in Egypt.

The first commandment is “I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Today’s Christian churches omit the part about their God bringing them out of Egypt, but in the Bible story this claim was essential to establish the credibility of this God with the tribe of Moses. People of this era worshipped many gods, including the sun, the moon and other celestial bodies, and this claim let the Israelites know they were dealing with a very powerful God, who had already intervened in earthly affairs on their behalf.

This God had repeatedly sent terrible plagues on the Egyptians (Ex 8-10) and then killed the firstborn child of every Egyptian family (Ex 11-12), in order to convince Pharoe to let the Israelites go. Of course, after each plague, this same God had also deliberately “hardened Pharoe’s heart”, specifically to ensure that Pharoe would not let the Israelites go, in order that he could move on to sending the next plague (Ex 4-11). But, to a primitive Bronze Age tribe, their God’s power was more persuasive than his morality. As a more direct incentive to worship him, they would be stoned to death if they worshipped the sun, the moon or any other gods (Deut 17:2-5).

2. Do not engrave or worship images of anything.

The second commandment is “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water below. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them.” The first part of this rule is absurd: it forbids nearly all visual art. Oddly, after this God announced these laws, he instructed Moses to make two cherubim out of hammered gold for the ark of the covenant (Ex 25:18-20).

Today’s Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches omit this rule from their popular versions of the ten commandments. And Roman Catholics regularly pray before images and statues of not only Jesus, but also Mary and numerous Saints. To make up for omitting the ban on graven images, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches divide the tenth commandment, which forbids coveting, into two different rules.

3. Do not swear by saying the word YHVH in vain.

The third commandment is “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” The Bible most often calls him YHVH, which Christians pronounce as Yahweh or Jehovah. The punishment for breaking this rule was death by stoning (Lev 24:16). When the Israelis brought a blasphemer before Moses, God instructed everyone who had heard the blasphemy to put their hands on the blasphemer’s head, after which the entire congregation must stone him to death (Lev 24:11-14). But the same God blessed Jacob after he had specifically used the Lord’s name when lying to his father in order to steal his brother’s birthright (Gen 27:19-20).

Also, a prophet could curse other people in the name of this God, for even trivial reasons, with horrific results. When the prophet Elisha was going to Bethel, a group of little children mocked him by saying ‘Go up, thou bald head!’ Elisha cursed the children in the name of the Lord, and two bears came out of the wood and killed forty two of the children (2 Kings 2:23-24). Some Christians have argued that these children were actually young men, as if that would make it more justifiable to set wild animals on them for teasing a bald man. In reality, blasphemy laws are at best primitive superstition, and at worst ways of supressing free speech.

4. Rest on the Sabbath or you will be stoned to death.

The fourth commandment is “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” This means that neither you, your children, your servants, your cattle or any of your visitors could work on the Sabbath. The punishment for breaking this rule was death by stoning (Ex 31:15). When the Israelites found a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath, they took him outside the camp and stoned him to death, as God had commanded Moses (Num 15:32-36). Since prehistoric times, humans have assigned days to various gods, so it was natural for a Bronze Age tribe to do likewise. But, whatever the benefits of resting on this day, they are far outweighed by the injustice of killing people for declining to rest.

5. Honour your parents because you will live longer.

The fifth commandment is “Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the land that God giveth thee.” So this law is based not on respect for your parents, but on the selfish desire to live longer. But why would honouring your parents cause you to live longer? One obvious reason was that, if you were stubborn and rebellious, and you continuously refused to obey your parents, they would take you to the elders of the city, and all of the men of the city would stone you to death (Deut 21:18-21).

A more subtle reason places the emphasis on the phrase “upon the land that God giveth thee.” If the tribe’s children learn to obey their parents, the tribe will continue to obey the commandments, and in return God will allow the tribe to remain in the promised land for longer. This law does not foster loving, caring, mutually respectful family values. It commands unthinking obedience, regardless of right or wrong, under fear of being stoned to death. Should the virgin daughters of Lot have honoured their father (Gen 19:4-8) when a gang wanted to rape two of his guests, who were angels from God, and Lot offered the gang his daughters instead?

6. Do not kill people unless God arbitrarily allows you to.

The sixth commandment is “Thou shalt not kill.” But this did not apply to the man who God chose to convey this very law to the Israelites. When Moses was an adult, he saw an Egyptian hitting an Israelite. Moses checked to see if anybody was watching, then killed the Egyptian and buried his corpse in the sand (Ex 2:11-12). Moses then went into hiding, knowing that he had acted unlawfully (Ex 12:14-15). And when the Israelite God decided that he needed somebody to lead his tribe, this is who he chose (Ex 3:1-10).

The sixth commandment does not apply if you kill your slave, as long as the slave takes a day or two to die (Ex 21:20-21). Or if you stone to death a man gathering sticks on the Sabbath (Num 15:32-36). Or if you slaughter all of the adults and children of every city you attack, apart from the virgin women who you can keep for yourself (Deut 2:31-34, Num 31:12-18). Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live (Ex 22:18). Nor, indeed, a medium or a spiritist (Lev 20:27). Strangers will be killed if they approach the tabernacle (Num 18:7). There are many more examples. Ironically, on his very return from Mount Sinai with the ten comandments, Moses ordered his tribesmen to kill three thousand of their brothers, friends and neighbours (Ex 32:27-28).

In effect, the sixth commandment is really “Thou shalt not kill unless God allows you to.” But there is no ethical basis to this particular God’s arbitrary killing choices. He once drowned the entire population of the world apart from one family (Gen 7:19-23). He killed Lot’s wife for looking around (Gen 19:26). He killed Onan for not completing sexual intercourse with his dead brother’s wife (Gen 38:7-10). He killed the first-born child of every Egyptian family (Ex 12:29-30). He killed 14,000 Israelites for murmering against Moses (Num 16:41-49). He killed seventy men for looking into his Ark (1 Sam 6:19) and another man for trying to stop the Ark from falling over when an ox shook it (2 Sam 6:6-7).

As there is no ethical basis to this God’s arbitrary killing choices, there is no ethical basis behind this commandment, which is ironically enforced under the threat of being killed (Ex 21:12). It is not about universal values of right and wrong. It is about protecting the stability and interests of one tribe.

7. Do not commit adultery, because men own their wives.

The seventh commandment is “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But why is adultery wrong? Based on the Bible, adultery is a crime committed against the husband of the woman involved, but not against the wife of the man involved. Predictably, the punishment is death (Lev 20:10). A man owns his wife from the time they become engaged. If another man has sex with an engaged virgin, he has committed a crime against her future husband, and must be stoned to death. If the woman did not scream for help, she must also be stoned to death (Deut 22:23-27).

If a newlywed man alleges that his bride was not a virgin, the bride’s father must prove her virginity. If the bride’s father can bring her blood-stained bedsheets to the elders of the city, her husband will pay him a fine for slander. If her father cannot produce the blood-stained bedsheets, the bride will be stoned to death on her father’s doorstep (Deut 22:13-21). If a man suspects his wife of adultery, he must bring her to a priest, who will make her drink bitter water that will curse her. If she has been unfaithful, this will cause her to have a miscarriage. If she has been faithful, she will be able to give birth. (Num 5:11-31).

The Bible has a lot else to say about sex generally, but its laws against adultery are based on the unethical premise that a woman is the property of her husband, and are enforced under the threat of being stoned to death.

8. Do not steal things or people owned by your tribesmen.

The eighth commandment is “Thou shalt not steal.” If you steal a person and sell him, you will be put to death (Ex 21:16, Deut 24:7). If you steal livestock, you must repay the owner double what you stole. If you have already sold what you stole, you must repay the owner five times. Otherwise the owner can sell you as a slave (Ex 22:1-5). Nor may you defraud your neighbour (Lev 19:13).

The first thing to note here is that you can steal a person (Ex 21:16, Deut 24:7). This may include kidnap, but this God also allowed slavery. Israelites could buy foreign slaves, and own them for ever, and pass them on to their children as inheritances (Lev 25:44-46). They could forcibly take foreign women and children after battles (Deut 20:14, Deut 21:10-14). Israelites could also buy and sell Israelite slaves, and could own the wives and their children of these slaves, but they had to release Israelite slaves after six years (Ex 21:2-6). Men could sell their daughters as slaves (Ex 21:7). A man could have sex with a female slave without being stoned to death, even if she was engaged, because she was not free (Lev 19:20).

The second thing to note is that this law only appplied internally within the Israelite tribe. Their God encouraged them to steal the treasures, animals, women and children of enemy tribes (Deut 20:14-15). After one batttle against the Midianites, they plundered about 200kg of gold, 800,000 livestock and 32,000 virgin women. As an aside, Moses and Eleazer the priest took about one percent of all of these spoils, as an offering to God (Num 31:25-54). The Israelites also stole the land of other tribes. Their God told them to drive out all of the inhabitants, take possession of the land and settle in it, and divide it up according to their clans (Num 33:50-54, Deut 2:31-34, Deut 20:16-17). Indeed, stealing the land of other tribes was the whole point of the covenant between the Israelites and their God.

This law is not about universal values of right and wrong. It is about protecting the stability and interests of one tribe.

9. Do not lie to or about members of your own tribe.

The ninth commandment is “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.” You must not defraud your neighbour, or pervert justice by not judging your neighbour fairly, or spread slander among your people (Lev 19:13-16). The punishment was a fine (Deut 22:17-19) or giving a ram to a priest, who will eat it to make atonement for your sin (Lev 7:1-7).

But the ban on lying applied only to “your neighbour” or “your people” (Lev 19:16) or “your brother” (Deut 19:18). It did not apply to strangers or foreigners. And, while the Israelite God said that strangers should be given justice (Deut 27:19), he also instructed his tribe to dispense different standards of justice to strangers. Israelites could own foreign slaves for ever, but had to release Israelite slaves after six years (Lev 25:44-46, Ex 21:7). Israelites could charge interest on loans to strangers, but not to their brothers (Deut 23:20). Their neighbour or brother could sometimes keep property they had lent to them, but a foreigner still owed it (Deut 15:1-3). More seriously, strangers would be killed if they approached the tabernacle (Num 18:7).

Actually, the Biblical God allowed, rewarded and even instructed lying. All three Biblical Patriarchs told lies. The prophet Abraham repeatedly lied that his wife Sarah was his sister, in order to give her to the Pharoe and save his own life (Gen 12:11-13). His son Isaac lied that his wife Rebekah was his sister (Gen 26:6-11). Isaac’s son Jacob lied to his father to steal his brother’s birthright (Gen 27:19-20). God rewarded midwives for lying about the birth of male children (Ex 1:15-21). God told Moses to lie to the Pharoe that his tribe only wanted to leave Egypt for three days (Ex 3:18). God saved the life of Rahab for lying about Israelite spies (Josh 2, Heb 11:31). God caused four hundred prophets to lie to the King of Israel (1 Kings 22:6, :22-23). Jehu lied to the prophets of Baal to lure them into being killed (2 Kings 10:18-28).

Again, this law is not about universal values of right and wrong. It is about protecting the stability and interests of one tribe.

10. Do not desire things or people owned by your tribesmen.

The tenth commandment is “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” In the Deuteronomy version, the order of house and wife is reversed, and the neighbour’s field is also included.

In this case, it is irrelevant that the rule is restricted to property owned by members of your own tribe, and it is irrelevant that wives and servants are considered to be the property of their husbands and masters, simply because this is an absurd rule that would be impossible to keep even if you wanted to. It seeks to regulate what you think, not what you say or do, and no law can enforce what you think. Furthermore, if people did not covet things owned by other people, nobody would ever purchase anything from anybody else.

As an aside, the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches divide this commandment into two, to make up for the fact that they omit the second commandment that forbids making graven images. But there is only one sentence in the tenth commandment, and there is no justifiable reason to divide it in two.

The Other Ten Commandments

Ironically, despite their centrality to Judeo-Christianity, these are not even the same set of laws that the Bible describes as the ten commandments. In the Book of Exodus, God wrote the ten commandments on two tablets of stone and gave them to Moses, who broke them (Ex 32:15-19).

God then recalled Moses to give him the same rules again (Ex 34:1-4). And these are the rules that God told Moses: the Israelites must observe the feast of unleavened bread and the feast of weeks, sacrifice firstborn male animals except donkeys, and give the first fruits of each harvest to God. They must not worship other gods, make treaties or intermarry with other tribes, cast idols, work on the seventh day, mix blood sacrifices with leavened bread, let fat sacrifices remain overnight, or cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk (Ex 34:5-26). God then told Moses to write down these words, and Moses wrote on two new stone tablets “the words of the covenant, the ten commandments” (Ex 34:27-28).

Today’s ten commandments actually appear elsewhere in the Book of Exodus (20:1-17). The Bible does not call them the ten commandments; indeed, there are at least twelve of them, if not more. And they are not written on tablets of stone; instead, in a different incident, God speaks them directly from Mount Sinai. It seems likely that later Christian leaders chose to downplay the ritual laws, and to instead brand the other set of laws as being “the ten commandments.”

In a later story, when Moses is recalling these events, he misremembers the exact words of these laws and mistakenly says that God wrote them onto stone tablets (Deut 5:6-22). This later story contradicts the Book of Exodus, unless the tablets had twenty laws on them. It seems more likely that the writer of Deuteronomy made mistakes or alterations when transcribing, perhaps several centuries later, the Exodus story.

Summary

Whether or not the Bible stories are true, the ten commandments of Judeo-Christianity are not a guide for ethical conduct. They are not based on universal values of right and wrong, because they were never intended to apply to all people. They were designed to protect the stability and interests of one Bronze Age tribe, specifically because this tribe was set apart from all other people.

They did this mainly by regulating how the tribe worshipped its God, by protecting the position of the tribe’s adult males, and by treating members of the tribe differently than strangers. They demanded unthinking obedience, based on desire for amazing rewards and fear of horrific punishments meted out by this God, and enforced by threats of being stoned to death by other members of the tribe.

This is no basis upon which to build an ethical moral code.

Sources

• The Bible
• Skeptic’s Annotated Bible
• The Ten Commandments by Joseph Lewis, 1946
• Godless by Dan Barker, 2008
• Lies by Prophets by Yael Shemesh

Photo: The Ten Commandments by DrGBB (cc)

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Atheist Ireland first radio interview

Soon after Atheist Ireland was founded, I was a guest of Simon Maher (pictured here) on the Dublin radio station Phantom 105.2 FM, where we discussed atheism in Ireland, in the context of the UK atheist bus adverts, and the formation of Atheist Ireland.

Here’s a recording of the interview, and a complete transcript.

Recording

You can listen to the interview here.

Atheists in Ireland

Simon Maher: We were talking last week about the atheist bus campaign in England, where there are advertising posters saying ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ And it got us talking generally about religion and atheism, and we said let’s try and apply it to an Irish context. And luckily enough there is a man called Michael Nugent who is a well known blogger at michaelnugent.com, where he writes about happiness, atheism and life, and a man who we’ve tallked to before here on Phantom Daily, and he joins us here in the studio. Good afternoon, Michael. Good to have you with us in the studio today.

Michael Nugent: Good afternoon. It’s nice to be here enjoying life and not worrying.

SM: Good. That’s a good start. I suppose the question we asked people when we talked about the feature last week was how the poster campaign might go down if it was to happen on buses trundling around the streets of Dublin?

MN: Well, I think there’s an awful lot of people in Ireland who aren’t particularly religious. We don’t go about shouting about it a lot, despite the temptation to do so given the way that non-religious people are treated by default here. But if you look at the last census, there are almost 190,000 people who said that they had no religion. And then there’s another 60,000 people who didn’t answer the question. So you have about a quarter of a million people who either said they have no religion or else didn’t answer the question. That’s quite a sizable minority.

SM: I was going to say, it is. A quarter of a million people in a population of 4.2 million or 4.3 million there or therabouts.

MN: Yes, technically, it’s the second largest grouping after Roman Catholics.

Atheists and Reason

SM: And when it comes to something like this, to give people a bit of background on atheism in general, its very much based on the idea of facts and evidence and reason, isn’t it?

MN: It is. Well, at it’s simplest, it’s either one or other of two things. It’s either saying that there’s no god, or else not saying that there is a god. And they’re both particularly unremarkable claims. You know, if I said that I don’t have five heads, it’s not a particularly remarkable thing to say. Equally, saying that there are no supernatural beings intervening in our lives and creating the universe, that isn’t particularly remarkable.

The default position is that rational thinking makes several things more likely. It makes enquiry more likely, in terms of trying to find out rationally what is true. It makes empathy more likely, in that people are going to treat each other as fellow human beings rather than being told what to do by deities, and it makes equality more likely, in that you’re going to have a secular society that’s based on respect for everybody rather than on rules that are handed down by a book that was written several thousand years ago.

SM: I don’t think anybody would disagree with any of that, but the idea of needing rational explanations for everything… you know, there’s a lot of things that go on in our lives. And we were talking before about the idea of love and marriage, which is probably one of the more irrational things that happen in our lives. Do we need a rational explanation for everything?

MN: It’s not so much that we need a rational explanation. It’s just that, whatever explanation that we come up with, we come up with by discussing it among ourselves. And we decide as natural beings, well, this is what love means to us, or this is what humour means to us… that’s all that it is, really. It’s not dictating what your ethics should be, or what love is. It’s just saying that it comes from within us, that it isn’t dictated to us by an imaginary being who wrote a book two thousand years ago.

The Atheist Bus Ads

SM: Right. And if we did see, let’s just say, the campaign that’s running now in the UK with ‘There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.’ If those buses did start chugging down O’Connell Street, do you think that people would have a problem with the idea of it, or would have a problem with the wording of it?

MN: Well, I’ll put it to you this way. As you know, there is a complaint in England about it. If people did have a complaint about it on the basis that you can’t prove there is no god, they should equally have much more complaints with promotions of the idea that there is a god, because the evidence certainly, in all probability, is leaning towards there not being a god.

If you take for example, it’s not technically an ad, but last year there was an ad banned by the Advertising Standards Authurity for slimming pills. And it was banned on the basis that the company couldn’t substantiate its claim that it would soak up fat from your food, and so on. Now, the reason I remember that particularly is that, on the same day that ban was announced, the Pope was announcing an even more unsubstantiatable special offer, which was that if you visited Lourdes with a year, you would get time off from Purgatory, and you would get to Heaven earlier, when you die. Now, on any basis, those types of claims are far more unsubstantiatable than the unremarkable claim that the world is, broadly speaking, as it seems to be.

Atheists and Faith

SM: Right. And when it comes to atheism, and the idea of proving – and once again, we are back to our rationality once again – if in a hypothethical situation, someone was to come along and present evidence, that an atheist was to find convincing, of something, in this case, the existence of god… that’s a large part of atheism, that you’re willing to accept that evidence then.

MN: Sure. Exactly. And, you know, whatever is true is true. We don’t know what it is. We’re not claiming that we know certainly what it is. All that we’re saying is that, on the basis of the evidence we have so far, we’re living beings, that live in a natural world, that is part of a natural universe. And it is up to us to figure out the nature of the reality that we live in, and to figure out how best to live together, and how to treat each other, and how to be kind to each other, and to have a society built on those values.

SM: And when it comes to the idea, then, of faith, obviously people themselves have an idea, they have an notion in their head. And if they take comfort from the fact that they have faith or belief, they may not perhaps be able to rationally explain to you… is that something that is maybe missing from atheism? Or is it something of an alien concept to you, the idea that you have faith in something yet it doesn’t necessarily have a rational explanation.

MN: No. Well, you don’t necessarily have to be able to explain everything. You know, there’s nothing wrong with saying ‘I don’t know.’ I mean, we can’t know everything. There are things that, centuries ago, people didn’t know that we now know. And there are things that we don’t know now, that in a couple of centuries time, people will know. At any given time, there are things we don’t know. And some people, in any given generation, happen to call those things God, and say God did it.

Atheist Ireland

SM: Right. And you yourself, and some like-minded individuals, have now got involved in the Atheist Ireland project.

MN: Yes, it’s a group that we’ve started off with a meeting last month, and we’re going to be formally launching it soon. It arose out of a website called Atheist.ie, which is a discussion forum where people can discuss atheist related issues in Ireland. And we have now formally started an organisation called Atheist Ireland, and its aim… we have two aims. One is to promote atheism and reason over superstition and supernaturalism. And the second aim is to promote a rational, ethical and secular Ireland where the state does not support or fund or give special treatment to any religion.

And arising from that, the tpe of things we are going to be looking at initially are promoting a secular Irish Constitution… currently our Constitution starts off by saying that all authority comes from the Holy Trinity and that we humbly acknowledge our obligations to our Divine Lord Jesus Christ. I mean, it’s quite fine for people to do that, but it shouldn’t be in the Constitution.

And there are some extraordinary claims in the Constitution, such as ‘The State acknowledges that the homage of public worship is due to Almighty God’. That’s not actually a defence of the right of people to worship God. That’s a defence of the right of this God to be worshipped. We’re placing the rights of the Gods within our Constitution. And it may sound like it’s just picking holes, but there are cases where fundamental rights have been interpreted on the basis that we have a Christian Constitution, so they have to be interpreted that way.

So the Constitution is one thing, and the second main thing that we are looking at is the education system, and the need to have a secular education system where people can be taught rationally. And they can learn whatever religion that they want from their religions, but not from the education system.

Conclusion

SM: Very good. Well, if people want more details, they can go to the website, Atheist.ie.

MN: And they can get involved either in discussions, or indeed get involved in the preparations for the launch of the organisation, by going to Atheist.ie and just getting involved in the chat generally there.

SM: Michael, thanks very much for coming in and talking to us.

MN: Simon, you’re welcome.

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