Catholic Abuse News - Poland Learns the Truth

Tell No One: YouTube documentary shows sex abuse victims confronting Catholic priests

That most Catholic of European countries, Poland, is having a major child abuse scandal involving Catholic priests all of its own. Whether this results in the same rejection of Catholicism that we've seen in Ireland and elsewhere remains to be seen.

The documentary, Tell No One, which includes secret recordings of Catholic priests being confronted by their victims and confessing to the abuses, has provoked a storm of outrage, having already had more that 21 million views on YouTube, which has resulted in moves to double the prison sentence for paedophiles from 15 to 30 years.

Catholic Abuse News - Church Struggling to Keep up With Secular Humanism

Don Gino Flaim - "It was the Children's fault"

Italian priest Don Gino Flaim justifies paedophilia on live TV and blames children for ‘seeking affection’ | The Independent

A measure of just how far the Catholic Church has been forced to adopt decent Humanist standards of behaviour can be gauged by this article from 2012 and comparing it with Catholic PR today.

To day, senior Catholics know they need to be very guarded and circumspect when they try to blame others for their church's moral bankruptcy and its arrogant abuse of power. Not so just a few years ago, as Don Gino Flaim, 75, of the diocese of Trento in Northern Italy, showed when he went on TV to blame the victims, and by inference their parents, telling the viewers:

Increasingly Secular Ireland as Catholic Church Declines

Baby boom in the past as new figures show birthrates drop again - Irish Mirror Online

The degree to which the Irish Republic has rejected Catholicism in recent years can be seen in a few birth and marriage figures for 2018, released yesterday.

Traditionally, a typical Irish family of previous generations, following the diktats of the Catholic Church, would have been very large. My partner's mother, born into an Irish Catholic emigre family, was one of twelve children, for example. Her Irish-born grandfather from County Mayo, born just a few years after the famine, was one of fourteen children. By the time of the 2011 census, this was down to an average of just 1.38 children, itself a fall from 1.41 in 2006.

Christian Abuse News - Jesus Army Church Closes

The Jesus Centre, former home of the Jesus Army, Northampton

Jesus Army churches close after child sex abuse claims - BBC News

In what could be a metaphor for Christianity itself, an extreme fundamentalist church in Northampton, UK, has lost so many members over child abuse scandals that it has decided to call it a day and close its doors, just as have so many other Christian churches.

Decent people are walking away from the church, repelled by the behaviour of the clerics and the church's leadership in tolerating it and even facilitating it and participating in it.

Christian Hypocrisy News - The Preachers of Hate

Six antigay church leaders who have found themselves ensnared in sex scandals / Queerty

Sanctimony is commonly used as a cover. Who would believe that upright, married Christian pastor who weekly fulminates against homosexuals and calls down the wrath of God upon them, would be gay?

It's like the scandalised gossip who condemns others but who keeps her curtains tightly drawn and only opens her door a chink to callers lest they glimpse the squalor in her own home.

We are becoming inured to the daily scandals as yet another priest is caught abusing his position to abuse yet more children or procuring an abortion for his under-age victim while preaching the sanctity of life and a ban on abortions for others. We now almost take it for granted that behind public sanctimony there will be private hypocrisy and the louder the condemnation of others, the more likely is the attacker to be an abuser.

Here, by way of illustration is a very short select of Christian hypocrites whose actions contrast sharply with their preaching lectures on what constitutes decent behaviour and whose virulent messages of hate directed at homosexuals are intended to deflect from their own behaviour. The list comes from Queerty, an online magazine with an openly gay agenda.

Another Massive Rejection of Catholicism in Ireland

1995 campaign poster.
Jesus says no; Ireland said yes. Now Ireland says more, by a massive majority.

Divorce referendum: Ireland votes to liberalise laws - BBC News

In another massive rejection of the teaching and advise of the Catholic Church in the Republic of Ireland, the Irish people have voted to liberalise their divorce laws in a referendum held on Friday.

The scale of this shift away from Catholic teaching can be gauged by the scale of the vote in favour of liberalisation compared to the vote to allow divorce in 1995. In 1995, the majority in favour of divorce itself was a mere - 50.3%. Friday's referendum gave an 82.1% vote in favour of the liberalisation of it.

Ark Encounter Suffers Flood Damage

Ark Encounter owners sue over rain damage

Don't laugh!

Ken Ham's Ark Encounter in North Kentucky, which claims to have a replica Ark, is suing its insurers for not paying out for the flood damage caused by heavy rain in 2017 and 2018.

Perhaps, the five different insurers regard this flood damage as an act of God or force majeure. It was caused by an act of gross stupidity. The insurers say they didn't ensure against "correcting design deficiencies or faulty workmanship."

Civilised Societies Leaving Religions Behind

Pastor Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church.
Preacher of hate.

World - Christian US Pastor Who Prayed For Obamas Death And Celebrated Orlando Gay Club Massacre Becomes The First Person Banned From Ireland | Daily Mail

In a stunning example of the yawning chasm that has opened up between fundamentalist American Christianity and what is considered normal, civilised standards of behaviour, the Irish government has banned an American preacher from entering the country because of the hateful and socially unacceptable nature of the opinions he spouts from the pulpit.

The Irish Minister for Justice and Equality, Charlie Flanagan, signed an exclusion order to stop Pastor Steven L Anderson entering Ireland after learning that he had publicly prayed for President Obama's death, celebrated the Orlando massacre of 48 people in a gay bar and called for the death of all homosexuals.

Evolution News - How One Thing Leads To Another

Giant armadillos (glyptodonts), Doedicurus clavicaudatus

Credit: © Peter Schouten

Climate, grasses and teeth: the evolution of South America mammals | UANews

Recent findings by scientists from the Universities of Arizona, Wyoming and Connecticut, give a fascinating insight into how Earth's ecosystems are dynamic, and how evolution is an integral part of how the system works to maintain itself, without the need for magic or interference.

The researchers, led by Barbara Carrapa, professor and head of the UA Department of Geosciences, showed that there was a major change in the climate of South America between 7 and 6 million years ago, caused by a change in the global tropical atmospheric circulation known as the Hadley circulation. The result was that South America became drier allowing subtropical grasslands to expand.

'Persecution' News - 'Good Christian' Paedo Rapist Treated Leniently

Good Christian, David Lynn Richards Jr, convicted of nine counts of rape, incest and sexual battery.

Photo credit: Brianna Paciorka/News Sentinel

Former pastor sentenced to 12 years in prison for rape conviction

A former Christian pastor who repeatedly raped his 14 year-old adopted daughter has been given a light sentence by a Judge in Knox County, Tennessee because he is a good Christian.

According to this report in the Knoxville News Sentinel, David Lynn Richards Jr, a former minister in the My Father's House Church of God in Lenoir City, was convicted by a jury at Knox County Criminal Court on nine felony counts of rape, icest and sexual battery. He protested his innocence throughout the trial, despite the evidence of his DNA being found in semen on his daughters bed frame.

Malevolent Designer News - Winning The Antibiotic Arms Race

The mcr-9 gene's protein structure graphic depicts the differing protein chains (solid color ribbons) and the protein surface (mesh) surrounding it.

Credit: Ahmed Gaballa/Cornell University

Cornell scientists discover new antibiotic resistance gene | Cornell Chronicle

Creationism's malevolent designer has been at it again in its arms race with human medical science, and it seems to have gone into overdrive.

As Cornell University food scientists have discovered, it has created a new 'diabolical' gene to convey resistance in bacteria to our antibiotic of last resort, colistin.

And not content with giving that resistance to a bacterium like salmonella, it has made the gene fully transferable to other species via a plasmid, so, by horizontal gene transfer, any bacteria can now acquire resistance to colistin. Colistin has been designated by the World Health Organisation as a highest-priority antibiotic. Unless we can find a better one or find some new way of killing bacteria when they infect us, that's it. We will have run out of options.

Creationism Goes off the Rails

Aldabran White-throated rail, Dryolimnas cuvieri subsp. aldabranus.

Photo credit: Charles J Sharp [CC BY-SA 4.0]

The bird that came back from the dead | UoP News

Here we have a very nice example of how evolution is 'directed' by the environment, and an example of how the Theory of Evolution has explanatory powers that creationism simply does not have. This example is of a flightless member of the rail family of birds that evolved not once but twice on the small Indian Ocean atoll of Aldabra.

Julian P Hume of the Bird Group, Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Tring, Herts, UK and David Martill of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth, UK, have shown that the present day flightless white-throated rail of Aldabra has some strikingly similar features to an extinct flightless rail. The extinct rail inhabited the atoll until climate change caused the sea level to rise and cover the atoll about 136,000 years ago, exterminating all plant and animal life.

Anglican Abuse News - Peter Ball, Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury

Peter Ball, Bishop of Gloucester, jailed in 2015 for sexually abusing 18 young men.

Inquiry publishes report into the Diocese of Chichester and Peter Ball | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has revealed that the Church of England had a casual approach to child abuse by it's clerics that was the equal to that in any Catholic diocese. All the 'sympathy and understanding' was reserved for the cleric who had given in to temptation and been caught, and none for their victims.

This 'understanding' went all the way to the top and included Prince Charles, future titular head of the Anglican Church. As with the Catholic Church, according to the IICSA, the Anglican Church was more concerned with “putting its own reputation above the needs of victims”.

The IICSA has found that former Bishop of Gloucester, Peter Ball, misused his position to sexually abuse young men, talking them into stripping naked to prey, and taking part in masturbation and flagellation sessions. Ball was convicted and given a 32 month sentence for the admitted sexual abuse of 18 young men between 1977 and 1992. Two further charges of indecently assaulting two boys, aged 13 and 15, were allowed to lie on file by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Peter Ball, along with his twin brother Michael, set up the Community of the Glorious Ascension, an Anglican monastic order through which he met many young men and boys as novice monks. He later became Bishop of Lewes, within the Anglican diocese of Chichester and in 1992 he was appointed Bishop of Gloucester.

Perfectly Plausible Abiogenesis

I get more than a little bit bored with almost every debate with creationists eventually, and often very quickly, coming down to a demand that we explain abiogenesis, or more likely an assertion that it can't be explained because it's 'impossible'.

Then comes the parrot squawk, "you can't get life from non-life", as though any of them could define this 'life' thing.

So, with that in mind, I thought I would both give a puff for my book, What Makes You So Special? From the Big Bang to You and put on record a perfectly plausible explanation for how abiogenesis could have happened. Note, it's not meant to be an account of how it actually happened, just how it could have happened, to refute creationist claims that it is impossible.

If any creationists wishes to substantiate that claim, please feel free to go through the following ten steps and say which laws of chemistry and/or physics would make one or more of them impossible. If you can't, clearly, it is not impossible.

Catholic Abuse News - The Rapist Paedophile Nun

Edward Hayes and his daughter

Man raped by NUN at Catholic home meets daughter he fathered for first time 62 years later - Irish Mirror Online

While researching the article on the abuse and starvation of children by the Catholic nuns who ran the Irish Mother and Baby homes, I came across this news item. It makes a change from the tens of thousands of accounts of Catholic priests raping children.

This account is of a nun repeatedly raping a boy in her care and eventually getting herself pregnant by him.

Catholic Ireland Where Nuns Sold Dead Babies

Bessborough Mother and Baby Home, Cork.
Highest infant mortality rate of any religious-run institution.

Pat Flanagan column: Selling 1,000 dead babies shows how much Catholic Church hated children - Pat Flanagan - Irish Mirror Online

The fifth interim report of the Irish Government's Commission Of Investigation On Mother And Baby Homes, published a few days ago, has added yet more horror to the catalogue of horrors that the homes became under the Catholic Church's supervision.

The homes were run by Catholic nuns and became almost autonomous, being accountable to no-one but themselves. They served as homes for pregnant unmarried women and mothers and became virtual places of punishment with both the women and their babies treated as sub-human and worthless by the nuns, who saw them as sinners and the products of sin. When they died, and they died very often, they were not even accorded respect as human beings.

Malevolent Designer News - Making Better Mosquitoes

Aedes aegypti

Credit: Muhammad Mahdi Karim [GFDL 1.2],
via Wikimedia Commons

Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes Detect Acidic Volatiles Found in Human Odor Using the IR8a Pathway | Current Biology.

Following close on the news that creationism's malevolent... er... sorry... intelligent (sic) designer has designed liver flukes to be better at making us and our livestock sick, comes news of another brilliant piece if design to improve a mosquito's ability to give us serious infections with life-threatening parasites.

Researchers from the Department of Biological Sciences & Biomolecular Sciences Institute, Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA have shown how the antennae of female Aedes aegypti Mosquitoes can 'smell' characteristic signature chemicals in human body odour. Their findings were published open access in Current Biology yesterday.

Malevolent Designer News - Making a Better Liver Fluke

Liver flukes, Fasciola hepatica.

Mechanism of a protein upon infection of the 'Fasciola hepatica' -- ScienceDaily

Scientists working at the University of Córdoba, Spain, have discovered just how devious any intelligent designer would have to have been when it designed the liver fluke, Fasciola hepatica.

Creationists who advocate intelligent design as the best explanation for organisms and the diversity of living things need to believe several key things about their purported designer:

Catholic Bishops Admit Bible Class Disadvantages School Children

Richard Brunton, TD.

In Letter to Irish Government, Bishops Admitted Religion Makes Kids Dumber | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

In an astonishing letter to the then Irish Minister for Education and Skills, Richard Bruton, TD ^PDF, Catholic bishops have unwittingly revealed that even they regard religious education as detrimental to the children being subjected to it.

The letter, which had never been made public, came to light by chance when Seamus and John from The Free Thought Prophet Podcast were researching for a podcast and submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Irish Department of Education and Skills.

The letter was written in response to Circular Letter 0013/2018 ^PDF from the Department of Education and Skills, detailing proposals for changes in the purpose of the circular was to:

... set out a new approach to the arrangements that are made for religious instruction and worship in the schools covered by this circular in order to ensure that the rights of children to attend the school without having to attend religious instruction will be conducted in a manner that takes account of the likelihood, given changing demographics, of an increasing number of families wanting to exercise their constitutional right to withdraw.

Sri Lanka and New Zealand - Why the Different Responses?

Dead bodies of victims lie inside St. Sebastian's Church damaged in blast in Negombo, north of Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, April 21, 2019. More than two hundred people were killed and hundreds more injured in eight blasts that rocked churches and hotels in and just outside Sri Lanka's capital on Easter Sunday.

Credit: AP/Chamila Karunarathne

In a world in which we've become used to mass killings and atrocities by religious fanatics, often perpetrated against members of a different religion, the New Zealand atrocities carried out by one fanatical Christian against Muslims peacefully at prayer stood out for it's barbarity and brutal violation, not just of the lives destroyed but of a peaceful and tolerant society.

The death toll was 50. People across the world were rightly outraged by it.

In Sri Lanka, an as yet unidentified (but assumed to be Muslim) group yesterday targeted Christian churches with bombs designed to kill as many as possible while Christians were at prayer on a day which many Christians regard as the most holy of the year.

Also targeted were hotels where mostly Europeans stay in a country in which Europeans are assumed to be Christian. This was clearly an attack against members of a religion by members of a different one.

The death toll currently stands at about 300. And yet the response to the Sri Lanka massacre has been far more muted than the response to the New Zealand massacre.