Kendall House Abuse: What God Was Watching?

Kendall House Abuse Centre

Kendall House: Girls drugged and abused at church-run home - BBC News

The report of the review of Kendall House, an Anglican girls' home in Gravesend, Kent, ordered by Bishop of Rochester, is truly shocking! It reveals a regime of systematic physical, psychological and sexual abuse of young, troubled girls, some as young as 11 years old, to the extent that almost every child was subjected to this abuse routinely and as a matter of 'normal' practice.

Bear in mind as you read this that one of the supposed 'selling points' of religion is that unlike 'atheistic' or secular institutions, they provide these social support institutions out of a sense of moral duty and obligation to their fellows - and because Jesus told them to!

You Can't Keep A Good Homophobe Down

What happened when Kim Davis met the Pope? - BBC News.

Despite all his public protestations of goodwill to all gays and his desire to reform the Catholic Church to make it more kindly, tolerant, loving and forgiving and willing to embrace even women and homosexuals - or to at least acknowledge their worth as human beings, though not letting them anywhere near the centres of power, obviously, ‘Uncle’ Pope Francis has let slip the mask.

He has revealed the nastiness and sense of privilege and entitlement to hate and persecute that is still hiding beneath this cloak of affable inclusivity.

Catholic Outrage - The Law Applies To Them Too!

Bernadette Smyth. "I'm no witch, I'm a Christian".

BBC News - Bernadette Smyth: Anti-abortion protester given community service

Catholics in Northern Ireland expressed shock and disappointment that a judge at Belfast's Magistrates Court had imposed a community service and issued a restraining order on Catholic anti-abortionist campaigner, Bernadette Smyth, preventing her from harassing Dawn Purvis of a Marie Stopes clinic and going within 20 yards of the clinic.

She was also sentenced to 100 hours community service and given a five-year restraining order

Slapdown For The Supine Pope

BBC News - Catholic synod: Gay rights groups 'disappointed'

Any illusions the 'reforming' Pope Francis may have been under that he is reforming the Catholic Church and bringing it into the 21st-Century by injecting a small dose of humanism into its doctrine were shattered today. The synod of bishops meeting in Rome put him firmly in his place and voted down his paragraph containing the mildest of calls to 'accept' and 'value' the contribution of homosexuals to society and replaced it with a reaffirmation of traditional homophobic Church dogma.

Religiously Hypocritical.

Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

BBC News - Archbishop of Canterbury 'furious over' Church investment in Wonga

This made me chuckle. The background to the story is that the new Archbishop of Canterbury and pastoral head of the world-wide Anglican Community, Justin Welby, had said that he has told the head of Wonga, a notorious loan-sharking company , "we're not in the business of trying to legislate you out of existence; we're trying to compete you out of existence".

Wonga specialises in luring poor people into spiraling debt then hitting them with extortionate penalty payments they can't possibly afford, eventually sending in bailiffs to seize their possessions, like a blood-sucking parasite bleeding its victim to death with all the morality of the financial marketplace.

A Persecuted Minority

Lord Carey, former Archbishop of Canterbury and
unelected member of the bicameral UK Parliament's Upper Chamber

As the Humanist march continues, in Europe at least, we are seeing case law being made which establishes that even Christians now have to obey the law. Indeed, this is a common cause of their whinging.

I've noted before how hypocritical Christians like former Archbishop of Canterbury and pastoral head of the Anglican Communion, Lord Carey, keep whining about Christians being a persecuted minority. Carey, in particular is often heard complaining when Christians have lost another court case brought against them for denying goods and services to people, or discriminating against, bullying or committing other hate crimes againt people on the grounds that their religion requires them to.

Carey sees it as a basic human right for Christians to deny basic human rights to non-Christians and regards it as persecution to insist that they comply with the law of the land, which, as an unelected member of the UK parliament he has the right to influence the framing of.

It's not just in the UK where Christians have this inflated sense of entitlement and regard any denial of privilege as a denial of their rights. We recently had an outstanding example from the USA where Christians were complaining that they were having to remain 'in the closet' about their homophobia and not being able to keep homosexuals in the closet where they belong.

Yes! It's a baby!

However, one small event which, if you were watching the BBC News a couple of days ago, seemed to happen on a day when, by great good fortune, nothing else happened anywhere in the world puts this persistent whining into context. The wife of the second in line to the hereditary title of Head of State of the UK (and several other Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand) and titular head of the World-wide Anglican Christian Church, produced an offspring.

This child, if it, and the monarchy, survives that long, will succeed to the post currently held by his great grandmother. In effect, unless the law changes, my grandchildren's children's, and even their grandchildren's ruler has already been chosen, as has the head of whatever is left of the Anglican church. He need do nothing at all to earn that post for which there is no formal job description and no basic standards against which performance can be measured. Of course, given that time-scale and the likelihood of Scotland leaving the Union with possibly Wales following suit, we don't know what he will be king of.

In the UK, the monarchy symbolised both the class system based on hereditary privilege, and how closely interwoven the Anglican Church has been in this system since Tudor times. The right of certain Anglican bishops to sit in the House of Lords and the tradition of some retired ones continuing so to do is a reflection of the privilege which Anglicans have traditionally had in Britain.

One wonders what Prince George has inherited in his DNA which entitles him to this future power but, unless the law is changed under pressure from Humanists, one thing we can be sure of is that one of Lord Carey's 'persecuted' Christians will hold the post of Head of State at least of England, quite possibly into the twenty-second century, and will need to have done nothing at all to deserve it.

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Prove There Isn't A God!

Osiris, Anubis and Horus

Despite the fact that Atheists are continually explaining that Atheism is not a belief that there are no gods but a belief that there is no evidence for any and therefore no reason to believe in any, theists continue to try to shift the burden of proof from themselves and demand we prove their particular god doesn't exist.

This is of course the tactics of the playground and the coward and depends on the infantile idea that if you can't prove a notion wrong it must be right. Curiously, in the deluded mind of the theist which seems to be capable of abandoning intellectual honesty and personal integrity in it's desperate pursuit of certainty, this only applies to their favourite god and not to fairies, pink unicorns, Harry Potter, or invisible loft hippos.

So Christians, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and anyone else who believes in one god but not all of them, if you want to show your intellectual honesty and personal integrity, this challenge should be right up your street. Just like us Atheists there are some gods you don't believe in. Presumably, since you think Atheists should be able to prove your god isn't real, you will be able to prove the gods you don't believe in aren't real. In all honesty, if you require Atheists to prove a negative, you should be capable of doing so yourself. To believe otherwise is hypocrisy, and I don't know of any religion which believes hypocrisy is a virtue.

Wodan heals Balder's wounded horse; Emil Doepler ca. 1905

You have very many gods to choose from. Answers.com says there are almost 3000 goods which people have believed in either now or in known history. There are probably lots more we don't know about.

Since the beginning of recorded history, which is defined by the invention of writing by the Sumerians around 6000 years ago, historians have cataloged over 3700 supernatural beings, of which 2870 can be considered deities. Those numbers are probably a very conservative estimate because we have no accurate information before 4000 B.C. This means any deities worshipped by man before this period are unaccounted for.

How many gods and goddesses are there? Answers.com

Don't panic! You don't have to prove all of them don't exist. Just pick any one and prove to readers that it isn't real.

If you haven't read any history and can't think of any other gods, this link leads to all the gods you could wish for, but don't limit yourself to these. You could even make up one of your own!

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

Just a word of warning though. Your opinions, faith, deeply-held beliefs, feelings in your 'heart', words in a book or the opinions of 'experts' don't count as evidence, nor does the fact that your parents believed in your favourite god. After all, you won't accept my opinions, my feelings, my books or the opinions of experts who agree with me, so play the game according to your rules. Produce the same evidence which proves your selected god doesn't exist that you would accept from me as proof that your god doesn't exist.

You don't believe in that god, just as I don't believe in yours, so provide the evidence you demand I should provide.

Anything else would be hypocritical.

I almost forgot: Don't try any of the fallacies listed here, or any others for that matter. They won't work on me and will only serve to expose your dishonesty.

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Manny's Many Twitter Accounts [Update 13]

We recently outed the serial abuser, loon, attention-seeking spammer and Internet troll, Manuel "Manny" de Dios Agosto, the emotionally immature failed wannabee Catholic priest from the Bronx who several of us have known for several months to be behind the Twitter account @Sacerdotus. The evidence can be seen here.

It is also very apparent, and has been for many months, that Manuel's method of abuse and harassment involves using multiple Twitter accounts. This blog will serve as a register for all Manuel's known accounts, so people who wish to ignore his incessant attention-seeking, infantile spam, cyber-bullying and harassment, know which accounts to ignore or block altogether. If Manuel's behaviour again descends to the depths he reached in the summer of 2012, when all his accounts had to be taken down by Twitter Support pending his undertaking to behave in future, this list can serve to support any official complaints against him.

Please feel free to register any new accounts in the comment section below, together with supporting evidence, and I will add them to the main blog. The usual signs that they are Manuel's accounts includes:

• Repetitively re-tweeting tweets from his other accounts.
• Promoting Manuel's blogs.
• Challenging people to a debate about Christianity then ignoring questions or becoming abusive when asked to clarify a point or substantiate a claim.
• Constant claims that people won't debate him or are afraid of him.
• Abusing the people Manuel normally abuses or agreeing with Manuel's abusive tweets.
• Having several of Manuel's accounts in the follower and following lists.
• Sharing Manuel's obsessions.
• Accounts impersonating people who Manuel is currently abusing, stalking or otherwise showing an obsessive interest in.
• Abusive accounts by people purporting to be devout Catholics, showing an obsessive fascination with the trappings of Catholic priesthood and variations on the 'Sacerdotus/Sacerdotvs/curatus/curatvs' theme.
• Replies from Manuel with one account to tweets sent to a different one. Running many accounts obviously gets confusing

Account	Notes	Current Status
@Sacerdotus	Manuel's main account in which he pretends his name is Michael. [Update 4 March 2015] Bizarrely, Twitter have reinstated Manuel's original account after promising to reduce trolling and abuse. It seems the hopeless muddle in Customer Safety which so embarrasses their CEO, is continuing. Of course he immediately recommenced begging for money and harassing his usual victims - Twitter informed.	Active again. Suspended again as of 30-March-2015
@SACERD0TUS	The account Manuel uses to get around being blocked, apparently believing that no one will notice the all caps to disguise the fact that he has replaces the letter 'o' with a zero.	Deleted
@Sacerdotvs	Used by Manuel to get round blocks.	Permanently suspended.
@SacerdotusBlogs	Account set up when all Manuel's other accounts were suspended. Immediately commenced abusing those whom Manuel had been harassing prior to suspension. Also suspended a few hours after creation.	Deleted.
@RosaRublcondior	An impersonation account Manuel was using to post gratuitously offensive obscenities until all his accounts were suspended by Twitter. Then used by him to support a petition to get me banned. Substitution of 'i' for 'l'.	Permanently suspended.
@RationallyFaith	Thinly disguised account normally used by Manuel to agree with himself and to abuse those who disagree with him.	Permanently suspended.
@Bronxbomber777	Used by Manuel to post threats of violence, often sexually explicit, especially to females.	Permanently suspended.
@YearOfFaith2012	Plagiarised by Manuel from an official Catholic account, presumably in an attempt to give it credence. Used for the usual abuse and to make it look like people agree with him.	Permanently suspended
@NYCLATINO2011	Used by Manuel to pose as a gay male prostitute to contact gays prior to spamming them with homophobic abuse. Has been known to post pornography visible to minors. Account appears to have been deleted very recently. Was active earlier on day of writing. (28 May 2013) Now active again and being used by Manny to compliment himself and tell others how brilliant he is. Manuel has developed a tactic for trying to hide his trail when he gets frightened that he's gone too far. He renames an account, then creates a new one with the original name and immediately deletes it. He seems to think this deletes all his old tweets but keeps all his followers. It doesn't, of course.	Name changed to @NYCLATINO2012.
@NYCLATINO2012	Ditto.	Name Changed to @NYCLATINO2013.
@NYCLATINO2013	Ditto.	Permanently suspended.
@jaxz0hnp	An impersonation account used to abuse and harass user @jaxzohnp. Simple substitution of 'o' with zero again.	Permanently suspended.
@StJohnSmith	Used for same function as @RationallyFaith.	Still active but all tweets and following appear to have been deleted. May have been renamed as above.
@Catholic_Blog	Yet another account used by Manuel to promote his blog, post abuse at those who disagree with him and agree with himself because very few real people ever do.	Permanently suspended.
822451ac-f4aa-11e2-802e-000bcdcb5194	This AOL Opaque OpenID account is used by Manuel to spam blogs requiring a registered account to post comments. The purpose of this form of OpenID appears to be to facilitate anonymous abuse and spam on blogs. He assumes people won't know it's him being his usual obnoxious and infantile self - rather like a child who thinks you can't see him when he puts his hands over his eyes. The clue of course is that he invariably agrees with and supports himself - a thing which no sane person would do - and his posts resemble those of a 8 year-old in terms of emotional maturity.	N/A
@TylerNull	Used by Manuel to promote his YouTube efforts because no one else does.	Renamed to @Peregrinusmmvii.
@Peregrinusmmvii	Another new account which began attacking Manuel's favourite obsessions and hate figures soon after the above account picked up its first warning, which came soon after it took up where Manuel left off, soon after @Sacerdotus was warned again.	Permanently suspended.
@RosaIsSuspended	The account Manuel now uses to post automated infantile abuse.	Permanently suspended.
@SacerSpended	Now all Manuel's usual accounts have been permanently suspended he is trying a new trick. He uses this account to pretend to be pleased Manny has been suspended and claims to have found who the 'real' @Sacerdotus is. Of course, it isn't the expelled seminarian Manuel de Dios Agosto but some other innocent person whom Manuel claims he found using links I provided on the blog where we exposed him. Needless to say, these links don't exist. The laugh is that this account was only created a couple of days ago and immediately followed me claiming to know all about @Sacerdotus and his lies, yet appears not to know what his other account is or why he should be interested in Manuel. What he doesn't seem to grasp is that he's simply confirming yet again that he is indeed Manuel de Dios Agosto, expelled seminarian, otherwise why would he be so implausibly pretending @Sacerdotus is someone else? I wonder if anyone can guess why Manuel is so desperate to want people not to know his real identity, and the reason he was expelled from St Joseph's Seminary, New York. [update 19 November 2013] Just when you thought Manuel couldn't get any more stupid, the idiot is now using this account to claim he's me!	Permanently suspended.
@Blog_Catholic	Manuel is back with a new account cleverly disguised so no one will think it's his by creaftily turning round the name of one he used earlier - @Catholic_Blog. I bet that has people fooled, eh, Manuel?	Permanently suspended.
@SacerdotusLives	And another new account so he can continue his obsessive attention-seeking and abuse. Bizarrely he implies in this one's bio that Twitter have given him this temporary account while his 'contacts' in Twitter sort out the mistake they made when they wrongly suspended all his others. I wonder if his contacts in Twitter are any more real than his vast army of contacts who are supposedly watching my every move and sending him information on my criminal/terrorist activities which he claims to be including in the regular reports about me he sends to 'The UK Authorities' Any bets on how long this one will last?	Permanently suspended.
@SCDTVS	After 4 months enforced absence, Manuel is now up and runnign again, and already posting abuse with a brand new account brilliantly disguised by removing a few letters, posting exactly the same stuff and resuming obsessive abuse of his usual victims. Can't accuse Manuel of being anything other than a traditionalist. Name changed to @CatholicGadfly and a new one created with the same name	Permanently suspended.
@Atheist707	Apparently he's been stung by everyone spotting him within a few minutes of starting up again despite his brilliantly disguised account, so he's now come up with another ploy. Now he's pretending to be an Atheist who just happens to mention Sacerdotus, his blog and his @SCDTVS Twitter account in every tweet. It's the same ploy he tried with his @SacerSpended account last November. He's soon abusing all his usual favourites too. And now he's even claiming that other people are him too! You might as well quote the above complaint reference when you have cause to report him for abuse. I'll register this new one against it with Twitter. Name changed to @StudiousAtheist then a new account created and deleted. He has apparently panicked after being threatened with legal action for posting a defamatory tweet depicting a minor without permission and claiming another Twitter user is abusing the child.	Name Changed to @StudiousAtheist.
@StudiousAtheist	Having failed to get away with his idiotic attempt to pretend to be an Atheist with some secret knowledge he was never quite able to explain that he isn't really Manuel de Dios Agosto but me and another Twitter user are ... look! This is Manuel's world we are in, where nothing makes any sense except to Manny and the walls of his bedroom in his mother's apartment just round the corner from the zoo, so bear with me, okay?... Manny has now had the brilliant idea of creating an identical account with a different name. He has already started abusing all his usual obsessive target of course. No one will ever guess so don't tell Manny we all know, okay! [Update] Manuel is now using this account to abuse a Catholic priest from Suffolk, UK by posting his contact details on Twitter and claiming he is demented and responsible for his embarrassingly bad blog on which he used to alternate between posting psychotic lies and begging for money, for no other reason apparently than his email address includes the name 'sacerdotus' (i.e. priest). And you thought Manuel couldn't find new depths to plumb!	Permanently suspended.
@CatholicGadfly	The account Manuel has renamed @SCDTVS to, having been exposed as Manny within minutes of creating it and recommencing his habitual abuse. Presumably, he imagines this will preclude his account being suspended. With this account he's now posing as a Jeff T. Follon MA, who, as a quick Google search will show, appears to have sprung fully formed into existence, complete with a Mannyesque 'degree', last July. I expect everyone will fall for that, eh Manuel? Has now inserted an underscore in the username to try to hide his abuse following a warning from Twitter about his abusive behaviour. (@Catholic_Gadfly). He appears not to realise this doesn't work despite having been shown you can't hide your history when he tried it by changing @SCDTVS to @CatholicGadfly.	Permanently suspended.
@SacerdotusRadio	Used by Manuel to post links to his podcasts where he tells lies, usually to himself, presumably hoping to convince himself that they are right. Usual infantile blather only spoken instead of typed out. Cunningly disguised again presumably in the hope it'll fool Twitter long enough for him to fool a simpleton or two that he's not really the expelled seminarian, Manuel de Dios Agosto, or Mad Manny from Bronx.	Permanently suspended.
@RosaRubicondlor	Don't worry Manuel. Your followers are far too stupid to notice you've cleverly substituted an 'l' for an 'i' like you did with your @RosaRublcondior account with which you used to tweet sexually explicit obscenities pretending to be me. Do you think they'll fall for your latest insane attempt to prove you're not the expelled seminarian by posting links to one of your accounts which you made in a poor copy of my blog and in which you are posting your normal lies? The give away is the insane gibberish you post in it. It has your emotionally retarded signature.	Permanently suspended.
@RationalFaith1	Manny has resurrected this old name for a new account specially to promote a new blog where he can debate with himself in different guises. He's understandably sensitive to being mocked for repeatedly challenging people to debate him then crying foul when they call his bluff, so in his new blog he can hold pretend debates with himself to 'prove' he isn't really afraid. Watch him feed himself idiotic points to knock back and convince himself with the brilliance of his arguments. I guess he's flunked his basic philosophy course at Leahman Community College already - I do hope he wasn't expelled again because of his old problem - and now has a lot of spare time on his hands once more.	Permanently suspended.
@Catholicgadfly	Created when Manny inserted an underscore in his @Catholic_Gadfly account to try to hide his continued abuse and harassment after being warned by Twitter and promising to desist in future. The only reason can have been to try to confuse Twitter Support.	Deleted or renamed.
@SacerdotusHgout	Used to advertise Manuel's little group on Google+ where he can post lies without getting suspended by Twitter. However, G+ also take a dim view of their services being use for targeted abuse and harassment and are quick to delete offending accounts. [Update 05 Nov 2014] Despite being told by Twitter support that this account had been permanently suspended along with the rest of Manny's then active accounts, it appears to have been reinstated. I assume this was following yet another promise by Manuel de Dios Agosto that he would try to control his habitual abuse, he recommenced posting abusive tweets today. Twitter support notified, meanwhile, please let me know when his behaviour deteriorates to its previous level. On previous experience this normally takes about a month as Manuel realises people ignore him. [Update 26 Feb 2015] Now suspended again "because this user appears to have created multiple accounts for disruptive purposes, or with overlapping uses".	Permanently Suspended.
@CatholicGadfIy	In what can only be another attempt to confuse Twitter Support, Manny has again changed the username of this account. The underscore has now been removed and the penultimate character has been changed from lower case 'L' to upper case 'i'. Manny seems to believe this will confuse Twitter support who will think his @Catholic_Gadfly account has been deleted so he can continue his campaign of abuse and harassment despite his recent suspension and promise to behave. 16-Jan 2015 Inexplicably, in the last few days, Twitter have suspended then un-suspended this account, told me they can't find it, that it isn't posting abuse and that it has been suspended while it is still active and Manny is repeating the tweets Twitter originally said they warned him about. Watch this space. Maybe Twitter support will sort themselves out.	Permanently suspended.
@TheBishopOfRome	This account, the name of which shows Manny's delusion of grandeur, had been a suspect for a Manny-controlled account for some time but was only confirmed as such when Twitter took it down simultaneously with his @SacerdotusHgout account, having implied that there were others with: Thanks for letting us know about this issue. We’ve investigated and suspended the account you reported because this user appears to have created multiple accounts for disruptive purposes, or with overlapping uses, which is a violation of the Twitter Rules (https://twitter.com/rules). Please note that the suspended user may appeal the suspension, which could result in the restoration of one or more accounts. Clearly, this relates to more than one account being suspended at that time. And Manuel was so confident that he had found a work-around to his problem of creating all his accounts with the same Bronx ip address by creating them from Lehman College. Obviously, Twitter are getting better at this since their CEO expressed his embarrassment at their inability to control the sort of abuses that Manny get off on.	Permanently suspended

No doubt there are other accounts owned by Manuel de Dios Agosto. They will be added as and when they are identified.

This site details how to go about dealing with abusive behaviour on Twitter. Twitter Support should already have records of Manuel's previous form in this regard.

In addition to using these accounts Manuel has recently begun spamming blogs with impersonation comments using a simple method to fake a username and disguise it as a Twitter account. The technique can be read about here. The clue is to check the URL beneath the name. If it is a Twitter domain URL it can ONLY have been entered manually as described in the preceding link. There is no other reason to enter a name this way other than to mislead and impersonate.

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Are All Governments God's Governments?

Here's a lovely little passage from the Bible that, for some reason, you hardly ever hear Christians quoting these days. It's almost as though they don't agree with it, and yet it was written by the major founding father of their religion - St Paul, supposedly directly inspired by God.

Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God. [my emphasis] Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation. For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil.

Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake. For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing. Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Romans 13:1-7

During the recent US presidential election campaign, you'd have expected Christians to have gone on endlessly about how all governments are ordained by God and how we should all pay our taxes because governments only do good and fight evil.

Very strange.

But of course, this passage, if you believe it, means that all government, everywhere and for all time, not only Barack Obama's, are, according to St Paul, ordained by God and all are doing nothing but God's work and fighting evil.

All governments, mark you! Not just modern Christian ones, or the first century CE Roman one. And every soul is subject to their rule. No geographical, political, religious or time constraints. The passages is unambiguous and unequivocal. All powers are of God and ordained by Him, and every soul is subject to them.

That means the governments of Saddam Hussain in Iraq, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, Hozni Mubarak in Egypt, the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the Communist governments of Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Joseph Stalin and the governments of the Soviet client states of Eastern Europe, were all ordained by God and doing God's work.

It also means the Sandanista government in Nicaragua, the Allende government in Chile, the segregationist state governments in Alabama, Georgia and Arkansas of the 1950s and 1960s were, just as the latter three claimed, doing God's work, as is the Chávez government in Venezuela.

In fact, every government in history; the German Nazis, the Mongol hoards of Ghengis Khan; the Early Medieval Muslim conquerors of the Holy Lands, North Africa and Spain, all doing god's work, according to the Bible. And of course, if you believe the Bible, you'll believe the colonial government of George III of England was entirely legitimate and should never have been overthrown in the Americas, least of all over the issue of taxation.

According to St.Paul, every citizen of every nation enjoys God's protection against evil from His government, and every citizen of every country should pay taxes so their government can afford to carry out God's work, as God ordained.

Strange then that the fundamentalist Christian supporters of the tax evading Mitt Romney were urging the overthrow of God's ordained president and are in favour of intervention to destabilise and over-throw so many of God's foreign governments.

Unless they think the Bible is wrong, of course.

How Christians Lie To Us - Fact And Fiction

This is the second and last blog dealing with Christopher Hitchens' book "The Missionary Position: Mother Theresa in Theory and Practice". In the first ("How Christians Lie To Us - Birth Of A Myth") I used Hitch's description of how Malcolm Muggeridge invented the Mother Teresa of Calcutta myth almost out of thin air to illustrate how (mythical) sanctity and 'miracles' can be created almost at will for a credulous audience eager for such things.

In this one, I'll use the testimonies of those who witnessed Mother Teresa and her 'Missionaries of Charity' at work to contrast the reality with the myth of tender, loving care for the needs of the sick and dying which the Catholic Church and much of the uncritical media have assiduously manufactured.

More Good Christian Love

Pope Clement V, the first Avignon Pope

In a previous blog on the brutal suppression of the Cathars of southern France I showed an example of the huge gap between what the Christian Church tells us to do and what it does itself. One might expect a Church which teaches love, compassion, ascetic poverty, giving to the poor and the sanctity of life, and which claims to be based on sound philosophical reasoning and the teachings of 'perfect' Jesus, to show these qualities itself when discussing differences of opinion amongst its followers.

But not a bit of it. Throughout history, the normal response has been a resort to armed power, to brutal suppression, grotesque methods of mass destruction and rigidly enforced dogma from a position of obscene wealth and splendour. Maintenance of this wealth and power seems to have been the primary motive for the Church, rather than spreading the 'Love of Jesus' and the elevation of all of humanity above the level of the humble peasant and toiler for the landed gentry which was the lot for the vast majority of medieval Europeans whose poverty and labour were the source of the Church's and the small powerful ruling elite's wealth.

The Christian religion was clearly the means to an end rather than an end in itself and it could be moulded and bent into whatever shape suited the rich and powerful at the time.

Feel That Christian Love!

A faith which is afraid of contradiction is not a faith - it is a fear.

You would think anyone secure in their beliefs would be content to explain their reasons and have done with it, confident that their beliefs are based on sound reasoning which can stand the test of doubt and counter argument. Even in the absence of good evidence you would think they could explain the inescapable logic behind their beliefs and the faults with all the other logic.

Surely, Christianity, with it's worship of 'gentle Jesus, meek and mild' who tells us to forgive our enemies and turn the other cheek, and of a god of peace and goodwill to all, is going to use non-violence against its doubters, especially those who simply disagree over some detail or other of the nature of their god and how exactly it should be worshipped? Surely, in the spirit of brotherly love, a good Christian secure in his own beliefs would simply explain to the doubter where and why he had gone wrong and trust the doubter to see the good sense of his argument.

Well, if you believe what they tell us, that might be what you expect, but is that expectation born out by the facts?

Not a bit of it.

The facts show that's not how religion, and particularly Christianity works. What we see is not a confident presentation of the arguments, but an assertiveness and ready resort to violence which betrays a lack of any such confidence and which betrays an underlying fear of counter-argument.

This time next week we'll be well on our way to the South of France, to the Languedoc-Rousillon region where, in the middle ages, one of Christianity's many little wars of persecution and violent suppression of dissent and disagreement took place - the crusade against the Cathars, also known as the Albigensians after the town of Albi, called the Cathar or Albigensian Crusade of 1209-1229.

The Cathars regarded themselves as Christians. Catharism had spread into Northern Italy and Southern France, especially the Languedoc region into the Pyrenees. It's origins are slightly obscure but seems to have included elements of the Paulician movement from Armenia, Bogomil gnosticism from Bulgaria, Egyptian Arianism and Persian Manichaeism.

In those days, the more powerful centres of Christianity, despite a frenzy of persecution and document burning which followed the recognition by Constantine of Christianity as the official state religion, had not managed to suppress all the various sects which the early Christians had spawned in the first few centuries after Paul of Tarsus and others had exported their different versions of the myths to various parts of the Eastern Roman Empire. In addition, many of these were co-existing with Islam and rubbing shoulders with other ideas like Buddhism coming along the developing trade routes across Central Asia, so there were a large number of bizarre creeds all coming under the broad umbrella of Christianity on the basis that they were centred on a belief in the Biblical Jesus and on various translations and interpretations of early versions of documents and 'gospels', some of which found themselves sanitized and bound up into the official Bible.

Basically, Cathars believed there are two gods, a bad one (Satan) who created the material world, and a good one (Jehovah), and that Jesus was a messenger from Jehovah whose teachings should be followed to avoid Satan's evil. They believed that at best, Jesus was only God's son and not God, so they denied the Trinity as taught by both the Roman and Orthodox Churches. They also rejected oaths, including marriage and taught that sex was sinful and anything which was the result of sexual reproduction was also satanic, so they were vegetarian. Obviously no one had told them how plants reproduce but at least they knew it didn't involve dangley bits and pleasure.

The presence of the Cathars was encouraging regional independence in southern France which meant the Catholic French King was losing his grip on his southern barons, but of course their worst 'sin' was in rejecting the authority of Pope Eugene III and even refusing to pay tithes! To make matters worse, in theological debate, the Cathars were winning more often than not, seeming to appeal particularly to the theologically literate, so the Catholic church was losing its local intelligentsia, and being humiliated. Whole congregations were reputedly converting en masse along with their clerics (who probably knew which way the wind seemed to be blowing). This clearly could not be tolerated, so, after feeble attempst to convert them by sending a Cistercian monk, a cardinal and a bishop to preach to them, all to no lasting effect, the Papacy resorted to the time-honour fall-back theological arguments - violence and murder.

When Pope Innocent III came to power he asked King Phillip Augustus of France to launch a military campaign against the Cathars. Phillip Augustus sent Simon de Montfort and Bouchard de Marly, two of his more ambitious barons. To encourage their religious zeal, Pope Innocent III ordered that all Cathar land could be seized. There followed twenty years of 'persuasive' murder and persecution. In one siege, Simon de Montford ordered that 100 captured Cathars should have their eyes gouged out and their lips and noses cut off, then be sent back to the town of Béziers, led by a captive with one eye remaining.

Béziers was also defended by a large number of Catholics who had opted to stay to protect their homes and property when offered free passage at the start of the siege. As the siege came to an end, Arnaud, the Cistercian abbot-commander who had ordered that all the Cathars were to be killed, was asked how to tell the Cathars from Catholics. His answer was a tribute to his humanity and Christian love for his fellow man. "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise his own". When the doors of the church of St Mary Magdalen were broken down, the 7,000 people who had taken refuge in it were dragged out and killed. In all, up to 20,000 people from the town were killed by being used for target practice and by being dragged behind horses for sport, interspersed no doubt, with bouts of brotherly love, goodwill and reasoned discourse on matters theological. Or perhaps not.

On 16 March 1244, 200 Cathars were ritually massacred by being burned alive on a large fire outside the Cathar-held castle of Montségur.

So, it's good to see that Christians, confident in their faith and in their reasons for holding to it, are able to persuade their fellow man to see the good sense of their theological arguments and are able to practice the teaching of Jesus to forgive their enemies and not live by the sword, the way they tell the rest of us we should live.

Or it would be, if only examples of them doing so were virtually non-existent and if only there were not so many examples of them doing exactly the opposite.

Further reading:

Cathars and Cathar Beliefs in the Languedoc
The Cathars: What was the Albigensian Crusade?
Cathars & Albigenses: What Was Catharism? What did Cathars Believe?

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Reassuring Christians

It must be reassuring to Christians to read their Bible and discover that Jesus was a hypocrite too.

Hiding Behind Piety

You know, the more involvement I have with social networking sites like Twitter and Redditt, and earlier so-called user groups or fora, the more convinced I become that religions, especially the three Abrahamic religions - Judaism, Islam and Christianity - are used by a large majority of their followers as an excuse for otherwise unacceptable behaviour and attitudes. Rather than being the cause of so much hatred, they appear to be merely conduits for it.

I have already written several blogs looking at the way professional apologists like William Lane Craig pander to the desire in his followers (almost without exception from the extreme right of the political spectrum) for theological backing for things like genocide and infanticide, which any person with a normal, functional social conscience would accept as immoral.

Odious though they are, they are not the subject of this blog. What I'm referring to here are the people, usually, but by no means exclusively, from the more fundamental wings of religions. Those who proudly display their piety in their tweets and messages whilst simultaneously displaying behaviour, beliefs and attitudes that are about as far removed from normally accepted standards of civilised behaviour as it is possible to get.

It would not really be fair to single out any of these individuals for special attention but just hanging around the #TeamJesus or #JesusTweeters hashtags in Twitter or Reddit/atheism will quickly show  how almost all the messages there contain an element of condescension clear designed to place the poster in a position of superiority, a passive-aggressive threat intended to anger or intimidate, overtly disingenuous feigned compassion, obnoxious third-party references, or, very frequently, outright abuse, obscenity or threats of actual bodily harm.

It is quite clear that these people are using their 'faith' as both a weapon and a shield; something to attack other people with and something to hide behind. "Don't blame me! It's in the Bible/Qur'an/Torah". Their gods and holy books are merely something to blame.

Question them about any of their beliefs or assertions and you quickly discover that they are vacuous. Almost invariably they degenerate into evasions, lies and abuse rather than  substantiate their claims or, (Heaven forbid!) admit that they don't know or could be wrong. Most noticeable of all will be their almost complete absence of intellectual honesty. Any tactic will do rather than deal with the subject under discussion: evasions; feigned misunderstandings of a perfectly simple question; diversions; claims to have answered the question when they can be seen not to have done so, and repeated attempts to shift the burden of responsibility for their claims.  And virtually never a straight, honest answer to a direct question.

If you follow any of those regular contributors, you will see them asking the same questions over and over again, ignoring the fact that they have already had them answered, and using exactly the same tactics on someone else, clearly rehearsed and prepared.

I can accept that a small minority of these people are suffering from a deep psychological need to believe, and many, if not all, of them are suffering from a phobia which means they feel compelled to try to placate their god by any means available and, when they don't have any evidence, and know truth, honesty and integrity would fail them, they have no other option than to try sophism and deceptions.

And it is often quickly clear that many of them are doing it for money or power, or as some sort of self-affirmation.

It's equally clear that for very many, their 'faith' is a mere pretence. They no more believe that a god is watching them and knows their every thought, at least not a god who values truth, honesty and personal integrity, than I do. Maybe they believe in a dishonest god who, like them, knows there is no logical or evidential support for it's existence, or maybe they just believe in a stupid god who doesn't notice.

But the most likely explanation is that they no more believe in their god than an atheist does. The most parsimonious answer is that they are merely using a pretence of belief as an excuse.

We read of statistics like 86% of Americans say they are religious. I wonder what this would fall to if we deducted those who are merely feigning religiosity, amongst whom should be included all the charlatans, creation 'scientists', preachers who do not practice what they preach; the publicly homophobic, privately gay clerics; the 'family values' preachers who have mistresses and consort with prostitutes, the paedophile priests and those who help cover up their crimes, and so on.

Yes. I'm aware I could be slipping into the No True Scotsmen fallacy but surely a 'believer' who is merely a believer in name only, and who shows by his/her behaviour not to be anything of the sort, is not a believer.

So, when we read these statistics for nations which are simultaneously the most violent; the most chauvinistic, the most criminal, are we really reading a statistic for hypocrisy and a measure of the number of people who have learned what a convenient thing is a pretence of piety?

I'm convinced that, for many people, their god and their holy book are not sources of inspiration or manuals of morality; they are something to blame.

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Ten Commandments - Tory Version

1. Thou shalt have no other god but money.

2. Thou shalt not make any graven image save what thou canst sell for profit and dividend for thine bankers and money-lenders.

3. Thou shalt serve the money-lenders and bankers for we are a greedy class and shall visit iniquity unto thee and thine children even unto the fourth generation if thou bowest not down before us, but we shall smile upon those who slip a bung into party funds (see the LORD Ashcroft of Belize if thou requirest anonimity)

4. Forgeth thou the Sabbath day for we can make more then than on most normal shopping days, and if the shop workers liketh it not, they canst joineth the other scum in the jobless scrap heap even unto the rest of their days, for they wanteth a day of rest and it shall be given...

5. Thou shalt not kill, save when using the bombs and bullets made by those who doth bung a wad into our bank account, yea, even through the Belize Slush Facility.

6. Thou shalt not commit adultery unless thou hast already fixed up a 'kiss and tell' deal with the Sun of Murdoch, or hath taken out an Super Injunction from the Court on High, and especially whilst thou art still in the Cabinet and doth lecture the common masses on morality and values of the family, lest they laugh at thee and call thee hypocrite.

7. Thou shalt steal only what thou may steal legally, and thou shall support any Law which allowth thou so to do. Remember thou what thou wentest into politics for.

8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour unless thou knowest thou can get away with it. Prepareth thou the ground well before thou dost try and have something on thy neighbour in case he cuts up rough and dobs thou in it too.

9. Thou shalt covet thy neighbours house if he hast a bigger one than thou, and thou shalt borrow more money than thou canst afford to repay from the money-lenders so thou canst have a bigger one.

10. Thou shalt covet thy neighbours wife, especially if she be a trophy, and his servants and his goods and thou shalt feel a failure in life if thou hath less than another man, for thou art indeed beneath comtempt for a man is worth the value of his possessions.

11. Thou shalt hold in comtempt all who labour and toil and especially those who careth for others and toil for the common good, for care and compassion are for softies and only those who have it not work for those who have, for this is the will of thy god.

12. Er.... raneth over there a little.

The Special Needs God of Creationism

Science works by applying a set of agreed fundamental requirements, based on the principles of logic, mathematics, and established accepted scientific axioms, to all hypotheses. All competing hypotheses must meet these basic requirements and each will stand or fall according to how well or badly the presented supporting evidence, when view according to these principles, supports the hypothesis. No serious scientist would expect to get away with pleading that his favourite hypotheses should be exempt from, say, an accepted fundamental law and least of all from one which is fundamental to his hypothesis.

For example, imagine a scientist who is proposing a new hypothesis explaining flight and claiming it is a much better account of how an aircraft flies than any other. In fact, it is so brilliant that it utterly destroys the science of aerodynamics and will require the fundamental laws of physics to be re-written.

He has rightly pointed out that a fundamental requirement of any aerodynamic theory is that it must explain how an object in flight in air is apparently defying gravity and is able to move up and down in a controlled manner in a gravity field. However, it has been pointed out to him that, applying HIS hypothesis would not actually explain anything. If it were true, no object would actually be able to leave the ground, let alone move up or down in the air, in a controlled manner or not.

Imagine the reaction from his fellow scientists when he retorted that this was not a problem for his hypothesis because it was a special case and was exempt from any principle or principles which rendered it false. How long do you think this scientist’s credibility would last? About as long as it took his fellow scientists to stop laughing and persuade their incredulous colleagues that he had really made that claim - and was not even joking!

Now, consider the Creationist hypothesis concerning causality. They will argue that all things must have a cause (ignoring things like spontaneous decay of radioactive isotopes, which don’t, but let’s ignore that with them for the time being). The argument goes that, since everything must have a cause, there must have been a prime cause for all things and that the only possible prime cause must have been their favourite god. They also argue that this is an absolute universal law of logic from which nothing can escape and to which all scientific theories must be subject, with absolutely no exceptions.

We can also ignore the fact that, even if this was true, it would not establish that this prime causing is their favourite god, or anything even remotely like it. Assume for a moment that creationists have established somehow that the need for a prime cause IS an absolute and immutable fundamental law of the universe and that any such prime cause can only be their god.

“Ah!” You’ll no doubt now be saying, “What was the cause of the creationist god?” And you’d be entirely correct. Applying our universal immutable law to which all things must be subject, the creationist god must also have had a cause. The ‘prime cause’ is not prime at all.

Okay, so let’s hypothesise a cause before the prime cause (a sub-prime cause?). In fact, we now have to hypothesis an infinitely regressing continuum of pre-pre-pre- (ad infinitum) prime causes. In fact our prime cause hypothesis does not explain causality at all. The prime cause hypothesis has just collapsed under its own absurd logic. It has spectacularly falsified itself, something only possible for the more absurd hypotheses.

“No!” Creationists will retort. “My hypothesis is a special case and is exempt from its own fundamental law! Everything else is obliged to pass the test of my first cause hypothesis, but my god is exempt. It is a special case to which special laws apply. It is not fair to expect it to compete with science on an equal footing”.  And they are not even joking. Special pleading is a fundamental part of almost all theology!

The creationist’s god is like a special needs child which can’t be expected to compete on an equal footing with normal children. It needs affirmative action and special provisions to be able to lead the semblance of a normal existence. These sentiments would be quite understandable, even laudable from the point of view of parents who have such an unfortunate child, but why have creationists created a god with so many handicaps and challenges that it needs to be treated as a special needs child?

The answer of course, is that they had no choice. Their problem is that their god IS handicapped. These handicaps were inherited from its parents. It was created by people who find reality difficult to understand and so constantly strive to live in an alternate one: one with simplistic answers, carefully constructed so as to be amenable to people with little or no learning and who take comfort in ignorance.

So of course it too can’t cope with reality either.  Imaginary friends are only as good as the minds that imagine them.

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