Anyone who has spent much time 'debating' with fundamentalist Christian apologists in social media will be familiar with the Canadian apologist, Sye ten Bruggencate, a leading proponent of the infuriatingly intellectually dishonest and childish 'presuppositional' school of apologetics.
Well, maybe no longer (at least for a while, anyway).
Someone dobbed him in regarding his inappropriate relationship with a vulnerable women and he has announced his withdrawal from 'ministry'. In other words, he's giving up lying for Jesus and suckering people with false arguments, because he's been caught... er... lying.
The details of the woman and who exactly dobbed Buggencate in to the elders of his Faith Presbyterian Church in Tillsonburg, Ontario, are sketchy and still emerging but he announced his 'retirement' on his website with a terse:
It's often difficult to tell whether American evangelical Christian fundamentalists like Greg Locke are genuinely as nutty as they seem or whether they are simply tapping into the income stream from people who really are nutty enough to follow them and give them tax-exempt money.
The more charitable view would be that surely, they can't really be so deranged and psychotically paranoid as they seem at first sight to be and still be able to live without constant responsible adult supervision. So that leaves cynicism, greed and fraud as the reasons for their bizarre behaviour and assertions. But, whatever the cause, the basic principles of Christianity seem to have been abandoned somewhere along the line. There is no commitment to truth or personal integrity and greed, avarice and relentless self-aggrandizement seem to have taken control.
Unless they really are bordering on the certifiably insane, that is.
Pope Francis meets with Uruguay Ambassador Guzman Miguel Carriquiry Lecour on Saturday at the Vatican. Neither wore a face-mask nor observed sensible social distancing.
I know it's unkind but I can't help laughing at the news that Pope Francis is to be vaccinated against Covid-19!
In an interview with the Italian TV station Canale 5, Pope Francis said
I believe that ethically everyone should take the vaccine. It is an ethical choice because you are gambling with your health, with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others.
Next week, we will start doing it here, in the Vatican, and I have booked myself in. It must be done.
The day after the UK recorded its highest ever number of new Covid-19 cases at 53,135 and hospitals in the Southeast reported that they now have more Covid-19 patients than at the height of the first wave last Spring, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) finally announced the long-anticipated approval of the vaccine developed by Oxford University researchers in conjunction with the pharmaceutical firm, AstraZeneca. No magic, magic deities or spell-casting preachers were involved in this scientific breakthrough.
This mRNA vaccine has an advantage over the Pfizer vaccine, which is already being deployed to the most vulnerable people, in that it can be stored at ordinary refrigerator temperatures, so is easy to deploy to GP surgeries, health centres, chemists and places like community centres for mass-vaccination efforts, instead of being held as specially-equipped hubs, like the Pfizer vaccine.
The UK government already has 100 million doses on order at a cost of just £3 per dose. With each person needing two doses this is enough for 50 million adults. The rollout is to begin on Monday 4th January. Together with the 30 million Pfizer vaccines, that should be enough for the whole adult population of the UK. There are high hopes that this vaccination program will be substantially complete by April 2021! What's the betting that Donald Trump will then claim he meant April 2021 when he said last in March 2020 that it would all be over by April?
For those intelligent [sic] design creationists who believe the SARS-Cov-2 must have been deliberately designed by their favourite creator deity, for some mysterious divine purpose that involved the random killing of the pious and impious alike, this must come as a bitter disappointment because it looks increasingly as though human medical science has developed an antidote to the virus their putative designer had created to make as many people sick and die as possible, even giving it a little tweak recently to produce the VUI-202012/01 variant which is spreading rapidly in the UK and elsewhere and which threw Christmas plans into chaos, because it is estimated to be some 56% more infective!
In fact, on that point, I'm still waiting for an intelligent design proponent to explain why this new variant, which seems to coincide with the announcement of the approval of the Pfizer vaccine, should not be regarded as a coincidence and the result of a natural, evolutionary process to which they are bound by dogma to deny, but the wilful attempt by their malevolent designer to pre-empt the vaccine and make as many people as possible as sick as possible before the vaccine was fully deployed against it. It looks like I'll have a long wait as an embarrassed silence seems to be the only response so far.
The other great thing about this Oxford vaccine is that it seems to be just as effective against this new strain and even if this putative malevolent designer manages to redesign it so the antibodies no longer work against redesigned 'spike' proteins, it is a simple matter to replace the mRNA in the vaccine with the relevant segment of the new viral RNA, so restoring its effectiveness.
The vaccine works by using the shell of a harmless virus to transport the mRNA it into muscle cells at the injection site. This is then used by the cells' internal protein-manufacturing mechanism to make the SARS-CoV-2 'spike' proteins. These proteins are harmless on their own, serving only to get gain the virus access to the cells and deliver their own full RNA genome, but are recognised by the body as foreign proteins, so stimulating the production of antibodies.
These antibodies then attack and deactivate the 'spike' proteins on any SARS-CoV-2 viruses that manage to get into the body. Since these proteins are what the virus uses to get into the cells of, primarily, the lining the respiratory tract to replicate itself, deactivating them stops that part of the virus' life cycle and, importantly, stops the virus infecting and killing your body's cells and making you sick and producing lots more virus particles for you to pass on to someone else.
The results of the clinical trials for the Oxford vaccine had seemed to indicate, from a trial on a small sub-group in the UK in which participants were mistakenly given half the normal dose as a first injection, followed by a normal second dose, that this gave 90% protection against the 60% protection given by the normal full dose regime. However, that result has largely been discounted as due to a non-random age distribution in the sub-group meaning that the sub-group was inadvertently biased toward a younger age group, and, significantly, there was a longer gap between first and second dose. It is now thought that the greater efficacy was due to the latter, the implication being that there is now not the same urgency to give a second dose within the 21 days and something to be gained by delaying it, meaning more vaccine is available for a first injection early on in the program and a second dose can wait for up to 12 weeks.
This first dose should be sufficient to protect 70% of people for that length of time, quickly building up heard immunity in the adult population. The second dose given 12 weeks later, raises the effectiveness to about 80% - better than the current annual flu vaccines. None of the volunteers who participated in the trial and who received the test vaccine, not the placebo, became ill or needed to be hospitalised during the trial! There were no serious side-effects from the vaccine reported in the clinical trial.
residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
all those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
all those 75 years of age and over
all those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals [footnote 1]
all those 65 years of age and over
all individuals aged 16 years[footnote 2] to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality[footnote 3]
all those 60 years of age and over
all those 55 years of age and over
all those 50 years of age and over
There are no certainties in science, especially when confronted with a process like evolution which is generally far cleverer than humans, but it is looking set now for the defeat by science of the most serious pandemic to befall mankind since the 'Spanish Lady' flu of 1919 and possibly since the Black Death plagues of the Middle Ages. Hopefully, by this time next year, the Covid-19 pandemic will be just an unpleasant memory and the triumph of science will stand as an example of what can be achieved by science when the funding and international cooperation are there.
It will also stand as a reminder to the way religious fundamentalists sought to exploit the misfortune of others and, when their income was threatened, or they were being slightly inconvenience by the social distancing regulations and requirement to wear a face-covering to protect others, they put that above the mere lives and welfare of their followers and of the general public. Never again can these sanctimonious hypocrites claim to be pro-life!
And it still remains for an intelligent design proponents to explain why a natural process such as the evolution by natural selection that they dogmatically reject, is the only explanation for the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the devastation it caused, which doesn't leave their putative designer looking like a malevolent, misanthropic, pestilential, genocidal, sadistic monster who hates its creation and goes to extreme lengths to make us sick and die, apparently singling out the pious church-goers and their priests, of all denominations, for special attention by turning church assemblies into super-spreader events.
Pastor Rodney Howard-Brown of The River church, Tampa, Florida and Revival Ministries International. Lying for money and to keep his death-cult paying for his quackery while endangering their health and welfare.
As I remarked in my previous post, there is something weird about fundamentalist Christians who seem to want to help their malevolent designer's special creation, the SARS-CoV-2 virus, kill people or at least make them sick.
This one, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, of The River church in Tampa, Florida, and Florida-based Revival Ministries International, who, along with his good friend, Pastor Jonathan Shuttlesworth, has been doing his best to ensure as many people as possible get Covid-19, is now lying in a desperate attempt to fool people into not having the vaccine medical science has developed to combat it.
The Texas Repugnican Attorney General, Ken Paxton, a committed Talibangelical Christian fighting for a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in the USA, is in deep do-dos.
According to the AP report, he had an extra-marital affair with a women whom he later recommended for a job with a wealthy donor who is now at the centre of a criminal investigation against him.
Jorge Alfonso waits to get into the El Rey Jesus church in Miami, where
President Donald Trump held a rally for evangelical supporters on Jan.
3, 2020. The Trump campaign has been trying to woo Latino and Black
Evangelicals to expand his base of support among religious
conservatives.
Their craven whoring of basic principles for the sniff of political influence
that support for Donald Trump promised, is beginning to backfire on the
Evangelical Christian right.
The 'Evangelical' brand name has become toxic - and deservedly so. Now the 50
year-old Christian organization, "Evangelicals for Social Action' a moderate,
apolitical organisation that advocates for social justice, has changed its name
to "Christians for Social Action" in order to distance themselves from Donald
Trump and those 'Christians' who associate with him.
According to Reuters, 29 year-old Giancarlo Granda is claiming he had a sexual relationship with Jerry Falwell Jr. and his wife Becki. Jerry Jr., is the son of the late prominent, influential evangelical Christian, Jerry Falwell and was formerly president of Liberty University, an evangelical Bible college highly influential in conservative Christian circles. He is also a close ally of Donald Trump.
The scandal reveals the stinking hypocrisy festering at the heart of American evangelical Christianity in it's cosy alliance with the extreme Republican right in American politics, where any pretense of sexual morality or financial probity has been abandoned.
Former Cardinal, now plain Mr Theodore McCarrick, still, pending Cardinal Pell's
defrocking, the most senior Catholic cleric to be defrocked by the Vatican
because of his involvement in child sex abuse, is now facing court action in
Essex County, New Jersey, USA, accused of running a sex ring at his New Jersey
beach home.
He is being sued by one of his victims who alleges in the papers presented to
the court that he was abused by McCarrick and three other priests at his home in
Sea Girt, in the early 1980s. McCarrick has been accused of bringing adult
seminarians to his home and harassing them during overnight stays, as well as
abusing children. It was these allegations that led to McCarrick being stripped
of his title by the Pope.
The unnamed plaintiff alleges that he was abused by two other clerics, including
the former Essex Catholic High School principal, who introduced him to McCarrick
on the pretext that McCarrick would help him pay for his school tuition.
The lawsuit alleges that the abuse began when McCarrick was bishop of the
Metuchen Archdiocese. He later became Archbishop of Newark and later Archbishop
of Washington, when he became a Cardinal and essentially the senior Catholic
cleric in the USA. However, it emerged two years ago that allegations about
McCarrick's predatory sexual behaviour were known to the the Catholic Church
when Newark Archbishop Joseph Tobin admitted that allegations of sexual abuse
against him had been settled secretly many years before.
McCarrick is also facing two other lawsuits in New Jersey alleging that he
sexually abused boys. These lawsuits have been filed under a new law that took
effect last December, suspending the statute of limitations for two years. More
than 100 such lawsuits have been filed under this law against all five of the
state's diocese. Four of the five priests name in the Newark lawsuits have
previously faces allegations of child sexual abuse. They are Gerald Ruane,
Michael Walters and John Laferrera, all accused of abusing boys aged between 14
and 16 at McCarrick's beach home. Gerald Ruane has since died as has the fourth
accused, the former Principal of Essex Catholic High School, Brother Andrew
Thomas Hewitt. The fifth person named is Anthony Nardino, accused of abusing a
boy aged 11 years old and a parishioner at St. Francis Xavier in Newark in 1978.
Nardino has since left the priesthood.
The lawyer acting for the boys alleges that McCarrick began abusing the boy
shortly after they met in 1982. The boy was “taken on overnight and weekend
trips” to the beach house in Sea Girt.
“McCarrick assigned sleeping arrangements, choosing his victims from the boys,
seminarians and clerics present at the beach house,” the suit said. “Minor boys
were assigned to different rooms and paired with adult clerics.”
The lawsuit alleged that the Catholic Church knew of McCarrick's abuses for many
years and that Pope Benedict XVI placed restrictions on McCarrick. And this is
where the affair begins to close in on Pope Francis. The disgruntled and
embittered Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò has claimed that both Pope Francis and
his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, knew of the sexual abuses by McCarrick but
allowed him to continue in his role as the senior American Catholic Catholic
cleric. Viganò has alleged that Pope Benedict XVI, now in seclusion as
self-style Pope Emeritus in the Vatican, the first pope to resign in 600 years
and giving Catholicism the unique experience of having two Popes in the Vatican,
placed McCarrick under restraint and that that restraint was removed by Pope
Francis, even though he too knew of McCarrick's predatory sexual activities.
Pope Francis has remained silent on the Viganò allegations, probably to protect
Pope Benedict XVI, because Benedict is in the double bind position that if he
did not know anything about McCarrick's activities then he should have known and
if he did but did nothing he was culpable. However, if he did know and did do
something, then he is in the clear but Francis is dropped in the mire.
It may be remembered how right-wing conservative Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò
fell from favour when he effectively ambushed and embarrassed Pope Francis on a
visit to the USA by arranging a meeting with right-wing extremist
fundamentalist, Kim Davies, in which Francis appeared to give support to her
campaign of refusing to register same-sex marriages, despite their legality and
despite a court order instructing her to do so. It appeared that the Pope was
interfering in the legal process of the USA as a guest in the country, giving
him a less than triumphal end to an otherwise successful official visit. The
affair effectively ended Viganò's career and put paid to the hope he had to
become a cardinal and the Papal legate to the USA. As a former Vatican staffer,
Viganò's toadying and naked ambition had already made him several powerful
enemies.
It will be interesting to see whether any more information emerges in court, to
shed light on the truth or otherwise of Viganò's allegations. No doubt, the
Vatican will be taking a close interest in proceedings. One Pope or the other
could well end up with egg on his face as the Pope who did nothing while
McCarrick ran his cosy beach-side paedophile sex ring.
It probably comes as no surprise to most American Atheists that Atheists rank even lower than Muslims in the American Christian demonology. 43% of Americans would not vote for an Atheist for president against 40% for a Muslim, 30% for a homosexual, 18% for a mormon with Latinos, Jews, Catholics, Women and African Americans getting 7%, 6%, 5%, 5% and 4% respectively. Incidentally, that 43% figure is close to the percentage of American adults who believe Noah's Ark was a historical event and that humans were created by magic out of dust and ribs.
Institutionalised 'Secularphobia' is normal in the USA with people giving a lower priority to an Atheist or agnostics waiting for a kidney transplant then for believers and Atheists are much less successful in custody battles after a divorce that religious parents. In addition, despite the First Amendment which guarantees freedom from religion as well as freedom of religion, it is illegal for an Atheist to hold public office in seven states. Atheists are barred from membership of the Boy Scouts, the American Legion, and the Veterans of Foreign Wars and Humanist chaplains are barred from serving in the US military.
If you're 'a deeply religious man who regularly exercises his faith', possession of 19,000 images of child pornography on your laptop will only get you a small fine of €1,535 and a 1 year prison sentence, suspended for 2 years and 6 months, in Catholic Hungary.
So Hungary's former ambassador to Peru, Gábor Kaleta, found when he pleaded guilty to the charge of possessing child pornography last Wednesday.
To be a dedicated American Covidiot it's essential to forget one thing - that unimportant place called "The Rest of the World".
Dr Alveda King, niece of the late Martin Luther King, has decided that the Covid-19 pandemic is all because abortions are legal in New York. Her god has decided to kill millions of people worldwide in places like China, India, Europe, Africa and South America to teach New Yorker a lesson - not Chinese, Indians, Brits, Italians or Spanish, but New Yorkers!
In a stunning display of the nauseating hypocrisy that passes for sanctimonious piety in the Catholic Church, a bishop who stood by and did nothing while priests abused children, has hit out at a planned gay pride month, warning parents that:
[Gays] promote a culture and encourage activities that are contrary to Catholic faith and morals. They are especially harmful for children.
Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, bishop of Providence, Rhode Island, served for four years in the 1990s as auxiliary bishop of Pittsburgh, one of six Pennsylvania dioceses covered in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report that reveals a horror story of decades of child abuse by Catholic priests and routine cover-up by senior clerics.
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.
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.
Eagle Mountain International Church's Terri Copeland Pearsons may have cost her father's money-making enterprise a hefty tax bill, if the Freedom From Religion Foundation's complaint to the IRS is upheld.
After turning the church into a political mouthpiece for Donald Trump and the GOP, in violation of the Johnson Amendment which removes the tax exempt, charitable status from churches that are openly partisan in their politics, Terri and her co-preacher Paula White, a 'spiritual advisor' to Donald Trump, boasted that since Trump became president they didn't need to bother about that because the Johnson Amendment has been abolished.
The only problem is, the Johnson Amendment has not been abolished and is still the law of the land. Trump promised to abolish it so the conservative Christian churches could have their greatest wish fulfilled so they could have the political power denied them by the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. They would, of course, without exception, support extreme right GOP candidates who would naturally be in hock to them and effectively in the pockets of church leaders like Kenneth Copeland and his daughter Terri. To date, however, Trump has failed to keep that promise.
"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked him to forgive me." - Emo Philips
It seems that John Thomas Lindsey, 47, a pastor at True Love Church of Refuge, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA also understood that basic Christian principle and the great benefit to be had from having a faith that means a few magic words can conveniently re-set your sin counter to zero without needing to make reparation to those you have wronged. He has been arrested and charged with nine counts of armed robbery!
After enquiries from a local tv station, Chanel 9, the True Love Church of Refuge issued the following statement:
We, the leadership and membership of True Love Church of Refuge, are deeply saddened and disappointed that our leader and brother, John Thomas Lindsey, is facing charges associated with criminal activity. Though we denounce any involvement he may have had, we love him and will continue to pray for him. The ministry will continue to stand strong despite the latest allegations and will continue to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom.
One of the most outstanding features of the American presidential election was the complete abandonment of any pretense of morality by the evangelical white conservative Christians in their eagerness to promote a white supremacist, misogynist, serial adulterer, self-confessed serial molester of women and public mocker of disabled people, to the top job. Almost as noticeable was the eerie silence from the black evangelicals and Catholics, even the hispanic Catholic leaders.
Still trying to understand why American fundamentalist Christians regard Donald Trump as such a great role model and eminently suited to being President of the USA, I looked further into how Christian fundamentalists see a man's marital infidelities. So I turned again to the Biblical Gender Roles blog for an explanation.
Maybe fundamentalist Christians won't be surprised by the hypocritical double standards and cherry-picking approach to the Bible that I found there, but I suspect normal people might at least raise an eyebrow. After all, don't fundamentalists normally make a big thing of the Ten Commandments, including the instruction to not covet a neighbour's wife? Well, that was a mistake, apparently, or maybe it just applies to other people.
Now, I don't believe in all that karma nonsense and I know it's unkind to laugh at a fellow human being's misfortune, but there is a certain delicious poetry about this story.
Pastor Tony Perkins is well known for trying to make gays and women who have had abortions feel uncomfortable with his hate speeches using his religion as an excuse. In 2015 he agreed with extreme Messianic Jewish pastor Jonathan Cahn who told him that Hurricane Joaquin, which devastated Hawaii last year, was a "sign of God's wrath". He is President of the controversial Christian group 'Family Research Council'. Never one to be deterred by mere facts when in need of a good smear, he also preaches that paedophiles are homosexuals (or is it that homesexuals are paedophiles?)
