Religious Stupidity News - Blundering Priest Now Trying to Save People From the Hellfire His Blunder Destined Them For

Pope Benedict XVI performing the ritual of baptism - but the words must be exact or God doesn't know it has been performed.

Priest’s new assignment: Helping those he invalidly baptized

The ludicrous tale of the Catholic priest who inadvertently condemned thousands of residents of St. Gregory Parish, Phoenix, Arizona USA, to hellfire by using a wrong word in the magic spell called baptism, took a new turn recently.

Having resigned as the parish priest, he took up a new role of baptising those he cursed, this time with the right words in the magic spell. The ritual of baptism inducts children into the Catholic Church, and so the 'one true faith', without their consent or participation. This then gives them special protection by God who casts everyone without the 'one true faith' into Hell, there to suffer an eternity of agony in hellfire.

The problem was that by using the wrong words, God was unaware that he, in the form of Jesus, for whom the priest was speaking, had baptised the children into the one true faith, so he doesn't know which ones to save and which ones to cast into the fiery pit for having the wrong faith. What Fr. Andrés Arango, should have said was "I baptise you...", instead, he said "We baptise you..." and obviously, "I" means "Jesus" in that context, and "We" doesn't, because, being specially anointed, a Catholic priest (but now any other priest, mind you!) speaks for Jesus, so God wouldn't know what was going on as he, being omniscient, doesn't understand a spell if even one word is wrong.

Oops! The Wrong Magic Spell has Doomed Thousands of Catholics to Hellfire, Apparently.

Casting a spell in the rite of baptism to ensure God knows you have the one true faith.
But the spell must be precise or it won't work!

A Catholic priest in Arizona resigned after discovering he'd incorrectly performed thousands of baptisms for over 20 years

The thing about protective magic spells is that they must be said exactly, without the slightest deviation or alteration, or they don't work, and when they are directed at an omniscient god, he/she doesn't understand them if even one word is wrong, so they don't work!

At least, this appears to be the official position of the Catholic Church, because Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, of Phoenix, Arizona, USA has informed thousands of people who assumed they had the protective spell of baptism cast on them by a parish priest, have no such protection because the said priest got one word of the spell wrong when performing the ritual, which also includes magic hand movements and magic water. In a letter to his distraught flock, Bishop Olmstead said:

Religious Abuse News - It's Not Even Just Christians Who Abuse Minors.

Campers throw coloured chalk into the air during an event at URJ Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. A recent report was released discussing reports of sexual misconduct over the last 50 years around the nation.

Source: Religion News Service

Reform movement publishes extensive report on sexual misconduct in its youth programs

Another investigation into the sexual abuse of minors and vulnerable adults by a religious organization, and another sorry tale of facilitation and coverup.

This time it’s not the usual Christian organization such as the Catholic, Anglican or Baptist Churches in which such abuses are now almost accepted as routine, scarcely raising an eyebrow, but this time it is a Jewish organization - The Union for Reform Judaism. The investigation was conducted by the New York law firm Debevoise & Plimpton and is published in full^[PDF] on the organization's website. The report comes with a warning that some portions of the report are sensitive and graphic and is not intended for children.

Christian Bigotry News - A New 'Journal' to Try to Make Religion Look Less Hateful

New journal will spotlight queer and trans religious studies scholarship | News

In an effort to alter the general perception that religions, especially Christianity and Islam, are fundamentally hostile to anyone who doesn't fit their strict definitions of sexuality and conform to their strict rules on permitted sexual relationships, a couple of Christian theology professors have founded a new 'Journal' which will concentrate on publishing articles and papers exploring 'the full range of rich and complex connections between religion, gender, and sexuality'.

The journal, to be called QTR: A Journal of Queer and Transgender Studies in Religion, has been founded by Melissa M. Wilcox, a religious studies professor from University of California, Riverside (UCR) and Joseph Marchal, a religious studies professor at Ball State University in Indiana.

According to the UCR news release:

It's a Miracle! Not a Single Red Face as Lourdes Reopens After Closing for the Coronavirus Pandemic!

[left caption]

[Right caption/credit]

The shrine to Bernadette Soubirous, Lourdes, France

Lourdes resurrected: grotto reopens to pilgrims after two year Covid closure

Without the slightest sign of irony, the Catholic Church in France has re-opened the Lourdes faith-healing scam in the Hautes-Pyrénées region, which had been closed because of the Coronavirus pandemic. Lourdes, it may be remembered, sells quack cures for all manner of afflictions and illnesses, but is powerless to prevent people catching COVID-19, apparently.

The grotto was officially reopened on February 11, on the anniversary of the date in 1858 on which a young peasant girl, Bernadette Soubirous, or Sobirós, in the local language, Occitan, then spoken in the Languedoc region of France, whom many townspeople, including her own father, thought was mentally disturbed, claimed to have seen a vison of the Virgin Mary.

How Science Works (And Why Religion Doesn't)

The Andromeda Galaxy (Messier 31). The small Messier 32 galaxy is seen above and slightly to the left (directly south) of the centre of M31, and Messier 110 is below and to the left. Above and to the left of M32 is the star HD 3914. This is an RGB image + some h alpha data. Captured in the Israeli desert (the Negev). Equipment: Celestron Cpc1100 Millburn wedge Starizona hyperstar Zwo asi294mc for imaging + asi178mc for guiding Finderscope for guiding Acquisition: 60 subs of 32 seconds for RGB 20 subs of 64 seconds for hydrogen alpha (This is an f/2 config) Captured with sharpcap and guided with phd2 Processing: Stacked in pixinsight Processed and enhanced in photoshop including noise reduction, sharpening etc.

By ;David (Deddy) Dayag - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Too many disk galaxies than theory allows — University of Bonn

Science's greatest strength, and the thing that seems to baffle Creationists most, is the way it constantly reassesses and revises its theories and never holds any opinion as sacred and unchallengeable. Religions, by contrast, have fundamental tenets, almost literally cast in tablets of stone, which, if they are ever seriously questioned, leads to internal conflict, schisms and often open violent hostilities. To question the fundamental beliefs of a religion is tantamount to leaving that religion.

Here, for example, we have scientists examining a fundamental theory in cosmology and concluding, quite amicably and dispassionately, that the generally accepted Standard Model of Cosmology is fundamentally flawed. What will happen now is that others will try to replicate these findings, a debate will ensue and, if necessary former ideas that were held to be true will be abandoned and revised, and, in all probability if they are proved to be correct, the scientists who made the discovery will be rewarded with prizes and plaudits and top jobs in prestigious institutes.

I don't pretend to be an expert in this subject, but what the cosmologists from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany, St Andrews University, Scotland, UK and Charles University in the Czech Republic believe they have shown is that there is a significant discrepancy between the number of disk galaxies that can be observed and what the 'Standard Model' predicts, therefore the Standard Model is wrong and needs revising. And they are proposing a new one which would require a far-reaching revision of other areas of physics. And all because the accepted Standard Model of Cosmology does not appear to model the reality it was designed to explain.

The Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn news release accompnying the team's open access publication in The Astrophysical Journal, explains:

The Old Dead Gods of Wiltshire are Still Hiding Their Secrets

Stonehenge at dawn

Photograph: Chris Gorman/Getty Images

How science is uncovering the secrets of Stonehenge | Heritage | The Guardian

Rosa's Laws of Theodynamics.

First Law of Theodynamics

Gods can be created out of nothing and will disappear without trace.
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Third Law of Theodynamics

Gods disappear completely when the number of believers in them reaches zero.
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The vast complex of Late Bronze/Early Iron Age monuments, burial chambers and earthworks on Salisbury Plain, in central southern England about which I've written before, continue to remind us how, when a religion and its god(s) disappear into the mists of time and no-one remembers them, unlike a science could be, they cannot be reconstructed from real-world sources, because they were never founded on real-world sources in the first place. They arose entirely in the imaginations of people who lacked the scientific method to discover the truth about the world about them.

But to their believers, as we can see by the evidence of the resources they devoted to them, they would have been no less important and no less 'proven' than are the modern gods of present days religions. The evidence for them would have been 'all around them'. It would have been in the 'design' of trees, sunsets and flowers and in the way they always answered prayers like ensuring the sun rose in the morning and the crops continued to grow in the fields, and when they failed this was proof of the failure of their followers to pray hard enough or to believe with enough faith or not having performed the required ritual correctly, or because the god(s) said no, for reasons which could only be guessed at.

Child Abuse News - The Evangelicals are Copying the Catholics

Former Youth Pastor, William Stefan Wahl, The River church, Kimball, Michigan, USA
Charged with six sex crimes against minors

UPDATE: Former The River church youth minister charged with six sex crimes Friday | Port Huron Times Herald

The Pro-Trump QAnon Inc, in alliance with fundamentalist evangelical Christians and their political wing, the Republican Party, has concocted a lurid conspiracy theory with absolutely no evidence, alleging a massive, world-wide satanic paedophile and child sex-trafficking ring involving prominent Democrats, and just about anyone who contradicts their increasingly lurid and ludicrous claims.

However, if you want to find real paedophile rings, you hardly ever need to look any further than a nearby evangelical church, like The River church in Kimball Township, St Clair County, Michigan, USA.

According to this report in Port Huron Times Herald by Laura Fitzgerald

William Stefan Wahl, 28, of Port Huron man [sic], was arraigned Friday on two counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct [with a] victim younger than 13, two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct [with] victim between 13 and 16, distributing obscene matter to children, aggravated indecent exposure and using computers to commit a crime.

His bond was set at $25,000 cash/surety.

Wahl is accused of sexually abusing four juvenile victims that he fostered a relationship with through The River, St. Clair County Sheriff Mat King said. King identified Wahl as a former youth minister at the church.

Catholic Child Abuse - How Cardinal Ratzinger Protected Paedophile Priests

Pope Benedict, formerly, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Archbishop of Munich

Pope Benedict XVI knew of abusive priests when he ran the Munich archdiocese, investigators say - CNN

Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, the predecessor of Pope Francis and the first pope for centuries to resign, knew of the abuse of children by Catholic priests in his diocese when he was archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982.

This is the devastating finding of an enquiry, commissioned by the Catholic Church, into historic sexual abuse at the Munich Archdiocese over several decades. In effect, this finding accuses Pope Benedict XVI of lying when he denied any knowledge of the abuses.

He was informed about the facts. We believe that he can be accused of misconduct in four cases; two of these cases concern abuses committed during his tenure and sanctioned by the state. In both cases, the perpetrators remained active in pastoral care.

During his [Benedict's] time in office there were abuse cases happening. In those cases, those priests continued their work without sanctions. The church did not do anything. He claims that he didn't know about certain facts, although we believe that this is not so, according to what we know.

Martin Pusch, Lawyer.
Westpfahl Spilker Wastl law firm.

Lawyer, Ulrich Wastl, produced a copy of the minutes of a meeting of Church leaders in Munich on January 15, 1980, when a decision was taken to appoint a known abuser (referred to in the report as "Priest X"). Pope Benedict denied being present when this decision was made, but this is contradicted by the minutes of the meeting. Benedict's incredible response to this evidence of his lies was that the document is only proof that something was written down, not evidence that he read it. However, the charge is not that he read the minutes but that he was present when the decision was made to appoint a known paedophile priest in the diocese of which he was head.

The building of lies to protect Pope Benedict has just collapsed with a crash. Benedict was complicit in the abuse of numerous victims after 1980, victims of Priest X

Matthias Katsch, Abuse survivor.
Leader of "Eckiger Tisch" which seeks justice for abuse victims.

In 2019, the then former Pope, Benedict XVI wrote an essay in which he sought the shift the blame for the paedophile priest scandals which have rocked the Catholic Church, away from the priests and the Church and onto society at large and liberals in particular by claiming it was the result of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and the liberalization of the Church's moral teaching. He also blamed homosexuals whom he claimed had established cliques in seminaries which significantly changed the climate in the seminaries. In other words, it wasn't the fault of senior clerics such as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who turned a blind eye to the abuses and allowed abusers to continue their abuses under the protection of the Church, but the fault of those high in the Catholic Church's demonology, 'liberals and homosexuals'.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, he was effectively Pope John Paul II's deputy and enforcer and was widely believed to be behind efforts to suppress reports of clerical abuse of minors in an effort to protect the reputation of the church and minimise compensation paid to its victims.

According to this article:

Homophobic Archbishop Demoted as Vatican Civil War Hots Up

Archbishop Giacomo Morandi,
former Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Source: Catholic Herald

Pope demotes Vatican official who championed statement against blessings of same-sex couples - Catholic Herald.

In a move which has focussed attention on the struggle within the Catholic Church as it tries desperately to modernise and come more into line with recent developments in cultural morality, the Pope has demoted the former Secretary for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, an old-school homophobe, widely believed to be the author of a document instructing Catholic churches not to bless same sex marriages on the grounds that "God cannot bless sin", despite Pope Francis' attempt to liberalise the Church and welcome same sex couples into it, if not to specifically conduct same sex marriages, to try to give the traditionally homophobic church a more LGBTQ-friendly face.

The Church's intolerant homophobia is often cited as a reason for leaving the church as the Catholic Church, in common with other Christian churches, continues to haemorrhage members throughout the developed world. The call to allow the blessing of same-sex marriages had come from several German bishops in response to their declining congregations.

In the document, Morandi had claimed the Pope had been informed of its contents and had given his consent to it, yet Francis was reportedly taken by surprise by it. Francis is either finding it difficult to keep up or trying to ride two horses, or Morandi was lying. Morandi is also believed to have opposed another reform initiated by Pope Francis, intended to restrict further the celebration of the Traditional Latin Mass.

Archbishop Morandi has been appointed bishop of a small Italian diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, although he will be allowed to retain his Archbishop title "ad personam", so not so much a punishment as a reduction in his work-load.

However, the Vatican has moved to deny that the effective demotion has anything to do with the reactionary document, so trying to minimise the impression of an internal civil war in the Vatican between the old guard and the reformers led by Pope Francis, by portraying it as nothing more significant than a simple reorganization. According to this report in the Catholic Herald:

Some of this was fuelled by a meeting between Archbishop Morandi and Pope Francis on December 18, the day when further restrictions against the Latin Mass were announced in a highly-controversial responsa to a dubia about Traditionis custodes, the Holy Father’s motu proprio limiting the Extraordinary Form of the Mass.

But Vatican sources told The Pillar website that his departure is not directly connected to the responsa, which introduced further restrictions – prompting questions about its legality – and that such speculation was “nonsensical”.

They say his move is most likely simply the first steps of a reshuffle which will allow the Pope to ultimately appoint Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta to the CDF and prepare him to take over as head of the dicastery when Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, the prefect who turns 78 in April, steps down from office.

One source said Morandi’s appointment was a way of “making room” at the CDF for the promotion of Archbishop Scicluna, an experienced canon lawyer and ally of the Pope, who at present serves as adjunct-secretary of the department.

It is generally agreed however that Archbishop Morandi was instrumental in the publication of the responsum ad dubium to a question about the legitimacy of liturgical blessings for same-sex couples.

However, although allowed to retain his title, being appointed to head up a minor diocese in southern Italy from his position as a senior member of the Curia and someone who would normally be expected to be appointed as a cardinal and promoted to head of the CDF, can't honestly be presented as anything other than a ritual humiliation and a warning to other die-hards not to oppose Pope Francis.

Covidiot News - Another Cleric Catches Covid After Attending a Super-Spreader Event

Patriarch Porfirije, Head of the Serbian Orthodox Church

AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic

Head of Serbian Orthodox Church tests positive for virus

The Head of the Serbian Orthodox Church, 60-year-old Patriarch Porfirije, has tested positive for COVID-19 after attending a super-spreader event last Sunday in Republika Srpska, the Serb-run part of neighbouring Bosnia, established as an autonomous republic at the end of the war following the collapse of Yugoslavia, in which Serbian Orthodox Christian forces, with the support and encouragement of the Orthodox Church, indulged in ethnic cleansing and genocide against Bosniak Moslems. Last Sunday (January 7) was the Serbian Orthodox Christmas.

Patriarch Porfirije's immediate predecessor, Patriarch Irinej, died of COVID-19 but the Serbian Orthodox Church has continued to hold masses in which few participants wear masks, despite the rapidly-spreading omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2.

Weekly Covid-19 cases (top) and deaths (bottom), Serbia

Source: Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center

Last week there were 47,749 new cases and 152 deaths in a population of 7 million. Since the pandemic started, there have been 1.3 million cases in Serbia, of which nearly 13,000 have died.

According to Reuters, a number of Serbian Orthodox clergy have contracted the coronavirus since early 2020, including Irinej and Metropolitan Amfilohije, the church’s patriarch in neighbouring Montenegro who died from the respiratory disease last October. Despite the pandemic, the Orthodox Church - with some 12 million faithful mainly in Serbia, Bosnia and Montenegro, has continued religious services and most of its clerics including Porfirije have appeared in public without face masks.

In common with other Christian churches and other religions, the Orthodox Church has been a major factor in spreading the coronavirus by continuing to hold mass gatherings in which social distancing and wearing face masks is generally ignored or even discouraged. Consequently, despite early pronouncements that the pandemic was a punishment from God, selectively directed at unbelievers, Clerics of all religions, and worshippers at their services have been some of the people most at risk from dying of the virus, yet they have continued to demand special exemptions from any measures to mitigate the pandemic, believers apparently believing their piety gives them special protection.

The reality is that the most pious are also the least likely to be vaccinated, the most likely to catch the virus, the most likely to spread the virus to others and the most likely to die from COVID-19.

More Evidence of Declining Religiosity in USA

The Bellefonte First Presbyterian Church in Bellefonte, Pa., USA. Founded in 1800 by the same group who founded the borough of Bellefonte in Pennsylvania, held its last service on 21^th December 2021.

'Go in peace': Pennsylvania church founded in 1800 holds last service.

As though to reinforce the recent findings of the Pew Research survey which shows an accelerating decline in affiliation to mainstream churches in the USA, one of the oldest fundamentalist Christian churches in Pennsylvania, The First Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte, has closed its doors for the last time, attendance having fallen by 87% from about 200 in the 1970s to about 40 before the pandemic and just 25 now.

When it was founded in 1800, the First Presbyterian Church of Bellefonte was very much a part of the local political establishment, even holding meetings in the courthouse before the church was built and providing two Pennsylvania governors from amongst its members. The church provided the local civil leadership for the borough and the state at large, which was, for all practical purposes, a local theocracy with no attempt to separate church and state, the local Christian leadership believing it was entitled to rule.

Why Do Creationists Choose to Remain Ignorant of Science? A New Study Offers An Explanation.

Whether people inform themselves or remain ignorant is due to three factors | UCL News - UCL – University College London.

One thing about Creationists and religious fundamentalist, that most rationalists and scientifically minded people find infuriating and almost incomprehensible is why they appear to be so well-informed about their chosen beliefs but remain so ignorant of anything that might contradict them.

For example, some Creationists and/or religious apologists will be well versed in the fallacies and disinformation that pass for arguments for their beliefs, yet, despite being told ad nauseum that that is not what scientists claim, or a patient

Vast amounts of information are now available to individuals. This includes everything from information about your genetic make-up to information about social issues and the economy. We wanted to find out: how do people decide what they want to know? And why do some people actively seek out information, for example about COVID vaccines, financial inequality and climate change, and others don’t?

The information people decide to expose themselves to has important consequences for their health, finance and relationships. By better understanding why people choose to get informed, we could develop ways to convince people to educate themselves.

Professor Tali Sharot, co-lead author
UCL Psychology & Language Sciences<br> And Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Ageing Research

explanation of how that particular apologetic can be easily refuted, they display complete ignorance of those counter arguments and of the facts they depend on.

It's frustratingly as though they hit the reset button at the start of every debate.

Ignorance appears to be a matter of pride, proudly displayed in the social media as some sort of achievement, to the extent that answers to the questions they purport to want answers to remain ignored or dismissed with the wave of a hand and a quick change of subject, often accompanied by abuse and/or an attempt to make the person who answered it feel guilty for supplying them with an answer they didn't want.

If Ever You're Feeling Really Stupid - 20 Absurdities That Some Adults Believe

1. That Earth is flat and has a dome over it to keep the water above the sky out. The moon and sun are lamps hung on this dome so we can tell day from night and the stars stuck to it can shake loose and fall to earth during earthquakes.
2. That a magic man designed himself before he existed then self-assemble out of nothing with enough information to create a Universe out of nothing and micromanage it to the minutest level.
3. That a hundred-year-old man built a wooden boat and rounded up two or seven of every species in the world to live together for a year sealed in that boat with only one small window for air, then they left the boat onto a sterile planet on which all living things had been destroyed, including the plants, but still found enough to eat so everything alive today is descended from those few survivors.
4. That just five generations after the survivors left the boat in 2, there were enough people to support a massive civil engineering project to build a tower up to Heaven, which in those days was just above the sky over the Middle East, and that all the languages on Earth are the result of this population each being magically made to speak languages that non-one else could understand, because the project alarmed an omniscient, omnipotent god who lived in the Heaven.

How Religion Keeps the Poor Poor.

Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty | The Economist

The problem with religion is that it teaches poor people to accept their 'place' in society and not to aspire to something better. This is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from a piece of research carried our recently by a group of sociologists and psychologists led by Jana B. Berkessel of the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.

The team found that, contrary to accepted ideas, people with a low socioeconomic status (SES) in a developed country carry a higher psychological burden than their counterparts in developing countries. The assumption had been that the psychological burden would ease as society developed and became more prosperous. However the research showed that there was an inverse relationship between the psychological burden of SES and the religiosity of the society and there was a similar relationship between religiosity and economic development.

In other words, as society develops economically, so religiosity falls, removing the religious norms that ease the burden of low SES.

This conclusion came as a result of statistical analysis of three surveys covering 3.3 million people in 156 countries.

This teaching to accept your place is not confined to Christianity either but can be found in almost all major religions. The team say:

Among the religious norms that enable cultural groups to thrive is a set relevant for SES. That set eases the burden of lower SES (“The poor are admitted into Paradise before the rich, by five hundred years;” Vol. 5, Book 37, Hadith 4261, The Qur’an; “For those who are poor and destitute; May I turn into all things they could need;” Ch. 3, Verse 10, Bodhisattvacharyavatara) and it does so in part by casting a bad light on higher SES [“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God;” Matthew 19:24, The Bible, “The demoniac person thinks: So much wealth do I have today, and I will gain more;” Ch. 16, Verse 13, Bhagavad-Gita (16, 29)]

Their open access paper is published in PNAS:

Significance
According to a fundamental assumption in the social sciences, the burden of lower socioeconomic status (SES) is more severe in developing nations. In contrast to this assumption, recent research has shown that the burden of lower SES is less—not more—severe in developing nations. In three large-scale global data sets, we show that national religiosity can explain this puzzling finding. Developing nations are more religious, and most world religions uphold norms that, in part, function to ease the burden of lower SES and to cast a bad light on higher SES. In times of declining religiosity, this finding is a call to scientists and policymakers to monitor the increasingly harmful effects of lower SES and its far-reaching social consequences.

Abstract
Lower socioeconomic status (SES) harms psychological well-being, an effect responsible for widespread human suffering. This effect has long been assumed to weaken as nations develop economically. Recent evidence, however, has contradicted this fundamental assumption, finding instead that the psychological burden of lower SES is even greater in developed nations than in developing ones. That evidence has elicited consternation because it suggests that economic development is no cure for the psychological burden of lower SES. So, why is that burden greatest in developed nations? Here, we test whether national religiosity can explain this puzzle. National religiosity is particularly low in developed nations. Consequently, developed nations lack religious norms that may ease the burden of lower SES. Drawing on three different data sets of 1,567,204, 1,493,207, and 274,393 people across 156, 85, and 92 nations, we show that low levels of national religiosity can account for the greater burden of lower SES in developed nations. This finding suggests that, as national religiosity continues to decline, lower SES will become increasingly harmful for well-being—a societal change that is socially consequential and demands political attention.

Berkessel, Jana B.; Gebauer, Jochen E.; Joshanloo, Mohsen; Bleidorn, Wiebke; Rentfrow, Peter J.; Potter, Jeff; Gosling, Samuel D.
National religiosity eases the psychological burden of poverty
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Sep 2021, 118 (39) e2103913118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2103913118

Copyright: © 2012 The authors. Published by the National Academy of Sciences.
Open access Reprinted under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0)

It looks as though both Seneca and Napoleon were right in that religion is used by the ruling class to keep the poor happy and contented so they never aspire to anything better. The priesthoods are complicit in this deception in return for protection and special status within the state.

This much was evident in the repose of religions to a Pew Research forecast a few years ago that support for religions will grow in coming years as the populations of third-world and developing countries is set to increase. They were jubilant at the though that the number of poor people in the world was going to increase and that they would benefit from this growth, part of which, with their teachings against contraception and family planning and for female subservience, they were responsible for.

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Atheist News - How Atheists Don't Need a God to be Good, But Theists Need One to be Bad.

Misinformation and Facts about Secularism and Religion | Psychology Today

In this devastating rebuttal of the 2011 claim by Dr Thomas G. Plante, Ph.D, that generally, religious people are more moral than non-religious people, David Niose, former president of both the American Humanist Association and the Secular Coalition for America, points out the factual and unfounded errors in Plante's article. In particular:

Plante casually claims that religious people are "better citizens" and "behave better." And without citing any sources, he tells us: "Research has consistently found that religious people are less likely to engage in criminal behavior, marital infidelity, alcoholism, unprotected sexual activity. . ." In other words, according to Plante, if you're not religious you might be a good person, but on average you are more likely to have these undesirable characteristics. This is a bold assertion that, of course, immediately puts secular individuals on the defensive. (Just imagine if the same claims were made against any other minority group.) It is precisely claims like these that lead to many Americans having an unfavorable view of atheists and other nonbelievers. Fortunately for atheists, agnostics, and secular humanists, there is no factual basis for Plante's claim that "research has consistently found" secular individuals to be more prone to such antisocial behavior.

Talibangelical Hate News - Trumpanzee Loon, Pastor Greg Locke, Banned from Twitter

After Twitter Ban, Christian Hate-Preacher Greg Locke Whines About “Persecution” | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

I'm not sure if this is good news or bad news. Pastor Greg Locke, of Global Vision Bible Church, Tennessee, is such a goldmine of anti-fundamentalist propaganda that it'll be a shame to lose him, but on the other hand, events have shown that there are people, especially in USA, who are gullible enough to let him think for them. Given his increasing advocacy of violence, repeated misinformation about Trump's defeat last November, which he still can't bring himself to accept, and his Trumpanzee/QAnon-inspired anti Covid vaccine lies, he constitutes the sort of danger to society that Twitter should be protecting its customers from.

In fact, the true value of preachers of hate like Locke is that they server to remind us what a violent and hate-filled religion Christianity would be if it hadn't been moderated and civilised by a hefty dose of Humanism following the European Enlightenment. They simply preach a pure version of primitive Medieval Christianity, based on Bronze Age, despotic Middle Eastern tribalism of which the Taliban and the Spanish Inquisition would be proud.

Religious Hypocrisy News - Child Abuse Widespread in Most UK Religions

Inquiry report finds child sexual abuse in most major UK religions | IICSA Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse

As though to prove my point that religions provide excuses for people who need excuses, the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) has concluded that child sexual abuse was fequent in most major uK religions, and that the normal response to allegations was to defend the organization at the expense of their victims.

In a report released yesterday, they say:

Child sexual abuse has been found in most major UK religions… with some found to have no child protection policies in place at all.

The ‘Child protection in religious organisations and settings’ report examined evidence received from 38 religious organisations with a presence in England and Wales, with the figures provided to the Inquiry about known prevalence of child sexual abuse unlikely to reflect the full picture.

Religious organisations play a central and even dominant role in the lives of millions of children in England and Wales. The report highlights the blatant hypocrisy and moral failing of religions purporting to teach right from wrong and yet failing to prevent or respond to child sexual abuse.

Evolution News - Science is Winning the Argument in USA

Stylised representation of the evolution of Homo sapiens from a common ancestor with the other African apes.

Study: Evolution now accepted by majority of Americans | University of Michigan News

According to a meta-analysis of several surveys carried out over the past 35 years by researchers from Michigan University's Institute for Social Research, American public opinion has now shifted firmly to a majority acceptance that humans evolved from ancestral pre-hominid ancestors, with a surge in support for evolution in the last decade, even amongst fundamentalist Christians.

However, there is now a marked difference between Republicans and Democrats and between fundamentalist Christians and moderate Christians/non-affiliated on the issue.

According to the Michigan University news release:

Refuting Creationism - Modern Humans Were Not the Only Aesthetic Species

Flowstone formation in the Sala de las Estrellas at Cueva de Ardales (Malaga, Andalusia), with the traces of red pigment.

© João Zilhão, ICREA

Neanderthals indeed painted Andalusia’s Cueva de Ardales | CNRS

One of the evidence-free claims Creationism is forced into by virtue of dogma, is that modern humans are unique in several ways that sets them apart from the rest of the animal kingdom, as some sort of special creation; namely, sentience and self-awareness, aesthetic appreciation, and a sense of moral obligation.

However, the notion that we alone have self-awareness and are thus the only sentient species has long been discounted by animal behaviourists by demonstrating self-awareness and even complex puzzle-solving behaviour in many other, even non-mammalian, species such as octopuses, bees and several birds. But there has been an on-going debate in anthropology about exactly when aesthetic appreciation (or in lay terms, artistic appreciation and symbolism) first arose in the hominins. Until now, there were precious little evidence that anyone other than modern humans ever used symbolism and colour in any deliberate, representational way.

Now, however, a team of international scientists, including researchers from the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) have shown that red ochre pigments on stalactites in a cave in Andalucia, Spain, were taken there and applied deliberately on multiple occasions, at a time when only Neanderthals were present in Europe. As though, over a period of several thousand years, the site had special significance and needed regular restoration, indicating a long oral tradition lasting for a very long time.

The press release from CNRC explains: