In the year ending June 2019, the number of allegations of sex abuse by US Catholic clergy quadrupled to an astonishing 4,434 cases - up from 1451 cases the previous year, according to an annual audit of more than 200 diocese and Catholic Church entities produced by CARA.
The report also highlights the fact that child abuse is continuing in Church establishments and that there is complacency with continued failure to publish reporting procedures, poor recordkeeping of background checks, dysfunctional Diocesan Review Boards and a lack of formal monitoring priests who have been removed from ministry.
The raving right in Britain are incensed at Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby's statement of the obvious on BBC Radio 4's Today Program that Jesus was not a white man.
Welby made this statement in response to the "Black Lives Matter" movement's campaign to have statuary and representations of racists and removed and the general review and reassessment of institutionalised racism in society, following another casual killing of a black man by white police in America.
Stung by the SCOTUS ruling that the law applies to all Americans, a group of fundamentalist Christian pastors have thrown a collective tantrum and are now threatening people with their imaginary friend.
They had expected SCOTUS, with it's Trump-given right-wing majority, to join with them in victimising and persecuting people from the LGBTQ community by agreeing that they could be freely discriminated against when it comes to employment rights. Instead SCOTUS ruled by a clear 6-3 majority, that federal sex discrimination protections extend to gay and transgender workers, making clear that employees cannot be fired under federal law simply because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.
Due at least in part to the campaign by covidiot evangelical Christians, more than 20 million Americans could now have contracted Covid-19, according to CDC.
This new information is based on serology tests for the presence of antibodies that have shown, for every person with symptoms who tested positive for antibodies, a further 10 also tested positive. With the number of known cases nearing 2.4 million, multiplying those together gives the 20 million + estimate.
It's easy, and accurate, to place the blame for the deepening Covid-19 crisis in the USA on the inept and incompetent Donald Trump, but we also have to place some of the blame on those credulous idiots who elected him and who continue to support him - the right-wing Trumpanzee evangelical Christians who, as a requirement of their faith, have forsworn the use of reason to embrace infantile conspiracy theories.
You would expect evangelical (i.e fundamentalist) Christians to be the most compassionate, most caring and most concerned for the welfare of their fellow humans, given their fundamental belief that we are all created by the same god who holds each of us in the same high regard, and give the alleged teaching of Jesus that loving your neighbour is second in importance only to loving God.
The reality is something very different, as their response to the Covid-19 pandemic is showing. There is something in the mindset of evangelicals that make them the least concerned, the most cavalier and the most selfish in their attitude toward collective responsibility for reducing the spread of the virus, as a recent poll showed.
“[The famine is an] effective mechanism for reducing surplus population [as well as] the judgement of God… The real evil with which we have to contend is not the physical evil of the Famine, but the moral evil of the selfish, perverse and turbulent character of the people.”
Charles Trevelyan, letter to Lord Monteagle of Brandon
Trevelyan's repugnant words, typical of English upper-class thinking of the time, illustrates just how much religion played in the response to the Irish Potato Famine, just as it had played a major part in setting the conditions for it to happen in the first place. Although the anti-Catholic Penal Laws begun by Cromwell and later extended, had been repealed, the repeal was too recent to have altered the distribution of land which was still heavily tilted in favour of Protestants, who were the main landlords, especially in the south and west of the island, and Catholics owned little or none of it.
And now a little bit of light relief from the accounts of covidiot religiots helping to spread the Covid-19 virus and turn places of worship into major Covid-19 hotspots.
Another Spanish restorer has managed to create mirth amongst the increasingly irreligious Spanish.
Following the 'success' of the hilarious restoration by octogenarian Cecilia Gimenez, of the Ecce Homo fresco in the Sanctuary of Mercy Church near Zaragoza, which turned Jesus into what looked like a monkey, an art collector employed a furniture restorer to restore his copy of Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s, 1687 painting of the Virgin Mary, entitled The Immaculate Conception of Los Venerable. The result left Mary looking more like Jezebel. Mercifully, Murillo made a number of copies of this major work.
The long-tailed tit, Aegithalos caudatus is one of my all-time favourite birds. And now they illustrate a fascinating aspect of evolution - how something evolved for one purpose can be co-opted and used for another. In this case, the constant twittering they make to maintain flock cohesion and to identify members of their extended family groups, is used to avoid incestuous breeding.
You can come across these lovely little birds in woods, especially in autumn and winter, when suddenly you realise the trees are alive with little twittering black, buff-orange and white birds, constantly on the go as they move through the trees foraging for small insects in groups of maybe a couple of dozen, constantly twittering and calling. Then, just as suddenly as they arrived, they're gone.
It's another day when scientists incidentally and without conscious effort, refute creationism with science.
One of creationism favourite god-filled gaps is the question of abiogenesis with constant questions about where the first proteins came from and how they self-assembled from non-living raw materials. This paper answers them. It details the findings of a team of scientists led by Prof. Dan Tawfik of the Weizmann Institute of Science and Prof. Norman Metanis of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and including scientists from Department of Chemistry, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA.
Sadly, once again a scientific paper of wide general interest is behind a firewall, however we have a news article from the Weizmann Institute of Science to explain the research:
Three-spined sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus, are common in streams and lakes all over the Northern Hemisphere but what is not generally known is that they are a marine species inhabiting inshore waters, which, since the retreat of the ice sheets since the last ice age has repeatedly migrated into fresh-water environments as these became available for exploitation. Lake Windermere in England's Lake District, for example, has two different populations of three-spined stickleback which occupy different regions of the lake and which are probably derived from two different colonisations.
As we would expect, given that there is generally not that much variation in the environments in different river systems in the same part of the world, there is considerable parallel evolution between different, isolated populations. However, this degree of parallelism is much more marked in populations originating in the Eastern Pacific coastal waters and less so in the Western Pacific and in the Atlantic where much more genetic and morphological variation is found.
A major new discovery in the landscape of Wiltshire, England, associated with Durrington Walls, shows the immense power that must have been wielded in the name of some long-forgotten god or gods some 4,500 years ago. The labour-force needed to construct structures like Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and and Durrington Walls indicates an economy and political organization able to provide and command this labour-force as well as to supply it with food - which would need some form of tax on those who were producing it.
This in turn suggests a ruling class that would have needed more than simple force of arms. It suggests an elite ruling with divine sanction, probably in the form of priest-kings and a fearful population who believed the priests and gods were necessary to ensure continuity of the seasons and the success of the crops. It's likely that these structures played an important part in the religious rituals, so there was a strong motive for constructing them.
Despite all the promises that God will protect the righteous from Covid-19, and the forlorn hope that somehow it was going to kill off people with whom the self-righteous fundamentalists disagree, the facts are turning out to be something very different. Covid-19 is killing more religious people than non-believers, according to figures provided by the UK Office of National statistics.
The reasons for this are many and complex and probably more related ethnicity than to religion (and incidentally a reflection of how religion tends to be inherited with ethnicity rather than something arrived at after objective analysis of the evidence) but one thing is certain: there is no evidence that a deity is using the virus to punish non-believers or to reward believers in any one religion. Jews, Muslims and Christians are no safer for their piety whereas non-believers for a number of reasons are being statistically less affected by the virus.
Wouldn't it be nice to hear religious leaders just once telling their followers that Covid-19 is a serious and present danger to us all and, as good, caring people they are going to be doing everything they can to reduce its spread and so reduce the number of people dying or made sick buy it. That they'll willingly close their doors and forego the usual income from passing the plate around during services, because no sacrifice is too good much for the people they love.
I'm not saying there aren't Christian leaders who think and say those things, but they are silenced by the loud whining and clamour for the right to ignore the lockdowns and social distancing orders and put anyone and everyone at risk just to maintain their income and their grip in the local community.
This is no less true in Manitoba, Canada than it is in the US Bible Belt where defiant churches are becoming Covid-19 hotspots.
In a chilling reminder of how inter-religious rivalry can result in hatred so intense that one side advocates (and often practices) genocide against the other, a pastor in the Geracao Jesus Cristo church sect in Brazil is advocating another Jewish Holocaust! The Geracao Jesus Cristo Church is a radical, Christian evangelical sect in Rio de Janeiro.
In a service in which the congregation joined in by echoing his words, Pastor Tupirani da Hora Lores called upon God to:
Christian talibangelicals, seeking to impose theocratic laws on Americans despite the constitutional bar on the establishment of any religion in the US, have scored a minor triumph in Tennessee, with a law which effectively denies the women of Tennessee the same rights as other American women as established by the Supreme Court in Wade vs Roe.
Tennessee legislators yesterday passed a bill which makes termination of pregnancy a criminal offence, punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a fine of $10,000 dollars, if performed after the developing embryo has a detectable heartbeat. The only exception is when the mother's life is threatened by continuing the pregnancy. Pregnancy resulting from rape or incest are not exempt.
The Grand Old Party; the Republican Party of Abraham Lincoln and one of the two great parties of American democracy has degenerated to the point where this is almost considered mainstream. A fruitloop Christian Trumpanzee who has declared herself to be a prophetess, has ordered 100 million angels to protect the GOP National Congress. She has already given them their orders and placed them at strategic locations around the town.
Clearly, America's mental health services leave a great deal to be desired:
According to psychologists, obsessive homophobia is very often a sign of repressed homosexuality. Never was this better illustrated than in the once-popular 'gay conversion therapy' organizations which burgeoned in the USA, as the demand for LGBTQ rights grew. Now, having lost many of their leading advocates, these organizations are almost gone. Very many of their leading lights have come out as gay themselves and acknowledged the harm they did to others in their attempts to come to terms with their own latent homosexuality.
One such was Hope for Wholeness founder and head, McKrae Game, who stunned the movement last August by publically coming out and renouncing the 'therapy' as a fraud and the program as torture which did enormous harm to its victims - victims who were only made to feel in need of 'treatment' by the religion that them sold it regardless of the harm it was doing. Having defined a natural impulse was a 'sin' or mental illness, churches then sought to profit from selling a cure for an illness that didn't exist and which inflicted real mental illness on their victims to the extent that many committed suicide.
It was the realisation of the harm he was doing to his victims that finally drove McKrae Game to renounce his faith and the organization he founded and condemn it as 'false advertising'.
But McKrae Game was not the first. In 2014, nine founders and leaders of the most prominent gay torture organisations wrote an open letter, published online by the National Center for Lesbian Rights, calling for these 'conversion therapies' to be banned, declaring:
As former ex-gay leaders, having witnessed the incredible harm done to those who attempted to change their sexual orientation or gender identity, we join together in calling for a ban on conversion therapy. It is our firm belief that it is much more productive to support, counsel, and mentor LGBTQ individuals to embrace who they are in order to live happy, well-adjusted lives.
Now, having failed to appoint a successor to lead the Spartanburg, South Carolina-based Hope for Wholeness scam, the board have decided to throw in the towel and close down. Despite this, the organisation is still advertising its torture sessions to those who have been shamed by religion into believing they are ill with:
Hope for Wholeness exists so that those who struggle with homosexuality can find freedom to live according to God's design. Genesis 1:27 We accomplish this by not trying to "change" people, but instead walk beside them and encourage them on their journey to wholeness in Christ. We are all fallen, and walk together in our collective imperfection. We are not anti-gay or political in any way. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us for answering questions, help with resources, prayer, and encouragement. We ask for your support in our efforts to impacting those affected by homosexuality, same-sex attractions, and transgenderism, as well as opportunities to walk with those who do not struggle with these issues but share in similar sexual and relational brokenness.
Note the false claim "We are not anti-gay" in a paragraph that equates homosexuality with being abnormal (not designed by God) or incomplete ([lacking] wholeness in Christ) and talks of "those affected by homosexuality, same-sex attractions, and transgenderism"
Despite telling NBC:
It has been a tumultuous several years for us. We lost the founding director, searched for two years for his replacement, hired a new director and then lost that director as well,” the memo, which was signed by the group’s board, states. “After much prayer and discussion, we have made the difficult decision to dissolve the organization. This was not an easy decision. But we do believe it is the right decision.
The scam organization is still appealing for funds on its website and makes no mention of its impending closer. It is also unrepentant, pledging to donate its (undisclosed) assets to another gay-abuse organization, Abba's Delight, an affiliated organization, based in Louisville, Kentucky and having broadly similar aims and methods as Hope for Wholeness.
so long as there are victims to bully for money and so long as there are impressionable people who can be fooled into believing perfectly natural desires and feeling are 'sinful', there will be frauds stepping forward to take their money, with not a hint of conscience about the harm they are doing.
These repugnant charlatans hide behind Christianity and blame their behaviour on Bronze Age superstitions written in a 'holy' book. Tweet
Loving thy neighbour as thyself, which according to Matthew 22:37-40 is second only in importance to loving God, doesn't seem to extend to protecting thy neighbour against deadly viruses, if Pastor Michael Jacobsen, leader of Palermo Bible Family Church in Butte County, California is anything to go by, according to this report in Sacramento Bee.
Despite purporting to believe in a god who told people to do unto others what they would want others to do unto them, and despite Jesus allegedly making up a tale about a 'good' Samaritan to show you don't need to be Christian to be good, you just need empathy, and that anyone who needs your help is 'thy neighbour' whom you should love, religious people tend to be less caring and compassionate than Atheists, according to recent research. Their work is to be published in the Journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science on 12 July and builds on the same team's findings published last April in the same journal
In that paper, a research team reported finding that compassion is greater amongst less religious people, who so tend to be more generous. The team tested the hypothesis that, with fewer religious expectations of prosociality, less religious individuals’ levels of compassion will play a larger role in their prosocial tendencies. They found, as the results of three separate studies that:
Compassion was more critical to the generosity of less religious people.
Increased generosity among less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals
Feelings of compassion predicted increased generosity across a variety of economic tasks for less religious individuals but not among more religious individuals.
In the first study, Saslow and her colleagues analyzed data from a national survey of more than 1,300 American adults taken in 2004. They found that compassionate attitudes were linked with how many generous behaviors a person was likely to report. But this link was strongest in people who were atheists or only slightly religious, compared with people who were more strongly religious.
In a second experiment, 101 adults were shown either a neutral video or an emotional video about children in poverty. They were then given 10 fake dollars and told they could give as much as they liked to a stranger. Those who were less religious gave more when they saw the emotional video first.
"The compassion-inducing video had a big effect on their generosity," Willer said. "But it did not significantly change the generosity of more religious participants."
Finally, a sample of more than 200 college students reported their current level of compassion and then played economic games in which they were given money to share or withhold from a stranger. Those who were the least religious but most momentarily compassionate shared the most.
Experiments such as this give the lie to the frequent claims of religious frauds that, because Atheist allegedly have no moral compass or 'objective' moral values, they are incapable of acting morally.
In fact, those claims are only ever made by religious fundamentalists whose 'objective' morality seems not to tell them that bearing false witness such as this is wrong because it encourages hate towards those who tend to be the most compassionate and so do the most good in society, often to mitigate some of the harm done by religions.
False witnessing against Atheists by religious frauds is probably a terror management strategy designed to cope with their fear that Atheists are right, and they are wasting their life hoping for something better later. Tweet
Atheists, on the other hand, are living for life, not waiting for death, so get on with creating a better world for the one life we have.
The U.S. Catholic Church Spent $281,611,817 on Child Sex Abuse Cases in 2019 | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos 
