Quotation

"Men rarely (if ever) managed to dream up a god superior to themselves. Most gods have the manners and morals of a spoiled child."
Robert A. Heinlein

One Misunderstanding?

The title of Neil Walsch's HuffPo piece, "Our One Misunderstanding About God", made me laugh quite a bit. He actually seems to think he has boiled down the various disagreements and contradictory assertions about God to one thing. Theists think too primitively. While I don't completely disagree with that idea it is far too simplistic and definitive. Once you cut through all Walsch's touchy-feely new age crap it isn't hard to figure out that he suffers from a very basic misunderstanding himself. He does not seem to realize that the God concept has more than one version. Part of why he fails to note, let alone think critically, about this is that he never really acknowledges that there isn't even a single agreed upon definition for God. Sorry Neil but there are lost of misunderstanding and there will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Setting aside most of the ideas and beliefs attached to a the personal scripture based God won't be an end to the concept's confusion and misunderstanding.

Quotation

“Those who would renegotiate the boundaries between church and state must therefore answer a difficult question: why would we trade a system that has served us so well for one that has served others so poorly?”
Sandra Day O'Connor

Anger and Hate not Required

I have no reason to doubt that Michael and Jenet Erickson are generally nice people with no malicious intent. However, it does not make them any less ignorant, self-deluded, or bigoted. This couples opinion piece, "Michael and Jenet Erickson: Being for traditional marriage does not mean being against anyone", would be laughable if it did not represent such a prevalent mindset.

There are two blatant fallacies that dominate the whole thing. There is no universally accepted definition of "traditional marriage" and never has been one. Scripture are full of examples of acceptable marriage practices that would horrify the likes of Michael and Jenet. Even if that were not the case it does not matter in regard to US law. Legislating anything based solely on highly subjective religious interpretations is flat-out unconstitutional.

The second problem is that you cannot claim you are not "against anyone" when you are in fact actively seeking to deny the rights of others. You can believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman but when you seek to deny the rights of others you have gone beyond just believing something. Denying other people the same rights you yourself enjoy is harmful and, yes, it is also bigotry.

What? The Vatican Lies!?

"The Vatican acknowledged on Friday that close to 400 priests left the priesthood in 2011 and 2012 because of accusations that they had sexually abused children."

Slight problem with this statement in that it is an intentional deception.

It was further explained in "Update: Vatican clarifies number of defrocked priests" that in fact, "Bishop Charles Scicluna, formerly the Vatican's top prosecutor of sexually abusive clergy, said 384 priests left the priesthood – either voluntarily or not - in 2011 and 2012, the last two years of Pope Benedict XVI's papacy."

Did you catch that part about "voluntarily"? If you resign it is not the same thing as being "defrocked." They also conflate all those that were defrocked with those specifically removed for sex-abuse crimes. The number actually includes priests that were removed for supporting women's rights and homosexual's rights. A practice detrimental to basic civil/human rights that the current Pope has continued to enforce.

It should be noted that the number of priests defrocked for sexual abuses during the specified time-frame is actually 125. I am certainly glad that they have been removed but is no where near the 400 claimed. In other words, the Vatican lied to make itself look better without having to actually do much to address the serious issue of pedophile priests.