Didn’t get around to posting this earlier, so you probably read the news already: Turns out that the Catholic Church’s cover-ups of pedophile priets was on orders from God directly (who of course whispers in the Pope’s ear). As The Guardian put it

The 69-page Latin document bearing the seal of Pope John XXIII [in 1962] was sent to every bishop in the world. The instructions outline a policy of ’strictest’ secrecy in dealing with allegations of sexual abuse and threatens those who speak out with excommunication…. British lawyer Richard Scorer, who acts for children abused by Catholic priests in the UK… said: “We always suspected that the Catholic Church systematically covered up abuse and tried to silence victims. This document appears to prove it. Threatening excommunication to anybody who speaks out shows the lengths the most senior figures in the Vatican were prepared to go to prevent the information getting out to the public domain.”

Here’s The Guardian’s piece: Vatican told bishops to cover up sex abuse And a few op-ed comments on it are here: ‘One of the biggest scandals of our times’

Here’s a nice piece from Slate slamming the the idea of the ten commandments as the foundation of morality.

The preacher who led the faith healing session that killed the autistic boy in Milwaukee will only face felony child abuse charges. He’ll do no more than five years in prison. Once again, prosecutors will go easy on a killer because of the religious context (see Ron’s “God kills another child” post below):

Critics, including some legal scholars, said the case reflected a general discomfort among prosecutors with trying to draw lines where religion is involved.

“If the child had died in a home, there’d be a whole array of charges, maybe including child abuse but also homicide, or manslaughter,” said Marci A. Hamilton, a professor at the Cardozo School of Law in New York. “When a religious entity enters the picture, prosecutors get very nervous.”

Professor Hamilton described a child abuse charge in such a case as “extraordinarily weak” and said the decision sent a devastating signal.

“It sends a message that if you are doing anything � whether it’s holding down a child or refusing to give them medical treatment, or whatever it is � if it’s religious, then they’re not accountable to the laws,” she said. “And that’s not right.”

The light charges are especially puzzling when you read about the multiple torture sessions this kid was forced to endure before they finally killed him: Faith Healing Gone Wrong Claims Boy’s Life

In Dangerous Religion: George W. Bush’s theology of empire, Sojourner’s Magazine (”Xians 4 justice-n-peace”) takes W the Burning Shrub to task for distorting their kind-but-wacky dogmas into his mean-n-wackier ones. An excerpt:

To this aggressive extension of American power in the world, President George W. Bush adds God�and that changes the picture dramatically. It’s one thing for a nation to assert its raw dominance in the world; it’s quite another to suggest, as this president does, that the success of American military and foreign policy is connected to a religiously inspired “mission,” and even that his presidency may be a divine appointment for a time such as this…. America’s foreign policy is more than pre-emptive, it is theologically presumptuous; not only unilateral, but dangerously messianic; not just arrogant, but bordering on the idolatrous and blasphemous. George Bush’s personal faith has prompted a profound self-confidence in his “mission” to fight the “axis of evil,” his “call” to be commander-in-chief in the war against terrorism, and his definition of America’s “responsibility” to “defend the�hopes of all mankind.” This is a dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology.

You tell’em, Jesus-people. Just goes to show that the lunacy that is Xianity can in fact be partitioned off from making the rest of your views crazy.

See? I said another nice thing about Xians. I am getting so mellow in my old age.

Nigerian Woman Facing Death Seeks Leniency

33 Are Killed in Stampede at a Hindu Festival

Went back into that Belief-o-Matic description of atheism:

“Atheists’ beliefs are similar to those of the Secular Humanists but do not necessarily include the emphasis on humanity’s ability to improve the human condition.”

Ummm, atheists don’t emphasize the ability of humans to improve themselves? Why the hell not? How the fuck else is it supposed to happen? So, I guess atheists either just sit around and do nothing (i.e., nihilism), or wait around for “something to happen”…

And they’re outta there: Workers Remove Ten Commandments Monument.

But I suppose it’s just as well; after all, #3 says that “Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters beneath the earth”. Wouldn’t this “monument” count?

So, BeliefNet has the “Belief-O-Matic” Quiz you can take to figure out what religious outlook’s beliefs are most like yours. Take it, if you like. I did. Here are the top 5 matches for me:

1. Unitarian Universalism (100%)
2. Secular Humanism (98%)
3. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (88%)
4. Liberal Quakers (83%)
5. Nontheist (83%)

So, what’s wrong with this picture? Who the fuck is outscoring me for atheism, I want to know? Come on, I brainwash students out of their religion every semester, and I run a blog called “God is for Suckers!” So why don’t I score 100 on the atheist scale? Because I have moral views other than nihilistic egoism, apparently. Even with the strongest “no” possible to every question about God, the supernatural, and all that, apparently they score me less of an atheist because I (for example, question 17) think that “Social betterment programs (e.g., equality, anti-poverty, education) should be fundamental.” Because, you know, atheists don’t care about things like that.