Wednesday, September 27, 2006
When you see the type of abusive brainwashing young kids are subject to in "Jesus camps" (including worshipping George Bush pictures and crying on command, and screaming fanatically), camps run by people who adamantly say "I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan, in Israel and Palestine and all those different places" (Becky Fisher) (see video here), one cannot but think there is something utterly wrong in American society.
How can it be legal to abuse young people's minds in such a way?
The loud "piety" of those children, is not certainly the result of a personal, intimate conviction, but is a behaviour forced by adults who exactly intend to shape the children's mind to achieve their ends.
The children act as expected because encouraged by their parents in the first place. Pleasing the adults, even if forcing themselves, is to those children the only way to get some "love" and recognition they feel they would not be able to obtain otherwise in their fanatical, fundamentalist, intolerant environment.
The camp's instructors themselves become parental figures to the children, figures that are also to be pleased by acting as expected, still in order to fit an find recognition in the monolithic world of evangelical fundamentalism.
This is a typical narcissistic setting in which the most fundamental needs of children are exploited by authoritarian adults in order to obtain certain behavioral results, through efficiently designed, obvious techniques of indoctrination, even if at the expense of the integrity of the children's self.
Of course, the children would do anything if they feel they are going to maintain the love of the parents. But the disrespect of their self, the exploitation of their needs, the insidious emotional blackmail surely involved, represent a very dangerous situation psychologically, liable to create severe personality problems.
The mere thought of the pressure those kids must have been subject to since birth, for years and years... the appalling, inexorable siege of parental self-righteousness and fundamentalism on them should make any person with a bit of reason and lucidity cringe with indignation.
No doubt that is abuse.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
From the best seller "Letter to a Christian Nation" by Sam Harris:
Forty-four percent of the American population is convinced that Jesus will return to judge the living and the dead sometime in the next fifty years. According to the most common interpretation of biblical prophecy, Jesus will return only after things have gone horribly awry here on earth. It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that if the city of New York were suddenly replaced by a ball of fire, some significant percentage of the American population would see a silver lining in the subsequent mushroom cloud, as it would suggest to them that the best thing that is ever going to happen was about to happen—the return of Christ. It should be blindingly obvious that beliefs of this sort will do little to help us create a durable future for ourselves—socially, economically, environmentally, or geopolitically. Imagine the consequences if any significant component of the U.S. government actually believed that the world was about to end and that its ending would be glorious. The fact that nearly half of the American population apparently believes this, purely on the basis of religious dogma, should be considered a moral and intellectual emergency.The book you are about to read is my response to this emergency...
Abuse of children in pious religious familes starts at birth. When infants are not even able to speak, let alone decide whether they want to belong to a religion, they are baptised.
The clever strategy of indoctrination closely associating parental love to religious belief continues in the following years, with prayers, attendance of ceremonies, Sunday schools, reinforcement of belief through daily speech, intolerance of the "others" (sometimes called "unsaved") or patronising, insidiously arrogant, compassion.
What's worse, through the long religious indoctrination, children learn that some things must be believed even in absence of evidence, if somebody powerful says so. Thus they develop an unconscious inclination to passive acritical thinking, and tendency to accept power figure unconditionally and even identidy with them.
By the time they are adults, the religious belief and the tendency to intellectual passivity has been nailed into the person's brain incessantly for long years, and a hypothetical rejection of the same, or even general questioning, are opposed by the obscure forces of loyalty to parents and authority introjection. Forces that can count on guilt and fear to counteract any attempt of critical thought and objective thinking.
Are these the adults society needs?
I don't think so. Society needs creative, free-thinking individuals, tolerant with different views, able to question, criticise and suggest new paths and solutions for existing problems.
The baby theo-con production lines
The following is a trailer of a new documentary Jesus Camp, following the abusive indoctrinating techniques adopted by Born-Again fundamentalists on children.
Watch it and decide even from these very few scenes whether the fanaticism and brainwashing shown here are conducive to the formation of mature, balanced, free-thinking individuals or not.
I call this fanatic indoctrination a psychological abuse of children.
Monday, September 25, 2006
Useful Contributions to Civilization?
The word religion is used nowadays in a very loose sense. Some people, under the influence of extreme Protestantism, employ the word to denote any serious personal convictions as to morals or the nature of the universe. This use of the word is quite unhistorical. Religion is primarily a social phenomenon. Churches may owe their origin to teachers with strong individual convictions, but these teachers have seldom had much influence upon the churches that they have founded, whereas churches have had enormous influence upon the communities in which they flourished. To take the case that is of most interest to members of Western civilization: the teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians. The most important thing about Christianity, from a social and historical point of view, is not Christ but the church, and if we are to judge of Christianity as a social force we must not go to the Gospels for our material. Christ taught that you should give your goods to the poor, that you should not fight, that you should not go to church, and that you should not punish adultery. Neither Catholics nor Protestants have shown any strong desire to follow His teaching in any of these respects. Some of the Franciscans, it is true, attempted to teach the doctrine of apostolic poverty, but the Pope condemned them, and their doctrine was declared heretical. Or, again, consider such a text as "Judge not, that ye be not judged," and ask yourself what influence such a text has had upon the Inquisition and the Ku Klux Klan. [...]
Christianity and SexThe worst feature of the Christian religion, however, is its attitude toward sex -- an attitude so morbid and so unnatural that it can be understood only when taken in relation to the sickness of the civilized world at the time the Roman Empire was decaying. We sometimes hear talk to the effect that Christianity improved the status of women. This is one of the grossest perversions of history that it is possible to make. Women cannot enjoy a tolerable position in society where it is considered of the utmost importance that they should not infringe a very rigid moral code. Monks have always regarded Woman primarily as the temptress; they have thought of her mainly as the inspirer of impure lusts. The teaching of the church has been, and still is, that virginity is best, but that for those who find this impossible marriage is permissible. "It is better to marry than to burn," as St. Paul puts it. By making marriage indissoluble, and by stamping out all knowledge of the ars amandi, the church did what it could to secure that the only form of sex which it permitted should involve very little pleasure and a great deal of pain. The opposition to birth control has, in fact, the same motive: if a woman has a child a year until she dies worn out, it is not to be supposed that she will derive much pleasure from her married life; therefore birth control must be discouraged. [...]
[Read the whole essay here]
Monday, September 18, 2006
The pope and other religions
Make no mistake. Despite his elderly aspect, his gowns, his fluted voice, Benedict XVI has given evidence of his theological arrogance, his intolerance and lack of charity, and scarce diplomacy to say the least. But all this in the oblique fashion typical of his priestly nature.
Take his mentioning - in his Regensburg's speech - the opinion of 14th century Byzantine emperor, Manuel Paleologos II. Of course the Pope said that was not his personal opinion, but in the meanwhile he managed to quote with nonchalance words like "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." He. The Pope. The supposed ecumenist. The peace maker. The supposed charitable pastor.
And the quote was only the beginning of a dubious argument supposed to suggest the "superiority" of Christianity.
Some of you may remember some equally uncharitable words Mr. Ratzinger (then a Cardinal) said in 1997 about Buddhism: "If Buddhism is attractive, it's only because it suggests that by belonging to it you can touch the infinite, and you can have joy without concrete religious obligations. It's spiritually self-indulgent eroticism."
In short, Ratzinger said that Buddhists are mental masturbators.
Now, can you not see a pattern?
A pattern of arrogance, self-centredness (and Christian-centredness which is the same), lack of charity and disrespect. Is that what Christianity is about? And, pray tell, is that the right attitude in an increasingly more diverse world in which different religions and ethnic background should live in peace?
The pope and science
And what about the Pope's argument against science?
Still in his Regensburg's speech, the astute Pope did not accuse "all scientists" to be driven by a desire to make God superfluous, which would have been pretty hard to demonstrate. So he simply vaguely suggested that some do. But who does? On what grounds does he suggest that some do? How many do? Any example? And why did the Poper care to say so?
Obviously by his generic and blind rebuking a not-better-specified "part of the scientific world" the Pope wanted to warn all scientists, and possibly induce in them some "walk on eggs" feelings, which would be a recognition of religious power. Which, let's face it, it is all the Catholic cult is about. Power.
The point is that the Pope has no right to suggest guidelines for scientists. The scientific method is a sufficient guideline for scientists. And if science ends up making some theological or catechistic content more and more ridiculous that is simply a consequence of the growth of culture and knowledge. It happened at the times of Galileo too.
The Pope's idea is that scientists should leave the door open to the increasingly anachronistic content of the Catholic theology. But that is simply an utter absurdity.
With his inopportune words on science, the Pope resembles the obstinacy of an old actress who waves about to call the attention of an indifferent crowd, incapable to accept the signs of age and the wrinkles, and expecting to be listened to with unchanged interest, despite the hapless and retrograde language, the sadly narcissistic presumption and desire to still count as she used to in her youth.
The above examples give some evidence that this pope does not appear to be the best pope for our times. Of course the Catholic herd, at least the very orthodox part of it, would follow a Pope even if he was playing the magic flute to let everybody drown. They are supposed to obey, without questioning, expressing unconditioned loyalty. But, verily, not thinking and blindly obeying does not help much.
Last but not least, I would suggest those offended by the crass words of this pope, whether Buddhists or Muslims, to take such circumstances as an opportunity to show more wisdom than him. Ratzinger is a man, fallible like all men.
Pope and folly
The Pope's remarks about Islam show the Catholic church is failing - yet again - to deal with the challenge of modernity.
[...]
The defence takes curious twists and turns. Well, excuse my churlishness, but I find the relish with which various commentators have plunged into the Pope's philosophical reasoning completely beside the point - let's leave that aspect of the issue to the suburban philosophy reading groups.
I also find all the explanations along the line of "shy professor", "learned academic", blinking in the media glare with no grasp on the modern world of mass communications, frankly absurd. This is a man who has been at the heart of one of the world's multi-national institutions for a very long time. He has been privy to how pontifical messages get distorted and magnified by a global media. Shy he may be, but no one has ever accused this pope of being an out of touch ivory tower theologian - on the contrary, he is a determined, shrewd operator who is not remotely shy of controversy. He has long been famous for his bruising, ruthless condemnation of those he disagrees with. This, after all, was the man who claimed Buddhism was a form of masturbation for the mind - a remark that is still repeated amongst deeply offended Buddhists more than a decade after he made it.
No, the worrying thing is that this Pope has never had much sympathy for inter-faith dialogue - unlike the last pontiff who famously gathered world religious leaders to Assisi to pray for peace together. In particular, he has absorbed some of that old Catholic bigotry towards Islam, a legacy of a thousand years of rivalry and violence. In his remarks last week, the Pope re-awoke the most entrenched and self-serving of western prejudices - that Muslims have a unique proclivity to violence - a claim that has no basis in history or in current world events, a fact that still eludes too many westerners.
[...]
Two lines of thought emerge from this mess. The first is that the Pope's personal authority has been irrevocably damaged; how can he present himself as a figure of global moral authority and a peacemaker after this? The first criteria for such a claim must be a degree of skilful competence.
The second is a more disturbing possibility: namely, that the Catholic church could be failing - yet again - to deal with the challenge of modernity. In the 19th and 20th centuries, it struggled to adapt to an increasingly educated and questioning faithful, now in the 21st century, it's in danger of failing the great challenge of how we forge new ways of accommodating difference in a crowded, mobile world. The Catholic church has to make a dramatic break with its triumphalist, bigoted past if it is to contribute in any constructive way to chart this new course.
(Read the whole editorial here).
Saturday, September 16, 2006
New York Times denounces Pope's remarks
September 16, 2006 03:18pm
THE New York Times published an editorial today, in which it called Pope Benedict XVI's latest remarks about Islam "tragic and dangerous" and urged him to apologise.
Speaking in the German city of Regensburg on Tuesday, the pontiff implicitly denounced links between Islam and violence particularly in regard to jihad, or “holy war".
Quoting a 14th-century Byzantine emperor on the Prophet Mohammed, founder of the Muslim faith, the head of the Roman Catholic Church said: “He said, I quote, 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”'
The Times recalled that this was “not the first time the Pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims”.
In 2004 when he was still the Vaticans top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was in permanent contrast to Europe, the paper recalled.
“A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue,” the editorial said.
“The world listens carefully to the words of any Pope,” The Times continued. “And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.”
___________That a Catholic Pope, not an obscure, unknown scholar of some remote university, should quote a 14th-century emperor saying 'Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached' can hardly sound wise or opportune. In fact, it sounds dangerously confrontational and far from a claimed spirit of openness towards, and understanding amongst, different religions.
The bottomline of the Pope's speech appeared to be that of "we are the best, the others are evil", an approach that instead of looking for points of contact, stresses presumed, irreconcilable differences between Christians and Muslims, the latter presented in one single and hastily labelled box.
A Pope should know better than irresponsibly fomenting conflicts with inopportune words.
But Mr. Ratzinger, who has a well known past of hawk of Christian faith, seems to find it hard to abandon a particularly accentuated arrogant presumption of being the representative on earth of "the one and only true religion", which goes together with a patronising - when not disrespectful and disparaging - attitude towards the "others", however expressed with pious-sounding scholarly words.
In fact, not only in the East, but in the West too, deep perplexity and condemnation have been expressed, now also from the New York Times.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
In his "pastoral trip" to Bavaria, Pope Benedict XVI has, amongst other things, stated the following:
"Since the Enlightenment, at least a part of the scientific world has zealously committed itself to seeking explanations of the world, in which God would become superfluous and unuseful even for our life."
It is quite malicious and unwarranted of Mr. Razinger - the Pope - to assert that scientists are anxious to make a God superfluous. The purpose of science has nothing to do with affirming or denying the existence of any God. In fact, God (or magic, voodoo and other superstitions) has nothing to do with science.
Moreover, the essence of science is to look for explanations, without relying on prepackaged answers, or on the mere authority of the past and its sediments of either lay or religious notions.
Scientists do not nor should care about religion when carrying out their inquiry, and should certainly not work with a Damocles' sword of Catholic dogmas and anathemas above their heads, nor have anything to do with guilt-making, anxiety-ridden muliebrile susceptibilities of men in drag.
If science does have the effect of indirectly making religious superstitions more and more haplessly unplausible (just like unplausible have become ancient Greek gods), it cannot be blamed for it nor it can be stated that is its purpose.
The words of Mr. Ratzinger fall within the typical pathetic, guilt-making strategy of opposing free thinking, while attempting to maintain the status of that who claims to possess the one and only unquestionable truth.
The power-ridden logic behind the Pope's words is clear and unsurprising. Yet one would rather hear words without such an obvious medieval flavour.
