Thursday, July 19, 2007
Transnational Humanism
Religion and Child Abuse
Innaiah Narisetti
Innaiah Narisetti is the chair of the Center for Inquiry/India. This article is excerpted from a paper that he will present at the Center for Inquiry’s congress in China this coming October.
[...]
THE CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD
The human rights of children and the standards to which all governments must aspire in realizing these rights for all children are most concisely and fully articulated in one international human-rights treaty: the Convention on the Rights of the Child. The Convention is the most universally accepted human-rights instrument in history. It has been ratified by every country in the world except two: the United States and Somalia. It places children at center stage in the quest for the universal application of human rights. By ratifying this instrument, national governments have committed themselves to protecting and ensuring children’s rights and have agreed to hold themselves accountable for this commitment before the international community.
While it is unfortunate that a powerful country such as the United States has yet to ratify the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the UN’s efforts are salutary and place much-needed emphasis on improving the lives of children globally.
THE INFLUENCE OF RELIGION
However, despite all the effort and rhetoric about protecting children and their rights, there is a severe shortcoming in the global campaign to protect children: the influence of religion and its continuing contribution to many forms of child abuse all around the world.
Such abuse begins with the involuntary involvement of children in religious practices from the time they are born. All religions, through ritual, preaching, and religious texts, seek to bring children into day-to-day religious practice. This gives holy books and scriptures, as well as those who teach them, an early grip on the developing minds of young people, leaving an indelible impression on them. In many cases, most notably in the Catholic Church, this forced and prolonged exposure of children to religious institutions has also been a key factor in the physical, mental, and sexual abuse of children by religious leaders.
This early grip is so strong that very few people, once grown, ever get an opportunity to change their minds, despite being exposed to science and rational thinking, or even other religious systems. Religious beliefs thrive by imposing themselves upon impressionable minds and gaining their blind adherence to certain dogmatic practices. In some ways, this lays the groundwork for sustained psychological abuse of young children by allowing adults the use of religion as a pretext for various other forms of abuse such as forcing them to fight in wars in the name of religion and ethnicity. During 2004, about 300,000 children served as soldiers in national armies, worldwide.
When it comes to the forced inculcation of religion and the resulting abuses of children in the name of religion, the UN, all of its affiliated organizations, and almost all national governments remain steadfastly silent.
[...]
[Read the whole article here]
Monday, July 16, 2007
- Victor Hugo (quoted by R. Dawkins in "The God Delusion")
Friday, July 13, 2007
However it might still take place sometime in some other city, as Milan culture councillor and art critic Vittorio Sgarbi announced.
"Miss Kitty", the sculpture by Paolo Schmidlin, likely one of the reasons for the controversies related to the exhibition [picture found on La Repubblica website, here].
Another piece from the exhibition [picture found on La Repubblica website, here].
And finally another piece that raised many controversies, "Ecce Trans" by ConiglioViola.
This piece draws inspiration and reinterprets a shot taken of a known politician while he was talking to a transexual [picture found here].
Irrespectively of whether one might like a work of art or not, censorship is wrong.
Personally I think that the "Miss Kitty" and "Ecce Trans" are thought-provoking and interesting.
Both the challenge the viewer to reconcile the idea of "religious" with that of "humanity".
"Ecce Trans", as somebody has suggested, might even be seen as the pictorial representation of the evangelical idea to love the outcasts of society, to see God in them too. Or not?
'A dead Iraqi is just another dead Iraqi... You know, so what?'
Interviews with US veterans show for the first time the pattern of brutality in Iraq
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 12 July 2007
It is an axiom of American political life that the actions of the US military are beyond criticism. Democrats and Republicans praise the men and women in uniform at every turn. Apart from the odd bad apple at Abu Ghraib, the US military in Iraq is deemed to be doing a heroic job under trying circumstances.
That perception will take a severe knock today with the publication in The Nation magazine of a series of in-depth interviews with 50 combat veterans of the Iraq war from across the US. In the interviews, veterans have described acts of violence in which US forces have abused or killed Iraqi men, women and children with impunity.
The report steers clear of widely reported atrocities, such as the massacre in Haditha in 2005, but instead unearths a pattern of human rights abuses. "It's not individual atrocity," Specialist Garett Reppenhagen, a sniper from the 263rd Armour Battalion, said. "It's the fact that the entire war is an atrocity."
A number of the troops have returned home bearing mental and physical scars from fighting a war in an environment in which the insurgents are supported by the population. Many of those interviewed have come to oppose the US military presence in Iraq, joining the groundswell of public opinion across the US that views the war as futile.
[Read the whole article, here]
Read the story below.
An innocent illustration for a children's book is deemed unacceptable in the USA.
But to show scenes of war and distruction, to go to church and see paintings of naked men tortured and flogged and crucified, to even hear gory and morbid details of torments inflicted on "saints", to be exposed for hours to the vulgarity and superficiality of TV shows, quizzes, ads and so forth is Ok in the USA....
Thousand of years of Judeo-Christian obsession with sex and sin drive to levels of absurdity, fertile ground for ignorance and dissociation.
That's the same country where books like James Joyce's Ulysses or Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn have been banned in the past (and are sometime still challenged).
That's the same country where many pious parents would gladly see their children read the Bible instead of a science book, to learn how the world began.
From The Independent:
Author's nude drawings too hot for US publisher
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
Published: 13 July 2007
One of Germany's best-selling children's authors is embroiled in an extraordinary transatlantic row about nudity after a US publisher refused to accept one of her books because it contained naive sketches of an art gallery with works depicting naked bodies.
Rotraut Susanne Berner's illustrated "Wimmel" books about the everyday lives of adults and children have won international acclaim and are best-sellers in 13 countries from Japan to the Faroe Islands.
But the 59-year-old author said her American publisher had refused to accept her latest book for US distribution because it contained elements deemed potentially offensive, including drawings of people naked or smoking. Berner said her US publisher, Boyds Mills Press, had objected in particular to one of her illustrations which showed adults and children in an art gallery where the portrait of a naked woman was on show together with a seven millimetre high sculpture of a naked man exhibiting a barely discernible penis.
She said Boyds Mills Press had informed her that she could either agree to have the offending images removed or the book would be withdrawn. "This was a joke," the author said yesterday. "The man's penis is about half a millimetre in length and the naked woman is clearly part of a work of art and not a real person," she added.
[Read the whole article here]Thursday, July 12, 2007
Thomas Jefferson
"Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear."
Thomas Jefferson
"The clergy, by getting themselves established by law and ingrafted into the machine of government, have been a very formidable engine against the civil and religious rights of man."
Thomas Jefferson, to Jeremiah Moor, 1800
"The Christian priesthood, finding the doctrines of Christ leveled to every understanding, and too plain to need explanation, saw, in the mysticism of Plato, materials with which they might build up an artificial system which might, from its indistinctness, admit everlasting controversy, give employment for their order, and introduce it to profit, power and pre-eminence."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, July 5, 1814, Lester Cappon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (1959) p. 433
"Ridicule is the only weapon which can be used against unintelligible propositions. Ideas must be distinct before reason can act upon them; and no man ever had a distinct idea of the trinity. It is the mere Abracadabra of the mountebanks calling themselves the priests of Jesus."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Adrian Van der Kemp July 30, 1816
"On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Archibald Carey, 1816
"To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise ... without plunging into the fathomless abyss of dreams and phantasms. I am satisfied, and sufficiently occupied with the things which are, without tormenting or troubling myself about those which may indeed be, but of which I have no evidence."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams, August 15, 1820
Thomas Paine
"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church."
Thomas Paine
"It is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe. It is impossible to calculate the moral mischief, if I may so express it, that mental lying has produced in society. When man has so far corrupted and prostituted the chastity of his mind, as to subscribe his professional belief to things he does not believe, he has prepared himself for the commission of every other crime."
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
"Priests and conjurors are of the same trade."
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
"Whenever we read the obscene stories, the voluptuous debaucheries, the cruel and tortuous executions, the unrelenting vindictiveness with which more than half the Bible is filled, it would be more consistant that we call it the word of a demon than the word of God. It is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it, as I detest everything that is cruel."
Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason
James Madison
"Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of religion, have had a contrary operation. During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What has been its fruits? More or less, in all places, pride and indolence in the clergy; ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution."
James Madison
"Ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption, all of which facilitate the execution of mischievous projects."
James Madison, letter to William Bradford, Jr., Jauary 1774
"What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not."
James Madison
Religious upbringing is child abuse
by Joe London
Why should the eyes and the heart of children be exposed (and thus be violated) by the turpitude and twisted esthetics of suffering of Christianity?
Why should children be indoctrinated since birth, with a vision of guilt, "original sin", self-denial, flogging and self-flogging, blood, torture, crucifictions?
Why should they be forced to watch the theatrical shows of gloomy black-gowned individuals, with their grimaces of phony and self-indulgent piety, their falsettos, their muliebrile and vain display of vestments and gold, their tribalistic and literally cannibalistic rituals? (the Catholics call their form of cannibalism "transubstantiation").
Why should they be induced to be diffident towards their body and corporeal joys and see sin in them?
Why should they forcedly become familiar with a vision by which, always, free inquiry is constrained in the limits of unquestionable dogmas - dispensed of any evidence whatsoever - established by unquestionable, if arbitrary, authorities. Why this training to be mentally passive, docile and servile?
Why should they, children, be exposed to funereal, guilt-making, sex starved, black-gowned individuals (Catholic priests) who are the farthest one can imagine from sound, balanced, wholesome and mature models for children?
(And why should they risk to be exposed to even simple glances of priests, imbued with a longing for a fullness of life they do not have, expressing a sickening languishing, manipulative, and a peculiar mix of weakness, vanity, vileness and duplicity?)
* * *
Instead, let children be exposed to the most different forms of art, read the greatest books of the world, listen to the myriads of sounds and music from all over the world.... French, Italian, German, Russian, Chinese, African, Japanese etc. etc. .... The world is vast.....
Let them travel (with you at first) as much as possible, see new places, realise how each culture has its own bulk of different traditions and religions and how, predictably, each claimed "perfect" belief always turns out to be the same as that of the country where one was born, or that of the parents.
Let them realise how what is inherited is a mix of truth and falsities, and how important it is to question and inquire, in order to discern between the two.
Let their mind freely exercise itself, so that they will not stagnate in vile mental passivity, ignorance, prejudice and superstition.
Let them understand that a truth is not made by authority, but by reasonability and evidence.
Let them build their mind and body, freely, with no constraints. Let them express themselves.
Be a model by being, in the first place, wholesome, true to yourself and to others, courageous, freely questioning, independent from past visions, curious about reality, and searching answers that do not humiliate your reason, and thus yourself.
If you do so, the "spirit" of your children will grow so much more than it would if exposed to priests, pastors and religions with their fabrications and dogmas, and pernicious vicinity.
They will be free, sound, mature, proud. Able to appreciate the world and its joys.
And you, parent, will have done the best that you could have ever done for them.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Bush jokes. Crowd laughs. Girl cries.
A question for President Bush on immigration rose up like a ghost from the grave this afternoon in Ohio.
Only the questioner was a 13-year old blonde-headed girl, Jessica Hackerd, from Brecksville, Ohio, who immediately broke into tears after making her inquiry.
"Mr. President, I know immigration has been a big problem in the U.S. And what is your next step with the immigration bill?" Jessica asked Mr. Bush, during a question and answer period after a speech Mr. Bush gave to a Cleveland business group.
Mr. Bush's sarcastic reply -- a wry "yeah, thanks" -- drew laughter from the crowd of 400. But the attention caused young Jessica, who characterized herself in an interview afterward as very shy, to immediately tear up.
"No, it's a great question. No, I appreciate that," Mr. Bush said, as he saw Jessica's reaction.
Jessica, in the interview, said that she was crying because she was so nervous.
But when the president's sarcastic answer was mentioned, she said, "I heard that too." [...]
[Read more here]
Had the elections been imminent, and he electable, Bush would have grabbed the opportunity to put on a compassionate face next to the girl, for a nice staged photography to impress the voters.
But, thanks to the American Constitution, twice is enough (though half term would have been enough, really, or even days) ...
But give Bush a break! No actor can be expected to be at his best the whole time, especially if the script is loose.
Besides, he has the right to freely express his REAL careless and CALLOUS nature sometime, does he not?
And consider how hard it must be to try to sound pious and concerned for the well-being of everybody and not the usual rich mates!
Also, why should he waste his "beautiful mind", as his mother would put it, to reply seriously to a young citizen?
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins (choose the new paperback edition)
God Is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
These should become text books in school, to perhaps attempt to amend that particular form of child abuse that commonly goes by the name of "religious upbringing".
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Christopher Hitchens: Religion Poisons Everything
Posted on Jun 6, 2007
By Jon Wiener
In his latest book, “God Is Not Great,” Christopher Hitchens makes the case against religion and for “free inquiry and open-mindedness.” Hitchens, of course, is a contributing editor to Vanity Fair, a visiting professor of liberal studies at the New School, and author of many books. He spoke recently with Truthdig’s Jon Wiener.
Jon Wiener: You show in your book how many horrible things men have done because of religion. In Belfast, Beirut, Bombay, Belgrade and Baghdad, men kill other men, and say God told them to do it. But why blame God for the bad things that men do?
Christopher Hitchens: I don’t blame God. I blame religion. I don’t believe there is such a thing as God. Religion makes people do wicked things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. It doesn’t make them behave better—it makes them behave worse. You couldn’t get people to hack away at the genitals of their newborn children if they didn’t think there was a religious obligation to do so. The licenses for genocide, slavery, racism, are all right there in the holy text.
Wiener: Yes, the Old Testament is full of these horrors. But it also contains the Ten Commandments, prohibiting killing, stealing, adultery, and lying—isn’t this a good thing?
Hitchens: No. it’s not. Because these are prefaced by a series of injunctions to fear a permanent, unalterable dictatorship. The first three commandments say “just realize who’s boss.” Let’s assume the story of Moses is true, even though archaeologists have utterly discredited it. Do our Jewish ancestors have to put up with the insult from us at this late stage that, until they got to Sinai, they thought murder and theft and perjury were OK? Of course not. There would have been no such people if they thought that. There has never been a society or civilization that did warrant those things. And you don’t need divine urging to see that they’re wrong yourself.
[Read the whole interview on Truthdig]
"Hope and fear is the external manifestation
of the internal desires and paranoia
that are adrift in America"
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
Church split feared as Pope backs return of 'anti-Semitic' Latin Mass
By Ian Herbert
Published: 30 June 2007
A plan by the Pope to authorise the widespread return of the controversial Latin Mass, despite concerns that parts of it are anti-Semitic, has provoked a backlash among senior clergy in Britain and threatens to divide the Catholic Church worldwide. The 16th-century Tridentine Mass - which includes references to "perfidious" Jews - was abandoned in 1969 and replaced with liturgy in local languages, to make worship more accessible to the bulk of churchgoers. But the Pope announced on Thursday that a long-awaited document liberalising the use of the Mass, which some clergy fear will also limit the Church's dialogue with Jews and Muslims, will be released next week. [...]
[Read the whole article here]
COMMENT:
It appears that Mr. Joseph Alois Ratzinger, also known as Benedict XVI, has a quite peculiar idea of interreligious dialogue.
Some of his remarks:
On other faiths in general: other faiths are "lesser searches" for the Truth ("Dominus Jesus", 2000)
On Buddhism (1997, interview with French magazine L'Express): It's an "autoerotic spirituality"
Not to mention other remarks, infelicitous given Ratzinger position of leader of the Catholic Church, on other faiths.
Now, it seems that during masses in Latin, the so-called Tridentine Latin Mass, anxiously supported by Ratzinger and by many liturgy-obsessed clerics (who do not care if their archaic show will be absolutely obscure to most people), the pious participants will hear expressions like "perfidious", referred to Jews, that are not particularly pleasant.
But given the arrogant presumption that Catholicism and other religions have of possessing the unique, unquestionable truth, how to be surprised of such expressions?
The Roman Catholic Church, an institution of contemporary pharisees, keeps missing opportunities to grow out of its self-indulgent hypocrisy and arrogance and keeps spreading tribal (and inconsistent) views, unfortunately blind to the consequences: conflicts, intolerance, violence, mental passivity.
