I think today will be about religion, for that’s most of the articles I have.
If there’s a religion that takes the silver medal in the “I’m Offended” category after Islam, it’s Catholicism. Who is a bigger religious crybaby than Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, a man who had a public tantrum when the Empire State Building refused to switch on blue and white lights in honor of Mother Teresa?
And so a bunch of what I presume are Catholics, or at least Christians, are upset at my comparison of ISIS with the Inquisition in my New Republic piece, which was in fact called “If ISIS Is Not Islamic, then the Inquisition Was Not Catholic.” Oy, to compare ISIS with Catholics! How dare I do that?
But of course I was not comparing the violence of those faiths, but making the point that faiths that can do bad things aren’t necessarily faiths that are “false.” Here’s what I said about Catholicism:
Well, if ISIS is not Islamic, then the Inquisition was not Catholic. The fact is that there are no defensible criteria for whether a faith is “true,” since all faiths are man-made and accrete doctrine—said to come from God, but itself man-made—that becomes integral to those faiths.
. . . ISIS has an extreme and fundamentalist interpretation of Muslim doctrine. But in exactly the same way, dogma about the immorality of abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, and divorce have become part of Catholicism. They are theological interpretations of scripture that appeal to some people’s sense of morality. Others disagree. Whose faith is “truer”?
That’s it. The article was almost entirely about the cowardice of branding ISIS as “not a true form of Islam.” Catholicism was just a comparison, though I still see Catholicism as, among all widespread faiths, the most dangerous, misguided, and harmful—next to Islam.
But what I said was enough to make the front pages at a site called NewsBusters, which a reader described to me as “a nasty, conservative, right-wing, cry-baby website.’ And indeed it was. No matter that I was going after Islam: if you bruise Catholic sentiments in the process, they get all up in your face. And, in fact, the article, by one Tom Johnson (!), singled out the quotes above. But what is really funny are the readers’ comments:
Here are some of them (there are some supportive ones, too). I love this first string of comments:
LOL! I made a bogus comparison—the Inquisition didn’t behead people! CrankyHuman hasn’t read the Old Testament, either. Don’t the Christians know their Scripture?
Of course men are the ultimate problem, as they are with all human-created institutions that do harm. But if they hadn’t invented relgiion, we’d be better off. And get this: ATHEISM TEACHES IT IS OKAY TO KILL BABIES. I weep for my country. And where is Massimo Pigliucci when we need him to dissect that last syllogism?
Some comments were supportive:
Three supportive comments in a row!
Here’s The Argument from Muslima:
And the argument from Atheist Regimes. Has this person even read Marx and Engels? I think he means the regimes of Lenin and Stalin:
And, of course, there’s the inevitable defense of irrationality: I believe because it is absurd.
The Argument from the Printing Press!:
There wouid be no prnted books without religion! We’d still have scribes! And no buildings! I love the final sentence which says it’s useless to criticize irrationality because it won’t make anyone more rational. I wonder how women, blacks, and gays made progress on the path to equality?
Finally, Missing the Point:
I’m not sure what the guy means by the first sentence; perhaps he (or she) meant that that immorality is inherent in Catholicism. I won’t argue that point, because it’s dreadful either way.
Does this bother me? Not a bit. It’s hilarious! If you anger such people, you know you’re on the side of the angels (well, metaphorically speaking).
But what is distressing is that the U.S. (not so much Europe) is festering with these people, who worship a God for which there is no evidence. In response to “panzerakc,” what would be missing from the world without religion would be a huge dollop of the divisiveness—an absence of the doctrines that separate human from human, and still lead them to kill each other.
Crybaby-website – I like that! 🙂
If that is all of the intelligence available today, then we shouldn’t wonder, should we?
Yeah, they’re so easily offended. You’d think if you have absolute truth, and God on your side, and exclusive access to heaven and all that, you could have a thicker skin when somebody says something you don’t like.
Of all the religious believers who I have encountered Catholics regardless if they are liberal or conservative are the most concerned about ABSOLUTE GOOD, so concerned that they are aware that the soles (as they don’t have any souls) of their shoes are smeared with doodoo which they are tracking all over the place. 🙂
That should be “they are Not aware that the soles…”
The readers’ comments are so frustrating. Do they really go through life believing these things and why are they so nasty?
I think they are actually nasty but their need to interact in society prevents them from behaving this way outwardly. Once they are free from the gaze of others, they can let loose under a pseudonym.
Yeah I think that observation is spot on. At least that’s my excuse 😉
They are nasty because they’re frightened. They fear the complete breakdown of society if people stop believing what they’re told.
You’ll never expect the Spanish inquisition….sorry I mean congregation for the doctrine of the faith!
Our weapon is surprise and fear…bugger.. I mean our weapon is whining and misrepresentation…. can we start again
When I was a child in a Catholic grade school, I was told, in no uncertain terms, that I was not a Christian, but a Catholic. Only hell-bound Protestant heretics called themselves “Christians”.
Interesting. If only Ian Paisley had lived long enough to read that.
Jesus – famous for rebelling against a corrupt and self-serving priestly hierarchy
The Catholic church – a corrupt and self-serving priestly hierarchy
That’s funny – Catholics I grew up with were surprised that Protestants were Christians as they were brought up to believe that only Catholics were Christians.
I’ve even heard some Catholics say when asked “Are you Christian?”: “No I’m Catholic.”
I heard from Protestants that Catholics weren’t Christians…
cue that long joke about the Upper Missouri Baptist True Faith Schism Church of 1892…
I was raised a Catholic, and we were always offended when Protestants said “Christians and Catholics” meaning “Protestants and Catholics.” I didn’t attend a Catholic school though, so I don’t know what they taught.
For Catholics, the definition of the ‘true’ faith is outlined in the catechism. The current catechism is explicitly supportive of capital punishment and also includes clauses like 2266:
The State’s effort to contain the spread of behaviors injurious to human rights and the fundamental rules of civil coexistence corresponds to the requirement of watching over the common good. Legitimate public authority has the right and duty to inflict penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. the primary scope of the penalty is to redress the disorder caused by the offense. When his punishment is voluntarily accepted by the offender, it takes on the value of expiation. Moreover, punishment, in addition to preserving public order and the safety of persons, has a medicinal scope: as far as possible it should contribute to the correction of the offender.
Punishments that are medicinal in nature and take on the value of expiation are exactly how capital punishment is justified today and how the inquisition justified the torture and murder of heretics.
I think you’re absolutely right to draw attention to the absurdity of Muslims denying their relationship to ISIS. Other than the Inquisition another example you could have used is the Crusades. Suggest they had nothing to do with the Catholic Church but were rather expressions of political and social unrest in Western Europe. This would be particularly irritating to Muslims because they constantly seem to bring up the Crusades as an example of their victimhood at the hands of Christians. Sorry Muslims, time to wake up and smell the coffee, either your religion has to fundamentally change, or these acts of savagery will continue.
Maybe Christians need to start complaining about the moslem invasion of syria, the moslem invasion of egypt, the moslem invasion of north africa, the moslem invasion of spain, the moslem invasion of sicily, the moslem invasion of asia minor and the moslem invasion of the balkans.
I would love to hear more Muslims deny their affinity to ISIS. What I hear from that quarter is either support or silence, and I hope I am generally wrong about what I hear.
The only claims that ISIS is not Islamic that I hear are coming from the western countries.
Sometimes internet comment threads make me wish I was being sedated.
If atheists sound condescending it’s only because there are times when the American public’s reaction being to a truly rational atheist perspective makes atheists feels like we’re shouting Yeats at the animals at the zoo.
The line about the catholic faith being as irrational as a mother saving her child is self-serving horseshit, even by the mushy standards of religious apologism. Maternal instincts are about as natural as it gets, faith is the ultimate subjugation of nature to superstition. Those two phenomenon are entirely unrelated.
CATEGORY ERROR ALERT! CATEGORY ERROR ALERT! Please return to your ontological stations for further analysis.
Seriously, this is probably one of the most common way religion is not only defended, but supported in the minds of the believers themselves. Confuse the factual claim that “God exists” with values and virtues like self-sacrifice, compassion, the appreciation of beauty, and so on and so forth. This is a monumental category error. Even if God exists and is the very essence of love, it’s still not supposed to be an emotion or an abstraction or a taste or a commitment to stay firm and true. Learn to classify.
It’s like conflating the Loch Ness Monster with the desire to protect endangered species. Not only does the hypothesis gather unearned merit — but look what happens to the critics and nonbelievers, who now apparently don’t want to protect endangered species. Therefore they refuse to believe out of spite.
And in what world is it “irrational” to try to save the life of your child or get chills when you hear music? Either they’re confusing IRRational with NONrational — or else they’re sneaking in dubious hidden goals (Rational rule: always do whatever you can to survive no matter what) — or they’ve fallen victims to the Mr. Spock School of Rationality (“Captain, I fail to see why a performance of music should effect me emotionally.”)
Btw I think “hydrodynDM” was being sarcastic and is on your side.
Exodus 21:17
“Whoever curses his father or his mother shall be put to death.”
I wonder what Catholics think of this? Would it he rational or irrational to follow this prescription from the bible?
Well of course it depends what you mean by “curses”. And “put to death” is really just a metaphor for being expelled from the bosom of the family until such time as you repent.
Simple stuff this theology if you put your mind to it- and still allows time for a real job
“Well of course it depends on what you mean by ‘curses.'”
Don’t forget–in days of yore, “cursing” someone didn’t mean saying “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on,” it meant saying something like “May your left ear rot off and fall into your right pocket.” Putting a curse on someone was a form of witchcraft and was taken seriously.
I had a precisely parallel misunderstanding to Jerry’s. I said that you don’t have to read the Qu’ran in order to criticise Islam. Got a lot of flak for that, on Twitter. So I used an analogy, which I thought would clinch the point: “You don’t have to read Mein Kampf in order to criticise Nazism.”
Then the storm broke. Now Dawkins is calling Muslims Nazis. How dare you say Islam is as bad as Nazism? etcetera etnauseam.
Fifty percent of the population is of below average intelligence and, since Twitter has no editorial filtering, stupidity can appear to be amplified. I find it helpful, when reading anything on the Internet, to ask myself one question: “Would this EVER have got past even the most slovenly newspaper editor? If the answer is clearly no, why am I bothering to read it?”
I wonder if “You don’t have to read Karl Marx to criticize Communism” would have passed muster. It’s the same point.
What’s particularly frustrating in the case of religion is that it’s perfectly likely that a philosophy can be misinterpreted by many of its adherents, human nature being what it is. But if the philosophy isn’t really philosophy but the Word of God handed down to humanity so that all those who are sincere in belief may read and understand, then such massive misinterpretations on the part of very sincere followers makes no sense. Surely God could and would have been clearer.
What!? Now you’re saying Muslims are COMMUNISTS!! And they eat babies and kill for atheism! 🙂
Strictly its only true that 50% of people are of below average intelligence if by “average” you mean the median.
If by “average” you mean the mean, then it may not be true depending on whether the distribution is symmetrical (so that median equals mean) or not.
Of course in this case it probably is symmetrical, so you’re probably right anyway.
I’ll get my coat.
Put down the calculator and back away from the distribution. There you go, just back away. 🙂
I’ve been teaching Introductory Statistics too long haven’t I?
Gauss knows, it’s a pretty standard deviation. À la mode, one might say…
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PS. Are species distributions always binomial?
Talk like that can be poisson!
Sadly, I think some people just want to be outraged. Once they are in outrage mode, they get some sort of rush and if circumstances change to nullify the outrage, to keep the rush going, they desperately look around for something else to be outraged about.
See the recent David Brin novel Existence, which features a character who is (literally) addicted to self-righteousness.
Speaking of which, this is quite interesting, it came about about a year ago:
The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom (by Candida Moss)
I have read this book and I support your recommendation, it is an interesting book. The ongoing tendency of Christians to invent persecution makes it more than simply history.
You have unfairly attacked hydrodynDM – he seems to be on your side.
Yes, you may be wrong, so given the ambiguity, I’ll fix it. Thanks!
I agree. I read that as “if they chose to criticize JC for talking non-science subjects then everyone other than scientists must keep quiet about evolution.”
How much traction do moderate Catholics believe their religious view-point would have gotten had it been conveyed to the Spanish Inquisition?
Does anyone doubt the lack of traction that the moderate Muslim view-point gets within ISIS?
The moderates believe their interpretation of religion is right. However, the extremists believe their interpretation of the religion is right. Each would seek to convert the other.
Unfortunately religions are NOT self-correcting.
Yeah, just once I’d like to hear a sincere believer say “I’m arrogantly twisting and distorting God in order to follow my own agenda — but those other folks are simply recognizing and accepting God in meek and humble fashion.”
But no — it’s always the other way around. And they usually bring it out with such flair, too, as if — ta da! — this is the explanation you were hoping for and never even considered, atheist. You never thought of this one.
“Why are there so many strongly opposing theological and moral viewpoints between people who believe in God? Because some people like to make God in their own image, that’s why — and I am in the group which doesn’t. I’m a seeker.”
Ahaha, your second paragraph there gave me a good chuckle, Sastra. It rings so true!
I will have to upvote a few comments on this NewsBusters site. “Pf Wag” (first screenshot) nailed it!
Take sweet solace in the fact that none of your regular readers resort to this level of conspicuous puerility.
Is that sarcasm?
If one wishes to claim that ISIS is not based on ISLAMIC tenets, then those individuals should also claim the following views are not Christian and so are against the Christian faith:
1) Oppression of gays including prevention of gay marriage and promotion of overseas laws that allow jailing and murder of gays.
2) Prevention of early term abortion, especially in the case of dangerous situations such as ectopic pregnancy.
3) Prevention of physician assisted suicide.
4) Prevention of birth control.
And I forgetting anything? Christian denouncement of these alone will make the world a better place.
Jerry, any chance The New Republic might be interested in appending this new piece to the original one? Or maybe provide it in truncated form as an update or as an “Author Responds” kind of thing? I’d love to see that.
Sorry Panzer…, it’s an overstatement to say the press was invented to print Bibles. The first prototype was in China in the 1040s.
The better known Gutenberg press used the Bible as a kind of test case, but JG had actually done some printing of poetry on a smaller scale before he embarked on his Bible project. He also printed grammar textbooks, a theological dictionary and even……indulgences!!! JG simply knew that the Bible would be a best-seller, but to say religion gave birth to the printing press is a stretch.
My guess is that the printing press would have been adapted sooner without religion.
My guess is that religion served as a “driver” of the technology, providing a (tithe-subsidized) market for Gutenberg bibles. The church could have served the same function as the military, NASA, etc. does today in tech transfer. But I don’t know.
Ah, that does sound more likely. OK, thank you.
I’m willing to bet that if the church knew what was coming and how moveable type would influence it, Gutenberg would have been burned at the stake!
William Tyndale pretty much carried out that function instead
Printing indulgences, an early form of paper currency. Genius!
I think che Church regretted soon after having sponsored a device that allowed all people to read the bible… in their own language.
My understanding of the events is that Gutenberg in fact went broke and lost his printshop to his financier Johann Fust, precisely because the bible project was unprofitable.
One of the profitable lines was indeed indulgences, but also flyers and adverts for local merchants. So it would be more precise to say that capitalism invented the moveable type press, but even that’s not very accurate.
As far as the Asian moveable type presses, it would appear that they were not particularly effective due to the large numbers of characters in their languages. Moveable type is well suited to European languages with far fewer characters.
Re: “If there’s a religion that takes the silver medal in the “I’m Offended” category after Islam, it’s Catholicism.”
Yeah OK, but I’d rather deal with that than the aggressive tactics of Scientology.
The militant wing of Islam has BOTH the “I’m offended” tactics of some Roman Catholics AND the aggression of Scientology and the both very magnified.
And a lot of Catholics are offended by…Bill Donahue!!!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-obrien/post_747_b_694436.html
It’s quite terrifying, actually, how many Catholics will outright defend even the Inquisition and the Crusades. The Nazi comparisons really aren’t all that far off the mark.
b&
There is an ultra-right-wing Catholic publishing company called TAN books which does indeed publish books defending the Inquisition.
Or you get the defense like this “But that was the secular governments at the time, not the church …”
(We all know what’s wrong there, I trust.)
I love the capitalization of “Men”.
What about the socialization os Men. Or the privatization of Men?
I think the more immediately distressing issue is lack of reading comprehension skills; they clearly either don’t understand or don’t care what the comparisom is intended to convey.
Another distressing possibility is that they normally have reading comprehension skills, but any (negative) mention of their particular belief system causes them to de-engage the analytical parts of their brain* and go for a fully emotional response.
*Several years ago there was a study with chimps doing tasks to get (visible) bananas as a reward. The experimenters found that the chimps didn’t work as hard to solve the problem if the visible reward was small (one banana, or a bunch of fruit they liked less). The chimps would work harder at problem solving as bananas were addded to the pile…up to a certain point. When there were too many bananas, the chimps got impatient quickly and stopped working effectively at all after just a short period of time. These folks who get upset at a mention of the Catholic role in the inquisition…we may have a ‘too many bananas’ problem here.
My religion doesn’t kill nearly as many people as some other religions: an example of “The Argument from Muslima”.
Oh Coyne, you’re very good.
That one’s a keeper!
I wholeheartedly agree with Jerry that the only religion worse than Catholicism is Islam.
Let’s play what’s in it for me:
True Catholic: Heaven
True Muslim: Heaven
Catholics and Muslims may not believe the same things, but they will believe anything to get what they desire. Catholics and Muslims are epistemologically compatible. This is one of the self-inflicted burdens Catholics must bear and they appear to do it so poorly.
I meant to say ‘deal with it so poorly’, in every sense, but especially in the introspective-Jungian manner, i.e., they hate looking inside themselves and ideas.
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Oh Christ these people hurts me head. So I’m just going to throw out some humor to humor me and anyone else who needs some humor.
Brian: There’s no pleasing some people.
Ex-Leper: That’s just what Jesus said, sir.
Same tired old claims. I have listened to a lot of great music, none inspired by religion.
I have seen great architectural and engineering wonders, with no religious connotation.
I have read a lot of books, not inspired by religion.
I seen great paintings, devoid of religious content.
There are secular attempts around the world to help the needy. Doctors without borders.
The printing press, like many things, time had come. If not for the bible then it would have been for pamphlets or whatever.
What part does religion play in mind numbing poverty in parts of the world?
“No books to read as the printing press was invented to print bibles.” Leaving aside the historical accuracy of this I suppose we might argue equally validly that if we had more religion we would not have the internet as it was invented to distribute porn.
Same thing with home video.
Tsk tsk, Jerry. How dare you bring up the Inquisition? If you think it happened because of Catholics or that Catholics involved in it were anything but pious, you have a grave misunderstanding of history.
On a more serious note, I’m not sure Islam has Catholicism beat in any category, “playing the victim” included.. Consider the size, money, centralized power and organization the Church has versus the fragmented decentralized organization that Islam has. It is really only during the last few decades that Islam has made any advances in overtaking Catholicism as the most vile religion. We only need to go back to the lack of action during the Holocaust (an event equivalent to 2000 September 11ths) to find the Church contributing to death on a global scale. Add to that the centuries long knowledge of priestly abuse and Catholicism has some serious nastiness going for it. We needn’t even go back to Galileo, Bruno, the Index Liborum Prohibitorum, the witch burnings, indulgences, the Borgia Popes: oh hell, I’m tired already and we’re only 25% of the way back through Church history.
I’m not saying it is a slam dunk for Catholicism, but it definitely gives Islam a run for the money in the worst religion contest. On a personal note I’ve heard the word grave as an adjective more times than is necessary for one lifetime. I’m sure other people here raised in a Catholic household can relate.
At least with Catholics, we have someone to take things up with. Who do we go to to complain about Islam?
It isn’t as if complaining to the Vatican, with its claims to a stranglehold on eternal, unchanging truth, accomplishes a whole lot. It would make for one hell of a 13th century style schism were Pope Francis to start implementing changes based on secular suggestions though.
Well no, but we know who to blame and we know who can stop a lot of unnecessary misery in the world.
Tsk tsk, Jerry. How dare you bring up the Inquisition? If you think it happened because of Catholics or that Catholics involved in it were anything but pious, you have a grave misunderstanding of history.
On a more serious note, I’m not sure Islam has Catholicism beat in any category, “playing the victim” included.. Consider the size, money, centralized power and organization the Church has versus the fragmented decentralized organization that Islam has. It is really only during the last few decades that Islam has made any advances in overtaking Catholicism as the most vile religion. We only need to go back to the lack of action during the Holocaust (an event equivalent to 2000 September 11ths) to find the Church contributing to death on a global scale. Add to that the centuries long knowledge of priestly abuse and Catholicism has some serious nastiness going for it. We needn’t even go back to Galileo, Bruno, the Index Liborum Prohibitorum, the witch burnings, indulgences, the Borgia Popes: oh hell, I’m tired already and we’re only 25% of the way back through Church history.
I’m not saying it is a slam dunk for Catholicism, but it definitely gives Islam a run for the money in the worst religion contest. On a personal note I’ve heard the word grave as an adjective more times than is necessary for one lifetime. I’m sure other people here raised in a Catholic household can relate.
You can say that again.
Is there an echo in here?
Yes, because this is the portrait gallery, Nick. It’s the safest room in the house.
That. 🙂
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@blondethinker:
Is the pope beheading people?
No, he’s eating their brains.
It is very hard for people to believe that they are part of a “religion” when they are religious – people have some cognitive dissonance with it they think they are not religious or since their religion is true it is something other than a religion.. (a reality?) and everyone else has a religion or a non reality or a separate sphere of truth. Just like I believe “my wife does not look fat in this dress” when she may be a littoral manatee of gravitational proportions I still think she is wonderful. No its not the same but why would anyone who does not like something like something? People who like to kill people and make them suffer like that sort of thing. It sounds relative and maybe a cousin to an axe murdering sex fiend to be a pope but regular people don’t see it that way. They see other things… that .. I dont see…
What stopped the Christians from hunting heretics, burning witches and books, going on Crusades of killing and acting like savages? It was the rise of secular humanism, atheism, skepticism and deism in the West that made the Christians behave civilized for the for the first time in history just a few centuries ago. When these kinds of ideologies find their way to the Middle East, we now see women getting in cars and driving which is against the law, Islam will lose its grip in the same way the evil religion of Christianity has become a moribund and impotent religion. When a religion can no longer silence its critics with violence it loses most of its power and control over people. I’m quite sure a large number of Christians are just jealous that the Muslims can still murder their critics and the Christians no longer can. Oh it’s true. It’s damn true!
The one poster who mentioned the “murderous writings of Karl Marx” was right. I tried reading Das Kapital and damn near died of boredom!
Then you’ll certainly appreciate this sketch: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDJeTnLKLEI)
But you are in good company: He sent a copy to Charles Darwin, who bravely tried but didn’t get past the first 100 pages or so [1]. And Darwin certainly was used to heavy reading!
[1] The book is still at Down House, and I think they inferred it from Darwin’s annotations, which stop after that mark.
Sometimes it just makes one want to give up hope that this world’s ever going to “come to its senses”- a babble passage that says, “He who increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow” is true in the sense that, the more you learn about things, the more you realize just how screwed up this world and most of the people in it, are!