Terry Firma ← Moral Compass ← Page 32

Easter Joy: Beavis and Headbutt in Church Brawl

Terry Firma

Apr

4

2013

A church on Easter Sunday — what better place and time to start beating and headbutting your fellow man?

During church services on a day that celebrates the resurrection of Jesus Christ, two men in a Kendall Park (NJ) church clearly missed the message about forgiveness. According to South Brunswick Police, a physical altercation occurred towards the end of mass on Easter Sunday at St. Augustine’s of Canterbury Church.

Police said the incident involved two men, both in their 40’s, who knew each other prior to attending the church services.

Shortly before 1 p.m.,

…one of the individuals was standing in line for Communion when the other man came up behind him, according to police. A quick physical altercation then occurred, with one man headbutting the other.

One of the brawlers suffered a cut lip, the other got off with a bruise.

[image via worldsbestever]

Saudi Court May Order Man’s Spinal Cord Severed

Terry Firma

Apr

4

2013

From YNet, with thanks to BangsNaughtyBits for the tip:

A Saudi court has ruled that a man who paralyzed his best friend should now himself be crippled in an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ punishment, the Saudi Gazette reported this week.

Ali Al-Khawahir has been in prison since stabbing his friend in the backbone 10 years ago, when he was only 14 years old. According to the Saudi Gazette, a court has ruled that the accused should now be “fully paralyzed” unless he pays the compensation demanded by the victim. Originally the victim asked for two million Saudi riyals ($448,500), but this sum has since been reduced to one million Saudi Riyals ($225,500), according to Mail Online.

It is not clear how the punishment would be carried out. However it has been speculated that the victim’s spinal cord would be severed.

The news comes one year after the Saudis began thinking about abolishing beheadings — not because they think there’s anything wrong with beheadings, you dig, but because the country is suffering from a worrisome lack of qualified swordsmen.

The oil-soaked desert kingdom beheads about 70-80 people every year. The highest-profile Saudi head removal in recent years involved a Sri Lankan maid, Rizana Nafeek, who received the death penalty for smothering a Saudi baby in her care in 2005. She maintained her innocence and explained that the infant choked to death. Early last year, despite international protests, the Saudis executed her anyway.

According to the International Business Times (IBT), Nafeek’s plight

…refocused the spotlight on the increase in cases of abuse of migrant workers, which is a disturbing phenomenon In Saudi Arabia and across the Gulf. Women in often wealthy households are confined to the family home for much of their lives, with complete authority over foreign staff, who are seldom literate and paid little. Maids often have their passports confiscated by their employers, and are treated as indentured labour.

If the domestic workers get in any kind of trouble with the law, justified or not, their legal challenges can be insurmountable. IBT claimed last year that around 50 foreign maids are on death row in Saudi Arabia. If henchmen with broadswords continue to be scarce, the inmates will probably face a firing squad instead.

If it were me, I might prefer that to being surgically paralyzed.

Do Saudi doctors swear a Hippocratic oath? Would severing a man’s spinal cord be in accordance with it? If not, the Saudi justice department could always hire Nazrul Islam, a young U.K. thug who used a knife on Cambridgeshire student Oliver Hemsley and turned him into a quadriplegic.

‘Where Do You Get Morals, If Not From Religion?’

Terry Firma

Apr

4

2013

It’s a frequently asked question when theists encounter an atheist: How can people tell right from wrong if they don’t believe in God?

I’m tempted to reprise Penn Jillette’s answer and leave it at that:

But here’s a nicer way of describing it (it’s going to take a few paragraphs though): We can’t really thrive and advance as individuals. There’s a reason most people don’t become hermits. We need others. Not just to procreate, but to collaborate with, for all kinds of practical purposes.

Thousands of years ago, in times predating today’s religions, we joined forces with others to build hunter-and-gatherer communities. If you weren’t a helpful part of such a group, you didn’t remain in good standing. You might’ve even been exiled. So there are clear reciprocal advantages to sharing, and to helping others, and to working/fishing/hunting together.

Those who violated the social contract would find themselves without food if food got scarce, and without care if they got wounded or sick. That’s pretty much the mother of all incentives to be good.

Being good, in that context, means don’t murder, don’t rape, don’t steal, don’t make others suffer needlessly, and don’t be a selfish pig; and do try to treat others as you would like to be treated. Those were the general rules and expectations in the millennia before Christianity, Islam, Judaism, et cetera; they’re still perfectly valid today.

I’ll add another observation, going from the sociological to the purely personal. Because I don’t believe in god(s), I have no confessor or savior to wash away my sins. If I fuck up, it’s on me. My misstep will haunt me. My guilt will gnaw at me. No shortcuts to (self-)forgiveness are available to me. I can’t go to church to pray and tell Jesus how sorry I am, and then walk out with both the pastor’s blessing and with the knowledge that Christ, who died for my sins, has already forgiven me.

No — I’m responsible for what I did.

That’s good, because it’s a very powerful preventative. As unlikely as it may sound to the religious, not believing in a god, for me, is what helps immensely to keep me on the straight and narrow. I think I might be a worse person if I could buy cosmic forgiveness for absolutely anything with just a few heartfelt prayers.

That doesn’t mean I think you are probably a bad person if you believe in God. Not at all. I’m just describing what works for me.

[cartoon via Freethinkers of East Texas]

Muslim Vandals Attack Dawkins Website

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

This is currently the front page of Richard Dawkins‘ website (Wednesday 10:30 EST.)

Islamist goons think they have the right to prevent others from speaking, even more so than other stripes of religious nannies.

As much as they say they abhor swine … ironically, to me, that’s exactly what these people are.

Bearded Woman Attacked For Crucifying Jesus

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

This happened in Brighton, England, last Sunday. From the Argus newspaper:

A beard-wearing woman was attacked as she crucified Jesus. The crime of Passion took place as the woman played a priest [named Caiaphas] during the open-air retelling of the Easter story.

Jeanie Civil’s attacker ripped her beard from her face and punched her during a performance of The Passion of Christ in Brighton on Easter Sunday. He yelled “Shame on you!” before Mrs Civil’s fellow cast members, dressed as soldiers, held him back.

The victim said she wondered if the man was an ardent Christian who disliked her character’s actions against the savior. “He might be an ardent Christian, or anti-Jewish,” she offered.

In the New Testament, Caiaphas is the Jewish high priest, appointed by Romans, who is thought to have organized the plan to kill Jesus.

[tip of the thorny crown to Dangerous Minds; image via The Argus]

Clergy Crime Roundup

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

All stories from the past 48 hours only.

• A former youth pastor in Alabama was sentenced to 10 years in prison in the sexual abuse of a child. [link]

• Another former pastor, also from Alabama, has been charged with sexual torture and abuse of an 8-year-old girl whose parents attended his church. [link]

• A Houston-area youth pastor has been sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to sexual assault of a child and online solicitation of a minor. [link]

• A New Mexico Catholic priest is accused of molesting a young boy in the late 1980s. [link]

• A Hindu priest in India allegedly sexually assaulted a girl suffering from smallpox. The girl had come to the temple to seek a holy man’s blessing that she hoped would cure the disease. [link]

• A former Catholic priest in Oregon was sentenced to over six years in prison on Monday after pleading guilty to multiple charges of sexual abuse on a 12-year-old boy. [link]

There’s more, much more, but that’s all I have time for right now.

[image via madmikesamerica]

What’s the Matter With Pennsylvania?

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

No disrespect intended to the people of Pennsylvania, but honestly: Since I started this blog, I’ve noticed that no state outdoes Pennsylvania in the number of news-reported sex attacks by clergy. What’s that about?

I don’t live anywhere near the Keystone State (sometimes called the Quaker State, take your pick), so it’s probably not a matter of Google reading my IP address and serving up search results that emphasize the state.

By the way, I have no known biases against Pennsylvania. I’ve traveled through it many a time, and feel neither exceedingly positive nor terribly negative about it.

I’m also not trying to suggest a link between religiosity and crime; if that were my goal, I’d try another state, because Pennsylvania is the tenth-least-religious state in the union, according to this 2008 Gallup poll.

My observation regarding sex crimes in Pennsylvania is entirely anecdotal, based on just two months of closely following news of religious crimes, so it may not translate into actual statistics. If there is a correlation, I doubt I’d be able to explain it, but I’m inviting anybody with a decent theory to chime in.

Priest Flees After Alleged Shrine Sex Attack

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

Father flees best:

A new priest-abuse lawsuit accuses church and local authorities of letting a Philadelphia-area priest flee to Poland during a stalled investigation. The lawsuit says the priest assaulted a woman last year while counseling her at a Roman Catholic shrine in Bucks County. The woman volunteered at Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown.

The Associated Press is not naming the accused priest because he could not be reached for comment. He belongs to the Pauline Fathers, a religious order at the shrine. A woman who answered the phone Wednesday said the Pauline supervisors were “in prayer” and not available for comment.

Rabbi, Do You Copy?

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

And here I thought that Thou shalt not steal was a revered commandment by Jews as as well as Christians. From Haaretz:

France’s Chief Rabbi Gilles Bernheim acknowledged that he plagiarized several parts of his latest book. Bernheim said Tuesday in a statement that parts of the 2011 book “Forty Jewish Meditations” were taken from other sources.

Loose translation of the headline: "We have lost our understanding of what it means to be moral."

Bernheim before the scandal (condemning gay marriage): “We have lost our understanding of what it means to be moral.” Thanks for that, Rabbi.

Even more disturbing may be that when confronted with his plagiarism, he lied about what he did — and smeared a dead man in doing so.

The affair started in early March when the Strass de la Philosophie blog revealed that a passage on hasidic exegesis from Bernheim’s work was almost identical to an interview of the philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard that appears in the 1996 book “Questioning Judaism” by Elisabeth Weber.

Soon after the disclosure, Bernheim said some of the meditations in his book were transcripts of lessons he gave in the 1980s while he was a chaplain for French Jewish students. He said the lessons were often recorded and that copies of his personal notes were distributed to the listeners, implying that Lyotard, who died in 1998, plagiarized him and not the opposite.

His version was contradicted by Weber, who interviewed Lyotard and specified that the philosopher answered her questions without a single note.

Bernheim still hasn’t come clean. While nominally accepting responsibility for the plagiarism in a “the bucks stops here” kind of way, he insists that he didn’t know about the pilfered passages in his book; he was hoodwinked by his “ghostwriter,” he claims. Reminds me of how copyright infringers on the web always claim that it’s the webmaster’s fault.

We will learn the truth, I think, especially now that the investigation is getting crowd-sourced following allegations that Bernheim has been at this for some time:

Jean-Noel Darde, a senior lecturer at Paris 8 University, suggested on his website that Bernheim also might have plagiarized books by other authors such as Elie Wiesel, Jean-Marie Domenach and Charles Dobzynski.

[image via la-croix.com]

One Hundred Ten Thousand Views…In One Day!

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

Two weeks ago, our page views shot up to 6,000 in a day, and we were excited.

Five days later, the number doubled to more than 12,000, and we were getting giddy.

And now we’re elated, because yesterday brought this gobsmacking six-figure milestone (thanks to Reddit and redditors’ more than 2,000 upvotes):

And it wasn’t all Reddit. Richard Dawkins also linked to Moral Compass from his website yesterday. Sweet.

The numbers could have been even higher if our servers had been able to keep up with demand. Unfortunately, as the traffic got heavy, Moral Compass got grindingly slow for a few hours in the evening. I imagine we tested people’s patience, and inadvertently chased some visitors away when they couldn’t get our pages to load in a timely fashion. Sorry about that. We’ll be looking into measures to keep the site quick and responsive.

There’s something you can do, too, if you wish. Actually, there are six things you can do. Pick and choose:

1. Tell others about Moral Compass.
2. Join and ‘like’ the Moral Compass page on Facebook (if that link doesn’t take you to the right place, search Facebook for “moralcompassmyfoot.”
3. Bookmark us in your browser(s).
4. Subscribe to our RSS feed (top right).
5. Subscribe to this blog by e-mail, so you’ll be notified of new posts as soon as they go live. Look for “Moral Compass by email” in the column on the right.
6. Find Twitter user MoralCompassWeb. Follow our Tweets, and don’t forget to say hi.

Also, feedback is always welcome.

Thanks again!

UPDATE: Today, we bought triple the previous bandwidth allotment. That should do nicely, but please feel free to try to prove us wrong!

N. Carolina Lawmakers Break the (Highest) Law

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

Does this look familiar to you?

The Establishment Clause part of the First Amendment might as well have been written in Serbo-Croatian, where North Carolina legislators are concerned. The highest law of the land is an apparent mystery to them. They’re equally non-plussed, I have to assume, by the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause.

So here’s what a group of neener-neener Christianist Representatives introduced in the North Carolina General Assembly on Monday. (I know Monday was Aprils Fool’s day, but if this was some kind of prank, no one told the local media, who are reporting on the measure more than a day later as if it’s real — and from what I can tell, it is.* See here, and here, and here.)

We’re talking about House Joint Resolution 494, otherwise known as the Rowan County Defense of Religion Act of 2013. The bill was filed by Representatives Carl Ford and Harry Warren. In total, eleven House Republicans signed on to sponsor the resolution.

The crux of it (read the whole one-page document here):

SECTION 1. The North Carolina General Assembly asserts that the Constitution of the United States of America does not prohibit states or their subsidiaries from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

SECTION 2. The North Carolina General Assembly does not recognize federal court rulings which prohibit and otherwise regulate the State of North Carolina, its public schools, or any political subdivisions of the State from making laws respecting an establishment of religion.

So what that does is to allow the state of North Carolina to declare an official religion. Oooooh, I wonder which one they’ll pick!

To put the judicially somewhat baffling move in perspective, the bill is the direct result of a federal lawsuit filed in March by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Rowan County Board of Commissioners. In that suit, the ACLU alleges that the board has illegally opened 97% of its meetings since 2007 with explicitly Christian prayers.

House Joint Resolution 494, then, is meant to give a big fat North Carolina middle finger to the ACLU and its commie Godless pansies who want to stick their city-slicking noses into the good old boys’ business.

Of course, 494 won’t go anywhere. The whole thing is patently, hilariously unconstitutional, and if the Assembly members live anywhere near the realm that I call reality, they know this. In effect, the bill is just a bit of absurdist political theater, performed by a faction of fundies who don’t mind beclowning themselves in an effort to win praise and re-election from their evangelical base.

Still, you have to wonder if these lawmakers would be so brazen as to declare their intent to break any other federal law on the books. Me, I look forward to future legislation in which they allow themselves to take bribes, rob banks, evade taxes, and beat up homos. Check back soon.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

* To make sure I wasn’t being punk’d, I called the newsroom of the Raleigh-based News & Observer, one of the two leading newspapers in North Carolina, and spoke to a reporter at the political desk. He confirmed that H.J.R. 494 is real — not an April Fool’s joke. I asked if the bill, which the Assembly referred to the Rules and Calendar Committee yesterday, would actually be scheduled for a floor vote at some point. His response: “I would be surprised, but then, I’ve been surprised by the Assembly many times.”

Anyone can check the current status of the bill here.

Connecticut’s High Priest

Terry Firma

Apr

3

2013

People had begun telling Father Kevin Wallin to stay away from methamphetamine. So he bought a fifteen-foot straw.

Heh-heh. But srsly:

A suspended Roman Catholic priest pleaded guilty Tuesday to a federal drug charge, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Connecticut announced. The Rev. Kevin Wallin, 61, of Waterbury, Connecticut, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute crystal methamphetamine. With the plea, he admitted that he received and distributed 1.7 kilograms of the drug, U.S. Attorney David B. Fein said in a statement.

Wallin was arrested January 3 after an investigation that involved wiretaps, confidential sources and an undercover officer, Fein’s announcement said. A search of Wallin’s apartment found meth, drug paraphernalia and drug packaging materials, said Thomas Carson, Fein’s spokesman. Wallin sold meth to the undercover officer six times between September and January, Fein said.

In addition to a great fondness for meth, the saintly Father Wallin had some seriously colorful sexual appetites and preferences. Previous Moral Compass post on the rascal here.

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