Time Discovers Faith’s Dark Side

In my lifetime, people of faith will probably always be allowed more manifestations of loopiness than non-believers.

If, as a secular American, I go around licking fenceposts every afternoon, and occasionally smash my forehead into one, it probably won’t be long until a kindly police officer takes me on a ride to the nearest mental hospital.

But if I claim that my behavior is my small congregation’s way of honoring Jesus’s sacrifice — a form of penitence that allows us to spiritually travel “nearer, my God, to thee” — chances are excellent that I will be left alone. I might even draw a bit of quiet admiration for my sefless devotional sacrifice.

That said, there seems to be an increasing awareness that not all forms of religiosity are healthy. “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) is a pathology that’s no longer easily dismissed; and even Time magazine, which can hardly be accused of being hostile to religion, now wishes to temper its zeal in spreading the notion that faith is necessarily a force for good.

Biblereader

Can Your Child Be Too Religious? Time asks — and with some equivocating, the answer the magazine gives is a clear yes.

Religion can be a source of comfort that improves well-being. But some kinds of religiosity could be a sign of deeper mental health issues. …

Your child’s devotion may be a great thing, but there are some kids whose religious observances require a deeper look. For these children, an overzealous practice of their family faith — or even another faith  — may be a sign of an underlying mental health issue or a coping mechanism for dealing with unaddressed trauma or stress. …

Some children suffer from scrupulosity, a form of OCD that involves a feeling of guilt and shame. Sufferers obsessively worry that they have committed blasphemy, been impure or otherwise sinned. They tend to focus on certain rules or rituals rather than the whole of their faith. They worry that God will never forgive them. And this can signal the onset of depression or anxiety, says John Duffy, a Chicago area clinical psychologist specializing in adolescents. “Kids who have made ‘mistakes’ with sex or drug use,” he says, “may have trouble forgiving themselves.”

Seems self-evident, but it’s nice to see the psychological downsides of faith acknowledged in a mainstream publication.

Such fastidiousness to religious practices may not seem so harmful, but extreme behavior such as delusions or hallucinations may be a sign of serious mental illness. Seeing and hearing things that are not there can be symptoms of manic-depressive, bipolar disorder, or early onset schizophrenia. But parents may be less attuned to such unhealthy behavior when it occurs under the guise of faith.

Whole story here.

[image via aclj.org]

Wicked Pisser: Pastor Pees in Buddhist Temple

Last August, a Protestant South Korean clergyman visited the Donghwa temple in Daegu — but hardly to pay his ecumenical respects.

The Reverend Seong made a beeline for a Buddhist shrine in the temple, where he used a marker to write insults on a portrait of Buddha and on various wall paintings. Then he unzipped, and urinated into the bowls and incense burners. Security cameras recorded Seong in the act.

pisser

The monks filed a police complaint the following day, submitting the surveillance footage as evidence. The reverend was arrested and made a full confession. He explained he had defaced the Buddhist temple in a fit of anger because its sacred texts are “filled with false words.”

Seong was ordained in 2005 and had been working as an assistant pastor at a nearby church.

Temple authorities say they repeatedly asked for an official apology from Seong’s church; they finally received one yesterday, seven months after the golden-shower incident.

[image via koreabang]

AA Still Asks, ‘Your Liver or Your Brain?’

If you have a serious drinking problem, you turn to AA, right? But what if you’re an agnostic or an atheist? Can you still climb those famous Twelve Steps if you don’t believe in God?

Six of the steps have strong religious connotations, to say the least:

2) (We) came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7) Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Quite the litany. Turn our will and lives over; admit the nature of our wrongs; remove our shortcomings and defects of character; pray for God’s will for us.

Sounds like a sect to me. A pretty brainwashy sect, at that.

vomit

So would you rather ruin your liver or your brain? Some choice.

[image via Roger Fields]

Buddhist Monks Lead Mobs to Violence

Dozens die in Myanmar thanks to Buddhist-Muslim violence.

Toll Rises as Sectarian Violence in Myanmar Spreads - NYTimes.com-1

More in the New York Times.

Peaceful Buddhists Burn Down Mosques

Yesterday, in Myanmar,

Two people, including a Buddhist monk, were killed and at least three mosques were destroyed after riots broke out [between Buddhists and Muslims] in a town in central Myanmar, police said. Around 200 people fought in the streets after an argument in a Muslim-owned gold shop turned violent in Meiktila on Wednesday. …

Myanmar

The unrest comes amid heightened concerns over Muslim-Buddhist relations in Myanmar, where communal conflict in the western state of Rakhine has left at least 180 people dead and more than 110,000 displaced since June 2012.

[image via Al Jazeera]

The World’s Tallest JPEG?

And to think, it could easily have been a thousand times taller. Still, pretty impressive (enlarge the picture by clicking on it after it loads).

Does Jesus Cause Crime?

If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many ostensible Christians among the prison population, one answer is that Jesus Saves. If no one forgives you for the terrible things you’ve done, He will.

Even the most godless of criminals will often turn (quasi-)devout behind bars. It’s perfectly understandable. For starters, religion gives prisoners something to do. It also lets them become part of a righteous tribe. And no doubt, prayer and Bible study look good in the eyes of the warden and the parole board.

But most of all, religion can wash away evildoers’ guilt, if they feel any, and offer them a shot at salvation.

Christians think of redemption as a feature of their faith. But what if it’s a bug?

Too far?

Too far?

I ask because a new study in the academic journal Theoretical Criminology suggests that, instead of causing offenders to repent of their sins, religious programs might actually encourage crime. Slate reported on the interesting research the other day.

The authors of the study surveyed “hardcore street offenders” in and around Atlanta, and tried to gauge the effect that religion may have on the offenders’ behavior. Of the 48 subjects (admittedly a small sample), 45 claimed to be religious, and the researchers found that those followers

…seemed to go out of their way to reconcile their belief in God with their serious predatory offending. They frequently employed elaborate and creative rationalizations in the process and actively exploit religious doctrine to justify their crimes.

It should come as no surprise that street hoodlums who cloak themselves in religion don’t have much of a grasp of their professed faith’s basics. Take, for example, an 18-year-old robber whose nom de crime is Que:

Que: I believe in God and the Bible and stuff. I believe in Christmas, and uh, you know the commitments and what not.
Interviewer: You mean the Commandments?
Que: Yeah that. I believe in that.
Interviewer: Can you name any of them?
Que: Uhhh … well, I don’t know … like don’t steal, and uh, don’t cheat and shit like that. Uhmm … I can’t remember the rest.

This lack of knowledge is often a deliberate (if possibly subconscious) mental construct, a simple psychological crutch. Ignorance is bliss. As one enforcer for a drug gang asserted,

God has to forgive everyone, even if they don’t believe in him.

He had committed several murders, and obviously felt better knowing that salvation was potentially just a few prayers away. In fact, he believed that he was due God’s forgiveness even without penance or prayer.

A 23-year-old robber called Young Stunna thought that the circumstances of his upbringing, coupled with an appeal to Jesus, would pretty much justify his crimes:

Jesus know I ain’t have no choice, you know? He know I got a decent heart. He know I’m stuck in the hood and just doing what I gotta do to survive.

Young Stunna was typical. The 45 religious interviewees tended to shape their interpretation of their faith to make their criminal behavior seem less odious, less condemnable. Slate quotes a 25-year-old drug dealer called Cool, who believes that God not only doesn’t mind when you do bad things to bad people; the Almighty actually dispatches avengers like Cool to do His bidding:

If you doing some wrong to another bad person, like if I go rob a dope dealer or a molester or something, then it don’t count against me because it’s like I’m giving punishment to them for Jesus. That’s God’s will. Oh you molested some kids? Well now I’m [God] sending Cool over your house to get your ass.

Maybe Cool is right. The Lord (we are always told) works in mysterious ways.

But seriously: Atheists may see the study as an endorsement of their view that believing in God doesn’t equip people with a superior set of morals — the notion that’s the exact point of this site. However, the stars don’t all line up in our favor.

If what I wrote in the first couple of paragraphs is correct, then convicted prisoners will disproportionately and post-factum slather themselves in religious sauce. That being the case, the number that many atheists gleefully love to cite — that less than one percent of the prison population consists of atheists — does become almost meaningless. After all, hoodlums who never gave a fig about religion probably have a tendency to “get right with God” once they’re locked up. They were perhaps — and may still be, appearances to the contrary  — atheists, even if they never self-identified as such. That alone debunks the idea that there’s something more moral and law-abiding about atheists than about religionists. Fair’s fair.

Back to the study: The authors conclude that

There is reason to believe that these [criminals’ religion-based] rationalizations and justifications may play a criminogenic [crime-producing, TF] role in their decision-making.

Religion’s good intentions notwithstanding, that finding is another unpleasant reality that theists will have to come to terms with. The study doesn’t prove that, in Christopher Hitchens’ words, God is Not Great; but its conclusion does seem to support his maxim that “religion spoils everything.”

[image via memegenerator]

Hey Redditors (and Others)! Welcome!

This blog is seeing its visitor numbers jump hugely today, via both Reddit and Hemant Mehta’s site (The Friendly Atheist, hosted at Patheos.com). We’re thrilled!

If you like our content, please consider doing one of four things (or all four if you’re, you know, hardcore).

1. Join the Moral Compass page on Facebook (if that link doesn’t take you to the right place, search Facebook for “moralcompassmyfoot.”
2. Bookmark us in your browser(s).
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4. You can also 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.

We’ll make it worth your while by, day after day, chronicling the misdeeds of the faithful, using stories culled from the news.

Write us at moralcompassblog AT gmail DOT com if you have editorial tips, questions, concerns, or complaints. We’ll listen.

Thanks!

On This Day in 1948…

…the U.S. Supreme Court banned as unconstitutional the use of public school facilities by religious organizations as a venue for religious instruction to students. In an 8-to-1 ruling, the court held that such activities violate the First Amendment. Justice Hugo Black wrote the majority opinion in the case, known as McCollum v. Board of Education.

The Supremes found that

neither a state nor the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force or influence a person to go to or to remain away from church against his will, or force him to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion.

No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs or disbeliefs, for church attendance or nonattendance. No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the federal government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect ‘a wall of separation between church and state.’

wall

We shall keep it intact.

[image via Little Victories]

10 Quickies To Get You Through Your Friday

• Danish imam says women must cover their heads or expect to be raped. Brilliantly proves his point by trying to rape a woman in a public park.

• Speaking of 10 quickies: In 2011 and 2012, youth pastor Aaron Edwin Springer had sex with a 16-year-old about 10 times at the First Assembly of God church in Manheim Township, PA, police say. The girl was a member of his youth group.

• Upset Vietnamese Buddhists are demanding the destruction or removal of all statues in which their Lord is seen copulating with a nude woman, but are not entirely sure that such statues exist.

sex-buddhism

• A new lawsuit implicates a Hawaiian priest, Father George DeCosta, in the sexual abuse of two boys in the 1960’s. The accusers claim that they were forced to perform various sexual acts when on camping trips and while praying with DeCosta.

• Mohammed Merah, the French-Algerian jihadist who gunned down a rabbi and three Jewish children at a school in Toulouse last year, was “a good and kind kid,” his mother told France 3 television.” His sister, not to be outdone, praised the “bravery” inherent in his crimes. To be brave means, apparently, to walk up to unsuspecting preteens and shoot them in the head.

• Buddhists in Thailand are said to be “enraged” over a single toilet seat cover in a small French hotel, as it bears a picture of their God. Thanks to the involvement of both the French Embassy in Bangkok and the Thai Foreign Ministry, Toiletseat-gate is now an international incident.

• Teenage Turkish Muslim immigrants in the Netherlands openly expressed their admiration for Nazism in an interview on Dutch television. They chuckled about the Holocaust and said Hitler “should have killed all Jews.”

• Brazil’s House of Representatives has picked a homophobic evangelical pastor, Marco Feliciano, to chair the House Committee on Human Rights and Minorities. Feliciano is on record as saying that being gay is “hateful” and “sick,” and believes that “salvation is available to them” in the form of a gay “cure.” He sounds like just the guy to lead a government human-rights group.

• An Edinburg priest has been charged with vandalism after police discovered he punctured the tires of a parishioner. Father Eusebio Martinez is also a person of interest in a series of arsons.

• To end on a positive note: Thumbs up to Indian peacemaker S. Tamil Selvan, the president of an artists and writers’ organization, who recently argued that parents should instil secular thoughts in the minds of their young children. “Home should be more secular and children should be taught to accept others’ ideas,” Selvan said. “There are a large number of religious minorities in our country, and their interests can be protected only when India follows secular principles.”

[image via Buddhism Magazine]

Is It OK to Indoctrinate Kids With Holy Books?

Take a look:

She’s unbelievably cute. And delightful. I mean that sincerely. I have two young daughters, now 8 and 10, so I’ve long been around a surfeit of off-the-scale adorableness. It never gets old.

So, yes, this lovely, lively little girl retelling the story of Jonah — it’s absolutely wonderful.

Except for the fact that she’s not recounting some yarn about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. We may assume that among the adults who taught her this fairy tale, there’s no shared understanding that she’ll grow out of it. They won’t have a good collective laugh about it, including her, when she reaches age 11 or 12 and realizes that everyone played a good-natured joke on her. Because to them, this is no laughing matter, and no flight of fancy. They neither expect nor want her to cast aside the tale (and the book it came from) when she matures. On the contrary. The people who teach their brood these stories will maintain that the tales are true — literally or metaphorically — because the source is their favorite holy book. And they want their kids to sign on to that … forever.

Though I could be wrong, I’d wager that most of these parents will have scarcely given a thought to the extreme improbability of a man living inside a whale’s belly for three days before being vomited, intact, onto dry land.

Speaking of waterworld adventures, what of Noah’s story? I doubt that most Christians will readily reflect on the extremely remote possibility that Noah’s home-built ark was able to accommodate the untold thousands or even millions of species. In neat boy-girl pairs, no less. Likewise, most prayerful parents will  probably dismiss skeptics who point out that animals like sloths and penguins, who can’t travel very well, couldn’t have made it to Noah’s place, thousands of miles from the creatures’ habitats. Et cetera.

Reason and open inquiry are, after all, often anathema1 to true faith.

At the risk of being a buzzkill, I ought to point out there are two vital differences between telling kids a fanciful Easter Bunny-type story, and indoctrinating them with the pretty and not-so-pretty stories from a holy book.

Firstly, I reiterate that the children of the faithful are expected to believe in, and live by, the latter — for life.

And secondly, there are serious social and psychological consequences if they don’t. The likelihood of ostracism, for one. The fear of causing deep parental disappointment, and of losing their moms’ and dads’ love and esteem, for another.

Even if you believe that the Bible isn’t literally true on every single page, I can’t say I understand why you would subject children to ‘sacred’ fairy tales and insist that they must ultimately believe in them until they die.

By extension, I don’t quite get why we wouldn’t simply let children make up their own minds, in due time, when they’re old enough to think for themselves.2

 

Meanwhile — sure, let them see how you live your faith. But also tell them about other religions, and about other creation stories — and about the fact that a billion people on this planet think that there are no gods at all.

Why wouldn’t you? Is it because forcing dogma on a five-year-old is easy as pie, and forcing dogma on a 20-year-old has every chance of failing?

The Oatmeal illustrates the point:

dogmaIn other words, for the love of _____ [fill in the blank], let’s please all stop doing this:

indoctrinate

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1I use the word advisedly. Anathema was originally used as a term for exile from the church, but evolved to mean set apart, banished, or denounced.

2This is what my wife and I do with our kids. They know that Mom’s a Christian and Dad’s an atheist, and we discuss it with them — when it comes up organically. But we also allow them to graze from other religions and world views. They’ve been to United Church of Christ summer camps and to friends’ Hannukah celebrations. They’re encouraged to learn about other faiths. We don’t tell them what to think. They’re smart, and kind, and they’ll figure out this religion stuff eventually.

Weekend Bonus

So that‘s how that works.

intolerantandhateful[source]