When I reported on the emerging Catholic sex-abuse scandal in Germany, it crossed my mind that the Pope is German. But I hadn't ever imagined that he'd have any personal connection to the allegations and confessions now being made there.

Well, it looks like I was wrong:

A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

...a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but how does it exonerate the Pope to say that he wasn't the one who allowed the accused priest to resume his duties? Shouldn't a priest accused of sexual assault be turned over to the police, not assigned to therapy? Maybe the Catholic church has grown so used to behaving as if they're above the law that this didn't even occur to them, and thought the defense that they sent a sex predator to therapy should be perfectly sufficient.

In any case, I would be very surprised if there was any concrete evidence that the Pope allowed a known sex offender to resume his clerical position. If he did play a role in that decision, the church would most likely protect him by finding a subordinate to take the blame and fall on his sword. At least one source in the Times article thinks that's just what happened here:

There was immediate skepticism that Benedict, as archbishop, would not have known of the details of the case.

The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, who once worked at the Vatican Embassy in Washington and became an early and well-known whistle-blower on sexual abuse in the church, said the vicar general’s claim was not credible.

“Nonsense,” said Father Doyle, who has served as an expert witness in sexual abuse lawsuits. “Pope Benedict is a micromanager. He’s the old style. Anything like that would necessarily have been brought to his attention. Tell the vicar general to find a better line. What he’s trying to do, obviously, is protect the pope.”

The Catholic church would obviously like to dismiss this whole vortex of scandal as a minor distraction from their really important work (such as telling AIDS-stricken Africans that condoms don't prevent the spread of HIV). Unfortunately for them, the headlines haven't been so cooperative, and we keep getting this steady drip of news that shows just how high in the church hierarchy the rot has spread. Just think - we've now reached a point where it's completely plausible that the Pope himself was personally involved in the cover-up. (And that's not even to mention the letter he wrote telling bishops to report allegations of abuse directly to Rome and keep them under a seal of pontifical secrecy.)

Clearly, what we need are some tape recorders in the walls of the Vatican. Maybe then we'd get a clearer idea of just how intimate Benedict's involvement in this matter has been. The church has proven itself more than willing to deceive, lie, and dissemble: in the absence of such evidence, how can anything else that they say be believed?

A few weeks ago, I mentioned briefly that the Catholic church had threatened to pull out of Washington, D.C., ending the social services they provide for thousands of people, if the city council passed a law recognizing same-sex marriage. Well, the council did pass the bill, same-sex marriage is now legal in D.C. (congratulations!), and the church looks set to keep its promise, starting with the termination of their foster-care program. They've also decided to end spousal benefits for all employees, including terminating the benefits of existing employees, rather than give those benefits to same-sex partners.

Happily, as AU reports, this story has a positive ending: Since Catholic Charities has shut down their foster-care and adoption program, the service they used to provide will now be offered by other groups, including the National Center for Children and Families, that will get the public funding the Catholic group used to receive. Well done, Washington, and shame on this despicable, bigoted church that would apparently rather see children go parentless than have to provide health insurance to gay people.

On a similar note, there's this story of a 5-year-old who was expelled from a private Catholic preschool because his parents are lesbians:

In a statement sent to 9NEWS, the Archdiocese said, "Homosexual couples living together as a couple are in disaccord with Catholic teaching."

..."No person shall be admitted as a student in any Catholic school unless that person and his/her parent(s) subscribe to the school's philosophy and agree to abide by the educational policies and regulations of the school and Archdiocese," the statement said.

Editorial note: Does this school plan to expel all students whose parents are divorced? Maybe they should also send around a questionnaire asking parents if they use birth control so they can expel the children of the ones who answer yes. Of course, since something like 90% of American adults, Catholics included, use contraception, this might lead to a fairly steep dropoff in those all-important tuition checks. It seems politically safer to only target members of relatively small minorities for persecution, rather than actually try to apply their own rules consistently.

On the positive side, it seems clear that the staff who run the school were appalled by the open bigotry and hatred of their church superiors - another clear sign that American Catholics are more progressive than their benighted hierarchy:

School staff members, who asked to remain anonymous, say they are disgusted by the Archdiocese's decision.

...Staff members said they were not allowed to discuss the decision after it was made. Some of them said they were disheartened to work at a school that preaches peace and love, but also makes this decision.

A memo to these staff members: As this and the previous story make clear, Roman Catholicism does not preach love - at least not in the unconditional, universal sense we generally think of when using that word. It preaches conditional, selective love - love only for people who are willing to submit to its insane dictates and obey the orders of the pompous frauds in charge - and that's a different animal altogether.

The church's shameless bigotry against gays and lesbians is all the more outrageous considering its own continuing crimes and hypocrisy. I wrote in my last post on the Catholic church that, given the sex abuse scandals in America, Ireland and Germany, it was a statistical inevitability that more stories of child rapists among the clergy would appear in other countries as well. Now similar allegations have been made in the Netherlands. More amusingly, there's this scandal in the Vatican itself:

The Vatican was today rocked by a sex scandal reaching into Pope Benedict's household after a chorister was sacked for allegedly procuring male prostitutes for a papal gentleman-in-waiting.

Angelo Balducci, a Gentleman of His Holiness, was caught by police on a wiretap allegedly negotiating with Thomas Chinedu Ehiem, a 29-year-old Vatican chorister, over the specific physical details of men he wanted brought to him.

And lastly, less amusingly, there's this story. The Catholic church in Ireland has racked up a $14 million bill for victim compensation after letting sexual predators in the clergy run rampant for thirty years, and the Bishop of Ferns, Denis Brennan, is asking his parishioners to pass the collection plate to cover the costs. As the Independent puts it:

In other words the Roman Catholic Church in Ferns is asking the victims of its own bitter failings to pay the price for the crime -- it is a request which beggars belief.

At this point, the church's callousness and hypocrisy has been demonstrated ad nauseam, so this no longer shocks me. The only thing that still surprises me is that a den of vipers like this one still thinks it has the authority to instruct the rest of us how we should treat our fellow human beings. Personally, I think the Pope and his hirelings ought to turn over all the remaining predators to the police, sell off the treasures of the Vatican to pay their court costs, and spend a few decades in sackcloth and ashes before they should even think of venturing an opinion on moral topics again.

Postscript: Although it's not a sex scandal, there was one more story that came out just after I wrote this that I couldn't omit: the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has banned voluntary end-of-life measures in the more than 600 Catholic hospitals and nursing homes around the country. In other words, Catholic institutions will no longer honor patients' living wills stating that they don't wish to be kept alive by feeding tubes if they're irreversibly comatose or terminally ill.

Although the law protects patients from being subjected to any medical treatment against their will, it's easy to see how this decision could be used by Catholic hospital administrators to coerce grief-stricken families and patients who may not be capable of expressing their desires. Even in the best case, it will almost certainly lead to more pointless suffering as patients who don't want to be kept artificially alive try to find another hospital to transfer to that will respect their wishes. We need to publicize the evil and tyrannical pretensions of the bishops, and I suggest this slogan: "If you want to have a feeding tube forcibly crammed down your throat or run through a hole cut into your stomach so you can be kept alive to suffer, then make sure you go to a Catholic hospital!"

It happened in America. It happened in Ireland. Now, it seems that another major Catholic sex abuse scandal is about to break open - this time in Germany (HT: Butterflies and Wheels).

As the German newspaper Der Spiegel reports, the pattern we're now seeing from abuse victims who've come forward is very much the same as we've seen in other countries - sexual predators among the priesthood whose proclivities were well known to the church higher-ups, but who were quietly shuffled from parish to parish rather than turned over to law enforcement, enabling them to continue preying on innocents:

For decades, German bishops tried to look the other way when their pastors engaged in sexual abuse, as well as to downplay the problem by characterizing it as isolated incidents. Now they are finally revealing their own figures, though hesitantly. According to a SPIEGEL survey of Germany's 27 dioceses conducted last week, at least 94 priests and members of the laity in Germany are suspected or have been suspected of abusing countless children and adolescents since 1995. A total of 24 of the 27 dioceses responded to SPIEGEL's questions.

...With at least 94 suspects uncovered nationwide so far, the church's official line that cases of abuse are just isolated incidents no longer holds water. The abusers include not only priests, but also include lay workers for the church, such as sextons, choir directors, employees of church charities and youth program volunteers.

As the article notes, the cover-up went straight to the top of the Catholic hierarchy - dating back to an order from the Vatican that sex abuse by priests be kept a secret and the matter be handled internally within the Church.

The guidelines, issued in the year of our Lord 1962, address a sensitive subject: sex in the confessional. The Vatican doesn't put it quite that directly, preferring to use more guarded terminology to describe what happens when a priest leads a member of his flock astray before, during or after the confession -- in other words, when he provokes a penitent "toward impure and obscene matters" through "words or signs or nods of the head (or) by touch."

...According to those guidelines, which remain in force today, potential cases of abuse must be reported to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The guidelines also forbid bishops worldwide from taking any steps beyond an initial investigation of accusations without direct instructions from Rome. The entire procedure is subject to "pontifical secrecy," the second-highest level of secrecy within the Holy See. Anyone who violates this code of secrecy without papal permission can be punished.

Ostensibly, this is to protect the sanctity of the confessional. But the actual effect is that the Catholic church acted as though it was above the law, refusing to contact the authorities even when there was evidence that a serious crime had been committed. Usually, the church didn't even enact any serious discipline of its own against the offender. In fact, it seems the only people who were punished in any way were the ones who tried to bring the matter to light:

"If you are forced, by virtue of your profession, to live a life without a wife and children, there is a great risk that healthy integration of sexuality will fail, which can lead to pedophile acts, for example," theologian Hans Küng wrote in SPIEGEL in 2005. "In addition to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, it would make sense for Rome to establish a Congregation for the Doctrine of Love, which would examine every decree issued by the Curia to ensure that it is in keeping with the Christian concept of love."

His fellow theologian Eugen Drewermann writes of a "church structure that is repressive in emotional areas and on questions of love." Because of these and similar views, the Vatican has revoked both theologians' permission to teach.

As I wrote in a comment on Butterflies and Wheels, the laws of probability alone virtually guarantee that there are scandals like this waiting to come to light in many more countries. Perhaps prosecutors should begin investigating in France, in Italy, in Poland... It's almost impossible to believe that there's nothing else to be found.

But regardless, this story has punched another hole in the Catholic church's flimsy pretext of being able to speak with moral authority to the rest of us. They are a whited sepulcher, whose ornate facade conceals only moral rot and corruption within, and a cabal of wicked old men more concerned with preserving their own power than with any harm they allowed to be inflicted on innocents. They do not deserve the continued allegiance or support of any thinking person.

Summary: An outstanding book, broad in its sweep and compelling in its use of fascinating detail, that paints a clear picture of the international forces opposing women's rights - and what's at stake in the fight against them.

I've said in the past that I believe all feminists should be atheists, the better to deny power and legitimacy to the religious belief systems that have treated women unjustly throughout history. But after reading Michelle Goldberg's outstanding new book The Means of Reproduction, I'm convinced that the converse is also true: all atheists should be feminists, in recognition of how many of the goals of religious fundamentalists entail the subjugation of women, and how effectively we can defeat them at home and around the world by working to uphold gender equality.

Goldberg's book examines the state of women's rights throughout the world and explores how the inevitable clashes with fundamentalist religion and traditionalist culture play out in the lives of millions of women. It's not, as I had assumed, primarily about the culture wars in the U.S. over abortion - although both abortion and American culture war politics do play a central role. But the legal and cultural equilibrium in this country hasn't changed much in the past several decades, and as Goldberg brilliantly shows, by far the most consequential impact of America's shifting political winds isn't felt at home, but abroad.

The opening chapters of the book offer a historical perspective on this fight by showing how, ironically, the U.S. was once the biggest provider of contraception and abortion services to developing countries worldwide. This happened during the Cold War era, when Malthusian fears of overpopulation were intertwined with concerns over the spread of communism in impoverished countries. The ways that American politicians lined up to combat this seem bizarre to anyone used to today's ideological battle lines. (One of many great tidbits is that former president George H.W. Bush, when he served in Congress, was so zealous an advocate of contraception that he was nicknamed "Rubbers".) By fighting overpopulation, politicians hoped to check the spread of Marxism - and so the U.S. in its heyday spent millions of dollars to launch family-planning clinics and distribute birth control pills around the world.

But these programs, in many cases, were victims of their own success. Most of them focused only on preventing births, while doing little or nothing else to help or empower the poor and disenfranchised women who most needed them. As a result, the growing international conservative movement, which took off during the Reagan administration, was able to frame them as Western racism and cultural imperialism - a charge that was not always without merit. Today, the worldwide feminist movement is opposed by a bizarre, but equally transnational, coalition of Christian and Islamic conservatives who join together in defense of patriarchy - often working hand-in-hand at the U.N. even as they denounce each other at home.

Goldberg next traces the origins of the international conservative movement. At the root of this bitter tree stands the Roman Catholic church, which was and is the staunchest opponent of women's rights in the world - as she points out, even Islamic theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Iran have a more permissive view of abortion than the Vatican. There are some truly amazing details here: I was startled to learn that a papal commission in the 1960s actually recommended that the Catholic ban on birth control be lifted - but Pope Paul VI overruled his own commission's advice and issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, reiterating the church's absolute ban on contraception. Several prominent bishops explained at the time that the pope had to do this, because anything else would have been a tacit admission that the church's prior beliefs were wrong and that can never be permitted, regardless of the consequences.

But the Catholic church alone was largely ineffective in stemming the tide of women's rights, until it was joined by conservative Christians from other denominations. Goldberg argues that, contrary to popular belief, it wasn't Roe v. Wade that galvanized Protestant evangelicals into entering politics, but the rise of the feminist movement that threatened traditional notions of the patriarchal family and the subservient wife. This reactionary movement, which began mostly in America, has been exported abroad in recent decades. The effects can be seen in Latin American countries like El Salvador, where pro-life groups have triumphed. In these countries, women who come to the hospital hemorrhaging from a miscarriage are handcuffed to their hospital beds until they can be examined by forensic vagina inspectors, to ensure they didn't obtain an illegal abortion; other women die horribly from ruptured Fallopian tubes because their country's laws don't permit abortion even in the case of an ectopic pregnancy.

However, not all anti-woman practices come from religion. In Africa, we learn of a few incredibly brave activists fighting the barbaric practice of female genital mutilation, a tribal custom which predates Islam but has been perpetuated by many Islamic societies. In even the mildest versions of FGM, the woman's clitoris is sliced off with crude instruments like scissors or razors, without anesthetic. (This is the practice that Ayaan Hirsi Ali was subjected to as a child.) But there are even more extreme versions, such as infibulation, in which the woman's clitoris is cut off and her vagina is sewn shut, leaving only a tiny hole to urinate - on her wedding night, her husband must literally rip her open. Bizarrely, this practice is still defended by some women - even well-educated, cosmopolitan women - who argue that it's an ineradicable part of their culture and a necessary step of womanhood.

As the FGM controversy shows, feminist issues don't always play out along familiar ideological lines. In India, Goldberg discusses the rampant practice of sex-selective abortion, which has led to dramatically skewed sex ratios - in some areas, as imbalanced as 700 women to every 1000 men. The resulting demand for wives not only encourages human trafficking and sexual slavery, but poses a threat to societal stability from the millions of angry, frustrated, unmarriageable young men.

Yet India is a clear example of the principle Goldberg repeatedly returns to: the root problem isn't the availability of birth control, but the need for female emancipation. She describes how India's growing wealth has encouraged an explosion of ever-more exorbitant demands for dowry, making daughters more and more of a financial drain on their families and increasing the pressure to have sons. Shockingly, in some places, dowry has become not just a one-time payment but a steady stream of demands from the groom's family - and if the woman's parents refuse to pay, their daughter may be beaten or murdered by her own husband and in-laws. The depth of the problem is summed up in a local saying she quotes: "Having a daughter is like watering your neighbor's garden."

But despite all the horrible sexism that Goldberg chronicles, all the discrimination and oppression she details, her conclusions are not wholly pessimistic. The cause of women's rights is advancing, albeit frustratingly slowly and haltingly, but advancing nevertheless.

One of her arguments that came as a revelation to me is that the United Nations does a lot more good than most people are aware of. Its treaties and resolutions on the rights of women, so often disparaged as powerless symbolism, have had major, concrete effects in reforming the legal systems of many countries and establishing reproductive choice as a human right before national and international judicial bodies.

Second, as I mentioned earlier, Goldberg argues convincingly that the greatest effects of American politics are felt abroad rather than at home. Abortion politics in the U.S. have settled into an uneasy but stable equilibrium, one that changes little regardless of which party is in power. But in the developing world, it makes a huge difference whether and to whom the U.S. provides aid. The most infamous example is the "global gag rule", which forbids family planning groups that receive any federal aid from providing, or even acknowledging the existence of, abortion. This rule, which has been repeatedly canceled by Democratic presidents and reinstated by Republican presidents, makes all the difference in developing countries whose only source of family planning aid is the U.S. When in effect, it's forced the closure of countless clinics that provide not just contraception or abortion, but also prenatal care, checkups, vaccinations, and other help for new mothers and families.

There's even more in this book that I haven't mentioned, but I've written enough to support the conclusions from my opening words. Goldberg makes a clear and compelling case that all the evils she mentions, all the battles that feminist groups are fighting, all of this stems from the same source: the refusal to recognize women as full human beings with equal rights, including autonomy over their own bodies and the right to decide for themselves when and whether to have children. This pervasive sexism is still entrenched throughout the world, and although religion isn't solely to blame for this, it has always been the strongest and most enduring friend to patriarchy. Only when its malignant influence is defeated will women truly be free. And conversely, by freeing women, we take one of the most effective steps to roll back religion's power and influence.

By Sarah Braasch

Representative Bart Stupak from Michigan was paraphrased in a recent New York Times interview as saying that his resolve to defeat the healthcare reform bill, unless the bill includes his anti-abortion amendment language, is a straightforward matter of Roman Catholic faith. The article states that Representative Stupak said that he actually urged the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to toughen its stance on the legislation. Representative Stupak is also quoted as saying: "It's not the end of the world if it goes down."

What?!?! Let me say that again. WTF?!?!

I don't understand how something like this goes unnoticed and unmentioned.

How does he get a free pass on saying something like that in his capacity as a US Representative? How does he not get called out on that?

He just proclaimed to the press that he holds religious law in higher esteem than the US Constitution. He just stated, unequivocally, that he intends to impose religious law upon the American citizenry. He just asserted that he intends to defeat healthcare reform unless religious law is deemed the supreme law of the land, usurping the position of the US Constitution.

I am trying to imagine the reaction if Representative Keith Ellison from Minnesota were to say something similar. Keith Ellison is the first Muslim member of the US Congress. I am trying to imagine the resulting tumult and uproar if he were to defy his Democratic Party and vote in opposition to its platform, all the while maintaining that he was doing so as a straightforward matter of his Islamic faith, because he holds the tenets of Islam in higher esteem than the US Constitution, because the Quran and the Hadith demand that he impose Sharia (Islamic Law) upon American citizens, as a matter of principle and conscience. Does anyone honestly believe that a comment like that would go unnoticed in a New York Times interview?

Representative Stupak took an oath to support and defend the US Constitution. He is openly admitting to violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution by attempting to establish religious law as US Federal Law. He may not seek recourse under the Free Exercise or Free Speech Clauses, because federal congressional legislation is textbook government speech. He is not acting as a private individual citizen when he acts in his capacity as a US Representative in Congress.

Is there something about the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution, which Representative Stupak fails to understand? I find it fairly straightforward myself. In case you had forgotten, I am including our glorious First Amendment to the United States Constitution: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

There is no religious test for public office, but there should be a competency test for public office, to determine if one is capable of maintaining the separation between church and state, if one is capable of NOT violating the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution, if one is capable of comprehending the difference between government speech and the private speech of an individual citizen.

If immigrants desiring citizenship must take a test that demonstrates their knowledge of the United States Constitution, then maybe we should require the same of our Representatives and Senators, since they are also being asked to take an oath or affirmation to support and defend the Constitution and all.

For the record, I am not Catholic. I reject Roman Catholicism. And, I am deeply and personally offended that Mr. Stupak would abuse his position as a US Congressman by attempting to force me to kneel to Roman Catholic doctrine as a matter of US Federal Law in direct violation of our Constitution.

And, even if I were Catholic, what entitles Representative Stupak to interpret the tenets of Roman Catholicism on my behalf? I didn't realize we had a Theologian Laureate in the United States of America. Thank God for Representative Stupak from Michigan. Thank God we have Representative Stupak to interpret Catholic doctrine and then legislate accordingly on our behalf.

I can sleep easy now. Congress is looking after my spiritual wellbeing. Congress is looking after my soul.

Of course Representative Stupak doesn't care if healthcare reform passes or no. Of course he doesn't care how many American citizens continue to die unnecessarily. He isn't interested in saving our lives. He's interested in saving our souls. For Jesus. Nothing unconstitutional about that.

For the holiday season, some goodies this weekend:

• First up, some music for the season: the blogger Lirone, of Words That Sing, in collaboration with William Morris, composer in residence at the British Humanist Association (did you know the British Humanist Association had a composer in residence? me neither!), has written a humanist carol, Gathering Round the Fire. It's 99 cents on iTunes, and all profits will go to the BHA. I downloaded and listened to it, and I enjoyed it greatly. Check it out, support a good cause, and lend a little bit of humanist cheer to your holiday gathering!

• Next, CNN has a surprisingly sympathetic interview with Richard Dawkins on evolution and atheist advocacy.

• The Daily Mail's Andrew Alexander offers a "heartfelt plea for atheism", an eloquent essay only slightly marred by an ignorant passage about climate change.

• Hanna Rosin asks whether the prosperity gospel contributed to the economic crash.

• On Daily Kos, it's a shameful day for the Irish Catholic Church, as a long-awaited report is released about the complicity of the bishops in sex abuse by predator priests.

• And finally, from Time, an unsparing essay about the subjugation and abuse of women in Islamic countries. (Did you know a Saudi Arabian woman has no legal proof of her existence besides her name on her husband's ID card? I didn't.) This is the kind of thing that the New Atheists get called "shrill" and "strident" when we write.

Also, you may have noticed that posts on Daylight Atheism are now classified by tag in addition to the six major categories (also, there's a tag cloud). I implemented this as a result of suggestions in the reader feedback thread, and I've been working my way backwards tagging older posts. Before I go further with that, I'm interested if people have any opinions on it. Too many tags? Too few? Are some missing that you'd like to see included? Personally, I'm still considering whether to add the "Science" tag to the posts on Lee Strobel.

The Case for a Creator, Chapter 7

To start off his interview, Lee Strobel asks Gonzalez and Richards about humankind's great demotion: the medieval religious belief that we were at "the center of the universe, sort of the throne of the cosmos, the most important place that everything revolved around" [p.160] and the overturning of this belief by science, which proved that we are not at the center of the universe either physically or metaphysically. Richards claims, however, "that this historical description is simply false" [p.161].

To counter this argument, Richards cites Dante's Divine Comedy, in which "the surface of the Earth is an intermediate place" between the heavenly spheres and the circles of the underworld. In fact, he calls it a "cosmic sump". "[C]learly, this is not the stereotype that we've been given that the center of the universe prior to Copernicus was the preeminent spot." [p.162]

But what Richards has passed over is the role that Earth plays in this cosmology. It's not, as Richards' dismissive description implies, a place of no importance. On the contrary: according to this belief system, Earth is the axis of creation. It's the stage where God's plan of salvation plays out, the place where everyone's eternal destiny will be decided, the cosmic arena where everything that's ever going to happen happens. And let's not forget that the most important series of events in all of Christian history - the incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus - took place on the Earth. Far from being unimportant, this belief system makes the Earth the place of supreme importance for God's plan and for humankind's ultimate destiny.

Without Strobel noticing, Richards then goes on to contradict the argument raised just several pages prior:

"It was the Enlightenment that made man the measure of all things. When you really think about it, Christian theology never actually put man literally in the center... it was never the case that everything was literally created solely for us." [p.162]

This flatly contradicts the passage from Michael Denton, quoted by Strobel and discussed in my last entry in this series, which describes the hypothesis that "every characteristic of reality exists [to create a livable habitat] for mankind" as "very far from a discredited prescientific myth" [p.158]. Strobel passes over this contradiction without noticing or remarking on it.

Strobel next raises the question of Copernicus, Galileo, and Giordano Bruno, three famous figures who were persecuted for opposing the geocentric cosmology of their day. Unusually, Richards doesn't adopt the usual evangelical apologetic of blaming it all on the cruel, dogmatic Catholic church. (Note that he's affiliated with the Acton Institute, a libertarian Catholic think tank.) Instead, he tries to exonerate the church and even argues that some of the treatment they received was justified!

"First of all," Richards said, "some claim Copernicus was persecuted, but history shows he wasn't; in fact, he died of natural causes the same year his ideas were published." [p.163]

This is a rather odd apologetic. If Richards wants to prove that the Catholic church refrained from persecuting scientists, it certainly doesn't help his case. It could equally well be argued that the only reason Copernicus wasn't persecuted is because he died before the church had the opportunity.

Indeed, the way Copernicus and his associates handled his discovery strongly suggests that they feared the church's response. When Copernicus' masterpiece, De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium, was published by his friend Andreas Osiander, Osiander added a foreword emphasizing that the heliocentric theory could be treated only as a mathematical convenience, and didn't have to imply anything about the true nature of reality. Copernicus himself began the work by reprinting a letter from a friend, who was a Catholic cardinal, praising his observational skills. He follows this with a long, apologetic preface addressed to Pope Paul III in which he admits that his theory is new and shocking, that for a long time he wrestled with whether to publish it at all, but that he was finally persuaded to do so by the urging of his friends. (Read the text of De Revolutionibus online; see also). And despite all this effort toward placating the church, Copernicus' work was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books later, during the Galileo affair. It would not ultimately be removed until 1835 (!).

And about that famous Galileo affair:

"As for Galileo, his case can't be reduced to a simple conflict between scientific truth and religious superstition. He insisted the church immediately endorse his views rather than allow them to gradually gain acceptance..." [p.163]

Considering that the ID movement has insisted public schools immediately endorse their views rather than wait to gain scientific acceptance, this is a laughably hypocritical charge.

"...he mocked the Pope, and so forth. Yes, he was censured, but the church kept giving him his pension for the rest of his life." [p.163]

First off, please take notice that Richards appears to be arguing that mocking the Pope is a legitimate reason to punish someone.

Second, it's ludicrous how Richards tries to soft-pedal Galileo's fate. What actually happened is that Galileo was summoned to Rome to appear before the Inquisition, where he was imprisoned for the duration of his trial before a jury of ten cardinals. When he was finally judged to be suspect of heresy, his book was banned and he was forced to recant on his knees under threat of torture; and when he had humiliated himself by abjuring his own work, he was then sentenced to house arrest for the remainder of his life. (Here's an excellent reference on Galileo's trial.)

"[Giordano] Bruno's case was very sad," Richards continued. "He was executed in Rome in 1600. Certainly this is a stain on church history. But again, this was a complicated case. His Copernican views were incidental. He defended pantheism and was actually executed for his heretical views on the Trinity, the Incarnation, and other doctrines that had nothing to do with Copernicanism." [p.163]

Evidently, we're meant to take from this that burning someone for their religious ideas is somehow more acceptable than burning them for their scientific ideas.

But what Richards says here is a half-truth at best. Bruno was not a scientist like Copernicus or Galileo; his cosmological views flowed from his mystical, pantheistic religious beliefs, not from direct observation. Nevertheless, it's striking how his ideas resemble the modern, scientific conception of the cosmos. He believed that the Sun was a star just like all the others, that the Earth and the other planets revolved around it, and that there were an infinite number of other stars each with their own planetary systems and living beings. And whether or not this was the charge that resulted in his execution, the record clearly shows that it was one of the charges laid against him at trial.

In sum, far from supporting his thesis, Richards has only undermined it: The church did insist on a cosmology that put Earth at the metaphysical center of creation, and it did persecute scientists and other freethinkers who dared to offer an alternative view. This embarrassing historical record doesn't fit well with the story he wants to tell, so it's no surprise that he tries to cover it up. Unfortunately for him, the facts are not so malleable nor so accommodating.

Other posts in this series:

• Rebutting The Case for a Creator

I've got plenty of goodies in the bag for this post. Frankly, more has been happening lately than I can write about - but that's okay, because there are lots of other fantastic atheist bloggers who've said it all!

• First, there's this outrageous story out of Washington, D.C., where the Catholic church has threatened to completely shut down all the social services they provide to local homeless people if they're forced to obey laws forbidding discrimination against same-sex couples.

I may write more about this later, but for now, I'm happy to send you to She Who Chatters, whose eloquent anger sums up everything I feel when I read this.

• On a related note, Atheist Revolution tells the story of a Cincinnati atheist billboard - bearing only the peaceful and non-confrontational message, "Don't believe in God? You are not alone" - that had to be moved after the billboard company was deluged with violent threats. Remind me again, what do we stand to gain by being civil and respectful and tiptoeing around so as not to offend anyone's superstitions?

• In the Washington Post, Jonathan Turley asks the cogent question of why the courts let parents off so lightly when their religious beliefs result in the painful and unnecessary deaths of their children from treatable medical conditions.

• On a less somber note, I'm happy to endorse Young Freethought, a new blog focusing on the work of atheists and freethinkers between the ages of 16 and 21. Every new generation shows a greater and greater willingness to think for themselves and challenge the old religious orthodoxies, and I'm very glad to see more young people step up to voice their convictions and add to this groundswell of free thinking. From what I've seen so far, this blog has some very promising, well-written essays already, and I'll be watching them closely to see what else they come up with. You should too!

• Finally, a reader turned me on to this wonderful website, Symphony of Science. Its creator has taken the words of famous scientists speaking about the discoveries that make us shiver in awe, then remixed them with his own brand of ambient, trip-hop music. The effect is eerie and surreal at first, but also hauntingly beautiful. It may not be for everyone, but I enjoyed it immensely. Combined with the lyrics, it spoke to me in a way that almost no other music does. (It reminds me a lot of Forest for the Trees, a band I used to listen to in high school and college.) If this interests you, I highly recommend checking it out.

Although the New York Daily News has no problem endorsing astrology on its news pages, the idea of giving sympathetic coverage to atheism is apparently too much for them to swallow. In a recent issue, they published this obnoxiously bigoted column from Gabriel Gillen, a Dominican friar, which manages to cram just about every anti-atheist slur in the book into a brief space.

We start with the old standby: pick a controversial atheist, accuse him of hypocrisy or some other charge, and assume that he somehow speaks for or represents all atheists:

...the well-known atheist Peter Singer. When his own mother lay helpless with Alzheimer's disease, he broke all of his own rules, thus throwing away his credibility as a utilitarian philosopher onto the tracks: He came to her rescue.

Let me explain: he went against his own moral code, which in this case would have required him not to help his mother because it is more logical to help others with a better probability of surviving. There is logic to Singer's reasoning, but it just seems too... heartless. Thankfully, Singer's heroic actions speak louder than his radically rationalistic vision.

And of course, what column attacking atheists would be complete without trying to taint us by association with the Nazis and Communists:

The atheistic ideologies of Nazism and Communism did not produce earthly paradises, but only tragic regimes of terror that trampled human dignity and freedom.

Just for the record, these would be the the Nazis who handed out translations of the Bible and wore "God With Us" on their uniforms, and the Communists who made alliances with Christian clergy and persecuted atheists for not falling in step with their political goals.

It's good to see the vast majority of the comments on the Daily News' site shredding Gillen. I took it upon myself to write a comment in response as well:

I'm stunned at the lapse of editorial judgment that evidently must have occurred to permit this brazen bigotry to be published in the Daily News. This column is a parade of offensive and revolting stereotypes that no newspaper would even have considered printing if the target was anyone other than atheists, and most of its accusations are outright falsehoods.

Recent surveys have found that up to 15% of the American population are atheists, and that in New York and other northeastern cities, that percentage is even higher. Whether you know it or not, you meet atheists on the street every day. We are policemen, firefighters, military veterans, doctors, teachers. We give to charitable causes, love our friends and neighbors, and care about the welfare of humanity every bit as much as religious people. How dare this despicable apologist imply otherwise? And how dare he accuse us of lacking moral values, when he represents a church that sheltered sex predators and moved them around so they could continue to prey on children; a church that still opposes equal rights for gays and lesbians; a church whose irrational and superstitious opposition to contraception is contributing to the deaths of millions of people around the world from AIDS and other preventable STDs?

Before you criticize atheists, Mr. Gillen, you should set your own house in order. Don't presume to lecture us as long as you still represent the cruel and irrational values of the medieval era.

In their never-ending quest to elevate every ranting wingnut to the same status as genuine experts, the Washington Post has given a guest column to Bill Donohue - the extreme right-wing Catholic bully whose sole purpose in life is seeking out things to be offended by. Whether it's The Simpsons, the "secular Jews" who run Hollywood and hate Christianity, store greeters who say "Happy Holidays", or monogamous gay couples who want to adopt children, no insult or indignity against the Catholic church is too minor for Donohue to ignore - except, that is, for priests who sexually molest children and are protected by the church hierarchy, which he views as no big deal.

Let's consider Donohue's column one point at a time, starting at the beginning:

There are many ways cultural nihilists are busy trying to sabotage America these days: multiculturalism is used as a club to beat down Western civilization in the classroom...

Yet as I mentioned, Donohue has no qualms about using his own "offense" as a club to beat others. He successfully used this tactic to get two well-known feminist bloggers fired from the John Edwards campaign in 2008. Clearly, the source of his complaint is that he's no longer the only one who can dictate to others what they can and cannot say in order not to offend him.

...artists use their artistic freedoms to mock Christianity... Today's radicals are intellectually spent: they want to annihilate American culture, having absolutely nothing to put in its place.

If this is what Donohue considers "sabotaging" America, then the First Amendment sabotages America. Citizens of this country have always had the right to speak their minds, to criticize, and to parody. And that doesn't make us "cultural nihilists", it makes us people with a different value system than the scrunched-up wad of indiscriminate rage that apparently constitutes his entire worldview.

Sexual libertines... have sought to pervert society by acting out on their own perversions. What motivates them most of all is a pathological hatred of Christianity. They know, deep down, that what they are doing is wrong, and they shudder at the dreaded words, "Thou Shalt Not." But they continue with their death-style anyway.

The Washington Post, ladies and gentlemen. Is this gibbering, spittle-flecked screed really the sort of garbage they want gracing their editorial pages? (If you don't think so, e-mail onfaith@washingtonpost.com and let them know your views.)

Self-awareness is not a strong trait of the religious right, and this passage shows it. Donohue whines at length about how secularists mock him, but that's only because he makes himself an irresistible target for mockery. Just think of the gigantic ego required to seriously argue that the world revolves around your personal likes and dislikes, and that everyone who believes or acts differently than you is doing it on purpose, just to be spiteful. What satirist could resist the chance to puncture such ludicrously inflated pretensions? How could one not tweak a nose that's so invitingly bulbous and red?

This rant does illustrate a larger point, however. When it comes to religion, many expert pundits and theologians solemnly aver that we atheists are the nasty, rude, uncivil extremists who are making our cause look bad. Why is that criticism never applied in the other direction? Why are bigots like Donohue allowed to rant on about "death-styles" and "perversions" without condemnation, while we secularists are condescendingly chastised just for standing up and calling this delusional nonsense what it is? If the gatekeepers had their way, this debate would be reduced to Donohue and those like him standing on the ramparts and hurling bombs down at us, while we'd be forbidden to reply.

There was a time when Hollywood made reverential movies about Christianity. But those days are long gone. Now they just insult.

Yes indeed, the days of the Hays Code are long gone. That self-imposed industry code of censorship required that "no film... may throw ridicule on any religious faith", nor could ministers be presented as comic relief or as villains. Doubtless, Bill Donohue looks back fondly on those days. But for the record, it also banned films from presenting "sex relationships between the white and black races". Donohue is silent on whether he's nostalgic for that rule, but since it seems clear that he views the Hays Code as a net positive, one would have to conclude, at the very least, that he considers anti-miscegenation laws an acceptable compromise if he also gets anti-blasphemy laws out of the bargain.

I want to emphasize this point, because I think it's important to notice how religious conservatives consistently whitewash the uglier parts of our history when speaking of the past. They pine for the good old days, the era of perceived respect and civility, while steadfastly ignoring the virulent racism, sexism and prejudice of all kinds that ran rampant. This is a subtle form of racism in itself, and we shouldn't let it pass unchallenged. Ask one, the next time you encounter them: Do you believe that the civil rights movement was a good thing? And if so, doesn't that disprove your claims about the moral decay of civilization by showing that, at least in some ways, our society is morally better today than in past generations?

The ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State harbor an agenda to smash the last vestiges of Christianity in America. Lying about their real motives, they say their fidelity is to the Constitution. But there is nothing in the Constitution that sanctions the censorship of religious speech.

Quite true, but there most definitely is something in the Constitution (that pesky First Amendment again!) that forbids the government from endorsing or supporting any particular religious view. This is a distinction that the religious right consistently fails to grasp. As Donohue already admitted, his desire is that Catholicism be the only belief system protected from attack or criticism, while everyone else is fair game.

Catholics were once the mainstay of the Democratic Party; now the gay activists are in charge.

The irony is, as pointed out in a comment on Donohue's column, Catholics hold many top positions in the Democratic party - including the Speaker of the House, the Vice President, and last election's presidential nominee - and are actually overrepresented relative to their share of the population as a whole. Indeed, Catholics voted for Obama over McCain by a nine-point margin. This just goes to show that Catholic laypeople are more progressive than the stultifying views of their self-appointed leaders.

And finally, in closing, comes this truly incredible wingnuttery:

The good news is that religious conservatives continue to breed like rabbits, while secular saboteurs have shut down: they're too busy walking their dogs, going to bathhouses and aborting their kids. Time, it seems, is on the side of the angels.

While Donohue dreams of a rosy future overpopulated by desperately poor and uneducated Catholic faithful, the sad truth is that every reliable survey has shown rates of atheism, freethought, and support for gay rights rising in every generation.

It is remarkable, however, how openly the right-wingers have given up on winning the battle of ideas. Instead, they've set their hopes on outbreeding their enemies. Clearly, the only people they expect to be able to convince are young, susceptible children. This in itself is the best sign that we're winning the culture war. Donohue's shrill, vile rant is the swan song of a demagogue who's fading into the dust of history, and knows it.