More Cartoons

Did I mention I like cartoons.

Movie Day

Image via Wikipedia

I was a little under the weather the last few days so I kicked back in my recliner and watched movies on Netflix. One of the movies I watched was Angels and Demons, the Dan Brown thriller about the Illumunati.

I remember when the movie first came out that Bill Donohue and the Catholic League denounced the movie. While, the movie certainly purported to show some of the Catholic hierarchy's hypocrisy and may well be true, I am certainly not one to know it's truth. However bizarre Catholic doctrine, the truth is always stranger than fiction.

For the last decade or so we have seen more and more reports of pedophilia in the Catholic church. In the last few weeks the reports and the cover-ups have been reported in several countries. Now we see the reports of pedophilia and the secrecy around it reach all the way to the Pope. (Be sure to check out the links below.)

I wish there was something that could be done to reign in the Catholic church and its harmful effect on society. For starters, I think we need to investigate the church much more deeply than we have and remove the shield of secrecy surrounding them. Additionally, I think the Pope should be considered persona non gratis in the U.S. and any country where there have been cases of Catholic pedophilia.

It's a shame that after watching a good movie my mind went down this road.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Sexual Abuse Scandal Tests Catholics' Trust in Leaders (nytimes.com) 
• Pedophile priest storm now threatens Italy (vancouversun.com)
• Crimes of 2 Pedophile Priests in New Santa Barbara Lawsuit Are Like Thousands Reviewed by Pope When He Was Cardinal (alternet.org) 
• Religion: Pope protected Wisconsin pedophile priest (examiner.com)
• Pope failed to stop pedophile priest in Germany: report (abs-cbnnews.com)

Bashing Religions

Image via Wikipedia
(I am sitting looking out the window at where the trolley ran.)

While sitting in the surgical waiting room at UCSF MC (waiting to see my wife in the recovery room), there was a group of people sitting near me that was bashing a family members religious preference. Specifically, the group was Catholic and they were commenting on how the family member still hasn't "found her faith" and how she was attending some "Christian" church.

Other than reading about religions bashing religions on blogs and online articles, I have never really been exposed to it much. Growing up most of my friends (and girlfriends) were Catholic and a few friends were Mormon. The only bashing I ever saw was Jehovah Witness, which we all agreed was bat-shit crazy.

Throughout my life I have heard and participated in various types of off-handed comments about different religions but, these Catholics were treating their family member as some type of nut job because she was attending a non-Catholic "Christian" church.

It was obviously lost on them that they were calling "the pot calling the kettle black". It was all I could do not to point out their hypocrisy. But, a surgical waiting room is not the appropriate place.

Now had they asked me....

Atheists Clubs in High Schools

Damian Thompson: Blogs Editor of the Telegraph Media Group writes about the rise of atheism clubs in U.S. high schools. 

A “triumphalistic, self-righteous atheism” inspired by the work of Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris is winning a following among American young people, leading to “atheist clubs” in high schools, according to Cardinal Francis George of Chicago.
The cardinal, who is President of the US Catholic Bishops’ Conference, says that unbelief among young people is more than a question of stopping going to church: it is part of a fashionable “new atheism” which is every bit as intolerant as Christian fundamentalism. He told John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter:
“In Chicago, we now have atheist clubs in high schools. We didn’t have those five years ago. Kids I would have confirmed in the eighth grade, by the time they’re sophomores in high school say they’re atheists. They don’t just stop going to church, they make a statement. I think that’s new. That’s perhaps a bit more like Europe.”
The Cardinal agreed with Allen’s suggestion that that the atheism of Dawkins and Harris was “highly evangelical”:
“Yes it is, sure. Everybody has said that, and it’s true. It’s the mirror image of a kind of fundamentalism, because it’s very restrictive in its use of reason. It’s also very triumphalistic and self-righteous.”
The Cardinal’s comments will be hard to dismiss as scaremongering. YouTube is crawling with videos by articulate, friendly American teenagers and university students proclaiming their uncompromising atheism; indeed, atheism is one of the fastest-growing movements in the 18-25 age group, casting doubt on old assumptions that the religious impulse is somehow hard-wired into the American psyche.
Yet, as Cardinal George says, there is something strongly akin to religious fundamentalism in the evangelical commitment it arouses in its adherents. He, and the whole of the American Church, must be praying that the certainty of unbelief wears off as the “new atheists” have children and face the prospect of mortality. But, as statistics from Europe indicate, this not a foregone conclusion: atheism, like any other belief system, can be passed from one generation to the next.

In a quick Google search I was not able to confirm the existence of any sanctioned clubs however there were many examples of clubs trying to start but running into significant issues with school administration. This is not something I have seen yet but I have no doubt there are high schools with atheist, agnostic or free thinker clubs.  It is the youth that is the group that will truly move atheism forward.