loon

Exorcism?

Here in the second decade of the 21st century, you might think that the only exorcism still to be found in the Church involves casting altar boys out of their robes. But while that may the mainstream of Catholic practices, good old-fashioned hellspawn expulsion remains on the Vatican's menu of imaginary services.

A lot of folks lately have been talking up the story of "Father" Gabriele Amorth, cross-slinging demon-buster of the Holy See, who claims a Vatican-roaming Satan himself is behind Church improprieties ("the Devil made them diddle", I guess). Reading words about – and by – the 85-year-old priest is a trip into utter lunacy, of course, but I gotta say it's awfully entertaining wackiness. Here are some things I've learned about the Church and the exorcist biz in particular: Readeth thou more

Prosecutors: Boy Starved to Death at Cult's Hands

An addition to yesterday's Texan Democrats (a little) less religious than Republicans: Let's take things up from one state to the national level. In Republicans v secular America, Dan Kennedy of Guardian News and Media reports on the latest machinations by a party salivating over the prospect of religion-based control over the US populace. Yes, that's all nothing you don't already know, but it's a jolting drink of gasoline to see so many voices of inanity gathered into one article:

• Tim Pawlenty: "God is in charge ... In the Declaration of Independence it says we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights. It doesn't say we're endowed by Washington, DC, or endowed by the bureaucrats or endowed by state government. It's by our creator that we are given these rights."
• Mitt Romney: Deflects suspicion toward his wacky Mormon sect by embracing "any person who has knelt in prayer to the Almighty" – but apparently, only such believers.
• Sarah Palin: Prays to invisible spirits for oil pipelines. (I presume the difficult words were written on her palm.)
• Mike Huckabee: "I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ."

But wait! There's more! Virginia State Delegate and Republican Bob Marshall just added, in a rant against Planned Parenthood:

"The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children. In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There's a special punishment Christians would suggest."

That's right: We're one-tenth into the 21st Century, and this guy claims that handicapped children are a punishment from the Old Testament Yahweh.

Fiscal conservatism? Proper role of government? Those and a thousand other matters are reasonable discussions on real-world topics to be had between "the left" and "the right" in the US, with meaningful ideas potentially coming from both sides. But as long as the Republican party is chock full of nuts like the above, who want to move their adherence to an ancient Middle Eastern cult from an appropriately private matter to a public requirement, any American wanting to keep religion and government separate (as the nation's founders clearly intended) needs to support the lesser of the two evils, the Democrats.

Or get to work cleaning house in the Republican party, pronto. Is it so hard to throw out morons who want to base government on supernatural voodoo? 

UPDATE: The same breed of idiots claims that any gathering of atheists is, by definition, a hate group.

The situation: A school wants to take 6th and 7th graders to a Fossil Discovery Center to attend a Rocks and Mineral Festival.

The problem: Those awful people are going to tell little Johnny – oh heavens! – that rocks are old!

From I bet that kid is popular in class at the Fail Blog: It's a simple field trip permission slip defaced by a barely-literate parent who thinks a Mineral Festival needs to begin and end with Jesus. The scrawl reads:

Note: Just to let you it is not that we don’t believe in things like that, it is just misleading when you talk about it being billions of years old, when we all know that the world is only about 6,000 years old. So why would I pay so that you can misslead my children, your world is just a revolving(?), ours has a start and an end. God created the world. He created animals and man all in the same week. It was also Adam who named all the animals, they will do the essay 'Rock and Minerals' but it might not be 5 pages long, and about billions of years, it will be according to the Bible.

(Hmm, is this from the United States? Hmm, do we even need to ask?)

We can laugh at the idiot parent, but what's being done to the poor kid is just sad.

I was just about to write a lament over the dearth of new predictions – religious, apocalyptic, or otherwise woo-ey – fogging up crystal balls everywhere. In Death of Darwinism: Need new predictions, fast!, I had reviewed some forecasts that had either failed recently or still sat under a ticking clock. The "demise of Darwinist ideology" and similar prognostications – not as concrete as, say, "Rove and Rumsfeld will be caught in a naked love huddle in August", but still solid stuff with measurable expiration dates. 

But where were some crunchy new entrail-readings? Readeth thou more

If Adolf Hitler was an atheist, as some argumentative religious loons keep insisting, he was the oddest atheist ever: a member of the Roman Catholic church who wouldn't shut up about his self-proclaimed role in doing God's holy work.

Hitler was a Christian (if one of a particularly warped nature) and a man of faith even beyond the borders of religion. That's so obvious and well-known that you have to wonder why True Believers keep bringing up "Hitler the atheist" when the claim backfires on them every time. Yet what's pointed out far less frequently (although it's not the least surprising) is that Hitler the Christian was also Hitler the flaming Creationist. Readeth thou more

Nancy Reagan consulted with astrologers? How sublunary. Miyuki Hatoyama, wife of new Japanese premiere Yukio Hatoyama, goes so much further. 

As reported in outlets such as this CNN article, the good Ms Hatoyama relates in her many TV appearances and books that she knows Tom Cruise from a previous life, when he (and presumably she too) was Japanese. While busy chatting about politics and cooking on the talk shows, she still finds time for the occasional astral trip to Venus via "triangular UFO", as well as moments to "take a piece of the Sun and eat it".

So she sounds like a hard customer to please at those state dinners, though with that Venus trip on her resume, she sure beats "I can see Russia from my porch" Sarah Palin in foreign policy experience. (Despite the kinship to Tom Cruise, though, there's been no report that Ms Hatoyama embraces Scientology. Some things are just too weird for her.)

Do animals have it easy?

Teen's death blamed on faith healing

My earlier entry The "atheists discredited" deadline hath come! was picked up by the 800-lb Pharyngula blog on February 17, in the post SOP for prophets. That mention brought a mighty spike of visitors, a nice handful or two of comments, and lots of discussion back on the Pharyngula page.

For whatever reason, though, I was unable to leave a comment myself on that page, despite three attempts. Maybe it was some oddity on my side; on the other hand, that heavily-trafficked site is known to choke on bugs once in a while. In any case, the comments I wanted to leave on that page are as follows: Readeth thou more