Secular Sanity

During the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church—dumb as a rock when it comes to moral standards—set the rules for determining heresy, then turned those deemed guilty over to the government for torture and execution.

Today the Vatican and its fundamentalist allies —still dumb as a rock on morality and even dumber on all things related to sex—have determined that using Plan B birth control to save rape victims from a pregnancy is somehow—oh, I don’t know—wrong? and turned the victims over to the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services. Like rulers in the Middle Ages, a religiously compliant HHS is getting set to carry out the sentence imposed by the Vatican and Protestant fundamentalists on women for getting raped. No Plan B for them. They’ll just have to bear their rapist’s child.

Since when does the government, under our secular Constitution, have the right to enforce religious doctrines? There is no rational secular justification for imposing religious beliefs on everyone regarding Plan B, other contraceptives, abortion, comprehensive sex education, marriage, scientific research, end-of-life care, science education—or even for inconveniencing everyone by accommodating foot washing and prayer rituals in workplaces, no dogs or liquor in taxis, cashiers’ refusal to ring up pork products, Sunday closings, Santeria chicken sacrificing, and who knows what else is ahead as this nation’s religious diversity increases.

Perhaps the time will soon come when the public, instead of being hostile to the concept of atheism, will begin to embrace it as the only safe haven from being jerked around by the Alice in Wonderland world of religion.

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Prof. Paul Z. Myers and that kid who threatened to hold a consecrated communion wafer hostage had better be careful. The history of what happens to people who question Catholic doctrine does not make pleasant reading. (“Catholic,” after all, was chosen to designate the belief that was held by everyone, everywhere—or else!) But there have always been those who were not careful. Take the pagans for example. During the early centuries of Christianity, they heedlessly ridiculed both the Church and the Eucharist, leaving us the term “hocus-pocus” to describe nonsensical deception. It’s a corruption of the priest’s Latin words of consecration, “Hoc est corpus mea” (This is my body). They also left us the term “cretin” to describe a person of low intelligence. It’s a corruption of “Christian.” The Church ended such adventures in free speech by destroying the pagans’ altars and wiping them out. So let’s be careful here, folks. Questioning anything at all about religion may no longer be lethal (although I understand that kid, and maybe Myers, got death threats), but the Church has plenty of economic, social and political ways to shut you up.

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Our newsletter editor Marie Castle wrote the following in response to an article (‘Apostle’ believers lost $30 million) in the Star Tribune, although it is doubtful that it will be printed:

Once again we read of people losing a great deal of money to a religious con artist. As an atheist, I find this disturbing and hope the swindler gets plenty of jail time. However, many people have given huge amounts of money to religious organizations, expecting (and often promised) that this will enhance their chances of a heavenly afterlife.

There being much evidence against and none for an afterlife, their expectations go just as unfulfilled as those of the victims of a con artist. The only difference is that the afterlife investors are incapable of being disappointed because the dead know nothing. (Eccl 9:10)

There is a lesson here for those who want to make money off of good people willing to trust anyone who exudes piety: Keep those investment promises and rewards in the afterlife, “where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Mt 6:20)-and whose unverifiability allows you to take their money tax-free and without fear of being hauled into court for “fraud, money laundering and failing to pay income taxes on millions of dollars.” (Star Tribune 7/13/08)

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