Sign says God’s gone fishin’

April 29, 2012 By 44 Comments
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“We do not have to live as if we are alone.”

“Those people are wrong, and they must be shouted down.”

“It is about us saying ‘no’ to hate, even when it is done in the name of God — no, especially when it is done in the name of God.”

“Here before my eyes was the unabridged, and little Baptist boy me was horrified.”

“Top 10 Reasons Why Men Shouldn’t Be Ordained”

“If the Catholic church’s insurance does not cover Sandra Fluke’s birth control, it shouldn’t cover Cardinal Dolan’s Viagra.”

“I wondered what I would say to [Msgr.] Lynn if given the opportunity. I settled on, ‘When did you stop believing in God?‘”

“Chuck Phelps, [her] pastor at the time who helped cover up her rape and could, reasonably, be an accomplice to a criminal act, was a board member in good standing at Bob Jones University.”

“This is only meant to make an annual declaration—which is not earth-shattering or surprising or particularly insightful, but is, nevertheless, necessary, in the sense of simply reading something into the public record.”

“I think they like it when their parents tell them something and then rub it in later.”

“‘It’s nothing but a political banner to cover up greed,’ Romney said.”

“If Paul Ryan knew what poverty was, he wouldn’t be giving this speech.”

“People who taught our children; policed our streets; picked up our garbage; put out our fires; built and maintained our parks, libraries, and roads for a living wage became the scapegoat for the impoverishment the private sector imposed on workers.”

“For the past several months, the laissez-fairyland blogosphere, assorted corporate front groups, a howling pack of congressional right-wingers, and a bunch of lazy mass media sources have been pounding out a steadily rising drumbeat to warn that our postal service faces impending doom.”

“The Lord’s Supper isn’t a ritual. It’s a sociological intervention.”

“We do not have to live as if we are alone.”

(“Give God the Blues” found via Brian McLaren. It’s from the Mercyland: Hymns for the Rest of Us compilation, which also includes the Carolina Chocolate Drops doing “Do Lord.”)

Filed Under: Uncategorized 44 Comments
  • Nathaniel

    Gotta love the post which has assumes that a cardinal is an atheist because he did bad things. 

  • P J Evans

     I think you missed something the first time through.

  • http://www.facebook.com/chrisalgoo Chris Algoo

    I can only hope that the career of whoever wrote that ad is SOOooOO OVER.

  • Nathaniel

     The article makes the common assumption that not believing in God is connected to being a bad person. Quite simply, fuck that.

  • Tricksterson

    I wonder if the little girl in the video is supposed to be God?  Nice touch if so.

    When listening I just had to find and post this as a response:

    <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5X4N2exOsU?
    Hope that worked, I have iffy luck with posting web addresses

  • Lori

     

      The article makes the common assumption that not believing in God is connected to being a bad person. Quite simply, fuck that. 

    I think the point of the article was that the Cardinal clearly doesn’t believe in the God he preaches, which is not the same thing.

  • Lori

    I have a story I would love to tell to all the people who can not stop complaining about the USPS. My old computer died a couple weeks ago, which was more than a bit of a bummer. My friend G had an old laptop he wasn’t using and after cleaning it up and making sure it was running he mailed it to me. Because it’s old it’s also pretty heavy, so he sent it via the slowest shipping method in order to save money. Obviously I had no objection to this (because I’m not ungrateful) and just hoped in would arrive in a week or 2. Five business days later it arrived at my door. That cost G less than it would have cost him to send me a letter via Fed Ex’s slowest service.

  • P J Evans

     Lori, I wonder if the people who are so busy trying to move us back to their mythical Golden Age realize that before the 1980s the USPS was a cabinet-level department of the government – and it worked fine.

  • Lori

     I’m going to guess, “no”.

    I read a book yesterday about pilots in Alaska and it reminded me that the only reason most people in the more isolated villages have any practical ability to travel outside those villages is that air service is effectively subsidized by the USPS. Small airlines make their nut carrying the mail. Passenger service is gravy so they can offer seats at a price people can afford.

  • WingedBeast

    Firstly, let me say, as an atheist, the question “when did you stop believing in God” would be met, by this particular child-molester, with utter confusion.  He never stopped believing in God.  And, sure, you can say that child molestation and the protection thereof isn’t in line with Christian views of what God wants, but in saying “when did you stop believing in God” suggests that one believes in some upper limit of evil from which a belief in God would stop you.  History indicates otherwise.

    To say that bad behavior indicates a lack of belief in God is to say that a lack of belief in God indicates and/or frees someone to bad behavior.  It would be similar to saying to a popular conservative voice, once put on trial for something horrible “when did you become a liberal”.

    That leads into a point reinforced by a few of these articles, which is that faith in God has an undeserved reputation for making people better people.  And, it has an undeserved reputation for making religious institutions into better institutions.  It’s that very reputation that makes it not only so glaring when someone within the faith and within the institutions does something horrible and/or works to cover up something horrible, but it’s also what makes the coverup necessary.

    If you honoestly believe that Bob Jones University is making its students into more moral people who are more in line with the desires of God, then it becomes very important that Bob Jones University maintain control.  If you believe that Bob Jones University’s rules, staff, and leadership are all ordained by God, then you cannot allow students to control who leads.  This means that, if a student causes trouble by drawing attention to the fact that one of the current leadership did, in fact, cover up a rape, then it becomes not just a self-involved revenge, but a duty from God to use the rules to intimidate any who would consider following in his footsteps.

    Similiarly, if you are in the Catholic Church.  If you are a Cardinal who truly believes that your church is the one and only way into Heaven, then covering up a rapist is not just the easy way out.  It’s your duty as ordained by God himself.

    In either case, the fact that the livelihoods of both of those institutions rely upon an image of being inherantly better institutions for being so focused on God makes it so that they cannot admit to the fact that there are grave evils among themselves.  So, they must hide the grave evils, for the greater damage is done by evil seen than evil done.

    By saying that someone who covers up child molestation must have stopped believing in God, that articles author was engaging in the very same force that encourages coverups in the first place.

    Say what you will about secular businesses.  But, when a public college or a secular private college finds that it’s harboring someone who covered up rape, they’ll have a vested interest in being seen to self-correct.  A secular daycare would, should it find that one among its employees had molested a child, would have a vested interest in being seen to report everything to the police and getting said molester into prison.

    Faith has a wholey undeserved reputation for making people better.  But, people become monsters in order to preserve that reputation.

  • Nathaniel

     Thank you. Couldn’t have said it better.

  • http://stealingcommas.blogspot.com/ chris the cynic

    Similiarly, if you are in the Catholic Church.  If you are a Cardinal who truly believes that your church is the one and only way into Heaven, then covering up a rapist is not just the easy way out.  It’s your duty as ordained by God himself.

    How so?  The cover ups have driven more and more people from the Catholic Church in a way that not covering up the abuse ever could have managed and that was always the most likely outcome.  The Catholic Church is not in the habit of assuming that judgment day will come before the end of this sentence, which means that they knew the scale on which they would have to keep the cover up going to avoid this kind of backlash and also knew that it was entirely untenable.

    If the goal was to get as many people into Heaven, and the assumption was that that had to be via the Catholic Church, they wouldn’t have taken actions that they knew would drive people away from their church.

    There are plenty of other, somewhat less religious, reasons for them to want to keep things under wraps for as long as possible (statues of limitation, for one example) but if you’re going to make the argument that the reason they did what they did was because they believed that church is the only way to Heaven, you at least have to explain why they took actions that were likely to drive people away, with a likelihood as close to certain as can be achieved in this world.

  • http://lliira.dreamwidth.org/ Lliira

    Since when are people practical? People often don’t act in their own self-interests, especially if acting in their own self-interests would somehow conflict with their ideas of themselves. 

    Besides, do we know for a fact that the cover-ups are driving people away whom the Vatican would care about? The Vatican is starting from a different basis of morality and belief than we are. They must always be seen to be right, and the hierarchy must be protected at any cost. Those are the central ideals. The Church is from God, so they think, and they think the Church is the hierarchy, so any attack on the hierarchy is an attack on God. The hierarchy of the Catholic Church has been around for almost two millennia, and has weathered plenty of storms before, by hewing to those ideals. 

    And the Catholic hierarchy didn’t just start doing evil things this decade. Or in the 20th century. Cover-ups work. They can’t distract the world by pointing at Jews and claiming they’re the true evil any more (at least without coding), but pointing at women and saying we’re the true evil still works, and pointing at gay marriage and saying it’s a brand new threat seems to be working as a distraction too. And no one is talking about nuns being raped by priests in Africa — North America is sticking to the atrocities in its own backyard, without seeing them as part of a pattern in both space and time. The Catholic hierarchy’s gonna be just fine. 

  • WingedBeast

    In order for this long term thinking to be appropriate, you have to know that the long term is going to come.

    What we know of, in the Catholic Church, is individuals, sometimes people who have only done this once.  Moved one person molester away with the belief that the molestation is done.

    Whether we’re talking about preservation of the reputation for religoius reasons or for purely secular ones, you cannot preserve the image of moral superiority if you openly admit that there are child molestors in your midst.

    Even now, when the cases of child molestation under the auspices of the catholic church have been publicly known and firmly embedded into world conciousness, the Catholic Church responds to new accusations as “gossip”.  This is not the action of somebody who takes the long view to see the inevitable unveiling of secrets.  This is the action of somebody who thinks that they can get away with it.  And, were it not for the bravery of a starting few, the many, many cases in courts now may never have come to light.

    We may wish to argue the long term advisability of the “keep it hidden” strategy versus the “report it and get it done” strategy.  But, my point wasn’t about the long term planning.  It was about the perils of an image of inherant moral superiority.

  • http://stealingcommas.blogspot.com/ chris the cynic

    Besides, do we know for a fact that the cover-ups are driving people away whom the Vatican would care about?

    I’m not sure, but I have a feeling that this probably depends on what one means by, “The Vatican”.

    I have been told that the present Pope, before he was Pope, publicly came out in favor of a smaller church if said smaller church stuck closer to ideological purity.  If that’s accurate then he’s probably not overly concerned about the people leaving the church.  But it’s not as if he’s always been Pope and the Vatican is far from a monolith and what we’re talking about isn’t some incident that’s isolated in space and time.

    So I think the answer has to be, “It depends.”

    -

    That said, my post wasn’t really about what the Vatican actually wants so much as what WingedBeast offered as the reasoning at work which, unless I misread, rested on the idea that the Cardinal responding to the situation does want to keep people in the church.

  • http://stealingcommas.blogspot.com/ chris the cynic

    What we know of, in the Catholic Church, is individuals, sometimes people who have only done this once.  Moved one person molester away with the belief that the molestation is done.

    What I know about, in large part from things that I’ve read based on Fred pointing to them here but also from other news sources, is an organization that undertook a systemic cover up which was internally documented such that the scope of the problem was known to those doing the shuffling of people.

    I haven’t heard many examples of one overseer moving one priest, I’ve heard of overseers moving multiple priests and at times the same one multiple times and all the while reporting about it to their higher ups.

    Consider the example of Lynn, the person mentioned here, who oversaw the confirmation of Fred’s daughters.  He’s not one someone who has only done this once.

    From an article Fred previously quoted about Lynn:

    It named 63 priests who, despite credible accusations of abuse, had been hidden under the direction of Cardinal Bevilacqua and his predecessor, Cardinal Krol. It also gave numerous examples of Lynn covering up crimes at the bidding of his boss.

    In the case of Rev. Stanley Gana, accused of “countless” child molestations, Lynn spent months ruthlessly investigating the personal life of one of the priest’s victims, whom Gana had allegedly begun raping at age 13. Lynn later helpfully explained to the victim that the priest slept with women as well as children. “You see,” he said, “he’s not a pure pedophile” – which was why Gana remained in the ministry with the cardinal’s blessing.

    That seems to be pretty consistent with what I’ve been hearing about.

  • http://twitter.com/mattmcirvin Matt McIrvin

    As with so much, Mr. Show parodied the “millennials against Obama” thing before it was made:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BY8YIn5okX8

  • Lori

     

    I have been told that the present Pope, before he was
    Pope, publicly came out in favor of a smaller church if said smaller
    church stuck closer to ideological purity. 

    His pre-Pope job was head of the Inquisition*, so that’s what you’d expect. 

    He’s 85 and admits that he’s now in the “home stretch” and what’s he focusing on? Hassling nuns, persecuting rape victims and hunting down whistle-blowers**. Also pretty much what you’d expect from the former head of the Inquisition.

    *They call it the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith now.

    ** http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2012/04/26/Pope-creates-commission-to-look-into-leaks/UPI-49381335448708/

  • WingedBeast

    Okay, so I got the numbers wrong.  The numbers are a non-sequitor to my point.  So is the question of whether or not covering up molestation is the best long-term strategy.

    The point of my post was that the reputation of faith in God for making people into morally better people is not only undeserved but, itself, a motive for horrible actions.

  • Matri

    The point of my post was that the reputation of faith in God for making
    people into morally better people is not only undeserved but, itself, a
    motive for horrible actions.

    Don’t forget also being used as a shield to protect themselves from justice. In their minds, Diplomatic Immunity.

  • Mary Kaye

    I think the whole problem with the quote that’s being debated is “believe in God.”  It’s totally the wrong question.  (In Christian eschatology even the devils believe in God.)  What ought to be asked of the Archbishop and those like him is more along the lines of “When did you abandon the attempt to live according to your faith’s moral system?” or perhaps “Haven’t you noticed that you are playing for Team Evil?”

    I don’t care what the man believes, frankly.  He needs to be held to account for what he *does*; and the fact that what he does is flatly contradictory to what his faith teaches is one extra nail in that coffin, though far from the most important one.

    (That said, unfortunately this type of error is endemic to tight-knit tribalistic organizations, and I don’t think it’s much different between religious and secular ones.  Witness Penn State.)

  • P J Evans

     Actually, it’s ‘clerical immunity’ – once upon a time, clerics were immune from civil laws, and there are still people at the Vatican (and elsewhere, obviously) who haven’t gotten the word that those laws don’t apply here.

  • arcseconds

    How so?  The cover ups have driven more and more people from the Catholic Church in a way that not covering up the abuse ever could have managed and that was always the most likely outcome.  The Catholic Church is not in the habit of assuming that judgment day will come before the end of this sentence, which means that they knew the scale on which they would have to keep the cover up going to avoid this kind of backlash and also knew that it was entirely untenable.

    All this shows is that individuals and organisations often aren’t very rational.  They often don’t consider the long term implications of their actions, and if they do, they often don’t do it very well.

    I think the following things are likely to be contributing factors:

    *) protecting their own.   This is common enough amongst any group of human beings — certainly I’d have difficulty turning over a family member or a long-term colleague to the police for minor infractions, and we only have to adjust the levels of loyalty, horror at the crime, and belief that the police are the appropriate course of action (see below) to see that someone else

    *) an individual protecting his own back/sweeping a difficult situation under the rug.   Turning in  a colleague or making the decision to allow them to be turned in not only might go against the person’s inclination due to loyalty, they also may fear difficulties from their superiors.   Also, it’ll potentially involve court appearances and so forth – easier just to sweep it under the carpet and hope nobody notices

    *) Habit/precedent.  Once the first case has been covered up, it’s cognitively a lot easier to do the same thing with the next case than to make a different decision.   Contrariwise, doing something different this time suggests your earlier solution was wrong, suggesting you should go back and fix it.

    *) ossuary in the closet.  After you’ve covered up even just one case, blowing the whistle about the next case may draw attention to the mound under the carpet (excuse me while I mix my metaphors), especially if the next case is about the same guy.   By the time you’ve got several cover-ups, dobbing the next one in runs a considerable risk of exposing the now quite difficult to explain network of fraud.

    *) hubris.   I don’t have any difficulty believing that they believed they would get away with it.  It’s an easy mistake to make when you’re a powerful and privileged hierarchy used to getting its own way.  This may even be based on experience — it doesn’t stretch belief too greatly to suppose that the Church has often successfully covered up embarrassing incidents in the past.  I imagine it’s probably a lot more difficult now than it has been at any time in the past.

    *) ‘it will be dealt with in the appropriate forum’ — historically the Church has considered itself above or beyond the ordinary law that governs lay people (there used to be a practice of the civil authority handing clerics back to the Church to be dealt with there, and usually the penalties were much lighter).   Moverover, they’ve traditionally had the attitude that the Church is superior to any ‘temporal’, secular institution.  I’m sure this history still informs contemporary attitudes towards national governments and law.

    So while I don’t really believe the idea that what’s driving this is really the concern for the reputation of the Church, and that’s all there is to it, I do think there’s still some truth to that – but I suspect it’s largely a rationalization of a bunch of stuff that happened for a variety of reasons, very few of them rational, and even fewer morally defensible.

  • Lori

      Actually, it’s ‘clerical immunity’ – once upon a time, clerics were immune from civil laws, and there are still people at the Vatican (and elsewhere, obviously) who haven’t gotten the word that those laws don’t apply here. 

    Actually, for the Pope the issue (at least in the most recent case I can recall) was sovereign immunity. An attempt was made a few years ago to sue him as part of a case in Texas. The claim was that while Ratzinger was still heading the Inquisition he knew about & helped to cover up the rape of 3 boys by a priest. By the time the case made it to court Ratzinger had become Pope Benedict XVI. Among other things that makes him the head of state for the Vatican. He claimed sovereign immunity and the court dismissed him from the case.

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10578472/ns/us_news-life/t/texas-court-dismisses-pope-sex-abuse-case/#.T54KpNl3p_4

  • P J Evans

     He (or his minions) are trying to claim that they’re immune to civil laws (like the ones requiring reporting of sexual molestation) because they’re clerics. But then I don’t think that the Pope should be above the law, any more than the President. (They’re human and will make mistakes, and even commit crimes to protect themselves and their associates, fi they think it’s necessary. And they should have to face the consequences.)

  • http://lliira.dreamwidth.org/ Lliira

    And victim-blaming. Lots and lots of victim-blaming.

    Powerful rapists — scratch that. Rapists almost always get away with it. It’s the norm. The fact that anyone is being held accountable has got to be a total shock to the Church hierarchy. And the Church hierarchy doesn’t think the really terrible sin is rape; they think the really terrible sin is betraying vows of celibacy the rapists made to the Church. Their ideas of sexual relations are not based upon consent; they are based upon whether or not the Church considers a particular sexual interaction legitimate. So a priest masturbating = a priest betraying his vow of celibacy = a priest raping someone.

  • Matri

    Still basically boils down to “You can’t charge me with anything because God, now shut up.”

    It is frustratingly vexing. Especially since if you persist in making them take responsibility for their crimes, they just scream Oppression!

  • Lori

      He (or his minions) are trying to claim that they’re immune to civil laws (like the ones requiring reporting of sexual molestation) because they’re clerics. 

    The law doesn’t agree, so the claim has no more weight then saying, “Shhh. Let’s keep this our little secret.”

    Honestly, I highly doubt that he ever thought that the concept of “pontifical secret” would hold any water legally. It was simply a convenient fiction thrown out in an attempt to get everyone on board with the conspiracy so that nothing would ever end up in court. That failed, but it’s still good to be the king so he’s off the hook and will die fat & happy in a very expensive bed in Rome instead of in prison where he belongs.

  • Lori

    Still basically boils down to “You can’t charge me with anything because God, now shut up.”

    No, it was, “You can’t charge me with anything because Head of State. Neener, neener, neener.”

  • http://lliira.dreamwidth.org/ Lliira

    That Gawker link is disgusting. Not surprising, since Gawker prints plenty of misogynistic bile, but I didn’t see that it was Gawker until I clicked.

    Please warn the next time you link something that uses the words “whore” as an insult. It is misogynistic. Using “cocksucker” as an insult: also extraordinarily bad. Who performs oral sex on men, hm…. now why would that be something to insult someone over, do you think? 

    Not okay. Nowhere near.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CE6FTHLHRMXUGOOGCMG3ROXBH4 David

    No, that won’t do either.  You’re still relying on the assumption that believing in a certain God makes people morally better.   Now you may choose to define a “true” believer as someone who follows all these moral teachings without fail, but then I don’t want to hear you describe yourself as a believer.  I never hear people talk about how they’re trying to be Christian or trying to be Evangelical or trying to be Catholic.  Generally, they just say that’s what they are.  And once you do that, any attempt to define your faith as populated by morally better people loses all legitimacy.

  • Matri

    “It’s nothing but a political banner to cover up greed.”

    If dear old dad could hear the garbage he spews out now, lil Mitt would be lain over his lap and paddled seven ways to Sunday.I’d likely pay to have a TV crew present.

  • Lori

     

    No, that won’t do either.  You’re still relying on the assumption that believing in a certain God makes people morally better.   

    I’m an atheist, so no I am not making any such assumption. You have never heard me describe myself as a believer and you never will. So you can step off any time now. The only thing I did was make a different assumption than you are about the original comment. 

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CE6FTHLHRMXUGOOGCMG3ROXBH4 David

    My apologies for an unwarranted assumption.  However, your interpretation of the article’s intent is still a distinction without a difference.  Whether you contend that people who believe in some sort of god don’t molest children or you believe that people you believe in some specific concept of God don’t molest children you’re still playing the “nonbelievers are okay with molesting children” trope. 

    I’m all for calling out hypocrites, but not by pretending certain moral values are the exclusive province of some in-group, or that certain forms of evil are nonexistent among your fellow adherents.

  • EllieMurasaki

    Did you miss the part where Lori said she herself is an atheist?

  • Münchner Kindl

    “How so? The cover ups have driven more and more people from the Catholic Church in a way that not covering up the abuse ever could have managed and that was always the most likely outcome.”

    Do we know that? When sexual abuse and other abuse (hitting children at school in the 70s) in the local dicocese was uncovered, do you know how much the rate at which people left the RCC went up in the following months?

    1%.

    Most people leave RCC because they are generally fed up with it and want to save the taxes/ money. And far more people use the standard aplogetics:

    “But not all priests are bad, I know some really wonderful priests/ nuns doing good work”

    “Those are individual cases, but the Church as whole is holy. Men are fallible and the Church is a human institution, so there has and will always be sin, which we must forgive and look at the spirit working in other parts” (Both of which are of course logical fallacies because they fail to adress the systematic coverup in the higher ranks)

    “I don’t want to break my family/ mother ‘s heart by leaving the Church” “Everybody in my village is Catholic, I would get problems if I leave” (which basically means “I’m too much of a coward to make a stand for my convictions of what is right and what is wrong”)

    and beneath that, often a motivitating factor but rarely explicity expressed:

    “Outside the Church there is no salvation – If I leave the church, I don’t get communion and confession, which means I go to Hell when I die, but I don’t want to go to hell.”

    Far too many people parrot this over and over again and meanwhile keep paying the money for the lawyers and the out of court settlements.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CE6FTHLHRMXUGOOGCMG3ROXBH4 David

    No.  Does that mean I can’t disagree with her take on the article?

  • EllieMurasaki

    Of course you can disagree with her take on the article. But first make sure you know what her take on the article IS. I assure you that for reasons including but not limited to ‘Lori is an atheist’, ‘atheists are child molesters’ is not something Lori has ever said or would ever say.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CE6FTHLHRMXUGOOGCMG3ROXBH4 David

    I’m well aware of that, but that’s the kind of statement Lori is letting the author of the article get away with by pretending the distinction between “not believing in God” and “not believing in a particular version of God” is important in this context.

    And for clarity’s sake, I was using the generalized “you” in that comment, not referring to Lori specifically.

  • Lori

     

    However, your interpretation of the article’s intent is still a
    distinction without a difference.  Whether you contend that people who
    believe in some sort of god don’t molest children or you believe that
    people you believe in some specific concept of God don’t molest children
    you’re still playing the “nonbelievers are okay with molesting
    children” trope. 

    No. It is not a distinction without a difference and I am not playing to any trope.

    Let’s try this in Venn diagram terms. Draw 2 circles, one labeled “nonbelievers” and the other labeled “folks who are OK with child molestation”. Now make two diagrams using those circles. In the first diagram show the circles totally overlapping. In the 2nd show the OK circle smaller than the nonbeliever circle and totally contained within it.

    Those 2 diagrams are not expressing the same concept. They may both be expressing a concept you disagree with, but they are not the same.

    I realize that some people suffer from logic FAIL and can’t understand that. I can’t tell if you’re actually one of them or if you’re just so pissed at those people that you’re acting like you are. I also don’t know for a fact if Susan Matthews is one of those people. I do know that her article about the trial of Father Avery doesn’t say that she is.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CE6FTHLHRMXUGOOGCMG3ROXBH4 David

    I understand your distinction.  I just don’t find it relevant and you have yet to give any cogent reason why I should.  In both your proposed Venn diagrams there’s a salient possibility missing – that part of the “child molester” circle lies outside the circle of believers.  It doesn’t make one lick of difference to me if Susan Matthews is willing to admit there are some unbelievers who aren’t child molesters*. She still demonizes nonbelievers relative to believers by refusing, against all evidence, to admit that there are some believers who molest children.

    In my mind such slander has much in common with abuse denial itself – both are trying to protect the image of their in-group.  One does so by denying the wrongdoing of in-group members, the other by denying their membership in the in-group.

    *See “some of my best friends are [Fill in the blank].”

  • Lori

    I understand your distinction.  I just don’t find it relevant and you have yet to give any cogent reason why I should. 

    So you’ve moved the goalposts and are complaining that I didn’t preemptively hit the new target? Smooth.

    She still demonizes nonbelievers relative to believers by refusing,
    against all evidence, to admit that there are some believers who molest
    children.

    You’re assuming that anyone who claims to be a believer is one. Ms Matthews thinks that no one who truly, deep down believes in the existence of an all-knowing God who is willing and able to send people to a place of unimaginable torment and never, ever let them out would molest a child using God as leverage. Since I’m pretty sure neither of you is a mind reader neither of you can actually provide any evidence about the link or lack thereof between belief and child molestation.

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_CE6FTHLHRMXUGOOGCMG3ROXBH4 David

    I haven’t moved any goalposts.  What are you talking about?  Do you know what a “distinction without a difference” is?

    Appealing to the secret inner workings of the human mind is a cheap attempt at special pleading.  We don’t, in the normal course of public conversation, refer to church leaders as if they may or may not believe in God.  In everyday life, people have absolutely no problem simply taking people at their word.  Newspaper articles do not say “Pope Benedict XVI, who claims to be Catholic, said…”  So which seems more rational and more fair to you: to continue in the same vein when a person professing a particular faith commits a heinous crime?  Or to suddenly resort to a different standard, one that automatically paints the offender as a member of the out-group?

  • http://deird1.dreamwidth.org Deird

     Ms Matthews thinks that no one who truly, deep down believes in the
    existence of an all-knowing God who is willing and able to send people
    to a place of unimaginable torment and never, ever let them out would
    molest a child using God as leverage.

    Point of order: Even if Ms Matthews is calling herself a Christian, that doesn’t mean she believes in:
    - an all-knowing God
    - a place of unimaginable torment
    - God being able to send people there
    - God being willing to send people there

    I don’t think that was actually the premise she was working with.