
A reasonable blog on atheism, religion, science and skepticism


“Rev.” Jim Moats has been deceiving his congregation for five years. He’s been telling them he was a Navy SEAL, when in fact he was nothing but a lying pastor:
After deceiving his parishioners for five years, and the rest of the world for one day, the Rev. Jim Moats’ recently revealed that he was never a Navy SEAL.
Immediately after the death of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden on May 1, the Navy SEALs rose to celebrity status. They had successfully raided bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan and killed the world’s most wanted terrorist. On the quest to reach out to a former Navy SEAL and find out more about their life, The Patriot-News, known for their interviews with veterans, wrote a story on Saturday on Rev. Jim Moats after hearing he had been a former SEAL.
The next day, Moats shamefully confessed his story was 100 percent fake.
In fact, he said he never had SEALs training, nor was he accepted in the program.
He told The Patriot-News, “I never was in a class; I never served as an actual SEAL. It was my dream. … I don’t even know if I would have met the qualifications. I never knew what the qualifications were.”
The Patriot-News reporter, Dan Miller, heard about Moats because he had been telling his congregants at Christian Bible Fellowship Church in Newville, Pa., for five years that he had been a Navy SEAL and proved it with a gold Trident medal, only given to those who have completed the training. The medal can be bought at any military store.
But it’s okay, because he’s sorry and Jesus will forgive him:
“I bring a shame and a reproach upon the name of Christ, I bring a shame and a reproach upon my church, and I bring a shame and a reproach upon my family,” Moats confessed.
He wasn’t sorry enough to resign, though.
A recent investigation has found that “No Belgian church escaped sex abuse“:
Investigators, working with the support of the Belgian Catholic Church received 475 complaints of child abuse committed in the 1950s through to the late 1980s by Catholic clergy.
“We can say that no congregation escapes sexual abuse of minors by one or several of its members,” the commission concluded.
The 200-page report, published on Friday, contains testimonies from some 124 anonymous victims, revealing that abuse for most began at the age of 12.It noted a “high number of suicides” with 13 deaths and six attempts attributed to “sexual abuse by a cleric”.
“We are talking here about anal and oral abuse, forced and mutual masturbation,” said Peter Adriaenssens, the psychiatric specialist in paedophilia who chaired the commission. [...]
A woman, quoted in the report, testified that she was abused at age 17 by a priest and tried to seek help from a bishop in 1983.
“I told him ‘I have a problem with one of your priests’. He told me: ‘Ignore him and he will leave you alone’,” she said.
Folks, I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the posts that the UF team has brought you recently, and it seems to me that we might have inadvertantly implied that Christians, particularly Catholics priests, are the only people who could possibly claim moral and ethical superiority while simultaneously raping children. Well, I think it’s time to right that wrong.

Mohammed Hanif Khan - Child Rapist
Meet Mohammed Hanif Khan. Mister Khan has taken it upon himself to prove that Imams can be child rapists too. By raping children. You can read the full story on the BBC news site, but I want to comment on one aspect of it, specifically this quote from the judge, Justice Dobbs:
“Your actions have had a significant effect on the community. The boys have been reviled by the community for bringing shame on the community.”
Um. Just. But. Wow. The boys are the ones who’ve brought shame on the community?! In similar fashion to Catholics who fell over themselves to ostracise children who had been raped for the terrible crime of being raped and daring to object to being raped, the Muslim “community” of Stoke-On-Trent have, it seems, reacted to a well-respected rapist by blaming the victims. Religious folk really do have fantastic moral compasses, don’t they? I can’t decide whether the judge has been very clever or particularly obtuse by phrasing it that way: “You’ve harmed the community, but the community are being a bunch of assholes about it anyway”. Either way, I find it deeply disturbing that a Judge could imply (if imply is the right word, I actually think it’s a pretty unambiguous wording) that the victims of a rapist have brought shame on their community by being raped. Nobody who thinks that way (or who is too stupid to realise that what they’re saying makes it sound like they think that way) has got any business being a judge.

Copyright 2008-2012, Patheos. All rights reserved. Terms of Service | Patheos Privacy Policy

Follow Patheos
Atheist: