“You may not be able to change the world, but at least you can embarrass the guilty.”
– Jessica Mitford

Did you hear that sound?  That loud, heavy ka-thud?  That was the sound of yet another right-wing Christian hate-mongering hypocrite hitting the ground like a big sack of bibles dropped from a plane at 14,000 feet.  That was the sound of George Rekers going down.  If you didn’t hear it, maybe you felt the shockwave underfoot.  These guys land hard, and they don’t bounce.  Not even the really gay ones.

Who is George Rekers, you ask?  You’ve probably never heard of him, and he seems to prefer it that way.  Rekers is one of the hidden puppetmaster of the hatemongering, hypocritical Christian wrong.  Er, um, sorry, I mean Christian right.

George Alan Rekers is a Baptist minister, an author and a professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science Emeritus at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.  He’s written a good deal on the subject of homosexuality and sexual identity.  His books include, Shaping Your Child’s Sexual Identity and Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.  Homosexuality is Rekers’s favorite topic.  Along with his pal James Dobson, one of the Christian right’s most beloved and outspoken hate mongers, Rekers is cofounder of the Family Research Council, which has been declared a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  According to the Miami New Times, “Its annual Values Summit is considered a litmus test for Republican presidential hopefuls, and Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter have spoken there.”

Rekers is also an officer of NARTH, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality.  NARTH is one of those groups that advocates “conversion therapy” to “cure” homosexuals of their homosexuality.  This involves such behavior modification tricks as drugs that induce nausea and electric shock while looking at homoerotic images, watching gay porn, or being shown old TV clips of Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly.  Oh, what’s that?  You didn’t know this sort of thing went on in this day and age?  O my brothers, I’m afraid so.  It seems that not only do these people spend a lot of time concerning themselves with what consenting adults do with their genitals and not only do they harbor a venomous hatred for homosexuals, they’re also really big fans of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.  NARTH claims it is a secular organization but this claim is highly suspect.  For one thing, NARTH is bosom buddies – droogs, you might say – with Focus on the Family.  Also, there are the words of its cofounder, Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, taken from an article on NARTH at TruthWinsOut.org:

“We, as citizens, need to articulate God’s intent for human sexuality,” Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, President of NARTH, said in CNN’s 360 Degrees with Anderson Cooper, April 14, 2007. At the Feb. 10, 2007 Love Won Out conference in Phoenix, the “secular” therapist told the audience, “When we live our God-given integrity and our human dignity, there is no space for sex with a guy.”  Confronted with protesters at their 2006 national conference in Orlando, NARTH instructed its members to “sing a hymn or pray instead,” according to Mother Jones magazine, in its Sept.-Oct. 2007 issue.

Rekers is listed as a participating “expert on the sexual development of youth” on the website FactsAboutYouth.com.  The website is a project of the American College of Pediatricians, which sounds mighty important and legitimate, and suspiciously similar to the American College of Pediatrics, from which it broke away after the American College of Pediatrics expressed its support of same-sex parents.  The website receives support and assistance from – drum roll, please! – NARTH.

Rekers also has a couple of websites of his own.  One is TeenSexToday.com, where he offers teenagers advice about sex and assures them, “So no matter how common or ‘off the wall’ you might think your question is about teen sex, I’ve probably already studied the topic.”  His other website is ProfessorGeorge.com where you can learn everything there is to know about Dr. George Rekers.

Well, um … maybe not quite everything.

Do you sense something of a pattern in the above details about George Alan Rekers?  Homosexuality … teenagers … Christianity … homosexuality … teenagers … Christianity.  Did I mention homosexuality and teenagers?  If you have suspicions about Rekers … well, then, you win the gold cock ring.

In April of 2010, Professor/Dr./Reverend Rekers went on a ten-day trip to Europe.  Due to a recent surgery, Rekers claims his doctor told him not to lift any heavy objects.  With all the luggage he would be carting around, Rekers needed a travel assistant to help him out.  So naturally, he logged on to the website of travel assistant agency Rentboy.com to find one.

Wait a second, hold it, just hold it!  Rentboy.com, which describes itself as “The world’s largest gay escort and massage site”?  For a travel assistant?  Yes, that’s right.  And he found one!  He chose a young man named Geo who had all the necessary qualifications to be a top-notch travel assistant: 132 pounds, 5′ 9″ tall, a lean swimmer’s build, blue eyes, blond hair, versatility, a nice ass, and plenty of uncut foreskin on his large cock.  Even better, Geo’s profile claimed that he was available for “Massage, good times, travel, escort for days, nights and weekends. … For a sensual meet or companionship.  Will do anything you say as long as you ask.”  The perfect companion to haul Rekers’s luggage – and, of course, his ashes.  Praise Jesus!  Professor George’s prayers had been answered and the lord had led him to the travel assistant of his dreams.  And off they went together into the wild, wild, wild blue yonder for ten days of Euro-fabulousness.

But, as the bible tells us, “the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour,” and sometimes he walketh about in the form of a photographer from the Miami New Times.  That photographer was waiting for Rekers at Miami International Airport at the end of their ten-day luggage-hauling frolic and snapped a picture … of Rekers handling that luggage that was supposed to be too heavy for him.  According to the New Times:

Rekers said he learned (Geo) was a prostitute only midway through their vacation. “I had surgery,” Rekers said, “and I can’t lift luggage. That’s why I hired him.”  (Medical problems didn’t stop him from pushing the tottering baggage cart through MIA.)

Rekers did not deny that he contacted Geo through Rentboy.com, only that he knew Geo was a gay prostitute.  When the ugly details spread fast, though, Rekers changed his story.  In a Facebook message to blogger Joe Jervis, Rekers wrote the following:

I have spent much time as a mental health professional and as a Christian minister helping and lovingly caring for people identifying themselves as “gay.” My hero is Jesus Christ who loves even the culturally despised people, including sexual sinners and prostitutes. Like Jesus Christ, I deliberately spend time with sinners with the loving goal to try to help them. … Like John the Baptist and Jesus, I have a loving Christian ministry to homosexuals and prostitutes in which I share the Good News of Jesus Christ with them.

So, to wiggle out of this whole gay rentboy thing, Rekers is comparing himself to Jesus Christ.  A fisher of … men.  A shepherd whose rod and staff … comfort.

Contrary to false gossip, innuendo, and slander about me, I do not in any way “hate” homosexuals –

Except maybe yourself, George?

– but I seek to lovingly share two types of messages to them, as I did with the young man (Geo) … [1] It is possible to cease homosexual practices to avoid the unacceptable health risks associated with that behavior –

But ceasing those practices isn’t nearly as much fun as continuing them, is it, George?  Even while you’re devoting your life to punishing others who engage in them.

– and [2] the most important decision one can make is to establish a relationship with God for all eternity by trusting in Jesus Christ’s sacrifice on the cross for the forgiveness of your sins, including homosexual sins. If you talk with my travel assistant … you will find I spent a great deal of time sharing scientific information on the desirability of abandoning homosexual intercourse, and I shared the Gospel of Jesus Christ with him in great detail.

First, Rekers pleaded ignorance, then he pleaded arrogance.  If we are to believe him, then Rekers went to Rentboy.com – “The world’s largest gay escort and massage site!” – searched until he found the “sexual sinner” with just the right stats (Cut or uncut? Paper, plastic, or latex?  Would you like thighs with that?) and dragged him off to Europe for ten days to get him to drop to his knees and devote his life to a man who never married and spent all his time with twelve other guys.

The Family Research Council released a statement from its president Tony Perkins (yes, that’s right, Tony Perkins – you movie fans will know why that’s so damned funny):

In the past 24 hours FRC has received calls regarding Dr. George Rekers and his connection with the Family Research Council. After reviewing the historical records we did verify that Dr. Rekers was a member of the original Family Research Council board prior to its merger with Focus on the Family in 1987.

Wait a second, hold it, just hold it!  Is this guy actually trying to tell us that the Family Research Council, cofounded by George Alan Rekers, the man in question, had to review “the historical records” because they didn’t know who this guy is?  Do they think we’re intellectually comatose?  Seriously, do they really think we just fell off the goddamned idiot truck this morning?

Reports have been circulating regarding Dr. Rekers relationship with a male prostitute. FRC has had no contact with Dr. Rekers or knowledge of his activities in over a decade so FRC can provide no further insight into these allegations.

So, at all of those anti-gay conferences held and participated in by the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family – conferences attended by people from NARTH and the American College of Pediatricians and by George Rekers – they were … what?  Preoccupied?  With what?  Hauling luggage around?  Is that why they didn’t notice Rekers?  Is that why they’ve had no “knowledge of his activities in over a decade”?

While we are extremely disappointed when any Christian leader engages in the very activities that they ‘preach’ against, it is not surprising. The scriptures clearly teach the fallen nature of all people. We each have a choice to act upon that nature or accept the forgiveness offered by grace through faith in Jesus Christ and do our best to ensure our actions, both public and private, match our professed positions.

So the Family Research Council – the organization Rekers founded with his co-kneeler James Dobson – has denounced George Rekers … even though they don’t really know who he is and have no idea what he’s been up to in over a decade.  That’s it, Tony – make sure your ass is covered before you bend over for the soapbox.  In the end, of course, like all Christians, they blame “the fallen nature of all people.”  In other words – everybody’s doing it!

NARTH had a very peculiar response to all of this:

You have as much information as we do. Before this released we didn’t have this much information. All we had was a simple accusation that he was with a “rent boy” so that was all we were able to talk about with him. His answers (as well as his demeanor) showed that the story wasn’t exactly as it seamed [sic]. There are certain accusations that would and wouldn’t surprise certain people about others.

No shit, Sherlock.

This comes as a complete surprise as Dr. Rekers is not only very old –

Very old?  He’s 61!  Since when is 61 “very old?”  And even if it were “very old,” what the hell does that have to do with anything?  Old people can’t be gay?  Quentin Crisp lived to be 91 – and he was about as gay as you can get the whole time!  Of course, Quentin Crisp was man enough to be honest about it.

– and in very poor health –

Gay people can get sick, too, you moronic douchebag!  Hey, maybe he has AIDS!  Ever think of that?

– but also very nice and soft spoken –

Oh, well, that’s different.  “Nice and soft spoken”?  Why didn’t you say so in the first place?  In that case, he couldn’t possibly be gay!

– so until we have further information or proof of this incident it remains rumor and speculation.

What do they want, video of the two of them having sex?  So they could show it to some poor son of a bitch while they try to shock the gay out of him?

This is yet another rendition of a tune we’ve heard Christians sing before.  It goes like this:  “La la la la, we can’t hear you!”

What makes this story so significant is Rekers’s aggressively anti-gay work.  According to gay rights activist Wayne Besen, “While he keeps a low public profile, his fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people.  His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals.”  Along with his tireless attempts to marginalize and demonize the gay community by keeping alive obsolete myths and hateful lies long proven wrong, Rekers has served “in advisory roles with Congress, the White House, and the Department of Health and Human Services and testifying as a state’s witness in favor of Florida’s gay adoption ban.” (Miami New Times)

Please open your hymnals now to that beloved old hymn, “Swing Right, Sweet Hypocrite.”  You’ve heard the song before, I’m sure.  We can’t sing the whole hymn because it’s really, really, really, really long.  But some of the stanzas include people like Mark Sanford, Ted Haggard, John Allen Burt, Roy Ashburn, everyone’s favorite airport men’s room tapdancer, Senator Larry Craig, and many, many, many others.  I simply don’t have the space, time or energy to list even half of the scandals involving Christian conservatives.  But you get the idea.  This isn’t anything new – in fact, it’s getting pretty damned old.  But it doesn’t stop.

I’m not trying to say that conservative Christians are the only ones who get caught with their pants down.  There’s plenty of pants-dropping on both sides of the aisle.  Right now, one of my prime candidates for being strung up by his genitalia from the Washington Monument is that slug John Edwards, who’s firmly on the left side of the aisle.  But conservative or liberal – that’s not the point here.  The point is hypocrisy.  We’re all humans, we all make mistakes.  But some of us insist that they have risen above that.  Those are the people I’m talking about.

The one thread that runs through these scandals is Christianity.  These are Christian men who fly their religious beliefs like flags.  They talk about “traditional values” and “family values.”  They pass judgment on those who do not live according to their religious beliefs – whether they share them or not.  They work hard to legislate against the rights of gay people, to determine what women can and cannot do with their own bodies.  Meanwhile, they’re screwing around on their wives, engaging in gay sex and fucking children, and when they get caught, they invoke the name of their savior and brag about how forgiven they are and tell everybody how wrong it is to judge them.

Look, as long as everyone is of age and consenting, you can do whatever the hell you want as far as I’m concerned.  Unroll the rubber sheets, break out the jumbo vibrating dildos, put on the scuba gear and call in the naked Episcopalian dwarves – I don’t care!  In fact, I’m all for people doing things that make them happy because we only get one life and we should make the best of it.  As long as nobody’s getting hurt, I say have yourself a party!

But if you’re a Christian and you’re determined to make sure that everyone knows you’re a Christian — as if that somehow makes you better than everyone else — and if you like to spend your time sticking your nose into other people’s personal business so you can make it known far and wide that you don’t approve of their personal business, if you work to limit the rights of those people, and it turns out that you are engaging in the very behaviors you have condemned, then you, my friend, have made yourself a big fat target.  You can talk all you want about how much Jesus loves you and forgives you and thinks you’re just swell.  But keep in mind that Jesus isn’t here.  He’s not talking.  He’s not posting your bail and he’s not coming to your defense.  And his angry, bloodthirsty, vengeful father is not the one you should be worried about.  Worry about the people you’ve hurt, the people you’ve condemned, the people whose lives you’ve damaged.  And keep in mind that you’re on your own, pal.  As the saying goes, Jesus may love you, but everybody else thinks you’re an asshole.

When I was a little boy, my cousin Kenny and I used to love to pretend we were Batman and Robin.  First, we’d fight over who had to be Robin. Then we’d don our capes – blankets or towels or whatever our mothers had handy – and we’d hunt down Catwoman, take her back to the bat cave and make her undress.  We were very imaginative.  But I digress.  Do you know why we pretended we were Batman and Robin?  We had no choice – because we weren’t Batman and Robin.  We had to pretend.  But the reality was that we were just a couple of dumb kids running around in towels looking like idiots.

That’s what these moralizing Christians do.  Christianity is a game of “let’s pretend.”  It’s the towel they pin around their necks and call a cape.  Then they prance around and tell everyone how moral and righteous they are.  They use lots of catch phrases and buzz words.  They support the family and traditional marriage, they say.  They have core values that are Christ-centered and biblically based.  They live by the Christian principles upon which this nation was founded.  They have rules they must follow – they have to oppose and condemn homosexuality and abortion and anything on the left.  As long as they oppose those things loudly enough so that everyone can hear and everyone can know how moral and righteous they are … well, then, they can go about the business of being human beings who live on planet earth.  But you know what?  Sometimes human beings are gay.  Sometimes human beings find themselves in situations where an abortion is the best choice they can make.  Sometimes when people follow their conscience, they find themselves on the left side of the aisle.  And best of all, some of those people are actually honest about all those things.

The brilliant comedian Lenny Bruce once said, “The ‘what should be’ never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no ‘what should be,’ there is only what is.”

Those who live in the world of what they think should be rather than what is do so at their own risk – especially when they hurt others while doing it.  Sooner or later, “what should be” falls apart and you’re left with “what is.”  If you’re a moralizing hypocritical Christian who imposes his beliefs on others, “what is” can be a very lonely and unpleasant place.

Religion has given itself such a bad name that even some believers don’t want to be associated with it.  “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual,” is something that’s usually said by people who believe in god but don’t want to be included in his army of uptight, church-going, dogmatic, judgmental, hypocritical, unreasonable, irrational, bullying followers bent on overthrowing the United States and turning it into a Christian theocracy.  If someone says this and you ask what it means, you most likely will find it’s shorthand for something like this:  “Well, I’m just not comfortable with the idea of a godless universe, so I believe in something, but I haven’t really worked out exactly what, and it’s not something I spend a lot of time thinking about, so I just try to keep a good moral center, but I’m not religious.”  Whatever their beliefs, that’s the one thing the “spiritual-but-not-religious” folks have in common – they don’t want to be mistaken for one of those people.  And who can blame them?

Now “I’m not religious, but I’m spiritual” is in the news.  According to a study conducted by Lifeway Christian Resources, 72% of the 1,200 18- to 29-year-olds surveyed described themselves as “more spiritual than religious.”  In an article in USA Today, Lifeway president Thom Rainer says that if this trend continues, “the Millennial generation will see churches closing as quickly as GM dealerships.”  This reflects the findings of other surveys by the American Religious Identification Survey (ARIS) and the Pew Forum.

According to ARIS, despite the addition of 50 million adults to the population in the last 18 years, religion is steadily losing ground.  In fact, the “nones” – people who claim no religious affiliation or no belief at all – now outrank all other religious groups in the United States except for Catholics and Baptists, and its numbers are growing.

Across the board, more and more people are turning their backs on organized religion.  None of the surveys I’ve found have asked why they’re doing this – I wish someone would do that study.  I suspect high on the list of reasons would be rampant hypocrisy among the religious, as well as the elitist, judgmental and bigoted attitudes of American Christians and the bullying behavior that demands respect from everyone but shows no respect to others.  Another reason might be the overwhelming authority churches claim to have over their members (and even non-members) without any real support for it.  They dip their hands into people’s lives, telling them how they should and shouldn’t live.  This is typically done by the men in the pulpits – pastors and priests who have decided to devote their lives to telling others how to live theirs.  These are usually men who have no formal training in anything but being pastors and priests, and yet they have the arrogance to counsel others on serious life issues, including marriage and family problems, which is especially disturbing in the case of priests who are not allowed to marry and who remain celibate – well, in theory, anyway … as long as you don’t count sex with kids.  As their source of authority and wisdom, they point to that ancient book written in a time of astonishing ignorance and superstition, the bible.  But that seems to be carrying less weight these days, too.  People are steadily seeing the weakness of the bible as a source of divine authority, morality or even good sense.

According to a Gallup poll, one third of the American population believes the bible is the infallible word of god and should be taken literally – an average of 31% between 1991 and 2007, a number that has dropped from 38% in the period between 1976 and 1984.  The level of education one has seems to be a factor in how literally they take the bible – the more educated, the less seriously the bible is taken.  A third of the country might seem like a hefty percentage – until you realize just how little the believers themselves know about what’s in the bible.  In his book No Place for Truth, theologian David Wells wrote, “I have watched with growing disbelief as the evangelical church has cheerfully plunged into astounding theological illiteracy.”

According to an article titled “Crisis in America’s Churches: Bible Knowledge at All-Time Low” by Michael J. Vlach, Ph.D., the most widely known bible verse among adult and teen Christians is, “God helps those who help themselves” – which isn’t even in the bible.  Valch writes, “One-third could not put the following in order: Abraham, the Old Testament prophets, the death of Christ, and Pentecost. … One-third could not identify Matthew as an apostle from a list of New Testament names … half did not know that the Christmas story was in Matthew, half did not know that the Passover story was in Exodus.”

According to Christian researcher George Barna, “Literally millions of Americans who declare themselves to be Christians contend that Jesus was just like the rest of us when it comes to temptation—fallen, guilty, impure, and Himself in need of a savior.”

If so many Christians are unfamiliar with the information in the bible that is relevant to their religious beliefs, then how many more have no familiarity at all with the ugly, hateful, immoral and downright horrifying material in the bible – the stuff their pastors and priests never cover in church, the stuff that doesn’t make it to buttons and bumper stickers and T-shirts?  A lot.  In fact, I’ll go so far as to say all of them (but I have no statistical study to support that – it’s just an opinion based on my experience with Christians).

Whenever I have any kind of discussion with a Christian about religion, sooner or later they fall on the old, “But the bible says so!” argument.  Oh, the bible?  You mean the old book that condones and advocates things like slavery, child abuse, torture, rape, incest, murder, genocide and communism?  That bible?  That, of course, is always met with indignant cries of, “It does not!” to which I calmly reply, “Yes, it does.”  Sooner or later, they say to me, “Prove it!”  That’s always fun.  Because I can.  And when I do, almost without exception, they are thrown into stammering, stuttering, slack-jawed speechlessness because they had no idea that the book they’d always believed to be the infallible word of god, the manifesto of god’s merciful love for his children, is actually the world’s oldest and bestselling horror novel in which the bloodthirsty monster is god.

My wife Dawn recently had a conversation with a friend who’s the daughter of a Christian minister.  The friend said something about the bible being “god’s word of love,” and Dawn laughed.  She suggested that a god who would command his people not to kill then tell them to wipe out an entire people by killing all the men, women, children, pets and livestock and take any surviving girls home for sex, was not too loving.  Her friend insisted the bible contained no such thing.  Dawn told her to ask her minister father about it, and the friend said she most definitely would.  She never brought the subject up again.  I assume Dad filled her in and she preferred not to talk about it anymore.

Throughout the Old Testament, god kills men, women and children, orders his people to kill their own children and loved ones, to burn nonbelievers, and to murder, rape and pillage entire civilizations.  He encourages slavery and even tells his people it’s okay to sell their own daughters into sexual slavery.  But the great majority of Christians are unaware of this because they don’t read the bible, they just listen to their pastors and priests tell them about it, and the pastors and priests tell their congregations only what they want them to know.  Those who are familiar with it have a number of standard defenses for its litany of obscenities.  My favorite is, “Things like that were cultural norms at that time.”  This, of course, makes no sense, because these same people will adamantly insist that god never ever changes and remains the same god he’s always been in every way.  But if what god deems acceptable behavior – slavery, rape, torture, child abuse, etc. – changes from one culture to the next, then obviously god does not remain the same and is heavily influenced by what humans deem acceptable behavior … which is awfully conveeeenient, as the Church Lady used to say.  But try pointing that out to them and see what happens.  The conversation will become uncomfortable at best, hostile at worst.  Usually hostile, by my experience.

Of those who say they believe the bible to be the word of god, how many know exactly what it is they’re claiming to believe in?  How seriously are we to take people who claim this book came from god when they don’t even know what’s in it?

Back to the Lifeway Christian Resources survey.  65% of those surveyed call themselves Christian, but Rainer says, “Many of them are mushy Christians or Christians in name only.  Most are just indifferent. The more precisely you try to measure their Christianity, the fewer you find committed to the faith.”

This brings up the elitist and judgmental attitudes of Christians that I mentioned earlier.  Mr. Rainer has no qualms about letting us know that he is capable of deciding which people are real, sincere Christians and which ones are “mushy Christians or Christians in name only,” or “indifferent.”  The bible assures Christians that “whosoever believeth in him (Jesus Christ) should not perish but have everlasting life.”  (John 3:16)  In that particular part of the bible – the bible goes through wild mood swings throughout – all that’s required is belief.  But apparently Mr. Rainer knows better and has found many of those who claim to be Christians to be, in truth, severely lacking in some way.  I have no idea what he’s basing this on, and frankly, I don’t care, because along with being appallingly arrogant and judgmental, Mr. Rainer is full of hot air.  His dismissal of those whose brand of Christianity he disapproves of is actually a pretty good description of most of the Christians in this country.

Going by my experience with Christians – which is reflected in the experiences of most people I know – most use their religious belief rather than live it, and they use it only when it suits them.  Others – even nonbelievers – are expected to live by their religion’s rules while they do whatever they like and claim to be “not perfect, just forgiven.”  Little or no attention is given Jesus’s instructions.  He tells them to pray in private, but they want public prayer mandated.  He tells them to be humble and meek and not judgmental, and … well, we all know how that’s worked out, don’t we?  It has been my consistent and unwavering experience throughout my life that the most Christ-like people are those who do not believe in or worship Christ.  So when Mr. Rainer claims that only some of those who profess to be Christians are actually Christians, which suggests that others are fine, devout, loving, Christ-like Christians, I can’t help but laugh.

According to the Lifeway study, 65% of those surveyed “rarely or never pray with others, and 38% almost never pray by themselves either.  65% rarely or never attend worship services.  67% don’t read the Bible or sacred texts.”  Among those who still believed they would go to heaven “because they have accepted Jesus Christ as savior, 68% did not mention faith, religion or spirituality when asked what was ‘really important in life.’  50% do not attend church at least weekly.  36% rarely or never read the Bible.”

But who are these Christian young people between the ages of 18 and 29?  Chances are extremely good that they were born into the religion or targeted by evangelism at a very early age, and the statistics – gathered by Christian researchers – back that up.

According to studies by Nazarene Church Growth Research and the International Bible Society, 83% to 85% of all Christians “make their commitment to Jesus between the ages of 4 and 14, that is, when they are children or early youth.”

Between the ages of 4 and 14.  I know that’s when I made all of my significant life commitments with full knowledge of precisely what I was doing – how about you?

According to an article by Michael Rohling, Manager of Youth and Family Interventions at Southern Illinois Regional Social Services (SIRSS) in Carbondale, Illinois, “Teenagers do not look as complete in brain development as researchers previously thought.  According to Barbara Strauch, the medical science and health editor of the New York Times, in her recent book, The Primal Teen [First Anchor Books Edition, September 2004], the notion that the brain was complete at age 13 or 14 has been thrown away.  The latest neuroscience is finding that structural changes are not finished until age 25 or so.  And, although there are numerous hormones involved, brain development plays a larger part in teen impulses.”

In a San Francisco Examiner article, education professional and Lifeline Foundation Inc. co-chair Sharon Biggs wrote, “Prior to full brain development children exhibit the following behaviors more coincidentally vs. consistently:  Decision making, use of appropriate judgment; rational thinking; integration of emotion and critical thinking; ability to think clearly about long-term outcomes that stem from behaviors; global thinking vs. self-centered thinking.”

Howard Culbertson, professor of missions and world evangelism, writes on the Southern Nazarene University website, “This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.  Because the 4 to 14 period slice of the pie is so large, many have started referring to the ‘4 to14 Window.’”

So the reasoning behind the “4 to 14 Window” goes something like this: We need to get them before they can think straight.  This makes sense, of course.  According to the Nazarene Church Growth Research study, only 4% of Christians converted to the faith after the age of 30.  Older people, especially those who’ve been educated – those who have fully-developed brains and have integrated their emotions with critical thought, those who are capable of consistently making rational, carefully thought out decisions – are a little harder to sell on the idea of the earth being poofed into existence in six days, talking animals, seas opening up so people can walk across them, a pregnant virgin, and people rising from the dead than are children between the ages of 4 and 14 whose gray matter, like a mold of unfinished Jell-O, has not yet set.  People at 30 and older are not as likely to be convinced that if they don’t accept Jesus Christ as their personal lord and savior, his loving and merciful father will make them suffer and burn for all eternity in hell.

It’s not suprising that, according to Culbertson, “Many people serving as career cross-cultural missionaries have testified that they first felt god calling them to missionary service during that 4-14 age period.”  Was that really “god calling them,” or was it the high-pressure fear-mongering and guilt trips of adults who know that kids of that age are the easiest to convince, the easiest to dominate and indoctrinate, the targets most likely to yield successful results?

Let me repeat the words of Howard Culbertson: “This data illustrates the importance of influencing children to consider making a decision to follow Christ.”  Replace the word “influencing” with the word “indoctrinating.”  I would suggest using the word “brainwashing,” but that would imply that prelearned information is being erased and replaced with new information – we’re talking about children who don’t have any prelearned information to erase.  Their young, new minds are being shaped and sculpted at the earliest stages, particularly those who are born into religion and indoctrinated from infancy onward.

No one asked me if I wanted to be a Seventh-day Adventist.  That decision was made for me.  My earliest memories are of fear of the “last days,” of the “national Sunday law” that Adventism teaches its children will be passed, possibly at any moment, forcing everyone to worship on Sunday – Adventists observe the Old Testament Sabbath and worship on Saturday.  I was taught that when that happened, we would have to drop what we were doing, flee to the hills and hide in caves so the Catholics and other “Sunday-keepers” couldn’t find us, imprison us, torture us, and execute us for our beliefs.  I lived in such terror of this happening that every time a TV show I was watching was interrupted for a “special news bulletin,” I had a panic attack for fear that the announcement would be about the abrupt passage of the Sunday law.  Children born into religion are taught to see the devil around every corner, to prepare for the end of the world, to keep a watchful eye for the antichrist, and all kinds of scary things – all injected into a small child’s mind before it can reason or think clearly or choose.

How often have you heard this:  I think it’s important for children to go to church so they get some kind of moral, Christian training. I’ve heard my wife’s sister say this many times.  It’s not an uncommon thing for the parents of young children to say.  According to a friend of mine who used to be involved in Christian ministry, “Our experience in ministry was that the vast majority of the newcomers to our church – the previously unchurched – between the ages of 25 and 35 started attending solely because they wanted their children to grow up with some form of religious/Christian training.  They did not start the church thing for themselves.  They only chose our church because it was enjoyable.  It didn’t really matter to most of them what denomination just so long as it didn’t bore the hell out of them.  But their commitment was generally pretty flimsy.  They never ‘caught fire’ as we would say.”

It’s typical for people to think that religion and morality are the same thing.  Religion has spent thousands of years claiming that it virtually invented morality.  It has commandeered morality and claimed it for its own.  Christianity claims that its morality comes from the bible.  You remember the bible — that book that condones and advocates things like slavery, child abuse, torture, rape, incest, murder, genocide and communism?  Yeah, that bible.  That’s where they claim their morality comes from.

The fact is that morality – right and wrong, good and bad – exist independent of religion and always have.  But that’s another blog post.  Unfortunately, those who’ve bought into the lie that religion is the source of morality often decide they must turn their children over to what is in fact a system of indoctrination that is ready and waiting to seize control of the minds of those children.  Rather than being taught morality or the difference between right and wrong, they will be taught a false morality, taught to believe in myths and invisible, unprovable beings that have nothing to do with morality.  They will be taught that they are inherently bad, that they are filled with sin and are worthless unless they accept a non-existent being who will forgive their sins and give them worth.  They are told that this being died a horrible death for them and they are obligated to accept him and devote their lives to him, and if they don’t, they will burn forever in hell.  What does this have to do with morality?  What does this have to do with being a good person?  Nothing.  But these children will be told otherwise, and they will be told at a time when their minds are vulnerable and defenseless.

Sure, they would like you to convert and join their church.  But what do they really want?  They want your children.  That’s where their future lies.

There’s just one problem.  It seems this system of indoctrination isn’t working as well as it used to.  Young people are walking away from religion more than ever before.  And people like Thom Rainer of Lifeway Christian Resources are worried that this trend could cause churches to close “as quickly as GM dealerships.”  Interesting he referenced car dealerships.  It probably would have been more accurate to specify used car dealerships.

But Christians are not surprised by this.  They say they’ve always known this would happen in the last days before Christ’s return – the great apostasy, the falling away of Christians as predicted in the bible.  When I was a boy living in fear of those last days, I was constantly being reminded of the many signs that we were living in them.  Earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, horrible diseases.  Never mind that there have always been earthquakes, floods, volcanoes and horrible diseases – don’t confuse them with the facts, they hate that.  The one that always confused me, found in Daniel 12:4, was this:  “many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”  This was always quoted to me as if an increase in knowledge were a bad thing (to say nothing of running to and fro).  This made no sense to me.  Wouldn’t an increase in knowledge be a good thing?  That’s what I always thought.  But everyone I knew seemed so afraid of that idea.

The young people who are now rejecting religion in greater numbers than ever before are living in a time of tremendous knowledge.  We now know more than we’ve ever known about our universe, our planet, our origins, and our bodies, and knowledge only continues to increase faster than ever.  The internet has made that knowledge instantly accessible.  A quick internet search can answer just about any question you might have about anything.  A lot of questions are being answered – questions about god, the bible, religion.  Before the internet, these questions were asked of pastors and other church leaders; they were given vague or evasive answers, and if the questioner continued asking, he or she was accused of the sin of doubt and was told to shut the hell up.  Now there are other places to get answers, and those answers are being pursued.  While it’s true that being spiritual but not religious, or rejecting religion but maintaining a belief in some kind of god, is a little like saying, “I don’t celebrate Christmas, but I believe in Santa Claus,” it’s a start.  Knowledge is increasing.

“And knowledge shall be increased” is scary to Christians.  But it’s not a sign of the end of the world.  It’s a sign of the end of their reign.

There was one of those horrifying moments in the news – the report of eight children mercilessly slaughtered by off-duty policemen in Rio, also known as the Candelária massacre. It brought a horrifying knowledge to a sanguine world that, despite all vacuous homilies about children being ‘divinely’ protected, it is an unsafe and insane world even for infants and toddlers.

‘Street children’  is

a term used to refer to children who live on the streets of a city. They are basically deprived of family care and protection. Most children on the streets are between the ages of about 5 and 17 years old, and their population between different cities is varied.

Street children live in abandoned buildings, cardboard boxes, parks or on the street itself. A great deal has been written defining street children, but the primary difficulty is that there are no precise categories, but rather a continuum, ranging from children who spend some time in the streets and sleep in a house with ill-prepared adults, to those who live entirely in the streets and have no adult supervision or care.

A widely accepted set of definitions, commonly attributed to UNICEF, divides street children into two main categories:

1. Children on the street are those engaged in some kind of economic activity ranging from begging to vending. Most go home at the end of the day and contribute their earnings to their family. They may be attending school and retain a sense of belonging to a family. Because of the economic fragility of the family, these children may eventually opt for a permanent life on the streets.
2. Children of the street actually live on the street (or outside of a normal family environment). Family ties may exist but are tenuous and are maintained only casually or occasionally.

Street children exist in many major cities, especially in developing countries, and may be subject to abuse, neglect, exploitation, or even, in extreme cases, murder by "cleanup squads" hired by local businesses or police.^[2]

In Latin America, a common cause is abandonment by poor families unable to feed all their children. In Africa, an increasingly common cause is AIDS.

Let’s take a gander at some stats, shall we?

• India 11 million
• Egypt 1,5 million
• Pakistan 1,5 million
• U.S. 750,000 – 1 million
• Kenya 250,000 – 300,000
• Philippines 250,000
• Congo 250,000
• Morocco 30,000
• Brazil 25,000
• Germany 20,000
• Honduras 20 000
• Jamaica 6,500
• Uruguay 3000
• Switzerland 1,000

The top 8 offenders are in bold. And, surprise! The top offenders are also the most highly religious countries.

One can easily ascribe these numbers to superstitious bullshit. India is often touted as the most religious country in the world. Egypt and Pakistan? Guess what those numbers are? The US comes in at a staggering 3/4 of a million to a million stray ‘sewer rats’.

I lay these crimes of overpopulation at the stair of superstition – I hammer this thesis to the door – I rant and rage at the bullheaded stupidity of ensoulment, for it is from this unprovable, ridiculous romanticism that is laying the bed of millions of vagrant children in blood and shit and tears.

Religion has done a piss poor job of controlling our loins, because it is fostered in the weltering weird fear of the sex drive, and it takes away the tools of education, the implements of prevention, the logic of critical thought, and replaces it with hierarchal horseshit and infanticidal delusions.

Religion. It’s gotta go.

Till the next post, then.

Evangelical archaeologists claim to have found the remains of Noah’s Ark in Turkey.

I will pause for a moment until you finish laughing your ass off at the combined use of the words “evangelical” and “archaeologists.”

According to an article in the UK Sun, Yeung Wing-Cheung from Noah’s Ark Ministries International says, “It’s not 100 per cent that it is Noah’s Ark, but we think it is 99.9 per cent that this is it.”

I had never heard of Noah’s Ark Ministries International before and wanted to learn more.  All I could find was this, and I can’t read it.

From the Sun:  “He said the structure contained several compartments, some with wooden beams, that they believe were used to house animals.”

No evidence is given to support the claim that these compartments “were used to house animals” – unless, of course, the fact that some of them had “wooden beams” is intended as evidence.  However, it’s pointed out that the “evangelical archaeologists” believe they were used to house animals.

Here is Merriam-Webster’s definition of the word “archaeology”:  “The scientific study of material remains (as fossil relics, artifacts, and monuments) of past human life and activities.”  I think the use of the word “scientific” in this definition is significant.  Where does “belief” come into “scientific study?”  Well … it doesn’t.

Here’s my favorite passage from the Sun article:  “The group of evangelical archaeologists ruled out an established human settlement on the grounds none have ever been found above 11,000ft in the vicinity, Yeung said.”

Where does the attitude, “Well, we’ve never encountered it before, so that can’t be it!” come into “scientific study?”  Well … it doesn’t.

So how is it that these “evangelical archaeologists” are so sure they’ve found the ark in which Noah saved two of every animal on the face of the earth from the flood sent by a loving, merciful god to destroy everyone on the planet?  Well, according to the Sun, “They claim carbon dating proves the relics are 4,800 years old — around the same time the ark was said to be afloat.”

What?  Wait a second, hold it, just hold it!  Carbon dating?  Are we talking about the same carbon dating used by scientists to determine the age of things like bones and fossils and the earth?  Are we talking about the same carbon dating that Christians routinely REJECT?  That carbon dating?

The website ChristianAnswers.net has a few things to say about carbon dating from a Christian perspective:

“People wonder how millions of years could be squeezed into the biblical account of history.  Clearly, such huge time periods cannot be fitted into the Bible without compromising what the Bible says about the goodness of God and the origin of sin, death and suffering—the reason Jesus came into the world.  Christians, by definition, take the statements of Jesus Christ seriously. He said, ‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female.’ (Mark 10:6).  This only makes sense with a time-line beginning with the creation week thousands of years ago. It makes no sense at all if man appeared at the end of billions of years.”

This is the real reason Christians reject carbon dating – it has nothing to do with accuracy or science or a search for the truth.  It can’t be “squeezed into the biblical account of history,” which they believe to be literally true and accurate.  If carbon dating works, then that biblical account is not true and accurate.  Therefore, it becomes necessary to discredit carbon dating – by any means necessary.  Here’s one attempt made on the website:

“The forms issued by radioisotope laboratories for submission with samples to be dated commonly ask how old the sample is expected to be. Why? If the techniques were absolutely objective and reliable, such information would not be necessary. Presumably, the laboratories know that anomalous dates are common, so they need some check on whether they have obtained a ‘good’ date.”

This is my favorite:

“Also, the Genesis flood would have greatly upset the carbon balance. The flood buried a huge amount of carbon, which became coal, oil, etc., lowering the total 12C in the biosphere (including the atmosphere—plants regrowing after the flood absorb CO2, which is not replaced by the decay of the buried vegetation). Total 14C is also proportionately lowered at this time, but whereas no terrestrial process generates any more 12C, 14C is continually being produced, and at a rate which does not depend on carbon levels (it comes from nitrogen). Therefore, the 14C/12C ratio in plants/animals/the atmosphere before the flood had to be lower than what it is now.  Unless this effect (which is additional to the magnetic field issue just discussed) were corrected for, carbon dating of fossils formed in the flood would give ages much older than the true ages.”

Are your sides aching yet?  Essentially, what Christians are saying is this: “Your scientific dating method doesn’t work unless you include and correct for one of the myths in our unscientific superstitious belief system!  So there!”

The conclusion reached by the website about carbon dating?

“There are many lines of evidence that the radiometric dates are not the objective evidence for an old Earth that many claim, and that the world is really only thousands of years old. We don’t have all the answers, but we do have the sure testimony of the Word of God to the true history of the world.”

I think the operative word in the above paragraph is “lines.”

Now we have some “evangelical archaeologists” who claim to have found what they believe may — or may not — be Noah’s ark.  What do they use to determine its age?  CARBON DATING.

They’re like an angry child who shouts at a disagreeing friend, “You don’t agree with what I think, so I don’t like your toys!  Your toys are no good!  They don’t work!  They’re broken!”  Then, the next day, the angry child comes back and begins to play with the very toys he was denouncing the day before.  “These toys only work right when I play with them!”

Folks, you can’t make this stuff up.  Fortunately, we have the Christians to make it up for us.

There are strange, small pools of thought that emerge sporadically from the landscape of any culture. Oddities that come bobbing to the surface like so many bits of driftwood on the beach of obscurity, that do not enrage the heart but cause a furrowing of the brow and a stroking of the chin by the fingers.

One of these oddities was one John Humphrey Noyes.

Noyes was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, and was not even 21 before he started voicing his first "heretical" ideas. While studying at Dartmouth College, Andover Theological Seminary, and Yale Theological College he used his skills at theological argument. He combined this with his skill in religious science, and the common sense he had gained as a farmer, to “make the application of a revolutionary religious doctrine to everyday life, an application that produced a social revolution.”

Where have we heard that one before?

It was in his second year at Yale that he made his first theological discovery. He was trying to determine the date of the second coming of Christ, and determined it had already occurred. His conclusion was that Christ’s second coming had taken place in 70 A.D., and that “mankind was now living in a new age.” With this in mind he became increasingly concerned with salvation from sin and with perfection. He began to argue with his colleagues that unless man was truly free of sin, then Christianity was a lie, and that only those who were perfect and free of sin were true Christians. This internal religious crisis brought about a religious conversion within Noyes. From there he began to proclaim that he “did not sin.” The idea of Perfectionism—that it was possible to be free of sin in this lifetime—caused his friends to think him unbalanced, and he began to be called a heretic by his own professors. From the moment of his conversion Noyes maintained that, because he had surrendered his will to God, everything he chose to do was perfect because his choices “came from a perfect heart”. His theory centered around the idea that the fact that man had an independent will was because of God, and that this independent will came from God, therefore rendering it divine. The only way to control mankind’s will was with spiritual direction. And Noyes proclaimed “it was impossible for the Church to compel man to obey the law of God, and to send him to eternal damnation for his failure to do so.” Noyes claimed “his new relationship to God canceled out his obligation to obey traditional moral standards or the normal laws of society.” As a result Noyes started acting on impulses from his intuition rather than giving thought to the actions or consequences. On February 20, 1834, he declared himself perfect and free from sin. This declaration caused an outrage at his college, and his newly-earned license to preach was revoked.

This obsession with ‘perfection’ has laid many low, and may eventually be the downfall of the human race.

Upon his expulsion from Yale and the revocation of his ministerial license, he returned to Putney, Vermont, where he continued to preach, declaring, "I took away their license to sin and they go on sinning; they have taken away my license to preach but I shall go on preaching". At this time his Putney community began to take shape. It started in 1836 as the Putney Bible School and became a formal communal organization in 1844, practicing complex marriage, male continence and striving for Perfection.

Like so many people before him, upon being cast out by his peers, he went out and founded his own community:

Community structure

Even though the community reached a maximum population of about 300, it had a complex bureaucracy of 27 standing committees and 48 administrative sections.

The Oneida Community was a self-supporting enterprise. Its primary industries were the growing and canning of fruits and vegetables, the production of silk thread, and the manufacture of animal traps. They were the primary supplier of animal traps to the Hudson’s Bay Company. The manufacturing of silverware, the sole remaining industry, began in 1877, relatively late in the life of the Community, and still thrives.Secondary industries included the manufacture of leather travel bags, the weaving of palm frond hats, the construction of rustic garden furniture, and tourism.

All Community members were expected to work, each according to his or her abilities. Women tended to do much of the domestic duties. Although more skilled jobs tended to remain with one person (the financial manager, for example, held his post throughout the life of the Community), Community members rotated through the more menial jobs, working in the house, the fields, or the various industries. As the Community thrived, it began to hire outsiders to work in these positions as well. They were a major employer in the area, with approximately 200 employees by 1870.

Interesting, but little more than a raised eyebrow.

Gender roles

As a goal subsidiary to achieving religious and social revivalism, Noyes believed that one of the major purposes of the Community was to regenerate relations between men and women, which he believed to be deteriorating in the larger society. In theory, males and females had equality and equal voice in the governance of the community.

However, scholars disagree about whether gender roles at Oneida were, on the whole, feminist or conservative. On the one hand, women were relieved of the special duties of childcare by a community nursery, which provided care for infants and children so that both parents could work. Females adopted a style of dress, believed to have been copied from the Iroquois, consisting of a short skirt over trousers (bloomers). This allowed them much greater freedom of movement than contemporary women’s styles.

On the other hand, Marlyn Klee-Hartzell has shown that women were disproportionately assigned to tasks—like nursery duty, housekeeping, and laundry—that were traditionally considered women’s work. Some women may have been required to wear bloomers against their will by Noyes, who believed that allowing women to wear dresses would make them materialistic.

Hmmm…some sexual equality, but a disparity between theory and practice is to be expected. Now here’s where it gets interesting –

Complex marriage

In theory, every male was married to every female. Status at Oneida was based on people’s spirituality. Community members were not to have an exclusive sexual or romantic relationship with each other, but were to keep in constant circulation. To help prevent a "special love" from forming, each Community member had his or her own bedroom. This extended even to couples who came to the Community already married. A married couple entering the Community was not required or even encouraged to legally dissolve their union, but rather to extend the borders of it to the rest of the Community in complex marriage. The average female Community member had three sexual encounters, or "interviews", a week.

I would imagine that if they’d gotten farther than one generation, the diversity may have well broken down into the third and fourth generations, contingent on the restrictions of community.

Postmenopausal women were encouraged to introduce teenage males to sex, providing both with legitimate partners that rarely resulted in pregnancies. Furthermore, these women became religious role models for the young men. Likewise, older men often introduced young women to sex. Noyes often used his own judgment in determining the partnerships which would form and would often encourage relationships between the non-devout and the devout in the community, in the hopes that the attitudes and behaviors of the devout would influence the non-devout.

Interesting, and this sort of practice would have discouraged the raging ageism we see today.  Here’s where I get a tad irked:

Noyes believed that sex had not only biological, but social and spiritual purposes as well. To Communitarians, it was yet another path to perfection. Generally, it was believed that older people were spiritually superior to younger people, and men were spiritually superior to women. Noyes and his inner circle were at the top of this hierarchy in the Community. In order to improve oneself, one was only supposed to have sexual relations with those spiritually superior. This was called "ascending fellowship." Once a Community member had reached a certain level (usually determined by Noyes and his inner circle), they were then to turn around and practice "descending fellowship" with those Communitarians trying to work their way up.

The idea of ‘perfection’ seems to always include some hierarchal concept of superiority – and I myself have met many older men and women who were anything but ‘superior’ in any way.

I found this intriguing:

Mutual criticism

Every member of the community was subject to criticism by committee or the community as a whole, during a general meeting. The goal was to eliminate bad character traits. Various contemporary sources contend that Noyes himself was the subject of criticism, although less often and of probably less severe criticism than the rest of the community. Although this could sometimes be a harsh process, the majority of community members appreciated this criticism because it allowed them to try to better themselves.

I think a great many folks in this day and age should embrace criticism (as long as it’s constructive and not constrictive), but we tend to lead with our emotions and confuse our opinions with ourselves.

Here’s where it gets a little scary…

Stirpiculture

A program of eugenics, then known as stirpiculture, was introduced in 1869. It was a selective breeding program designed to create even more perfect children. Communitarians who wished to be parents would go before a committee to be matched based on their spiritual and moral qualities. 53 women and 38 men participated in this program, which necessitated the construction of a new wing of the Oneida Community Mansion House. The experiment yielded 58 children, nine of whom were fathered by Noyes.

Once children were weaned from breast milk (usually at around the age of one) they were raised communally in the Children’s Wing, or South Wing. Their parents were allowed to visit, but if those in charge of the Children’s Wing suspected a parent and child were bonding too closely to one another, the Community would enforce a period of separation.

This is truly illustrative of how a slippery slope argument actually does work. First, the environment is too controlled and structured. Second, interfering with a parent-child bond violates some serious ethical imperatives. Third, perfection of any sort is a plateau: you cannot by definition become more perfect – A. it’s an impossibility, and B. there’s utterly no yardstick for this falsehood.

Of course, since this community was too close-knit and too internally diverse in so many ways, it started to come apart at the seams (and you folks will love one of the factors):

The community lasted until John Humphrey Noyes attempted to pass the leadership of the Community to his son, Theodore Noyes. This move was unsuccessful because Theodore was an atheist and lacked his father’s talent for leadership. The move also divided the Community, as Communitarian John Towner attempted to wrest control for himself.

Them durned atheists! And of course the eventual confusion about sex:

Within the commune, there was a debate about when children should be initiated into sexual rituals, and by whom. There was also much debate about its practices as a whole. The founding members of the Community were aging or deceased, and many of the younger Communitarians desired to enter into exclusive, traditional marriages.

Noyes had a penchant for the youngsters:

The capstone to all these pressures was the harassment campaign of Professor Mears, of Hamilton College. John Humphrey Noyes was tipped off by trusted adviser Myron Kinsley that a warrant for his arrest on charges of statutory rape was imminent. Noyes fled the Oneida Community Mansion House and the country in the middle of a June night in 1879, never to return to the United States. Shortly afterwards, he wrote to his followers from Niagara Falls, Ontario, advising that the practice of complex marriage be abandoned.

And the polygamy/polyandry/universal marriage thing came apart at the seams (a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one):

Complex Marriage was abandoned in 1879 following external pressures and the community soon broke apart with some of the members reorganizing as a joint-stock company. Marital partners normalized their status with the partners they were cohabiting with at the time of the re-organization. Over 70 Community members entered into a traditional marriage in the following year.

On a final note:

The joint-stock corporation still exists as of 2008 and is a major producer of cutlery under the brand name "Oneida Limited". In September 2004 Oneida Limited announced that it would cease all manufacturing operations in the beginning of 2005, ending a 124 year tradition. The company would continue as a marketer for products manufactured overseas. The company has been selling off its manufacturing facilities. Most recently, the distribution center in Sherrill, New York was closed. Administrative offices remain in the Oneida area.

Hence the ‘spooning’ joke in the title.

Thus endeth the history lesson. While Noyes had some interesting (and eclectic) ideas about communal organization, gender roles, etc., it is readily obvious that he would have failed regardless of whether religion was involved or not. However, it’s safe to say that religion usually ends up helping these oddballs screw the pooch even sooner.

Till the next post, then.

By all means let’s be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out. – Dawkins

Today is that day the Christians hail as fundamental to their belief system, the resurrection of the larger-than-life mythical being we know as Jesus. In real life, we usually realize that when a story is chock full of ‘miracles’, it’s more likely than not what is termed a ‘fish story’ (to those of us who aren’t wide-eyed and gullible, that is). Until recently, we as a culture have been told ‘hands off’ when it comes to religious topics of any sort (unless they tend to be absolutely bugfuck crazy – then it’s okay to mock) – but recent events as well as archeological discoveries have been the gale wind to knock down houses built on foundations of sand.

The first item on the agenda: the empty tomb. Somehow this has become one of those hoary old chestnuts we’re fed as children, inundated by cheery Xmas songs and the inculcated idea that the bible has any shred of veracity whatsoever. Yet, as we’ve seen over the past few centuries (as the religious tend to argue and war over petty items), nobody can seem to agree on where the damn thing is. The most basic point is best: this location would have been inundated by pilgrims from the get-go, especially if the mass conversion of many thousands in the Middle East was true. In fact, the standard measuring point in any form of historical veracity is the same as it is in the retail motto: location, location, location. Yet somehow this is overlooked in any discussion of the topic among the Christians.

Item two: the missing body. I think Richard Carrier puts it best:

In Acts’ history of the Church, from the moment the Church first goes public, right in Jerusalem, nowhere do either the Romans or the Jews ever show any knowledge of a missing body, nor do they ever take any action to investigate what would only be to them a crime of tomb robbery and desecration of the dead (both severe death penalty offenses), or worse. The Gospel of Matthew even claims the Jewish authorities accused the Christians of such crimes before Pilate himself (Matthew 27:62-66, 28:4, 28:11-15). Although that is certainly fiction (as I have argued elsewhere, external and internal evidence confirms Matthew’s story is a poetic and apologetic fabrication), it reflects what could not fail to have happened–if any body had gone missing.[17]

Since Christians were supposedly capitalizing on this fact, they would be the first suspects–or at least the second ones if (as the Gospels claim) Joseph of Arimathea was the last person known to have had custody of the body (Mark 15:43-46, Matthew 27:57-60, Luke 23:51-56, John 19:38-42). In that case he would be the first man hauled in for questioning. Yet he vanishes completely from this earliest history of the Church, as if no one knew anything about him, or he didn’t exist at all. Though Christians would be suspects in a capital crime of grave robbery, and Acts records case after case of them being interrogated at trial before Jews and Romans on other offenses, never once in this history of the Church are they suspected of or questioned about grave robbery. It’s as if there was no missing body to investigate, no empty tomb known to the authorities. Which means the Christians can’t have been pointing to one. If they had, they would have been questioned about it (and possibly convicted for it, innocent or not). Yet Acts shows there were no disputes at all regarding what happened to the body, not even false accusations of theft, or even questions or expressions of amazement.

Thus, either Acts deliberately suppresses the truth about what happened to the body and what was really being argued, said, and done about it (which entails the truth must have been severely embarrassing to Christians), or there was no missing body and no one was claiming there was. In alignment with the latter conclusion are the facts already surveyed above, which suggest the original Christians were preaching that Jesus rose in an entirely new body, not the old one left in the grave, and the fact that Acts fails to mention any debate or discussion about any tomb being empty or any body being missing (e.g. it never occurs as an argument or a defense in any of the trials or debates it records).[18] Such an incident was evidently entirely missing from the history of the original Church.

The Romans would have had an even more urgent worry than body snatching: the Christians were supposedly preaching that Jesus (even if with supernatural aid) had escaped his execution, was seen rallying his followers, and then disappeared. Pilate and the Sanhedrin would not likely believe any of this resurrection or ascension nonsense (and there is no evidence they did), but if the tomb was empty, and Christ’s followers were reporting that he had continued preaching to them and was still at large, Pilate would be compelled to haul every Christian in and interrogate every possible witness in a massive manhunt for what could only be in his mind an escaped convict (guilty of treason against Rome for claiming to be God and King, as all the Gospels allege: e.g. Mark 15:26; Matthew 27:37; Luke 23:38; John 19:19-22). And the Sanhedrin would feel the equally compelling need to finish what they had evidently failed to accomplish the first time (finding and killing Jesus). Yet none of this happens. No one asks where Jesus is hiding or who aided him. No one is at all concerned that there may be an escaped convict, pretender to the throne, thwarter of Roman law and judgment, dire threat to Jewish authority, alive and well somewhere, and still giving orders to his followers. Why would no one care that the Christians were claiming they took him in, hid him from the authorities, and fed him after his escape from justice (according to Acts 1), unless in fact they weren’t claiming any such thing?

The best explanation of this strange omission is that the body was still in its grave, since then all the Christians’ claims could be legally ignored. That’s why those claims are dismissed as mere madness (Acts 26:24), involving no possible criminal charge of any kind under Roman law (e.g. Acts 18:12-17, 23:26-35). Otherwise, the crime of either robbing graves or aiding and abetting an escaped felon and royal pretender would certainly have been obvious grounds for an inquest or trial. Yet neither occurs. Thus, if Acts records any truth about the history of the first Church, its narrative all but entails there was no empty tomb, the body of Jesus was not missing, and that the earliest Christians, including Paul, were instead preaching a resurrection by transfer to a new body, residing in heaven (at least after the Pentecost), a fact known only by private revelations and interpretations of scripture.

Item three: the evidence of absence, or an argument from silence. We know of Julius Caesar quite well, for instance. There are statues and coins a-plenty. He wrote quite a few items – memoirs, some poetry. His enemies spoke/wrote of him, as did his extensive family. Yet the Christians make the claim that Jesus was indeed a historical figure, more so than any other. Yet there is a dearth of evidence surrounding this mystery figure. Of forty historians of that time period, not a word. Not from Philo Judaeus, nor Seneca the Elder or the Younger, not from Velleius Paterculus nor Livy. For someone who allegedly attracted droves of followers (so many that some were trampled underfoot), this is a suspicious silence. Josephus mentions him (among numerous other Jesii), but contemporary sources fall silent. Note that Flauvius was born seven years post ex facto, and brief mentions of rumors heard do not an account make. There is indeed, not one written account from an external source who looked in the face of our mystery man – no one who wrote about that day on Golgotha, or sat and ate a meal with him. Not a whisper. It’s well-established fact  that the Synoptics were written well past the given date by a century or more of the alleged event.

And there you have it. Three simple items that would not only make the less gullible amongst us pause, but those of us who have a sharpened sense of critical analysis laugh out loud. But it is difficult, when the meme has had centuries to take deep root, and the resistance squashed by those who claim to practice ‘turn the other cheek’ but in reality cannot internalize the concept.

Welcome to the 21st century, where finally these anachronistic superstitions will be laid to rest in a shallow, unmarked grave.

Till the next post, then.

Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors. – Isaac Newton

So, here’s the question: how many of you, in your travails amid the blogosphere, have had this canard trotted out? They’ll trot out a famous name: “Hey look, this brilliant genius way back when believed in gawd, and he was RILLY RILLY smart!”

Not only is this an argument from authority, it obviously only uses selected highlights to lure in the believer. Arthur Conan Doyle believed in faeries in his senile dementia, John Nash Jr. had schizophrenia, Bobby Fisher not only got involved with an apocalyptic church but he’s also a raving anti-Semite, Anatoly Fomenko is by all accounts a brilliant mathematician but also a crazed historical revisionist….but I think you’ve caught the gist of it. Or as an old co-worker of mine once said, “Just because you’re smart, doesn’t mean you’re not stupid.”

Isaac Newton is indeed one of these. A brilliant physicist, one of those ‘somebodies’ the religious trot out to prove a point. However, by today’s standards, old Isaac was…well, for want of a better word, a bit of a fruitcake:

Sir Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727), the noted English scientist and mathematician, wrote many works that would now be classified as occult studies.

These occult works explored chronology, alchemy, and Biblical interpretation (especially of the Apocalypse).

Alchemy?

Newton’s scientific work may have been of lesser personal importance to him, as he placed emphasis on rediscovering the occult wisdom of the ancients. In this sense, some have commented that the common reference a "Newtonian Worldview" as being purely mechanistic is somewhat inaccurate. After purchasing and studying Newton’s alchemical works in 1942, economist John Maynard Keynes, for example, opined that "Newton was not the first of the age of reason, he was the last of the magicians."

Obviously not the magician in the same sense as Houdini.

In the pre-Modern Era of Newton’s lifetime, the educated embraced a world view different from that of later centuries. Distinctions between science, superstition, and pseudoscience were still being formulated, and a devoutly Christian Biblical perspective permeated Western culture.

Like I said, selected highlights. Skipping to the ‘selected highlights’ (hehehehe):

Of the material sold during the 1936 Sotheby’s auction, several documents indicate an interest by Newton in the procurement or development of The Philosopher’s Stone. Most notably are documents entitled, "Artephius his secret Book", followed by "The Epistle of Iohn Pontanus, wherein he beareth witness of ye book of Artephius", these are themselves a collection of excerpts from another work entitled, "Nicholas Flammel, His Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures which he caused to be painted upon an Arch in St Innocents Church-yard in Paris. Together with The secret Booke of Artephius, And the Epistle of Iohn Pontanus: Containing both the Theoricke and the Practicke of the Philosophers Stone". This work may also have been referenced by Newton in its Latin version found within Lazarus Zetzner’s, "Theatrum Chemicum", a volume often associated with the Turba Philosophorum and other early European alchemical manuscripts. Nicolas Flamel, (one subject of the aforementioned work) was a notable, though mysterious figure, often associated with the discovery of The Philosopher’s Stone, Hieroglyphical Figures, early forms of tarot, and occultism. Artephius, and his "secret book", were also subjects of interest to 17th Century alchemists.

Somehow, Dawkins’ refrain of not being so open-minded one’s brains spill out springs to mind. His library on alchemy sounds like an incredible waste of time.

Newton studied and wrote extensively upon the Temple of Solomon, dedicating an entire chapter of "The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms" to his observations regarding the temple. Newton’s primary source for information was the description of the structure given within 1 Kings of the Hebrew Bible, which he translated himself from the original Hebrew.

The temple of Solomon? You mean that edifice that is thoroughly lacking in any archeological evidence whatsoever?

Oh, and talk about delusional:

Newton considered himself to be one of a select group of individuals who were specially chosen by God for the task of understanding Biblical scripture. He was a strong believer in prophetic interpretation of the Bible, and like many of his contemporaries in Protestant England, he developed a strong affinity and deep admiration for the teachings and works of Joseph Mede. Though he never wrote a cohesive body of work on Prophecy, Newton’s belief led him to write several treatises on the subject, including an unpublished guide for prophetic interpretation entitled, "Rules for interpreting the words & language in Scripture". In this manuscript he details the necessary requirements for what he considered to be the proper interpretation of the Bible.

Mild messianic complex, anybody?

In addition, Newton would spend much of his life seeking and revealing what could be considered a Bible Code.

(Points to head, rotating index finger, whistling.)

He placed a great deal of emphasis upon the interpretation of the Book of Revelation, writing generously upon this book and authoring several manuscripts detailing his interpretations.

Perhaps the most crazed book of that diatribe of shepherd tales.

Unlike a prophet in the true sense of the word, Newton relied upon existing Scripture to prophesy for him, believing his interpretations would set the record straight in the face of what he considered to be "so little understood".

And yet, so few believers know that this even exists. So much for being ‘chosen’.

In 1754, twenty-seven years after his death, Isaac Newton’s treatise, "An Historical Account of Two Notable Corruptions of Scripture" would be published, and though it does not argue any prophetic meaning, it does exemplify what Newton considered to be just one popular misunderstanding of Scripture.

But today, in the 21st century, our understanding is exemplary: the bible is crap, scripture is nonsense.

Although Newton’s approach to these studies could not be considered a ’scientific’ approach, he did write as if his findings were the result of evidentially-based research.

Of course he did: don’t they all? Isn’t that the whole point of presuppositionalism?

And dig this – he thought Atlantis was real:

Found within "The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms", are several passages that directly mention the mythical land of Atlantis. The first such passage is part of his Short Chronical which indicates his belief that Homer’s Ulysses left the island of Ogygia in 896 BC. In Greek Mythology, Ogygia was home to Calypso, the daughter of Atlas (after whom Atlantis was named). Some scholars have suggested that Ogygia and Atlantis are locationally connected, or possibly the same island. From his writings it appears Newton may have shared this belief. Newton also lists Cadis or Cales as possible candidates for Ogygia, though does not cite his reasons for believing so. Within the same material Newton mentions that according to ancient sources, Atlantis had been as big as all Europe, Africa and Asia, but was sunk into the Sea.

Is there an emoticon for ‘tasered into disbelief’?

Enough. I believe my point has been made. In summation, Newton was a phenomenal physicist, and we still employ many Newtonian principles to this day. But his religious (and yes, occult) beliefs would serve to get him laughed at in many venues in our century as well as the last. He is, in short, the last person on earth anyone should use as an argument from authority in relation to their belief system.

And to top this minor post off, here’s a link to an essay by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, titled the Perimeter Of Ignorance, which is far more eloquent than I could ever hope to be.

Till the next post, then.

There are only two kinds of people in the world, The Irish and those who wish they were. – Old Irish saying

Being half Irish myself, I find the Sons of Eire a delightful lot. They appreciate a good song, a good toast, a good joke and a good story. Of course, a steady diet of wine, women and song tends to be a little less healthy, but so be it.

It’s a big holiday in the US, there’s no doubt about it. It seems like many ethnicities get at least one day apiece (some of them even get an entire month), and the Irish are no exception. My preference would be that we call it Shamrock Day, as the notion of ‘saints’ becomes ever more anachronistic with the passing of time.

So who was this ‘Saint Patrick’?

Saint Patrick (Latin: Sanctus Patricius, Irish: Naomh Pádraig) (c. 387 – 17 March, 493) was a Romanized-Celt, a Romano-Briton and Christian missionary, who is the most generally recognised patron saint of Ireland (although Brigid of Kildare and Colmcille are also formally patron saints).

Two authentic letters from him survive, from which come the only universally accepted details of his life. When he was about 16 he was captured from Britain by Irish raiders and taken as a slave to Ireland, where he lived for six years before escaping and returning to his family. After entering the Church, he returned to Ireland as an ordained bishop in the north and west of the island, but little is known about the places where he worked.

By the eighth century he had come to be revered as the patron saint of Ireland. The Irish monastery system evolved after the time of Patrick and the Irish church did not develop the diocesan model that Patrick and the other early missionaries had tried to establish.

Most available details of his life are from later hagiographies from the seventh century onwards, and these are not now accepted without detailed criticism. Uncritical acceptance of the Annals of Ulster would imply that he lived from 340 to 440, and ministered in what is modern day northern Ireland from 428 onwards. The dates of Patrick’s life cannot be fixed with certainty, but on a widespread interpretation he was active as a missionary in Ireland during the second half of the fifth century.Saint Patrick’s Day (17 March) is celebrated both in and outside of Ireland, as both a liturgical and non-liturgical holiday. In the dioceses of Ireland it is a both a solemnity and a holy day of obligation and outside of Ireland, it can be a celebration of Ireland itself.

Most of what little is known has been pieced together, but here we can cut straight to the blarney, lads and lasses:

Pious legend credits Patrick with banishing snakes from the island, though all evidence suggests that post-glacial Ireland never had snakes; one suggestion is that snakes referred to the serpent symbolism of the Druids of that time and place, as shown for instance on coins minted in Gaul (see Carnutes), or that it could have referred to beliefs such as Pelagianism, symbolised as “serpents”. Legend also credits Patrick with teaching the Irish about the concept of the Trinity by showing people the shamrock, a 3-leaved clover, using it to highlight the Christian belief of ‘three divine persons in the one God’ (as opposed to the Arian belief that was popular in Patrick’s time)

Methinks me spies a wee bit of a yarn there.

Some Irish legends involve the Oilliphéist, the Caoránach, and the Copóg Phádraig. During his evangelizing journey back to Ireland from his parent’s home at Birdoswald, he is understood to have carried with him an ash wood walking stick or staff. He thrust this stick into the ground wherever he was evangelizing and at the place now known as Aspatria (ash of Patrick) the message of the dogma took so long to get through to the people there that the stick had taken root by the time he was ready to move on.

It took him no small turn of the clock to finally sell his snake-oil, no doubt. There’s more, but we Irish are a long-winded lot and enjoy makin’ a story where none is needed (for an example of this, ask the price of a vegetable from a grocer anywhere in Eire, and you’ll likely be regaled with a long history of that particular legume’s lineage). If you take the time to study pagan Irish mythology, you’ll find a huge diversity equal to any evolutionary tree.

Anywhoways, have a happy Shamrock day, and do drink green beer responsibly.

‘Go mbeire muid beo ar an am seo arís.’ (May we be alive at this time next year.)

Sláinte!