Oops, looks like I missed a day yesterday. Oh well, on with today’s evil.
The Cloyne Report shows how the Catholic Church in Ireland used its influence to cover up child abuse as late as 1996. They did all this while claiming that the Catholic church had some sort of moral authority and that they knew right from wrong better than non-clergy and non-catholics. Well done.
I think Tim Minchin is appropriate here
Genital cutting on children of both sexes, despite the scientific advances that have been made showing how the potential benefits do not outweigh the risks.
The distress caused to the children is abominable, and religious thinking lets parents somehow abdicate their responsibility for that suffering and refuse to protect their infants in the “hope there is more to this than I can see or understand.” Wonderful. You have no evidence that there was any point to the suffering, and absolutely no reason to think that there was any point. You just give up, let someone chop off a sensitive bit of anatomy and listen to the crying you could have stopped and hope. Well done.
NOTE: The points made here about a ban not really stopping it seem important. How do you stop it without putting kids at more risk than they already are?
The question doesn’t detract from it being one of the evils of religion, but makes me wonder what is the best way to stop it.
ALSO NOTE: I schedule these for the days I’m at work well in advance and, in the meantime, Ophelia Benson did a much better job than I could with this piece. Go read it.
And since I mentioned the quiverfull movement yesterday, I’ll discuss it today.
The idea that the sole purpose of a woman is to have children and serve her husband is vile. It’s still alive in fundamentalist religious circles, but the quiverfull movement is particularly bad. It teaches female children that they are worth less than their brothers. It gives the husband complete control over his wife and children, and allows him to enforce that with brutal violence, starvation, hard physical labor and emotional abuse, all backed up with quotes from the bible.
NOTE: I was hoping to link to several articles showing examples of these behaviors on the No Longer Quivering site, but it is having database troubles as I’m writing this, so I can’t find the articles I was looking for. I may come back and edit this if I remember to. If anyone who is reading this is interested in the specific examples, just leave a comment and I’ll try to dig them up if the database is working again.
I personally hate christmas and was quite happy that I’m not only being allowed to work that day, but also that I got to see the looks on my fundie coworkers’ faces when I told them I was choosing to do so. Fuck yeah. Multi-usage things.
Many things have been done to keep people considered unworthy by religion ignorant and powerless. Everything from killing people who translated the bible into the local common tongue to attacking girls who dare to enlist in school with acid.
Here’s another vile thing: Man cuts off most of his wife’s right hand because she wants to go to school. The victim, Hawa Akther Jui, is learning to write with her left hand.
He’ll be missed.
I’m sad that he’s gone, but happy he was here while he was. We are left better for his life. When I agreed with him it was like hearing the melody of my thoughts written into a symphony. When I disagreed, it made me think long and hard about why and work to wrap words around my reasons. His strength in living and dying was admirable and something I strive toward.
If I could, I’d buy someone who could enjoy it a whiskey in his honor.
I hope I can be well enough to fight like he did, though I’ll never be as erudite.
Thanks, Hitch. We’ll take it from here.
I cry when I look at this. How can humans be so awful? This is not only approved of by Islam, but required by Sharia law.
What is it about religion that makes people value clumps of cells more than a fully grown woman?
It’s been a bad year for women’s bodily autonomy
I’ve often wondered, if I hooked myself up to a pro-lifer physically in such a way that it would kill me if they broke the connection, what would they do? Go around for the rest of their life tied to me? Or would they think it would be ok to kill me? I’m so much more than I was as a fetus.
There’s not anything in the bible about abortion. I often wonder where they get it from, too.
How can I not mention the Pearls?
Beating children until they die in the name of religion
“A child properly and timely spanked is healed in the soul and restored to wholeness of spirit. A child can be turned back from the road to hell through proper spankings.” – Michael Pearl
I thought I’d start linking to an evil of religion everyday.
(I know it’s the Daily Fail, but I’ve cross checked this and they have the best article…meh) 85 sexual predators arrested on evidence provided by 117 children
Staggering amounts of evil. So much evil, I don’t think I can quite get my head around it. It’s true that other organizations and individuals abuse children, but the problem with religious organizations is that they are authoritarian. When the people who have power commit these abuses, the only people who know are trained to not speak out against the abusers.
However 24 alleged paedophiles were not jailed. In some instances, the case against them collapsed when victims and their families backed out of giving evidence in court following pressure from the religious community, according to the assistant DA.
As far as I’m concerned, this is the worst part of religion. It isn’t just that it’s wrong, but that it hurts, bullies and ostracizes people until those who remain are too frightened to speak up in their own defense or defense of their families when evil happens.
What an Engineer Thinks Like 