II - Response to Latest Speech by Pope Benedict

This is actually a re-posting of something I wrote on my Facebook profile which was technically speaking the first post in this series but it seems to serve a better second post in this place and now my head hurts. Anyway this is from a couple of weeks ago so it's not the most current of new stories but I am working on new material for next week.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=661965&f=110

Pope Benedict

How dare you stand in front of these people and in front of the whole world and proclaim that you do not condone the response of catholic church. Two months ago you and your council drafted and passed a resolution that officially declared women priests as "heinous sins" but you have done absolutely nothing to change the way the church operates when it comes priests raping young children. Most of these allegations occurred over a year ago now, you have had plenty of time to address this completely fucked up procedure.

Let’s tally exactly what you have done so far to address this complete betrayal by your church.

1. You have sent letters of apology to the nations involved. (See several of my previous rants)
2. You have expressed your outrage at the audacity of police departments who were performing their duty in searching property of the Catholic church and interrogating priests/cardinals/bishops/monsignors.
3. You have blamed the news services for “blowing the incident out of proportion”.
4. One of your top aides has compared this media treatment as equivalent to the horror inflicted upon the Jewish people during the Holocaust.
5. You sent a statement to your entire church stating that changes to the way the catholic church handles these cases MAY be forthcoming. (That was 10 months ago)
6. You have “criticized” your church for how it handled these cases.

That’s it.

You are the dictator of your nation-state. You are the leader of your church. To your followers you have literally been chosen by god to lead his church and through extension them individually. Your church on a daily basis tells millions of people what the “moral choice” is and imposes restrictions on your followers that would make some people in the dark ages go WTF. Your priests hold power over their congregations, your bishops and cardinals hold power over multiple congregations and entire nations, your monsignors hold more power than many countries on an international level and you sir are a completely undisputed dictator with millions of fanatical followers around the world.

You cannot tell us that with all this power at your finger tips you could not have stopped the practice of moving priests out of the affected countries, break the omerta of the catholic church or at minimum cooperate with the police forces investigating these crimes. The small things you have done have been nothing but an insult to the victims as well as your world wide congregation.

I got asked the other day what I would ask the pope if I had the chance to ask him one question. I realize that what I’m about to say is a complete cliché but it is also the single most fitting phrase I could come up with:

“Pope Benedict, at long last, have you left no sense of decency?”

Because; at this point it isn’t a question of religion or god or even the corruption of organized religion, it’s a question of decency, of basic humanity.

To All Catholics:

You are the only people with influence over this organization. Do something!

Cya around the universe

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I - First Post

Welcome to the first post of the first page of the first day of the blog that will be the sum of my entire existence as a human being on this little planet of ours.

As you might imagine when one wrote that first line 3.1415926535 seconds ago, one might have been prone to hyperbole. This will in fact not be the summation of my entire existence.

I am a firm believer in the dissemination of accurate information. Not only is information the single greatest weapon in the arsenal of reason that atheists have at their disposal, it is also the cornerstone in any movement to depolarize our society. It has been said many times that the internet is where religions come to die. This is true not because anyone can slander the opposing view anonymously but because it allows for the simple and efficient dissemination of just about every piece of information that has been acquired by humanity. A Google search will allow you access to everything from the latest fads in the ever present porn industry to published studies and university papers….some of which deal with said fads but that is beside the point. Wikipedia allows anyone with an internet connection to quickly look up source material for almost every topic, this site has become more pertinent lately as they have worked hard to clean up their vetting and sourcing problems. Hell even YouTube can be used to find lectures, speakers and debates on almost any topic. Facebook, blogs and the general affordability of domains allows us to quickly share what we find on these pages which informs your circle of virtual friends which in turn can inform their circle of friends etc. The internet is the only medium in which such a rapid distribution of information is possible. This has some obvious downsides though.

The major news networks have been working overtime lately to try and push the population to the fringes of the political, social and religious spectrums; and as it turns out they also figured out that the internet is a pretty damn good medium to do this with. Most of the commentary and outright propaganda are still being shown on network television but the amount of internet traffic from these outlets has been steadily increasing in the last few years.

It is this polarization of the populous which, along with organized religion which so often is the pawn for these polarizing entities, worries me the most these days and thus I will be spending a large portion of this blogs existence to that subject. I have a particular aversion to the Catholic church at the moment so expect to hear a lot about them.  You will probably also notice that I tend to agree with the left more than the right. This is not because I have anything against the original concept of the conservative movement, it is because so much of what is the conservative movement in Canada and the United States has been hijacked by people like the followers of Leo Strauss and more recently the Tea Party movement.

I am currently also more left leaning because they fundamentally are open to more rational debate. Again I am not just saying that because I am  one of those godless, pro choice, pro gay civil union, pro personal freedom heathens. I am taking this stance because the right has been pushed so far to the right that they can’t view at topics logically anymore. Take this recent interview between two prominent media figures. Bill O’Reilly on the right Jon Stewart on the left, you will notice that Jon (who by many is considered on the more extreme side of the left) attempts to have a conversation based on merit and individual issues while Mr. O’Reilly spends the entire interview attempting to divide the issues and push them to the left and right extremes. Now some might say that I am simply taking the side of the left leaning speaker because of my own personal views, which is true in part, but it is as true to say that the right has moved so far to their extreme that even the more polarized members on the left seem to be centrists. 

Bill O'Reilly interviews Jon Stewart - Entire Interview 

The power and control that this divide holds over a large percentage of the North American population is troubling to me. The simple fact is, that due to their position on the extreme, the right is able to summarize their entire narrative and philosophy into easy to follow, simple catch phrases; while the left which is positioned much more to the center of the political spectrum is struggling to get its message across to people because their arguments require some actual thought process to occur.

Don’t get me wrong the left is beginning to move more towards their extreme as well. Take some of the recent speeches by leaders of the left, including President Obama, as well as the maneuvering that MSNBC has been doing in the last two years and you have a movement which is unfortunately also migrating outwards. 

Into this mix you throw in two of the most populous religions in the world clashing and place it all into a time where our understanding of the universe could leap forward at any moment, and you have a bit of a mess on your hands.

At the end of the day this blog will be about my views on these issues. I have no formal education, I am of average intelligence and most days I am rather busy trying to figure out my own life; but I do think that I have a pretty good grasp of the underlying issues that are fueling today’s political and social landscape. If you disagree, good for you, let me know why you do so and let’s begin a dialogue to come to a better understanding. If no one ever reads any of this that’s okay too, if nothing else it will help me store some of my thoughts on topics for future reference in real life debates…which have a tendency to pop up these days…a lot.

Thus endeth the first post. I will probably be posting one, maybe two posts a week as I am ridiculously busy with life these days and I unfortunately do not have enough capital to do this full time. [Insert sad face here]

Cya around the universe.

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