"Wanted": In which I take a dumb summer action flick entirely too seriously

I saw "Wanted" over the weekend, and it was more or less what I was expecting: dumb action movie, neato "Matrix"-like special effects, pretentious effort to hammer home some kind of deep pop-philosophical message. Unfortunately, since this is a relatively new movie, I'm frustrated by my desire to talk about the things that bugged me about it. So here I am, blogging it.

So, this post is going to spoil the movie, a lot. If you haven't seen it yet, and have the intention to, I would strongly recommend that you just stop reading this post, bookmark it, and come back here to discuss when you are finished.

Ready? Spoilers ahead, stop reading now.













Morgan Freeman leads an elite group of super-assassins called "The Fraternity," which has been operating for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years. Members of the frat are periodically ordered to go kill somebody they never heard of. Most of them have several natural abilities which, for all practical purposes, are magical superpowers. They can slow down time, shoot bullets in such a way as to curve around obstacles, and there are magic hot tubs in the headquarters which can heal all wounds, bruises, and breaks within a matter of hours. And of course, they have the almighty power of Angelina Jolie's Hotness, which is undoubtedly one of the deadliest forces on the planet.

It is eventually revealed that there is a loom, or a series of looms, which have a mystical hotline to some sort of entity which tells them who to kill. A persistent TCP/IP connection to the gods, if you will, forming a cloth-based internet. The looms weave bits of cloth which, due to imperfection in the threads, contain coded messages in binary form that identify the next target. (We can only assume that the frat has been aware of ASCII for hundreds of years.)

Nobody knows how the powers that be pick the targets; but we are given to understand that they have impeccable judgment about who will soon deserve to die. Angelina Jolie (a.k.a. "Fox") explains that when she was a kid, a frat assassin failed to kill a target, and that target brutally murdered her father. So trust the loom.

The twist, though... hang on a second...

ONE MORE SPOILER WARNING: If the above description has not already turned you away from the movie, I'm really about to totally reveal major plot details!

The twist is that Morgan Freeman is corrupt and so is the organization. They stopped listening to the loom years ago, and now Freeman picks his own targets to suit profit and convenience motives. Devious! So in the end, the message is "don't blindly trust authority" -- which I approve of.

BUT, even as the plot exposes Morgan Freeman as untrustworthy, it still implies that the magic loom is always right to the end.

Now come on, this is a pretty transparent religious allegory. The loom is the Bible. Morgan Freeman is a fallible priest who reads the Bible and hides the truth from others. You can't trust human religion, but you sure can trust the messages you hear direct from God. Okay, the analogy is flimsy, and maybe it's not specifically the Christian religion that is being vindicated. But you know what I'm talking about; lots of people say "I don't follow organized religion because it's just man-made. But do believe in God and have a personal relationship" yadda yadda yadda.

Now here's what I want to know. We'll take it for granted that we can't trust Morgan Freeman, because he's a shifty old bastard anyway. (Although he did play God explicitly, twice.) But even knowing that, what on earth is our justification for trusting the loom? Just because it was right on at least one occasion?

Nobody in the brotherhood seems to know much or care about who the looms are connected to, or the mechanism by which the connection remains secure. What's to stop Satan, or perhaps Loki, from setting up his own spoofed IP address that leads to a server that he controls? How do we know that the man behind the loom isn't evil or capricious, or that he doesn't just possess a wacky sense of humor?

Certainly, like Yahweh, there's no indication that the God Of The Loom is periodically dropping by to explain himself to each member. So while you can argue that our hero was wrong to trust Morgan Freeman, you can't really argue that he could have interpreted the message and been confident in the answer. In fact, the only reason he believes the loom is trustworthy at all, is because Fox (Jolie) tells him so by anecdote. Would that be enough evidence for YOU to start killing strangers?

Suppose it's Loki. Loki isn't evil, he's just sort of "chaotic neutral." No reason he can't tell the truth sometimes and lie sometimes, just to maximize his amusement.

Or suppose it's Faust. This characterization of the devil surely wouldn't hesitate to pull the wool over the eyes of Fox, leveraging the tragedy of her father's death to make her believe that it was somehow the fault of not killing enough people. Surely it's right in character for him to say: "Look here. You want to avenge your father? You can have damn near omnipotent powers. Slow down time... kill people more or less with your mind... instant regeneration. All you have to do is sign right here."

And that, in a nutshell, is a basic problem with believing anything based on faith. It's not just fallible human translation that's the problem. Even if you're The Real God Of The Loom, and think some people need killin', why on earth would you choose to communicate through a medium that is so abstruse, and obviously begging to be abused? And if you're a mortal being ordered to kill somebody by a friggin' loom, what level of extraordinary proof should you require before you actually accept that you're being asked to do a good thing?

This is the Euthyphro dilemma writ large. You say you're good because you're doing what a god wants? Well, how do you know that the god is good?

A few other random observations in closing:

Those magical hot tubs are awesome. They can apparently bring people back from the brink of death most of the time. (Though, mysteriously, some guy dies dramatically right next to a hot tub and nobody thinks to dump him in there.) I think that if the goal of the Frat is to save the world, they would do a LOT more good by simply releasing the hot tub formula to the world and letting everybody benefit from it. I'm just saying, that seems a little more efficient than picking off bad guys one victim at a time. But no... we have to save it for newbies in training who need to recover because people in our organization like to intentionally beat the stuffing out of them.

Final point, memo to self: If 3 million dollars ever mysteriously appears in my bank account, the very first thing I'm going to do is set up a different account, that no one knows about, in a place with an excellent reputation for security, and transfer all the money out immediately. When somebody can put money in your account, they can also take it back. Duh.

*puke*

From the odious Billy Graham:

Jesse Helms, my friend and long-time senator from my home state of North Carolina, was a man of consistent conviction to conservative ideals and courage to faithfully serve God and country based on principle, not popularity or politics.

In the tradition of Presidents Jefferson, Adams and Monroe -- who also passed on July 4th -- it is fitting that such a patriot who fought for free markets and free people would die on Independence Day. As we celebrate the birth of our nation, I thank God for the blessings we enjoy, which Senator Helms worked so hard to preserve...

From a comment following Graham's disgraceful encomium: "Jesse Helms fought for FREE PEOPLE??? (emphasis mine) Would those be the white people who wanted to be FREE of having to associate with black people?" Uh huh. Seems fitting that a homophobic, racist piece of shit should be eulogized so fulsomely by an anti-Semitic piece of shit, eh?

Whoops, there goes our Cuss Rating.

Ken Follett on secular ethics

On page 426 of Ken Follett's latest novel, World Without End, I came across a neat quote. The story, which is a sequel to Pillars of the Earth, takes place in 14th century England, in a town that is mostly managed by monks from the local cathedral. A monk named Godwyn has devised a scheme to bilk the townspeople out of a bunch of money.

Caris wondered whether he believed that any deceit was pardonable provided it was done for the sake of God's work. Surely men of God should be more scrupulous about honesty than laymen, not less?

She put the point to her father, as they hung around the court, waiting for their case to come up. He said: "I never trust anyone who proclaims his morality from the pulpit. That high-minded type can always find an excuse for breaking his own rules. I'd rather do business with an everyday sinner who thinks it's probably to his advantage, in the long run, to tell the truth and keep his promises. He's not likely to change his mind about that."

On the whole "being offensive" thing

In my Dawkins report, I discussed the way many Christians — primarily of the conservative stripe — can't stop whining about how horribly offensive the anti-religious rhetoric of the "new atheists" is, while intentionally ignoring, and even defending, far worse behavior from their own. A perfect example is this odious hypocrisy I read via Ed Brayton's blog.

Oklahoma representative Sally Kern, not surprisingly a sponsor of the anti-education bill HB 2211, recently had a sickening homophobic hate screed of hers recorded and made public. Is she apologizing? Of course not. She's a Christian, and morally superior to you, after all. So not only is she sticking to her guns, she's got the lunatics at the WorldNutDaily (to which I refuse to link, so go over to Ed's if you must immerse yourself in such filth) concocting a nice little conspiracy theory in her defense as well. Get a load of this. Here they are talking about how the thousands of gays and lesbians whom Kern gratuitously offended with her hate speech are the ones with the problem, and how they're victimizing her.

Basically, they're trying to silence her by threatening, intimidating, harassing and frightening her until she can't take any more abuse. No dialogue, no debate - just crush her.

Only a fundie would think there's something meriting "dialogue" and "debate" when some foul-tempered, hideous old cow (oh noes, the eebul afeist is calling her naaames!) rants about how gays and lesbians are more dangerous to America than terrorists, that they're bringing about the downfall of civilization, and who lies about non-existent "studies" that support such idiotic ideas.

From where I'm sitting, the entirety of the "dialogue" and "debate" hate speech like Kern's deserves can be summed up as, "You're a sick individual, a disgrace, and a vile liar, and would you please go crawl back under your rock, you ignorant useless bitch. Thank you. Signed, The Human Race."

That's their game. It's despicable, and utterly un-American.

While religious hate is just so praiseworthy and "pro-American," of course.

In a sense, Kern does a better job of validating Dawkins' points than Dawkins does. When Dawkins wrote in his essay "Logical Path from Religious Beliefs to Evil Deeds"...

Religion changes, for people, the definition of good.... For non-religious people, the behavior of consenting adults in a private bedroom is the business of nobody else, and is not bad unless it causes suffering – for example by breaking up a happy family. But many religions arrogate to themselves the right to decide that certain kinds of sexual behavior, even if they do no harm to anyone, are wrong.... The following quotation from the Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Weinberg has become well known, but it is so devastatingly true that it is worth quoting again and again: “With or without [religion] you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”

...he was talking about you, Mustang Sally.

Now, back under the rock with you. Here, take your Bible. You'll need that, since you haven't got a brain.

Oh gee. Did I offend someone?

Tell me again how theism makes you morally superior?

The latest on the Colorado church shootings:

The gunman was identified as Matthew Murray, 24, who was home-schooled in what a friend said was a deeply religious Christian household.

Gosh, it's all so confusing.

And another morally superior Christian goes down in disgrace...

Okay okay, the snark in the headline may have been overkill, since I do believe the whole discussion with Rhology about the presumed necessity of theism as a prerequisite for morality has reached its end. But it never ceases to fascinate me, that the people in our society who most frequently suffer humiliation and public disgrace are those whose public reputation for devout religiosity is most prominent.

Richard Roberts, whose every command God is reported to have told at least one ORU regent to obey without question, has resigned effective immediately from ORU's presidency. The whole Roberts clan were exposed as having misappropriated university money for their own private use, living lavishly on the backs of their student body and faculty. Sleazy is as sleazy does. That a fundamentalist "university" has been exposed as just another money-making scam by those who subscribe to the "prosperity gospel" is, I suppose, not surprising. But it is depressing that, in the 21st century, religion still continues to hold human culture back from true enlightenment and progress, enabling venality and selfish excess under the justification that if you're Godly, you're forgiven already through Jesus' "sacrifice" — so live it up!

New study shows right/wrong distinctions in infants

Apropos to the current round of discussions we've been having with Rhology, news has appeared today announcing the result of a new study suggesting that even 6 month old babies can distinguish fundamental differences between good and bad social behaviors, and choose all by their little selves the better option.

Babies as young as 6 to 10 months old showed crucial social judging skills before they could talk, according to a study by researchers at Yale University's Infant Cognition Center published in Thursday's journal Nature.

The infants watched a googly eyed wooden toy trying to climb roller-coaster hills and then another googly eyed toy come by and either help it over the mountain or push it backward. They then were presented with the toys to see which they would play with.

Nearly every baby picked the helpful toy over the bad one.

The babies also chose neutral toys -- ones that didn't help or hinder -- over the naughty ones. And the babies chose the helping toys over the neutral ones...

The choice of nice over naughty follows a school of thought that humans have some innate social abilities, not just those learned from their parents.

"We know that they're very, very social beings from very, very early on," Hamlin said.

A study last year out of Germany showed that babies as young as 18 months old overwhelmingly helped out when they could, such as by picking up toys that researchers dropped.

There is an obligatory quote from a psychologist who isn't convinced of the "innate ability" part, insisting these behaviors were learned. But it seems he's not recognizing that all these babies observed were the actions of the toys themselves, which toys "helped" one another and which "fought" each other. They were not then told by the researchers which to choose to play with. On their own, they overwhelmingly chose the "good" toy over the "bad" one.

He does make a good point about the social experience babies have in their first six months of life, and how this likely plays a role. But this experience would be limited exclusively to family, where the baby will naturally be getting cared for in most cases. But often, even at that age, there can be bullying and sibling rivalry in multi-child households. I can think of one good control for a future study to test how much the babies' choices are innate, but it would be difficult to pull off. Find some 6-month-olds taken from homes where neglect, if not outright abuse, was the norm, and see if they choose the "meaner" toy.

While nothing in science ever rests on one study, and there is more research clearly to be done here, I think what this study can be confidently said to establish is that it wasn't necessary to hammer these babies with a fusillade of Christian moral indoctrination about their innate "depravity," and nasty threats of eternal hellfire and damnation, in order to persuade them to choose nice over naughty. Sure, they're not old enough to understand such indoctrination in the first place, but that's the whole point: even at this young an age, very fundamental notions of beneficial social behaviors appear to be entirely comprehensible. And the babies didn't even need parental authority — the real-world analogue to Christianity's reward-or-punishment-based morality paradigm — to distinguish good from bad behavior. We're a social species, and it's human nature to want to get along. Sadly, it's only as we grow older, and are exposed to whatever social, political, or religious ideologies appeal to us (or are forced on us), that we feel more inclined to divide ourselves and view our neighbors, our former playmates, with hate, fear, and suspicion.

Warren Jeffs sentenced; must serve at least 10 years

Polygamist cult leader Warren Jeffs was sentenced today for being an accomplice to rape by running his "Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints" as a sex farm for himself and older male members, forcing teenage girls into marriages with cousins and other men often old enough to be their grandfathers. Good riddance.

Now, I wonder how our pal Rhology will assess this situation. I assert, based on "personal" and "societal preferences" (yes, that slurping sound you hear are my eyes rolling yet again), that was Jeffs did was morally wrong because it is harmful to force any unwilling person into sexual submission and/or a marriage that they don't want, and it's especially bad to further manipulate them into consent by scaring them that they might jeopardize their rumored "eternal salvation" if they resist, when what's really going on is that you have an oppressive theocratic society in which males dominate and subjugate the females and treat them like property. Freedom of choice, especially choices dealing with whom you marry and have sex with, should be left up to the individual. To remove that choice from a person simply because you wield power over them is abusive. I know these are not things I should ordinarily have to explain, but remember we're dealing with Rhology here. Basic human nature eludes him.

So, I invite Rhology to explain whether he approves or disapproves of what Jeffs did, based on his vaunted "objective morality" that he still has yet to define. I invite him especially to give better reasons than the ones I've listed, based on this "objective morality," as to why he think Jeffs was wrong for forcing underage girls into marriages, if indeed Rhology thinks he was.

Demerits for simply falling back on such unsupported presuppositions as "atheists don't have objective morality so they're in no position to condemn the acts of Christians." (Though I suspect Rhology doesn't consider Jeffs, leader of a splinter Mormon offshoot cult, to be Christian.) Remember, Rho, we've heard your premises over and over. We're still waiting for you to defend and explain them. And whether my reasons are just "personal" or "societal" preferences, are my conclusions about the morality of Jeffs' acts wrong? And if not, can we agree that your whole "objective morality vs. preferences" mantra is a big fat rhetorical red herring?

And now, for an example of that superior Christian morality in action, we take you to ORU...

Okay, so we all remember the recent series of scandals that has rocked Oral Roberts University in recent weeks, do we not? You know, where Richard Roberts and his family are accused of all manner of financial improprieties, as well as such sleazy activity as having ORU staff do their daughter's homework for her? Well, I thought this would be an excellent example to put Rhology's claims (see previous post) that Christian morality has a bulletproof foundation in God's word, whereas atheist morality has no basis to distinguish right from wrong at all, to the test. What, exactly, was God's word to ORU regents while the Roberts clan was skimming the university piggy bank for all they could get? Well, according to Chairman George Pearson, God was evidently an accomodating kinda guy.

When George Pearsons accepted the position of chairman of the ORU regents in May, he said in an address to the board: "I am standing here today because the Lord clearly spoke to me and said, ‘Do whatever Richard Roberts asks you to do,'” according to a copy of the address.

Wow. Carte blanche to do whatever. What a sound system of morals that is! God says it, I do it, that settles it. So if Richard Roberts decided, oh, "Let's fly my daughter and a bunch of her friends to Florida on an expensive senior trip, and charge the whole thing to the university," then that's okay by God. And if we picky atheists raise our hands and say anything like, "Uh, hey, isn't that a little dishonest and unethical, and possibly also illegal?" ...Well, what do we know? All we live by are our "personal preferences," and why should anyone else have to follow those if they don't want to?

Heh. It's always fun to have some pompous Christian turn up proclaiming the moral superiority of all Christians based on an ancient holy book, only to have the wind taken out of his sails by the mendacious and disreputable behavior of some of the most prominent Christians in our culture.

It's clear that in the real world, the only people rooting their moral behaviors in their "personal preferences" are the ones shouting their Christianity from the rooftops. They just tell themselves that anything they do is all pre-approved by God, and alakazam, wrong is right, war is peace, and freedom is slavery. And it's not like God can come down and correct them when he only exists in their minds, created in their own image. Christianity's "morality" is like getting a Visa card with no spending limit, and someone else paying the bills every month, so that you never have to learn to be responsible on your own.

Rhology and Christianity's misanthropic "morality"

A Christian blogger calling himself Rhology has discovered us, and is currently posting like mad in this comment thread with the usual run of "no morality without a God" canards. It's interesting to read, mainly for the way in which Rhology argues, which involves telling us what we think (mainly, that we don't believe in right and wrong), and just stating his assumptions, responding to challenges to those assumptions mostly by restating them. He demands we explain in detail what our basis is for deciding whether a situation is morally right or wrong, but does not himself provide a similarly detailed explanation for the basis he uses. It is sufficient for him to say, in essence, God lays down the law, it's all in the Bible, and that's all I need.

In repeatedly asserting the superiority of his "worldview," he never actually gives an example of any circumstance where theistic morality would present a person with the ability to more accurately assess the right or wrong of a situation than a reason-based, secular morality. Is there any example Rhology can give where a Christian, using only the Bible as his moral guide, could more reliably decide when a situation is good or evil than an atheist could just by rationally assessing the situation using his poor, imperfect brain? I'd love to hear it.

Rhology's vaunted "worldview" is chock full of deeply misanthropic presuppositions. Human beings are entirely evil and depraved, for one, with nary of hint of innate goodness. There is no difference in Rhology's mind between being good and being perfect. One cannot be good at all unless one is perfect. Therefore, no one can be good, and we all need God. It's a rather jaw dropping assertion, to be sure, and one that flies in the face of what anyone who actually, you know, interacts with people in the real world knows.

But it's a necessary premise for Rhology's arguments, because without that deep-seated misanthropic basis for his "worldview," he would have to entertain the notion that maybe people can think for themselves, and reach a consensus morality sufficient for the success of our species and our society on our own. (In Aristotle's words, that virtue arises from the proper application of reason.) If people can decide amongst themselves what's right or wrong, then God looks less necessary. And Rhology cannot countenance that. So human reason must be denigrated at all costs. Rhology does this by trying to deride reason-based morality as nothing more than one's "personal preferences," as if everyone on Earth lives in a vacuum and just makes this stuff up. He cannot comprehend that human moral precepts are based on our shared experience of living together as a social species, and learning through endless trial and error what works for us and what doesn't. There are things about human nature at a fundamental level that Rhology's Christian indoctrination has rendered him incapable of understanding.

So hop on over to the thread and have a read, and pitch in if you can find more flaws in Rhology's "worldview" than I and some other commenters already have. He's an interesting example of how a too-dogmatic adherence to Christianity's authoritarian teachings can cripple one's understanding of — let alone respect and empathy for — his fellow man.

Life imitates The Onion

Here's a headline that leaves the mind reeling: "Christian Clown in Perv Bust".

Seriously, the pedophilia thing needs to stop, guys.

Wonder what John Terry thinks of this guy? Shouldn't he have had that divine "restraint" thing going on?

A sterling example of the moral bankruptcy of religion

Recently, Richard Dawkins wrote a piece called "Logical Path from Religious Belief to Evil Deeds." In it, he proposed that the reason religionists can consider themselves morally superior to absolutely everyone who doesn't share their beliefs is that religious belief "changes, for people, the definition of good."

This is how, for example, the 9/11 terrorists were able to do what they did, and still believe themselves and their actions to be as "good" as it was possible to be. This is how psychotics like Fred Phelps and Donald Spitz can do what they do — the former staging his unspeakably vile protests and the latter claiming to be a "pro-life" champion while lionizing a murderer of an abortion doctor on his website as an "American hero" — and think they are the paragons of all that is good in the world. If there's one concept religion — especially as practiced by Christians and Muslims — perverts beyond all hope of recognition, it's the rational understanding of good and evil. To a believer, if you're doing it for your God, it's good, even if it's the most backwards and disgraceful of bigoted beliefs, or the most inexcusable of crimes, including mass murder. It's classic Orwellian doublethink.

This fact has been made clear once again by the latest blatherings of the mentally ill Ann Coulter. Yes, I'm sure all of you are poised to roll your eyes and go "come on!" at my choice of such an easy target. After all, Ann has never said a sane (let alone sensible or remotely factual) thing in her entire manufactured career. Isn't pointing to her idiocies like shooting fish in the proverbial barrel?

Well, maybe. But that doesn't invalidate the basic point, which is this: Ann is a deranged and hate-filled individual. And yet, she embraces Christianity quite fervently, a religion whose proponents repeatedly insist is all about love. But notice: Christianity, contrary to another claim of its adherents, does not in fact give Ann a foundation from which she can understand just how vicious and ignorant her beliefs are, and change them for the better — which is what it would do if it were a belief system founded upon sound moral precepts that provided comprehensible moral guidelines for living. Rather, it simply gives her a comfort zone from which she can continue to hold those beliefs, and then label them moral.

Look at this truly bizarre exchange between Ann and CNBC host Donny Deutsch. On Deutsch's show last Monday, Ann made some of the most outlandishly anti-Semitic remarks to be publicly aired since April of 1945. And yet, with all apparent sincerity, she insisted that these statements were in no way anti-Semitic or the least bit hateful.

COULTER: Do you know what Christianity is? We believe your religion, but you have to obey.

DEUTSCH: No, no, no, but I mean --

COULTER: We have the fast-track program.

DEUTSCH: Why don't I put you with the head of Iran? I mean, come on. You can't believe that.

COULTER: The head of Iran is not a Christian.

DEUTSCH: No, but in fact, "Let's wipe Israel" --

COULTER: I don't know if you've been paying attention.

DEUTSCH: "Let's wipe Israel off the earth." I mean, what, no Jews?

COULTER: No, we think -- we just want Jews to be perfected, as they say.

DEUTSCH: Wow, you didn't really say that, did you?

COULTER: Yes. That is what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. We know we're all sinners --

DEUTSCH: In my old days, I would have argued -- when you say something absurd like that, there's no --

COULTER: What's absurd?

DEUTSCH: Jews are going to be perfected. I'm going to go off and try to perfect myself --

COULTER: Well, that's what the New Testament says.

Wow, huh? Now, keep in mind, as part of the very same exchange, Ann is able to say this with perfect conviction.

DEUTSCH: You said -- your exact words were, "Jews need to be perfected." Those are the words out of your mouth.

COULTER: No, I'm saying that's what a Christian is.

DEUTSCH: But that's what you said -- don't you see how hateful, how anti-Semitic --

COULTER: No!

DEUTSCH: How do you not see? You're an educated woman. How do you not see that?

COULTER: That isn't hateful at all.

DEUTSCH: But that's even a scarier thought.

Once your brain stops reeling, you may be given to wonder just how a person can hold such 1984-ish, contradictory attitudes and not have one's head explode from cognitive dissonance. The answer is: religion. Religion redefines "good" to accommodate, legitimize and justify whatever the believer already believes. It is not a rational process in the least. If it were, then yes, it would impossible to make the pronouncement that, compared to you, an entire race of people is imperfect (and, by unavoidable extension, inferior), and simultaneously think that that is not only not a hateful comment, but one that embraces diversity. The moral and intellectual wasteland that is religion is never made more clear than when some religionist openly and proudly espouses these "war is peace, freedom is slavery" attitudes, and then gets all agog with confusion and denial when someone points out just how demented and hateful and just plain wrong they are.

If I've said it once I've said it a million times: religion provides no basis for a system of morals. It simply provides a smug sense of superiority for its adherents, in which the word "moral" is applied to the flock, and "immoral," "imperfect," "sinner," and other divisive and harmful sobriquets are applied to everyone on the outside, irrespective of actual deeds.

I know, you're shocked, aren't you?

Word is getting around about the stupefying level of corruption and sleaze over at Oral Roberts "University". You know old Oral. He's the con man who told everyone God would kill him if he didn't raise $8 million, and got the money, demonstrating conclusively that when it comes to getting filthy rich, there's no sleaze so great it won't sell. Well, the sleaze just got sleazier.

The internal document was prepared by Stephanie Cantese, Richard Roberts' sister-in-law, according to the lawsuit. An ORU student repairing Cantese's laptop discovered the document and later provided a copy to one of the professors. It details dozens of alleged instances of misconduct. Among them:

• A longtime maintenance employee was fired so that an underage male friend of Mrs. Roberts could have his position.
• Mrs. Roberts - who is a member of the board of regents and is referred to as ORU's "first lady" on the university's Web site - frequently had cell-phone bills of more than $800 per month, with hundreds of text messages sent between 1 a.m. to 3 a.m. to "underage males who had been provided phones at university expense."
• The university jet was used to take one daughter and several friends on a senior trip to Orlando, Fla., and the Bahamas. The $29,411 trip was billed to the ministry as an "evangelistic function of the president."
• Mrs. Roberts spent more than $39,000 at one Chico's clothing store alone in less than a year, and had other accounts in Texas and California. She also repeatedly said, "As long as I wear it once on TV, we can charge it off." The document cites inconsistencies in clothing purchases and actual usage on TV.
• Mrs. Roberts was given a white Lexus SUV and a red Mercedes convertible by ministry donors.
• University and ministry employees are regularly summoned to the Roberts' home to do the daughters' homework.
• The university and ministry maintain a stable of horses for exclusive use by the Roberts' children.
• The Roberts' home has been remodeled 11 times in the past 14 years.

Tim Brooker, one of the professors who sued, said he fears for the university's survival if certain changes aren't made.

It's hard to imagine which of these is the most meretricious. That Mrs. Roberts appears to be a closet pederast? (What is she texting underage males in the middle of the night for, anyway? Football scores?) That the Roberts family shows their dedication to quality education at their "university" by forcing employees to do their own kids' homework? That the place even has a "university jet"? Or, echoing the amusing remarks I've seen from women in other sites' comment threads, why, if Mrs. Roberts was going to piss away 39 grand of misappropriated funds buying clothes, she'd do it at a place like Chico's?

I personally hope Tim Brooker's fears are realized, and that these revelations finally shut down the farcical ORU for good. Now if we could only unearth similarly scandalous behavior over at Liberty "University" and Bob Jones "University", we could start to put a serious dent in the plague of fundamentalist miseducation and influence in this country once and for all.

I wonder...

...what John Terry thinks about this guy?

After all, aren't we the ones who, "without restraint," are most likely to become murderers? John said so himself, remember?

So how is this possible, John? How?

Could it be that reality doesn't jibe with your ignorant prejudice?

Or maybe John Ashley just wasn't a True Christian™. Yeah, that must be it.

D. James Kennedy surprised to remain underground

Megachurch pastor and smarmy radio creationist D. James Kennedy died today at the ripe old age of 76.

Wait, wasn't D. James Kennedy in jail? No wait, that was Kent Hovind. Um, so is he the guy with the gay prostitute meth scandal? No, that was that Haggard guy. Let me see, Kennedy, Kennedy. Why does that ring a bell?

Oh yes, now I remember! D. James Kennedy is the one who helped Roy Moore move his giant two-and-a-half ton granite monument of the ten commandments into the courthouse in the middle of the night. Then he took video of the whole incident and sold copies in order to help pay for Moore's legal defense.

Well anyway, I guess that's one less con man to keep track of.

Jesus thinks you suck too, dude

Scumsucking dogkiller Michael Vick gave the usual on-camera "apology" today for his nefarious affiliation and support of interstate dogfighting, which involved directly participating in the killing of several dogs by drowning, electrocution, and strangling.

Anyone wanna guess what he said once he was sure cameras and mics were rolling?

Anyone?

Ah, okay, I'll tell you.

"Through this situation I've found Jesus," he added. He vowed to redeem himself, saying, "I have to."

Huh. Typical. Religion to the rescue again!

Sad thing is, that little quote will mollify a lot of people.

No need to think for yourself

I just finished watching this video, which shows the responses of anti-choice demonstrators in Libertyville, Illinois when asked what sort of punishment women should receive if they had an abortion after abortions became illegal. Go watch it...I'll wait...

The responses speak for themselves.

I don't want to get into the specifics about abortion (though I'll proudly admit to being pro-choice) because it's not an atheist issue. Atheists can be pro or anti-choice. I do believe, though, that it is (often) a church-state separation issue, fueled by emotion and irrationality.

My purpose in posting this video is to point out the sort of mindless sheep that are produced by religious thinking.

(I know, I know...you're not all mindless sheep, so don't get your panties in a twist about my generalization. If you're not like the folks in the video, I'm not talking about you.)

Dogma, in all of its disguises, is evil. Magical thinking poisons the mind. Religion, as a combination of the two, renders its victims unable to deal with reality, incapable of questioning their beliefs and completely unconcerned about the consequences of their actions. They're unable to follow any logical argument that might, in any way, jeopardize their beliefs.

The people in this video aren't rabid fundamentalists. They're not calling for the death penalty (though one of them allowed for that possibility). They don't fit in with the true hatemongers who call for homosexuals to be put to death like some politicians have done... and some countries. They sincerely believe they're doing the right thing — protecting innocent little babies — and none of them have given a moment's thought to anything else. They believe that they're doing god's work and that they cannot be mistaken; which makes them just as dangerous and delusional as the truly hateful. To quote William S. Burroughs:

"No one does more harm than those who feel bad about doing it."

I'm still amazed that anyone could avoid the simple concept that there's no point in making something illegal if you don't have a punishment for breaking the law... but that's not the big question, the big question is this:

Why were they able quickly and easily to proclaim that abortion is the murder of a human being and yet they couldn't quickly and easily agree to the punishment proscribed for murder?

The answer is simple. Even these sheep recognize a difference — they're just unable to act on that recognition because their brains have been poisoned by religion. They neither need nor recognize rational arguments. Somewhere, deep in the compartmentalized recesses of their minds, protected by gross rationalizations, shielded by emotional pleading, they know that their beliefs don't make any sense.

Now, if they could only be convinced to give a damn.

Why of course theism makes you morally superior! How could I ever have doubted it?

And this just in: the latest report of trusted church members getting a little light-fingered with the collection plates.

They should have just gone to work for Benny Hinn, where they use collection buckets and the whole stupid ceremony is all about fraud and deceit from the get-go. Fit right in, they would.

Again with the "theism = morality" thing

A lot of theists place great store by insisting that theism is somehow necessary for a comprehension of the concepts of right and wrong. This is fairly baffling, as, if it were true, you would expect to find, around the world, theists behaving in a consistently more ethical and moral manner than unbelievers. One does not in fact find this. One finds believers in the middle east strapping bombs to themselves and blowing up hundreds of innocents. One finds believers in the US verbally haranguing members of "wicked" faiths not their own in public; passing laws telling others whom they cannot or cannot marry based upon some specious fear that their own marriages will somehow be placed at risk; and shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in cash settlements as a way of apologizing for sexually molesting children placed in their care by naively trusting parents.

Meanwhile, the world's most high-profile atheists are castigated as "militant" and "fundamentalist" for the heinous crime of — hold on to your hats — writing books.

Also, if God is the source of my morality, then I have to wonder why this God is less moral than I am. Even if I had the power to do so, I would never condemn a person to an eternity of torture because they did not love me to my satisfaction. Indeed, to even consider the idea would be a sign, not merely of immorality, but psychosis. Also, if I were a military general, even one not bound by, say, the Geneva Convention and rules of engagement, I would probably be disinclined to tell my men to annihilate literally every single living thing in a given town, with the exception of the young women, whom they would be free to capture, enslave, and rape at whim. God's a little more easygoing on the whole mass-rape thing than I am.

Over in this comments thread, a Christian named kevin h is making an attempt at arguing for the necessity of theism to morality. His argument, such as it is, consists of dismissals of the possibility of morality as an evolved instinct, which appear to be rooted in little more than his distaste for the idea. These are married to assertions about the nature of God in which nothing is given as backup. But moreover, most of his assertions are so baldly wrong I'm given to wonder exactly what world kevin lives in. In his last comment, he asserts:

Once one realizes that moral values are nothing more than social convention and "herd instinct" they are reduced to illusions of nature. Therefore, they are descriptive and not prescriptive, and the only reason one should rationally be "moral" is for manipulation...

First off, I find it more than a little baffling that a fellow attempting to argue that the source of morality is an invisible magic man in the sky is complaining about "illusions of nature". To find nature illusory is, I submit, one of the more intellectually damaging side effects of embracing religion. But in any event, in previous responses to kevin, I had repeatedly pointed out that one can learn sound moral precepts by observing the consequences of actions. Observable consequences can hardly be considered "illusory" by anyone who hasn't intentionally abdicated the use of reason. What does kevin even mean by this phrase? What exactly is illusory about learning lessons from experience and observation? kevin doesn't say. His way of arguing, as with many theists, is to make the assertion without feeling the need to back it up.

As for his claim that the sort of morality I am arguing for is about manipulation, this is a real irony-meter breaker. Christian morality — in the way in which a great many rank-and-file Christians practice it (remember, I've spoken with these people) — is about pleasing a deity in order to get a ticket to Heaven. If this isn't a tit-for-tat arrangement that could give a damn for the greater good, I don't know what is. In contrast, secular morality, rooted in rationalism and an understanding of the consequences of actions (you know, what kevin thinks is illusory) is primarily about the greater good, about creating a stable and safe society to better ensure species survival. kevin is just plain screwed up here.

kevin goes on:

In addition, if one got control of the society, one could punch whomever one wanted. Especially "undesirables".

Because kevin had been having a hard time understanding how people could just, you know, figure things out on their own, I had given the example of punching random strangers in a grocery store as a good, quick lesson in why people should be moral for practical reasons.

What is funny about this remark of kevin's is that this kind of behavior is exactly what we see — all together now — believers engaging in all over the globe. If anyone's out there trying to make life miserable for whomever they consider "undesirables," whether they're Islamist suicide bombers targeting Jews or American right-wing Christians wallowing in their hate for gays and lesbians, it ain't the atheists!

There of course have been irreligious societies that have committed similar acts of oppression. However, as Sam Harris has pointed out, not all irreligious movements have been enlightened or rationalist movements. Atheism can take a very bad form when it is only a reactionary rejection of religion. This is why, in previous posts, I've talked about the difference in development between eastern atheism and western atheism, the latter of which was informed by Enlightenment values and philosophies. It's telling that those irreligious cultures in which rulers felt they could "punch whomever they wanted" have been mostly failures. Act without reason whether you're religious or not, and you aren't going to find life very successful. Again, you don't need an invisible man to understand this. Well, I don't, but I guess kevin does.

kevin is also fond of assertions like this:

God is the Good. His ultimate nature enjoys the ontological status which anchors morality.

Which is fine, if you're willing to overlook the fact that God's existence has yet to be established, and a statement like this scarcely constitutes evidence for him. It amounts to an attempt to define God into existence by attributing qualities to him the arguer finds desirable. But the statement is fundamentally empty. What is meant by God's "ultimate nature"? In what way does this nature "enjoy the ontological status which anchors morality"? This, I suspect, is why Dawkins blew off going into in-depth critiques of theology when writing TGD. It's all so much rhetorical smoke and mirrors. kevin's statement has no greater meaning, and brings us no closer to an understanding of what morality is, what function it serves in a culture, or how it aids the survival of our species, than if he were to have made exactly the same statement but substituted "Harvey the Invisible Rabbit" for "God".

Indeed, reading over kevin's comments, it appears he considers such an understanding of tangential relevance at best. Understanding morality is less crucial than simply assuring that his God gets the credit for it. kevin's habit of dismissing prefectly sound questions asking him to elaborate on his views doesn't help him much, either. When I asked him (I thought quite reasonably)...

And why isn't the fact that we're genetically hardwired toward group cooperation a good foundation for a moral theory? We know that ethical behaviors exist not only in humans but in other species of primates. So if our genes are responsible for developing just about everything else that makes us "us," why wouldn't they play a role in determining our behaviors, and which of those behaviors were the most beneficial in the interest of species survival?

...his only reponse was:

Because it amounts to delusion.

Uh...oh yeah? Like...why? How? Remember, this is a guy arguing for an invisible deity, telling me it's delusional to attribute real-world phenomena to real-world causes. With no explanation. I call "lame"!

The easiest way to wrap up, I think, is to offer the same challenge to kevin h that Christopher Hitchens has offered to Michael Gerson, who authored that drivel in the WaPo that Kazim fisked in the post immediately preceding this one. Can kevin...

name one ethical statement made, or one ethical action performed, by a believer that could not have been uttered or done by a nonbeliever?

Where, exactly, are the moral precepts that are unique to Christianity, that no one in the world understood prior to Christianity's formal development as a church in the first few centuries of the Common Era? This is the problem faced by apologists like kevin. In arguing for the necessity of theism for morality, the presence of millions of morally upstanding atheists around the world must present a measurable element of confusion.

God's forgiveness = self-forgiveness

From the world of phony sports — to which I customarily pay zero attention — comes this grisly tale of professional wrestler Chris Benoit, who murdered his wife and child and then killed himself. After killing his family, he placed a Bible next to their bodies.

This isn't going to be another of those posts full of "religion kills" bromides. In this case, the possible reason for Benoit's rampage may be linked to his use of too much of what the bodybuilding world calls Vitamin S. But the role the Bible plays here is interesting. Having no expertise in the mental health field at all, my built-in atheist's "skepdar" (a wonderful term someone on the ACA's Yahoo group came up with) tells me that Benoit was using religion as many people do in life: a forgiveness quick-fix, the moral equivalent of using Fix-a-Flat to pump up a punctured tire.

While Christians go on about how no one without religion can possibly have a moral compass to follow, what they never talk about is the way in which people who do embrace religion, however fervently or casually, typically behave no better than unbelievers, and oftimes worse. And when they do behave worse, they use religion as a convenient thing to fall back upon, either to justify their actions, or to showboat a fake display of remorse.

Many Christians will respond to this by agreeing wholeheartedly, then by attacking those people for moral hypocrisy and not being "true" Christians. This misses the point. I think Christianity unintentionally sets itself up to be used in this way by giving people a poor understanding of morality, and of the difference between right and wrong in the first place. As Stephen has pointed out here, Christianity paradoxically wants people to be good, then gives them bad reasons to do so. Christian morality is entirely tied in to how well one obeys divine rules and commandments. One should not kill or steal because it will anger God (except in those cases where it's okay) and could doom you to hell. That killing takes a life, which is in and of itself bad, and that stealing involves taking something that isn't yours and that you haven't earned from someone who has earned it, which is in and of itself bad, is significantly less relevant to Christian thought. The only consequence to be feared is the displeasure of God. All of us have heard (and if you haven't yet, it's quite sobering to hear it for the first time) some Christians say that if there were no God, then they'd see no reason whatsoever not to just go off on a wild murder rampage, wreaking merciless havoc with gleeful impunity. Whether or not they actually would if presented with the chance, or whether it's all just talk, is immaterial. That a Christian would even say such a thing with a straight face underscores the darkly ironic fact that many of the people who consider themselves to be the world's poster children for all things righteous and moral simply do not comprehend what the terms "right" and "wrong" even mean.

But what of the believer who does go off on that rampage. Well, then, there's God's "forgiveness". Since praying is really nothing other than glorified talking-to-yourself, how easy it must be for a person who does something really horrible to tell themselves, "Hey, it's not that big a deal after all," simply by praying, and enjoying a little delusional exchange in which they themselves, playing the role of creator and ruler of the universe, bestow instant "forgiveness". Occasionally, the display is brazen, as in Kent Hovind's bizarre dialogue with God in which Kent reinforces his belief in his own martyrdom and heroism to a degree that bespeaks genuine mental illness.

But other times, the self-forgiveness is more subtle and cynical. Benoit's is a perfect example. I suspect he placed the Bible next to his murdered family either in the effort to convince himself that it wasn't such a bad thing, what he did and all, because his wife and child were in Heaven now, or simply to assuage his own sense of guilt about the murders through a feeble gesture that he hoped would placate his invisible friend. Or both.

Either way, religion made it easier for him to carry out his crime, rather than giving him the intellectual and moral tools to stop himself from carrying it out. Because Benoit lacked the ability to make rational decisions in life — perhaps a combination of steroid use, religion, and too many blows to the head — he and his family are now dead. And all the little gestures of piety in the world don't change that.