Over the weekend, I saw the very disappointing movie Boondock Saints II.  Where I found the first film original, clever, and fun to watch, the sequel was sadly lacking.  But I’m not a movie critic; my focus is the glorification of vigilante justice present in our culture.

“And shepherds we shall be, for Thee, my Lord, for Thee.
Power hath descended forth from Thy hand, that our feet may swiftly carry out Thy command. So we shall flow a river forth to Thee, and teeming with souls shall it ever be.
In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.”

I’m a big believer in the rule of law, so it was difficult for me to see the protagonists as heroes.  Two admittedly cool Irish Catholics experience a religious vision and decide to take justice into their own hands, slaughtering “bad guys”.  The killing is surrounded by religious imagery and symbolism, from the prayer the brothers say before assassinating their victim to the rosaries they wear.

They generally target mobsters, but at one point they make a spur-of-the-moment decision to shoot two other men in an adult entertainment parlor.  How is this behavior to glorify?

It is arrogant to assume that you know all the facts.  It is borderline psychotic to assume that you have the authority and judgment to administer lethal justice yourself.  The brothers were clearly partly motivated by religion, but there are countless similar stories without it playing a part.

Other Questionable Heroes

Come! Break the law for us!

The same line of thinking applies to other cultural heroes glorified in our society.  In Batman Begins, it’s a mitigating factor that the people of Gotham City have no power in their government.  Mobsters have bought the justice system and will never be investigated.  But Bruce Wayne commits assault, destroys property, invades people’s privacy, and generally breaks laws to help send the mobsters to jail.  No, he never killed anyone, but he still took the law into his own hands.  Should he serve as a role model?

What’s worse is that the police force regularly calls for Bruce Wayne’s involvement in the stories because he can disregard the laws they swore to follow. The police need search warrants, arrest warrants, and need to be careful of excessive violence. Not so for Bruce Wayne.  Instead of respecting those rights, the police outsource their lawbreaking.

A source of problems is that the audience has the special position of “knowing” that the bad guys are bad and the good guys are good.  Anything the good guys do must be good by definition!  When these ideas seep into the cultural consciousness, it perverts the careful, nuanced approach we’ve developed.

For example: we now have people in America believing that extreme executive power should be legal in the war on terror because they watch it work on 24.  I remember a particular 2006 episode of the Bill Maher show in which The Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore said that he supported a bill because it created “Jack Bauer justice… This guy knows how to interrogate people!”  He was serious.  Bill interjected with “You do realize it’s a TV show?” and Barney Frank did a great job refuting the argument (watch the exchange at OneGoodMove.org).  He was willing to grant the President extreme power because he saw it work out well in a fictional TV show.

Rule of law should be promoted, not dismissed in our cultural myths.  As much as I love Batman, extralegal vigilante crime-fighters should not be among our revered icons.  What do you think their place should be in our culture?

(The graphic novel Watchmen does an incredible job exploring these issues from the other side, if you’re interested.)

(via)

“I asked that be done because I’m ashamed,” the church’s pastor, Richard Mahan, told the congregation later Sunday morning. “I’m ashamed of what the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has done to a church I’ve loved for 40 years”….

“We welcome the sinner, but we do not welcome the sin,” he told the congregation. “All are welcome, but the sin is not.”

“We have always welcomed gays and lesbians to our church, but according to the word of god, we do not believe they are to be ordained. I am not speaking out against the gay and lesbian community, but I am speaking out against the ordination of gays and lesbians as pastors and bishops and leaders of the church – and the blessing of same-sex marriages.”

I’m sure they must feel very welcomed — “Oh hai disgusting sinner, we do love you, but hate your filthy sin! No you can’t join our church! No you can’t be married here! No you can’t be ordained! But we hope you feel loved and very welcome! Jesus loves you and so do we!”

“I have been called homophobic, a racist, a hatemonger,” Mahan said. “God is in control. Maybe he just wants me to stand up for what I believe in.”

They seem to miss the irony that white people used to think similarly about black people — “Oh, we sure do love them black folk, just as long as they don’t join and preach at our churches, have any authority over us, or marry our daughters.”

How long do you think it will be before gay marriage is as accepted as interracial marriage?

After calculating that I wasted 6500 hours in church the first 25 years of my life, I vowed to spend 6500 hours doing volunteer work that would actually make a difference in the world.

Sounds like a good plan to me.

What’s your 1-sentence thought on church?

The rabbinate says that Mr Tarosyan cannot prove he is Jewish according to its strict standards and therefore should not marry Ms Samosvatov, who is considered a proper Jew.

Mr Tarosyan, aged 34, who moved to Israel from Moscow in 1995, called his treatment by the rabbis “humiliating”.

“In Russia we were hated because we were Jews and here in Israel we are discriminated against as Russians,” he said.

It’s this kind of crap that happens when you have religion in control of marriage:

“Civil marriages are not possible in Israel,” he said. “So the rabbis get to decide who can marry and who cannot.”

Israel has passed control of all matters relating to personal status — births, marriages and divorces, and deaths — to rabbis belonging to the strictest stream of Judaism, Orthodoxy.

Official figures show that as many as 350,000 Jews are classified by the rabbinate as having “no religion”, and are therefore unable to marry in Israel. Their only option is to wed abroad —the marriage is then recognised on their return.

Once again, religion is holding back basic moral progress.

I have an idea — just let people marry. It doesn’t matter if one is white and one is black. It doesn’t matter if one is Catholic and one is Protestant. It doesn’t matter if they are both men or women. And it doesn’t matter if one is 79% Jewish and the other is 43% Jewish. If they want to get married, let them!

Eternal life does NOT depend on works. If it did, we will all be in hell. Christ paid for EVERY sin, so how can I or you be judged BY GOD for a sin when the penalty was ALREADY paid. People judge but that does not matter.

Common evangelical beliefs, right? Many Christians would say “Amen!” to that if it was said by a preacher.

It’s actually taken from the online journal of George Sodini, the man who killed 3 women and hurt 15 by opening fire in a LA Fitness gym a few days ago.

It was his justification for killing people. God forgives sin, salvation is not based on works but on faith. You can kill people — like biblical heroes did — and still have the favor of God.

He knew he had some problems, and he blamed a church he attended for 13 years for them:

“Be Ye Holy, even as I have been Ye holy! Thus saith the lord thy God!”, as pastor Rick Knapp would proclaim. Holy shit, religion is a waste. But this guy teaches (and convinced me) you can commit mass murder then still go to heaven…. guilt and fear kept me there 13 long years until Nov 2006. I think his crap did the most damage.” [December 31, 2008]

I know virtually all pastors would say killing people like this was a sin, and they’d probably be happy to say he went to hell. And I’m thankful they don’t follow what the Bible says about who should be killed, because the God of the Bible certainly didn’t have a problem with mass murder in certain contexts, seeing he did it and commanded it numerous times.

Would this man have killed those people if he wasn’t brainwashed? He was obviously mentally unstable, so perhaps he would have. I don’t know. But what I do know is he killed people with religion as his justification and comfort, like so many others do. Is there any different between him and a brainwashed Muslim who will kill himself for paradise with his God? It seems like you have to be mentally unstable to believe that, too.

George didn’t need prayer. He didn’t need Jesus. What he needed was someone to help him through his problems, and if he couldn’t be helped, to be locked up in order to protect others.

Perhaps some people need religion to be moral, but does that really make up for all the evil people do in the name of religion?

See also: Before Aerobics Massacre, Sodini Read Sexist Christian Author’s Book; Gym shooter posted video monologues online

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all the other monkeys with cold water. After a while another monkey makes the attempt with same result, all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Now, put the cold water away. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm.

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all of the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not?

Because as far as they know that is the way it has always been done around here.

(via MahouSniper)

I’d like to share some of my thoughts with you regarding abortion. I’m a doctor who does both 1st and 2nd trimester abortions.

Although most of my practice is general OB/GYN, I’m something of an abortion “specialist” because most folks in my profession don’t want to be involved in abortions. I work for a large group where abortions are sent to those of us who will do them, so I perform literally hundreds of abortions a year.

First of all, I and most of my abortionist colleagues are women. Most of us are Jews, atheists, and other non-Christians. Almost all of us are mothers. I continued to perform abortions late into my own pregnancies, and you could literally see the appreciation in the eyes of my patients, knowing that I accepted and supported their reproductive choice.

I rarely tell anyone but my closest friends and family that I do abortions because I don’t want to risk myself or my family. Those crazies out there scare me.

Who Gets Abortions and Why?

Pullquote: Did you know that half of the abortions done in this country are done because of birth control failure?

We all know that anti-abortionists aren’t really “pro-life,” they are “pro-forced birth.” They make huge assumptions about who the women are who actually have abortions. They think that all the women who have abortions are just young flaky women who have no concern for the life of the embryo/fetus they are aborting. They couldn’t be more wrong.

Most of the women seeking early abortion are either very young or in the late part of their reproductive life. The youngsters are often coerced into unwanted pregnancies by their partners, or they didn’t think or know that they could get pregnant. Some of the older women think they couldn’t get pregnant because they were “too old.”

The decision to have an abortion is an agonizing decision, that few women choose lightly. They will be criticized for whatever decision they make. What kind of terrible mother could kill her own child? What kind of terrible mother could give her child away to strangers? What kind of terrible mother would keep a child she can’t afford to care for?

Did you know that half of the abortions done in this country are done because of birth control failure?

The “pro-coerced birthers” think that these are immoral women who should be punished for their (sex) sins with an innocent child. Then they complain about “welfare mothers” who need money to support their children. Those “precious babies” become children who they don’t want to feed. Aren’t Christians supposed to provide charity for those who need it? Worse then that, they don’t want to use federal funds to provide effective contraception or abortions for poor women. They just want to keep punishing women. Of course, if it’s one of their own, she just “made a mistake, she’s really a good girl.” Abortions happen in the fundie community too, don’tcha know.

Did you know that 1/3 of women who have abortions had a partner who sabotaged their birth control method? This is true domestic violence.

Women who have abortions come from all walks of life. This is not a phenomenon of only the inner city. Many are educated, and most of them are just plain middle class people.

The 1st trimester and early 2nd trimester abortions are most frequently done as elective abortions for unwanted pregnancies. I don’t like to do elective terminations after 22 weeks because of the viability issue. Late 2nd trimester pregnancies are very different.

Virtually all of the late 2nd trimester abortions I do are for fetal anomalies, fetal deaths, and for maternal health reasons. These poor souls really wanted their babies. They are in deep mourning because of the loss of their children. They come in deep grief, many times feeling guilty because they are “killing” their loved and wanted children. They worry if the baby will feel the abortion, and they don’t want their child to suffer.

Performing Abortions

Pullquote: 1,000x more women died due to abortion in Mexico, where it was illegal, than in the US

Many folks wonder what it’s like to perform abortions. First trimester abortions (dilation and curettage, D&C) are very unremarkable. Our patients are awake but sedated. The procedure is performed with a suction curette (hard plastic tube), and in the hands of an experienced abortionist, suctioning out the pregnancy lasts less than a minute. The “products of conception” come out as just a mass of undefined tissue about the size of a golf ball. No thunder and lightning. Most patients have worked themselves up to have it be a long, grueling process, but are shocked at how short the procedure is.

2nd trimester abortions are very different. The later procedure is much more difficult and riskier for the mom, hence the limited number of us who actually do them. They are also unpleasant, because the procedure (dilation and evacuation, D&E) involves pulling out the baby in pieces. That all being said, the procedure (in the hands of an expert) is much safer than inducing the delivery, and has a much lower complication rate that the induction does. Many of these poor parents don’t want to be awake for the birth of the child they are going to lose, and just prefer to lose the child under general anesthesia.

I’ve never done the famous “D&X” (dilation and extraction, “partial birth abortion”) procedure. This was the one that was outlawed because opponents thought it was too horrible of a procedure. The concept was to try to deliver the baby intact, but the brain matter was suctioned out to allow the delivery of the head through the cervix. This procedure was designed so that the parents of the child could hold an intact baby, back of the head covered up, after a surgical abortion. Not because we horrible abortionists love to torture babies and then kill them.

Why Do I Perform Abortions?

Pullquote: I perform abortions because women with unwanted pregnancies are willing to risk just about anything to try to end their pregnancy.

I would be the happiest person in the world to never do another abortion again. So why do I do them? Because pregnant women with unwanted pregnancies are willing to risk just about anything, including almost killing themselves, in order to try to end unwanted pregnancies.

I remember reading some statistics comparing abortions in the U.S. and Mexico, before they were legal there. About the same number of abortions were done in each country, just over 1 million abortions a year. In the U.S. about 10 women died as a result of legal abortion. In Mexico, about 10,000 women per year died as a result of illegal abortions. 10,000 women who were mothers, sisters, daughters, wives. Not pre-viable fetuses.

There’s excellent evidence that in countries where women control their reproduction, the families are more prosperous. Funny that, women knowing when it’s a good or a bad time to add a child to their family.

You would never pick out an abortionist in the crowd. We would probably be the last people you would figure. We are the kindest, most compassionate people you would wish to meet. We are, however, very passionate about protecting the lives and reproductive rights of our patients.

Last time I checked, abortion was legal in this country. But I can tell you that the people who oppose abortion have no feelings of any kind for the poor women who have to make the terrible decision to end a pregnancy for whatever reason. They want to end abortion because they love those theoretical innocent children.

Oh, yeah, forgot that we are all born sinners. Maybe they aren’t such great babies after all.

They thought their God was testing their faith. They didn’t want to show their lack of faith by going to a doctor. So the child died of untreated diabetes.

When she was on trial last Spring she explained her thinking:

Leilani Neumann told the jury in her husband’s trial that she thought her daughter’s March 2008 illness was a test of her religious faith and she didn’t take the girl to a doctor because that would have been “complete disobedience to what we believe.”

Leilani Neumann testified for nearly five hours Tuesday, describing the events leading up to her daughter’s March 23, 2008, death on a mattress on the floor of the family’s rural Weston home as people surrounded her and prayed. Someone called for help when she stopped breathing.The mother said that she and her husband believed their daughter’s deteriorating condition may have been the result of a falling out with another couple, and called them once the girl was unconscious and persuaded them to come pray for the girl.

“I asked her if she loved Jesus,” the mother testified. “She might have said yes. I know for sure she was acknowledging it. What sounds came out, I don’t remember. She was making noises. … My focus definitely was to pray.”

“We thought even the lifelessness was something that she would come out of,” the mother said. “Everything for us is about faith. It is about trusting in God. We either believe in God’s word or we don’t.”A pediatric expert on diabetes told the jury Monday that even right before her death, doctors might have been able to save the girl’s life had she been brought to a hospital.

I think everyone can agree that this kind of faith is dangerous. They had “biblical” faith — they put their trust in God and not in man. And, as usual, God failed where humans could have helped.

Believers constantly say they need to rely upon God, but why would anyone put their trust in a God who has failed, over and over again? Granted, it’s hard not to fail when you don’t exist, but you’d think that people would stop relying on someone so notoriously unreliable.

His five victims sat looking forward in the gallery. One, a woman he “married” at age 8, wiped away a tear.

The jury of nine men and three women found Alamo guilty of taking girls as young as 9 across state lines for sex, in violation of a nearly century-old federal law. Alamo was accused in a 10-count indictment that said the abuse started in 1994….

Women ranging from age 17 to 33 told jurors that Alamo “married” them in private ceremonies while they were minors, sometimes giving them wedding rings. Each detailed trips beyond Arkansas’ borders for Alamo’s sexual gratification.

Alamo’s perspective? That he’s just being persecuted for Jesus, of course:

“I’m just another one of the prophets that went to jail for the Gospel,” Alamo called to reporters afterward as he was escorted to a waiting U.S. marshal’s vehicle.

But it’s okay. All he has to do is ask forgiveness in Jesus name, and his sin will be cleansed and he’ll go to heaven forever — unlike all those evil people who lived good lives but didn’t believe in Jesus!

Your God is not pro-life.

You might find that statement surprising, but I know this from your own holy book. Despite what you may have been told, the Bible is not a pro-life document.

It is, in many parts, pro-death. In one of the first stories in the Bible, God murders millions of people through a global flood — including born and unborn children. Unborn children — the ones you fight for. God only wanted to get rid of them.

Later in your holy book God commands the death of nation after nation because they happen to inhabit the land he plans to give the Israelites (Josh 7-9). He commands Israel to kill women and children (1 Sam 15). When he wanted to make a point to the Egyptians, he murdered all the firstborn sons of Egypt. Innocent children. And when King David killed a man and slept with his wife, God punished him by killing his unborn child.

This same God does nothing while billions of people throughout history have been starved, drowned, raped and murdered. He sits on the sidelines and watches.

That is not a God who is pro-life!

On top of all that, at least 25% of all pregnancies end in “natural” abortion — which you believe your God either designed or actively performed — an act you consider murder.

No, your God is not pro-life. By your own standards, he is a murderer — the most prolific abortionist of all time.

So don’t tell us you base your morality on the Bible or on the character of God. Don’t tell us you’re sent from your God to protect the lives of the innocent. Despite what your pastor says, your God is not pro-life. He has been killing, maiming, and letting people suffer for ages. You’re pro-life because, like most humans, you value human life.

I also value human life, but it has nothing to do with supernatural beings.

I’m pro-life too. I hate abortion. I don’t think it is murder, but that doesn’t mean I like it. We can agree on wanting to minimize abortion as much as possible. Since 95% of Americans admit to premarital sex, that means we need to work on getting people to use birth control so they don’t have to consider an abortion. Abstinence-only education doesn’t work.

Let’s work together to teach birth control methods. Let’s provide counseling and adoption services. But let’s not take away the legal right for a woman to choose. Let’s not stand outside and scream at people that they are going to hell for murder if they have an abortion. Let’s not block women from entering a clinic.

In this way, we respect the legal right of women, as well as reducing abortions. We will, as Bill Clinton said, make abortion, “safe, legal, and rare.”

Sincerely,

Dan Florien

See also: Murder in the Bible

Only the founder of the country, Kim Il-sung, and his son, Kim Jong-il, may be worshipped, in mass public displays of fervour.

Despite the persecutions, it is thought up to 30,000 North Koreans may practise Christianity secretly in their homes.

A report by a number of South Korean groups highlights one particular case of a woman allegedly executed in public last month, in a northern town close to the Chinese border.

She was accused of distributing Bibles, spying for South Korea and the United States and helping to organise dissidents.

Her parents, husband, and children were sent to a prison camp.

Such reports are hard to verify, but North Korea is known to be intolerant of religion – it views any form of alternative social organisation as a competitor for its own, religion-like ideology.

The US government says just owning a Bible in North Korea may be a cause for torture and disappearance.

Let me be clear: while I dislike religion, I dislike religious persecution even more. Persecuting someone based on religion or ideology is unacceptable and must be stopped. I believe in freedom of and from religion. Hurting people because they believe something different from you is barbaric and unreasonable.

Personally my advice for Christians is to not go anywhere near places like North Korea, but the fervent ones won’t listen. They feel a need to take their message to the dangerous places and will happily die a martyr’s death. There is no stopping people like that — they want to be heros. And if they’d only risk their own necks then I’m fine with it, but when they bring their families into it (especially children who have no choice) I get more uncomfortable.

If they purposely go to a place where there is a high chance they will get killed for their beliefs, then there is not much we can do. But we can all support the idea of religious freedom, and do what we can to help those who are involuntary victims of religious persecution.

One way is supporting Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Feel free to recommend other charities that fight for human rights.

From That Mitchell & Webb Look.

Religion makes sense to me. I have trouble with dogma more than I have trouble with religion. I think the best thing religion does is give people a sense of place, purpose, and compassion. My quibble with it is when it’s described as the only way to have those things instilled.

You can be moral and not be religious, you can be compassionate, you can be empathetic—you can have all those wonderful qualities. When it begins to be judged as purely based on religion, then you’re suggesting a world where Star Jones goes to heaven but Gandhi doesn’t.

Like anything else that’s that powerful—that is touching that deep into the epicenter of the human psyche and our fears, it can be misused. I’m probably much more responsive in a bad way to dogma and to extremism than to religion.

When people say things like, “I found God and that helped me stop drinking,” I say, “Great! More power to you. Just know that some people stop drinking without it.” It’s when it gets into the realm of “This is the only way to salvation”—that’s when I think, “Okay, now we’re getting into a problem.”

I agree — when religion helps someone overcome a problem, I’m glad they found help. But it’s not the only way to fix problems.

And if religion helps someone be a better person, I’m glad they found help. But faith isn’t a requirement to be a good person — at least for some of us!