Apathy Sketchpad

It’s a bit old now, but it’s something I’ve been meaning to blog as part of my apparently ongoing project to document and mock everything the new, crazy Pope says and does wrong from the moment of his appointment to shortly after the moment of his death, after which (much as he thinks otherwise) he will not say or do anything.

He was not-very-recently scheduled to give a talk, on the subject of… er… nothing very much, at La Sapienza university, but the talk was cancelled after large numbers of scientists complained. They said the Pope shouldn’t be allowed to talk at a now-secular (the university having been founded by an earlier and probably saner Pope) research institute after What He Said About Galileo. Eventually the talk was reorganised for a later date, and the Pope tried to claim the triple-whammy of association with the university, victim, and victor. Personally I think he came out of the whole thing looking like a twat, but then that’s much the way he went in so no harm done.

For those who missed it, the now-pope, 17 years ago and long before he was pope, defended the Catholic Church’s treatment of Galileo way back when. (For those who missed that too, Galileo pointed out that the Earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. The last Pope, John Paul II, was happy to admit Galileo was right, as to be fair is the new one, but where Benedict XVI loses my respect is that he condones the actions of the Church at the time when they banned all his books, forced him to recant and locked him in his house until he died.)

Of course, the Church was quick to leap to Ratzinger’s defence:

The Vatican has dismissed some of the protestors [sic] as anti-clerical activists, and have said that others have misunderstood Benedict’s remarks, made 17 years ago.

…

As Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict said that Galileo had turned out to be correct about the earth revolving around the sun, and that subsequent biblical scholarship had rejected literalist readings of texts that had been taken by the Church to deny this.

Nevertheless, he said, Galileo had been dogmatic and sectarian in his statements at the time, and the Church authorities had acted reasonably given the levels of knowledge available then.

So, his defence is that Galileo, though now-demonstrably and -clearly right, was too dogmatic for the Pope. So they banned his books and humiliated him and locked him in his house for questioning their beliefs, but that’s okay because he was a tad dogmatic. In any case, “the levels of knowledge available then” were the same as the levels of (relevant) knowledge available now: there was no proof that the sun orbitted the Earth. As such Galileo was surely perfectly free to doubt it, yes? No. It’s as if the Pope believes that the Church is free to demand that everyone follows their thinking on any issue right up until the moment that it can be definitively proved wrong and everyone agrees. Another fun paragraph from that article is here:

Nevertheless, there is no doubt but that the Vatican is extremely embarrassed by the incident, which will strengthen the hand of those who argue that religious belief and scientific enquiry are incompatible - a view rejected by those involved in science-theology conversations, but spreading widely among non-specialists.

That reads like it was written by one of those strange people who study theology as if it was a proper subject. The incompatibilities (or lack of them) between science and religion is a philosophical area — we can’t prove it. Sure, it’s easy to point out that science is based around the idea of questioning all knowledge and demanding proof of all claims, whereas religion is based around the idea of believing what you’re told, preferably without any proof, but some people will say that they don’t accept that and even though they’re obviously wrong, they’re not demonstrably wrong. They just have to chase you back until you hit an assumption (say, “logic holds” or “the universe exists”) and declare their assumption equally valid.

And I just bet that they’re using the phrase “non-specialists” to mean “atheists”. That’s what it usually means in this context: it’s the mindset that thinks you can’t disprove religion without studying it for years. It’s a bit like saying “you can’t prove π doesn’t equal four without checking every decimal place”. After all, the view they ascribe to “non-specialists”, “that religious belief and scientific enquiry are incompatible,” is the view held by Richard Dawkins, the esteemed biologist, professor for the public understanding of science, and author of The God Delusion. I think it’s fair to call him an expert in the field.

But they’ve decided what’s true and anyone who disagrees obviously just hasn’t studied hard enough. Damn those dogmatic astronomers!

The Catholic Church does a lot of things that are bad, but it also does some good. One of those things is that, particularly since the new Crazy Pope took over, it provides a never-ending stream of examples of all the bad things religion does. Here’s the latest one, and it might be the stupidest yet. This is what the Pope intends to do about the paedophilia scandals in the church (from the Guardian):

The Vatican has called on Catholics to atone for the sex abuse scandals that have engulfed their church in recent years by taking part in what may be the largest global prayer initiative ever seen.

Cardinal Cláudio Hummes told the Vatican’s official daily, L’Osservatore Romano, that every diocese in the world should name a priest to work full-time on the arrangements for the “perpetual adoration” of the eucharist. This would involve parishioners taking turns to keep a round-the-clock vigil in front of a consecrated host representing the body of Jesus.

The initiative has all the hallmarks of the thinking [sic] of Pope Benedict, and would certainly not have been launched in this way without his full support.Hummes, the head of the Vatican ministry for the clergy, said a letter had gone to “dioceses, parishes, rectories, chapels, monasteries, convents and seminaries” calling on them to organise groups of “adorers”. The aim was “to make amends before God for the evil that has been done and hail once more the dignity of the victims”, who had suffered from the “moral and sexual conduct of a very small part of the clergy”. He did not indicate how long he saw the adoration continuing.

The Times said a little more:

Cardinal Hummes said that the aim was to put a definitive stop to a scandal that … [he said] was exceptionally serious, although it was probably caused by “no more than 1 per cent” of the 400,000 Catholic priests around the world.

So that’s okay, then. Thousands of children have been abused, but the Pope has a plan. He’s going to have “a round-the-clock vigil in front of a consecrated host representing the body of Jesus*”. He’s going to ask people to watch bread. I can see that helping a lot, presuming it was the bread that was abusing all those children.

Partly I object to this because it’s moronic, but to be honest, that doesn’t matter. This represents a huge number of people who are, in all probability, going to do as he asks and keep a close eye on baked goods and think they’re helping. Not only is that time that could be better spent actually doing something, but by creating the (not very realistic) illusion of action it will discourage those people from really taking any in their remaining free time.

And to a point you have to respect it, because if the Pope really does believe that looking at food will solve the problem then he’s doing exactly the right thing, but then, if the Pope really does believe that looking at food will solve the problem, then he’s an idiot, so don’t feel you have to respect him more than you would a cucumber. That would mean he thinks that an all-merciful and all-powerful God will refuse to do anything about a spate of paedophiles in his own organisation unless enough people sit around “adoring” him for long enough. How many high-ranking Catholic officials have failed to point out how absurd that is?

It’s hardly worth sitting here trying to make the Pope look stupid. It’s like trying to make fire look warm.

He even has a silly hat.

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*…or as the Pope would have it, a consecrated host which is the body of Jesus.

According to the Pope, “spe salvi”.

This is the title of his latest infallible rant, and is a small nugget of Latin taken from the Bible, where it means “in hope, we are saved”, apparently. (As is my way I’ve linked there to the full rant, not the little snippets in the news.) So what does the Pope have to say for himself this time? Let’s take a look.

Here’s some from section 42, in-keeping with the Christian tradition of numbering all text:

The atheism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is—in its origins and aims—a type of moralism … If in the face of this world’s suffering, protest against God is understandable, the claim that humanity can and must do what no God actually does or is able to do is both presumptuous and intrinsically false. It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice; rather, it is grounded in the intrinsic falsity of the claim. A world which has to create its own justice is a world without hope.

Here, the Pope explains that mankind should not try to deliver justice or alleviate suffering. Presumably he thinks all laws should be repealed, all governments shut down, all charities disbanded (which would be a cunning way out of the Amnesty International-shaped hole he dug himself into all those months ago), and all peace talks immediately halted: they are presumptuous, after all, and grounded in the intrinsically false idea that mankind can and must create its own justice.

He really would rather live in the middle ages, wouldn’t he? He’s essentially saying that we should just sit back and watch the world go to hell in a handcart while we sit around being insufferably pious until the biblical “Last Judgement” rolls around and we all get to live forever in paradise. Which to be fair sounds like a terrific plan as long as we can rely on the eternal paradise bit actually happening.

The nerve of the man to accuse atheism of being “intrinsically false” when he believes an invisible wizard from space is going to individually judge everyone in the world and actually physically resurrect all the ones who’ve obeyed his arbitrary set of rules to live forever in an earthly paradise to which, presumably, the second law of thermodynamics does not apply. He criticises Marxism when his proposed solution is to sit back and do absolutely fuck all about the injustices and suffering in the world (many of which are created by his own organisation) and let an imaginary sky fairy fix everything with his magic wand.

I honestly think the Pope is one of the most dangerously insane human beings alive today.

Somebody explain to me why Catholics still exist. I can’t imagine what justification could possibly be given for supporting, even implicitly, this dangerous organisation when there are so many flavours of Christianity which don’t require you to listen to a word of the tripe spewed by the Vatican City.

Personally, I think Italy should demand the country back. Even if the Vatican refused, I think it’d be a pretty easy place to take by force.

The next person who tells me religion forms a basis for morality gets a punch in the face. Well, no, that’s almost certainly not true, but if they do, I feel it will be justified. This month’s Religious Crackpot Of The Month award goes to the entire Vatican, who are increasingly mad and incredibly dangerous.

Religion forms a basis for rules. Rules can be good or bad. But they aren’t morality. It’s not “moral” to be good to avoid burning forever in hell; it’s selfish. It’s not “moral” to obey some rules to gain access to some paradise afterlife; that’s selfish, too. The religious argument, though, says aha, but you see God created the universe and He gets to decide what’s Moral and what’s Immoral. Therefore, it reasons, if you obey the rules God laid down, you will be acting Morally, and if you don’t, you won’t.

This is slightly stupid, because there’s no actual logical connection between creating the universe and morality. You can’t get from one to the other. It’s also stupid because the rules that religions preach now are, even if we’re generous and grant religion the rather absurd assumption that whoever they believe vreated the universe actually did write their holy books, nothing like the originals. They’re not God’s Word; they’re Chinese Whispers.

Evolution doesn’t favour the most accurate forms, or the most true or the nicest. It favours the ones that survive best. And evolution is an inevitable consequence of any system that allows something to mutate, reproduce, and pass changes onto its offspring. So when a book is copied out, changes are introduced in every generation. When a religion is passed on by word of mouth, changes are introduced. When a text is translated, errors creep in. and all these little changes add up over time, and eventually you end up not with the an accurate reflection of any original work, God’s word or otherwise, but with a very powerful meme which is very good at getting itself passed on, very good at deflecting argument, and very good at sticking in your brain. There is no requirement at all for it to do anything else, so generally it doesn’t.

Of course, it will always keep something moral back, like “Thou Shalt Not Kill”. But not because it’s “moral” or “right” or “God’s Word”. It’s because that’s a good survival trait — it allows people to say things like “this idea forms a basis for morality; look, it preaches not killing”. Big whoop. So does Shazanity.

But I can forgive all that. You can believe that, and I won’t think less of you. It’s very hard to break out of something like religion, and some people get enough support and happiness out of theirs that it might not be a good idea anyway. They’re in a symbiotic relationship with the viral meme that is their religion. What I really don’t understand is Roman Catholics.

Now, as I understand this, and I used to be one and now I have a keen interest in them so I like to think I know at least as much about Catholicism as the average Catholic, a Roman Catholic is basically the same as any other Christian except that in addition to the Bible, they also believe a whole stack of other dogma churned out be the Vatican. For example, they have to believe that God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are simultaneously three distinct entities and one single entity. This creates a problem, because if you apply set theory, which I’m given to understand is ultimately the root of all mathematics, then you can start from that premise and prove quite trivially that three equals one*. (Mathematics is important to Catholicism because without it Pope Pius I was the same person as Pope Pius III, and that’s just confusing.) So Catholics also have to believe a second bit of dogma brought in later, which explains it away as a “Strict Mystery”. A Strict Mystery is one that is so mysterious, it’s impossible to understand unless you’re God (or an idiot). This, of course, makes no sense either, and doesn’t really explain anything at all even if you assume it’s true, but that’s okay, because it itself could be a Strict Mystery.

And they you have Limbo. Now Limbo is very confusing. It was widely publicised a bit ago that the latest Pope, who was a Nazi, abolished Limbo, the traditional resting place of unbaptised babies. This meant that all good Catholics who read this had to immediately stop believing in Limbo. But it had been publicised weeks before that he was going to do that, so what were Catholics supposed to believe in the meantime? But the worst part of this is that these reports aren’t true. In real life, the new Pope, who wasn’t really a Nazi, issued a Papal Bull to the effect that Limbo may or may not exist. The Vatican doesn’t know, because the Bible doesn’t say, and of course anything that the Bible doesn’t mention may or may not be true and you can’t prove it, because only the Bible is proof of anything. (You know, the Bible, or anything the Vatican says, because of Papal Infallibility, which was introduced by the Vatican in– hang on.)

But that’s the point: it’s all just rules. Rules don’t define morality. And as if proof were needed, here it is.

This blogger is rather understandably annoyed because not only did some bastard kill two employees of an abortion clinic in the name of his religious “morality”, but now there is a group of people who frankly are at least as bad intent on worshipping him as a hero and re-enacting the murders. And as if that wasn’t bad enough, we now have to put up with the Vatican asking all Catholics to boycott Amnesty International. Why? Because they think women should, in some situations, be allowed abortions.

(Now, far be it for me to apply common sense to any of this, but it would seem to me that if aborted foetuses go to Limbo, where they get “natural happiness”, that’s not so very bad. Frankly it’s probably better than most of them would get if they lived a normal life and God Judged them. Really, abortions are selfless acts, with one doctor accepting an eternity in Hell to save a load of foetuses.)

But more to the point, what may or may not happen to foetuses, or for that matter, people, after they die is something of a mystery. It’s really impossible to know, at least, not when you’re alive. What happens in Iraq to people very shortly before they die is a matter of well documented fact. And anyone who read the excellent article in the Times should know what happens in Guantanamo Bay. Amnesty fight these causes, and need money to do that, but the Vatican just mindlessly applies a bunch of rules it invented to everything, with no common sense or compromise or thought of any kind. They spot Amnesty going even slightly against one of those made-up rules and they immediately announce that all the extra suffering, totrure and killings it will cause don’t matter and that all that matters is that Catholics teach Amnesty that God is not to be fucked with. It shouldn’t need stating that boycotting a charity aimed at, and successful in, preserving and standing up for human rights, based on your flimsy interpretation of a book written centuries ago claiming to be the work of God is an utterly abhorrent way to behave. (The same applies to the whole condoms-are-bad-oh-no-AIDS debacle.)

This week, the same Pope has just made an announcement that non-Catholic churches are somehow “not proper churches”. This means, logically, that non-Catholic denominations of Christianity aren’t proper Christianity. Naturally, that’s what Catholics would believe anyway, at some level, so we’ve learned nothing from this but it has still made people angry. Why did he say that? What use was it? Sometimes I think hegoes looking for a fight.

I generally allow religion its follies because they are harmless and because it’s just easier that way. But a number of people who are very important to me are heavily involved in Amnesty, and a number of other people who are also very important to me are Catholics. So I’m rather forced to form an opinion. And my opinion, or rather, the plain simple fact of the matter, is that whether or not Amnesty is right, the Vatican is wrong. So here’s the deal: anybody who refuses to support Amnesty because it conflict with their Catholic beliefs is no longer my friend. It really is that simple. I’m not, as a rule, friends with people who behave abhorrently. If you find yourself in that category, do not attempt to change my mind. Attempt to change your own mind, because it is your mind which is defective. (Anybody who considers themselves a Catholic but finds themselves forced to disagree with things the Vatican says probably ought to take a long look and decide if they are then, by any reasonable definition, a Catholic, or just a Christian whose nearest church happens to be a Catholic one.)

But I’m not going to sit there in conversations any more and act as if this kind of thing is okay. The next person who tells me they are a Catholic is going to get asked if they support Amnesty. Because it’s the difference between “I like to wear white clothes and have bonfires” and “I am a member of the Klan”.

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*First,define a set of the father, the son and the holy spirit. This has a cardinality of one. Then one-to-one map it directly to the set of Chipmunks (Alvin, Simon, Theodore) which has a cardinality of three. This proves one equals three. Apparently.

The following things are not terrorism:

• Drawing a cartoon.
• Making a level for Counterstrike.
• Insulting the Pope.

If they are, boy am I in trouble. (Although I’m more the 21/7 type of videogame level maker. My attempts never work properly.)

Now can everyone shut up about imaginary terrorists? We have enough trouble with the real ones.