In yet another example of ‘unholy’ behavior by the supposed guardians of holiness, churches are buying insurance policies to pay off people who have been sexually abused by the clergy.
Although nobody is claiming that religion is the one and only cause of sexual abuse in the church, this shows that religion does not work. Religion does not help us lead a moral life, religion does not help priests keep their hands to themselves, religion does not make people less likely to commit crimes, religion does not ensure that people would behave, and the list goes on. Abstinence and celibacy simply do not work, even when proclaimed to be holy in the name of religion. They do not work even when people are threatened with hellfire because going against basic biology does not work.
People who still think that sexual abuse is not a problem among supposedly ‘celibate’ clergy need to start confronting reality before more innocent people are scarred for life because religious institutions are not willing to face the obvious fact that religion does not work.
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I suspect that the “spike” in the 80’s was just a spike in the attention the issue got from the national media. The national media doesn’t seem to report on it much anymore, possibly because it’s “old” news that their readers are just sick of hearing about. There’s a lot of that crap still going on but most of it only gets reported in local publications, and then everyone is all upset that it happened “in their town”. I’ve got a quickly growing compilation of these local news stories at http://fetidfruit.blogspot.com in an attempt to debunk the myth that religiosity is synonymous with morality.
Well put Shalini.
Abuse perpetrated by members of the clergy is obviously evil. However, your post is misguided because the most important question is not “Does ‘X’ religion *work*?”, but rather “Is ‘X’ religion *true*?.
What do you mean is it “true”?
Do you mean:
1. The metaphysical propositions, such as the existence of god or the afterlife? That we cannot answer.
or
2. Religion’s apologists views that religion is important, useful, etc.? In that case, this post answers that. Please could you be more specific.
Religions work. If they co-operate with one another, and with sciences and arts, they work even better. It is the misunderstanding of the religions which barr religions from working.
Askin Ozcan
Author of “SMALL MIRACLES”
ISBN 1598001000 (Outskirts Press)
I am talking about metaphysical propositions, and indeed we can determine their truth or falsity.
Personally, I’d like to determine false…. can I get a show of hands?
Really? Please tell us more.
You rely on the truth of metaphysical propositions every day. One example of a metaphysical proposition that you know to be true is ‘Numbers exist.’
Numbers are immaterial, yet we know that they are real. You can neither prove nor disprove their existence, yet they are a fundamental reality in our society. We know of their existence through our intuition which is a way of knowing things that does not rely on inductive or deductive reasoning. Intuitive knowledge is foundational to all other knowledge enterprises.
Science is philosophy’s handmaiden.
How would you reply to the Invisible Pink Unicorn and billions of deities that are no longer around? At some point people believed, very strongly and to the death, that they existed. But no one now (really) believes in them.
Also, you can posit anything exists in that sort of way. But I think you are confusing the concepts and the existence of something, which is the inherent problem of the ontological argument.
Even I believe in the concept of the biblical god, but that does not mean that i believe he exists such that he can interact or play a part in the world. Also, you are confusing simply words with the concepts. The concept of numbers is meaningless, because we now that x + x = 2x. but you can replace x with anything. In fact, you can replace 2 with anything. The point is this is something actually occuring in the real world, we can “test” it.
What can we do with biblical gods, dead gods, invisible pink unicorns? Nothing, in my opinion. You can describe him existing in any way you like, but the point is all proofs for his (the biblical god) existence in the universe as we know it simply fails.
This says nothing about whether one day someone will come up with a perfect proof, such that i can change my mind easily. Or that god reveals himself to me, somehow. I don’t discount those possibilities – but we are not talking about possibilities of the future. We are tlaking about the past and the present. And so far, nothing throws light on to the existence of the biblical god (or any god – you could get away maybe being a deist but thats a leap away from the jealous god of the bible).
I think we both realize that it is impossible to prove a universal negative. You could never prove to me that there are no teapots orbiting the earth or that there are no pink invisible unicorns. But that does not prove that they exist either.
As far as numbers are concerned, I think that to say that numbers are meaningless is somewhat confused. The symbols that we use for numbers (’1′, ‘2′…) are arbitrary, but they refer to abstract, immaterial concepts that exist in reality. If I were to ask you to test whether 2+2=4, you could maybe illustrate it by adding two apples to the two already in your bag to equal four apples in your bag. But that wouldn’t really be testing it in a scientific sense, that would only be illustrating it. If I asked you to repeat the test, you would see no reason to do so because the answer is *obvious*.
We cannot ‘test’ for the existence of numbers, yet we can certainly know that the concepts referred to by the symbols are real.
Can we test for the existence of God? Not really, God is immaterial. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t exist. There are other ways of knowing things besides the scientific method.
Some things we know intuitively, like the existence of numbers and the existence of minds. Other things we know inductively, like…
1. All men are mortal.
2. Socrates is a man.
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
Arguments for God can be made both intuitively and inductively.
Will we ever have apodictic certainty that God exists (or not)? Not in our lifetimes.
You say that maybe deism is maybe a little respectable…but deism and atheism are polar opposites and the step from deism to theism is not nearly so great.