Thursday, December 25th, 2008
I have written about how Christian belief relates to the plight of “child witches” before in my “Why I engage in religious debates…” essay. But this recent news article is very disturbing and seriously deserves being read twice:
By David Harrison — telegraph.co.uk
“The religious leaders offer help to the families whose children are named as witches, but at a price. The churches run exorcism, or “deliverance”, evenings where the pastors attempt to drive out the evil spirits. Only they have the power to cleanse the child of evil spirits, they say. The exorcism costs the families up to a year’s income.”
…
“At his church in Ibaka, the Bishop pours a homemade substance called African mercury, a potion of pure alcohol and his own blood, into the eyes of a young boy lying on a table. “I want this poison destroyer to destroy the witch right now, in Jesus’ name,” he says.
…
He has recently refined his techniques for dealing with child witches. “I killed up to 110 people who were identified as being a witch,” he says.”
Oh good, the Bishop has killed 110 children who were witches.
Where did he get such an awesome idea?
I can think of one place…
Exodus 22:18 You shall not permit a witch to live.
Now, this is where sometimes a “but that’s an Old Testament verse!” response comes in. All right, let’s take Jesus’ actions as reported in the Gospels for insight into dealing with reality. Let us consider how to deal with demon possession, witches, and other supernatural problems. According to the Gospels, there is hardly a more widespread and pervasive problem.
Is there anything that Jesus does more of in the Gospel accounts than cast out demons?
No. And just to give you a flavor, here is a partial list of demon-verses from just the Gospel of Matthew: (when I integrate these verses into a full essay, I’ll link up each verse individually).
Search in Gospel of Matthew for Demons:
Matthew 4.24: So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them.
Matthew 8.16: That evening they brought to him many who were possessed by demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick.
Matthew 8.28: When he came to the other side, to the country of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs coming out of the tombs met him. They were so fierce that no one could pass that way.
Matthew 9.32: After they had gone away, a demoniac who was mute was brought to him.
Matthew 12.22: Then they brought to him a demoniac who was blind and mute; and he cured him, so that the one who had been mute could speak and see.
Matthew 15.22: Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’
Matthew 17.18: And Jesus rebuked the demon, and it came out of him, and the boy was cured instantly.
One slight positive of publicizing stories like this is a followup story:
The ‘Bishop’ from the first story is arrested. Good. It’s a start.
Perhaps Western Christians who visit this page do not consider it a good thing that witches are being killed and that children with demons are being cast off into society. Two points.
- Why would these Western Christians no longer worry about demon possession and witches? A closer reading of the New Testament? Surely not.
- Western Christians often feel the need to spread their superstition to all corners of the world through missionary work — and perhaps their own … tempered … view of Christianity is less of a problem. But when you get an already highly superstitious place to adopt your version of superstition, they just may believe in your magic book even more fully than you do.
Tags: atheism, child-witches, superstition, witches
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Wednesday, December 24th, 2008
Here’s an interesting/horrifying news story:
By Mail Foreign Service
22nd December 2008
A father gives his 8 year old daughter in marriage to a 58 year old in exchange for a dowry. The mother, funny enough, did not approve and filed papers with a Saudi court.
As the article states: Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:”The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty.”
Too bad that the mother does not have equal rights as the father with regards to the daughter… not to mention the daughter’s rights!
So as I wrote before in my “Why I engage in religious debates…” essay,
In Islam, Mohammad’s life is the best example of how to lead a virtuous life. How he lived his life is to be emulated by faithful Muslims. It is blasphemous to suggest that Mohammad’s moral example could be improved upon. This leads to some tragic modern day occurrences. The Sahih al-Bukhari is the most trusted Sunni collection of Hadiths which records the life of Mohammad.
It has passages like the following (the link is to the specific quote in the USC-MSA Compendium of Muslim Texts):
Volume 7, Book 62, Number 88: Narrated ‘Ursa:
The Prophet wrote the (marriage contract) with ‘Aisha while she was six years old and consummated his marriage with her while she was nine years old and she remained with him for nine years (i.e. till his death).
The Prophet is, of course, Mohammad, who is seen consummating a marriage with a nine year old.
If people honestly believed that this kind of behavior is the highest morality that we could even aim for, what effect could this kind of thinking have in the real world today?
This is not a hypothetical — we have the answer — the cited news story is just one more example of the effects of this kind of religious belief.
Tags: atheism, immorality, islam
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Monday, December 22nd, 2008
I had submitted my site for consideration to the Atheist Blogroll, which has been accepted (and the link to which is now prominently displayed on my sidebar). One of the conditions is to write a post about the Blogroll, so here it is.
Enjoy the fellow atheist bloggers on the site, and I’ll try to figure out how to make the blogroll know that I’ve updated (something about pinging…).
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Sunday, December 21st, 2008
This “You are attacking a literal interpretation of the Bible” is a common challenge thrown up by Christians/believers and atheists alike.
When an atheist brings it up it is usually to mention why a particular argument they are reading about wouldn’t work.
When believers talk, you often hear some kind of appeal to a more nuanced and suble faith that have that is somehow more sophisticated than the fundamentalist Bible believer.
Don’t allow a person to say such things without being pressed to be more specific.
I just posted a new article: Response to: You are attacking a literal interpretation…
It gives you questions and more importantly a mindset to really dig in and find out what a person means when they say such “nuanced” things…
The article also involves a new tactic which emphasizes good information flow between people in a conversation — not a tactical gambit to ‘win’.
Let me know what you think!
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Friday, December 19th, 2008
Biblical scholarship is not for everyone, but if you are at all interested in the subject (and it’s fine if you are an atheist who fines Biblical scholarship interesting) I wrote up a short article on some famous verses that were not originally in the Bible.
From the beloved “cast the first stone” story to the ridiculous “drink any poison without harm”
The list that the article is based on is taken from Bart Ehrman’s book Misquoting Jesus:
Let me know what you think!
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Monday, December 8th, 2008
Jesus is often considered to be some kind of moral genius or amazing moral teacher. Many atheists will say how much they admire the morality taught by Jesus before criticizing some other aspect of religion.
An honest reading of the New Testament Gospels doesn’t really put Jesus’ morality in such an amazing light.
Most of the things that He teaches are completely unoriginal and were explicitly taught before Jesus came about.
The few things that He does say that are new are pretty silly at best.
Anyway, I wrote a new article that argues against this notion that Jesus is some moral genius:
Let me know what you think!
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Friday, December 5th, 2008
So I’m trying something new today.
I usually post new articles as “article” pages — but this doesn’t update the RSS feed apparently. So, I posted a new article: Mohammad: Executioner via Amputation.
It discusses yet another morally questionable event in Mohammad’s life.
Let me know what you think of it!
- CA
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