Church Bucks Lawyers, Apologizes to Victims and Worshipers!

A church sex scandal mixed with an insurance company and lawyers ... what a recipe for disaster! Here's how it started to go down. The insurance company sent a letter with this statement:

"Do not make any statements, orally, in writing or in any manner, to acknowledge, admit to or apologize for anything that may be evidence of or interpreted as (a suggestion that) the actions of Vienna Presbyterian Church … caused or contributed to any damages arising from the intentional acts/abuse/misconduct" by the youth director."

But amazingly, the church ignored it! They very next day they issued a humble apology.

The insurance company gave the church legal but immoral instructions ... and the church ignored it and did the right thing. Instead of a coverup, we have a church that is trying to apologize and to make amends. Now those are what I call good Christians.

It's refreshing to see a congregation following their own teachings.

The Scandal of Atheism

Atheists are facing a grave scandal today that threatens the very roots of atheism.

It is almost identical to the one that enveloped philosophy itself around the end of the nineteenth century. Back in the early 1900s, the question was this: How do I know that you really exist? Maybe you're just a dream of mine, maybe the whole world is a dream. I claim the external world doesn't exist. You say you're real, not just my dream? Prove it!

And so you try ... and it turns out to be impossible. No matter what you say, I can counter by pointing out that in my dream, that's what you'd be likely to say, that it's just my own mind dreaming up answers to my questions.

To most people, it seems like a silly question, but philosophers were very perplexed. Immanuel Kant famously called it "the scandal of philosophy" that philosophers couldn't even prove the existence of the external world.

But the great philosopher Martin Heidegger saw this "scandal" for what it was: a made-up problem. He famously wrote:

The 'scandal of philosophy' is not that this proof has yet to be given, but that such proofs are expected and attempted again and again.

Heidegger's view was that the question was essentially useless (not his words, but that's the idea) – one can make up all sorts of impossible questions, and the only scandal is when you take them seriously and waste whole careers, decades and centuries trying to find answers.

Atheism faces an almost identical scandal today. We've been sucked into a silly argument that has no answer,

Why Does the Christian Anti-Sex Meme Survive?

Of all the tenets of Christianity, the prohibition against their priests having sex is the most perverse and unnatural. Requiring healthy men to ignore nature's strongest instinct is simply a recipe for disaster. Our sexual desires are almost impossible to suppress, and when we try, it's like trying to hold the steam in a boiling pot: Sooner or later it will burst, and do all sorts of damage.

If today's story was just another about a Catholic priest molesting young boys and/or girls, it would barely even be newsworthy – there have been so many. But in this case, one of the most charismatic and influential Catholic leaders in modern times, the founder of the Legionaries of Christ, is not only accused of molesting a number of boys, but he also had a "regular" affair with an adult woman, and fathered a child.

Ironically, it was his child that brought his reputation down, not molesting young boys. Go figure.

Unfortunately for the Legionaries, they are taught to revere the founder, to identify with him spiritually and emotionally, to read all of his works and study his life for guidance. With the revelation that their leader was, in fact, a sexual predator, and had fathered a child, the group has quite a problem on its hands.

While researching for my book, The Religion Virus, I read dozens of books, studied Christianity's history in depth, and I came to understand many things. Using cultural evolutions and a memetic approach, most of the tenets of religion and churches, which superficially are baffling to those not raised in a religious environment, are actually quite predictable. Concepts like heaven and hell, monotheism, an asexual god, and so forth, are all memes (evolving ideas) that are plainly "fit for survival" in the Darwinistic sense.

But I've never been able to understand why Christians vilify sex so much, why that meme survives. Why do they hold abstinence and chastity in such high regard? How are those memes more fit for survival in the dog-eat-dog world of religious-dogma memes?

When Christianity started, it was quite the opposite. The Jews believed that sex, wine, and other pleasures were God's gift to humanity, to be enjoyed &ndash with proper moderation and respect. To deny oneself these pleasures was to reject God's gifts. The Jews even today expect their rabbis to marry and have children, after all, a rabbi is supposed to set a good example for his people.

A great deal of the Christian vilification of sex came from St. Augustine, who wrote extensively on the subject, and really laid the foundation for the modern Christian attitudes for sex. But that doesn't answer the more fundamental question: Why did St. Augustine's anti-woman, anti-sex attitudes become Christian dogma? There were many other writers who advocated a more reasonable and healthy attitude towards sex. Why were they ignored?

I'm still working on this puzzle. But in the mean time, the damage goes on. And on, and on, and on.

Tags: sex priest catholic christian scandal atheist atheism