Australian Pastor Had Sex With His Daughters – To Teach Them To Be Good Wives Friday, August 31, 2007
Posted by Henry in Australia, crime, faith, family, fundamentalism, incest, morality, religion, scriptures, sex, South Australia.14 comments
Why – someone please explain to me – do we often have religious figures commit unspeakable, despicable crimes like this? People with religious duties are depended by many followers as their moral guides and supportive pillars, yet we seem to never stop hearing criminal and degrading sexual acts being repeated over and over again. Why?
In this report an Australian fundamentalist pastor is being jailed for eight and half years for having sex with his daughters – when both were in their early teenage years – to teach them how to be good wives.
Says in the report:
The man [the pastor] told the court the sex was not about fulfilling his desires but about teaching his daughters how to behave for their husbands when they eventually married, as dictated in scripture.
In sentencing, Judge David Lovell said the misrepresentation of scripture used to justify the abuse of the girls “defied belief”, and that he had “hypocritically betrayed” his religion and principles.
Many religious apologetics have said that religion is merely an expression, a vehicle for wrongful acts. This I will not contest. However, it is also important to face the fact that such as in this case, religion and blind faith are the root cause of wrongful, criminal acts themselves.
This so-called “pastor” makes me sick.
Another Faith-Based Human Tragedy Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Posted by Henry in Australia, faith, family, fundamentalism, Jehovah's Witnesses, murders, psychiatry, rationality, religion, scientology, tragedy.3 comments
This is a family murder tragedy that could have been avoided. But sadly it wasn’t, apparently because of blind beliefs in scientology.
A 25 year old Australian woman in Sydney has been accused with the murder of her father and sister whose bodies were found last Thursday. She is also charged with grievous body harm on her mother.
Investigations into this family tragedy have shown that the accused woman has been denied psychiatric treatment for about a year by her parents because of their scientology beliefs. From the news article it is quite clear that the woman has been very ill mentally, but the parents have denied her of psychiatric medication on scientology grounds, and so no effective treatment was done on her.
This really maddens me – lives are lost, souls are destroyed because of credulous minds believing in completely ignorance and utter stupidity. When are we going to make this aspect of scientology a crime? This, along with Jehovah’s Witnesses’ horrible religious doctrine of rejection of blood transfusion, must be made criminal offences so that lives can be saved. This is not about freedom of beliefs; it is about saving human lives!
While it is so unfortunate that the father and the sister died, I feel even more saddened for the woman, and cannot imagine how she will live the rest of her life knowing the family-destroying crime she inflicted upon her own family. What she said after the murder is truly haunting and painful to bear:
“What have I done? I just butchered my family … I have just butchered my family. I stabbed Dad, Mum and sister. They are all dead.”
And all this could have been avoided.
Evolution Space 