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.
Abide By The 10 Commandments Saturday, July 14, 2007
Posted by Henry in Australia, Bible, Christianity, comic, funny, humor, humour, rationality, reason, religion, Ten Commandments.9 comments
I stole this cute clever comic from the Rationalist Society of Australia website.
A Boy Named Hell Rejected by School Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Posted by Henry in Australia, Catholics, Chinese, Christianity, hell, numerology, rationality, religion, superstition.1 comment so far
Here is another piece of the middle-age mindset that has characterised the Catholic church. A boy whose surname is Hell, which has its origin rooted in Austrian, was rejected from enrolling in a Catholic school in Australia simply because of the name, for the obvious reason.
Apparently here is the sequence of events that happened: at first the father of the boy offered to change the surname, but the school would not change its mind. Then the father decided not to change the boy’s surname, but the Catholic school decided to accept the boy. However this was too late for the father, who now says there is now no way that he would send his boy to the school.
The father correctly states:
“It’s 2007, not 1407 — it’s not the Dark Ages.”
According to the report, this is what the school statement has to say:
“The issue of a change of surname of the child was an initiative of the parents which they believed would assist the child in the transition of schools,” the school said in a statement.
“The school is working with the family in the best interests of the child,” the statement added.
While this issue has its religious context, this kind of incredible stupidity know as supersition is not limited to the religious. Numerology is one obvious example. Apparently the recent date of 07/07/07 has seen a large number of weddings planned on that day because many people believe this unique date brings good luck.
Also the number 13 and springs to mind. In the Chinese culture, the number 4 is considered bad luck because it sounds very similar to the word “death”, while the number 8 is considered very good simply because it sounds like the word “fortune” or “sudden fortune” in Chinese. So next time if you see a number plate filled with 8’s – you know why.
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.
Church Bulletin Bloopers Sunday, July 8, 2007
Posted by Henry in atheism, Australia, blooper, Christianity, church, funny, humour.1 comment so far
Found this light-hearted piece of collection of funny church bloopers from an Australian atheist website. Enjoy!
Bertha Belch, a missionary from Africa, will be speaking tonight at the Calvary Memorial Church in Racine. Come tonight and hear Bertha Belch all the way from Africa.
Announcement in the church bulletin for a National PRAYER & FASTING Conference: “The cost for attending the Fasting and Prayer conference includes meals.”
Our youth basketball team is back in action Wednesday at 8 PM in the school recreation hall. Come out and watch us kill Christ the King.
Miss Charlene Mason sang, “I Will Not Pass This Way Again,” giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.
“Ladies, don’t forget the rummage sale. It’s a chance to get rid of those things not worth keeping around the house. Don’t forget your husbands.”
Oh No… Creation Museums Thursday, June 14, 2007
Posted by Henry in anti-evolution, Australia, Canada, Christianity, creation museum, creationism, fundamentalism, intelligent design, Kentucky, museums, religion, science.1 comment so far
The recent opening of the $US27 million Kentucky based creation museum has ignited a wide media coverage and caused a storm in the blogsphere. The timing of it is right on the money, given the recent popular rise of atheists books and the pesky Intelligent Design movement.
And there is the opening of another creation museum, this time in Canada. This one turns out to be a flop so far – little media coverage and its opening was miserable. Perhaps $27 million does make a difference, hey?
Anyway, after a quick research on the Internet, here is a list of creation museums. I am based in Sydney and so was pleased to see that there is none in Australia… until I remembered that the organisation behind the creation museum, Answer In Genesis, is being sued by its Australian equivalent, Creation Ministries International in Australia. Apparently the brain behind the Kentucky “museum” has some Australian roots.
“Out of Africa” Theory of Human Evolution Gets Further Confirmation! Saturday, May 12, 2007
Posted by Henry in Africa, anthropology, Australia, Australia Aborigines, evolution, genetics, homo erectus, human evolution, Melanesian, New Guinea, science, world.3 comments
The fascinating tale of human evolution gets another important story added to it, this time with a new DNA research done on Australian Aborigines and Melanesians from New Guinea, which further confirms the hypothesis that all humans originated from a group of people from Africa around 50,000 years ago. This is known as “Out of Africa” or the single origin theory.
Up till now the fossils and tools found in Australia have cast doubt on the Out of Africa hypothesis, since they differ significantly to South Asia. This implies that the early settlers in Australia might have interbred with the local homo erectus population that was already there (which migrated out of African some two to one million years ago), “or because there was a subsequent, secondary migration from Africa”.
But the research done using mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosomes DNA shows that:
there was no evidence of a genetic inheritance from Homo erectus, indicating that the settlers did not mix and that these people therefore share the same direct ancestry as the other Eurasian peoples.
The researchers suggest that the variations in fossil and tool records can be explained with the thousands of years of isolation that the aboriginal population faced, since the land bridge joining Australia and Asia was submerged into water some 8,000 years ago.
This, in combination with an earlier report, further confirms that the Out of Africa hypothesis is becoming the firm theory of how humans have evolved. We can mainly thanks to the advancement in the science of genetics.
Below is a map of mtDNA migration, courtesy of Wikipedia:
Evolution Space 