The UK’s Guardian reports today that many parishes in Dublin are close to financial collapse due to child abuse compensation payments. Their source for this is a leaked internal report from the Council of Priests that was published in this week’s edition of the Irish Catholic newspaper. The Guardian article says …
religion
Religion & Money – Where does the $$ come from, and where does it go?
Belief is a very powerful tool for gathering wealth, and because of this some of the wealthiest organisations around are religious groups that also often attract followers that are quite poor. Here now are some interesting statistics that list where some of the main players get their wealth from, how much they have, and what they spend it on. I confess that some of this was a surprise to me.
Looking down the list, if I was to vote which were the slimiest scumbags around, its really difficult to decide between Scientology, Catholicism, and Televangelism.
- The catholics have spent over half a billion in compensation to abuse victims and also kept a pile of plundered Nazi gold for themselves
- The scientologists have simply scammed all their loot
- The Televangelists use all donations for ‘God’s work’ to maintain a life of luxury
Fraudlent Islamic Claim – Professor Kroner confirms Qu’ran is scientific
There exists a modern claim that the Qu’ran contains verses that describe things known only to modern science, but since it was all written 1400 years ago when such things were unknown then “Allah did it”. Challenge this and ask for the best example and you usually are given a poetical phrase which has been quote-mined and twisted out of context to enable some modern thinking to be retro fitted in.
Atheism Debunked by Muslims – You know this will be silly, right?
For the past week I’ve had a bit of free time on my hands, so for fun (and perhaps also for a bit of Critical Thinking practice), I’ve been hanging out in a couple of Facebook groups where Muslims attempt to debunk Atheism.
It has been exactly what you might expect …
- Number of silly utterly insane arguments presented – lots
- Amount of credible evidence presented – zero.
I must confess to being a bit naive, for I truly had no idea just how loopy things would get. Purely for your entertainment and amusement, here now are some examples (I’ll not be providing any names).
“There are no Genuine Atheists” claims an Astrophysicist
Yep, a real Astrophysicist has made this claim … but we are deeply into kook territory here.
Before we get into details, I think I better first introduce you to the claimant. This comes from a chap called David Klinghoffer. He works for the Discovery Institute as a … well, that does not really matter, because knowing that it is the Discovery Institute tells you all you really need to know; its basically kook central for the Intelligent Design movement.
Since it is indeed “them” you know in your heart of hearts this is going to be truly silly (it is), so here we go. He starts out with …
Islamic Justifications – apostates from Islam must be killed
Challenge an Islamic cleric regarding their immoral “compulsion”, and they will argue that there is no compulsion, because no one is forced to enter Islam (yea right, I’m skeptical about that claim, but let us take it at face value for the moment).
If you then make the observation that they do indeed believe that apostates from Islam (folks who used to by Muslim, but renounce it) must be killed, then in what universe is this not “compulsion”? Well, the answer, which happens to be one used by many clerics to justify this insanity, goes like this …”after somebody chooses to enter Islam, they cannot be allowed to leave. To attempt to leave Islam is akin to treason, and every country in the world punishes treason by death.”.