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Which Century?

Entry 1173, on 2010-03-12 at 20:00:28 (Rating 4, Religion)

Which century are the Catholic Church stuck in? Sometimes it seems like they're making progress against the dogma and superstition they have traditionally believed. They officially believe evolution is real, for example, even though they think God guides the process which is fairly ridiculous in itself.

But then they make complete idiots of themselves by showing they are still stuck in the dark ages (and the dark ages were primarily caused by the Catholic Church preventing progress). For example, recently they showed that they take exorcism seriously.

Believing in exorcism is stupid enough but using demonic possession as an excuse for the horrendous behaviour of various members of the church is just evil. But that's what they've done.

The Vatican's "chief exorcist", 85 year old Father Gabriele Amorth, has said that the sex abuse scandals which have happened in the Roman Catholic Church are proof that that "the Devil is at work inside the Vatican". Well of course that's proof. It could never be because of the sick ethics and bizarre social context priests are expected to live by, could it?

Its odd really because guilt is one of the primary tools the church uses to control its members and the idea that everyone is a sinner seems central to Christianity. Saying that its really the devil's fault seems to contradict this idea. Still, I guess fear of the devil is a fairly efficient tool for controlling the masses as well!

There must be plenty of demons to go around too because there's so much abuse by members of the church, and there are plenty of officials who deliberately hide the abuse when it happens. I guess they must be possessed too.

In fact, Father Amorth has performed 70,000 exorcisms in 25 years and still can't keep on top of the problem! Maybe the Vatican should hire some more exorcists and they might be able to improve the behaviour of their members.

Actually, doing the maths, Father Amorth must be a busy man. Even if he works every day of the year he must be performing an exorcism every hour of his working day. No wonder the poor guy looks so worn out and tired. All of that shouting and throwing holy water around and other cool stuff would be enough to tire out any one!

Well, that was fun. Ridiculing people who believe abject nonsense always makes me feel good. I'd just like to finish by explaining a comment I made earlier: that belief in god-guided evolution is ridiculous.

Anyone who knows much about evolution will know that just about every structure in living things, every process, every behaviour falls a bit short of perfection. In fact, in many cases it goes away beyond that and its obvious that the "design" of living things is totally bizarre!

If god guided evolution then he didn't do a very good job. In fact I think we should fire him and just let pseudo-random processes like natural selection take over instead. Wait a minute... maybe that's already happened!

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