by mr dan
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Good morning, it’s time for another Catholic scandal.

Perhaps you’ve heard by now of the Reverend Kevin J. Gray, the priest from Waterbury, CT, who has been charged with first-degree grand larceny after allegedly stealing $1.3 million from the Catholic Church.  The unusual story captured the internet’s attention for about three minutes.  As with most priests, it had always been assumed that Gray was a humble, kind and charitable man who couldn’t possibly have absconded with over a million dollars which he used to dine in fancy restaurants and stay in extravagant hotels with male prostitutes.  That is, of course, until it was revealed that that’s exactly what he’d been doing.

Now, I know what you’re thinking: isn’t embezzling funds and soliciting male prostitutes really more of a Protestant crime?

What strikes me as interesting about this is not that a priest was caught stealing money, or that he was caught sleeping with prostitutes, or even that he was caught sleeping with adults.  No, what really captures my fascination is that it was the Hartford Archdiocese that turned him in.  They asked the police to investigate Rev. Gray after they noticed bookkeeping discrepancies.

The Hartford Archdiocese has been implicated in numerous scandals involving child sexual abuse by members of its clergy as well as by a doctor in one of its hospitals.  In all cases it has been clearly shown that the church did all it could to hush the allegations, sometimes transferring priests to other parishes, or simply dismissing the allegations without investigation.  And they recently succeeded in blocking House Bill 5473, legislation that would have removed the statute of limitations on sexual abuse cases, because, they argued, it would be too much of a financial burden to defend themselves against such ancient allegations.

Throughout every scandal the Catholics have tried to subvert the authorities at every turn.  But when someone is stealing money from them, that’s when its time to call the police.  It seems that if you’re a Catholic, it’s okay to get caught with your hand anywhere it shouldn’t be — except for the collection plate.

According to the Associated Press,

Gray, 64, used the money to stay at such hotels as the Waldorf-Astoria, New York Palace Hotel and Copley Square in Boston, and on expensive clothing labels including Armani, Saks 5th Avenue and Brooks Brothers, police said. He dined at Tavern on the Green and Arturo’s restaurants in New York, Union League Cafe in New Haven and Abe & Louie’s Restaurant in Boston.

One man Gray met in New York’s Central Park told police that Gray paid for him to attend Harvard University, bought a piano and dogs, and paid for his piano lessons and veterinarian bills.

The New York Daily News adds:

He opened credit card accounts for two men he had met – one at a male strip club and another through a male escort service, according to court papers.

One of them racked up $67,000 in charges – including $5,410 for tuition at LaGuardia Community College in Queens. The other charged almost $50,000 to the card, including Louis Vuitton merchandise and $9,000 in Crunch gym fees.

Gray also claimed to have cancer, which not only garnered him sympathy but served as the perfect cover for his frequent trips to New York City.  He may have been seeking treatment there, but I don’t think male prostitutes count as doctors, even if they dress up like one.

So even though Gray is exactly the sort of man that our culture condemns as a white-collar criminal, whose misconduct is an affront to blue-collar working folk everywhere, he’s not the one who receives the bulk of my ire in this situation.  I have no interest in defending him or his crimes, but I’d rather live next to him than George Reardon or Edward Pipala or Thomas Glynn or William Przybylo, or any of the other church members who have been accused of the dastardly and unforgivable crime of child sexual abuse.  It seems Rev. Gray’s biggest mistake was thinking that the organization best known for sheltering society’s sickest individuals would extend its compassion to a common crook, and forgetting that as Catholics, they’ve probably never read that bit about not casting the first stone.

mr dan is vice president of CVA. he views expressed in this post are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.

by Johanna.
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I grew up vaguely Christian, and one of the things that always bothered me was the fact that there was no way to keep score. It’s never outlined conclusively in any of reading material. No one ever sat me down and told me exactly how many times I could say “God damn it” before I was no longer invited to the big party in the sky. It isn’t baseball; no one ever said “three strikes and you’re out.” If you’re good enough, you go to Heaven, and if you’re not… well. The problem is, nobody knows what “good enough” looks like. Everybody has their own idea, sure, but most people’s idea of good enough is pretty much exactly as good as they are, give or take that candy bar they shoplifted when they were twelve.

Even within the scope of Christianity, that idea isn’t based on anything but wishful thinking. There are plenty of passages in the bible that suggest God requires absolute perfection, while others speak of forgiveness. But how much can God forgive? Some churches claim that there is only one unforgivable sin, that of denying God. All that other stuff — theft, rape, murder — that’s ok, as long as… what? You feel bad later? You tell a man in a robe sitting behind a screen that you did it? God looks in your heart and sees that you didn’t actually mean that awful thing you did?

I’m curious to know how many murderers would get to go to Heaven. After all, lots of them regret it. They’d take it back if they could. They ask forgiveness, they pray, they read the Bible every day. Maybe the ones who mean it the most get a cloud next door to their victims! Wouldn’t that be great? Pedophile murderers hanging out just down the gold-paved street from the souls of the children they brutally violated. But only if they’re really sorry.

Let’s face it, there’s no equation. No magical scorecard to let you know how much you’re allowed to screw up and still get that eternal reward. That would defeat the purpose, right? Anyone who screwed up just a little too much would no longer have any motivation to behave morally. I mean, knowing you’re going to Hell, you may as well just get your kicks now.  It’s all about balance and control. Heaven has to seem like an obtainable goal while Hell seems to be a realistic threat. There are convicted murderers who honestly feel like they have a shot at Heaven. There are also people who have lived exceedingly moral lives who fear damnation at the slightest misstep. So which is it? It’s not like school; you don’t get a midterm report card telling you how hard you’ll have to work to pass the class. Since there’s no way to know, both groups may as well keep trying for Heaven, right?  Conveniently enough, the church can help you do that!

The standard counterargument to all of this is that people are supposed to have faith. Faith is, for most denominations, the deciding factor in damnation or the lack thereof. Faith also appears to be the deciding factor in a number of other things; cancer survival, the safe return of missing children, music awards, football games… Funny, though, I’ve never heard anyone tell the family of a recently deceased cancer patient that their faith must not have been strong enough. It’s the football coaches that crack me up the most. If faith is a deciding factor in who wins the Super Bowl, I’d be curious to know if it’s just the faith of the coach God is looking at, or if it’s the team as a whole. Maybe there’s some sort of complicated formula: the number of Christians on a team levied against the strength of their convictions. If that’s the case, shouldn’t coaches be looking for players that are better Christians? Maybe it should be factored into a player’s stats.

The point is, every believer lives in constant fear of Hell while believing that Heaven is within their grasp if they just try hard enough. In reality, that scenario is ridiculous. It’s like every person on the planet living in equal fear of tidal waves. Actually, no. It’s like every person on the planet living in equal fear of being eaten by the Loch Ness Monster, but that’s not the point. The ambiguity concerning methods of salvation isn’t about faith or “God working in mysterious ways,” it’s about controlling people through fear and uncertainty. It’s about making people feel dependent on the church for their supposed salvation. Personally, I think if you believe in an afterlife, you should just decide what type of people you want to hang out with for all eternity and act like them. If that’s what gets you into Heaven, great! If not, at least you could hang out with all the cool kids in Hell until the end of time. In the meantime, try to recognize that constant threat of damnation for the scare tactic it is and move on with your life.

Johanna is a member of Connecticut Valley Atheists.  The views expressed in this posting are her own and do not necessarily represent those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.

by mr dan
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So, an odd thing happened a couple of nights ago.  I awoke from sleep with the image–or at least the feeling of the image–of a white, misty being, like smoke, floating directly above my head.  My first thought was that some creature, a bat perhaps, had gotten in my room, or that a large spider was descending from its web and swaying back and forth.  I slipped rather horizontally out of bed, switched on a light and turned to observe:

Nothing.

There was nothing there.  No creature stirred within, nothing was burning to have made smoke.  So I rather anticlimactically turned off the light and went back to bed.

Now, I still wonder if what I saw was the last remnants of the dream from which I was awakening.  We all know those times when we’re on that border between dream and reality and not sure which is which.  Maybe there was a piece of lint or a speck of dust on my eyelashes which was catching moonlight.  Perhaps a car drove by and its headlights danced on my ceiling through my ugly venetian blinds.

One of the only things I’m sure of is that I’ll never know for sure.  Another is that it wasn’t a ghost.

A day or so later, one of my co-workers approached me, and said, “Hey Dan, you’re into all that dismissing-the-paranormal / there-is-no-god crap. Tell me what you think of this–” and proceeded to tell me about his adventure at the grocery store, where he and , he claims, two other people all witnessed a juice bottle levitate itself off of a shelf, hover in the air for several seconds, and then smash violently to the ground. He then challenged me to explain how it happened, and what, besides a ghost, could possibly account for such a strange occurrence.

I told him quite honestly that it seemed unlikely that the story happened just how he told it.  Since I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I have no way to know that it happened at all, so I’m not on the hook to explain anything.  It’s like accusing someone of a murder without producing a victim or a missing person, and then expecting the accused to prove their innocence.  If it did happen just as he said, then there has to be a scientific explanation for it, even if that scientific explanation is proof of the existence of ghosts.  Since there is no hard evidence to prove that ghosts exist, it is absurd to offer them as an explanation.

Because I didn’t witness it, I have to rely on the eyewitness testimony, which is, no matter how you look at it, incredible.  And since the witness has biased their testimony by framing it as proof of the existence of ghosts, then it can hardly be considered impartial or valid.

You’re asking me to concede that there is a supernatural realm, that disembodied souls walk the earth, rattling chains, hovering above our beds and smashing juice bottles in the supermarket.  I’m sorry, but it’s simply more likely that your story is a misinterpretation, an exaggeration, or an outright lie.

But there are always those people who say that I don’t believe in anything supernatural because I’ve never seen a ghost.  Because I’ve never encountered any bizarre event which I couldn’t explain, they insist that it’s only natural that I am a skeptic. They blame ignorance for my understanding, and completely miss the irony within.

But, like all of us, I have seen many things for which I can provide no explanation.  The ethereal thingumabob floating above my head the other night is just one example of something odd that happens to all of us.  It is only those among us whose brains are not capable of accepting the fact that weird stuff happens who need to resort to myths and fairy tails.

Human beings are not omniscient.  The answers to many questions elude us.  That doesn’t mean those answers are paranormal ones.  In every question, seek the most likely answer.  The explanation that forces you to make the fewest assumptions is probably the correct one.  Leaps of faith will never get you anywhere worth jumping to.  And when everything else fails, anticlimactically turn off the light and go back to bed.

mr dan is the vice president of CVA. The views expressed in this posting are his own and do not necessarily represent those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its members.

by Johanna
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You know that feeling? The warm, fuzzy one deep in your chest that tells you God is watching over you? Or maybe you don’t.

It’s not a feeling I’m personally familiar with. I’ve heard a lot about it, though. It usually comes up when I’m discussing the reasons behind a person’s beliefs. It’s part of that whole circular argument I sometimes find myself trapped in. The one where the other person tells me that they believe in God because they have faith, and they have faith because God is real… which they know because they have faith. If I keep at it long enough, the other person often admits to knowing God exists because deep down, they can feel it. It resonates with them as a truth so deep that they can’t help but know it. From there, the conversation often meanders down a long road of musing on the complex perfection of the universe and the beauty of the world and how none of it makes sense without an all-powerful creator.

As much fun as it is to mock the argument from ignorance, right now I want to focus on what I call the argument from certainty. If you’re familiar with that feeling I described and have ever used it to explain why you believe what you do, then I’m talking to you.

“I just know it” is not evidence. It’s not even an argument. It’s a statement, and while it may feel true to the person who says it, it has no bearing on reality. “Just knowing” something doesn’t make it true. In the immortal words of Agent K, “Fifteen hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was the center of the universe. Five hundred years ago, everybody knew the Earth was flat, and fifteen minutes ago, you knew that humans were alone on this planet. Imagine what you’ll know tomorrow.” Setting aside the part about aliens for the time being, the man makes a good point. People walk around “knowing” things that aren’t true all their lives.

Confidence in your beliefs is a nice feeling. It makes things easier, if nothing else. That doesn’t change the fact that your confidence isn’t evidence, especially if it isn’t based on evidence. You can tell me until you’re blue in the face that you can feel God’s presence in your life, but even assuming I believe you, all that convinces me of is that you feel something. It does nothing to convince me of whether or not the thing you feel is real. If you want me to believe something, try using reason instead of emotion.

The most important thing to keep in mind about this feeling you might have is this: You aren’t the only person who feels that way. People all over the world have that unshakeable gut feeling that their religion is the truth. It isn’t unique to you, and more importantly, it isn’t unique to people of your specific faith. Mormons, Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Scientologists; they’re all people who feel just as strongly as you, if not more so, that they know the truth. If a feeling of certainty is evidence that your own religion is true, then it only goes to follow that other people’s certainty is evidence of other religions.

I’ve heard it argued many times that those other people who claim certainty are lying, mistaken, or being misled. Even if that were true, I fail to see how anyone could prove that they aren’t among those whose certainty is misplaced. You can’t compare your feeling to anyone else’s; you can only experience your own. You can’t know how being deceived might feel differently than truly being aware of the presence of God or Jesus or The Flying Spaghetti Monster. From my perspective, you all sound exactly the same. Everyone uses very similar language in attempting to describe that feeling. Whatever denomination of whatever religion you happen to follow, your certainty sounds identical to my ears. I can’t experience what you’re feeling, so I’m in no position to judge who’s the most sincere and who’s just deluding themselves or exaggerating their certainty or being fooled by Satan. To me, you all sound equally convinced that you’re right and everyone else is wrong.

Personally, I see a lot of evidence that this conviction is a result of near-complete immersion in a system of beliefs. If something is taught by authority figures as the absolute truth, most people are going to believe it, especially if they’re exposed to as few dissenting opinions as possible. It’s how our brains work, especially during our formative years. Numerous psychological studies have shown time and time again that people can be convinced of just about anything if the information is presented correctly. Just look at white supremacists, scientologists, and Glenn Beck.

So if you feel, deep down, that you’re on the right path and that this feeling in and of itself is evidence that your beliefs are true, I guess I’m happy for you. That must feel nice. Just don’t expect me to believe that your certainty springs from anything other than wishful thinking and willful delusion.

Johanna is a member of Connecticut Valley Atheists.  The views expressed in this posting are her own and do not necessarily represent those of Connecticut Valley Atheists or its individual members.