Category News

Hemorrhaging Catholics in Brazil

The AP reports:

At the start of the last decade, millions of Brazilian Catholics joined flashy Pentecostal congregations expanding in the world’s biggest Catholic country. Now, Brazil’s Getulio Vargas Foundation finds, the country’s Catholics are still leaving the church and at a higher rate than ever, but many younger parishioners, like Maragato, are simply becoming nonreligious.

Color me surprised. I knew (and the article confirms) that Latin America is considered a Catholic stronghold, one of the last places where you’d expect religion, especially Catholicism, to decline. Heck, even in the US, it appears that one reason religion hasn’t declined more precipitously than it has is that it’s being propped up by immigrants from the south. But according to the article, a study has found that 68% of Brazilians were Catholic last year, compared to 90% thirty years ago.

The article suggests several reasons for this decline, including a burgeoning middle class, which certainly goes well with the common notion that as the more well-off people are, the less they need to turn to religion.

This is also in part a self-inflicted wound:

Marcelo Neri, the author of the study, also said he thinks the Catholic decline was sparked by a “female revolution.”

The foundation study discovered that Catholic women, instead of giving up entirely on religion, are largely going to traditional Protestant denominations such as the Presbyterians or Methodists, which are viewed by many as less patriarchal.

This is the point, I think, at which any decent consultant would say that the franchise needs a reboot to remain relevant for modern audiences. Make Jesus a woman, or change the setting from Jerusalem 2000 years ago, to Sao Paulo in 2010. Maybe add a shootout at the last supper. Add corporate sponsorship and tie-ins; instead of bread and wine, have priests turn Big Macs and Coke into Jesus’ flesh and blood. Don’t worry about continuity: the fans will retcon it easily enough.

But of course the Catholic church is nothing if not reactionary. Change of any kind terrifies them. And so they’ll continue to lose the younger generation, the one that lives in this century instead of the fourteenth.

For lifelong Catholic Leila Ribeiro, the church’s misfortunes mark a break from generations of church tradition.
[…]

“I was brought up with the notion that religion is passed from mother to child, but I fear for what will happen to the church in his generation,” she said, looking toward her son. “If the Catholic faith isn’t spread within the family, how will it grow?”

Well, they could provide some evidence that their claims of magic people, of a candyland in the sky, and so on, are actually, you know, true. But they’ve been trying that for 2000 years now without success, so I wouldn’t bet on it happening any time soon.

Update, 12:49: More support for the “self-inflicted wound” hypothesis, courtesy of the Washington Post. Not in Brazil this time, but in the US:

New research by the Barna Group finds they view churches as judgmental, overprotective, exclusive and unfriendly towards doubters. They also consider congregations antagonistic to science and say their Christian experience has been shallow.
[…]

“Churches are not prepared to handle the ‘new normal,’” said Kinnaman. “However, the world for young adults is changing in significant ways, such as their remarkable access to the world and worldviews via technology, their alienation from various institutions, and their skepticism toward external sources of authority, including Christianity and the Bible.”

He Just Doesn’t Get It

In today’s WaPo, we find an account of the pope’s visit to Germany.

He told reporters on the plane that there needs to be an examination of why people have been leaving the church recently, and the part that the abuse scandals played in the phenomenon.

Well, let’s see… How about increasing irrelevance in a world that has largely moved beyond the 13th century? No? What about ridiculous and dogmatic stances on contraception and homosexuality? Perhaps monsieur would like to see something in our “hypocrisy of speaking out against greed while living in a golden palace” line, or view the “spreading AIDS in Africa by pooh-poohing condoms” collection?

Oh, wait. He said something about some scandals:

“I can understand that some people have been scandalized by the crimes that have been revealed in recent times,” he said.

What? Seriously? “some people”?

He really doesn’t get it, does he?

What I want to know is, why is anyone not scandalized by the church’s crimes? Why is anyone still a member of an organization that for decades, possibly centuries, covered up child rape as a matter of policy?

Court Rules for Teacher Who Criticized Creationism

The Christian Science Monitor has a story about a teacher in California who criticized creationism in class in 2007:

A three-judge panel of the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled unanimously that the lawsuit against an advanced placement history teacher at Capistrano Valley High School in Mission Viejo must be thrown out of court because the teacher was entitled to immunity.

The San Francisco-based appeals court said the teacher was entitled to immunity because it was not clearly established in the law that a teacher’s expression of hostility to certain religious beliefs in a public school classroom would violate the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

It goes on to quote some of the things Corbett said in class:

“Aristotle … argued, you know, there sort of has to be a God. Of course that’s nonsense,” Corbett said according to a transcript of his lecture. “I mean, that’s what you call deductive reasoning, you know. And you hear it all the time with people who say, ‘Well, if all this stuff that makes up the universe is here, something must have created it.’ Faulty logic. Very faulty logic.”

He continued: “The other possibility is, it’s always been there.… Your call as to which one of those notions is scientific and which one is magic.”

“All I’m saying is that, you know, the people who want to make the argument that God did it, there is as much evidence that God did it as there is that there is a giant spaghetti monster living behind the moon who did it,” the transcript says.

Corbett told his students that “real” scientists try to disprove the theory of evolution. “Contrast that with creationists,” he told his students. “They never try to disprove creationism. They’re all running around trying to prove it. That’s deduction. It’s not science. Scientifically, it’s nonsense.”

All of which is true, of course, which doesn’t mean there aren’t first amendment issues:

“Farnan [the plaintiff] asserts that it has been clearly established for many years that the government must remain neutral with regard to religion, and it may not show its disapproval of religion,” Fisher said.

“This overbroad proposition, cast at a high level of generality, is just the sort of sweeping statement of the law that is inappropriate for assessing whether qualified immunity applies,” the judge said.

Because the law was not clearly established, the panel said, they need not assess the underlying constitutional issue.

So as I understand it, the court ruled that complete and absolute neutrality on religious issues, forbidding teachers from saying anything one way or another about religious issues, would be a straitjacket. This is unreasonable, because teachers need some breathing room to do their jobs. That while a pattern of anti-creationist tirades might be actionable, Corbett’s statements do not rise to that level.

I guess it’s a bit like saying “don’t waste the court’s time because he stole fifty cents from you. Come back when it’s twenty bucks.”

The NCSE is also on this, and goes into more detail about the facts and precedents.

At any rate, I’m not sure yet how I feel about this decision. On one hand, Corbett’s absolutely right in what he said about creationism, and there’s data to back that up, so it’s arguably appropriate for a science class. At the same time, there’s that whole first-amendment neutrality-toward-religion thing. And of course the rules apply to teachers pushing creationism as well. Though again, there’s a difference between one or two offhand comments, and a pattern of bias.

So in the end, I guess I can live with this.

(h/t /.)

Numbers Mean Things

So I saw this headline in The Washington Post:

UN envoy says $5 billion malaria fight has saved several thousand lives in recent years

My first thought was, “$5 billion divided by, let’s say 5000 people, that comes out to a million bucks per person saved. A noble result, to be sure, but isn’t there a more cost-effective way of achieving the same result?”

Then I read the first paragraph:

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. chief’s envoy for malaria says a $5 billion campaign has saved several hundred thousand lives in recent years, keeping international efforts on track to virtually end deaths from the mosquito-borne disease by 2015.

(emphasis added) and now the cost per person drops two orders of magnitude, from $1 million to $10,000. Much more reasonable (though it’d still be nice if it were even cheaper).

But I suspect that either the reporter, or someone at AP or WaPo decided that the word “hundred” didn’t change the meaning enough to make it worth taking up valuable headline space. I’m sorry, but it does.

Then again, what’s two orders of magnitude among friends?

(Cross-posted at UMDSI.)

Maryland Gay Marriage Bill Fails

Well, fuckbunnies. The bill to allow gay marriage in Maryland passed the state Senate, got out of committee in the House, avoided getting stuck with several amendments (that would have sent it back to the Senate), and finally got to floor debate in the House, only to be sent back to committee.

The proponents of the bill figured they didn’t have enough votes to pass it. And AIUI sending the bill back to committee rather than allowing it to be voted on meant not forcing delegates to reveal how they would have voted. I’m just speculating here, but for all I know there might also be some procedural reason, like if a bill fails, it can’t be reintroduced for another two years; not having an actual vote might mean that it can be reintroduced sooner than that.

This is disappointing, but life goes on. I have no doubt that gay marriage will eventually become as normal as interracial marriage.

In the meantime, go home, knock back a couple of rum and cokes, and fantasize about the patriarchs at NOM gagging on a bag of cocks. You know that a lot of them will be doing the same.

Gay Marriage Passes MD Senate

In case you hadn’t heard, the Maryland Senate passed a bill allowing gay marriage. So yay! Go Maryland!

From here, it has to go to the House of Delegates, so it’s not settled yet. So if you’re in Maryland, write your delegates and tell them that you oppose special rights for heterosexuals.

If this passes, Maryland could become the marriage mecca for gay couples in Pennsylvania and West Virginia who are willing to go out of state to get married, but not as far as DC, as well as Virginians who’d rather not deal with traffic in the District.

An Open Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury

(This was originally posted at Secular Perspectives.)

The Telegraph reports that the Archbishop of Canterbury wants Christians to argue their side more forcefully:

Clergy are to be urged to be more vocal in countering the arguments put forward by a more hard-line group of atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, who have campaigned for a less tolerant attitude towards religion.

A report endorsed by Dr Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, warns that the Church faces a battle to prevent faith being seen as “a social problem” and says the next five years are set to be a period of “exceptional challenge”.

Dear Dr. Williams,

This seems as good a time as any to repeat what Christopher Hitchens wrote in the introduction to his anthology, The Portable Atheist:

A terrible thing has now happened to religion. Except in the places where it can still enforce itself by fear superimposed on ignorance, it has become one opinion among many. It is forced to compete in the free market of ideas and, even when it strives to retain the old advantage of inculcating its teachings into children (for reasons that are too obvious to need underlining), it has to stand up in open debate and submit to free inquiry.

I, for one, welcome better arguments from believers, and I suspect that many atheists and humanists do, too. But then, a lot of us argue ideas for fun and to get at the truth by knocking down bad ideas.

And the fact is that an awful lot of apologetics is of very low quality. You might be surprised at how often we’re offered Pascal’s wager, C.S. Lewis’s Liar, Lunatic, or Lord, arguments from ignorance, and even “you just have to have faith” come up. Evidently a lot of theists have no idea how comically weak these arguments are. If you could educate them, we’d appreciate it. Thank you.

Over the centuries, religion has erected a protective wall around itself: blasphemy laws, intimidation, social taboos against criticizing religion (often in the name of ecumenicalism), mean that religious ideas have been insulated from criticism for a long time. And as a result, many theists have very little experience defending their ideas against rational arguments. And now that atheists are speaking up, and things like free-speech laws prevent religions from silencing dissent, this fact is becoming more and more apparent.

But if I may, I’d like to offer some advice on arguing with atheists like Dawkins and Hitchens, as well as lesser luminaries like PZ Myers and Matt Dillahunty, and even rank-and-file atheists like myself.

The key is to realize that our commitment is to the truth, not to any given set of ideas, tenets, or dogmas.

Philosophers and scientists have done a lot of work in figuring out how to figure out what’s true, and how to avoid coming to incorrect conclusions. It is easy to find lists of logical fallacies. You may want to educate your coreligionists on these fallacies and how to avoid them, because people who rely on fallacious arguments will be called on it.

What we’re really looking for is arguments for the existence of a god that don’t fall apart under scrutiny. If you have such an argument, please present it. If you don’t have one (yet), then it would be nice if you could at least say so.

Secondly, when asked for reasons to believe that there are any gods, theists often reply by pointing out the good done by their churches. But of course that is a non sequitur: it may in fact be useful for people to believe in gods, souls, or reincarnation, but that doesn’t mean that those things actually exist. Please tell your coreligionists to make sure they’re not arguing the wrong topic, because they will be called on it.

I realize that it’s easy to see the above as concern trolling. Actually, it’s cockiness. I’m so confident that spirited, rational argumentation will bring us closer to the truth (and remember, my commitment is to truth, not to atheism) that I can afford to give the game away, as it were.

So bring it on. And may the best ideas win.

(Thanks to Shelley for forwarding the Telegraph article.)

Gay Marriage Advancing in Maryland?

WaPo is reporting that a bill to allow same-sex marriage was introduced in the Maryland House and Senate.

It’s just a bill, yes it’s only a bill, and it’s sitting… um, in Annapolis-il? But still, I’m cautiously optimistic that it can pass. And if it does, that it won’t be overturned by referendum. Then again, I didn’t think Prop 8 would pass, so this isn’t a done deal.

Of course, Maryland has an argument that California doesn’t: gay couples can just catch the Metro or MARC train down to DC and get married there. I’m guessing that Annapolis would prefer if the money spent on weddings (and I don’t even want to think how much two wedding dresses cost) were spent in-state.

The same argument applies to Northern Virginia, but there’s the massive red southern part of the state (not to mention a comically-reactionary attorney general) holding them back. But once Maryland enacts marriage equality, Delaware might start worrying about its own wedding industry.

How to Respond to Charges of Misinformation

The New York Times has an article about a University of Maryland study that shows that for the most part, the more people watched Fox News, the more they were misinformed about issues pertaining to the 2010 election (e.g., Fox News viewers were more likely to think that TARP began under Obama rather than Bush).

Asked for comment on the study, Fox News seemingly dismissed the findings. In a statement, Michael Clemente, who is the senior vice president of news editorial for the network, said: “The latest Princeton Review ranked the University of Maryland among the top schools for having ‘Students Who Study The Least’ and being the ‘Best Party School’ – given these fine academic distinctions, we’ll regard the study with the same level of veracity it was ‘researched’ with.”

Mr. Clemente oversees every hour of objective news programming on Fox News, which is by far the nation’s most popular cable news channel.

For the record, the Princeton Review says the University of Maryland ranks among the “Best Northeastern Colleges.” It was No. 19 on the Review’s list of “Best Party Schools.”

(NYT’s statement about the Princeton Review seems to be true.)

So now we know: if someone accuses you of making shit up and misleading your audience, just make some shit up.

(Update: Clarification suggested by alert reader Fez.)

What the Hell Is Wrong With the Obama Administration?

Okay, let’s recap:

Obama campaigned in part on a promise to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Which is great, because a majority of Americans, including many (perhaps most) in the military want it repealed.

Then, once elected, he did nothing about it. Okay, I can chalk that up to priorities (the economy had to come first) and a disposition toward being cautious.

The Log Cabin Republicans sued to overturn the policy. In September, District Judge Virginia Phillips found DADT unconstitutional and ordered the Pentagon to stop enforcing it.

At which point he had the DOJ appeal the decision, and assured a country rightly concerned about this that “This policy will end, and it will end on my watch.”

Just not as quickly as it would have if he’d done quite literally nothing.

So yesterday, Bloomberg reported that the Log Cabin Republicans have appealed to the Supreme Court, and the Obama administration has asked the Supreme Court to uphold the ban, “arguing that a change in the law should come from Congress, not the courts.”

Ha. As if. Congress includes Republicans, the Party of Not Just No But Hell No, remember? And Congress has been oh so much more effective than the courts at overturning injustices in the past, right?

Which brings us to today’s Post:

A Pentagon study group has concluded that the military can lift the ban on gays serving openly in uniform with only minimal and isolated incidents of risk to the current war efforts, according to two people familiar with a draft of the report, which is due to President Obama on Dec. 1.

More than 70 percent of respondents to a survey sent to active-duty and reserve troops over the summer said the effect of repealing the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy would be positive, mixed or nonexistent, said two sources familiar with the document. The survey results led the report’s authors to conclude that objections to openly gay colleagues would drop once troops were able to live and serve alongside them.

So what’s the hold-up? Why is the Obama administration dragging its feet on this?

Gah.