Willful murder by the Catholic church

I don’t often write condemning religion.  There are many decent people who are religious.  But this headline reports an incident that demands condemnation:

• ‘This is a Catholic country’: Woman dies of septicaemia after being refused an abortion in Irish hospital

The medical condition of the woman was clear.  But religious demagogues, with their utterly stupid ideas about abortion, condemned the woman to death by refusing her the treatment that could have saved her life.

A couple of links for weekend reading

I have added a new category “humanism” as a partial response to a recent post by Jen.  I expect to have occasional posts in that category.

So here are two links, that are at least slightly related:

1. “Parables Of The Not-So-Social Gospel” is a fun read.  It is an updated version of part of the gospels, written so as to truly represent what Christianity has become today.
2. “Radical Feminism, the Unwitting Ally of ID and Creationism” is a criticism of Atheism+.  It will either make your blood boil, or give you a good laugh.  Silly me.  I thought that “atheism+” was simply adding ordinary human decency to  atheism, that there wasn’t anything radical about it.  Perhaps I have never understood the meaning of “radical.”

I am taking the “good laugh” approach to the second of those links.

 

Memo to Todd Akin

According to news reports, Akin is now saying:

The mistake I made was in the words I said, not in the heart I hold.

No, Mr Akin, the mistake was not in the words that you said.

When I first heard reports on that speech, I immediately understood that you had misspoken, and that the work “legitimate” was a very poor choice.  And I took that into consideration as I read what you had said.  And, after factoring in that correction, what you said remained stunningly ignorant and offensively sexist.

Apologizing for your choice of words is not enough.  It is not nearly enough.  That “apology” leaves us suspecting that you yourself are deeply ignorant and offensively sexist.