Did you have a look at the report on Saudi textbooks? It’s horrible, horrible stuff. It’s sickening to read. You feel despair that there are people in the world going about things in this way, ‘teaching’ children in this way. You feel disgusted with human beings.

A 2005-2006 Fourth Grade textbook on Monotheism and Jurisprudence instructs students to “hate (tubghida) the polytheists and the infidels” as a requirement of “true faith.” Incongruously, the same sentence instructs that they are not to treat the infidels “unjustly,” but does not provide any clarification of what this meant.

“ Is belief true in the following instances?

a. A man prays but hates those who are virtuous.
b. A man professes

‘The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy’ attempts to throw its weight around.

The Confraternity of Catholic Clergy (a national association of 600 priests & deacons) respond to the sacrilegious and blasphemous desecration of the Holy Eucharist by asking for public reparation…We find the actions of University of Minnesota (Morris) Professor Paul Myers reprehensible, inexcusable, and unconstitutional. His flagrant display of irreverence by profaning a consecrated Host from a Catholic church goes beyond the limit of academic freedom and free speech.

Unconstitutional? How’s that?

The same Bill of Rights which protect freedom of speech also protect freedom of religion. The Founding Fathers did not envision a freedom FROM religion, rather a freedom OF religion.

Clever; we’ve never heard that before. But … Read the rest

Moving on, from the sadistic to the ridiculous – Birmingham Council won’t let its staff read atheist websites. (So can Birmingham Council staffers read B&W? I wonder. I know B&W is banned in Iran [yes, I am proud of that, and so would you be, so quit staring] so perhaps its Bluecoat Software can detect heterodoxy just as well as Iran can. I’d love to know.)

The rules also ban sites that promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity…The authority’s Bluecoat Software computer system allows staff to look at websites relating to Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and other religions but blocks sites to do with “witchcraft or Satanism” and “occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other

Next up we have an Archbishop in the Philippines saying why contraception is such a bad terrible wicked thing.

Archbishop Lagdameo argued the bill would not solve the problems of population growth but would only undermine the dignity of marriage and endanger women. He said that artificial contraceptives cause physical and psychological harm to women.

Whereas having children that they don’t want to have causes no physical and psychological harm to women at all, good heavens no. Women are invariably better off if they are forced to produce as many children as they can churn out, no matter how poor they are, no matter how much they might prefer to have one child or two children that they could … Read the rest

More bullshit from the Catholic News Agency.

Colorado for Equal Rights, an organization backing a measure on the Colorado ballot that would define a person in the state’s Constitution as “any human being from the moment of fertilization,” has released a list of over 70 physicians and pharmacists from around the United States who agree that a person includes any human from the moment of conception.

‘Any human being from the moment of fertilization’…That’s an interesting idea: a microscopic fertilized egg is a human being and a person, even though of course…it isn’t. Let’s define everything that way. A daffodil bulb is a daffodil. A swallow’s egg is a swallow. A caterpillar is a butterfly. A truckload of boards … Read the rest