The Catholic doctrine of limbo looks set to evaporate.
Pope Benedict XVI has reversed centuries of traditional Roman Catholic teaching on limbo, approving a Vatican report released Friday that says there were “serious” grounds to hope that children who die without being baptized can go to heaven.
This says volumes about science and religion, and the kind of evidence that people are trained to accept. When a scientist says there are ‘serious grounds’ to accept an idea, it means there’s some kind of evidence that other people can examine. When a religious leader says there are ‘serious grounds’ to accept an idea, it means ‘he thinks so’.
But here’s the problem: either people need to get baptised, or they don’t. If they do, then unbaptised babies and heathens are getting shut out of heaven. If these people can somehow get in without baptism, then there can be no entry requirements to get into heaven, not even being Catholic.
I just hope the parents of Edgar Mortara would be posthumously pleased that the doctrine that sanctioned their child’s kidnapping is now considered peripheral.
Veterans can now have a Wiccan symbol on their headstone.
Wicca is silly, but no more than other religions. I hate that it pretends to be older than it is, but at least it accidentally promotes a good idea once in a while. And that the US military wouldn’t (but now does) allow their silly symbol to be on headstones like all the other silly religious symbols was just… silly.
But is the Wiccan symbol the silliest? Of course not. That would be either the Atheist symbol or the Happy Humanist symbol. But you can see them all and decide for yourself.
Religion is good for kids, says Fox News
Unfortunately, Fox News is bad for kids. So are poorly-designed studies.
John Bartkowski, a Mississippi State University sociologist and his colleagues asked the parents and teachers of more than 16,000 kids, most of them first-graders, to rate how much self control they believed the kids had, how often they exhibited poor or unhappy behavior and how well they respected and worked with their peers.
Perhaps that should read: Religious parents underestimate the behavioural problems of their children.
25 April 2007 at 10:45 pm
So as long as we are being silly… a couple of silly follow ups.
Why would the government care what symbols are put on these headstones? Are they afraid of the peace sign?
Wicca is silly…but…most of the people I know who practice it are not silly, or stupid. They use the form of the religion to metaphoricly embrace thier athiest-humanist view of the world while still allowing themselves to celebrate their “awe of existance-spirituality” in common symbology, tradition and ceramonies.
Now if any of them were to take it literally they would be boneheads, but those who enjoy it as a way to celebrate existance and life and self awareness I have no problem with.
30 April 2007 at 8:08 pm
I don’t think the Bartkowski study definitely shows that religion per se is good for children. It is possible that perhaps parents who go to church are more stable in the first place and thus provide a better environment for their children. However, other studies have found that children in religious families fare better than their peers in many areas.
I suspect that some militant atheists are disparaging this study because it doesn’t suit their personal ideology. So much for their much-proclaimed objectivity.
Emilia Liz (emilia_e_murphy@yahoo.ca)
1 May 2007 at 12:57 am
I think Anon must have issed the point. And the baiting is so obvious as to be childish. Must have read Ann Coulters “How to speak to liberals.” Silly rabbit, tricks are for kids.
1 May 2007 at 3:05 am
Oh, yeah, on a related note — have you got your militant atheist outfit yet? They’re cool.
1 May 2007 at 3:31 am
I think if you were more honest, you would say that religion may be bunk, but it may have benefits (i.e. the placebo effect). But that would be like a fundie endorsing evolution.
Emilia Liz
1 May 2007 at 5:23 am
And would that be your point of view, Emilia? Why not say just it instead of impugning my honesty?
I can think of some short-term benefits of religion, just as I can think of some short-term benefits of morphine.
For example, when someone dies, people take comfort in a belief that they’re still alive as a spirit. While it may be comforting, it takes a great deal of courage to accept that this belief is baseless, and to live in the real world.
7 May 2007 at 11:36 pm
Having worked for many years in mental health services, on the basis of my own empirical research I can tell you that having christian parents is extremely harmful for some children. Suprisingly, my children appear to be extremely happy, well-behaved and well-adjusted for children of atheists.