The Opiate Of The Masses
I've never been a particularly religious person. Most of the time, I describe myself as being in the "militant agnostic" camp, meaning that when it comes to the existence of a god or gods, I don't know and you don't either. Of course, people have their beliefs, and that's perfectly fine. You can believe what you want and I would acknowledge that spirituality in all its forms is a vital part of the human experience. Just don't confuse believing with knowing or faith with fact.
I'm particularly not a fan of organized religion, especially huge powerful "religious" bureaucracies like the Catholic Church or Mitt Romney's cult. That said, my attitude toward religion, even organized religion, is basically indifference. I tend to view it all as just so much annoying superstition. I see the Judeo-Christian or Muslim gods much as I see Zeus or Thor or Santa Claus or the tooth fairy: mildly interesting cultural artifacts that are the stars of some creative literature but tell us nothing about how the universe works or what is actually going on in the world.
The point is, I rarely venture into the realm of being anti-religious. But once in a while, some church or other does something that truly gets my blood boiling and I start to wonder if these "cultural artifacts" aren't doing human society a lot more harm than good. Such was the case this morning when I was listening to an in-depth report on BBC Radio about the Catholic Church and its vehement opposition to the efforts of the Phillipine government to make family planning information more available to its citizens.
Keep in mind that the Phillipines is one of the fastest growing populations in a densely populated area of an overpopulated planet. A huge percentage of the population lives in poverty and most families are having more kids than they can afford to support simply because things like contraception are unaffordable. A package of condoms could cost more than a family earns in a week.
Eleven women die every single day in the Phillipines from complications from childbirth, a situation with echoes of a far earlier era of human history where women dying in childbirth was quite common. That's the equivalent of a September 11th or Hurricane Katrina every single year. Thanks to the Catholic Church, the Phillipines remains one of the few countries where abortion is illegal in all circumstances.
Abortions still happen in the underground economy, but these black-market jobs cause further risk to the lives of women. And mysterious concoctions that are claimed to end pregnancies are a staple of the black market. At best, women who use these unregulated black-market brews are spending what precious little money they have on something that's completely ineffective. At worst, the stuff could kill them.
So the government of President Benigno Aquino wants to step in to make family planning information and services, including contraception, more widely available. There is to be nothing coercive about this. The initiative is merely to provide women with information and options and let the women decide for themselves. If women want to use contraception, the government will provide it. The basic philosophy is simply that no woman in the Phillipines will be denied access to contraception if she decides she wants it.
But this simple and common sense approach amounts to heresy in the Phillipines. You see, the Catholic Church has a huge influence on society and a strong grip on the government by virtue of government officials--including the elected representatives of the people--being afraid of opposing the Church. And the Catholic Churches believes that contraception is the exact same thing as abortion. Incidentally, no one in the Phillipines, including contraception proponents, is talking about making abortion legal. And still the Catholic Church fights.
Never mind that viewing contraception as being equivalent to abortion defies all sense of logic, science, and common sense. Never mind that women in the Phillipines are suffering. Never mind that families are faced with making agonizing choices every day due to having more children than the resources of the family can comfortably support. Never mind the thousands of women dying in childbirth or the thousands more risking their lives with black market abortions or birth control. Never mind that in addition to being a tragedy in itself, each woman's death deprives parents of a daughter, a husband of his wife, and her other children of a mother.
No, none of this matters as much as the need of the rich, powerful, and entrenched Catholic Church to retain its power by brutally enforcing its own interpretation of an ancient book of fairy tales and superstitions. In interviews with influential Catholic bishops, the bishops talk in circles and change the subject to government corruption. Of course, they have no desire to discuss their own corruption or the corruption that pervades the Vatican.
This story is bad enough, but then there is joedecker's recent series of posts about the huge amounts of money that religious organizations in the United States are investing in trampling the civil rights of LGBT people in referendums on gay marriage. And then there are moominmuppet's posts about the ongoing right-wing attacks on women's health care, particularly Planned Parenthood. And while we're at it, let's not forget the Catholic Church's insane opposition to the use of condoms in Africa, a continent being decimated by the AIDS virus.
I hear one story after another along these lines for long enough and I start to think, maybe the more extreme atheists are on to something. Maybe Marx was right. Maybe we all really would be better off without these bastards. If you want to talk to me about religious moderates, I would submit that they need to be doing a whole hell of a lot more to speak out against this kind of utter evil.
I'm particularly not a fan of organized religion, especially huge powerful "religious" bureaucracies like the Catholic Church or Mitt Romney's cult. That said, my attitude toward religion, even organized religion, is basically indifference. I tend to view it all as just so much annoying superstition. I see the Judeo-Christian or Muslim gods much as I see Zeus or Thor or Santa Claus or the tooth fairy: mildly interesting cultural artifacts that are the stars of some creative literature but tell us nothing about how the universe works or what is actually going on in the world.
The point is, I rarely venture into the realm of being anti-religious. But once in a while, some church or other does something that truly gets my blood boiling and I start to wonder if these "cultural artifacts" aren't doing human society a lot more harm than good. Such was the case this morning when I was listening to an in-depth report on BBC Radio about the Catholic Church and its vehement opposition to the efforts of the Phillipine government to make family planning information more available to its citizens.
Keep in mind that the Phillipines is one of the fastest growing populations in a densely populated area of an overpopulated planet. A huge percentage of the population lives in poverty and most families are having more kids than they can afford to support simply because things like contraception are unaffordable. A package of condoms could cost more than a family earns in a week.
Eleven women die every single day in the Phillipines from complications from childbirth, a situation with echoes of a far earlier era of human history where women dying in childbirth was quite common. That's the equivalent of a September 11th or Hurricane Katrina every single year. Thanks to the Catholic Church, the Phillipines remains one of the few countries where abortion is illegal in all circumstances.
Abortions still happen in the underground economy, but these black-market jobs cause further risk to the lives of women. And mysterious concoctions that are claimed to end pregnancies are a staple of the black market. At best, women who use these unregulated black-market brews are spending what precious little money they have on something that's completely ineffective. At worst, the stuff could kill them.
So the government of President Benigno Aquino wants to step in to make family planning information and services, including contraception, more widely available. There is to be nothing coercive about this. The initiative is merely to provide women with information and options and let the women decide for themselves. If women want to use contraception, the government will provide it. The basic philosophy is simply that no woman in the Phillipines will be denied access to contraception if she decides she wants it.
But this simple and common sense approach amounts to heresy in the Phillipines. You see, the Catholic Church has a huge influence on society and a strong grip on the government by virtue of government officials--including the elected representatives of the people--being afraid of opposing the Church. And the Catholic Churches believes that contraception is the exact same thing as abortion. Incidentally, no one in the Phillipines, including contraception proponents, is talking about making abortion legal. And still the Catholic Church fights.
Never mind that viewing contraception as being equivalent to abortion defies all sense of logic, science, and common sense. Never mind that women in the Phillipines are suffering. Never mind that families are faced with making agonizing choices every day due to having more children than the resources of the family can comfortably support. Never mind the thousands of women dying in childbirth or the thousands more risking their lives with black market abortions or birth control. Never mind that in addition to being a tragedy in itself, each woman's death deprives parents of a daughter, a husband of his wife, and her other children of a mother.
No, none of this matters as much as the need of the rich, powerful, and entrenched Catholic Church to retain its power by brutally enforcing its own interpretation of an ancient book of fairy tales and superstitions. In interviews with influential Catholic bishops, the bishops talk in circles and change the subject to government corruption. Of course, they have no desire to discuss their own corruption or the corruption that pervades the Vatican.
This story is bad enough, but then there is joedecker's recent series of posts about the huge amounts of money that religious organizations in the United States are investing in trampling the civil rights of LGBT people in referendums on gay marriage. And then there are moominmuppet's posts about the ongoing right-wing attacks on women's health care, particularly Planned Parenthood. And while we're at it, let's not forget the Catholic Church's insane opposition to the use of condoms in Africa, a continent being decimated by the AIDS virus.
I hear one story after another along these lines for long enough and I start to think, maybe the more extreme atheists are on to something. Maybe Marx was right. Maybe we all really would be better off without these bastards. If you want to talk to me about religious moderates, I would submit that they need to be doing a whole hell of a lot more to speak out against this kind of utter evil.