Vexen Crabtree's Insane Journal

1:56am: Child Abuse: Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi defends the Catholic Church at the Human Rights Council

I have added a serious new part to my page "Child Abuse by Christian Priests: Horror, Paedophilia and the Clergy" by Vexen Crabtree (2009):

The Human Rights Council of the United Nations met in Geneva on 2009 Sep 22, where the Catholic Church was challenged over its response to its child abuse horrors. The Vatican's official UN observer was present, Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi. This religious body's presence at the UN HRC is nowadays matched by the non-religious secular representative of atheism and suchlike, the International Humanist and Ethical Union, who in this instance was Mr Keith Porteous Wood, who is also the director of the UK's National Secular Society, a body that lobbies for politics and religion to be kept seperate.

Keith Porteous Wood set the context by recalling that in 1990 "the Holy See acceded to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It submitted its first and only report in 1994 - about which CRC expressed several areas of concern. But since then - nothing". The RCC has breached five of its Articles. Some of the most serious complaints which he then iterated were that the Church had not taken claims of child abuse seriously, had not acted on cases that were clearly within its power to act upon, had accused many victims of making up stories and has moved offenders to one place to another instead of reporting them to authorities as instructed to do.

Bishop Silvano Maria Tomasi's reply contained some quite odd reasoning. Some of his arguments were that actually, homosexuals were to blame, that abuse has occurred in other institutions too, not just in the Catholic Church, and that the church has acted on at least two occasions by issuing statements to its priests. Probably as a result of continued revelations of cover-ups and scandals, the Archbishop also mentions that the Catholic Church, in its second report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child, will devote an entire paragraph to the problem of child abuse by the clergy. I hope it is a truly efficiently-written paragraph, as I do know how busy the Church is tackling other problems, such as the evils of contraception. The Vatican's defence of child abuse by its staff rests on a few further points that Archbishop Tomasi raises:

• Most cases of child abuse are by relatives of the child in question. Also, pupils in public schools are also given 'unwanted sexual attention' by staff.
• Protestant Churches in the USA have more cases of child abuse by its clergy than do Catholics.
• Also, Jews have a higher rate of child abuse too.

This appalling and dismissive response not only misses the facts - the Archbishop was called to defend the Vatican against claims it had breached 5 Articles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, but instead spent most his time pointing out that Catholic priests were not the only ones at it. Not only that, but his comparison was misleading as, as the IHEU pointed out, there are far more Protestants in the USA than there are Catholics. When I first estimated that 3% of Christian priests were involved in recurring cases of child abuse, I thought that this number might be too horrible to be true. The Archbishop, however, actually agreed:

“From available research we now know that in the last fifty years somewhere between 1.5% and 5% of the catholic clergy has been involved in sexual abuse cases.”
Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi (2009)

I am quite sure that the Archbishop, given his other dismissive defences, is himself repeating a conservative claim of the numbers of clergy involved, and I suspect with horror that the number might therefore be over five percent.

Something which highlights the odd and elusive arguments of the Archbishop, is the response of a Rabbi as reported in The Guardian:

"Representatives from other religions were dismayed by the Holy See's attempts to distance itself from controversy by pointing the finger at other faiths. Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, head of the New York Board of Rabbis, said: "Comparative tragedy is a dangerous path on which to travel. All of us need to look within our own communities. Child abuse is sinful and shameful and we must expel them immediately from our midst.""

His condemnation of child abusers is clear and his comment is directed solely at those who commit such crimes. He didn't pass the buck, play down the problem or indicate that homosexuality was the real problem, as opposed to paedophile priests. His quick response shames the Archbishop's politics and games.

12:23am: National Belief in God and Intelligence
All the studies on my "Religion and Intelligence" by Vexen Crabtree (2007) had concentrated on individual measurements of IQ, and how they correlate with religiosity. In the West, this largely correlates with Christian religiosity. Because most of these studies are performed in the West, it is possible that secularism and atheism is correlated with higher intelligence simply because Christianity has a particularly negative effect on intelligence.

To explore that further, I wanted to see if these trends exist in various cultures, where the background religion is no Christianity. Luckily for me, such studies have already been done, and have shown that across the globe, the more religious the people are, the less their average intelligence. It seems that the effects of belief on the Human search for truth are universal, and not religion-specific.

A study of data for belief in God and intelligence across 137 countries was undertaken by Lynn, Harvey & Nyborg (2009)9, with the latest comprehensive sets of data available, which were mostly from 2004. The data shows conclusively that countries with a higher average IQ have less belief in God - they state that "in only 17% of the countries (23 out of 137) does the proportion of the population who disbelieve in God rise above 20%. These are virtually all the higher IQ countries". Sociologists have found that in general, as a country gets more intelligence, the rate of belief in God begins to drop.

I've updated "Religion and Intelligence" by Vexen Crabtree (2007) and done a nifty graph showing this correlation in action.

11:14pm: I have added the following text to my page "Approaching Death: Cremations, Disposal of Bodies and Suicide" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

Assisted suicide is illegal in most countries that have laws on suicide. In the UK suicide was decriminalised in the Suicide Act of 1961. The same law made it illegal to help another person do this legal act, and is punishable by up to 14 years in jail. But this isn't the whole story. Eight hundred Britons have signed up with Dignitas, and one hundred have voluntarily died there, aided to their end by physicians. None of the Brits who travelled with them, or the relatives who helped them beforehand, have had a prosecution brought against them. A principal book on UK criminal law states that "if it is determined that the terminally ill person was competent, her local authority had no power to seek to maintain an injunction to restrain her spouse from complying with the wife's wishes to take her to Switzerland" to commit suicide. This creates, in reality, a conflicting and impractical state of law. Lord Falconer, once the Lord Chancellor in the UK, continues:

“Though prosecuting those going with them has in no case been deemed in the public interest, many fellow travellers have been interviewed by police and waited for months to learn that no charges would be brought. It is "time now for the law to catch up with reality," he says. [... and proposes that] if someone declares before an independent witness his intention of committing suicide, and two doctors certify that he is terminally ill, a person accompanying him abroad for that purpose should not face prosecution.”

The Economist (2009)

Lord Falconer's sensible declaration seems hard to fault, except for the fact that many of those who suffer from excruciatingly horrible and debilitating diseases that are not actually terminal illnesses. The law should allow the assisted suicide of those certified as per Lord Falconer's idea, with the addition of those certified to be unable to counter a disease that dominates every area of their life. Eighty percent of Britons support changing the law.

So... to what extent should free will and freedom be allowed, and where are the lines?

1:06am: Public Relations Lies in the Mass Media
I've added text to my page "Smoking: Society, Health and the Freedom of Choice" by Vexen Crabtree (2007):

“Modern journalists work at breakneck speed to process stories as fast as possible. Therefore most news services rely heavily on public relations (PR) material in order to rapidly produce the stream of news. Much of this news comes from trusted wire agencies, but these also rely on PR input. Because of these pressures, public relations firms and commercial companies are having a heyday and find it easy to insert material into news media. In general, over half of all news stories are mostly PR or contain substantial PR-sourced material. Journalists themselves do not check the facts or figures of such inputs, nor admit in the articles themselves that PR material is the true source of the information, so the news often appears unbiased. Powerful commercial lobbies use this weakness to pervert public opinion.</p>

For example in the 1950s the smoking lobby created a waft of innocent-sounding and scientific-sounding groups in order to discredit government information about the dangers of smoking. Oil and petrol lobbies have spent fortunes on the same PR tricks, as have food industry lobbies. They produce scientific reports engineered by their own scientists, which serve to boost their own industries by deceiving the public. In short, don't trust the news media directly even when they are reporting on scientific-sounding research groups. Always check facts with long-standing scientific bodies such as the Royal Society. Rich and activist commercialist lobby groups have a set of well-practised and efficient methods for manipulating the news and public opinion. The scientists and welfare groups who wish to get real scientific worries about certain industries out into the open are not funded or equipped to run public relations campaigns. Only multinational information campaigns, legal agreements and inter-national political bodies such as the EU have the oomph to be able to fight back against such powerful industries.”

"The Modern Mass Media: The Bane of Human Cultural Evolution" by Vexen Crabtree (2008)

This disinformation campaign has spanned many decades; vested commercial interests provide an incentive to manipulate the public's understanding of the risks.

“As a result of paperwork disclosed in US court cases, we now know that when the tobacco companies in the 1950s found themselves under pressure from the discovery of the link between smoking and cancer, they hired PR companies to create a network of pseudo-groups to massage public thinking on their behalf. Hill & Knowlton, who were then the biggest PR agency in America, duly created the Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute as apparently independent organisations to produce research to defend their sales. [...]</p>

A second PR agency, Burson-Marsteller, created the National Smokers Alliance as an AstroTurf group, to hold public meetings and hassle politicians, changing the tobacco story from a threat to health to a threat to freedom.”

"Flat Earth News" by Nick Davies (2008)₁₄

5:44pm: Can Brits criticize immigrants taking jobs, when 10% of Brits work abroad?
I've added some arguments to "UK Immigration, Economics and Pensions" by Vexen Crabtree (2007), and added a new opening paragraph to the conclusion on that page. It reads:

Firstly, the values of freedom and fairness dictate that we should allow a wide flow of immigrants into Britain. Ten percent of Britons live or work abroad, so we can hardly argue against free migration. We are ourselves poor at foreign languages, so it is also unfair if we were to hypocritically criticize foreigners for living here without being good at our language. The free migration of open labour markets benefits entire economic regions. The opposite, the nationalist raising of labour barriers against foreigners, has the same effect as trade tariffs: to distort the market, reduce wage efficiency and balance and to harm the economy as a whole. Ironically, attempting to secure local jobs for local residents has the effect of shrinking the economy, therefore reducing the long-term number of overall jobs. Strongly reducing immigration and stopping foreign workers is not worth the economic instability and the loss of freedom and would be hypocritical, given the numbers of Brits that migrate.

4:03pm: Adults who believe in magic...
... should probably read more books.

10:12pm: The Progression of Paganism into Early Christianity
I have added the following text to "Historical Christianity: Theologian's Explanations of Progression from Paganism to Christianity" by Vexen Crabtree (2003):

The fact that many pagan religions had many of the same dates, beliefs and practices as Christians led later Christians to denounce them as 'satanic imitations'. Theologians made the famous argument that the Devil had created these pagan religions so that people would think that Christianity was just a developed copy of them. The Cardinal Newman argued that (be it God or Satan's fiat) these pagan religions merely prepared people to accept Christianity. In other words, god made pagan religions in order to teach people Christianity, before revealing actual Christianity.

“To Newman, 'Pagan literature, philosophy and mythology were but a preparation for the Gospel.' His Protestant counterpart, Bishop Westcott of Durham, praised Greek thought for representing several stages in the unfolding of divine purpose. Gladstone determined 'to prove the intimate connection between the Hebrew and Olympian revelations', and told the House of Commons that Greek mythology had prepared minds for some of Christ's teachings. Kingsley agreed that it contained essential lessons in the human relationship with the divine.”

"The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft" by Prof. R. Hutton (1999)

Unfortunately, it seems that all such arguments are only half-truths. If there is a progression of human belief, then it implies that Christianity is itself not the final truth. Islam, for example, claims to be host to the teachings of the prophet that followed on from Jesus. If this progressive march continues, then Christianity itself may well just be a stepping-stone for another religion.

5:48pm: VBA, The Ribbon, Microsoft Office
I spend more time dealing with bugs with Office and the Ribbon than I do with actually developing VBA applications.

2:31am: Organ Donation

I've added some stats and figures to do with organ donation and opt-out schemes. The contents of "Post-Death: Cremations, Disposal of Bodies and the Funeral Ritual Instinct" by Vexen Crabtree (2007) is now:

1. The Funeral Ritual Instinct
2. Disposal of Corpses in an Overcrowded World
   1. Practical Matters Must Trump Intellectual Ones
   2. Cremations Have Been More Popular Than Burials Since the 1960s
   3. Arguments for Cremation
   4. Religious Protests
   5. The Personal Disposal of Ashes
3. Organ Donation
   1. Opt-Out Schemes are Better Than Opt-In
   2. Strange Beliefs
   3. Objection: My body is my property and I can do what I want with it
   4. Objection: Freedom to Choose
   5. Conclusions on Organ Donation Schemes
4. Military Remembrance Parades

1:28am: 2008 was crazy
I lost enough sanity in 2008 to be facing 2009 with much of a new personality!

11:24pm: Updated my page on historical "Anti-religious forces"

I've added section 2.2, on modern critics of religion, which mentions the attainments of Richard Dawkins and Paul Kurtz. If I can find two more people who have done as much, in modern times, to bring people away from religion, then I will add them to the list too.

The contents of "Anti-Religious Forces: Specific Factors Fuelling Secularisation" by Vexen Crabtree (2003) is now:

1. Anti-Religious Forces
   1. Communism
   2. Intelligence
   3. The Ancient Greeks
   4. Science
   5. Individualism
   6. Multiculturalism
   7. Human Rights
   8. Christian Intolerance for Magic and Gods
2. People of Historical Importance
   1. Those Who Became Historical Movements: Nietzsche, Weber, Freud and Marx
   2. Outstanding Critics of Religion in the Modern Era
3. Blows to Religion According to Moojan Momen

6:38pm: Life this year...
... was good for it set up a better future, but, was also challenging. I've spend 10 months away from home (one reason I've hardly been updating things), and that has meant 10 months away from my poor wife, and 10 months away from all my books. For much of that time I was only online via cybercafés or via military computer networks, existing behind heavy firewalls that blocked many social sites.

The last 4 years I've been in Germany, and out of that, I've spent a full 13 months in Afghanistan doing technical work, it has been difficult to maintain all my civilian friendships and academic contacts; despite that I have still managed to collaborate with a few authors for their respective books on various aspects of religion.

From next year, all will be different. I will living back in England, be able to visit friends in London and elsewhere on the weekends, be able to access English-speaking libraries, and have my cars to hand. So, I'll be both present, and mobile! Although I will have to get used to driving in the UK, with its arrogant drivers, congested roads, slow motorways...

I've been used to living in the much-more civilised Germany, where city-centers aren't full of trash in the evening (unless they're British), where people are nice and polite, things are done intentionally properly, etc... in short, all those values which used to be British, but we have largely lost.

Anyway, I don't really know what directions I will be going in next year. Undoubtedly, I will write more on elements of religious sociology and religious psychology. I know I need to redo my site on monotheistic theology. I see myself revamping my large website on Satanism, due to being with my books and finally reading a few valuable gems that I leave at home because I don't want to travel with them. I'm just finishing a few books on Islam, so, expect some writings in that area.

2:08pm: The Pro-Blasphemy Position

I have rewritten "The Pro-Blasphemy Position: Satanism in Action!" by Vexen Crabtree (2000)

1. The Positive Reasons to Intentionally Blaspheme
2. Reasons Why Blasphemy Laws Should Never be Enshrined in Law
3. Satanism
4. A Blasphemous Religion
5. What is Blasphemy Against Satanism?
6. The Realities of Blasphemy Laws
7. A Religions' Territory
8. United Kingdom's Blasphemy Laws

2:16pm: Psychosomosis: Psychoimmunology and Stress
I've re-organized my page "Psychosomosis: Curing and Causing Disease with the Mind" by Vexen Crabtree (2006), to give more prominence to stress. New headers are:

2. Psychoimmunology and Stress
   1. Moods and Disease
   2. The Long-term Health Benefits of Dealing Well with Stress
   3. The Limits of Reverse Psychosomosis

The page introduction reads:

People can exert mental control over their body and mental states, sometimes with long-term results. I hope that by describing what it is possible to do, people will learn to take more control of their mental and physical health. 'Psychosomosis' is sometimes used to mean medical symptoms that derive from purely (subconscious) psychological factors (such as ulcers caused by stress) but I intend to use it in the wider sense; of the effect of the mind on the body, for good (i.e., meditation preventing cancer) and ill (depression causing increased illness). I advocate the strengthening of willpower in order to prevent psychosomatic illness and also for physical health self-empowerment.

10:50am: The Inside-Out Retina of the Human Eye
Added to my text on evolution: "Unintelligent Design: The Inside-Out Retina of the Human Eye", Vexen Crabtree:

We have dysfunctions, genetic junk, evolutionary dead-ends and obscure morphologies (birds that can't fly, male nipples, etc) and countless other little imperfections that belie the any idea that evolution 'knows' what it is doing. It merely gets by with whatever comes up, and doesn't make future plans. Take the human eye as an example. The history of the eye has been carefully documented by evolutionists; from its basic form in ancient fish, to designs of ever increasing complexity and functionality: the eye is a good example of the haphazard nature of evolution. There was no foresight in its development. This is why us humans have ended up with inside-out retinas. The nerves that carry signals from the rods and cones in our retina lay on the sensors instead of under them. This is because once something starts evolving, there is no easy way to restart the design. Things move on, and new designs build on old ones.

As the eyes increased in resolution, more and more nerves lay on the inside of the retina; their way to the brain remains a hole in the retina which now features as the blind spot in our vision. A little foresight on the behalf of nature would have led to a much more sensible design! The biologist and philosopher Daniel C. Dennett comments, "no intelligent designer would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process".

3:53pm: Christian abuse of minors in communities
I've added the following paragraph to my text on the sexual abuse of minors by the Christian priesthood:

"The Peacock vs. the Ostrich: Monotheist Religions and Sex" by Vexen Crabtree (2008)

"The abuse has occurred in communities large and small, in private homes and in church. In 2008, the Pope apologized in person to President Bush about the extent of the child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, and the Canadian prime minister made an official apology to his indigenous population, because "between 1870 and 1996, an estimated 150,000 indigenous children were wrenched from their homes and sent to Christian boarding schools, where many were sexually and physically abused". Not even schools have been safe from the secret violence. The worst frequency of abuse has been when Christians themselves live with other Christians, as we will see:"

The page continues: 4.2. Internal Abuse in Christian Institutions

8:08pm: I am pleased I am a poor Machiavellian.

11:24am: Firewalls...
This is the only journal I have that isn't blocked by the firewall in this backwards country!

3:25pm: Trudging on
The ills of mankind, and the short-sighted behaviour and shallow concerns of the masses, groups and individuals, all around me... it weighs me down and makes me push people harder. But they don't get it.

10:16pm: Life is short!
Found a nice little quote in a philosophy book on Time and Space:

“With unrelenting speed, life's scenes fly by, and the grave yawns before us.”

"Travels in Four Dimensions: The Enigmas of Space and Time" by Prof. Le Poidevin, p123.

I have added it to my page: "Satan Represents Death" by Vexen Crabtree (2003)

7:54pm: Ghosts & Clothes

“Ghost, n. The outward and visible sign of an inward fear.

There is one insuperable obstacle to a belief in ghosts. A ghost never comes back naked: he appears either in a winding-sheet or 'in his habit as he lived.' To believe in him, then, is to believe that not only have the dead the power to make themselves visible after there is nothing left of them, but that the same power inheres in textile fabrics. Supposing the products of the loom to have this ability, what object would they have in exercising it? And why does not the apparition of a suit of clothes something walk abroad without a ghost in it? These be riddles of significance.”

The Devil's Dictionary

Added to "Physical Interaction between Body and Soul" by Vexen Crabtree (1998).

11:42am: The Multitudes, according to Bierce.
"The Untermensch: The Inferior People of Society" by Vexen Crabtree (2004):

“Multitude, n. A crowd. [...] A multitude is as wise as its wisest member if it obey him; if not, it is no wiser than its most foolish.”
The Devil's Dictionary

2:38pm: Drunken behaviour is related to expectations and the environment
Added a quote to "Alcohol: The social and medical story" by Vexen Crabtree, "The Social Effects of Alcohol are Cultural" (2006):

“It appears that some of the short-term effects of ingesting small amounts of alcohol are as strongly related to the drinker's expectations about the effects of the drug as they are to its chemical action on the body. For example, alcohol is commonly thought to stimulate aggression and increase sexual responsiveness. Research has shown, however, that these reactions may not be caused by alcohol itself but by the drinker's beliefs about alcohol's effects. In experiments demonstrating these points, participants are told that they are consuming a quantity of alcohol when they are actually given an alcohol-free beverage with its taste disguised. They subsequently become more aggressive (Lang et al., 1975) and report increased sexual arousal (Wilson & Lawson, 1976). People who actually drink alcohol also report increased sexual arousal, even though alcohol makes them less aroused physiologically (Farkas & Wilson, 1976). Once again, cognitions have a demonstratably powerful effect on behaviour.”

"Abnormal Psychology" by Davison & Neale, p299

To curb street violence, increased education on what the effects of alcohol really are is required, and so is changing the nature of the environment in which alcohol is drunk (and especially where binge-drinking occurs). Both of these things require a change of the basic, common drinking habits of those who frequent pubs.

The reason that I point out things like this on my pages is that such basic education can increase the responsibility that people take for their own behaviour. So much behaviour is a case of people trying to think of reasons and excuses why they can behave badly, and more freely... if they realized that they had more control over themselves than they thought (including self-initiated freedom), they would be better people all-round. It also annoys me no-end when the excuse for being late for work, for being destructive, sexually aggressive, irresponsible, is "I was drunk!". This especially occurs in my own workplace!

8:38pm: Night Terrors
I just came across (again: I'd forgot!) the fact that Night Terrors are non-REM sleep, occurring in Stage 3 and Stage 4 sleep (like sleep walking/talking).

5:14pm: St Paul Was Converted to Christianity by a Seizure
New text on St. Paul: St Paul Was Converted to Christianity by a Seizure:

“Saint Paul certainly had once an epileptoid, if not an epileptic seizure” - "The Varieties of Religious Experience" by William James, p35.

William James, the well-known psychologist and author on the history of religion, is convinced that St Paul's vision of Christ (his only "contact" with Jesus, ever) was a seizure (ref: Acts 9:3-9). His claim is scientifically likely and has been made by scientists and doctors many times in history₄. The prominent book on brain neurology, Neuroscience states that some people have a once-in-a-life seizure that can include visual hallucinations. In the general (non-epileptic) population, it occurs in 7 to 10 percent of people's lives₅.

(References exist on the page linked)