Yet Again, Religion Makes People Stupid

It wasn't that long ago that Bernie Madoff was busted duping his fellow Jews with impossibly high returns on investments. Greed and misplaced faith were their downfall.

Now it's the Christians' turn:

"It was a good place where Christians would be investing in the work of other Christians," said Karen Lamb, a 55-year-old Terre Haute, Ind, housewife.

More than five years later, the Lambs still are waiting to get most of their $53,000 investment back. Now a former pastor is going on trial for what authorities call a multimillion-dollar scheme that preyed on thousands of parishioners who thought they were helping build churches but were actually buying the man and his sons planes and sports cars.

Authorities say Reeves, founder and owner of now-defunct Alanar, and his three sons duped about 11,000 investors into buying bonds worth $120 million secured by mortgages on construction projects at about 150 churches. The men diverted money from new investments to pay off previous investors, pocketing $6 million and buying two airplanes, sports cars and vacations, according to court records.
Officials say the scheme operated mainly in Indiana, though church members in other states, including Florida, Michigan, Maryland and Oklahoma, also were victimized.

(courtesy HuffPo)

When will people learn that a common religion does not equate common values, that thieves are thick among religious folk, as they are with all folk, and--most importantly--that you should never invest ALL of your money in one place?

Probably never, so maybe it's a blessing in disguise that most people out there have no money to invest thanks to the Lords of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce.

In the meantime, be wary your fellow churchgoers...

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Chuck Norris Doesn't Run Wild...

Chuck Norris gets bitch-slapped by the eloquent Chris Kelly and probably doesn't even understand it:

Chuck Norris Says Obama Wants Mary to Abort Jesus

It's a well-known fact that Chuck Norris could kick the shit out of the Council of Ephesus, so when he has somehting to say about the Blessed Virgin Mary, I, for one, listen:

Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy? Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington's wise men and women! Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

He makes a powerful case, especially the last part, where health insurance reform leads to the Massacre of the Innocents. I'd get to the threat of Obama repeating the excesses of Herod the Great by pointing out they both like occupying the Middle East, but I understand Chuck's logic, too. Teach a man to fish and you've fed him for a lifetime. Subsidize his co-pay; he will commit genocide.

Here's where I get off board, and where Chuck Norris has made a potentially serious mistake. It's not that his slippery slope argument is sub-moronic. And it's not that he doesn't understand the moral difference between providing access to something -- lets say safe, legal abortion -- and ordering it. (If making something available was the same as doing it yourself, then arms makers would be responsible for gun homicides, and we know that's not true.)

My problem is with his misunderstanding of Mary, Stella Maris, Queen of Heaven, mother of mercy, sweetness and hope, bearer of light, mediator and co-redeemer. He seems to think of her as kind of a clueless, sloppy slut.

You know how women are. Don't get Chuck started.

The Mary in Chuck's example might carry Jesus to term or she might not. What does she care? The only thing that could make her give birth to God is if we make the alternative even more inconvenient.

Now, I enjoy misogyny as much as the next guy. I was in a fraternity. So Chuck Norris can imply whatever he wants about theoretical women in general, and how they'll have all the abortions they possibly can, if they're just lying around. And what rankles me isn't that -- to get at women in general -- he's taking a casual dump on the Mother of Our Savior. What bothers me is that Chuck Norris is a board member of the National COuncil on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools and he understands the Bible like a turtle humping a shoe.

You can't use Mary as an example of a woman considering an abortion, because the Mary that could make the mistake of aborting our Savior wouldn't be Mary. And if she weren't Mary, Theotokos, immaculate treasure of virginity, spiritual paradise of the second Adam, then Jesus wouldn't be Jesus. She'd just be a woman, and he'd be a lunatic. It's an analogy that isn't just ignorant; it's actually blasphemous.

The nature of Mary, her threefold perfection -- disposition, sanctification and ends -- of which the second perfection excels the first and the third the second, is evidence of the divinity of Jesus. You simply can't use her in abortion hypotheticals, because then she'd just be some yutz.

You can't ask "What if Mary chose wrong?" It's like saying, "Imagine you're Superman, but you don't have any superpowers." Or, "What if you were invisible, but everyone could see you." It doesn't work as an example. It cancels itself out.

Mary, Conqueror of Sin, workshop of the union of Christ's two natures, marketplace of the saving exchange, bridal chamber in which the Word was wedded to the flesh, was incapable of making a mistake.

Which, by the way, is not the same as not having a choice.

She has no place, even anecdotally, in this debate. Here case is by definition atypical. Even Chuck Norris should be able to process that.

There's got to be a simpler way to insult women and deprive them of their reproductive rights.

If you want to put the Bible in schools but you think Mary might have aborted Jesus, if she didn't have to pay for it, you don't get to talk anymore. You are disinvited from an opinion on theology. You don't get to put toilet paper in the boys' room.

You're not a Christian. You're just an asshole. We get that a lot.


[the link to the original Huffington Post column, reprinted here in full]

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