This is Michael Nugent’s contribution to the UCD Law Society debate yesterday on the motion that the Catholic Church has become irrelevant.
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The Catholic Church has become irrelevant: Michael Nugent at UCD Law Society debate
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Irish People Abandoning Religion
Irish people are among the least religious in the world. That’s according to the latest Global Index of Religion and Atheism released by WIN-Gallup International.
The index is based on surveys conducted in 57 countries, representing more than 73% of the world’s population. Read More
Pluralism in education with some prejudice against atheists: conference report
Last Friday, Michael Nugent and Jane Donnelly attended a conference in Limerick titled Towards Mutual Ground: Religious Pluralism in Educational Practice in Irish Schools. It was organised by the Mater Dei Irish Centre for Religious Education, the PDST, and hosts Mary Immaculate College. Catherine O’Brien from the Humanist Association of Ireland was also there, and one of the workshop speakers was Fionnula Ward from Educate Together.
Overall, we found the conference to be very useful, with a lot of information covered, and many people interested in sharing opinions with us both during and between the formal sessions. Unfortunately, we also heard some of the caricatures of atheism and defamatory statements about atheists that we have sadly become used to from some Catholic theologians, including the literally dehumanising claim that atheists are not fully human.
Religion v Secularism – Michael Nugent debates Brendan O’Neill and Adnan Rashid
On Monday 20 February in University College Cork, Michael Nugent of Atheist Ireland debated Brendan O’Neill of Spiked magazine and Adnan Rashid of iERA on the merits of Catholicism, Islam and secularism. The debate was jointly organised by the UCC Philosophical, Atheist and Muslim Societies.
Here is Michael Nugent’s opening contribution:
Here are the contributions from the audience of Atheist Ireland Cork members Joe O’Regan and Tim Murrell:
And here is the complete debate, including all audience contributions:
Also posted in Islam, Secularism, Video Comments closed
The price of Sky Pilots
Guest post by Atheist Ireland member GT.
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In a recent letter to the Irish Independent a correspondent noted that the Irish state’s new law term on the 3rd of October will commence with a roman catholic mass attended by representatives of the legal profession, judiciary, An Garda Siochana and the Defence Forces.
Why the Irish state should pay judges, policemen and soldiers to attend catholic mass in this day and age is beyond me. But I was not surprised when I recalled the religious worship forced onto me and colleagues in a previous occupation…that being a member of the Defence Forces.
Read More
Also posted in Politics, Secularism Comments closed
Bringing the Scientific Method to Magic Crackers
I have long heard claims being made, specifically in the Catholic faith, that during certain ceremonies, when certain propitiations are made, that normal Cracker Bread is changed “literally” into the body of a long dead Jewish Human Male who displayed later Zombie tendencies to refuse to stay in the grave.
There are those of course that claim that the transformation is symbolic not literal, which I have not concerned myself with here as they are essentially saying nothing. I limit my inquiry only to those who claim a literal transformation.
I decide some time ago therefore to investigate over a 2 year period these claims. Since the results of this have been sitting on a shelf for some time I thought it useful to disseminate a short summary of my tests and summary of my results to the internet. The hope is that further testing can be suggested that I might have missed and which I can now take up the mantel again and continue to engage in.
Experimental setup:
As a setup I obtained “normal” and “consecrated” hosts in sufficient numbers and continued to do so over the 2 year period to make sure that I was working with both “fresh” and “dormant” samples. Both are surprisingly easy to obtain as those that have them seem keen to be rid of them.
As the transformation was meant to be into something resembling human flesh I, where possible, also used volunteer skin samples in my tests.
Blind experimentation:
To remove and risk of bias in the experiments I performed ALL experiments in the following fashion. I used 4 cracker samples in all cases.
Sample A: Chosen randomly by me from the “normal” pile.
Sample B: Chosen randomly by me from the “consecrated” pile.
Sample C: Chosen randomly by a third party from either pile without informing me which it was from.
Sample D: Chosen randomly by a third party from the other pile without informing me which it was from.
Sample E: Collection of random skin samples from human volunteers, myself included.
The order of the samples was then hidden and mixed from me by another separate party so that until the results were in I would not know if the results connected to samples A, B, C or D.
Sample summary of Experiments performed:
The samples were then subjected to many tests of which this is a random but not exhaustive sample list:
1 ) Burning tests, testing energy released in burning, burning time, change in mass of sample between before and after burning, color of flame (light wavelengths measured).
2 ) Chemical testing: Disolving in various chemicals and measuring energy releases, mass changes, chemical composition of diluted samples.
3 ) Degradation testing: Observing the differences in samples left to their own devices to measure differences in chemical breakdown due to food “going off” etc.
4 ) Luck testing: Engaged in various tests of luck in the presence of, or following the consumption of Samples from each group. Dice Games. Lottery Ticket use. Guessing Games and much more.
5 ) Emotional testing: Gauged personal subjective impression of mood changes in a group of volunteer subjects in the presence of, or following the consumption of, Samples from each group over 24 hour periods.
6 ) Priest testing: Proffered Samples to a selection of priests who were unable to identify which crackers were “normal” and which were “consecrated”.
7 ) Float testing: Tested the floating properties of each Sample.
8 ) Mass testing: Tested for differences in mass, density and other physical properties between samples, including aerodynamic abilities and resistance to physical stress such as piercing with nails (rusty and normal), tearing, toasting, hammering, bending, stamping and more. It has been suggested to me independently a number of times… seriously by those of a theistical bent, and jokingly by those who are not… that I rename this section the “Torture Testing”.
Summary of Results:
There was in ALL tests absolutely NO difference between the samples at any stage except for minute expected differences in mass between all samples (even internally among each sample group) which are within expected tolerances for normal human food manufacturing variances.
There was in ALL tests NO significant overlap of comparative results between any crackers and any human skin samples.
Conclusion:
There is no basis at this time apparent to support any claims that there is any form of “literal” transformation in the “consecrated” samples.
Further Study:
I still posses a number of samples of each time and am more than happy to engage in further testing should anyone manage to submit a test idea that I have not yet engaged in.
60 years on, time to remove the Angelus from RTE
This week 60 years ago, on the request of the Roman Catholic Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, Radio Eireann started to broadcast the Angelus. This daily call to prayer, still gifted by RTE to the Roman Catholic Church as a free prime time advertisement, has no place in a modern pluralist republic.
Recent attempts to soften its impact, by illustrating it with nonreligious images and rebranding it as a pause for reflection, simply make it worse. This suggests that people of all religions and none can unite under a Roman Catholic call to prayer.
If RTE was to broadcast a minute of atheist propaganda at prime time every day, most people would intuitively realise that this would be inappropriate. And the problem would be made worse by illustrating atheist propaganda with religious images.
In a religious State, the State broadcasting system would be promoting religion; in an atheist State, the State broadcasting system would be promoting atheism. In a secular State, it would do neither, and that is what Atheist Ireland wants to see happen.
Also posted in Secularism Comments closed
Official – Vatican does compare child abuse with ordaining women
Apologists for the Vatican have recently claimed that the Catholic Church does not compare sexually abusing a child with attempting to ordain a woman, but that it merely included both crimes in the same document as a procedural matter.
However, this is not true. A Vatican official has explicitly described the crimes contained in this document as being “on the same level” of seriousness. They are the “Delicta Graviora”, the crimes which the Catholic Church considers the most serious of all, and which are reserved to the Holy See for judgment.
In 2007, the Vatican published a pamphlet on Paedophilia and the Priesthood, written by Monsignor Raffaello Martinelli, an official of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and member of the editorial commission of the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet explicitly states:
“The seriousness with which the Church evaluates and judges acts of pedophilia is shown by the fact that with a new law passed in 2001, the Holy See (and not the local bishops) decided to reserve the right to judge those crimes…
The fact that the Pope wanted to reserve to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — a dicastery of the Holy See — judgment of the acts of pedophilia committed by priests, shows that the Church considers those acts to be very serious, serious crimes on the same level of the other two serious crimes — reserved to the Holy See — that can be committed against two sacraments: the Eucharist and the holiness of confession.”
In 2010, with the updated document Normae de Gravioribus Delictis, the Vatican has now added the attempted ordination of women to this strange list of the most serious crimes of all.
And the direction of the comparison is not that they consider these theological crimes to be as serious as sexually abusing a child, but that they consider sexually abusing a child to be as serious as these theological crimes, to be judged by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which used to be the Congregation of the Inquisition.
For example, sexually abusing a child is listed not as a crime against the child, but as a crime against the Biblical commandment forbidding adultery. And attempting to ordain a woman attracts a more serious punishment than sexually abusing a child. This is the type of morality that results when people put theology ahead of reality.
Ethical issues should be evaluated on the basis of human rights, compassion, well-being and suffering, not on the basis of theological dictates from people who believe they are getting messages from the creator of the universe.
Posted in Catholicism Comments closed
Read the Bible: The Resurrection of Jesus
One of Atheist Ireland’s campaigns is to encourage people to read the Christian Bible and the sacred texts of other religions. The physical resurrection of Jesus Christ is the central tenet of Christianity. But the evidence for this extraordinary claim is nonexistent outside the Christian Bible, and contradictory within the Christian Bible.
In the earliest written Biblical reference, Paul says the risen Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people at one time [1 Cor 15:3-8]. Yet in the earliest written Gospel, called Mark, the allegedly risen Jesus does not appear to anybody. A different writer later added that part [16:9-20] to the Mark story, with the risen Jesus saying that people who believed in him could safely drink poison.
The Gospels called Matthew and Luke, written a decade or more later, were the first to include the risen Jesus physically appearing to people. But in Matthew, this seems relatively commonplace, with the bodies of many dead people being physically resurrected, coming out of their tombs, and appearing to many people [27:52-53]. None of the other Gospels mention this incident.
Nor do the Gospels agree on where and how many times the risen Jesus physically appeared. In Mark he does not appear at all. In Matthew he appears twice, to the two Marys on a road [27:8-9] and to his disciples on a mountain in Galilee [27:16-17]. In Luke he appears three times: to a man and his companion on a road [24:13-32], to Peter in an unspecified place [24:33-34], and to his disciples and others in a house [24:36-53].
In John he appears four times: to Mary Magdelene who thinks he is a gardener outside his tomb [20:11-18], to his disciples twice in a house [24:19-23, 26-29], and to some of his disciples for breakfast after a fishing trip [21:1-12]. None of the Gospels include Paul’s remarkable claim that the risen Jesus appeared to more than five hundred people at one time.
These fantastic and wildly inconsistent stories may have seemed convincing in more primitive times, written as they were as standalone stories in different places for different audiences, many of who believed the world was coming to an end within their lifetimes. They are no basis today on which to build a worldview about the nature of reality or how we should live together as sentient beings.
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Flirting with the light of reason: how a la carte Catholicism contributes to the secular agenda, by Andrew D Rattigan
The current rumblings within the Catholic Church with regards the censure and attempted silencing of priests such as Fr. Tony Flannery is indicative of a coming schism within the organisation. In fact, it is well under way, it is just being confined within the church and has not yet led to a split.
The Association of Catholic Priests is an organisation of Catholic priests who believe the Catholic Church should be accountable to its members and open to change. Members of the ACP, such as Tony Flannery, question the hierarchy’s position on many social issues and take a liberal view on areas such as sexuality and human relationships that run at odds with the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
This questioning and challenging of the dogma and doctrines of the catholic faith within the clergy is merely indicative of the changes in wider Irish society and in particular the ongoing transformation of Irish people who call themselves Catholics but who are at odds with the official teachings and stance of the Catholic hierarchy on many social and doctrinal issues. Read More »