Just a little over two years ago, I noticed that Google had widely varying results in their search suggestions: http://www.laytheism.com/blog/2008/who-is-god/

Check out this radical piece of journalism hot off the press from Fox News:

Google’s search engine returns common results to most queries as you type. But the “don’t be evil” company appears to be censoring its results when it comes to Islam. …

Enter “Christianity is” and you’ll find results that, while offensive, at least indicate common discussions on the Internet. Likewise, type “Judaism is” and Google suggests other, potentially offensive searches such as “Judaism is false” and “Judaism is not a race.”

But type “Islam is” into the search engine and Google’s auto-results pane mysteriously vanishes, leading some to conclude that Google, whose mantra is “don’t be evil,” is censoring its search results.

According to Google’s Web site, the query suggestions that appear as you type are drawn from from searches you’ve done (if you’re logged in), searches done by users all over the world, sites in the search index and ads in Google’s network. …

Perhaps the returned results are so inappropriate that all results have simply been turned off, an option some Internet users label ‘cowardly.’ After all, search for hot-button items such as “scientology is” or “Muhammad is” and the results are even more offensive.

A Google spokesman explained that the weird absence of results is just a software problem: “This is in fact a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.” But the company would not respond to requests for clarification.

An intriguing corollary: Google offers search suggestions for future tense queries as well. Ask “Christianity will” and Google suggests “Christianity will end, it will disappear,” and “Christianity will end.” Ask the same about Islam and Google notes that “Islam will dominate the world” and “Islam will destroy Europe.”

Pretty clever on the tense change.  Guess the Google engineers missed that.

Ireland: Our priests teach us how to lie

Such hairsplitting is repugnant even if the liar weren’t a priest, said Vincent Browne in The Sunday Business Post.

Vincent Browne

The Sunday Business Post

It’s official: We now have Catholic doctrine on how to lie, said Vincent Browne. A damning government report on sexual abuse by the clergy shows that Archbishop Desmond Connell covered up for the abusive priests under his authority, even lying to investigators. But Connell claims that these lies were not really lies because he had a “mental reservation” about what he was saying.

As he put it, “You can use an ambiguous expression, realizing that the person who you are talking to will accept an untrue version of whatever it may be.” So, for example, when asked whether he had paid off a victim of one of his abusive priests, Connell answered that diocese funds “are not used” for that purpose. By using the present tense, he reasons, he wasn’t excluding the possibility that diocesan funds had been used for such a purpose in the past. It’s the same defense Bill Clinton used when he invoked the definition of “is.” Similarly, when a female victim complained that Connell was lying when he said he had cooperated in the investigation of her case, he countered that he never stipulated that he had cooperated “fully.”

Such hairsplitting is repugnant even if the liar weren’t a priest. “And these guys presume to lecture the rest of us on morality?”

A longer version of his column is here:

Vatican cannot escape blame in abuse scandal

06 December 2009

By Vincent Browne

The cynical indifference by Irish Catholic bishops to the sexual abuse of children perpetrated by their brother priests is not the full story, by any means. The culpability of the leadership of the Catholic Church at the Vatican is part of that fuller story, as I hope to demonstrate.

Clerical child sex abuse is only a small part of the scarifying phenomenon of child sex abuse in Ireland.

However, let’s examine the culpability of the Vatican authorities and its indifference to the welfare of children. Desmond Connell became Catholic archbishop of Dublin in 1988. Twelve years later he was singled out to hold the second-most prestigious position in the Catholic Church, that of cardinal.

It is not believable that, from 1988 to 2000, when Connell was appointed cardinal, the Church authorities in Rome had no idea how he handled (or rather, mishandled) clerical sex abuses cases here, and how he had lied about at least one of these cases.

The case in which clearly he lied concerned the courageous victim Andrew Madden, and the priest, Ivan Payne.

Payne was a serial child abuser who abused at least 31 people.

Madden made a complaint about Payne in 1981, claiming that Payne had sexually abused him for five years. The Church authorities knew of the abuse from 1981 onwards but, essentially, nothing was done.

In 1989, Madden repeated his complaint, this time to an auxiliary bishop, and asked why Payne had been moved to another parish where he might well abuse again.

Neither this auxiliary bishop nor Connell made any effort to enquire into the grounds of the complaint to determine whether Payne remained a danger to children.

Madden threatened legal proceedings against Payne in March 1992. Madden wrote to Connell in April 1993 complaining about the delay in settling the case. Connell instructed the diocesan solicitors to offer Payne financial assistance to settle the case. A settlement was reached the following month.

In 1994, Madden went to the media, first on the Gay Byrne radio programme. The case got widespread publicity.

Connell went on radio in May 1995 and said, in relation to the handling of clerical child sex abuse cases: ‘‘I have compensated nobody, I have paid nobody.” He went onto say that the finances of the diocese ‘‘are not used in any way’’ to make settlements in civil actions concerning clerical child abuse. Madden exposed this claim as a lie.

On October 4, 1995, I wrote in a newspaper column, in reference to Connell’s statements quoted above: ‘‘We now know that each of these statements is essentially misleading. Archbishop Connell provided £27,000 to compensate a clerical child abuser victim and, in doing so, the finances of the diocese were used in a particular way to make a settlement.

‘‘But not just that. We also know that Archbishop Connell failed to report the commission of a crime to the Garda, in spite of a legal obligation to do so. Connell knew that a crime had been committed because he had made £27,000 available to the priest to make a settlement for the crime.

‘‘We also know that the priest in question was given some form of therapeutic assistance, after which he was proclaimed fit to resume pastoral work.

‘‘If no crime had been committed, then what was this therapy for and, if it was for something unconnected with the crime, why was it mentioned in this connection?”

I do not claim any special insight.

My purpose in quoting myself is simply to show how there was widespread appreciation at the time that Connell had failed to report a crime to the Garda and had lied about making funds available to compensate a victim of clerical abuse and had failed quickly to move a priest from a parish, who he had every reason to believe was a child sex abuser.

If I and several others, including the dogs in the street, knew about this at the time, is it believable that the Vatican did not know about it?

Neither is it believable that they knew nothing about any of the other cases which he mishandled during that period from 1988 to 2000.

When the proposal arose – I assume some time in early 2000 – of appointing Connell to the College of Cardinals, one assumes rudimentary checks were made to determine the suitability of the appointment.

One assumes the Papal Nuncio – and perhaps some other bishops in Ireland – would have been consulted.

Is it plausible that none of them would have mentioned to the Vatican anything about the Payne case and the lie which Connell told in that connection?

Assuming that such mention was made, isn’t it likely that further enquiries would have been made into how Connell had handled other clerical sex abuses cases since his appointment as archbishop in 1988?

If the Papal Nuncio made no such report and not a single bishop did so, doesn’t that in itself say something about the institutional Catholic Church?

More likely, the Vatican was aware all along about the ‘‘mental reservation’’ and the cover-ups, and saw absolutely no reason why that should disbar Connell from the College of Cardinals, because the sexual abuse of a few children is a trifling matter in the panoply of power and importance of the church.

One final reflection. This quite proper outrage over the bishops and the cover-ups and the lies disguises a larger phenomenon.

The incidence of child sex abuse in Ireland is enormous.

According to that Sexual Abuse and Violence in Ireland (SAVI) report of 2002, around 320,000 people were raped in childhood, and there is little reason to believe the incidence of child rape has diminished.

The incidence of child rape among the clergy is certainly greater than among the population at large, but only about 4 per cent of child rapes have been perpetrated by the clergy.

The government shows no interest at all, aside from the odd photo opportunity.

sbpost@iol.ie

I would guess this is about par for the last couple of thousand years.

It’s like Judge Dredd meets the Matrix meets World of Warcraft meets the Terminator meets Ted Haggard (with a dash of Denzel Washington).

Take a look at the SharperFX web site… look for the “WEBSITES” link — it has a “NEW SITES” sign sticking out of it with a pop-up laser shield behind THAT (wait for it…) contains eight pages of MAXIMUM FLASH… for God. Crowd favorite seems to be ICCM-1 (dash 1?). Ah, turns out all the other “good” ICCM website URLs were taken.

What would be amazing is if someone spoofed it and went WAY over the top — with flash animation, spinning logos, swords, lightning, voiceovers, random steel foundry noises…  aw crap.  He already has all that in there.  How do you spoof a caricature?

Anyway, in the spirit of the WWE, please to enjoy some wacky propaganda for… The Holiest of Holies… The Alpha and the ChrOmega… The Master of the Universe… The reigning Heavyweight champion of the world… (closest challenger is Islam the Destroyer)…  the ONE… the ONLY…  CHRISTIANnnnnn… FAITHHhhhhhh….  [CROWD CHEER].

Televangelist Schuller’s empire in trouble

Leadership stumble brings financial chaos

I think it was the word “televangelist” that did it.  I think what they do is despicable. They pray on the weak-minded and frequently the weak-walleted.  Screw ‘em… glad their “empire” is crumbling.  Maybe we’ll make some enlightened progress in this country yet.

More of the article

By GILLIAN FLACCUS
Associated Press
Sunday, February 01, 2009

GARDEN GROVE, Calif. — Once one of the nation’s most popular televangelists, the Rev. Robert H. Schuller is watching his life’s work crumble.

His son and recent successor, the Rev. Robert A. Schuller, has abruptly resigned as senior pastor of the Crystal Cathedral [you've got to be fucking kidding me]. The shimmering, glass-walled megachurch is home to the “Hour of Power” broadcast, an evangelism staple that’s been on the air for more than three decades.

“Hour of Power”… they aren’t kidding.  Take a look as these numbers:

The church is in financial turmoil: It plans to sell more than $65 million worth of its Orange County property to pay off debt. Revenue dropped by nearly $5 million last year, according to a recent letter from the elder Schuller to elite donors. In the letter, Schuller Sr. implored the Eagle’s Club members — who supply 30 percent of the church’s revenue — for donations and hinted that the show might go off the air without their support.

Holy shit.  Eagle’s Club? Do they get to go to the front of the line when they die? 

Nevermind.  You just get the same crappy eagle pin, regardless of level: Regular Eagle, Golden Eagle, Platinum Eagle, or Diamond Eagle (allow 4-6 weeks for processing and shipping – not kidding).

“The final months of 2008 were devastating for our ministry,” the 82-year-old pastor wrote.

Awwww… sniff.

The Crystal Cathedral blames the recession for its woes. But it’s clear that the elder Schuller’s carefully orchestrated leadership transition, planned over a decade, has stumbled badly. [...]

Today’s increasingly fragmented media landscape is also to blame, said Quentin Schultze, a Calvin College professor who specializes in Christian media.

Church-based televangelism led by powerful personalities filled TV in the 1980s, but now only a handful of shows remain, he said. Among the struggling ministries are those of Oral Roberts and the late D. James Kennedy of “The Coral Ridge Hour” TV show.

I am praying that these collapse soon as well.

“I don’t see a scenario for maintaining a TV-based megachurch anymore. The days of doing that in the models of Schuller and Jimmy Swaggart and Oral Roberts are over,” Schultze said. “It’s amazing to me that the ‘Hour of Power’ was able to keep going as long as it did.”

Yay!!

He studied marketing strategies to attract worshippers and preached a feel-good Christianity, describing himself as a “possibility thinker” and spinning his upbeat style into a 10,000-member church and a broadcast watched by millions worldwide.

I’ll bet he did… just tell them what they want to hear!  If we aren’t cautious and wise, some asshole will gallop in and find a new way to package the religion message.

The church’s main sanctuary, the Crystal Cathedral, is a landmark designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson, with a spire visible from afar amid Orange County’s suburban sprawl. Thousands make the pilgrimage to see where the broadcast is filmed before a live congregation.

The Schullers consider the church a family business and the younger Schuller’s 2006 appointment was sanctioned by the Crystal Cathedral’s parent denomination, the Reformed Church in America.

Thank GOD they reformed because they were a bunch of sinning, theiving whores before and on their way to hell in a handbasket.

The church has since instituted a rotating roster of high-profile guest preachers, including Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church, the Chicago-area megachurch, and evangelist Luis Palau.

No one really gives a shit, but I figure if anyone goes searching for these guys, at least Google now has their names indexed. 

On the church Web site, concerned members and TV fans have posted hundreds of comments protesting the upheaval, with some indicating they have stopped giving or will leave altogether.

That’ll teach ‘em… no seriously, that will do it.  Definitely stop giving… and leave.

Melody Mook, a 58-year-old medical transcriptionist from El Paso, Texas, said she stopped her $25 monthly donation and is looking elsewhere for her spiritual needs. She said she dislikes the guest pastors.

I am very, very sad for Ms. Mook.  She should go volunteer at a homeless shelter or something to fill that spiritual gap.

“I feel hurt and confused and I’m not sure that I want to sit and watch when I know there’s problems beneath the surface,” she said. “You feel like you’re in somebody else’s church every Sunday.”

Others said they felt betrayed that the Schullers couldn’t put God before their family spat.

“They have not been forthcoming at all,” said John Dewart, an insurance agent from New Jersey who’s watched for 30 years. “Why can’t a father and son work together for the glory of God? That’s my big question.”

That’s an easy one.  Because God is not really first.  Power (ahem) is first and control follows the power.  Also, God doesn’t exist, so it’s difficult for Him to have any divine influence over this upheaval. At any rate, it’s too much to wish them eternal damnation, so I hope it merely destroys them financially so that they have to be productive for a living rather than spreading the message of personal powerlessness for three decades.

If you want to see something sad, click here:

Crystal Cathedral: http://www.crystalcathedral.org/

Crackpots.

Anyway… that’s all I really have for now.  Just wanted to revisit in writing my thoughts from February prior to the complete economic meltdown we are in now.  As I have said before, I am very moderate in my views so I have no particular issue with either party winning the election as long as they do the least amount of damage (the dreaded, obsolete two party system is a topic for another day).

So, my thoughts have turned to Obama’s first 100 days in the White House.  What will he do… and will we like it?

Check out the full story from Wired magazine.

read more | digg story

A few days ago, Peggy Noonan summed up why she thought Hillary has been able to muster a comeback of sorts, but also paints a vivid picture of what it would mean for her to succeed: 

She kept her own spirits up to the point of denial and worked it, hard, every day. She is hardy, resilient, tough. She is a train on a track, an Iron Horse. But we must not become carried away with generosity. The very qualities that impress us are the qualities that will make her a painful president. She does not care what you think, she will have what she wants, she will not do the feints, pivots and backoffs that presidents must. She is neither nimble nor agile, and she knows best. She will wear a great nation down.

Very well said, Peggy.