The Catholic Church is a political organisation

Sorry for the hiatus, I have been busy, lazy and lacking in writing inspiration. But enough excuses, now I am marking my return with a post on my favourite topic: Religion. Or is it politics? What's the difference?

Truth is, all organised religions are as much politics as they are religion. To hold power over the masses, politics is undeniably vital. And to say that they are not about power would be akin to saying Megan Fox is ugly. In other words, denial.

But here I point you to the sex abuse crisis the Catholic Church faces, and the Pope's avoidance of the issue. The Pope made no mention nor apology on the issue during the three hour Easter Mass. But what's worse is that some leaders of the Catholic Church called the sex abuse issue a "smear campaign aimed at the Pope." That is no different to what politicians say when their sex scandals were made public. Plus the fact that these were not allegations, these were cases where the clergies themselves have admitted to committing. What happen to the Church that preaches repentance? Clearly, politics is more important than God's forgiveness. Hypocrisy is a virtue in politics, remember?

To their credit, there were a few Archbishops who criticised the Church's handling of the issue. They deserve to be commended for that. I urge more Catholics to do the same.

Despite his silence towards the sex abuse crisis, the Pope did however, say that humanity faces a "profound crisis" and that it needs to undergo a "spiritual and moral conversion." I fully agree. However, I hope the Pope does not regard sex abuse and spreading HIV to others as morally acceptable. If he does not, then I think the Pope should tackle the problems in his own backyard first before trying to "fix the world." Like Michael Jackson said, look at the Man In the Mirror.

There are many other Catholic clergies more deserving to be the Pope than this idiot. The only way to make sense of his election is to draw parallels from how George Bush was elected: He played politics.

Playing God

(Yes. Title from latest Paramore. Don't get why all the hype though. It's good but not great to me. Maybe it's a Twilight type thing. Speaking of which, a forty plus year old lady was reading Breaking Dawn on the train. Oh My! It is the end of literature!)

This is an embarrassing attempt by a believer to defend religion.

A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target

Seriously. How can something like that match up to the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens or Singer?
The article is written by Greg Cravens, Vice Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University.
I honestly feel sorry for Catholics and students of that university. His credibility is gone. I doubt any believers themselves would think that the article would do them justice.

Since you are unlikely to read the article, I'll show you some of the comedy.
He started off with:
"Attacking Christians is not really clever, witty or funny."

but apparently attacking atheists is.
Why would anyone start an essay with that but go out of your way to try to be funny in their essay? Oh, hypocrisy!

Now for my favourite part:
"This is not to say that believers - and perhaps especially Catholics - do not get seriously irritated by atheists. They do, but not because atheists are fearfully clever or Wildely funny."

So he thinks Wilde is funny. Oh my, wait, Oscar Wilde? The atheist? HAHAHA!
Hypocrisy or misinformed?
Not to mention that in itself is a lame attempt at trying to be funny.

Next, for the most disgusting part:
"In an average week of atheistic bigotry in the Melbourne media, we can expect to learn that Catholics endorse child molestation, hate all other religions, would re-introduce the crusades and the auto de fe at the slightest opportunity, despise women, wish to persecute homosexuals, greedily divert public moneys for their own religious purposes, subvert public health care, brainwash children, and are masterminding the spread of the cane toad across northern Australia."

He brushed those claims aside just like that. He rather devote his essay to unsuccessful attempt at wit, which he says isn't cool.
Let's see, Catholic sex abuse cases. Oh, not much, just an entire Wikipedia article about it. Let's not count the ones for each country. He offered no solution, no apology, nothing. As though it was not an important matter. Maybe he's part of it. Like wise for all the other "sins" he mentioned. No solution, just as though they weren't true. Only an idiot will think atheists made those facts up. Who's against Gay Rights? Who's against Feminist Rights?

Let me remind you, the upcoming atheists convention in Melbourne in 2010 (largest ever in Australia, which is what sparked the increased number of debate between atheists and believers lately) is funded entirely privately. World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney cost the government $185 million.

What's fair? You tell me.

If believers want to be taken seriously, they ought to come up with better arguments. So far, I have yet to witness a believer defeating a non-believer in one of these debates on religion. Either it's ignorance, or just not as intelligent. I think the former, they aren't stupid.

Believers, if you got this far, don't get me wrong. Most atheists don't hate you. We simply do not like you imposing your believes on to us. Public money in a secular country should be spent without the interference of religion. Islamic country can spend it on Islamic activity, it makes sense, but not secular country. If you want to practice your religion, do so, but don't impose it on others. You don't see atheists attacking Buddhism.


Your friendly atheist,
TY

False Pretense

The more I come into contact with the private healthcare system, the more disheartened I get of the system in place. Everything in the system seems to depend on only one thing. Money. The general feeling I get from the people working in the system, be it the doctors, nurses or the receptionist, is that, no matter what happens, as long as there is a profit, everything's fine.

They don't really care if you live or die, as long as you pay your bills. For all they care, even they've killed hundreds of patients, it doesn't matter, as long as new patients keep coming and the law suits are under control. At the end of the day, it is the billion dollar profit they care about, not you, the patient. The patient is only a means to an end. The end, I would state again, is money.

For quite some time now, I have been a staunch supporter for a health care system whereby the universal health care coverage provided by the government should co-exist with the private sector. I believed such a system would bring about healthy competition to keep each other in check. At the same time, people who can afford the private health care should be allowed to opt for a faster, more efficient service, while the poor still get the essential health coverage from the government. But my recent revelations have led me to think that maybe this isn't such a good idea at all. After all, do you think a doctor would run as fast to a cardiac arrest of a patient he does not care about, as he would to a patient he sincerely cares for? No. In other words, you are jeopardising your health by submitting your care to such a doctor, motivated by only money.

However, little can be done as of now, because the public hospitals are terribly under-funded, has severe staff shortages, and many are operating at near capacity. These all lead to a decrease in quality of care. Hence, opting for public health care really isn't going to improve your care.

For as long as I can remember, the subject of money has been a taboo when an aspiring doctor is asked "why do you want to study medicine?" Be it during a medical school interview or when asked by a friend. Yet, the bureaucrats running the system are all about money. Maybe this hypocritical nonsense is something I have known for years, but have just been desperately hoping it wasn't true. Maybe it's time I get out of my denial phase and accept the fact that the health care system is just like any other industry, motivated only by money. The pharmaceutical industry has long since sold out. There is no reason why the health care industry, one of the largest industry in the world, would not.


TY
Next post is likely to be about secularism. Religious leaders sitting on government committees in a country that openly declares is a secular country, is plain absurd. And a picture post about Canberra too, if I'm not lazy.

Dazed and Confused

Hypocrisy, oh hypocrisy!

I just came across a blog accidentally 5minutes ago which was thoroughly fascinating. Why? Because the second latest post on the blog was about 40 hour famine, and the latest post was about...iPhone. Yes, iPhone.
Oh, the irony!
"People are starving, what are you doing about it? See I'm helping. Oh and I got a new iPhone too!"

Hang on folks, that's not all of the hypocrisy news for today. There's more.

"A new study has found more than 40 per cent of Australians believe it is acceptable to torture enemy soldiers in certain circumstances."

These are the same people who campaign for Tibet's freedom. The same people who want Mugabe to resign. I thought they stood for Human Rights. But now I can safely say they just like campaigning, joining rallies, wearing badges, and looking like they're useful to society. Fuck off.

And remember, Australians aren't the only ones. US has been pressuring China to stop suppressing the Uighurs and Tibetans all while operating this extremely humane prison known as Guantanamo Bay.

Don't you just love hypocrisies. I do.

"A man who moralises is usually a hyprocrite"
-Oscar Wilde

TY

Who's Gonna Save Us

After several weeks, I still cannot get over the fact that authorities renamed the latest Flu pandemic as H1N1 Influenza A, or something long and scientific along those lines.

The 1918 flu pandemic was named Spanish Flu, 1957 Asian Flu, 1968 Hong Kong Flu and 1978 Russian Flu.

So why the fuck can't the 2009 flu be named North American Flu?

Do you see the hypocrisy and the imbalance of power among seemingly "international" authorities like WHO? Now you know why so many countries are strongly against organisations such as World Bank and IMF.

Fuck the dictators who so vocally oppose dictatorships. Fuck the hypocrites.

On another note, do you think the people who coined the term common sense have seemingly little of it? Seeing as common sense is rather uncommon, it would have been stupid to name it as such, isn't it? It would have been better off as Seventh Sense. I'm pretty sure there are more people with sixth sense than common sense, whatever sixth sense is.

Now to weather, yesterday was the foggiest day I've seen around my area. Visibility was about 20-30m. It was fascinating yet slightly scary driving through the fog. Today isn't as foggy, there's even sun. Fogs are way cooler than floods though. Poor Queensland.

Wave of Mutilation

And now here are quotes from A Woman of No Importance I find worthy. Also by Oscar Wilde.

"The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years. To hear them talk one would imagine they were in their first childhood. As far as civilisation goes they are in their second."

"Taking sides is the beginning of sincerity, and earnestness follows shortly afterwards, and then human beings become a bore."

"The soul is born old but grows young. That is the comedy of life."

"The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future."

"The world is simply divided into two classes -- those who believe the incredible, like the public -- and those who do the improbable."

"There is no secret of life."

"All thought is immoral. Its very essence is destruction."

"Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess."


Ah, sometimes I wish I came up with these quotes!

TY

Comem Out And Play

An Ethical Dilemma

I will only go if there is alcohol. But if there is alcohol, I can't drive. Without driving I can't get home. If I drive I can't drink. If I don't drink, there's no point going.


This is when I need a girlfriend that doesn't drink and doesn't mind driving me home despite my home being way out of the way.

Sad Song

This post is about human perception, or rather, people with superiority complex.

Here, let the facts do the talking.

A research on medical students' attitude towards patients with mental illness shows that they react less positively towards them.

This is from ShockMD.com.

Concerns that the students appears to have with patients with mental illness ?

• Their perception that mental health patients will take up more time. This may be accurate as mental health care users do have higher consultation rates than the general population and take more time to evaluate these patients.
• They think that mental ill patients use more illegal drugs and they are concerned about child welfare of parents with mental illness. But substance abuse is generally found more frequently in young men with antisocial characteristics instead of schizophrenia. Children of parents with mental illness may be exposed to considerable psychosocial and genetic risks but this shouldn’t exclude the care for these patients, it should promote the health care.
• The students still have the perception that mental illness patients in the community have an
  increased risk of violence. This is not true. This is a common view fuelled by media coverage.
• In Schizophrenia the students presume compliance to be a bigger problem and they are less likely to undertake health promotion activities such as exercise and healthy diet.
• Students also thought that the patient with depression was deemed more likely to drink to excess than those with other diseases.

And,

Students need to appreciate that although patients with mental health problems may, as a group, be more difficult to manage than other patient groups, this does not mean that all – or even the majority – of such patients will be.

It comes to show just how we seem to think we are superior over others just because of factors such as social status, health status and education.
Sometimes, we really do need to be kicked back down to earth, before we realise how naive and close minded we were(are).


Robert P Dixon, Lesley M Roberts, Stephen Lawrie, Lisa A Jones, Martin S Humphreys (2008). Medical students’ attitudes to psychiatric illness in primary care Medical Education DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2008.03183.x


On a related note, I saw this book on Amazon
This is part of the review.

But Maté never judges. His book is a powerful call-to-arms, both for the decriminalization of drugs and for a more sympathetic and informed view of addiction. As Maté observes, "Those whom we dismiss as 'junkies' are not creatures from a different world, only men and women mired at the extreme end of a continuum on which, here or there, all of us might well locate ourselves."

Apparently he also points out the flaw in the "fight against drugs" system. Looks interesting. Unfortunately it isn't available at my local library. It seems he and I share the same ideology. One day, I'll have to get the book.

So to all you narrow-minded fucks, do look beyond your self-centred ego and open up your mind.

"The open-minded see the truth in different things, the narrow-minded see only the differences.”