More sophisticated theology

People keep telling me that I have to read up more on real theology, you know, the stuff where smart old white guys sit around in seminaries and invent rationalizations for whatever the hell they want to believe. Unfortunately, I don't see any difference in principle (but hopefully, in outcome) between what, for instance, elders of the Mormon church or Catholic bishops say, than the ideas of Peter Lucas Moses, who has his own special interpretation of God's holy word.

A religious leader in North Carolina shot to death his four-âyear old step son because he thought the boy, Jadon Higganbothan, might be gay. The man, Peter Lucas Moses, 27, who also shot to death a 28-âyear old woman, may face the death penalty.

Moses, whom police stopped short of calling a cult leader, lived in a one-âroom home with nine children and three women. The 28-âyear old woman, Antoinetta Yvonne McKoy, Moses killed had been beaten and strangled with an extension cord before Moses murdered her. The day he did, she had escaped to a neighbor's house and begged her to use her cell phone. The neighbor did not call police because she claims she thought the woman might be mentally disturbed. She witnesses Moses dragging her into the house, and still never called police.

If you lack a rational, empirical rubric for evaluating truth-claims against real world evidence, how can you claim that Catholicism or Scientology or Mormonism or Islam or Lutheranism or Black Hebrews are any more right than anyone else?

There's a lot of attention being focused on the young child who was murdered for suspicion of being gay, but I find the murder of McKoy just as appalling. What did she do, you might wonder?

She was a failure as a woman, apparently.

McKoy found that she couldn't have children and wrote dairy entries begging "Lord" not to kill her, prosecutors said.

How primally Abrahamic…how primatological. The purpose of this religious construct is to control the fertility of its members, and again, there's not much difference between one cult and Catholicism, except for tactics. Catholic leaders tend to avoid shooting women in the head anymore, and instead shackle them to a lifetime of pumping out babies, but its the same miserable need to control women's lives.

Tags

More like this

Some wag in the British government made a half-joking tentative itinerary for the Pope's visit to England…and it got spread around and made some stuffed shirts very angry. The Rt Rev Malcolm McMahon, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Nottingham, was astonished and angered by the proposals. He said: "…
LisaJ here again. Wow. Now here's a story that just disturbed me to no end. Little Javon Thompson's mother, 21 year old Ria Ramkissoon, became a Christian at a young age, but when her local pastor disappointed her by pleading guilty to molesting young boys, she left her church and was taken in…
This is interesting at so many levels, but I thought you might find it pertinent to the ongoing discussion of whether or not we should assume that a person is good because they are very very religious, or check our wallets frequently and wear body armor when near them because they are very very…
The American electorate is apparently not too keen on having a Mormon as the next President. Compared to an atheist, however, a Mormon is a Highly Desirable Personage. Gallup Poll, 2/9- 11, 2007: If your party nominated a well-qualified Candidate for the White House in 2008 who was a ___, would…