Thou shalt not take the Lord's name and make him look bad in the media.

I recently received a phone call from my sister, wherein she tried to convince me that Catholics weren’t dicks. This is perhaps a bit misguided, because I’m not of the general opinion that Catholics are dicks. However, there are a lot of publicly loud dicks who are Catholic, and so I’m able to build a pretty compelling case against her. It’s easier to just cite Bishop Janusz Kaleta saying that gay and lesbian tourists are a provocation and an abuse of the Vatican’s buildings than it is to have a conversation about the greater meaning of public Christian douchiness.

I probably am of the opinion that religion is a bad thing for the masses. It discourages thoughtfulness, creates a certain dependency and, in some cases, breeds hysteria. But at the end of the day, I am a firm believer in people doing whatever they want. And if I’m honest with myself, most of the bullshit comes from people who are just dicks, and who happen to be religious and in the public eye.

Unfortunately, there are enough people being dicks in the name of Christianity, that I could probably post an update per day of examples. I will not. Rather, I will put them all in one blog post.

Over at the National Catholic Register’s blog, Matt Archbold writes an immature, mean-spirited column snidely criticizing Richard Dawkins’ Haiti relief fun, stating that “I always get a kick out of evangelizing atheists and how they’re so desperate to prove that they’re as good (and usually better) than us religious types.”

Archbold’s points play into weird, fucked up notion that religion is the only reason to be good, and that without God, everyone would just be shitty, greedy rapists and murders. This idea suggests that atheists are miserable nihilists.

I’m not going to go into why this is misguided and wrong because the argument itself is really petty. And, hey! It’s particularly petty  in the face of something as devastating as the situation in Haiti. Seriously? Pat Robertson suggesting that Haiti brought this tragedy on themselves by making a pact with the devil wasn’t enough? You need to criticize Richard Dawkins for having a charity?

Pat Robertson and Matt Archbold may not represent all Christians, but at a time like this, their ideas are disgusting enough to to stoke my outrage.

I know that religion is supposed to be about faith. The truly devout aren’t going to be worried about a couple douchebag outliers. But damn, Christians. You need some big named moderates out there.

[Via http://culturelobster.wordpress.com]