The Pope is an Asshole

The Vatican's transcript of Pope Benedict XVI's second encyclical, a letter to the church's bishops, reads: "The atheism of the 19th and 20th centuries is - in its origins and aims - a type of moralism. ... It is no accident that this idea has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice."

Oh, yeah? Well fuck him and his legions of brainwashed stooges.

The Humongle Dongle (what?) blog states it nicely, saying: I hold that the Catholic Church is the most evil organization on Earth. I have yet to observe any institution so consistently opposed to human progress and happiness. All of the Catholics I know suffer from the same mental illness: neurotic guilt. And it is an illness, albeit a self-imposed one.

What makes us human is the faculty of reason. It is our means of survival. Without survival, no value is possible. It follows that the exercise of reason is a precondition of value, and is thus the basic virtue of humanity. What does Catholicism have to say about this? Let's turn to the story of Adam and Eve. Before their encounter with the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve are blissful and happy, but live as animals. They have no knowledge of good and evil, no knowledge even that they are naked. God forbids them to eat the fruit that grows on the Tree of Knowledge, but the serpent entices them to do the opposite, and they gain knowledge (i.e. the faculty of reason). It is this that Catholicism (and all other Judao-Christian philosophies) place as original sin. According to this belief, our very means of survival, that which makes us human, is also that which makes us evil. According to this belief, humanity is evil at it's core. And this is what 1/3 of the world accepts as right and proper!

In the absence of reason as a virtue, Catholocism sets up a philosophical system we are told to accept on faith, for no other reason than that the Bible says it's true. If reason is our means of survival, and faith is the opposite of reason, then faith is our means of death.Catholicism also states that this is man's original sin, and that we are all in need of forgiveness because Adam and Eve ate from the Tree of Knowledge. What would you say if someone suggested you be sent to jail because your great-grandfather murdered someone? In our society, we reject the idea of ancestral guilt. Why should we accept it in regard to religious sin?

Catholicism places is system of ethics in consistent opposition to the requirements of man's happiness here on Earth. For instance: sex for pleasure is bad, pride is bad, sacrificing your own happiness for the benefit of someone else is good. It's no wonder that the conclusion drawn from the practice of this moral code is that happiness is unachievable to us here in this world.

Catholicism promises that happiness is to be achieved in some supernatural heaven. Tell me, where is the evidence that heaven even exists? If a man accepts this moral code and practices it, he finds himself leading an unsastisfying life. If a man accepts this moral code and doesn't practice it, he achieves all of the values he would need to be happy, but instead experiences guilt. It's a brilliant catch-22 they've set up for us. Follow your religion consistently, and your screwed; follow it inconsistently and your screwed as well.

"Thou shalt honor thy mother and father." Suppose one's parents don't deserve honor? According to this commandment, we should love, respect and obey our parents, without regard to their character. Is Hitler deserving of such love we usually reserve for parents? How about Charles Manson?

The Catholic Church consistently opposes all advances we make to improve human life. Catholics speak out against birth control, which enables us to experience sexual pleasure without the risk of creating a life which we are unprepared to care for. At one time, Catholics spoke out against vaccinations, open heart surgery, pacemakers, and many other ingenious advancements that have prolonged and enriched human life. And yet, this is the institution that many of us use as the barometer for virtue and good.

I reject Catholicism in its entirety. I hold that reason is not my original sin, but my original virtue. I hold that pride is not a sin, but the virtue that tells me my life is good and worth preserving. I hold that my life is to be lived for the achievement of my own values, and no portion of it is to be sacrificed to anyone else's wants, whether they be the wants of God, or of other men. I hold that Catholicism is evil at it's root, and all throughout. This doesn't mean that all Catholics are evil (although the high-ranking members of clergy certainly are). What it does mean is that many, many otherwise good people have been outwitted by the most horrendous impedement to their own happiness that has ever been devised: bad philosophy.