Shit Anti-Choicers Say - The Gift From God

The October 2, 2012 edition of Newsday, Long Island's major newspaper, featured a letter-to-the-editor from a Marc de Venoge, who decried what he refers to as "[d]ecades of values-free... government and school policies" that "fail to treat the root cause" of teenage pregnancy.

The solution, according to de Venoge, is "to teach the basic notion that...any pregnancy is a God-created gift from the moment of conception." (Emphasis mine).   Of course, what de Venoge means by "any pregnancy" is every pregnancy, even if it results from rape or incest.

This echoes what former senator and failed Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said in an interview with CNN's Piers Morgan earlier this year:

"I believe and I think the right approach is to accept this horribly created — in the sense of rape — but nevertheless a gift in a very broken way, the gift of human life, and accept what God has given to you."

Let's set this straight right away.  Pregnancy is not a "gift from God," it's the consequence of a biological process.  Here are a few excerpts from WebMD's slideshow on conception:

"A man may ejaculate 40 million to 150 million sperm, which start swimming upstream toward the fallopian tubes on their mission to fertilize an egg. Fast-swimming sperm can reach the egg in a half an hour, while others may take days. The sperm can live up to 48-72 hours. Only a few hundred will even come close to the egg, because of the many natural barriers that exist in a woman's body."

"The fertilized egg starts growing fast, dividing into many cells. It leaves the fallopian tube and enters the uterus three to four days after fertilization. In rare cases, the fertilized egg does not leave the fallopian tube. This is called a tubal pregnancy or ectopic pregnancy and is a danger to the mother."  (Emphasis mine).

Does de Venoge believe that God is monitoring the progress of each sperm cell and intervening where necessary so that the favored sperm reaches and fertilizes the egg?  And if it is such a divine gift, what divine purpose is served by an ectopic pregnancy?

There's also a flip side to this "Gift from God" argument.   According to the CDC, as cited in this pregnancy fact sheet, "About 10 percent of women (6.1 million) in the United States ages 15-44 have difficulty getting pregnant or staying pregnant."  de Venoge and his ilk are basically saying that women who are unable to conceive apparently are unworthy of such a gift from the Supreme Being.

Well, thankfully, at least for some women who have trouble getting pregnant the old-fashioned way, there's help that does not require divine intervention.

From the same fact sheet:

"Infertility can be treated with medicine, surgery, artificial insemination, or assisted reproductive technology. Many times these treatments are combined. In most cases infertility is treated with drugs or surgery."

That's right.  Where God fails, human ingenuity can sometimes fill the gap.

But even if I were willing to entertain the claim that human pregnancy is a gift from God, what about pregnancy that results from sexual reproduction in other species?  Or does it only apply to humans?

Todd Akin, Republican nutbag member of the House of Representatives from Missouri, who is currently running to be a Senator from that state, not long ago notoriously said that during a "legitimate" rape, a woman's body has the means of mounting a biological defense against the rapist's sperm to prevent a pregnancy.

Seriously though, if our anatomy was truly the result of the handiwork of an Intelligent Designer, then the human female could have been designed to either accept or reject a man's sperm regardless of whether the sexual encounter was consensual or coerced.  Just imagine, there would be no problem of teen pregnancy or abortion!   Now that would be a really useful gift.

What The Hell Is He Talking About?

The October/November 2012 issue of Free Inquiry magazine, which I read last week, contains an article by an R. Georges Delamontagne titled "Overgeneralization: The Achilles Heel of Apocalyptic Atheism?"

Unfortunately, while portions of the issue are accessible on the Free Inquiry website, Delamontagne's article is not one of them, so I can't provide a link to the article itself.

In summary, Delamontagne takes atheist luminaries such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris to task for making claims about religion that "are not substantiated by findings deriving from research applying appropriate social scientific methodology and, thus, are prone to serious errors, the most common and flagrant being that of overgeneralization."

Though I believe Delamontagne makes some valid criticisms in his article, in the penultimate paragraph he proceeds to drop this turd bomb:

"The direct, confrontational, no-holds-barred assault upon organized religion by contemporary atheists is misguided - a terrible waste of time, precious talent, intelligence, and energy that has little chance to help bring about the realization of a life for humankind guided by humanist ideals."

All I could think was "What no-holds-barred assault on organized religion is he talking about?"  To the best of my knowledge, no prominent atheist figure has beat up a priest or a rabbi, torched a church or a mosque or disrupted Bible study classes.  We're not forming human chains around houses of worship to keep people from attending religious services. 

Or does Delamontagne consider public criticism the equivalent of a "no-holds-barred assault" of religion?

Based on my recent observations, it is the actions of people who identify with one religion towards peoples of other religions that has reached the level of assault.  It isn't atheists who threaten to publicly burn the Quran like Pastor Terry Jones.  It wasn't atheists who attacked Christians and Ahmadiyas in Indonesia or Shia Muslims in Pakistan.  Atheists had nothing to do with the massacre of Muslims in Gujarat in India.  I could go on an on (seriously, I could!) but I think I made my point.

Do some atheists overgeneralize or behave immaturely with regard to religion sometimes?  Sure, most of us have been guilty of it at times.  But does such rhetoric or behavior constitute an assault on organized religion?  I would reply with an emphatic no.  It seems to me that in criticizing atheists for overreaching sometimes, Delamontagne commits the same error himself.

The Electric Eye

During my years as a teenager in the Eighties, one of my favorite metal albums was Screaming for Vengeance by Judas Priest. The album opens with an instrumental track called "The Hellion" that then segues into the song "Electric Eye," which is about an aerial surveillance device whose "lasers trace everything you do" and whose purpose is to "keep the country clean."

Earlier this year, I was at a fundraiser held at a bar where a Judas Priest tribute band played "Electric Eye." Listening to the lyrics, it suddenly occurred to me how prophetic the song turned out to be.

Surveillance drones such as the Predator first entered the public consciousness during the war in Afghanistan.  Their use rapidly expanded from just surveillance to actual combat capability, being armed with Hellfire missiles.

Drones have since become commonplace in what is commonly called "The War on Terror" here in the United States. In places such as the mountainous region along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, which were generally inaccessible to our soldiers, drones became both our eyes for tracking terrorist targets and our means of killing them.

Osama bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan was frequently flown over by drones in the months before Seal Team 6 dropped in to pay him a visit.  Drones were also instrumental in the tracking and killing of Anwar al-Awlaki in Yemen. Awlaki's death generated a bit of controversy, because he was an American citizen who was basically executed at the orders of the President of the United States.

Our heavy reliance on drones for striking at Taliban commanders in the mountains of Waziristan in Pakistan is also a sore point in our country's relationship with Pakistan, particularly when a drone strike results in the deaths of Pakistani civilians. 

The excerpt below from the website livingunderdrones.org gives us an idea of what it is like to live in areas where our drones frequently operate:

Drones hover twenty-four hours a day over communities in northwest Pakistan, striking homes, vehicles, and public spaces without warning. Their presence terrorizes men, women, and children, giving rise to anxiety and psychological trauma among civilian communities. Those living under drones have to face the constant worry that a deadly strike may be fired at any moment, and the knowledge that they are powerless to protect themselves.

One could make a good case that the frequency of drone strikes in places like Pakistan and Yemen undermine the legitimacy of their governments, which are viewed by their citizens as stooges of the United States and at the very least tacitly complicit in the deaths of their own people at the hands of U.S. drone strikes.

While we Americans are used to looking at drones as something employed by our government abroad, there is also a growing concern that the potential use and abuse of drones by federal and local law enforcement authorities here at home.

The ACLU has a web page devoted to the issue of the use of drones in the United States here, including a link to the organization's report on domestic drones.

The ACLU advocates for putting in place rules "to ensure that we can enjoy the benefits of this new technology without bringing us closer to a 'surveillance society' in which our every move is monitored, tracked, recorded, and scrutinized by the government."

With the ubiqituous presence of cameras on our streets and buildings, I would argue that we are already living in a surveillance society.  Here in Nassau County where I live, there's hardly a major traffic intersection that does not have a red light camera.  Several years ago, I myself was a victim of one when I made a right turn on a red light at an intersection in Hicksville.  It was a Labor Day weekend and there was no cross traffic when I made the turn.  I had also mistakenly believed that the cameras only targeted cars that drove through an intersection when the light was red and that they did not target right turns.  Lesson learned.

In a sense, thanks to the prevalence of security cameras, drones, and even the huge numbers of mobile phones with photo and video capability that people carry around with them, we have become like God.  For millennia, many humans were told and believed that some deity watched ceaselessly over them and took note of everything they did.   You would be told that though you might be able to commit a crime without the knowledge of your fellow man, somebody up in the heavens would know and remember.  Now, we don't need to pay any mind to the unblinking eye of an invisible divinity when human technology has reached a level where we can now watch each other.

Little Cayman - July 21 - July 28, 2012 - Life Beneath the Surface

As with last year's Bahamas trip, I brought my Sealife 1200 underwater camera to take some pictures of the marine life and my fellow divers.  Unfortunately, I didn't get to take as many pictures as I had wanted to because I neglected to recharge the battery after one day's use.  The next morning, when I was getting myself ready, I saw to my dismay that the batter was low, so I managed to charge it for a few minutes before I had to leave.  The camera had enough juice for just a few pictures before it conked out again.

Still, I managed to get some decent underwater shots, the best of which follow below. 

First up, my favorite dive site of the trip, Jackson's Reef, which we visited on Thursday, July 26.  What I really liked about it was that it featured a large open white sand bottom surrounded by large coral formations with lots of cuts, nooks and crannies that I like to explore and swim through.

I like the way this one turned out, with fellow diver Bruce parallel in the photo with the barracuda. I have to confess that this was entirely accidental on my part, as Bruce just happened to be in the right spot when I pressed the button.

I spotted this lobster early on in the dive crawling in a narrow crevice bathed in shadow.  I attempted several shots, but due to the fact that I did not have strobes, the lobster was barely visible.  A few minutes later, I went looking for it again and found it out in the open.  The photo above is one of three I took of it from different angles.

Talk about a close encounter.  I was swimming above the coral when I found a narrow groove beneath me.  Being rather thin, I decided to descend into the opening.  When my fins touched down on the surface, I turned to my left and what do I see staring right into my face but this grouper you see above, with his mouth agape.  I fumbled for my camera as fast as I could and snapped this shot because I was worried he might swim away.  He was probably just as surprised by the encounter as I was.

On Friday the 27th, we revisited the Mixing Bowl, which we first dived the previous Sunday the 22nd.  I didn't take a lot of photos, but I was able to get a few interesting ones.

First was this sequence of shots I got of a Hawksbill turtle that I spotted after we had finished swimming along the reef wall.   I saw the turtle swim down towards this coral formation and stick its head deep inside as if it were trying to get something to eat.

I turned around and swam back to get a better view of it.  The turtle had by then changed position, with its body turned so that it was facing to the right of the direction it is facing in the picture above.  I managed to get right along side of it.

At that point, the turtle became aware of my presence and clearly didn't want to be in the presence of a large human being. 

And away it goes!

It took a lot of patience and failed attempts before I finally bagged this Yellowheaded Jawfish.  They're these cute little fish that dig holes in the ground, and when they feel threatened, they descend tail first into the hole.  Usually if you stay still and wait a few minutes, they'll come back out of the hole.

But the dive still had a surprise left in store for us.

A bunch of us spotted this Southern Stingray hiding himself undernearth the sand, with just his eyes sticking out.   I got myself into position and snapped this photo and then a split second later, the stingray shot up and darted away from us. 

I was able to get this photo of it as it was swimming away from us.

Besides the marine life, I also took a few pictures of some of my fellow divers under the water.

What should have been a good shot of David, Jeff's son, turned out poorly because on my first dive of the trip with the camera, I accidentally selected the option that you would use if the camera had strobes attached, so all of my shots on that dive were not properly lit.  David's turned out somewhat better than the others because he was closer to the surface than the other divers I photographed.

Susie, Larry's wife.  She was the one who organized the trip for us.  Even though Larry sold his dive shop, he and Susie still do dive trips with a bunch of us who were students or customers of his.

Like me, Tara became a regular starting with the Belize trip in 2009.  While she was a beginner like me back then, she has since gone on more trips and racked up more dives than I have. 

Here we have Ira, who I also first met on the Belize trip.

At the beginning of the dive at Mixing Bowl on the 27th, I spotted Larry above upside down blowing bubble rings out of his mouth while I was swimming some distance from the reef wall.  I got in a bit closer and hurried this shot because I didn't know how long he would keep doing it.  Had I been above him, the bubble rings would have been more visible.

I look forward to our next dive trip, which as I might have mentioned in a previous post, will likely also be in Litle Cayman, where I hope to improve my underwater photography skills.

Feeding the Hate Monster

This past Wednesday morning, I was walking up 7th Avenue to work from Penn Station.  When I was at Times Square, I glanced at a news ticker on one of the buildings and saw a headline that read that the U.S. ambassador to Libya had been killed.  I found myself doing a double take. 

When I got to the office, I went onto a news web site and read that the ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, and three other embassy personnel were killed in an attack by militants on the embassy in Benghazi. 

I had read about the crowd that had scaled the embassy walls at the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, Egypt the day before in protest of a film supposedly being made in the United States insulting the prophet Muhammed, but what happened in Libya took it to a whole new level.

Now, in the wake of the Libyan attack, further riots have taken place in Muslim countries throughout the Middle East.

When I read about the attack on the Libyan embassy on Wednesday morning, I have to admit I felt an incandescent rage.  Here was a clear cut example of people committing murder in the name of religion.  It filled me with a desire to see Muslim people get hurt in retaliation.  "Why not fire missiles from Predator drones at crowds of crazy religious fanatics as they protest outside of our Middle East embassies?  It would teach them a lesson."

As an atheist, I can't understand how people can get so violent over religion.  I suspect that less than 1% of the Muslims rioting over the movie has even seen the trailer.  All they likely know is that someone in America made such a blasphemous film, which means in their eyes that all Americans are responsible for it.  Evidently, they don't understand the concept of free expression that we have in this country, a right that applies to American Muslims as well.  If they had not rioted and gone crazy, I doubt I would have ever heard of this movie, which by all accounts is a cheap and shoddy piece of crap.

After my anger had abated somewhat and I got to thinking about it some more, I recalled an episode from the original Star Trek series titled Day Of The Dove.  In the episode, the crew of the Enterprise find themselves locked in perpetual combat with a band of Klingons on the ship, unknowingly goaded on in their hostilities by an entity that draws strength and nourishment from hatred and violence.  Below is a clip from the episode where Captain Kirk tried to convince the leader of the Klingons that they are all being manipulated to fight each other by the alien entity.



 

Eventually, the Enterprise crew and the Klingons drive the entity off the ship with laughter.  If only life were that simple, but hey, it's a television show.

The lesson that can be drawn from the episode though is that there are forces at work in our world constantly trying to manipulate us.  Of course, I'm not talking about aliens, demons or supernatural forces.  Such things are not necessary, when simple human malevolence will do.  There are groups of people in the Muslim world who want to harness hatred towards the United States, Israel, "the West," or just non-Muslims in general, so they seek to push the emotional buttons of their fellow brethren to urge them to violence.  Likewise, there are groups of people who seek to manipulate us to hate all Muslims and support violence against them.  Thus, we find ourselves all locked into a cycle of animosity and death. 

Hatred is a monster that requires constant feeding.  Some people are happy to feed the Hate Monster willingly, while the rest of us feed it without realizing it.  Tragically, knowing that the Hate Monster is real is not enough to stop most of us from feeding it.  It is difficult to resist the temptation to think that if we just punish the "bad guys" hard enough, they'll cower in fear and no longer be able or willing to try and hurt us anymore.  But even if by chance it works, there will always be some other group of people who will fill the role of the enemy who must be fought, guaranteeing the Hate Monster with an endless supply of food. 

I don't claim to have the solution to all of this.  All I can do is diagnose the sickness.

Little Cayman - July 21-28, 2012 - The Pool's Open

Diving from a land based resort had its differences from the liveaboard experience I was used to, though I couldn't say if the way it was done at Little Cayman Beach Resort is representative of all land resorts.

Early on the first morning, they take the gear bag you left outside the front door of your room and place it on the boat to which you have been assigned.  Our group was put on a boat called Holiday Diver II.  For most of the week, our crew members would be Clive, who grew up in Zimbabwe, and Aly, from British Columbia in Canada.  On our first day of diving, Sunday the 22nd, Clive had the day off and his replacement was another guy named Craig.

When you get on the boat, your bcd and regulator are already set up, with the rest of the gear stowed away underneath the seats.  When I first got on the boat, I couldn't find my where my stuff was at first.  And then to my horror, just when we were getting ready to shove off, I realized I had forgotten to put my dive skin in the gear bag, so I notified the crew and made a mad dash back to my room to get it.  While I had did my diving in the Bahamas last year wearing mostly a shirt and shorts, the main deck of the boat where our gear was stowed was uncovered and I wanted to make sure my pale skin was not exposed to the hot sun, so I wore the new full body skin I had bought.

The day's first dive established the routine that would follow for the week.  The boat would head out and turn west past the western tip of the island, then turn north and then east until we entered Bloody Bay Marine Park, off the north central part of the island.  All of our dives would be at one of the sites within the confines of the park.  We would do two dives in the morning, head back to the resort for lunch, and then go back out again for one dive in the afternoon.  On the two liveaboards I was on, most days there would be up to five scheduled dives.  The resort's dive shop did offer a night dive and a dusk dive during the week for an extra fee, but they were contingent on enough people signing up for them.

Once the boat would be moored at the dive site, one of the two crew members would give a dive briefing on a small white board.   Upon the conclusion of the briefing, one of them would invariably announce, "The pool's open."  When you were ready to go into the water, you would walk to the back of boat and start putting on your fins.  One of the crew members would bring over your bcd, regulator and tank and help you put it on.  Then you would get up and go in.

That first morning, I was a little edgy, as I had experienced problems on my first dives on both the Belize and Bahamas trip.  The site we were diving at was called Sarah's Set.  Like all of the first dives of each day, it would involve going down to the reef wall where we were permitted to descend as deep as 110 feet.

Thing did get off to a bumpy start, though thankfully not for me.  David, Josh's son, was the first to giant stride into the water, and as soon as he was in, his regulator started free flowing.  Then another diver in our group, Dick, had problems with his bcd.  But once everything got sorted out, we were finally on our way. 

I don't really remember anything remarkable about the first dive, though it was great to be back in the water again.  Everything went rather smoothly for me, and when I got back on the boat, I was relieved that my first dive jinx had come to an end. 

We also adopted a new member into our group.  The first evening we were at the resort, during dinner, my wife and I noticed a young Asian female by herself, who I could have sworn was only a teenager.  She ended up being assigned to our boat, and on the way to our first dive, Ira and I struck up a conversation with her.  Her name was Jill, and it turned out she was actually from the Philippines (seeing her from a distance, I had thought she was Korean) and was now living in Canada.  She had noticed my wife the previous night and noticed she was Filipino as well. Jill was also much older than my initial impression, being a few days shy of turning 33.  She would be diving with us for a couple of more days before leaving to spend the rest of the week at Grand Cayman.  She had a low key but friendly and ingratiating personality to her and before she left for Grand Cayman, she had expressed an interest in joining us on our next diving trip in 2013.

Little Cayman - July 21 - 28, 2012: Yeah, Another Goddamn Scuba Diving Trip

This year, the destination for our group's annual summer scuba diving trip was the Little Cayman Beach Resort on the island of, well, you probably guessed it, Little Cayman.

Unlike the previous two diving trips I went on, which were on liveaboard boats, this time we would be staying at a resort on the land, except of course when we went diving.  Also, this time I took the entire family with me.  I told my wife they had a spa and a hot tub, which was all she needed to hear.

One improvement over last year's trip was that our flight was out of JFK airport instead of Newark.  Since my wife and I both had monthly LIRR passes, we decided to use public transportation to get to JFK while the rest of the group either drove or paid to ride in a van.  Most of the gang from last year's trip was in attendance, Larry, Sue, Tara, Nina, Jeff, Ira, and Bruce.  Also joining us was Jeff's son David, George, who the rest of the group knew from the Honduras trip that I didn't go on in 2010, Dick, who I remembered from the Belize trip in 2009, and a newcomer named Chris, who was one of Larry's recent students.

The flight down to Grand Cayman went rather quick and smooth, about three hours.  We then had to wait the better part of the afternoon for our connecting flight to Little Cayman.  If I recall correctly, it was originally scheduled to depart around 2:30, but didn't end up leaving until 3:45.  The flight to Little Cayman was very short though, about 45 minuters, and we got to the resort around 5 p.m.

In the lobby, we each took turns getting our room keys and filling out the necessary paper work.  After the wife, kids and I got settled into our room, I went down to the resort's resident dive shop, Reef Divers, to complete their required forms.  When I returned to my room, as instructed, I left my dive gear in a gear bag outside by the front door.  We were in one of the Oceanfront rooms on the second floor, with a balcony facing towards the beach to the south.

Our first evening was rather uneventful.  We ate dinner and my two kids made the most of the resort's small pool.  The next morning, after breakfast was served, would be diving time.

A Couple of Random Observations

Some of my fellow atheists like to point out that if God is punishing America with tornadoes and hurricanes and so forth because he is angry with us for things like gay marriage, abortion and secularism, then why do these natural disasters frequently afflict parts of the country where so many Gawd fearin' types live.

After all, if God hates homosexuals, then why not cause gay men to spontaneously combust whenever they engage in acts of sodomy?  Why not strike down abortion providers with bolts of lightning whenever they are about to perform an abortion? 

Then I had that "Eureka!" moment.  There's a reason why God afflicts the good Christians of America with natural disasters.  And that is because he is just like the drill sergeant in the movie Full Metal Jacket.   When Private "Pyle" continues to mess up in spite of the drill sergeants constant badgering and cajoling, the drill sergeant tries a new tack, as shown in the scene in the Youtube clip above.  He announces to the platoon that he will no longer punish Pyle for his mistakes.  Instead he will punish the rest of the platoon, which causes them to beat poor Private Pyle with bars of soap wrapped in towels.  Consequently, Pyle becomes a better Marine, well, at least until he ends up shooting the drill sergeant and then himself.

So maybe that is why God punishes the Bible Belt states of America with wild fires, droughts and other natural disasters.  They are not doing their job to get the rest of us sinners right with Jesus.  He is just trying to motivate them to try harder to ban abortion, roll back same sex marriage and eliminate access to contraception.  If that is the case, I think God needs to give them some more motivation.

On a different note, I recently received the 25th anniversary edition of Condé Nast Traveller magazine.  The magazine has a fold out page with some travel related facts, including comparison of some statistics from 1987 and 2012.  For example, in 1987, there were 701 million rolls of camera film sold in the United States, whereas just 15 million rolls were sold in 2012.  While the number of rolls of film sold has obviously plummeted, the year 2012 still had 5 months left to it as the magazine went to press, so the total for the year could go up to maybe 25 million.

The foldout section also lists the five highest and lowest states by percentage of population with passports. 

The five highest states by percentage are:

New Jersey: 50%
Massachusetts: 46%
New York: 45.2%
Connecticut: 43.5%
New Hampshire: 43%

And the five lowest states by percentage of the population are:

Mississippi: 13.1%
West Virginia: 13.9%
Arkansas: 16.6%
Alabama: 17%
Kentucky: 17.2%

The top five states are all located in the northeast of the United States.  I was surprised that California didn't make the the top five, as I would imagine that states with a high percentage of foreign born U.S. citizens would be more likely to have a greater percentage of passport holders, as foreign born Americans and their families would travel frequently to their countries of origin. 

The bottom five states are mostly rural with less ethnic and religious diversity in their populations. Citizens of these states also travel abroad less, which also minimizes their exposure to peoples of other cultures.    Maybe that is what Sarah Palin meant when she spoke of those little pockets of what she called the "real America."

The Platform Preacher

When you walk the streets of Manhattan, it's not uncommon to see some street corner preacher type bellowing out Bible verses and exhorting people to accept Jesus.  While I find it slightly annoying, it's tolerable when you are just walking by and will soon be out of ear shot of windbag for Jesus.

This morning at the Hicksville train station was a different situation.  I had ascended the platform and made my way towards the middle to catch the 7:57 AM.  The 7:57 is a double decker train that is much shorter than the rest of the train, so you have to walk all the way to the middle of the platform just to be able to be in position to enter the rear car.

Anyway, seconds after finding a spot to stand and await the train, I hear not to far from me a man talking in a loud voice.  I looked to my left and saw a young Asian man holding a Bible in one hand and reading out loud to no one in particular.

I sighed and walked over to him.  I don't recall my exact words, but in general I tried to tell him that he was making a nuisance of himself because he wasn't taking into consideration whether or not the other people on the platform wanted to hear what he had to say and that most of the people within the range of the voice already knew what the Bible was anyway.  He stopped to listen to me and for a brief moment, I thought my entreaty had gotten through to him.  However, no sooner had I walked back to where I had previously been standing before he resumes his Bible bloviating.

I let out an even louder sigh, more of a groan actually, and after about a minute I walked back to him again.

I tried a different tack this time.  I explained to him that some of the people on the platform were Jews, Muslims and Hindus and that it was insensitive to their feelings that they should have to hear him when they were basically a captive audience.  Because they were waiting for their train, they had no escape until the train pulled in. Asian Preacher Man replied what he was doing was motivated by love.

"Maybe to you it might be," I replied, "but that is not how they perceive it."

I asked him how he would feel if a Muslim started preaching from the Koran outside of his church, though in retrospect, a better example would be if the Muslim bellowed his Koran verses at Asian Preacher Man and his friends at their church picnic at a public park.  He didn't really respond to that and I don't remember what else he said.

I continued by acknowledging that I understood how he felt, that he believed he was in possession of some wonderful truth that he felt he had to share with the rest of the world.  I pointed out to him that reading from the Bible in public didn't accomplish anything useful and that his time would be better put to helping to feed homeless people or picking up litter.  Unfortunately, at that moment, the train was pulling in to the station and the sound of it would have drowned out any further conversation.  I shook his hand and told him that I wasn't trying to put him down but just to try and make him understand that he should take other peoples feelings into consideration.

I stepped into the train car without looking to see if he was getting on too or if he was going to remain behind to continue with his Bible reading.

While I doubt I swayed him from conducting any repeat performances in the future, I can still hope that I had an impact.

Though it isn't exclusive to religious people, it can't be denied that quite a few individuals, pumped up by their zealous faith, seem to feel it gives them a license to make a public spectacle of themselves.  The atheist equivalent would be to stand outside of a church and accosting people on their way to and from mass, telling them that they're wasting their time and that the god they pray to does not exist.  That would be an incredibly dickheaded thing to do.

The vast majority of us just want to go about our daily business without being disturbed by others.  I don't think it is too much to ask for.

I Guess They Didn't Pray Hard Enough

From Bangladesh, more evidence that being a devoutly religious person doesn't result in your God enveloping you in some kind of magic shield to protect you from harm.

"At least 13 devotees have been killed by lightning outside a mosque in northeastern Bangladesh.

Local police chief Bayes Ahmed says 20 other people were injured by the lightning late Friday in Sylhet district. The victims were struck by the lightning as they were exiting the mosque following special prayers tied to the holy month of Ramadan."

How To Tell Your Religion Was Created By A Man

Here is Augustine on the creation of the human race:

"Therefore, God created one sole individual, not that he was meant to remain alone deprived of human companionship, but in order that the unity of society and the bond of harmony might mean more to man, since men were to be united not only by the likeness of nature but also by the affection of kinship.  God did not even wish to create the woman who was to be mated with man in the same way that He created man, but, rather, out of him, in order that the whole human race might be derived entirely from a single individual."*

* City of God, Book XII, Chapter 22.

Augustine and the Limits of Knowledge

About two and a half years ago, I wrote this post about Augustine and his famous work City Of God.  Unfortunately, at the time, I was reading a copy I had borrowed from the library and I never really got more than halfway through it before I had to return it.

Several months ago I purchased my own abridged version of City Of God and finished it.  To my annoyance, some of the parts that were cut out, based on the brief descriptions of their content, looked like they would be of interest to me and I shall have to see if I can find the full version online so I can read them.

At any rate, one of the things that provided me some amusement was reading what Augustine got so horribly wrong, particularly when he spoke with such authority and assurance about the Earth. 

Thus, in Book XVI, Chapter 17, Augustine declares that "Europe and Africa together take up one half of the world and Asia the other."

Augustine evidently did not know how vast Asia was, as he writes of an Assyrian ruler who "subdued the whole of Asia except India."  Evidently, the ancient Japanese, Chinese, Koreans and Indonesians erased their conquest by the Assyrians from their historical records!

Our learned Christian scholar, in Chapter 9, also dismissed "the nonsense about their being antipodae, that is to say, men living on the far side of the earth, where the sun rises when it sets for us...that is utterly incredible."

He goes on to add "it does not follow that the other hemisphere of the earth must appear above the surface of the ocean; or if it does, there is no immediate necessity why it should be inhabited by men.  First of all, our Scriptures never deceive us, since we can test the truth of what they have told us by the fulfillment of predictions; second, it is utterly absurd to say that any men from this side of the world could sail across the immense tract of the ocean, reach the far side, and then people it with men sprung from the single father of all mankind."

So, by adhering to closely to his holy book, Augustine effectively rules out the existence of Australia and the Americas and the people who inhabited them, sprung from common human ancestors, though of course not a Biblical Adam.

I'll have more on Augustine's City Of God to add in the coming days.

Well, Isn't That Special?

One of my Facebook friends, presumably Catholic, posted this picture today.

From a Catholic point of view, this photo of a very young child kneeling in devotion likely elicits geysers of warmth and fuzziness.  Isn't it so inspirational!

I, on the other hand, being an atheist, have a totally different perspective.  Was she told to kneel like that solely for the purpose of taking the picture?  Was she just imitating what she saw other people in the church doing without knowing the reason for it?  Even if it was spontaneous, she is way too young to have developed an intellect capable of determining for herself whether what she has been taught to do in a church really causes some deity in the heavens to smile down upon her.

There Can Be Only One?

When my wife and I met with Nino and his wife Lily, one topic I raised was Taiwanese independence. 

I have long been of the opinion that the people of Taiwan should have the right to determine their own destiny, and if that means being a de jure rather than a de facto independent country, then so be it.

If only it were so simple.

The problem lies with the government of the Peoples Republic of China on the mainland across the Taiwan Strait.

From the website of the PRC's embassy:

"There is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is part of China."

Well, that doesn't leave much room for ambiguity!

"The lingering civil war which was imposed on the Chinese people in late 1940s and more importantly the intervention by foreign forces against the reunification of China led to a temporary state of separation between the two sides of the Taiwan Straits after the People's Republic of China was founded. But the status of Taiwan as part of China's territory has never changed, nor has the Government of the People's Republic China ever given up its jurisdiction over Taiwan."

While I don't claim to be an authority on Chinese history, I do know quite a bit.  When you look at maps of the territories controlled by the major Chinese dynasties for nearly two millennia, starting with the Han and up to the Ming, no Chinese ruling dynasty exercised any control over Taiwan.  The island would not factor at all in Chinese history until the Manchu invasion in the mid-17th century, when Ming loyalists expelled would be Dutch colonizers and established a government in exile that lasted roughly two decades.  The Manchu Qing invaded the island in 1683 to quash the Ming loyalists but did not take serious steps to integrate Taiwan into its empire until the latter part of the 19th century.  Alas, by that time, Japan had modernized and adopted an expansionist foreign policy.  After crushing China in the Sino-Japanese War, Taiwan was ceded to Japan in 1895.  The Qing dynasty that had ruled Taiwan largely as an absentee landlord for little more than two centuries would itself be toppled in 1911.  Taiwan would remain a Japanese colony until the end of World War Two in 1945, when it was taken over by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-Shek.  After losing to the Communists, Chiang and the remnants of his government fled to Taiwan in 1949.

Therefore, it has been about sixty three years since a mainland based Chinese government exercised any authority over the island of Taiwan.

While the PRC government is adamant that the island should be reunified with the mainland, with every year that passes by, the number of people in both real and relative terms in Taiwan who never lived under a mainland based government grows ever larger.  During that time, martial law and one party rule in Taiwan has given way to democracy.  Why should the people of Taiwan want or be expected to reunify with an authoritarian one party dictatorship?   It's like telling an orphaned child that there is no choice except to go live with a drunken, belligerent uncle he or she has never met but who has a reputation for abusive behavior.

In a perfect world, the PRC government would announce that if the people of Taiwan voted in favor of being their own independent country, the PRC would respect their wishes.

Unfortunately, the mainland is a prisoner of its "one China" policy.  Even if some enlightened leaders of the Communist Party privately were willing to recognize an independent Taiwan, they could never advocate such a position publicly.  For six decades, the Communists have indoctrinated the people of mainland China in the unwavering position that Taiwan is an integral part of China.  Just about every major nation has what I call "the bullshit story it tells itself."  It's a national mythos that a government and its people tell themselves to make them feel special. For the PRC, a good deal of the Communist Party's legitimacy derives from its position on Taiwan and it has to make a constant show of actions and announcements to show that it is working towards the goal of reunification.

The other part of the problem was that for decades after fleeing the mainland, Chiang Kai-shek maintained that his was the sole legitimate government of China.  Chiang even harbored ambitions of retaking the mainland by force.   Perhaps, had Chiang offered to recognize the Communist government on the mainland in return for recognition of Taiwan independence, history might have turned out differently, though I recognize this is purely conjecture.  Then again, Chiang based his legitimacy on being the sole legal ruler of China, and just like the PRC, the Nationalists on Taiwan were a prisoner of their own "bullshit story."  In his pro-American independence tract, Common Sense, Thomas Paine rhetorically asked with regard to British rule of the American colonies, shall an island rule a continent?  By the early 1970's, Chiang's government faced this same dilemma as the United Nations gave the China seat to the Communist mainland.  Despite having all of the trappings of a state, Taiwan was no longer recognized as one except by a couple of dozen poor countries in the developing world whose recognition was purchased with large dollops of foreign aid.

The current position of Taiwan on its political position is best summed up as follows:

"The Republic of China was founded in 1912 on the Chinese mainland. At that time, Taiwan was under Japanese colonial rule as a result of the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki, by which the Qing court ceded Taiwan to Japan. The Nanjing-based ROC government began exercising jurisdiction over Taiwan in 1945 after Japan surrendered at the end of World War II.

The authorities in Beijing have never exercised sovereignty over Taiwan or other islands administered by the ROC government in Taipei. There are differences of opinion among ROC citizens over whether it is best to maintain this status quo indefinitely or work out a different relationship with the Chinese mainland. Regardless, they share the conviction that their future must be based on freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and that only they have the right to decide their own future."

It is, in my opinion, a reasonable position that ideally would be accepted if Taiwan were negotiating with a reasonable party.

Instead, the status quo resembles the Joker's line from The Dark Knight, with an unstoppable force, being mainland China, butting heads with an immovable object, which is the desire of the overwhelming majority of the people of Taiwan not to submit to mainland rule.

I don't claim to know what the future holds for Taiwan.  I suppose the independence minded people of Taiwan hope that the longer they avoid coming under mainland rule, the greater the chance that changes in the mainland will one day result in the mainland willing to recognize the island's independence.  On the other hand, the mainland likely anticipates that with each passing year, it's military and economic power compared to Taiwan grows larger and larger, until finally the people of Taiwan will have to bow to the inevitability of reunification with the mainland and accept a status along the lines of Hong Kong's One Country Two System's model.

My question would be "Why must there be only one China?" After all, there is no such thing as one German nation. For nearly half a century, there were two Germanies. While East and West Germany reunified in 1989, Austria is also a German country. No one today seriously maintains that Austria should become part of Germany. Prior to the German unification in the 1870's under the kaiser, the Germans were used to living under a multitude of separate dominions.  The idea of a single German reich did not even become a realizable goal until Adolf Hitler annexed the Sudetenland from Czechoslavakia and incorporated Austria into Germany in 1938.  As even the most casual student of history knows, this One Germany did not outlast the Second World War and the idea itself has been consigned to the ash heap of history. 

Only time will tell with Taiwan, though my gut tells me that the island will eventually move towards some kind of unification with the mainland, though it will likely take the form of some kind of economic integration, with political integration being contingent on the mainland adopting democratic reforms such as allowing multiple political parties and popular elections.  The mainland could also attempt to take the island by military force, though hopefully cooler heads will prevail on both sides.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 3-5, 2011 - There And Back Again

Saturday, September 3rd, was our last full day in Taipei.  The day's itinerary would take us to the northern party of the city. 

First stop, the Miramar Entertainment Park, which boasts the largest movie screen in Asia.  We rode the MRT line from the Technology Building station a couple of blocks west of our hotel north to the Jiannan Road station, which is just a short walk away from  the Miramar Entertainment Park  Its other main attraction is an insanely large ferris wheel, and below is a picture of the view you get from the Jiannan Road MRT station.   Unfortunately, the wife and kids are just silhouettes, but you get an idea of the size of the ferris wheel. 

And naturally, we rode the ferris wheel.

As you can see in the background, there's quite a view from the top of the ferris wheel.

After the ferris wheel was finished, the dilemma we faced was what to do next.  For a building called the Miramar Entertainment Park, there really wasn't much there that was particularly entertaining.  Turns out the movie theater there was showing Harry Potter The Deathly Hollows Part 2 in 3-D, so the kids said they wanted to see it, even though they had already seen it back home in the US in 2-D.  I relented, since there really wasn't anything else to do.  But first, we had to attend to our stomachs so we walked across the street to another building that had lots of restaurants in it.  We ate in an Italian restaurant, the name of which escapes me, though the food was satisfying.  Then we walked back to Miramar to see the Harry Potter movie.

For the evening, the next item on the agenda was to take the bus to the National Palace Museum, which houses a large collection of Chinese art and artifacts that the Guomingdang brought over with them to Taiwan when they fled the mainland.  On Saturday evenings, the museum is open free to the public after 6:30 p.m.

I had planned for us to take the bus there from the bus stop on Beian Road across from the Jiannan Road MRT station.  Based on my reading, it looked like the number of the bus that takes you to the museum was supposed to stop there.  So we waited, and we waited, and we waited, as bus after bus passed by or stopped that had a different number.  Finally, after about a half hour had passed, a small bus with the number stopped and we got on.  I told the driver we wanted to go to the National Palace Museum and away we went.

The route took us through the Ziqiang Tunnel and the ride lasted about 10 or 15 minutes.  By the time we got there, it was already dark and it was about 7:30 p.m.  I asked the bus driver what the fare was and for some reason he seemed confused and told us not to worry about, so the ride didn't cost us anything.

So in we went.  There were lots of intricate lacquer curio boxes on display.  Another exhibit that I remember was a recreation of what would have been a study room in a Qing official's home.  I also recall a series of paintings or drawings that told a story.  To my annoyance, my daughter kept complaining that she was bored.  I understood that the museum wasn't exactly her kind of place, but that since we had done things that she wanted earlier in the day, it was her turn to let her mom and I have some time to do things that we wanted to do. 

Before we knew it though, it was already approaching 8:30, and the museum was getting ready to close.  In our brief time there, we only managed to view the exhibits on the first floor.

I managed to get this shot of the outside of the museum at night before we made our way to board our bus.

When we got back to the stop near the Miramar Entertainment Park, we decided to have dinner before heading back to our hotel.  The Italian restaurant we ate at earlier for lunch was closing when we got back, so we ended up dining in a different restaurant in the same building called the Royal Host (amazingly, my daughter remembered the name!).  Both my wife and my son were quite tired and nodded off before our food was brought to our table.

We also took a couple of shots with the ferris wheel in the background at night.

And with that we took the MRT back to Xinyi and trudged back to our hotel.

The next morning we checked out and were driven back to Taoyuan Airport.  I snapped a photo of this building we passed that looked interesting, though I don't know what it was.

UPDATE: As Nino helpfully informed me in the comments section, this interesting building in neoclassical Chinese is the Grand Hotel.

Finally, back at the airport, I watched as our EVA Air plane was being made ready for the flight back to Hong Kong.

By the time we got back to Hong Kong and checked into our room at the Regal Airport Hotel, it was around 4 p.m.  I was hoping we could do something, like maybe do a dinner cruise while watching the Symphony of Lights presentation in the harbor.  I even called and made reservations for us.  But the wife and kids fell asleep.  I figured it was best to let them get their rest and by the time they woke up, it was already too late to ride the Air Train into Central to pick up our tickets and board the boat (luckily, I didn't have to give my credit card info when making the reservations!).  So we ended up walking over to the airport and eating dinner in an Italian restaurant that served pretty good food, though again I can't remember the name of it.

After that, we called it a night.  Before we checked out of our hotel the next morning, September 5, the kids were able to get some swimming time in the hotel's pool.  With that, we checked in for our flight back to New York.   We had a moment of brief aggravation when we were told that we could not bring in our carry on a snow globe with our picture in it from the Ngong Ping 360 cable car ride from two weeks earlier for security reasons.  The helpful staff of Cathay Pacific were able to box it for me and check it in as additional, albeit very small, luggage that we would need to pick up at the baggage claim back at JFK Airport in New York.

When we arrived back home in New York, it was still September 5.  While you lose a day when you fly from New York to Hong Kong, the benefit of flying back to New York is that it is still the same calendar day thanks to the time zone differences.  Having made the trip two times previously, I wisely had scheduled a day off from work for September 6 so that I would be able to get some extra sleep and readjust to the local time.  And thus ended our third Asian vacation.

The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 2, 2011 - Back To The Far Eastern Plaza Hotel

After we had our lunch at Modern Toilet, I was hoping we could visit the 2-28 Peace Park, which is located a few blocks east of the Ximen MRT station.  If memory serves though, the wife and kids were a bit tired and I think that was when one of my son's sneakers started to come apart.  So, we rode the MRT back to the Xinyi district and walked back to our hotel.

It was a hot afternoon, and it seemed the right time for the wife and kids to try out the Far Eastern Plaza's rooftop pool.

"We're swimmin' on top of the world, mama!"

For reasons I don't recall, I didn't end up swimming in the pool and wasn't there for most of the time.  I might have been checking my e-mails on one of the computers that were made available to hotel guests.  Actually, now that I think about it, I did check my e-mail to make sure that our plans were on for later in the evening with two very special guests (see below).

Of course, our trip wouldn't be complete without a picture of my wife in a swim suit with Taipei 101 in the background.

After the pool, we walked back to the Linjiang Night Market that we had visited the night before to buy new sneakers for my son to replace the ones he had worn out.  We also ate noodles from the same noodle stand and then headed back to our hotel so that the wife and I would have time to shower and get ready for a special meeting.

For those of you who have read through all of my posts on Taipei so far, you'll know that I often referenced Nino's blog My Kafkaesque Life for ideas on where to go in Taipei as well as other helpful information about the city.  I thought it would be a nice idea to invite him and his wife Lily to meet up with us at the Far Eastern Plaza's Marco Polo Lounge.   To my pleasant surprise, he accepted our offer.

While the bulk of my blogging is atheist related, for all the years I have been blogging, the only atheist bloggers I recall meeting in person were Adam Lee of Daylight Atheism and Shalini Sehkar (whatever happened to her anyway?) at a Center for Inquiry event in New York City a few years ago.  So, it was pretty cool to get to meet a blogger in Taipei whose blog was such a valuable resource for me.

My wife and I headed up to the Marco Polo Lounge around 9-ish local time to meet them.  I recall that the door to get into the lounge was a hidden door that the hostess outside pushed open for us, otherwise we might not have noticed it.  It sort of felt like walking into the lair of some James Bond villain.  The lounge was rather crowded and we couldn't get a table by the window for a view of Taipei at night like I had hoped, but you can't get everything you want, right?

A few minutes after my wife and I got settled in, I saw Nino and Lily come in.  I actually recognized her better, because I saw a few pictures of her on Nino's blog, whereas the few pictures of him on his blog generally show him from a distance or at an angle, probably because he is the one who takes most of the pictures. 

We had some rather pleasant conversation for about an hour and half or so.  Since Nino is from Slovenia, I told him about my grandmother who was Slovenian and came from a town on the Austro-Slovenian border and joked that we might be distantly related.  Nino and his wife talked a bit about their life and jobs in Taipei.  They seemed to get a kick out of my caricatures of ignorant American voters who believe that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim Kenyan commie atheist who wants to impose sharia law on the United States.

One of the lounge waiters was kind enough to take a group photo of us to memorialize the occasion.

I was glad they were able to meet up with us.  Besides having the opportunity to meet with a fellow blogger, it was also a nice little break from the kids for the wife and I and to hang out with some grown ups for a change!

And then it was off to bed with one more full day in Taipei ahead of us.  











The Philippines/Taiwan Trip - September 2, 2011 - Lunch In A Toilet Bowl

While going through Nino's blog looking for places to check out during our visit to Taipei, there was one that stood out for me above all the others, a theme restaurant called Modern Toilet.  I showed the pictures to my kids, and they were both excited to go, especially my daughter.  My wife though, wasn't particularly keen on the idea.

After planning our visit to Longshan Temple for that morning, I figured Modern Toilet would be ideal for lunch, as it was only one stop away on the MRT line.  The MRT is a lot like New York City's subway system, with different lines taking you to different parts of the city.  Our trip to Modern Toilet would be our first on Taipei's MRT. 

Nino's post on Modern Toilet contained a helpful map on how to get to the restaurant from the Ximen station.  Unfortunately, I didn't print it to take on the trip with me.  I remembered to go north west for a couple of blocks and then go left to head west at the Starbucks.  So far so good.  I figured that if I kept walking, I would see it eventually.  But I didn't.  So we trekked north a block and then west with no sign of Modern Toilet.

At a street corner, I spotted a group of four young Taipei guys sitting on their scooters chatting with one another.  I figured maybe they could tell me how to get to Modern Toilet.  I approached them and they could see that it was obvious I was a tourist.  I asked the one closest to me if he knew where Modern Toilet was.  He said he didn't know, so I thanked him and walked back over to my wife and kids to try and figure out what to do next.  While we were talking amongst ourselves, another one of the scooter guys walked over to us and told us to follow him.  He led us one block south and then we turned right to head west.  And then, there we were, in front of Modern Toilet.  For all I knew, we could have walked past it earlier, as it was not particularly conspicuous.  The restaurant is not actually at street level.  There's really just a door that leads you into a small room.  Inside is a stair that leads you up to the next level which is the first of several floors occupied by the restaurant.  We thanked the scooter guy profusely and headed in.

As you can see, it was already a big hit with the kids before we had even made it up the stairs.

Because of the passage of time, I don't remember what my wife and I ate.  We both had one of the hot pots.  Mine had seafood in it.  I don't remember what she had.  I believe the kids had the spaghetti.

As you can see, the novelty of Modern Toilet is that you sit on toilets instead of chairs, you eat your food out of miniature toilet bowls, and you sip your drinks out of plastic urinal cups.

Much to my delight, my wife really got into the spirit of things.

And then for some dessert!

The biggest surprise for me though turned out to be Modern Toilet's bathroom.

Yeah, sure, it wasn't a shock to me that the sink outside of the bathroom was a toilet bowl.

But then my daughter had to use the bathroom.  Shortly after going in, she came out to tell me that there was no toilet bowl.  I was like, "What do you mean there's no toilet?"  So I took a peak inside and this was what I saw.

Yep, that's right.  A toilet themed restaurant didn't even have a toilet bowl in its bathroom!  So, all I could do was tell my daughter that if she had to pee, then she was going to have to squat over the urinal thingy in the floor that you see in the picture above.

In conclusion, Modern Toilet was a fun restaurant to eat at and the food was good enough to make it worth the trip there, though I did have some difficulty communicating with the waitress whose English was little better than my Chinese.

If you are planning to visit Taipei and want to put some interesting pictures up on your Facebook page, then definitely have a lunch or dinner at Modern Toilet.  For all you ladies though, just remember, if you need to use the bathroom, you now know what is in store for you.

You Can Believe In Magic, Only So Long As It's Our Magic

Being a Long Islander, I suppose it is inevitable that some of my friends from high school on Facebook are big fans of the so-called Long Island Medium.  These Facebook friends also identify themselves as being Roman Catholic.

So it was with interest that this afternoon on my lunch break while looking for any articles on the Internet about attempts to debunk her that I came across this little gem from the Long Island Catholic.

The author of the column, whose name is unknown to me, laments the "the popularity of a new TV show called “Long Island Medium” that has been airing for a few weeks on TLC."

So, what's the problem, according to the nameless Catholic columnist?

"The woman purports to be able to speak to the dead. This is problematic on a few levels, the most important being that it is a mortal sin to try to contact the dead."

Oh, and "The other problem is that she is not really believable as a medium."

Seriously?  That's like telling someone at a restaurant, "The organic cheeseburger you've just been served contains enough e. coli bacteria to kill you in less than 24 hours.  And by the way, the cheese they used isn't really organic."

But our intrepid Catholic columnist doesn't want to stray too far off topic.

"My intention... is to try to alert some of the people who consider themselves practicing Catholics and let them know that to use the services of a psychic, an empath, Reiki master, medium, psychic healer, or any occultist is to put your soul in danger. It amazes me to see how popular it is now to have a “reading” with these people who are at best stealing your money and at worst communing with demons."

Yep, it's bad enough all you suckers who go to fortune tellers that you're getting ripped off.  Your tarot card reader might also be consorting with malevolent spirits!

In case you might not be giving this the consideration it's due:

"You might think that that is a serious exaggeration on my part but nothing could be further from the truth."

I suddenly thought of that scene from National Lampoon's Animal House where Donald Sutherland as the literature professor is telling his students that some of them still owe him a term paper as they bolt out of the class at the ring of the bell, causing him to blurt out "I'm serious!  This is my job, you know!"

Lest you think the Catholic columnist does not have the requisite authority for his or her position, he/she adds this Bible verse:

“Let no one be found among you who sacrifices his son or daughter in the fire, who practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens, engages in witchcraft, or casts spells, or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead. Anyone who does these things is detestable to the Lord” (Deut. 18:10–12, NIV)

That's right.  Having a reading with the Long Island Medium is just as awful as burning one of your kids to death!  It says so right there in the Bible!  What more proof do you need?

So what's a Catholic who is feeling down in the dumps about the loss of a loved one supposed to do?  Oh, that's easy!  The Our Domestic Church columnist makes it plain and simple.

"If you are Catholic and need comfort and guidance your first stop should not be a TV medium or storefront psychic, it should be the Church."

I wonder how my Catholic Facebook fans of the Long Island Medium would react to this column.  I strongly suspect they would ignore the columnist's exhortations and continue as they have before with their cafeteria Catholicism.