Hemant Mehta's Blog, page 1911

Co-Discoverer of Ebola Virus Says That Catholic Nuns’ Unclean Needles Were Responsible For the First Outbreak

Der Spiegel has an interesting and scary interview with Peter Piot, a medical researcher who was on the team that investigated the world’s first known Ebola outbreak, in 1976, and gave the illness its name.

Piot recalls how Ebola made its first wave of victims. Missionary Catholic nuns spread the disease through a stunning disregard for medical protocol:

“In their hospital they regularly gave pregnant women vitamin injections using unsterilized needles. By doing so, they infected many young women in Yambuku [in the Congo] with the virus… I can still see the Ebola patients in Yambuku, how they died in their shacks and we couldn’t do anything except let them die.”

The medical profession knew as early as the 1870s that safely reusing needles requires sterilizing them. Even in Africa, where the overall standard of care is surely lower than in the West, jabbing pregnant women with a used, unsterilized hypodermic needle is pretty much the definition of medical malpractice. I could see doing it if the patient needed a potentially life-saving injection (and no sterilization method was available). Vitamins, however, can be taken orally.

You have to wonder whether the nuns thought they could get away with their flouting of proper medical procedure because they thought that they were under divine protection.

Either way, 280 people died.

(Image via Shutterstock)

Can Atheism Offer Eternal Value?

The video below, part of The Atheist Voice series, discusses whether atheism can offer eternal value:

A rough transcript of the video can be found on the YouTube page in the “About” section.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on the project — more videos will be posted soon — and we’d also appreciate your suggestions as to which questions we ought to tackle next!

And if you like what you’re seeing, please consider supporting this site on Patreon.

Atheists Don’t Give a Damn About Carrie Underwood’s New Song

Here’s how desperate some Christians are to play victim.

There’s a new Carrie Underwood song out — which, let’s face it, you didn’t know until just now — and atheists everywhere hate it… That is, according to some conservative websites:

Of course, none of them actually name any atheist groups, websites, or even random individuals who have a problem with the song. Unless Underwood actually said anything disparaging about atheists in her song — which she didn’t — I don’t know why anyone would give a damn. She’s welcome to sing about her faith and the rest of us are free to ignore it.

Apparently, none of those writers noticed that atheists are pretty subdued when it comes to Christian bands, rapper LeCrae, and Gospel music in general. Unless we’re criticizing hypocrisy within the lyrics, it’s hard to imagine why atheists would freak out over Christian lyrics in songs by Christian artists.

It’s worth mentioning that the original story seems to have come from the Conservative Tribune, which is hardly a reliable website. For all we know, it’s parody. But the point is that the story is already spreading around the Internet as if it were true, because Christians love to believe they’re victims and very few of them will bother to fact-check this.

(via Reddit. Thanks to Jerod for the link)

This Video Was Only Supposed to Be Seen by Those “Left Behind” After the Rapture

***Update***: According to IMDB, it appears this video is inspired by the Left Behind series, and “Pastor Billings” is an actor. That said, the message is nonetheless hilarious.

…

Just in case the release of Left Behind isn’t enough Rapture-y goodness for you heathens, video site Everything is Terrible! has got you covered. The site, which highlights humorous, terrible, and/or bizarre videos from the VHS era, is about to wrap up its celebration of Rapture Week!

One of the more delightful finds on their Facebook page is a video by New Hope Village Church, starring Pastor Vernon Billings. AV Club describes it as “17 minutes of fear tactic fun.”

It’s a pretty accurate description. The video was ostensibly meant to be viewed by those “left behind.” Pastor Billings introduces it by commiserating with the sorry heathen (he is, naturally, “confident” that he’ll be gone):

I can only imagine the fear and the despair that you face, for this is being recorded for viewing only after the disappearance of God’s people from the earth. The fact that you are watching indicates that you have been left behind.

(The fact that we’re watching this now means the video was either a complete failure or the Rapture’s already happened. And the Rapture hasn’t already happened…)

At any rate, Pastor Billings provides the Biblical basis for the “single most shocking event in history” and plenty of thoughtful discussion of the post-Rapture landscape, like how

… babies and children [will] have vanished… you may also find that unborn children have disappeared from their mother’s womb. I can only imagine the pain and the heartache of a world without children…

And…

… you may have seen a loved one standing before you and suddenly they were gone. And I certainly don’t envy you of that shock.

Naturally, there’s also the popular idea of unmanned vehicles and the chaos that will create. So, if Nicolas Cage doesn’t cure you of your Rapture enthusiasm, this should do it.

ISIS Has a Serious Recruiting Problem

The Onion‘s got the scoop:

[R]epresentatives for ISIS told reporters Wednesday that they have so far encountered considerable difficulty in finding American recruits who are physically fit enough for jihad. …

“Even though these people are enthusiastic about righteous martyrdom, I honestly don’t see most of them even fitting into a suicide vest, let alone lugging a 40-pound rocket launcher through the desert,” said ISIS operative Bakir Hamdani.

Whole thing here.

Despite Stopping Government-Sponsored Prayer Breakfasts, This Atheist Has Only Received Positive Feedback

Last week, I posted about how atheist Carole Beaton and her attorney Peter Martin had filed a lawsuit against the city of Eureka, California in 2013 because Mayor Frank Jager (below) had been promoting prayer breakfasts using city resources.

The trial was supposed to take place later this month, but both sides recently settled the case out of court, with the city agreeing never to promote the breakfasts and paying Beaton $16,500 for attorney’s fees.

Beaton just wrote a piece for the Eureka Times-Standard describing the reactions to the settlement… and, in a surprising twist, they’ve been overwhelmingly positive:

I was expecting at least a few nasty calls, letters or emails. The phone started ringing the day the lawsuit was made public. Every time I picked up the phone, I was expecting a blast of anger. Instead I got over 30 calls thanking me for protecting the separation of church and state. Many of these calls were from religious people who understand that we are all better off if the government does not get involved in religion. A few days after the lawsuit was filed, I got a call from the president of Atheists United in Los Angeles, who was visiting his brother in Arcata. When I picked up the phone, he was dumbstruck. He said, “Are you actually answering your phone? You’re not letting the machine pick up the calls?” When I told him I had not had one negative call, and all calls had been supportive, he was shocked.

What a pleasant change of pace given all the vitriol atheists in the public eye tend to get.

(Thanks to Brian for the link)

Lucas Oil Millionaire Posts Rant on Facebook Against Atheists and Muslims “Running Our Country”

Charlotte Atkins Lucas and Forrest Lucas are the multi-millionaire founders of Lucas Oil, the company that owns naming rights to the stadium in which the Indianapolis Colts play.

Yesterday, Charlotte Lucas posted this rant on her Facebook page:

I’m sick and tired of minorities running our country! As far as I’m concerned, I don’t think that atheists (minority), muslims (minority)n or any other minority group has the right to tell the majority of the people in the United States what they can and cannot do here. Is everyone so scared that they can’t fight back for what is right or wrong with this country?

A few quick thoughts:

1) Since when do atheists run this country? If only that were true…

2) Since when do atheists tell everyone else what to do? If she’s referring to church/state separation battles, atheists are the ones pointing out what the Constitution says. We’re fighting for neutrality, not special treatment.

3) Since where does the majority not fight back? Christians are still pretty dominant in the U.S. and there are plenty of conservative legal defense groups, not to mention a government that seems to bend over backwards to accommodate religious beliefs in the law.

The post and her Facebook page appear to have been deleted since yesterday, though she confirmed to a local news station that she made the statement:

“I was very upset when I wrote that,” she said. “I will not elaborate other than to say that there are certain people who are trying to make the whole world eat what they want to eat and do what they want to do. I don’t think it’s any of their business what I put in my mouth. Thank you.”

It sounds like she’s referring to Michelle Obama‘s “Let’s Move!” campaign because, as we all know, it’s super-oppressive when the First Lady (a minority!) tells people to eat healthy… (Give her two statements, it also sounds like she’s referring to the Obamas as Muslims, more evidence of her blissful ignorance.)

But point taken: C’mon, atheists and Muslims. We need to stop holding back the rich white lady and let her eat whatever she wants. We’ve had it too good for too long.

Man, how great it must be to be so wealthy that you can afford to be this oblivious to the world around you…

(Thanks to Josh for the link)

New Study Shows Atheists Are More Prolific on Twitter Than Any Religious Group

According to new research published on arXiv.org, atheists are more prolific on Twitter than any major religious group:

Be proud, Mom. I finally got my name published in a research paper.

“On average, we can say the atheists have more friends, more followers, and they tweet more,” said Lu Chen, a doctoral candidate at the Kno.e.sis Center at Wright State University who co-authored the study with Ingmar Weber of the Qatar Computing Research Institute and Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn of Rutgers University-Camden.

…

The study is also remarkable for its size — researchers combed through more than 96 million tweets of over 250,000 Twitter users. They also studied the users’ friends — the people they follow on Twitter — and the users’ own followers. Subjects were Twitter users who self-identified as religious or atheist in their profiles, and only those who said they lived in the U.S.; researchers compared them to a “baseline” group of Twitter users who expressed no religious identification.

I can’t say the results are surprising at all. Atheists may be a small percentage of the population, but we live and breathe our beliefs via the Internet in a way no religious group does (or needs to). Twitter has turned out to be a fantastic way to pass along quick criticisms of bad ideas, including religion.

A few lines from the paper stand out:

The top 5 Twitter account that characterize Atheists all belong to atheistical or irreligious celebrities, including RichardDawkins, neiltyson, rickygervais, billmaher and SamHarrisOrg.

…

… the difficulty level of recognizing a user from a specific religious group based on their tweet content is (from easiest to hardest): Atheist < Jew < Christian < Buddhist < Muslim < Hindu...

...

... the top 20 discriminative words of Christianity cover images (e.g., jesus, god, christ, lord), beliefs (e.g., bible, gospel, psalm, faith, sin, spirit, etc.), practices (e.g., pray, worship, praise, and societies (e.g., church, pastor). On the other hand, Atheists show apparent preferences for topics about science (e.g., science, evolution, evidence), religion (e.g., religion, christians, bible) and politics (e.g., republicans, gop, rights, abortion, equality).

You can read more about atheists’ habits on Twitter here and here.

Young Cancer Patient Who Used Faith-Based Treatment Instead of Life-Saving Chemotherapy Has Suffered a Relapse

Several months ago, I posted about Makayla Sault (below), an 11-year-old with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The disease is treatable with two years of tough chemotherapy and has a nearly 90% survival rate… but Makayla no longer wanted to continue the chemo and her Ojibwe/First Nations parents were more than happy to oblige, seeking out useless faith-based treatments instead.

The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) of Brant met with Makayla’s family at the time to make a final decision on her treatment. I was hopeful they wouldn’t let her parents effectively put her life in jeopardy… but that’s exactly what they did:

[Director of Brant Native Services of CAS Sally] Rivers further spoke on behalf of CAS Native Services, saying the organization “acknowledges and respects [indigenous] medicine.” Rivers said that the Native Services Branch is aware that the Sault family are treating Makayla through Onongwatri:yo: and that they, as an organization “acknowledge and honour Makayla’s choice.”

…

At this point, CAS closing the file means that Makayla will not be put back in chemotherapy against her will. A legal representative addressed the crowd saying that CAS is the authority under Ontario Law to take this case forward or close it…

I hardly think it’s a “choice” if you’ve been brainwashed to believe western medicine is worthless…

While Makayla is still thankfully alive, her condition — surprise, surprise — has worsened. She’s not alone, either. It turns out there’s another First Nations girl who would benefit from chemo, but she also refused it for cultural reasons. Testifying at a hearing about the newer girl, oncologist Vicky Breakey pointed out that Makayla recently suffered a relapse:

Makayla Sault’s leukemia has come back, according to testimony by McMaster Children’s Hospital’s Vicky Breakey. Although Breakey didn’t name the patient, it’s clear she was referring to Makayla. The 11-year-old girl from the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation left chemotherapy treatment at the McMaster hospital in May to pursue traditional indigenous medicine.

…

Breakey said that in this new case, the girl would have had a 90 to 95 per cent chance of survival if she had continued with chemotherapy. The pediatric oncologist also cautioned that those odds diminish the longer she is without treatment and said if she doesn’t return to chemotherapy, she will die.

It’s unbelievable to me that these parents are essentially allowed to kill their children because of their religious beliefs and there’s nothing the doctors or government can do about it. It shouldn’t take the death of a child to get the point across that indigenous magic doesn’t hold a candle to evidence-based medicine.

(Thanks to Geff for the link. Portions of this article were posted earlier)

High School Cancels Event with Catholic Chastity Speaker Because He Can’t Be Trusted to Keep Faith Out of His Talk

If you were to visit the website of the Catholic-based Chastity Project website (and I’m not sure why anyone would), here’s the explanation you would find for why gay marriage isn’t really marriage:

Because members of the same sex have bodies that are not created to receive one another, they physically cannot express the vows of marriage. This inability of the bodies to become one expresses the deeper reality that they were not meant to give themselves to each other in marriage. Therefore, the Church has no authority to marry a couple who cannot speak their wedding vows through their bodies. A nonmarital relationship cannot be declared a marriage.

…

According to the Church, these would not be real marriages, even if the couples had legal marriage certificates. Similarly, if two people cannot have the kind of sexual relations that are designed to give life, they are incapable of marriage.

… realize that the Church is not singling out same-sex couples. In fact, the Church also believes that heterosexual couples are incapable of marriage if they are impotent. Not to be confused with sterility (a condition in which a couple is able to have intercourse but unable to have children), impotency means that a person is incapable of having intercourse.

There’s a lot of this faith-based bullshit all throughout the website and other resources, which is why it’s especially disturbing to learn that founders Jason and Crystalina Evert give presentations at public schools:

Chastity Project exists to promote the virtue of chastity so that individuals can see God, and be free to love (Matt. 5:8).

Next week, Jason Evert was scheduled to speak at Olean High School in New York. The program was sponsored by the “Office of Lifelong Faith Formation of the Diocese of Buffalo” (as if they needed an even bigger hint at the faith component).

But after school officials couldn’t get a promise from Evert that he would keep his faith out of the presentation, they canceled the event:

After first advocating for Mr. Evert’s discussion, Olean High Principal Barb Lias made the final call to withdraw. Asked why, she referenced the First Amendment. In just over five minutes, Mrs. Lias cited the “separation of church and state” 11 times, but she and Superintendent Dr. Colleen Taggerty are still urging interested students with parental permission to attend and hear the positive message.

While Mr. Evert does both faith-based and secular programs for private and public schools, Mrs. Lias said she eventually grew unsure the talk would refrain from religious dialogue.

“You’d like to be able to say you can guarantee something, but when you can’t really guarantee it, then you have to sit and think about it a long time,” Mrs. Lias said. “Even though I spoke directly with the man, I couldn’t guarantee that he wouldn’t. I couldn’t take that chance.”

…

OCSD reached out to Chastity Project for reassurance, Dr. Taggerty said.

“But in order for us to see that, we had to buy a video,” the superintendent added. “At that point, maybe this wasn’t what we should be doing.”

It’s good to see administrators make the right move here, but I can’t get over how they could have possibly said yes to this in the first place. It’s not like Evert hides his faith on the website, and despite his claim that he can do a secular presentation, we know all too well you can’t trust abstinence speakers to give students honest, objective information. They’ve broken that trust far too many times.

The presentation may still continue at a local Catholic school, and buses may transport public school students who have permission slips signed by their parents — which may be another church/state separation problem on its own — but it could be much worse.

Just to be clear, there’s nothing wrong with promoting chastity as an option for students, provided that it’s mentioned in a secular context and that options for safe sex are also included in the presentation. But to say that anything beyond chastity means there’s something wrong with you, which is how religious speakers tend to present the information, has no business in a public school where facts ought to trump religious dogma.

(Thanks to Brian for the link)