More evidence that straight religious men rule the world. This is like the girl who was stoned to death for being a rape victim, or the young woman I read about in the book Princess, who was wrapped in a sheet, bound with chains, and thrown in the family swimming pool in Saudi Arabia, for kissing a boy.

Perhaps instead of calling religion the opiate of the people, we should call it the crack rock.

Ugh. Seriously, what goes on in peoples minds that makes them think that is an appropriate way to handle a situation? I don't get it.

It reminds me for some reason of the sex laws of the Hittite (some of the most ancient written texts ever found). You'd be put to death for having sex with a dog or a sheep, but not with a horse or a mule. The logic seems to have been that the horse being bigger then the man, it obviously was the one responsible, so it should be put to death.

Apparently, blaming the victim has been a characteristic of humankind for a long time now.

(On the plus side: All you had to do was fuck your neighbour's horse and you were safe, content... and soon to be richer then your neighbour. The birth of capitalism?)

Meanwhile, every old battle axe in America is jumping for joy.

I just have no tolerance for religion any more. I tried to make allowances for the nice ones, but UGH.

Remember the woman who wrote about my son is ay, of her little boy who liked to dress in girls clothing last halloween? Here's the aftermath with her church. http://nerdyapplebottom.com/2011/02/03/e…

UGH. sticks and stones may break my bones (and kill me)
and words hurt and cut, too

Wow, what an epilogue, BEG, to that original story. The part that surprises me, though, is that anyone actually expects enlightened behaviour from church officials. I think when it happens, one should be pleasantly surprised, like when Visa calls and says they made a mistake, and are crediting your account, but for the most part, intolerance and hypocrisy are their calling cards. If they actually respected diversity, it would be hard to control all the good little sheep.

@5 wow, thanks for the update. Hopefully that mom will have the good sense to leave the church, for her son's sake if nothing else. She would fit in fine in a good Humanist group, with the guarantee that she would never get commandments hurled at her for supporting her child!

It's easy to blame religion for murder and violence, that way we don't have to blame the people responsible. This woman was angry at her husband for cheating and jealous of that girl, and she saw a way to get even. That emotion would have been present with or without religion.

Oh, Canuck! I think you might like this -> Falldown: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2YfM8_50F… (audio is english, visuals is ASL). Same guy also does Hard Candy http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBE2dAjS5… (part 2 is the signed version w/audio, part 1 just has the audio track and a static image). Now THERE'S a guilty pleasure of mine...

Actually -- most of you sloggers would like both those clips...

@8 Religion justified it, religion allowed for it, religion expects intolerance and bigotry and rewards it. Only religion makes it socially acceptable to beat a girl to death for talking to a man.

If there had been no understanding, evil cleric to turn to, instead would the wife have plotted their beatings herself? We'll never know, but it sure as fuck would've been a lot harder to pull off and get away with.

@10 exactly -- you don't get the surrounding social sanction if you take religion out of it. I find that the secondarily horrifying part, that this happened as a *community effort*.

Ironically enough, it's stuff like this that makes me want to believe in Satan. If whipping a child to death, presumably in front of her mother, who probably had to be restrained while her child slowly died in front of her...

Jesus Christ. I can't even finish that. This makes me physically ill. We are a vile species.

@5 - I read that back when it was first on SLOG, and I never foresaw any other way for this to end. Either the church would ignore the whole thing & pretend it never happened (which it looks like they probably would have preferred, except that it went viral), or she & her homosexual agenda would be hounded out of the church.

Hopefully this mom will understand that this is a sign that she needs to get herself and her kids the hell away from that place.

Keep in mind that many of things like this are actually cultural in origin, and religion only gets mixed up in it. If this were truly religious, we'd hear more about how bad Indonesian women have it.

Religion spoils everything. The US Christianist Taliban would have this for our country, if laws didn't prevent it. There's no other way to deal with sin- hit it hard, often and make sure everyone knows what punishment will be meted for trangressions. Look at Scott Lively in Uganda- trying to build there what 'should' be possible in the USA, were it not for that pesky, humanist Constitution thing.
We ARE a vile species.

The problem is that other religions see things like this and say "their religion isn't like ours." Even if it's the same fucking religion. How often do you see two christian sects, or two islamic sects, or two whatever sects arguing (and killing each other) over which one is holier-than-thou?

My invisible avenger is better than your invisible avenger.

I agree with @8 and not so much with @10.

I don't think it necessarily follows that without religion there would be morality. If this was the case then the Khmer Rouge should have been a bunch of life affirming athiests when the reality is that they slaughtered between 1.4 million and 2.2 million - all without religion or God(s)...

I'm not pro-athiesm or pro-god, but I do think simply implying that religion is the cause for the fucked up things that humans do is missing the mark.

@ 19, Dan uses this heading a lot because some fundie once said that to him. Or maybe he read it somewhere, I can't quite recall. (Someone did tell him to his face that "Every child needs a mother and a father," another frequent headline he uses.)

So, he's just using this to point out the gross irony of that attitude, not to argue the polar opposite position. (Although, a true understanding of morality and ethics requires NOT relying on pleasing an invisible judge, and being able to reason out what's right and what's wrong, but most people aren't reasonable and need the threat of divine punishment to be kept in line.)

@9 Thank you, BEG! I learn something new here every day, and also have something new for the iPod, although the visuals are awesome, I love his dancing...

@20, Thanks for clarifying, but I get it. I was using my comment to point out the gross irony that the reality is much more complex than the arguments that some of the commenters are relying on.

@21 Yay! Corruption, one slogger at a time ;-)

@23 If that's corruption, I'm already in jail serving time... :)

Religion often seems to make it easier to act immorally. When you but the source of your morality outside yourself then it becomes easier to free yourself from having to take responsibility, you can delude yourself into believing that your actions are ethical because your complying to your religious tenets or following your pastor/cleric, etc. (Ethics on the other tends to put the source of morality within us, and focus the responsibility back upon us as individuals.) Things become further complicated when their are differing religions or subsets/denominations, differing tenets permit differing compliance expectations. I still think that individual religious people can and still do better the world, but I find it difficulty to think that religion itself betters the world. Anything that asks one to blindly turn off their conscience, ignore ethical questions from within, can only fumble at bettering society and will more likely harm society by its demand for fundamentalism and compliance. Just my $0.02.

This is such a heartbreaking story.

@19 It does follow that w/o religion there is morality, because morality is just another word for behavior & beliefs. You don’t need religion to have behavior and beliefs. And while the number of human lives snuffed out under the banner of various religions dwarfs the number killed by atheists by several sextillion orders of magnitude, of course atheism doesn’t preclude murder. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god, that’s it. Secular humanists on the other hand, have yet to lead any genocides that I’m aware of.

Religion isn’t the primary cause of all the fucked up things we do. That’s the fault of the evolved wiring of our brains and the crazy unpredictable events of history that have resulted in our culture & environment. But a very important part of that culture, of that environment, is prominent cults preaching & legitimizing hate, intolerance, and bigotry towards our fellow man. The absence of religion doesn’t transform our world into a paradise, but it sure would make it a whole lot less stupid.

Kim @ 25: Nailed it!

Internally based morality places responsibility (and will/ power) where it belongs, external moral authority takes responsibility etc from where it belongs.
Of course, it is not in any powermongers interest to tell you this, otherwise they lose control over you.

@19

I really think religion is the cause of a lot of the fucked up things a lot of people do. The people who hijacked planes and flew them into the WTC buildings on 9/11 did it because of their religious beliefs. They weren't just some crazies who did something fucked up and were also religious. Their motivation was pretty much entirely religious.

Pol Pot's atheism had nothing to do with his murders just as Augusto Pinochet's Catholicism had nothing to do with his murders and torture. Evil exists, with or without religion. That fact is irrelevant to this discussion.

The point is that religion can and does lead directly to some of the more horrible, despicable acts committed today and throughout history.

I don't think anybody believes that the absence of religion necessarily leads to good, moral behavior.

If we got rid of religion entirely, we would have to create our own system of morality based on something other than mythology. We could do better than what is in the bible or the koran which actually fail pretty completely at being moral guides.

What I'm saying is that the best possible system of morality would be atheistic.

Some very small part of me kind of does want to see all religion abolished, just so that the smug atheists would then have to face the fact that people are perfectly capable of being monstrous without it.

@30: Smug atheists (like smug anythings) can be annoying, but I don't think I've ever seen one claim that people are only capable of being monstrous because of religion.

Every athiest I have known acknowledges the human capacity for evil. Their point, agree with it or not, is that religion allows humans to claim that their evil actions are in fact good, as they are justified by God.