Gay Conversion Therapist Outted For Soliciting Sex On Gay-Dating App

You can't make this up!

You'd think that the Larry Craigs of the world would have learned from his debacle, but noooooo.

This time, a rabid gay conversion therapist and advocate has been outted by two different sources as being someone who solicits gay sex on those dating apps/website.

Norman Goldwasser, by day, is an Orthodox Jewish therapist at Horizon Psychological Services who compares homosexuality to Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and misleads clients by claiming that their sexual orientation can be changed with his special brand of quack therapy, which is rejected by every respected medical and mental health association. By night, an undercover investigation by Truth Wins Out has found, he solicits sexual partners on Manhunt, a gay dating App, using the profile “Hotnhairy72.” During our operation, Goldwasser, going by the pseudonym “Dave”, offered to meet for sex with our operative, “Brandon,” at a Fort Lauderdale motel room. Goldwasser also had a profile on Bear Nation by the same name.

It didn't say whether "Brandon" sacrificed himself and did the dirty deed with "Dave". :)

This would have been hysterically funny if it weren't so downright repugnant and serious. And if this destroys this type of quack organization, then it can't come any sooner. Gay conversion therapy should be outlawed already!

Zz.

Religious Liberty and Equality in the US

File this under "Be careful what you ask for, because you might just get it."

With people fighting to get the so-called "religious liberty" and the ability to discriminate by using their religious freedom as an excuse, along comes the Satanic Church that will demand their equal rights and freedom. Let's just see to what extent those who fought for religious liberty are willing to tolerate another religious wanting the same thing that they have.

In my book, these religious liberty is simply a smoke screen used as an excuse to exercise their bigotry, homophobia, and intolerance. After all, there are many other activity that are contrary to their religious beliefs that they tolerate. Anyone checking if those straight, heterosexual couple getting married have already had pre-marital sex with one another? Last time I checked, Christianity prohibits such a thing, yet no one seemed to have a problem baking a cake for those weddings.

Zz.

Mosque Burnt Down, Jews Handed Over Keys To Their Synagogue

Story like this does not get highlighted enough, especially during the hate-filled and hateful period since the US Presidential election.

The mosque/Islamic center in the small town of Victoria, TX burnt down under suspicious circumstances earlier this month, right after the President signed the travel ban executive order. This story would have ended there if it were for the generous and kind folks of the Temple Bnai Israel.

"We have probably 25 to 30 Jewish people in Victoria, and they probably have 100 Muslims. We got a lot of building for a small amount of Jews."

One of the mosque's founders, Shahid Hashmi, said: "Jewish community members walked into my home and gave me a key to the synagogue."

There are A LOT of lessons to be learned here. Boys and girls, if you want to promote whatever it is that you believe in, and show to the world how wonderful it is, nothing can be better than showing us your best feature dressed in your best outfit. This is what those people at Temple Bnai Israel have done. They not only reveal to the world how kind and generous they are, but also on the nature of their beliefs and practices.

If you want to sabotage and ruin the reputation of your beliefs, then you form something like ISIS or the Westboro Babtist Church. There's no quicker way to destroy the good name of your belief than to act that dumb.

Zz.

Fake News, Faith, And Reason

Whoa! An essay that conveys what I've been thinking of lately!

A dozen or so years ago, I was working on a profile of Zig Ziglar, the famous motivational speaker who died in 2012, and I went to hear him speak at his church in a suburb of Dallas. His topic, as a lay lecturer in adult Sunday school, was the threat of cults, and he began by mocking the creation myth of Scientology — the whole baroque science-fiction epic starting 4 quadrillion years ago and proceeding through the Galactic Overlord, the frozen thetans and the nuclear holocaust on a planet called Teegeeack.

“Now, I ask you,” he said, wrapping up his recitation, “how could any of this fool an intelligent, thinking man or woman who has read the first four chapters of Genesis?”

Well, yes, precisely. Scientology is incompatible with Christianity, or Judaism or Islam; you cannot by any stretch of reason believe in both. What went without saying, to Ziglar and to his audience that morning, was the logical superiority of a six-day Creation and a talking snake, and by extension the flood and the ark, the litany of biblical miracles and the Resurrection.

But from an agnostic standpoint, there’s no inherent reason to believe one account over the other. They are stories written in books that function as their own authority. People believe in the Bible as a matter of faith, because they accept its message of redemption, not because of empirical evidence or the inherent plausibility of the individual stories within it. This has been true as far back as Augustine, who held that faith and reason go together, but faith leads the way: “Seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand.” Or, in the more pungent formulation of Mark Twain, faith consists of “believing what you know ain’t so.”

Does that remind you of something transpiring in American society at this moment? Many Americans subscribe to conspiracy theories as preposterous as anything L. Ron Hubbard could have dreamt up, and — because they relate to current events and real living people — far more dangerous. Just in the past few days, a man shot up a Washington pizzeria, acting under the delusion that it was the headquarters of a child-sex ring involving Hillary Clinton, and a woman who believed that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre was a government hoax was arrested for making threats against the parents of a child who died there.

 Conspiracy theories exist across the political spectrum, but some of the most influential purveyors populate the far right, including the radio commentator Alex Jones, who has claimed that not just Sandy Hook but also the 9/11 attacks and the Oklahoma City bombing were “false flag” operations staged by the federal government as pretexts to expand its tyranny. And Jones has had as a guest on his show Donald Trump, whose campaign abandoned even the pretense of grounding statements in empirical fact. The unemployment rate was whatever he said it was — “probably 28, 29, as high as 35” — and Barack Obama was born in Africa right up until the moment it became expedient to say something else. 

Many of these absurd beliefs originate in “fake news,” clickbait posts whose authors may not even care if they are believed, as long as there are enough suckers out there to click on them. This has led to calls by media figures and other interested parties, Hillary Clinton among them, for a crackdown on the way social media sites abet the spread of nonsense. But the bigger question is, how could someone possibly believe that one of the most visible and recognizable figures in the world, surrounded at all times by aides and security, was sneaking into the basement of a pizza parlor to have sex with children? Who are those people?

By a wide margin, Trump was supported by (white) evangelical Christian voters. And in Brooklyn, N.Y., one of the few areas where he did well was the Orthodox and Hasidic enclave of Borough Park. Obviously, people supported Trump for all sorts of reasons, including some grounded in religious conviction, such as opposition to abortion, but also some that had nothing to do with faith. And, of course, many religious people voted the other way. But, to state the obvious, a precondition for believing, along with Jones, that Hillary Clinton is a literal demon from hell is a belief that demons and hell exist in the first place. It is much easier to ignore evidence about global warming if you believe, with Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., that Earth’s climate is controlled directly by God. More generally, is there something in the mindset of a religious believer — someone who accepts the reality of an unseen deity, based on ancient accounts of events with no parallel in everyday experience — that encourages the acceptance of unprovable claims in the realms of politics or science?

It’s not an easy question. Christians put Scripture in a separate epistemological category: It is the word of God, not subject to the same empirical testing as a weather forecast or an unemployment report. Some highly trained minds — Isaac Newton, for one, and Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project and an evangelical Christian — have managed to maintain a strong Biblical faith while also rigorously pursuing objective truths about the natural world, but most of us don’t have the philosophical chops to pull it off. Conservative churches offer their believers certainty rather than ambiguity, and they attract congregants who are comfortable obeying, and exercising, authority.

 Brain-imaging studies show that doubt requires more mental effort than belief. Credulousness is the default setting for most people, most of the time. That is as true of crystal-gazing New Agers passing along posts about a conspiracy by Monsanto to control the world through genetically modified corn as it is of Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, an elder of the Erath County Cowboy Church, who passed along an unfounded rumor that Clinton had been endorsed by the Communist Party. Miller, who is reported to be under consideration for nomination as secretary of agriculture, told reporters he doesn’t care whether it’s true or not. 

So someone like Miller is essentially treating political discourse as a matter of faith. If your goal is to be saved, you don’t go around looking for logical holes in the Gospels; you leave that to the atheists. If your goal is to elect Republicans, you pass along anything that puts your opponent in a bad light and leave the fact-checking to the mainstream media.

But is that any way to run a country? Maybe it’s a time to reawaken our capacity for doubt, now when misinformation is more readily available and arguably more dangerous than ever before in history. Faith has a place in the lives of many people. But, per Augustine, it can no more stand alone than pure reason; a Christian must call on both to be strong in the world. That’s still good advice.

The problem also comes in when people can't tell the difference between speculative, unverified babble versus something with actual physical evidence. Talking heads on TV tend to ramble on and on about something, and often make guesses and speculation of a piece of news. But listeners often confuse or mistook them as being part of the news.

Or maybe they DON'T want to, or don't care, if it is valid or not, as the article suggests. If this is true, then it is pretty sad. The Spaghetti Monster truly lives!

Zz.

Religious Children Are More Selfish?

Well, this is an interesting revelation, no pun intended.

A new study published in Current Biology has found that children who are supposedly brought up in a religious environment are more selfish than children without any religious affiliation.

Decety’s team of psychologists assessed altruism using ‘the dictator game’: each child was given 30 stickers and told to choose how many to share with an anonymous child from the same school and similar ethnic group. This task reflects choices in ecology – allocating limited resources – and the results were used to calculate a ‘generosity score’. The researchers looked at 1170 children aged 5-12 years old, from six countries (USA, Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey and South Africa). Most kids came from households that identified as Christian (24%), Muslim (43%) or not religious (28%). (Small numbers from Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu and agnostic homes weren’t compared.)

The results revealed that secular children shared more stickers. Muslim children appear to be less generous than Christian kids, but this is not statistically significant (labelled ‘ns’ in the bar chart below). All three groups became less altruistic with age, though religious kids had lower generosity, suggesting that longer exposure to religion leads to less altruism.

This result, of course, goes against the prevailing and unproven notion that religion makes one more "moral".

Parents were also asked to score their children according to a sense of empathy and sensitivity to injustice. This subjective self-reporting showed that religious adults think their children have strong moral tendencies, contradicting objective assessments of altruism (generosity and moral sensitivity).

Why are religious people less moral? One factor is a psychological phenomenon known as ‘moral licensing’: a person will justify doing something bad or immoral – like being racist – because they’ve already done something ‘good’, such as praying. “It’s an unconscious bias,” Decety explains. “They don’t even see that’s not compatible with what they’ve been learning in church.”

History backs-up the scientific evidence that secular people are more moral, as reviewed by Israeli psychologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi. Most white supporters of the US Civil Rights Movement were non-religious, for example, while the apartheid regime in South Africa was led by devout Christians and opposed by atheists.

All interesting and eye-opening stuff. This again reinforces my point that just because Talking Heads that you listen too says such-and-such, it doesn't mean that it has been socially or culturally verified to be true!

The source paper can be obtained (at least for now) from here.

Zz.

Kentucky's Clerk Kim Davis Might Be Violating The Bible Herself!

And interesting take on this ridiculous issue in an article from Huff Post. It comes from a passage in the Bible (Roman 13).

Based on that passage, this is what the author concluded:

Of course, this famous passage in Romans is in addition to other verses like 1 Peter 2:13 and Titus 3:1 and Jesus's own command to "Render unto Caesar" in Mark 12:17, Matthew 22:21, and Luke 20:25. Together they mean that if we're going to play the The Bible Is Clear™ game, then Kim Davis is clearly in violation of Scripture for the Bible clearly and repeatedly tell us to obey the government. Which obviously creates an incredibly awkward conundrum, for in her steadfast determination not to violate her biblical values, Davis has done just that.

Regardless of what she believes in, she is a PUBLIC SERVANT, and it is part of her job. The local government didn't refuse tax money from gay men and women, or give them partial refunds, because it would not provide some service to such citizens. So she is obligated to provide such a service.

If she can't, then she has not been performing the job she was hired to do. She should quit, or she should be fired!

It is as simple as that!

The claim of religious freedom is bogus. Did she check if the straight couple she issued marriage licenses to have had premarital sex? Has she ever issue licenses to a pregnant woman? Does that mean that she actually endorses all of these behaviors?

Once again, we have an example of people using religion to hide and justify their bigotry and stupidity.

Zz.

Businesses Being Allowed To Discriminate Against GLBT

I don't know if everyone who is a proponent of this simply drawing a blind eye, or if the rest of the population is not seeing this.

As more and more states in the US and in various parts of the world start to accept and legalize gay marriages, there are now laws in other parts trying to allow various private organizations and businesses to refuse serving people or activities that these entities think are "contrary to their beliefs". Of course, they word it that way so that it doesn't sound as if they are targeting gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgender community. But they are.

But there is a side effect to this and everyone seems to have missed! Let's look at the case of this baker in Ireland who refused to make a silly cake:

"We just didn't want to be forced to use our creative skills to help endorse and promote a campaign message that went against our sincerely held religious beliefs," he said.

"We are just trying to be faithful to the Bible. We think it is wrong to use the law to force anyone to say something that they oppose, and we hope the court will take the same view."

OK, let's run with that, shall we? What if a Muslim person walks into this bakery, and requested a cake for "Happy Eid Fitr"? Will he also refuse to do such a cake? After all, it is "promoting" a festival of another religion, and what is more offensive to his Christian belief than the promotion of another religion that clearly claims that his belief is false?

The same can be applied to all those laws in the books in various states in the US. Are people of various religions can now refuse to serve those of the opposite religion? Keep in mind that the most serious attack on one religion is another religion, considering that each considers the others to be false! So who should you be most offended with, a GLBT person, or someone who practices another religion?

Yet, if this baker or if the laws were to say that we can refuse to serve someone just because of his or her beliefs, everyone will be up in arms and shouting religious discrimination! But that is what such beliefs and such laws allow! So why aren't people seeing and addressing that?

Zz.

Phantom and Mangled Quotes From The Bible

This might be a show worth watching on CNN.

This article, to promote the CNN show, describes many versus that most people thought came out of the Bible, when in fact, they are nowhere to be found there!

See if some of the stuff you thought came out of the Bible were one of these phantom verses.

Zz.

Atheists and Agnostics Top Religion Poll

The result of a new poll on religion (i.e. basically Christian religion) shows a very amusing conclusion. Atheists and agnostics tend to know more about religion than Christians!

On average, people who took the survey answered half the questions incorrectly, and many flubbed even questions about their own faith.

Those who scored the highest were atheists and agnostics, as well as two religious minorities: Jews and Mormons. The results were the same even after the researchers controlled for factors like age and racial differences.

“Even after all these other factors, including education, are taken into account, atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons still outperform all the other religious groups in our survey,” said Greg Smith, a senior researcher at Pew.

This poll was also reported in the LA Times, which had a similar take on it and also offered a possible reason.

So why would an atheist know more about religion than a Christian?

American atheists and agnostics tend to be people who grew up in a religious tradition and consciously gave it up, often after a great deal of reflection and study, said Alan Cooperman, associate director for research at the Pew Forum.

"These are people who thought a lot about religion," he said. "They're not indifferent. They care about it."

Atheists and agnostics also tend to be relatively well educated, and the survey found, not surprisingly, that the most knowledgeable people were also the best educated. However, it said that atheists and agnostics also outperformed believers who had a similar level of education.

Now, if this is not amusing to you, I don't know what is....

Zz.

"Jesus" Struck By Lightning

If any article qualifies as one of life's greatest amusing event, this would be it.

News reports indicates that a 6-story tall statue of Jesus Christ at the evangelical Solid Rock Church along I-75 in Ohio was, get this, struck by lightning!

The sculpture, 62 feet tall and 40 feet wide at the base, showed Jesus from the torso up and was nicknamed Touchdown Jesus because of the way his arms were raised, as though reaching out to catch a football. It was made of plastic foam and fiberglass over a steel frame, which is all that remained early Tuesday.

The fire spread from the statue to an adjacent amphitheater but was confined to the attic area, and no one was injured, police Chief Mark Neu said. The fire department would release a monetary damage estimate Tuesday, he said.

Travelers on Interstate 75 often were startled to come upon the huge statue by the roadside, but many said America needs more symbols like it. So many people stopped at the church campus that church officials had to build a walkway to accommodate them.

Now, don't misunderstand this. I'm not having a glee moment here. It is a statue and has no meaning to me. However, many misguided and so-called religious followers often attach meanings to symbols. Just read about people seeing images of Jesus or the Virgin Mary on things ranging from expressways underpass to potato chips! And morons such as Pat Robertson even attaches natural calamity to sins committed by people befallen by such unfortunate events. So I am rather curious as to why none of these people have attached any meanings to such a dramatic destruction of a religious symbol. They always bring out instances when a church or other religious symbols somehow remained standing or unscathed after a natural disaster, as if that is god's sign of something (forgetting that god sent down that disaster in the first place). So this is a clear instance that maybe god didn't like what you're worshiping?

Like I said, it is certainly is amusing.

Zz.

Another Dumb "Religious" Cleric

Ah, this shows that stupidity knows no religious boundary.

Just so he could outdo Pat Robertson's stupid remarks on the Haiti earthquake, a cleric in Iran (a country that is already well-known for having leaders that don't care that they make stupid statements) is blaming earthquakes in Iran on, get this, "... women and girls who don't dress appropriately ... "

"When promiscuity spreads, earthquakes increase," he says in a video posted Monday on YouTube, apparently of him leading Friday prayers in Tehran, Iran, last week.

"There is no way other than taking refuge in religion and adapting ourselves to Islamic behavior," he adds in the video.

You can go find the video yourself. I will need a lobotomy to view any more of such filth.

It is hard to understand these things when you look back at the Dark Ages and realize that there are some people who are still stuck there. And it isn't about these dumb morons, really. It is the people who actually follow them and bought lock, stock, and barrel of the garbage that they are spewing. If these are the people they wish to follow and obey, then they deserve what they get. It is difficult to save people from themselves.

Zz.

Marriage to an 8-Year Old?

Remember my rant against those "islamic nations" that opposed the endorsement of gay marriages because it might lead to the sanction of pedophillia? I exposed the hypocrisy of such claim because taking a child bride is a common and LEGAL practice in some of these muslim countries, including Saudi Arabia.

Well, this is one such example. A judge in Saudi Arabia refused to annul the "marriage" between an 8-year old girl and a 47-year old man. This man married this girl via an arrangement with the girl's father to, get this, settle his debt! But don't you worry, because the girl's husband has "... pledged not to consummate the marriage until the girl reaches puberty... "

Phew! Now that made us all feel a bit better, doesn't it?

UNBELIEVABLE!

No, it is not unbelievable that this happened. You'd expect something this stupid in a moronic society. What is unbelievable is that you'd get these countries to have the GALL to then turn around and oppose gay marriages based on the grounds that it will lead to pedophilia. What a load of hypocrisy crap!

Zz.

US Endorses UN Gay Rights Text

Some time, you read something that is full of hypocrisy, it makes your blood boil.

The US, the so-called champion of "human rights", finally endorses the UN declaration on gay rights after the Bush administration made the US the only western country not to sign it.

But what made my blood boil was this part:

Some Islamic countries said at the time that protecting sexual orientation could lead to "the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts" such as pedophilia and incest. The declaration was also opposed by the Vatican.

The Vatican and the Catholic Church, of course, are experts in pedophilia and how to hide it. But how the "islamic countries" could actually be so uppity about such act while keeping a straight face is beyond me. Let's not forget that taking prepubescent child bride is alive and well in Saudi Arabia, the bedrock of Islamic religion where millions of muslims go for their pilgrimage. If this is not pedophilia, then what is it?

So maybe they just don't want protection for gays and lesbians (I'd like them to pull out statistics on how many lesbians have assaulted underaged girls) simply because they don't want competition for their pedophiles!

Zz.