The Pope has declared Mother Teresa a saint. Here is why she is undeserving of any kind of honor.

Courtesy of MSN: 

Pope Francis declared Mother Teresa a saint on Sunday, praising the tiny nun for having taken in society's most unwanted and for having shamed world leaders for the "crimes of poverty they themselves created." 

Francis held up Mother Teresa as the model for a Catholic Church that goes to the peripheries to find poor, wounded souls during a canonization Mass that drew an estimated 120,000 people — rich and poor, powerful and homeless — to a sun-filled St. Peter's Square. 

"Let us carry her smile in our hearts and give it to those whom we meet along our journey, especially those who suffer," Francis said in his homily. 

The canonization was the highlight of Francis' Holy Year of Mercy and may come to define his papacy, which has been dedicated to ministering to society's most marginal, from prisoners to prostitutes, the refugees and the homeless.

Yes well if that is what he was hoping for, this is a swing and a miss.

Two years ago there was a research paper published which explained why that is: 

‘The sick must suffer like Christ on the cross’ 

At the time of her death, Mother Teresa had opened 517 missions welcoming the poor and sick in more than 100 countries. The missions have been described as “homes for the dying” by doctors visiting several of these establishments in Calcutta. Two-thirds of the people coming to these missions hoped to a find a doctor to treat them, while the other third lay dying without receiving appropriate care. The doctors observed a significant lack of hygiene, even unfit conditions, as well as a shortage of actual care, inadequate food, and no painkillers. The problem is not a lack of money—the Foundation created by Mother Teresa has raised hundreds of millions of dollars—but rather a particular conception of suffering and death: “There is something beautiful in seeing the poor accept their lot, to suffer it like Christ’s Passion. The world gains much from their suffering,” was her reply to criticism, cites the journalist Christopher Hitchens. Nevertheless, when Mother Teresa required palliative care, she received it in a modern American hospital. 

Mother Teresa’s questionable politics and shadowy accounting 

Mother Teresa was generous with her prayers but rather miserly with her foundation’s millions when it came to humanity’s suffering. During numerous floods in India or following the explosion of a pesticide plant in Bhopal, she offered numerous prayers and medallions of the Virgin Mary but no direct or monetary aid. On the other hand, she had no qualms about accepting the Legion of Honour and a grant from the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti. Millions of dollars were transferred to the MCO’s various bank accounts, but most of the accounts were kept secret, Larivée says. “Given the parsimonious management of Mother Theresa’s works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

In short Mother Teresa was a penny pinching fame whore who believed that the poor grew closer to God in their suffering and yet sought out the best medical attention available when she herself became ill.

She was one of the worst hypocrites on the planet, and made millions of dollars off of the suffering of others while doing virtually nothing to ease their pain or cure their ills.

To learn more simply watch this documentary by the brilliant Christopher Hitchens who may have been one of the first to see through this charlatan's act.

Sarah Palin uses a quote from Mother Theresa to attack Planned Parenthood. Well somebody should have done a little more research.

Courtesy of Palin's very last social media outlet.

Now on the face of it this might seem like a direct hit on Palin's part. Here she is quoting a once beloved Catholic icon to attack an organization that it is all the rage among conservatives to attack.

The problem lies in the "once beloved" part.

You see the great Christopher Hitchens wrote a carefully researched, and scathing book about Mother Theresa's supposed charitable nature and what he found seriously damaged her reputation around the world.

Here is just a little of what he found:  

MT was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction. And she was a friend to the worst of the rich, taking misappropriated money from the atrocious Duvalier family in Haiti (whose rule she praised in return) and from Charles Keating of the Lincoln Savings and Loan. Where did that money, and all the other donations, go? The primitive hospice in Calcutta was as run down when she died as it always had been—she preferred California clinics when she got sick herself—and her order always refused to publish any audit. But we have her own claim that she opened 500 convents in more than a hundred countries, all bearing the name of her own order. Excuse me, but this is modesty and humility?

Others who researched the claims made by Hitchens found them factual and right on target:  

Canadian academics trawled through 96 per cent of all originally researched literature on the Catholic icon and concluded that her reputation as one of the holiest women of the twentieth century was the product of hype. 

Researchers allege missing funds for humanitarian work and homes for the poor that did not offer the medical care they required, leaving many to die. 

Serge Larivée, a researcher from the University of Montreal, said: "Given the parsimonious management of Mother Theresa's works, one may ask where the millions of dollars for the poorest of the poor have gone?”

If you think about it the choosing of Mother Theresa's quote is a no-brainer for Palin as they are essentially cut from the same cloth.

Both are grifters who accept donations that they ultimately spend mostly on themselves.

Both claim to be working for the greater good, while seeking out and basking in whatever limelight will shine their way.

And both hide behind religion to keep their critics at bay.

Interestingly enough, by way of comparison, Planned Parenthood attained the highest score possible for accountability and transparency.  (And if you don't believe that charity rating service, here is another.)

Atheists to get their own TV channel. This is a GREAT idea, said no religious person ever.

Courtesy of The Telegraph:

 ....next week sees the launch of America's first dedicated TV channel for non-believers. Atheist TV launches in New York and will broadcast 24 hours a day via Roku, the internet streaming service that allows people to watch internet-based channels on their TVs. Roku only has seven million subscribers, but anyone can watch it streamed online at www.atheists.tv 

Free-thinkers, as atheists style themselves, remain almost bizarrely under-represented in American public life and discourse. There is not a single openly declared atheist among the 535 members of Congress, and it is conventional electoral wisdom that the President of the United States has to be a believer. 

The profile of atheism is very slowly starting to change, with an increasingly vocal atheist community, including high-profile adherents like Brad Pitt and Mark Zuckerberg. Even so, non-belief, is still a very long way from acceptance.

The channel is backed by American Atheists, the civil rights organisation founded in 1963 that takes a pretty confrontational approach to defending separation of church and state, including fighting a legal battle against the "9/11 miracle cross" being placed in the museum commemorating the September 11 attacks 

The organisers tell me the channel will broadcast 24 hours, mostly with licenses and pre-recorded content, such as documentaries by the Richard Dawkins Foundation as well as a talk show titled "Atheist Viewpoint" and a call-in show, "Atheist Experience". 

I don't know what I'm going to enjoy more watching more, interesting thought provoking programming featuring the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and other freethinkers, or simply watching all of the conservatives and fundamentalist heads exploding.

I think they should dedicate an entire day to an "Inherit the Wind" marathon.

Another day could be dedicated to airing clips of religious apologists getting hitchslapped.

And perhaps yet another to  George Carlin comedy routines.

I'd watch that.

This may seem a trivial thing, and perhaps it is. But it is yet another sign for Atheists that it is starting to be okay for us to come out of the closet and proudly proclaim our emancipation from the chains of religious intolerance. 

Blast from the past: Christopher Hitchens subjects himself to waterboarding in order to prove it is not torture. Instead proves the opposite.

There is a never ending stream of criticism that is leveled at Hitch, some of it even from me back in the days when he was a cheerleader for the Iraq war and I was angrily speaking out against it with every post. However what can NEVER be said about Hitchens is that he is a coward.

Even before he accepted his terminal cancer diagnosis and continued debating against religious faith in spite of his own impending demise, Hitchens decided to call the bluff of his detractors by proving that he could withstand waterboarding just as well as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who, it was reported, had been subjected to the torture 183 times.

Instead Hitch learned two things.

One, that he would gladly have given up state secrets in a heartbeat in order to avoid the process again.

And two, that despite his earlier protestations waterboarding was indeed torture.

Afterward he immediately wrote a compelling article admitting his ignorance, and telling the world that the process did not simulate the feeling of drowning, but in fact those subjected to it were actually being drowned.

You may remember that Hitchens was not alone in expressing his willingness to prove his point by allowing himself to be waterboarded.

Sean Hannity did the same thing, for charity even.

The exception of course is that Hannity is a cowardly POS and has never sacked up and followed through. (Not only that, but if you remind him of his broken vow he throws a tantrum and quickly changes the subject.)

I did not always agree with Christopher Hitchens, but I always respected his intellect and his courage. Something, by the way, that is often in short supply these days. 

Study finds that religious more likely to lie for financial gain. So THAT'S why I'm still poor!

Courtesy of Salon: 

In an experiment where lying led directly to financial gain, just over 50 percent of the participants told an untruth. That figure is roughly consistent with previous research. 

What’s new in this study by University of Regina economist Jason Childs is its breakdown of the personality traits of the liars. Unlike some previous research, he did not find men are more likely to lie than women. 

However, he discovered other factors predicted a greater likelihood of telling an untruth—including the assertion that religion plays an important role in your life. 

Somewhere (or not), Christopher Hitchens is chuckling.

Findings of the study were as follows:  

Among those more likely to lie for financial gain were: 

• Business majors. “It could be that these students are more prone to lying by nature or training,” Childs writes. “It could also be that individuals strongly motivated by financial returns, and therefore more likely to lie for a monetary payoff, are more likely to pursue an education in business.” (Previous research has found higher levels of academic cheating among business majors.) 

• Students whose parents were divorced. This is in line with expectations, in thatpast research has found children of divorce are more likely to engage in anti-social behavior. Perhaps the belief they’ve been cheated out of a happy childhood may lead them to feel cheating is OK. 

• Those for whom religion was more important to their lives. “This is surprising,” Childs writes, as most religions “promote honesty as a virtue. It may be that students for whom religion was important feel separate from other students at this largely secular university,” and thus feel less compelled to be honest with them.

You know part of me kind of wants to challenge these findings since I have never found that being religious or not, had any direct impact on a person's honesty.  However I also have to admit that with the preponderance of churches now preaching prosperity theology it might very well have conditioned many religious folks to focus on the acquisition of money above all else.

Personally as an Atheist I don't need to feel more moral or honest than my religious counterparts, I just don't want to be considered less moral or honest simply due to my lack of belief.

Whenever I hear religious people calling Atheists arrogant.

It's Sunday so let's talk God, shall we?

Well, that was informative.

Like I said before Hitchens could be arrogant, pompous, and acerbic, but when he was hitting on all cylinders, like he was here, his brilliance could also be blinding.

Discussion?

It's Sunday, so let's start the day with a little Chistopher Hitchens in honor of the Sabbath, shall we?

There were a number of things on which I did not see eye to eye with Hitch. He could also be very arrogant, and abrasive, which did not always help people keep an open mind ot the things he was saying.

However he was often very good at whittling down an argument to its most succinct points, and then stating them bluntly and with no apologies to those who might take offense.

Gotta love that about him.

Wait, it comes in a spray? Why didn't anybody tell me?

You do realize that if this were real that Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens would have had this sprayed in their direction so often that they would have been in a constant state of minty freshness.

Probably me too, for that matter.

Kathleen Parker reminisces about the bonding she experienced with Christopher Hitchens over their mutual dislike of Sarah Palin.

Courtesy of Saint Louis Today:

To say I was a friend of Hitchens would be an exaggeration, though I did enjoy the pleasure of his company on several occasions. But one needn't have known a writer to mourn his passing or to feel profound sadness about all the silent days to come. No matter what the topic, I always wanted to know what Hitchens thought about it and, lucky for the world, he seemed always willing to end the suspense. 

Although I had read him for years — and had in fact been influenced by him on wide-ranging subjects — I didn't meet him until 2008 when we were both consigned to the leper colony reserved for any who questioned John McCain's selection of a running mate. Precisely, we met "in makeup" at NBC. This is not the bonding experience of the foxhole, but the objectifying ritual of having one's countenance applied in the presence of another's conveys a sort of detached intimacy. 

"At last we meet," he said, as though this were the one thing missing from his otherwise rich life. 

If one knew only Hitchens' acerbic wit or his passionate attacks on such untouchables as Mother Teresa, not to mention God, then one might be surprised by his humility in personal encounters. Notwithstanding his deserved reputation for (often-rude) belligerence in the heat of intellectual debate, he was as polished as a silver service in the parlor. If he didn't kiss my hand upon parting, he left me with the impression that he had. 

He did most certainly invite me to a dinner at the home of David Frum and Danielle Crittenden, where a few of us benighted objectors to Sarah Palin feasted on Alaskan salmon, Baked Alaska and other ironic dishes indigenous to our own little Siberia. I confess to being raptly attentive to every Hitchens syllable, not least because of his remarkable lucidity well past the point where others had forgotten the first part of their own sentences. 

Among the many things that made Hitchens unique was his precision of thought and expression. What made him rare were his courage and tenacity. He was fearless in the field and relentless in his defense of the defenseless with that mightiest of swords — his pen. Judging from his final essays, he was also fearless in the face of death. Terrified that he might lose his ability to write and therefore his being? Well, that was something else. 

In his last article for Vanity Fair, Hitchens said he wanted to be fully present at death so that he might experience it actively rather than passively. How perfect that a man who was never passive about living would go un-gentle (but surely gentlemanly) into that dark night, and dare death to have the last word. 

It is quite interesting to me that Parker found herself finding common ground with this intellectual heavyweight over the GOP's most famous lightweight.

It is, after all, an experience I know all too well.

McCain's ridiculous choice for VP once brought many great minds together in an attempt to understand, rationalize, and explain to others the unexpected phenomena known as Sarah Louise Palin. And of course inspired many of us to stop her meteoric rise before it got too out of hand, by revealing the truth behind her carefully crafted mythology.

I have met some remarkable people due to her emergence, and of course watched numerous friendships dashed to the rocks along with the plummeting to the earth of her once skyrocketing popularity.

In the end the question is, was it worth it? And of course the answer is, yes, yes it was.

You may, or may not, be a fan of Christopher Hitchens, but he , unlike other journalists, had the courage to undergo waterboarding to determine if it was indeed torture. It was.

This video is from 2008, when Hitch decided to undergo water-boarding to determine if it was torture.

You may perhaps remember that in 2009, Sean Hannity said that HE was willing to be water-boarded for charity, but despite an offer from Keith Olbermann to pay $1,000.00 a minute to his named charity if he went through with it, Hannity simply did not have the guts.

"For every second you last, a thousand dollars -- live or on tape, provided other networks' cameras are there. A thousand dollars a second, Sean, because this is no game. This is serious stuff. Put your money where your mouth is, and your nose. Oh, and I'll double it when you admit you feared for your life, when you admit the horrible truth -- waterboarding, the symbol of the last administration, is torture."

After seeing how quickly Hitch succumbed to panic during his waterboarding, imagine how it must have felt for the so-called "Mastermind of 9-11," Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to undergo that same process 183 times.

Somehow I think he would have admitted to just about anything.

And then there were three.

You can almost feel the emptiness of the void can't you?

I had thought just to leave this image up and allow all of you to do the Googling as to who these gentleman are, and why what they have written is of such value to free thinking people everywhere.

However I thought better of it, and decided to provide a starting off point.

So to learn more about Richard Dawkins, just click here.

For the inside scoop on Sam Harris, this is where you want to go.

And for information on Daniel C. Dennet you can visit his home page here.

If you are not already overwhelmed by the incredible wealth of information that you will be exposed to, and wish to learn more about the fourth horseman who so recently shuffled off this mortal coil, you can watch the brilliant Christoper Hitchens take on former Prime Minister Tony Blair concerning the question of whether or not religion is a force for good in the world by clicking here.

I will warn you ahead of time that these are VERY intelligent men, making VERY intelligent arguments. So if you wish to continue forward with your religious beliefs, and with your certainty firmly in place, you might wish to avoid these men, and their arguments which challenge religion, like the plague.

Christopher Hitchens continues to impress.

Well no wonder he let loose his grip on this earthly realm.

Clearly his work here is done.

Another intellectual shining light blinks out. The passing of Christopher Hitchens.

Yesterday Chris Hitchens finally lost his battle with cancer, and has shuffled off this mortal coil just as convinced there was nothing awaiting him on the other side, in death as he was in life.

Hitchens was perhaps one of the MOST aggressively outspoken of the "New Atheists."

Though I did appreciate Hitchens brazen dismantling of religious sacred icons and beliefs, but I often had issues with his style, which could be a little too acerbic for my tastes.  This could possibly stem from the fact that he sometimes reminded me of the younger me, who was always ready to challenge a person's faith and ridicule their lack of intellectual honesty.

Over the years I have mellowed a great deal, and though I was NEVER as arrogant or dismissive as Hitch, I have come to be far more accepting of people's need to subscribe to the idea of something beyond that which is seen.

Having said that, there were certainly some wonderful quotes from Hitchens that should never be forgotten:

“If you gave [Jerry] Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.” 

“The governor of Texas, who, when asked if the Bible should also be taught in Spanish, replied that ‘if English was good enough for Jesus, then it’s good enough for me’.” 

About Mother Teresa: “She was not a friend of the poor. She was a friend of poverty. She said that suffering was a gift from God. She spent her life opposing the only known cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women and the emancipation of them from a livestock version of compulsory reproduction.” 

“Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that’s where it should stay.” 

“[O]wners of dogs will have noticed that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they will think you are god. Whereas owners of cats are compelled to realize that, if you provide them with food and water and shelter and affection, they draw the conclusion that they are gods.” 

About George W. Bush: “He is lucky to be governor of Texas. He is unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.” 

And of course:

About Sarah Palin: “She’s got no charisma of any kind, [but] I can imagine her being mildly useful to a low-rank porn director.”

Anybody who can make such an incredibly insightful statement about Palin is certainly somebody who will be sorely missed.  Good-bye Hitch, and good job.

For those who are unfamiliar with Chris Hitchens, here he is during a debate on the afterlife, with  Sam Harris, David Wolpe and Bradley Shavit Artson at the Whizin Center. (If you are easily offended, you might skip this video. Also there is some NSFW language.)

Though not usually my favorite Atheist, Christopher Hitchens makes extremely provocative and amazing opening statement before his debate on religion with ex-British PM Tony Blair.

Like any truly honest student of religious history, I tend to resist the urge to say that I am definitely certain of anything when it comes to religion..  However if forced at gunpoint to choose sides between those that believe and those that don't I would not hesitate to take my place standing with Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens.

Of the three my library only contains books written by Harris and Dawkins, as I have always found Hitchens to be somewhat pompous and imperious for my tastes.

Having said that I was rendered slack-jawed at Hitchens amazing opening statement (Starts at the 4:53 mark) in the beginning of his debate with Tony Blair.  Here read it for yourself.

Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects, in a cruel experiment, whereby we are created sick, and commanded to be well. I'll repeat that. Created sick, and then ordered to be well. And over us, to supervise this, is installed a celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea. Greedy, exigent, greedy for uncritical phrase from dawn until dusk and swift to punish the original since with which it so tenderly gifted us in the very first place.

However, let no one say there's no cure, salvation is offered, redemption, indeed, is promised, at the low price of the surrender of your critical faculties. Religion, it might be said, it must be said, would have to admit makes extraordinary claims but though I would maintain that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, rather daringly provides not even ordinary evidence for its extraordinary supernatural claims.

Therefore, we might begin by asking, and I'm asking my opponent as well as you when you consider your voting, is it good for the world to appeal to our credulity and not to our scepticism? Is it good for the world to worship a deity that takes sides in wars and human affairs? To appeal to our fear and to our guilt, is it good for the world? To our terror, our terror of death, is it good to appeal?

To preach guilt and shame about the sexual act and the sexual relationship, is this good for the world? And asking yourself all the while, are these really religious responsibilities, as I maintain they are? To terrify children with the image of hell and eternal punishment, not just of themselves, but their parents and those they love. Perhaps worst of all, to consider women an inferior creation, is that good for the world, and can you name me a religion that has not done that? To insist that we are created and not evolved in the face of all the evidence. To say that certain books of legend and myth, man-made and primitive, are revealed not man-made code. (You can find the entire transcript at the New Statesman.)

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of religion and its importance to humanity, the words spoken above must, at the very least, give one pause. It is even more impressive that Hitchens remains so defiant to the comforting, yet intellectually numbing embrace of religion when he faces his own mortality in the form of esophageal cancer.

My combative personal relationship with religion has always been defined by the fact that it asked too much of me in exchange for its simple answers to the complex questions of my life.  It demands that I turn off my critical thinking and eschew logic in exchange for allowing its tendrils to enter my consciousness and soothe my troubled spirit.

However, apparently unlike many other Americans, there is NO off switch connected to my critical thinking, and NOTHING troubles my spirit as much as creating distance between it and logic.  In short there is simply no way for me to get from where I am, to where the millions of people who readily embrace religion and accept on faith what science has been completely unable to discover have positioned themselves.

In my opinion, and please feel free to disagree with me, the very idea of choosing belief over reason seems to be the denying of that which makes us human.  After all isn't it this amazing intellect of ours which has allowed us to elevate ourselves out of the day to day fight for survival which defines the life of the creatures to whom we feel so superior?

Here we are a species which has unlocked the very genome that identifies what makes us human, and explored the mysteries of space, and yet we still run toward the comforting bedtime fables of religious belief when we are overwhelmed by our troubles or feel fear at the approaching of our own mortality.

What am I missing?

I could always be wrong, but I am fairly confident in saying that Christopher Hitchens is NOT a Sarah Palin fan!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Here is Hitchen's piece on Palin from December 7.

(H/T to Danielle.)