Michigan:

A Lansing Township pastor accused of possessing child pornography has resigned from his church and faces up to seven years in prison. Lloyd M. Hall Jr. last week submitted his letter of resignation to Plymouth Congregational Church, where he had served for about seven years, said Jim DeLine, a spokesman for the church.

The church’s board of trustees met Sunday morning and decided to accept 69-year-old pastor’s resignation, DeLine said.

93 replies on “There Is No Morality Without Religion”

  1. @48:

    So, better to just ignore the blatant hypocrisy of religious zealots who seem to be unable to practice what they preach, who feel compelled to condemn in others actions they seem to find perfectly acceptable when done by themselves? Not buying it for a moment.

    Sorry, but burying ones head in the sand, and trying to go through life blithely pretending such crimes never occur simply because it might APPEAR that such acknowledgment represents some sort of rhetorical “tit-for-tat” isn’t a particularly compelling argument for doing so, in my view.

  2. Sigh… you’re right COMTE. It’s not in the titles, it’s in the text. My bad.

    I retreat from this argument having been scolded for a technicality.

    No, wait… I said “articles.” I’m good there. You’re not right, COMTE. My bad.

    Sloggers… you rock. Christian, gay, or otherwise. I love you all.

  3. @50:

    Did YOU read the post?

    “Oh, wait… the patterns are inferred, right? And the title “Youth PASTOR Watch” is just in my imagination, too. Along with “And They Will Know Us As CHRISTIANS…”

    FAILUS MAXIMUS MORONUS

  4. A couple of things. The Plymouth church is not a member of the UCC, that’s the progressive Congregationalists. They are NACCC, which tends to be more conservative, and is officially apolitical, so this is not an activist gay friendly church.

    Regardless, as others have noted, there are people of shoddy moral character in every corner of life,of every sexual orientation, and in every religion. It is appropriate for public figures like Dan to call the church on its moral hypocrisies because so many corners of the church are so quick to make bigoted and condemning statements about us LGBT folks, and about Dan in particular.

    As an openly gay mainline clergy person, I’ve had to deal with a healthy dose of hate through the years, so I can relate a bit. I try to be quick to cry foul when my colleagues twist scripture into something hateful and condemning and I’ll admit to experiencing inappropriate, but momentarily wickedly schadenfreude when a conservative leader is exposed as a blatant hypocrite. I’m no angel, but don’t claim to be.

    I don’t know the whole situation with this pastor, but he clearly seems to have had child pornography on his computer. As either one who made or acquired child pornography, the Reverend is a criminal and an exploiter of the most vulnerable in our society–children. I don’t know if this guy is progressive or conservative, though one gets a conservative vibe from the church website. Regardless, the church, like society, must be vigilant in bringing to justice those who would exploit children. This guy is dangerous and shouldn’t have access to any position that would endanger others.

    Yes, Dan sometimes gets snarky when stuff like this happens…but then who can blame him? Heaven knows how much hate mail Dan gets from churchy folk with blinders on their brains and a fear and hatred of people who challenge their rigid views. I don’t think Dan is being self-righteous when he exposes the sexual wrongs of church folk…he’s RESPONDING to self-righteousness with a bit of humanist/secularist/atheist righteous indignation…and again, who can blame him?

    Keep it coming Dan…eventually I hope some of us crazy liberal Christians can pleasantly surprise you.

  5. Oh for FUCK’S SAKE, Comte…

    I wasn’t talking about boldface in my post. I was talking about boldface in the articles.
    I can’t type boldface. I can only type ALL CAPS to make emphasis.
    You’re lost in the fucking details, mincing words, and trying to win an argument based on stupid technical fouls.

    Generally, I make it a point to never directly insult another Slogger (apart from staff), but you… YOU….

    You’re alright, man… Sorry. I got a little heated there.
    Say, come up with another clever way to say “FAIL.” That shit cracks me up.

  6. 53
    Don’t be so hard on yourself, Chris, it’s not in your head. It couldn’t be, that space is full of shit.

    And @50 was wrong to call you a moron.
    That is so unfair.
    To actual morons.

  7. @ 46, the point is this.

    Savage was once told that “there is no morality without religion” by some fundie. Another one told him that “every child deserves a mother and a father.”

    He uses these posts to show the absurdity of these statements. Many religious people aren’t the least bit moral. Many children being reared by heterosexual couples are abused and neglected. Using either of these arguments to make a case against gay adoption or gay marriage are demonstrably false, and all these articles (and the YPW ones as well) prove that. They aren’t blanket condemnations of all religion, nor are they anti-straight parenting.

    I hope knowing the background helps you appreciate where these come from.

  8. Attention, everyone:

    I am sad to see this argument has degraded to name calling. Please consider chilling out. Thanks.

    Oh, and @54- Not Shy in Chi? Are you in Chicago? I’m moving there in September and will be looking for a Church. For some reason yours sounds appealing.

  9. @57 I hear you and appreciate the point. I’ve been reading these columns for a while now and know their origins.

    But why can’t Dan tell us some stories about happy gay couples leading good lives and raising well-adjusted children?
    I would LOVE to read those stories. I imagine other readers might agree.

    Instead, we get these luridly detailed, true-crime horror tales with sanctimonious titles.

    How does THAT further the cause of acceptance?

    Dan? I love you, man. You can do better than this.

  10. @57 I hear you and appreciate the point. I’ve been reading these columns for a while now and know their origins.

    But why can’t Dan tell us some stories about happy gay couples leading good lives and raising well-adjusted children?
    I would LOVE to read those stories. I imagine other readers might agree.

    Instead, we get these luridly detailed, true-crime horror tales with sanctimonious titles.

    How does THAT further the cause of acceptance?

    Dan? I love you, man. You can do better than this.

  12. Oh, Lenny, Lenny, Lenny – that’s your BEST excuse? You can’t type bold face?

    Oh! See what I just did there? Wow, it’s like magic! Amazing! Doesn’t it just boggle your mind? Maybe someday, if you’re really, really nice, I’ll let you in on the incredible secret! But, I mean really nice, not just pretend nice.

    But, back to the point at hand.

    Did you your did you not type the following:

    “Oh, wait… the patterns are inferred, right? And the title “Youth PASTOR Watch” is just in my imagination, too. Along with “And They Will Know Us As CHRISTIANS…”

    You see Lenny, when people use the word “title” I generally take that to mean the, you know, title, unless somehow the word has suddenly changed its meaning in the last couple of hours or so.

    And hey you-all, love the name-callin’ – it gladdens my lil’ ole’ heart to see just how readily you are to debase your rock-solid arguments with ad hominum attacks, really classy there.

    For now I think I’ll designate this one as:

    FAIL – EPIC SCALE

  13. 62
    Chris,
    Lenny went out of his way to be civil, obviously a waste of time and also obviously he has never read your shit or he would have known not to bother, but he tried really hard and gave you several chances and you used them all to demonstrate what a sad little prick you are. It is not the trolls that ruin slog, it is the regular named assholes.

  16. You mean, your argumentative foundation is predicated on whether you LIKE me or not?

    If the foundation is solid, then why should you CARE about anything else?

  21. @66 – It doesn’t matter how solid your foundation is if the shit you’ve built on top of it is a bunch of douchebaggery.

    @67 – Hi Kim! Thanks! 🙂

    @70 – Yay! Could I entice you to take a look at my blog and perhaps shoot me an email (the address is on there) as to where this church is?

  22. So, in your mind the argument is irrelevant, if the framer doesn’t meet with your standards of approval?

    Yes, well. How perfectly Christian of you…

  23. Well, yeah, I am a Christian, but that’s kind of irrelevant. In my opinion, you don’t judge a person by what they believe, but on the quality of their character.

    So, um, epic FAIL.

  24. On fallacies:

    It has always seemed to me that the point of these posts is to falsify the absolute positive claim, “there is no morality without religion” with a single ‘black swan’ – a single piece of contradictory evidence that demonstrates that the (again, absolute positive) statement which titles the post is incorrect. But to actual falsify the statement “there is no morality without religion”, what you’d need to show is _morality without religion_; whereas Dan keeps showing _religion without morality_.

    This is perhaps slightly more clear if we reconstitute the hypothesis as “if morality, then religion” (or, “if no religion, then no morality”). Contradicting this statement requires (no religion) AND (yes morality).

    What Dan keeps showing is (religion) AND (no morality) – which is interesting, but beside the implied point of the post. In fact, contradicting the hypothesis requires a positive post, showing an atheist acting morally.

    Unless I’m making some logical mistake myself, which is entirely possible – thoughts?

  26. Yes, of course you do. Because that allows you to maintain your smug, morally superior sanctimony, so that you can then dismiss the argument, regardless of its other merits, simply because you don’t like the “character” of the person making it.

    “That person is such a douchebag”, you say to yourself, “therefore, I can completely disregard anything they say, even if it makes sense, is logical, or proves the point.”

    I would expect nothing less, frankly, since apparently, your Messiah’s admonition to “judge not, etc., etc.” has fallen on completely deaf ears.

    But then, Christians have a tendency to ignore so many of Yeshua’s admonitions, whenever they find them inconvenient, don’t they?

  27. You know, COMTE, it’s possible to agree with someone and find them completely repugnant. I am experiencing this sensation right now. It’s very strange.

    But you’re trying to raise yourself above human nature here. There’s no point having a douchebag on your side, because a douchebag is never going to change anybody’s mind. He is (read: you are) only going to piss people off. If you want to promote your ideas, which are good ones, you might want to consider evolving some pragmatism. Thanks.

  28. See, your problem Jocelyn, is you actually BELIEVE you CAN change anyone’s mind on this subject.

    Nobody who has already formed an opinion on this particular issue, whether they’ve done so via a completely rational examination of the facts, or whether they’ve simply unquestioningly absorbed whatever primitive superstitions have been foisted on them by their parents or pastors, is ever going to come over to the other side on this one. So, the fact that you naively think that’s even a remote possibility already puts you at a distinct rhetorical disadvantage.

    I don’t CARE if you agree with me or don’t; I don’t care if you like me or not; my only concern is to continue to point up the complete and utter idiocy of this belief system, in all its illogical, hypocritical, self-contradictory, faith-based glory, using every rhetorical device at my disposal, including ridicule, humiliation, cajoling, snarkage, and yes, even general douchebaggery, if that’s what it takes.

    Pissing people off is what it’s all about, because when people get angry, they lose the capacity to stay focused on-message, and gradually retreat to that ancient reptile-brain response that invariably results in their ranting and screaming and calling you names and telling you to go fuck yourself, at which point any credibility they may have potentially built up over the course of an argument is washed completely down the drain, and they show themselves for what they truly are: sanctimonious, self-absorbed, intellectual feather-weights, for whom rampant, unmitigated hatred of their opponent becomes the only means of expression left to them once the paper-thin veneer of civilized behavior has finally crumbled away completely.

    In this type of dialectic, where you can’t actually WIN the argument (i.e. convince your opponent of the correctness of your position) because they’re never going to relinquish their own, you can only make THEM LOSE by pushing them into destroying their own rhetorical house-of-cards of their own accord.

    Which , as the above examples clearly demonstrate, isn’t all that terribly difficult to do, if one is willing to take a few minor hits in the name of douchebaggery.

  29. COMTE, I realize that the rabble-rousers on the other side will not have their minds changed. The average person, however, often will. I’ve been involved in discussions that changed my mind on things, or at least set in motion a chain of events that lead to a mind change.

    For example, I went to Catholic school for twelve years and the propaganda I received there lead me to be staunchly anti-abortion. But, when confronted with a reasonable argument from the other side, I began to see that being pro-choice was much more of a “pro-life” position. I have also changed some other people’s minds on this subject and others.

    The point is, the average guy is not, necessarily, a big-headed, closed-minded jerk. Many people are open to reason. There’s no reason to assume otherwise. I mean, if people didn’t change their minds once in a while, then nothing new would ever happen.

    Maybe you do have a point, though. I mean, I don’t think you would be the ideal candidate to be a central representative of a cause, but if people like you are on the sidelines arguing with the nut-bags on the other side, it frees up the civil people among both sides for meaningful discourse.

  32. Judging from the quality of what, even under normal circumstances, passes for discourse around here, I seriously doubt it.

    SLOG simply isn’t designed for such a salon-like tête à tête, not so long as individuals can’t be held accountable for whatever inane garbage they decide to anonymously spew. Until TPTB elect to institute some sort of registration system (unlikely, since the sole purpose of SLOG is to drive eyeballs-to-ads, and nothing does that quite so effectively as ersatz controversy), it’s just the hordes of slavering visigoths versus those of us who enjoy taunting them.

  35. There’s a lot of us who read Slog, but don’t post much. We’re not here to troll, or to argue. We’re here because there are frequent gems – sometimes diamonds – in the pile. Sometimes you have to dig through a lot of trollshit to get to them, but they’re usually there. Simply because I don’t post a response doesn’t mean I didn’t think about a post, have a visceral response to it, perhaps even change my mind because of it.

  36. Um, I forgot to actually make my point at the end of my post. My point is that you can’t judge the open-mindedness and cognitive ability of Slog’s readers by the quality of the dialog. A large number – quite probably a majority – of the readers either post very seldom or not at all.

  37. Right, they don’t like to get their hands/keyboards dirty, but they enjoy the visceral response of watching others do it on their behalf.

    You would have made a lovely spectator at The Coliseum, no doubt about it.

  43. @90:

    The point being, anyone who HASN’T formed a solid opinion on a subject such as the one we’ve been discussing by this point in their lives is simply too timorous to have developed even a basic sense of conviction in their own principles. In political and religious parlance (and in advertising) these people are referred to as “sheep”, and they can be led willy-nilly in whatever direction the wind happens to be blowing at any given time.

    So, when it comes to an issue of this importance, if you don’t know which side of the fence you sit on by now, you’re likely to never know; and I really can’t abide fence-sitters.

    91:

    Nooooo, it’s the blue pills in the morning, and the yellow and black ones at night – I know how to read a ‘sript, and my doctor, surprisingly, has excellent cursive skills.

    92:

    The gladiatorial games were also noted for pitting experienced fighters against political and religious dissidents, convicted criminals, mental and physical defectives, prisoners-of-war, the occasional unsuspecting spectator, and even an emperor himself (Commodus – although it should be noted his combats were always rigged in his favor). Ironically, a good gladiator was so highly valued by his owner that they made a concerted effort to keep them alive and in good fighting condition for as long as possible; hence the tendency to pit them against sub-par opponents. In point of fact, in most typical combats, the one participant LEAST likely to be seriously injured or killed was the gladiator themselves.

    But, in any case it was all done for the amusement of the masses, and of those who may have objected to the practice on moral principles, very few had the temerity to defy the public craving for blood-sport, so they went along, even when they knew it was the wrong thing to do.

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