<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	xmlns:itunes="http://www.itunes.com/dtds/podcast-1.0.dtd"
	xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/"
>

<channel>
	<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; Religion</title>
	<atom:link href="http://wspus.org/category/religion/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://wspus.org</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Tue, 07 Feb 2012 17:10:31 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en</language>
	<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
	<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	<generator>http://wordpress.org/?v=abc</generator>
	<!-- podcast_generator="podPress/8.8" - maintenance_release="8.8.5.3" -->
	<copyright>Copyright &#xA9; World Socialist Party (US) 2010 </copyright>
	<managingEditor>joinwspus@wspus.org (World Socialist Party (US))</managingEditor>
	<webMaster>joinwspus@wspus.org (World Socialist Party (US))</webMaster>
	<category>posts</category>
	<ttl>1440</ttl>
	<image>
		<url>http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4261195043_233c9929ca_o.jpg</url>
		<title>World Socialist Party (US) &#187; Religion</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org</link>
		<width>144</width>
		<height>144</height>
	</image>
	<itunes:subtitle></itunes:subtitle>
	<itunes:summary></itunes:summary>
	<itunes:keywords></itunes:keywords>
	<itunes:category text="Society &amp; Culture" />
	<itunes:author>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:author>
	<itunes:owner>
		<itunes:name>World Socialist Party (US)</itunes:name>
		<itunes:email>joinwspus@wspus.org</itunes:email>
	</itunes:owner>
	<itunes:block>no</itunes:block>
	<itunes:explicit>no</itunes:explicit>
	<itunes:image href="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4261195043_233c9929ca_o.jpg" />
		<item>
		<title>What&#8217;s wrong with religion?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/11/whats-wrong-with-religion/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/11/whats-wrong-with-religion/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 06 Nov 2010 18:42:01 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Suzy</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1912</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Occasionally [the SPGB] gets a membership application from someone who has a rough idea of what we stand for. They may have read few Socialist Standards and perhaps been to a meeting or two. They’re fired up and want to get involved so they ask for an application form, fill it in, &#8211; and suddenly they’re puzzled. &#8211; Why do we ask them their views on religion? (It’s not just religion we ask them about of course but their understanding and agreement with our case generally but it’s often a religious view that proves to be a sticking point). ‘Wasn’t Jesus a socialist’? They may ask. And if they do or if they hold the view that the stars or other mystical forces hold the key to our lives we have to politely ask them to find out a bit more about the Socialist case and then come back and talk to us again. So why are we opposed to religious beliefs? Well the socialist or materialist opposition to religion differs slightly from the usual atheist position. The non-socialist atheist argues that there is no evidence and thus no rational grounds for believing in supernatural beings or in life after [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2010/11/whats-wrong-with-religion/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>It&#8217;s the Devil&#8217;s fault!</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2010/04/its-the-devils-fault/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2010/04/its-the-devils-fault/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Apr 2010 08:14:26 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1505</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[“Noted Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth, commented this week that “the recent defamatory reporting on Pope Benedict XVI, especially by the New York Times, was prompted by the devil.” Speaking to News Mediaset in Italy, the 85-year-old exorcist noted that “the devil is behind the recent attacks on Pope Benedict XVI regarding some pedophilia cases. There is no doubt about it. Because he is a marvelous Pope and worthy successor to John Paul II, it is clear that the devil wants to grab hold of him.” Father Amorth added that in instances of sexual abuse committed by some members of the clergy, the devil “uses” priests in order to cast blame upon the entire Church: “The devil wants the death of the Church because she is the mother of all the saints. He combats the Church through the men of the Church, but he can do nothing to the Church.” The exorcist went on to note that Satan tempts holy men, “and so we should not be surprised if priests too fall into temptation. They also live in the world and can fall like men of the world.” (Catholic News Agency, 31 March) RD No related posts.


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2010/04/its-the-devils-fault/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The power behind the shame</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2009/08/the-power-behind-the-shame/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2009/08/the-power-behind-the-shame/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Aug 2009 23:01:24 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://wspus.org/?p=1058</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[From this month&#8217;s Socialist Standard It was the political power that the Catholic Church once exercised in Ireland that allowed it to cover up for so long the child abuse exposed in the recent Ryan Report. I travelled to Dublin in the early 1950s as a member of a delegation from a Northern Ireland Labour group. Our purpose was to discuss with the leaders of the Irish Labour Party the desirability and feasibility of extending this party into Northern Ireland. The Irish Labour Party was then part of the coalition government which abandoned the constitutional ties with Great Britain and declared the state of Eire “The Republic of Ireland”. Its leader was William Norton who was the Coalition’s Deputy Prime Minister (Tanaiste) and Minister of Labour. He was the Leader of the delegation we were meeting on the Sunday morning. The rest of its delegates were Senator Luke Duffy, the Party’s General Secretary, James Larkin (son of the courageous Labour Leader of 1912 fame) and Roddy Connolly,(the son of James Connolly, the erstwhile socialist who was executed by the British for his part in the 1916 Easter Rising). We met in the Tanaiste’s office, a very grand location in, if [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2009/08/the-power-behind-the-shame/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Darwin and the Intelligent Design Brigade</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2009/02/darwin-and-the-intelligent-design-brigade/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2009/02/darwin-and-the-intelligent-design-brigade/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 05 Feb 2009 06:05:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Science]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=910</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Christian Right Lobbies To Overturn Second Law Of Thermodynamics &#8220;The second law of thermodynamics, a fundamental scientific principle stating that entropy increases over time as organized forms decay into greater states of randomness, has come under fire from conservative Christian groups, who are demanding that the law be repealed. &#8220;Calling the second law of thermodynamics &#8220;a deeply disturbing scientific principle that threatens our children&#8217;s understanding of God&#8217;s universe as a benevolent and loving place,&#8221; they are spearheading a nationwide grassroots campaign to have the law removed from high-school physics textbooks. The plan has already met with significant support in the state legislatures of Kansas, Oklahoma, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, and Mississippi.” Before you start worrying, this was a satirical item from The Onion, back in 2000, aimed at religious people who reject Darwinian evolution. However it’s not really an exaggeration. Religious fundamentalists who reject evolutionary theory are also rejecting geology, astronomy, Einsteinian and Newtonian physics, in fact the whole body of scientific knowledge going back to first principles, and replacing it with a couple of anonymous books and a God who, as Bill Hicks pointed out in relation to dinosaur fossils, must be a liar and a practical joker. Yet these [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2009/02/darwin-and-the-intelligent-design-brigade/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>A Reply to the Pope</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/10/a-reply-to-the-pope/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/10/a-reply-to-the-pope/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:56:44 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPCanada</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=736</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[On October 8, 2008, an article in the Toronto Star (Credit Crunch Shows Futility of Money : Pope) should have set to rest the minds of any who are worried about the worlds financial crisis. “Pope Benedict XVI, reflecting on crashing stock markets and capitalism, concluded that, ‘money vanishes, it is nothing’ and that, ‘the only solid reality is the word of God. He who builds only on visible and tangible things like success, career, and money, builds the house of his life on sand’, the pontiff told bishops at an assembly in the Vatican.” This represents one of our criticisms of religion in general. It attempts to assuage the suffering of the masses with the belief that a better life awaits after death if you endure this suffering without protest, instead of analyzing the true causes of that suffering and proposing real solutions that work in the material world. Of course, that would mean advocating an end to our present class system of economics that religions support. I only wish I could meet the Holy Father in person and say, “Gee, thanks, what greatness of character you have that you can rise above your worry of homelessness, starvation, and [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2008/10/a-reply-to-the-pope/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Another Fraud</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/10/another-fraud/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/10/another-fraud/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:27:22 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>SPGB</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=683</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;For as long as man has worshipped a god, there have been forgers, crafty hucksters who seize on a believer&#8217;s desire to possess material proof of the divine. In Jerusalem, it is a bountiful trade. The old adage is that if all the splinters of the True Cross were gathered from across Christendom, it would yield a wooden crucifix the size of a Manhattan skyscraper. Even back in the Middle Ages, pilgrims visiting Jerusalem told of hawkers who sold counterfeit bones and relics of saints. But indisputable historical evidence that Jesus Christ, or any of the other Biblical prophets, truly existed is something that eludes religious scholars. There was therefore much excitement in 2001 when a reclusive Tel Aviv collector, Oded Golan, announced that a stone reliquary had come into his possession inscribed with the words &#8220;James, son of Joseph, brother of Jesus.&#8221; The discovery of the ossuary was hailed in some quarters as a spectacular archaeological find — solidly circumstantial proof, at last, of Christ&#8217;s existence. For it would have held the remains of the Apostle James, who was killed in A.D. 62 and is described in the Bible as Jesus&#8217; brother. When the James ossuary toured Canada in October 2002, it [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2008/10/another-fraud/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Oh</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/03/oh/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/03/oh/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 09 Mar 2008 23:34:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>FN Brill</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Humor]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=369</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[No related posts.


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2008/03/oh/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The trouble with gods</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-trouble-with-gods/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-trouble-with-gods/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sat, 12 Jan 2008 06:00:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Stefan</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=326</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Gods do exist, in a certain sense (I use the word “gods” as a gender-neutral term that includes goddesses). Humans create them in their own image, though without being aware of doing so. The fact that gods are male or female in itself strongly suggests that they are creatures of the human imagination. But they infest the mind as powerful, capricious and mysterious beings who demand endless worship and praise, reverence and obedience, devotion and propitiatory sacrifice. The gods in the head of the believer thwart the development of confidence, self-respect, rational enquiry and independent judgment. In this way the idea of domination and submission is imprinted in the psyche as a model for relationships between beings. That model is then readily applied to social relationships – to the relationship between man and woman, master and slave, and so on. The Moroccan scholar Fatna A. Sabbah has shown how this works in the case of Islam in her brilliant (pseudonymous) study Woman in the Muslim Unconscious (Pergamon Press, 1984), but her analysis applies equally well to the psychology of “God-fearing” Jews and Christians. The imaginary world of the divine, in turn, draws its inspiration from the real world of human [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2008/01/the-trouble-with-gods/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Happy Wage-Slave-Off Days!</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2007/12/happy-wage-slave-off-days-2/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2007/12/happy-wage-slave-off-days-2/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:00:00 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>Dr. Who</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=304</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Isn’t it nice to have a few days off from work, warming the cockles of our overgenerous souls after spending the past year producing large sums of wealth for the parasite class, singing Santa songs by the hearth, drinking mulled wine and pretty much anything else that will get us tipsy, opening our presents, and living those few golden days of celebration that we would wish for the other days of the year as well? But these holidays will end all too soon. We have barely begun to relax in our holiday mode when the alarm clock awakens us once again and we are back in the traffic. Back to returning home in the evening to a mail box as stuffed with bills as were the stockings with gifts just a few brief days ago. There are so many things worth celebrating, for sure. Our children’s birthdays. And a thousand victories for slaves, minorities, workers and women. But the birth of a baby who likely never existed and who spearheaded a movement whose work ethic seemed to fit in rather nicely with the decline of slavery and the rise of capitalism? Capitalism requires a censoring of egoism since its basis [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2007/12/happy-wage-slave-off-days-2/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Religion or capitalism: Which is the root of evil?</title>
		<link>http://wspus.org/2007/10/religion-or-capitalism-which-is-the-root-of-evil/</link>
		<comments>http://wspus.org/2007/10/religion-or-capitalism-which-is-the-root-of-evil/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:42:40 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>MS</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.wspus.org/?p=286</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Atheism—thank god—is gaining in popularity and in converts. Books by atheists have been appearing on non-fiction bestseller lists, such as Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith. Even Christopher Hitchens, who has been cheering on the US imperialist crusade with his Christian comrades in the 101st Keyboard Brigade, has cashed in on the trend with his new book God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. These prominent atheists have pointed out the ill effects of religion on society and exposed the errors and outright stupidity of religious thought. Such efforts are all-too necessary today, unfortunately, especially in countries like the United States, where politicians cannot even order a cup of coffee without declaring: “God bless America.” It is encouraging that atheists are now confidently voicing their ideas and that their criticism of religion has struck a chord with so many people. If anything, though, the “new atheists” take religion too seriously, extending their criticism to the point that religion seems to be the fundamental cause of many—if not most—of the society’s ills. Dawkins, for instance, depicts an epic struggle between religion (evil) and science (good), while effectively detaching both from the society in which [...]


No related posts.]]></description>
		<wfw:commentRss>http://wspus.org/2007/10/religion-or-capitalism-which-is-the-root-of-evil/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>0</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

