Friday, August 28, 2009

The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch or Mansfield

I've mentioned before how some Xians always assume greater honesty in others who identify themselves as Xians in spite of evidence to the contrary. I thought about that while reading this article about a youth minister convicted of 42 sex crimes in Mansfield, OH. Then I was reading about the kidnapper of Jaycee Lee Dugard who turned up 18 years later in Antioch, CA after Phillip Garrido, her kidnapper-rapist, drew the attention of police at UC Berkley when he and his 2 daughters (that he fathered with the kidnap victim) were passing out religious tracts. Garrido claims to be a devout Xian but his neighbors just think he is psycho.

I'm not saying all Xians are bad (although the ones I blog about usually are), I'm just saying that anyone who assumes that someone identifying himself as a Xian is automatically more trustworthy, honest or moral than average, should probably paint a target on their forehead and put a "kick me" sign on their back. There is no evidence that those who identify themselves as Xian are more honest than average and if anyone bothered to check, I suspect they would find a correlation between how loudly a person espouses his religion and how dishonest he is.

A last minute addition: The Friendly Atheist just posted something about one of the kind of person I was talking about.

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