The demise of the Catholic Church could be of great benefit to the world's poor precisely because of their stance on contraception and reproductive rights.

It is generally well-known that giving women control over their reproductive health is a major step to reducing poverty. The countries with the highest rates of poverty also have the highest rates of fertility and population growth. But you don't have to just take my word for it, it is the consensus of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. Have a look at Google scholar and you will find many studies which support this. Here's an example from the prestigious UK medical journal The Lancet, reproduced on the WHO website:

Sexual and reproductive health: a matter of life and death
Anna Glasier, A Metin Gülmezoglu, George P Schmid, Claudia Garcia Moreno, Paul FA Van Look http://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publication...

(You have to register to get into the Lancet's archives, but here is the the abstract there: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/...

So let the Catholic Church go on marginalizing itself and making itself more and more irrelevant. They could hardly get more despicable than they already are. Anyone who genuinely wants to help the poor can, and easily will, find other ways to do it. Ones which don't come with such pig-headedly counter-productive conditions placed on them.

Fuck the Catholic Church!

Oh, now you're all about nuance and subtle point-of-argument, I see. Forgive me, it didn't really come through in your original comment, which seemed awfully flip and dismissive.

"Large parts"? etc. etc.

Okay, I stand partially corrected. How about significant parts of it are not Jewish then? Seeing as they have been used to justify centuries of persecution of Jews, I think it would be reasonable to call them significant. It also makes me wonder if characterizing the Bible as "Jewish lies" is terribly fair. What is it with you and Jews, anyway? I'm curious, are Jewish lies worse than gentile lies?

"There's nothing wrong with fairytale so long as you know that's what it is and don't mistake it for literal truth".

I think we secularists already got that part figured out. The problem is that the religious world has not.

Oh, you know that then? It didn't really come through in your comment. But since then, you seem to have woken up.

You state that it's not badly written and then proceed to dive right into an explanation of how and why some of it is badly written.

Yes, and your problem with that is what? Honesty demands that I acknowledge that parts of the Bible are badly written, however I did not claim that the Bible is well written, because that would have made me as wrong as you. The truth of the matter is that some of it is badly written, and some of it is exceptionally well written, so when you say "it is badly written" it is neither fair nor accurate.

"So is Hamlet, but do you call that ridiculous? "

No, because people don't enslave, rape, torture, murder and otherwise treat people like shit because of something they read in Hamlet. Horrible analogy.

No, it is a great analogy. Analogies are only bad or good depending on the intent of the analogy. You are not reading it right. Deliberately, I suspect. If I say a man in a tuxedo is like a penguin, it's a great analogy if I mean he is black and white. Not so great if I mean he can swim in sub-zero temperatures. The fact that the Bible is error-ridden, violent, misogynistic and magic filled has nothing to do with the fact that people use it to justify wicked actions. A point which I seem to recall making twice, and which the fact that people don't do the same thing with Hamlet underlines.

I think you are totally missing the point just as much as this Prof. Capes is totally missing the point. What you say reminds me of the kind of crap you get from Christian fundamentalists. They say:

"If THIS BOOK isn't TRUE, you may as well THROW IT AWAY!" <brandishes Bible>

Are the Aeneid and the Odyssey a load of old shite too then? Or is it possible that you're so caught up what Christians tell you the Bible is that you can't see it for what it really is - which is a perfectly respectable, fascinating and historically important collection of folk-tales and mythology? I just want to address some points here:

It's not all Jewish, large parts of it were written by gentiles.

On what basis do you call it lies? One may just as easily call it a good-faith attempt at explaining the world and recording the traditions and legends of the people who wrote it - who were working under an extreme handicap, BTW, since they had little enough knowledge of how the world works, or even how to find out.

There's nothing wrong with fairytale so long as you know that's what it is and don't mistake it for literal truth.

It's not badly written. Well, I will grant that parts of it are awful, but when was the last time you read, say, Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians? Sometime around about never, I'm guessing. It's patchy at worst, and that's because it isn't really one book but a collection of books by different authors, some of which were fine writers, and some of which weren't.

It is indeed error-ridden, violent, misogynistic and magic filled, but frankly who cares if you take it as what it is instead of as some kind of instruction manual? So is Hamlet, but do you call that ridiculous?

Personally, I think the Bible is a fine book. It's faith I have a problem with. Once you've put away childish things like faith, the Bible becomes just another one of many fascinating old books. No need to sound so bitter about it!