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Category: Religion

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By Erich Vieth on November 17th, 2009

The Charter for Compassion: simple kind-hearted affirmation of others

Karen Armstrong’s “Charter for Compassion” is a new and eloquent re-affirmation of the golden rule. Her Charter is not based upon any particular religious tradition. Rather, it is based on the recognition that compassion (the golden rule) is the centerpiece for all worthy moral systems. Armstrong, formerly a nun was recently interviewed by Bill Moyers, and had this to say:

[T]his is the beginning of something. We’re writing a charter which we hope will be sort of like the charter of human rights, two pages only. Saying that compassion is far more important than belief. That it is the essence of religion. All the traditions teach that it is the practice of compassion and honoring the sacred in the other that brings us into the presence of what we call God, Nirvana, Raman, or Tao. And people are remarkably uneducated about compassion these days. So we want to bring it back to the center of attention. But then, it’s got to be incarnated into practical action.

. . . Compassion doesn’t mean feeling sorry for people. It doesn’t mean pity. It means putting yourself in the position of the other, learning about the other. Learning what’s motivating the other, learning about their grievances. So the Charter of Compassion was to recall compassion from the sidelines, to which it’s often put in religious discourse and put it back there.

I do believe that this type of approach is sorely needed in the modern world. We need an approach that can be embraced by every good-hearted person, religious or not. This Charter is something simple enough and powerful enough to combat the egoism, arrogant intellectualism, arrogant religions, consumerism and xenophobia that are screwing up so many of us.

Good and Evil • Religion • Social justice
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By Erich Vieth on November 16th, 2009

Chris Mooney: New Atheists’ attack on religion is counter-productive

Chris Mooney is the author of The Republican War on Science, Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future (co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum). He is also an atheist who, for years, has engaged with believers on the validity of religious claims. He strongly believes that those who respect the scientific method should question religious claims.

In this interview with D.J. Grothe at Point of Inquiry, however, Mooney takes on the New Atheists (starting here at about the 10:30 minute mark). Instead of attacking religions, Mooney advocates that we should promote scientific literacy. Yes, we should refute the baseless claims of fundamentalists, but it is equally critical to “mobilize the religious moderates,” and not alienate them by attacking all religions.

Mooney argues that the New Atheists have painted with much too broad a brush, and that they have used an aggressive tone that achieves “nothing at all.” He points to P.Z. Myers as being one of the most prominent culprits.

Featured • Religion • Science
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By Mike Pulcinella on November 14th, 2009

An atheist’s response to a religious greeting

I have an acquaintance at the gym, let’s call him “Greg”. I like Greg. Whenever I ask him how he’s feeling Greg answers, “I am blessed!”

If I see him when I’m on my way out and I say, “See ya later Greg!’, he always says something like, “God bless!” or “God willing!”

Greg is obviously a devout man. He hurt his wrist in a bad fall recently and told me how God was looking out for him because it could have been much worse. I nodded silently. Greg doesn’t know I am a doubter and I would never bring it up in the gym.

The strange thing is that lately I have found myself returning his greeting in kind. The other day Greg saw me before I saw him and he greeted me first.

“How’s it going today Mike?”

“I am blessed!”, I found myself saying (much to my surprise) and I meant it!

“You know it!”, he said with a knowing smile, and walked on.

It’s true! I do feel “blessed”, whatever that means. I’m very grateful for the things, the people, my health and the opportunities that I have in my life. I think about it every day. I often say that I feel like I live in a constant state of thankfulness. If that isn’t blessed I don’t know what is!

So now whenever I see Greg I greet him in a way that I’m sure leads him to think that I am a believer like him. My beliefs haven’t changed, I’m still an atheist, but it makes me feel good to say it and hear him say it back.

Is that wrong??

Featured • Meaning of Life • Religion
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“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”
By Brynn Jacobs on November 11th, 2009

“Going Muslim” as the new “going postal”

The shootings at Fort Hood last week have provoked a media feeding frenzy. Questions abound, and there is no dearth of speculation as to the shooter’s motives. Most articles I have seen waste no time pointing out that the shooter was a Muslim, that he exclaimed “Allahu akbar” before shooting, and that he is linked with radical imams and possibly Al Qaeda. That’s from the ostensibly “impartial” media, but there are also a few extremely distasteful editorial perspectives that are unfortunately quite mainstream that I wanted to comment on today. I’m afraid my ability to edit sarcasm out of my posts declines in direct proportion to the insanity and hypocrisy with which I’m confronted, so bear with me.

First, Forbes featured an article by Tunku Varadarajan entitled “Going Muslim“, a play on the old phrase “going postal”. He describes it thusly:

As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub–disconcertingly–”Going Muslim.” This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American–a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood–discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.

Bigotry • Current Events • Featured • Military • Religion
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By Mark Tiedemann on November 11th, 2009

Church To State: “Do What We Want Or Else.”

The divide between church and state seems on the one hand to be growing but on the other narrowing, especially when you consider how intrusive established religions have been. Representatives of the Catholic Church sat in Nanci Pelosi’s office of late while negotiations for the health care bill were ongoing, overseeing what she would do about abortion.

Now this.

Any way one reads this, it comes out as a threat. The quid pro quo is explicit. “If you don’t bend to our will on this, we will stop services your city relies on.”

I have in the past believed that the tax exempt status of religions was a necessary work-around to preserve the fiction of separation. In the past, there have been instances of state intrusion directly into religions in, for one example, state funding for programs in parochial schools. There was always a quid pro quo in such offers and practices.

But never has a representative of the state sat in the office of a minister while he drafted a sermon to be sure certain details got left out or included. Never, despite massive abuses by religious institutions in real estate and related financial areas, has the state moved to revoke 501(c)(3) status. It may be that any state official who tried it would be booted out of office summarily, but nevertheless that has been the unspoken law of the land.

Seems the courtesy doesn’t go both ways. If that’s the case, I think it is time to revisit the whole issue. If the Catholic Church sees itself as providing services as an arm of the civil service sector and allows itself the conceit that it may use that service as a lever to influence political decisions, then they have implicitly given up due consideration as an inviolate institution, free from state requirements of taxation and regulation.

Seems fairly clear cut to me. Obviously, there will be those who disagree. But it’s time, I think, to seriously reconsider the state relationship to so-called “nonprofit” “apolitical” tax exempt institutions.

American Culture • Culture • Current Events • Featured • Law • Media • Noteworthy • Politics • Religion • hypocrisy
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By Erich Vieth on November 09th, 2009

The three reasons to have slavery, based on the Bible

If you thought that no one would dare try to defend slavery, as presented by the Bible, think again. I found this video on Slate; it is an animated (and speeded-up) version of a real-life “Biblical slavery” apologist. Listen for a minute or two, if you can stand it.

Note the comment following the video: “Brilliant! So, where can I sign up to be a “biblical” slave…?”

Religion
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By Mark Tiedemann on November 07th, 2009

Success and Sources: the Self-Created Problem of Christianity

I’m sure this will annoy a lot of people, some more than others.

This is one of those notions I stumble on from time to time while daydreaming or free associating. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about religion of late—as how could many people not be, what with the state of the world (he says with tongue in his other cheek, being both ironic and absurd)?—and trying to come up with some theory of it that might bleed off the poisons that seem to bubble up from it from time to time.

Someone said something to me that triggered this idea and it’s probably not original. But we were discussing Roman Catholicism and the observation was made that in its long history it has absorbed more than it has suppressed.

“Of course it has,” I responded. “That’s how it began, after all, as a congeries of pagan beliefs subsumed beneath an orthodox umbrella. It is the perfect example of an assembled religion.”

Regardless where the initial push came from, whatever its core ideology, the fact is that Roman Catholicism came to fruition as a political entity and it was a model of almost democratic universalism. The holidays (holy days) are mostly borrowings from other disciplines, retrofitted to make people comfortable with the new paradigm. Its rituals and mysteries are all adaptations of older religious ideas and practices, including a marvelous transplantation from Egyptian mythology of the entire Jesus myth (Horus—almost all of it is duplicated, including certain names, such as Lazarus, and the whole virgin birth motif, which itself is nothing particularly new). The architects of Roman Catholicism, let us assume to be more gracious than not, recognized a core set of beliefs that did not of themselves require the trappings of a religion or its concomitant institutions, but also saw that most people would prefer (or require) all that such physical and cultural manifestations afford. Romans above all understood in their bones the function of public architecture and ceremony. They seemed instinctively attuned to the idea that to get people to behave a certain way they should live within the physical representations of the philosophies behind such behavior. Romans were Romans as much because of their cities and roads as because of any political philosophy. The two supported each other. The church borrowed that big time.

But as an assembled religion, it had a problem, which was the necessity to obscure all the past manifestations, cut the ties to all the pagan practices they’d taken over, and embark on a long-term campaign to evoke cultural amnesia in order to represent themselves as The Truth. The problem with this is two-fold: [more . . . ]

American Culture • Bigotry • Culture • Politics • Religion
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Fans, Freedom, and Frustration
By Mark Tiedemann on November 03rd, 2009

Fans, Freedom, and Frustration

Over on her blog, Kelley Eskridge has a video of a “Bono Moment” in which you see two distinct types of fans interacting with U2’s lead singer. Check it out and come back here.

Okay, the guy in the t-shirt obviously is carrying on a conversation. he may be being a fan, but he hasn’t lost his mind. The female is being…a groupie, I guess. Though the groupies I’ve met in my time have been a bit more specific about what they wanted and had a better plan on how to get it. In any event, the questions Kelley raises are interesting and relate on so many levels to so many different things. The fan reaction—mindless adulation bordering on deification—looks to me, has always looked to me, like exactly the same kind of nonsense people put into religion. Mindless, utterly uncritical adoration of an image and the set of emotions with which that image is connected in the mind of the adulant. You can see the same thing in politics. To a lesser degree with less public personalities—writers, painters, photographers (I never knew anyone who elevated a photographer to the level of sex god, but I have known people who got off on sleeping with painters, and of course there’s a kind of Nabokovian/Bellow/DeLillo-esque subculture of writer groupies…) and other creative types—but actors and musicians seem to get all the dedicated obsessives.

I’ve never had this happen to me. I’m not sure if I’m grateful or resentful—having somebody want to associate themselves with you in a mindless swoon because your work has made them, I don’t know, climax maybe is on a certain level appealing. But it’s appealing the same way porn is—something most people, if they’re at all sane and grounded, kind of grow out of and get over. I know I would not find it very attractive now. When I was twenty-five? You betcha. Bring ‘em on.

But if I’d had that then I think I’m fairly sure I would have wearied of it very quickly. I long ago realized that sex, to me, involved the other person—emphasis on Person—and the best sex I ever had included the good conversations before and, especially, after. (There is a point, of course, where you realize that sex is a conversation, of a very particular sort, and takes on a whole new dimension, which one-night-stands, no matter how good they might be, just can’t provide.)

But the real problem with all this is that art is more than just any one thing and the artist is not the art. The two are inextricably linked. Here is a video discussing the question of artist-in-relation-to-muse which I find illuminating. The notion that the talent “arrives” and you act as conduit through which creativity happens is not, as the speaker suggests, a new one, and it’s not one I’m particularly in sympathy with—it all happens in my brain, it’s definitely mine—but I certainly find her analysis of the psychology of following through intriguing and true. Once the muse is finished with you on a given project, you do not continue to exist as though in the grip of the work. There is a person there that pre-figures the work and who will be there after it’s done that has all the needs and wants and sensibilities of a normal human being. To be treated as some kind of transcendence generating machine by people is in some ways disenfranchising. For a writer, if the well from which inspiration and material are drawn is the honesty of human interaction, then the gushing idiot fan robs the writer, for a few minutes at least, of exactly that.

But it also sets the artist up to become a prisoner. A prisoner of other people’s expectations. Those expectations always play a part in anyone’s life, but certain aspects—the most artificial ones—get exaggerated in the instance of fan adoration.

Watch Bono shift from one stance to another when he finally acknowledges the female. No, he doesn’t stop being Bono, but it’s almost as if he says “Oh, it’s time to do this sort of thing now” as he first recognizes her presence and then automatically poses for the camera, with this not-quite-disingenuous smirk. Because he also recognizes that, however silly this person is being, what she’s feeling right then is her’s and to claim it is artificial is wrong. Maybe an artificial set of expectations led her to this point, but now that she’s In The Moment, the emotions are real. If he’d ignored her or told her something snarky in an attempt to snap her out of it, all that would have resulted would have been an ugly moment, a bit of cruelty, and a lot of confusion on the fan’s part.

[more . . . ]

Addictions • American Culture • Art • Communication • Community • Consumerism • Culture • Education • Featured • Meaning of Life • Media • Politics • Psychology Cognition • Religion • Science • Writing • music
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By Erich Vieth on November 03rd, 2009

The beliefs of Scientologists

What do Scientologists believe? What follows is an excerpt from ABC’s documentary on Scientology. You’ll learn about the “purification rundown.” You’ll also learn a bit about Scientology’s confidential scriptures–meant only for those who have reached the highest levels of Scientology–including the teachings about the Intergalactic emperor named Xenu, who allegedly brought the spirits of his people to Earth 75 million years ago and buried them in volcanoes. These people were supposedly alive quadrillions of years ago (this is far older than the big bang). One Scientologist who appears in this video claims that it is against his religious beliefs to discuss his religious beliefs, leading to an entertaining ending, at least for those of us who don’t believe in Xenu.

Culture • Religion
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What Jesus looks like; what God is like.
By Erich Vieth on October 30th, 2009

What Jesus looks like; what God is like.

I somehow got onto a emailing list that sends me lots of information on God and heaven. The latest email included a provocative photograph of Jesus. He looks like a wealthy young man from Los Angeles, hanging out at the beach. These sorts of “photos” of Jesus were extremely popular when I was growing up. These sorts of images still appear in the Christian literature handed to me on the streets and at my front door.

It makes me wonder, though, whether Jesus would be nearly as popular if he was represented as he might have looked in reality (if he existed at all): He would have had much darker skin and hair; he’d likely be much shorter than most modern men; he would not have been so well groomed, his complexion wouldn’t be that of a pampered movie star, his clothing would not have been well-washed and he would not have spoken nor understand English. If he visited our modern world, he would hang around prostitutes, criminals, other types of sinners, and the poor and down-and-out. He would likely assume the role of “terrorist,” attempting to detonate the corporate temples of the big Wall Street money-changers/Mammon idolaters. He would, if he visited us, encourage his followers to give up their suburban lifestyles, and to empty out their 401K’s and give all of that money to the poor, which would mean that they would be asked to hand their hard-earned retirement money to needy strangers. If he visited us, he would also ask his followers to conjure up the images of the people (gays, atheists, Democrats, Iranians) that they most despise, and to affirmatively take real life steps to demonstrate that they love them. If he visited in person, those who love the beach-boy Jesus, would become dismayed that Jesus is actually a prickly, even accusatory fellow (as he often was in the new testament stories), challenging people to dramatically change the way they lived their lives. He would not be the kind of fellow most Christians would repeatedly invite to their cocktail parties: “This is my best friend, Jesus, who will follow you around tonight insisting that you give away all your property to poor strangers and criminals.”

I know that many folks would say that they would follow Jesus no matter what he was like, but is that so? How many American Christians have any friends who fluently speak only a language used in the Middle East, and whose skin is darker then their own? Who spend lots of time giving comfort to street people and criminals? If the answer is “none,” then it is unlikely they would have paid any attention to Jesus.

The Christians who bond over images like the “Jesus” shown above need to at least have the courage to get the picture more accurate before deciding how much they love him.For more on what Jesus “looked like,” see this earlier post.

In that same email, I was sent a cartoon summing up that God loves me so incredibly much that he will send me to hell for eternal torture if I don’t love him back. Hell is usually described in such terms that it would clearly be unconstitutional. Of course, it’s always presented as “my choice.” I’ve heard that such warped and sadistic people like this exist on Earth–love me on my terms or I will get violent. I avoid those people like the plague–as all rational people should do. This little cartoon vividly illustrates the principle that the “God” is “good” even though he allegedly loves us like an abusive parent would “love” us, at least for some Christians. And BTW, it was the kind and gentle beach hippie Jesus of the New Testament who invented hell.

heaven-or-hell

Culture • Featured • Religion • photography
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Fundamentalism, Fox, and … Scientology?
By Dan Klarmann on October 28th, 2009

Fundamentalism, Fox, and … Scientology?

I was recently chatting with a friend who has been a Scientologist for several decades. He was attacking the White House for its conspiracy with other networks to censor and muzzle Fox News. He later sent me this screed on the Campaign for Liberty blog under the Subject “Fox News is Right”. The CfL is one of the political arms of Scientology. Check out their mission and board if you want. The introduction to the post is (in part, go read it yourself):

Why is America under such a vicious and prolonged [internal] attack against its basic beliefs? Why are some Americans attacking the hand that feeds them? Why tear down a working system? None of the attacks make sense. It is as though we are living in a looking glass world. I am looking backwards and it seems left is right and wrong is right and right is wrong. Politically correct speak replaced plain speak and the silent Christian majority are called domestic terrorists.

Okay, I paused at this point and replied (in part):

Lost me at “silent Christian majority”. An iconic building in every neighborhood, billboards every mile, ads every hour on radio and TV channels not already owned outright by Christian networks, and their creed printed on money and embedded in children’s daily oath to the flag does not fit my definition of “silent”.

I didn’t mention the wholesome Christian activities of blockading health clinics, continuous protests with gory signs on streets and campuses, bombing clinics and shooting doctors.

But the actual point of the article is that the KGB is alive and well and still trying to take over America via a conspiracy with the Psychiatric Industrial Complex. They have (the article claims) powerful mind control methods that are being used on the public.

If so, I asked in reply, how did we ever manage to get rid of CheneyBush?

Today, my friend sent me (among other Scientology political pieces) a YouTube video attacking Obama’s plan to sign the latest international emissions control treaty. It took a while of watching to figure this out, among the doomsayer speech of One World Government, global warming denialism, and the demise of America and such. Many of the positive comments to the video seem to be from garden variety End Days Christians, but the platform is quite visibly Scientology.

The point of all this is, Why are the Scientologists aligning with Fox and Christian Fundamentalists? For recruitment? For political palatability? To hijack a powerful propaganda machine?

Read and listen to what they actually say, and get back to me.

American Culture • Censorship • Civil Rights • Communication • Culture • Current Events • Featured • Law • Networking • Politics • Religion • Science • advertising • global warming • ignorance
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Halloween: Whence the pursuit of horror?
By Erich Vieth on October 27th, 2009

Halloween: Whence the pursuit of horror?

Some of the neighborhoods near my house in St. Louis have already celebrated Halloween. For instance, my street celebrates Halloween on the Sunday afternoon prior to Halloween. Celebrating in the daylight makes it easier for us to visit with little neighborhood children and their parents. The nearby Compton Heights neighborhood celebrates Halloween on the Saturday night prior to Halloween. Our family was invited to venture over to Compton Heights a few nights ago, and we weren’t disappointed. head

Amidst all of the traditional candy-giving, we stumbled upon one particular house where the family had put together its own haunted house. The family owns a big old house, but also owns a separate large two-story carriage house in the back. They hired an electrician to wire up the carriage house with sophisticated lighting and they assembled a team of 20 friends and family to pose as various types of dead people inside the house. Not typical dead people, mind you. Dead people who stand still in the dim lighting and come alive just when you are convinced that they are mannequins (and there were quite a few mannequins too, some of them dismembered). When selected dead people came alive, they yelped, or they screamed; some of them reached out and grabbed you. There were ghouls and ghosts, a vampire, a mummy, floating bones, a guy with a “chainsaw,” and a beheaded guy who suddenly moaned, all of this horror looking rather real and all of these characters lurking carefully amidst the dim lighting as we toured this incredible house.

front-of-haunted-houseEach of the photos in this post is from this house. Note that it’s not always easy to take photos in a darkly lit haunted house. While I was taking a photo of a decapitated head on a table, for instance, a dead man reached out and tugged on my sleeve, smudging the long exposure.

How good was it? I stood outside for 30 minutes after I toured the haunted house, and every ten minutes or so, I saw a panicky grown child running from the haunted house crying. Bravo! I then learned that the haunted house family has been putting on this magnificent show, for free, for 15 years. Double Bravo!

But as I walked away from the haunted house, I wondered two things.

American Culture • Communication • Culture • Featured • Media • Psychology Cognition • Religion • Science
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If the Methodists can do it, why can’t everyone?
By Mike Pulcinella on October 26th, 2009

If the Methodists can do it, why can’t everyone?

While shooting footage for a documentary in Brooklyn this past weekend I came upon this sign outside of a Methodist church and felt compelled to share it with you. It made me feel good to see tolerance so boldly stated.

parkslope2

American Culture • Bigotry • Quality of Life • Religion • Uncategorized
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