A wedding observation

I attended a wedding over the weekend. My family is Italian and I'm sure it's no surprise that we are overwhelmingly Catholic. However, because the ceremony wasn't being held in a church but rather in the reception hall I had thought that I would be spared having to sit through another Catholic mass. I was wrong. *sigh* As it turns out, it was a thankfully shortened version of the ceremony. I noticed that, even in abbreviated form, the priest managed to mention FIVE TIMES (we counted) that,"...God made us MALE and FEMALE so that we may join together in His love". It would have been just another day in a big Italian Catholic family except this time, seated right up front were two good friends of the bride and groom who also happened to be a lesbian couple. I've seen "the lesbian couple", as they are called in the family, a few times at family gatherings that were large enough to encompass all of us. They have been together for many years, at least as long as many of the other couples in the room. Longer than some. I couldn't help but cringe each time the phrase rolled around.

"Marriage was created by God for MALE and FEMALE...", "We join in holy matrimony this MAN and WOMAN...", etc.
With each repetition of the phrase it seemed that the priest was emphasizing it more and more and from our vantage point several rows back it almost seemed like he was glaring at the lesbian couple when he said it. (Probably my imagination.)

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Rumsfeld’s religious war

I'm truly disgusted to learn of newest evidence for the religious underpinnings for Donald Rumsfeld's (and George Bush's) thought process. GQ has revealed that Rumsfeld authored an entire series of Bible/war memos, "Top Secret Briefings," to get Bush fired up that he was on God's side in a Manichean struggle.

This mixing of Crusades-like messaging with war imagery, which until now has not been revealed, had become routine.

For those who say that religion is good, that is sometimes true. Many people have been inspired by religion to channel their natural empathy into acts of kindness. To those who say religion is dangerous, that is also sometimes true, as witnessed by America's religious war waged in Iraq. Thanks to the Bush Administration's application of religion, 100,000 people are dead, tens of thousands of Americans wounded, and millions of Iraqis who have lost their homes. I would say, as a general rule that we should always discourage violence in the name of religion. Religion is too often a potent mind-altering trip. Too often, it causes people to unplug their pre-frontal cortices, so that their base instincts, especially their xenophobia, rise's to the top. Religion is too often used to concoct needless imaginary lines between and among groups of people, resulting in growing distrust, which too often ripens into seething hate. Bottom line: Thanks to Rumsfeld's (and Bush's) embrace of what we now know (better than ever) to be religious violence, our "secular" government was able to conclude that their religious ends justified their military means, and that any lie, any torture, and any amount of collateral damage was justified. All of this in the name of God.

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Not Ready to Meet their Maker?

Reading through my back issues of the Economist, I came across this article from March. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association religious people seem curiously unwilling and unready to die. According to the study, by Andrea Phelps and her colleagues at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, religious people seem to use their faith simply to cope with the pain and degradation involved in treatment, and that they are more willing to experiment with more aggressive treatments, even though such treatment rarely makes much difference to the outcome or their life expectancy.

Dr Phelps and her team followed the last months of 345 cancer patients. The participants were not asked directly how religious they were but, rather, about how they used any religious belief they had to cope with difficult situations by, for example, “seeking God’s love and care”. The score from this questionnaire was compared with their requests for such things as the use of mechanical ventilation to keep them alive and resuscitation to bring them back from the dead.
According to the study, three times as many 'religious' people requested aggressive life extension measures (mechanical ventilation and resuscitation) versus the least religious. I would expect that the religious would be happy to eventually 'meet their maker' - but I suppose this is yet another aspect of the cognitive dissonance we find among religion and it's adherents.

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Father of two charged in child poisoning case

ASSIMULATED PRESS Regency, Alabama - A prominent business owner is being charged in the poisoning and near death of his two children. Alabama Child Protective Services was notified when the children of prominent Regency land developer Ian Oda were brought into Eden County General Hospital convulsing and showing other signs of poisoning. When questioned about what had happened, Mr. Oda explained that the children, Alex 7 and Elizabeth 6, had ingested poisoned food that he had warned them not to eat. “I told them the rules and they disobeyed me. This is their fault.” Police and CPS agents were dispatched to the Oda home where they found an elaborate fenced-in playground which had been built specifically for the children. Neighbors reported that they had seen the children enjoying themselves and running naked around the playground for several days before the incident. Food, snacks and beverages were scattered throughout the area. However, some of the treats had been laced with strychnine and piled all together at the base of a large apple tree. Further complicating matters was the news that a former employee of Mr. Oda had been seen talking to the children shortly before they arrived at the hospital. Mr. Levi Natas had been overheard telling Elizabeth that the poisoned snacks were actually the tastiest snacks of all and that their father was hoarding them for himself. Mr. Natas had worked for Mr. Oda's company for many years but had a falling out and been let go under contentious circumstances in 2004. Mr. Natas then started his own rival company in Regency and has been notorious for trying to undermine many of Mr. Oda’s construction projects. When questioned about the incident Mr. Oda said, “Oh yes, I saw Mr. Natas talking to Elizabeth. I saw everything. My living room window overlooks the playground. But the children knew the rules. That was the only pile of snacks I had asked them not to eat.” Mr. Oda faces charges of reckless endangerment. Although the children have recovered, Mr. Oda stated to police that they are no longer welcome in his home, will never be allowed back into the playground, and that their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will also never be allowed to play there. In a prepared statement which Mr. Oda dictated to one of his assistants while the assistant was asleep, he proclaimed, “I have an employee that can clean up this mess. I promise I will send him. But it may take a few thousand years before I get around to it.”

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Two problems of Buddhism

One of Andrew Sullivan's readers wrote to say that Buddhism had two fundamental flaws:

A) It dodges the issue of death "through the conceit of reincarnation." and

B) It "blames victims for their circumstances (karma)."

Succinct and persuasive arguments, in my mind. Yet I, just like this reader, am sympathetic to many of the other ideas offered by Buddhism.

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