Last posts on religion

'Awestruck' Evening at First Congregational Church

2009-11-05T11:29:00+01:00

NOTE: This is the fourth in a series of articles about Battle Creek (Michigan, USA) area churches. The author, Jim Richmond, is former Vice President of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation and past president of the Battle Creek Community Foundation, and Frey Foundation. He is semiretired, writing and doing fundraising/marketing for things he cares about in life. Richmond can be contacted at: jmadisonrichmond@gmail.com

‘Awestruck’ Evening at First Congregational Church

By Jim Richmond

“My God, I used to take care of his kids!,” Laurie Macon, a northside neighbor of long ago, said, giving me a hug before the simple dinner that preceded the “Awestruck Service” last night in the dramatic, embracing circle sanctuary at First Congregational (United Church of Christ) Church near downtown Battle Creek.

I hadn’t intended to go to Church, but a friend, John Wright, called, wanting me to see his horses, and then go to Congregational for the service (“Hey, it’s different. You’ll like it.”).

I’d never been in First Congregational – always thinking it was part of the big, stuffy, old line, conservative and all-white churches half ringing the northside of Battle Creek.

I was mistaken: it is warm, engaging, inspiritational and (I don’t think the Lord would mind), fun.

Not too long ago, First Congregational added this expansive indoor meeting space, that’s more like eating in an open air courtyard – and that’s where we had a simple buffet dinner – quietly served and bussed by church members including, I noticed, a retired BC mayor and his wife, and another couple who are both architects and historical preservation buffs.

“People from all over town go here on Wednesday nights. If you like a contemporary service, and are inclusive, open minded -- this is a great place to be” my friend John commented, as we ate chicken, mash potatoes, gravy and cold slaw on paper plates, and as I gawked around at people in the Church courtyard, and the multi-story glass ceiling, which seemed to stretch into the night sky.

Rubber necking a bit, I see Donna and Jack Gray at another table, Marie Ptacin, Clare and Tom Ott, Nancy and Chris Schweitzer, Lauren Sackrider – and many other young and old time Battle Creek “suspects” – people known to quietly lead and support such efforts as Battle Creek’s Nursing Clinic (for the homeless), South Central Michigan Music Center, Habitat for Humanity, Substance Abuse Council, Alano Club, the tutoring program at Ann J. Kellogg School, the Battle Creek Community Foundation, JONAH, and other civic projects.

AT 6:30, we strolled into the adjoining, circular church sanctuary, open at its center, and which seats about 250 people in comfortable, stair-stepped concentric rings of pews.

The Wednesday night “Awestruck” Service was established by church members and Associate Pastor Leah Robberts-Mosser about 18 months ago, part of the Church’s evident journey to examine religious mission, membership and community outreach.

Wednesday night is different from Sunday morning service at First Congregational, which evidently has a more traditional liturgy and overall feel.

‘We wanted this (Wednesday) to be a special night when we eat, pray and worship together,” Associate Pastor Leah said.

Four teams of FCC members rotate in planning the Wednesday services, selecting the evening’s liturgy, reading, and music around a particular theme.

Last night’s music was inspirational, lively and uplifting, featuring a small, enthusiastic choir (dressed very casually like everyone else in blue jeans, Dockers and sweaters, it seemed) and an unusual blend of live music, musicians and instruments.

Pastor Leah talked on Apostle Paul’s message to The Philippians. There was an intimate breaking and sharing of bread and wine, by all, in the center of the sanctuary.

And at the end, we all went down to the sanctuary’s center again, to link hands, sing, celebrate the Lord, and also wish Pastor Leah, her husband David, and family “Godspeed” as they relocate to another Church in Illinois.

A lot of my stereotypes about downtown churches got broken at First Congregational last night during its Awestruck Service.

Walking out of the sanctuary, I found myself humming the melody and the lyrics to one of the evening’s hymns:

“Close as tomorrow the sun shall appear.

Freedom is coming and healing is near.

And I shall be with you in laughter and pain

To stand in the wind and walk in the reign”.

back to zero

2009-08-14T03:04:48+02:00

kemabali memulai hidup,masih ada rantai yang membelenggu,masih ada noda yang memenuhi,tapi masih ada harapan,let's back to fitrah..

Religious Law

2009-07-28T02:37:43+02:00

THE LAW WAS MADE FOR THE UNJUSTFor I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to the whole law. Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosever of you are justified by the law, ye are fallen from grace. Galatians 5:3, 4 “But if ye be led of the Spirit, ye are not under the law.” Galatians 5:18Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these: Adultery (voluntary sexual relations between a married person and somebody other than his or her spouse), Fornication (sexual intercourse between two consenting people who are not married to each other),Uncleanness (sinful especially involving or guilty of committing a sexual sin), Lasciviousness (showing a desire for, or unseemly interest in, sex—provoking lust), Idolatry (the worship of idols of false gods—excessive admiration or love shown for somebody or something), Witchcraft (the alleged effect or influence of magical powers—alluring or seductive charm or influence),Hatred (a feeling of intense hostility towards somebody or something), Variance (a difference between two or more things--a difference of opinion or attitude), Emulations (to try to equal or surpass somebody or something that is successful or admired),Wrath (strong anger, often with a desire for revenge),Strife (bitter and sometime violent conflict, struggle, or rivalry), Seditions (rebellion or incitement—actions or words intended to provoke or innate((relating to qualities that a person or animal is born with—coming directly from the mind rather than being acquired by experience of from external sources)) rebellion against government, authority, actual rebellion against government authority, Heresies—the holding of, of adherence to, an opinion or belief that contradicts established religious teaching, especially one that is officially condemned by religious authoritiesEnvying (wanting something somebody else has— the resentful or unhappy feeling of wanting somebody else’s success, good fortune, qualities, or possessions) Murders (crime of killing somebody), Drunkenness (drunk of frequently drunk), Reveling (to have an enjoyable time in the company of others, especially at a party), and such like; of which I tell you before as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.Thy Law is my delight----Psalms 119:174. All the law is fulfilled----Galatians 5:14 (“For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even this; THOU SHALT LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF.”)“Be not deceived: God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man sow, that shall he also reap. For he that sow to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that sow to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”Galatians 6:7-9 WHAT THE LAW COULD NOT DO --------------------------------------------ROMAN 8:3-9Yah is a shorten form of the divine (Hebrew) name YHWH (Yahweh). Short form of the divine name YHWH (Yahweh). It occurs 25 times in the Hebrew Bible, both in relatively early texts (e.g. Ex 15:2; Ps 68:5, 19) and in later passages (e.g. Ps 115:17-18; 118:5, 14, 17-19). It features a further 23 times in the expression Hallelujah, which means "Praise Yah" (the spelling Jah instead of Yah comes from medieval Latin). The name Yah also appears as the final component in such biblical names as Micaiah, which means "Who is like Yah?"; Azariah, which means "Yah helped"; and Abijah, which means "Yah is my Father". Scholars are divided as to whether the name Yah is derived by shortening from YHWH or as to whether the forms Yahu and YHWH were expanded from the original Yah. ________________________________________Yah is also the name of the Egyptian moon god.Isaiah 40:8 “I am the Lord, that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven image.”The Egyptian worships the moon god Yah (graven image). To keep down confusion Yah should not be used. If you must use the Hebrew name, use the word “Yahweh.” Deuteronomy 6:13 “Thou shall fear the LORD thy God, and serve him, and shall swear by his name. Ye shall not go after other gods, of the people, which are round about you ;( For the LORD your God is a jealous God among you) least the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee, and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. ”Isaiah 43:15 “I am the LORD, your Holy One, the creator of Israel, your King.”“Lord” and “God” is not the same name they are two distinct names. God is used as a title or form of address just as mom is used instead of my name Valerie. Yah is used instead of Yahweh just as Val is used instead of Valerie. However, since Yah shares the name of an Egyptian moon god, people who use the word Yah is said to have another god before the true and living God. “For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God(“Yahweh”((Hebrew)) sending his own Son(“Jesus”((English)) or “Yeshua”((Hebrew)) in the likeness o sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God (“Yahweh” ((Hebrew)). Why we go to church, “It is the house of God.” God is a spirit they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in true. It is not a plaything. It is not to match wits with anyone it is to worship the true and living God. “And thou, Solomon my son, know (to believe firmly in the truth or certainty of something) thou the God of thy father, and serve him with a perfect heart and with a willing mind: for the LORD searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts: if thou seek him, he will be found of thee: but if thou forsake him, he will cast thee off forever. “Take heed now; for the LORD has chosen thee to build a house for the sanctuary: be strong, and do it.”

Self-Improvement and Self-Love

2009-07-22T23:30:00+02:00

Spirituality alone tends towards self-satisfaction yet also towards self-love, science alone tends towards self-criticism yet also self-improvement; thus, we need both so that we can both love ourselves as we are and improve ourselves. In fact, we need to love ourselves to better improve ourselves, and also improve ourselves to better love ourselves. Love gives us strength to improve, improvement gives us the strength to love; both should be possible without the other, but they can nonetheless increase each other.

We are once more faced with one of the many versions of balance between yin and yang, spirituality being yin and science yang. These terms are, however, open to interpretation: a spiritual attitude can be a mere sense of connectedness, without any actual theory behind it, while a scientific attitude can be a mere openness.

Film ”The Scarlet Letter” A Country of Hypocrisy

2009-05-03T05:46:00+02:00

A woman named Hester lived in a small Puritan Village in 17th century had been accused of adultfully. She had to wear scarlet letter "A" all the time because of the sin she committed. She and her daughter, Pearl were always harrassed by the villagers.

Local villagers and its headman wanted to know who was the father of Pearl. At last the villagers found who he was and got shocked.

It seemed that the film revealed the true nature of America. The origin of America was Puritans. Puritans were exiles from England.

They lived under the faith of God because of fear they experienced in England. They created a very closed society with very strict rules. As a result they became hypocrits.

In last scene of the film, Hester and Pearl ran away from the land of hypocrisy, not freedom.

That represents feeling I have right now. I am losing interest in America and growing contempt for it.

American is not a dream country to me any more since 911, war in Iraq, deployment of USS George Washington in Yokosuka, and financial crisis.

Good-bye, America! A country of Hypocrisy!

Now I wonder where I am heading. The film gave me a hint.

The film was produced by Germans. It was all German version although the story took place in America.

It is just like holocaust films in English version made by Hollywood.

I am now studying German and getting more interested in Germany than ever.

God and His Mysterious Ways

2009-04-18T07:25:00+02:00

Life means encounter

2009-03-20T16:34:00+01:00

Life is full of hardships, whereas, it's fun. It's just like the beer is delicious after hard work.To the question - "What do humans live for?", many people have tried to answer in each way. So will I. "Humans live for encounters"It's good to meet someone that has a close sense of view to yours, but things are not so easy. Occasionally you meet hateful people, possibly so hateful that you feel like killing them.Encounter is not only with people, but also with such arts as books and music, and with religion. Human's feeling become insired by them.I will quote my "encounter" from the Bible.From the Evangelion according to John, 13 : 33, 34 33"My children, I will be with you only a little longer. You will look for me, and just as I told the Jews, so I tell you now: Where I am going, you cannot come. 34"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. "The action of love comes not only from the affection. The point is "As Jesus Christ lovd us". Love is similar to rain. And all of us are the cup for receiving it. Rain falls so much that cup becomes full and it overflows and the water falls into another cup.It's a bit away from encounter, but love is connected with a Japanese word, "Ichigo-Ichie"( means: you should treasure even one little encounter because you might never meet the person again)Treasure one encounter means think a lot of the person, think a lot of him/her means love him/her.One book says "Love someone means hope him not to die". I think it's the same.

Why

2009-02-16T02:32:00+01:00

http://pewforum.org/

48% for the US population? Two other polls have it at 14% and 39%... Oh well.

兒童床邊聖經故事之「祈禱的威力」與「有佢講冇人講」

2009-02-15T06:55:00+01:00

Monkey Business

2009-02-13T06:07:00+01:00

"So you believe in... monkeys?" a 21yo Kansan asked.

Since then, I wanted to find out what children here really learn at school.

Kansas City is a funny place that trap both godless liberals, right-wing religious fanatics and everyone in between.

Kansas thrust into international spotlight in 2005 when the state board of education voted 6-4 to adopt a new set of "science standards" that marginalized the theory of evolution. Those stupid "intelligent design" lazy fuckers redefined science, paving the way to slip God into science classroom through the backdoor (something that Texas is now trying to do).

So it felt kinda unreal and exciting to celebrate the bicentenary of Darwin's birthday here in KC at the Linda Hall Library today.

We were late for the cake, but did make it to the discussion session.

I half-expected some uninvited insane bible-thumping Jesus freaks screaming in tongues, and there was one.

But it was a brave greying school teacher who captured my attention, and here's what she said.

"I'm a school teacher in Shawnee (Kansas). I teach general science to 14 year olds. There're lots of Bible literalists in our district. The kids believe in whatever their parents told them and would openly challenge me every time I talk about evolution or genetics."

"They're very well versed. If you tell them about fossils, they'd just say that God put them there to fool them."

"They'd say they're not animals and would totally take the class down that road. I can't debate with 14 year olds in class. Very often I'd just have to stop the conversation. I hope one day they'll think back and realized that yeah, we actually HAVE taught them science."

"Fortunately, the district board is very firm about the curriculum and book banning. We've always been able to strike a balance in our library collection because of our incredible librarians."

"In fact, every year we have a ban-book-day called "Right to Read"."

[This post is a salute to her and all the defenders of science and reason.]

Darwin celebration: full house at the Linda Hall Library, Kansas City

Interesting claim about biological ”design”

2009-01-25T18:55:00+01:00

While researching dissection for a paper on Early Modern anxieties about not being able to encounter *everything* via sensory functions, I came across an interesting claim: Jonathan Sawday, author of one of the most influential texts on the topic of Early Modern dissection, notes that the idea that the human body is "designed" is very much specific to the late twentieth century. Indeed, the historical specificity of biological "design" seems to run counter to some claims that the concept is as old as Abrahamic religion.

The Bali Bombers, Mimesis and Me

2008-11-07T17:50:00+01:00

I've been reading in recent weeks about the so-called Bali Bombers, three men -- two brothers (commonly called Amrozi and Mukhlas) and an Imam/computer technician -- who were tried and found to be instrumental in the killing of 202 people -- most of whom were foreign nationals, including 88 Australians -- -- at nightclubs in a tourist area on the Indonesian island of Bali [in green] in 2002, to protest the US-led invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. (Bali is overwhelmingly Hindu, however.) Another 209 people were injured. (More at Wikipedia)

For their roles in the crime, their execution, which may occur by this weekend has now occured, will be by ritualised firing squad on another Indonesian island, off Java, the spot (or perhaps three separate spots) in the woods already decked out with chairs and crosses, after five years of legal appeals that apparently the bombers themselves had no interest in, as they have said throughout that they are ready and happy to die as martyrs, preferrably by beheading, in the Islamic way. They admit the crime and show no remorse but have apologised for killing Indonesian Muslims during the attacks.

Meanwhile, their family and other supporters are surging towards the moment of execution, burial, funerals, and partying, using the funeral as "an occasion 'to celebrate the victory of Islam.'" Graves have already been dug for the two brothers. A goat will be slaughtered. It will be an occasion for rallying.

As usual, it's the mimesis -- the accusative gesture, the heightening drama, the religious rituals and the prohibitions, the sacrificial centre that offers meaning and a feeling of unanimity amidst grief -- that interests me, and the predictable forms it takes, particularly as death comes very near:

The bombers are hailed by supporters as, variously, victorious martyrs, victims of an unfair system, and heroes whose deaths will spin off more heroes.

Family members have said it's unfair for the Bali Bombers to be killed before the Bali Nine heroin smugglers, who "should be executed first because their drugs could have killed more people."
The bombers issued a statement in October: "'Principally we are ready to die but if the executions go ahead it is wrong. If we are executed there will be new Mukhlases, new Imam Samudras and new Amrozis and they will take revenge,' they said."
They have also written "an open letter encouraging their supporters to retaliate after they are executed," naming some specific officials whom they believe should be killed.
The brother of two of the Bali bombers supports his brothers' right to kill "half-naked people [the people in the nightclubs] ... for the perceived insult. ... 'That's what [my brothers] believe. Whatever it is, it is against Islam and must be fought, whatever the form, whatever the action.'" Their mother concurred: "'I feel that killing infidels isn't a mistake because they don't pray.'"

The site of the execution has become rather sacred-seeming in the media, and both speech and acts related to the deaths are shot through with religious language and appeals.

Religion is obvious at the site(s): There are crosses there, religious officials have met with the men and will accompany the bombers to their place of execution (as will lawyers and a doctor).
There are rituals: the setting up of the execution site(s) in a particular way, the health check-ups for those who are about to die, families delivering a last meal of favoured goodies and other gifts. All the elements are in place, including autopsy table, helicopters and body carrier baskets, and the fourteen members of the execution squad, and a 'rehearsal' of the execution is planned for today.
There are mythologies and compelling stories galore, from everyone's point of view, and they all say the same thing: we are victims and someone else is to blame for the violence. We are justified. There are rumours among supporters of the bombers that the U.S. CIA was behind the most destructive of the three bombs that exploded that October night. They see the attacks as "'a conspiracy between America, Australia and the Jews.'" There are all kinds of theories concerning the nefarious meaning of the multiple delays in carrying out the executions.

The supporters are gearing up for a show of grief, celebration, and unanimity on behalf of religion and its martyrs.

Jemaah Islamiyah, a local network of "mostly Afghan trained militants" that is believed to be behind the Bali bombings, will be at the funerals in force and have threatened to kill in revenge for the executions. The founder of that group, Abu Bakar Bashir, plans to attend both funerals; he says that "Muslims would be angry if the men are executed but what he is most scared of is 'if God is angry.' 'If Muslims are angry,' he said, 'it will be only words. But if God is, it will be real problem.'"
The U.S. and Australian embassies in Jakarta received bomb threats by text message earlier this week. Australia has raised its terror alert and launched travel warnings in anticipation of violence after the executions are made known.
Some Indonesians are donating their land for the bombers' burial ground, to create a Jihadi cemetery; a blogger living in Jakarta notes: "'It is almost comical in a sense the competition that is being generated with regards to signing up the families of the soon to be dead killers to a burial spot.'"

Not only are the supporters building momentum, so is the media. I set up a news alert for "Bali Bombers" last week. It brings about 20-25 news stories per day into my email box, more than any other news alert I've ever had. And nothing is happening -- except the pre-death rituals, anticipation and intimations, and the post-death fears, anticipation and predictions -- and the precise recording of the process of momentum-building as mimetic.

I admit to feeling fascinated, not by these three bombers and what they've done, in particular, nor by their deaths whenever they occur, but by the process as it unfolds so clearly, so ordinarily though it's writ large, so (seemingly) unconsciously through all the conscious strategising.

To quote Rick Blaine in Casablanca (1942): "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." Three people, yes, and yet, how alike we seem, how much the same the system seems to operate everywhere: how ready to grieve, to unify, to remove conflictual elements, to blame and accuse someone else, to seek revenge, to feel we are victims, to ritualise, to sacralise, to mythologise, to invoke a higher authority to support our views, to want our side to win, to join in the violence and to feel good knowing we're right.

Update 14 Nov: This article in The Age today hits most of the elements of the scapegoat mechanism: unification of splinter groups through shared anger, grief and a sense of being the victims of others -- the outsider 'others' become the enemies, displacing animosity among warring splinter groups; the compelling story that can be told to enroll new converts; the 'sacrifice' and the glorification of the 'self-sacrificing' victims; and, the understanding in modern times that violence in the name of religion masks "economic, political and social disaffection."

Did you know our PM is Catholic?

2008-11-02T05:05:29+01:00

Suprised to know our prime minister, Taro Aso is Catholic. I just recently learned that. He was elected on 25 of September this year.

But none of Japanese media reported his religious faith. He's been known as potential candidate for PM long time before. It has never become the issue.

I learned that by reading articles in BBC, CNN, FOX and Roman Catholic website.

Maybe you wonder why. Only a few percent of the population is Chrisitian in Japan. They are minority and experienced oppression during 16 to 19th century. But the thing is we really don't care. Are we atheist? No, actually Japan is known to be Budhist society and has many many Budhist temples. But native religion of Japan is Shinto. Shinto is polytheist. We welcome any kind of religion and personal religious faith doesn't matter to politics or so on. We rarely talk about religion in our daily life.

In recent politics, PM's visiting Shrines that memorize A-class war criminals has been controversial. He visited there, too although he is a follower of monotheist religion. Shiton has been considered kind of festivity or national symbolic spirit, not as religion you should be dedicated to.

In Western society, religious faith seemed to be a very big deal in politics and social issues such as abortion, homosexuality.

To tell you the truth I am Christian, too. I do not support him nor his party. Strangely I just feel intimate to him although I think he is most unqualified PM in history. Iraq war has been regarded as "Wholly war" by crusaders. Scary!

As far as I've checked his action and speech, I cannot find him practicing Christian. He caused tensions with neighboring nations by making provocative statements. He insulted the victims of the disastors, altzheimer patients and many others. He called opposition party as Nazis. His prime mister status wouldn't last so long because he is very, very unpopular so is his party. Soon enough, the parliament would be dissolved and new election will be coming up.

The nation would judge him and his administration and choose who to rule Japan. He will learn true meaning of the wholly bible words "Judge not others lest ye be judged."

Then he will shout "Jesus Christ!"

Need for Sense of Control, Either Personal or External

2008-07-17T14:40:00+02:00

Overcoming Bias points to an article in the July 2008 issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (links to full text here but it's fee-based, or available through your library system) that examines four psychological experiments and concludes that when we feel a weak sense of personal control, we are more likely to believe "in the existence of a controlling God" and to defend "the overarching socio-political system." The authors discuss "the implications of these results for understanding why a high percentage of the population believes in the existence of God, and why people so often endorse and justify their socio-political systems." Sounds interesting -- I hope to read more when the July issue is available via my library system's EBSCOhost subscription.

This hypothesis seems in line with earlier reporting correlating that the longevity of communities with their religious underpinnings (religious communities last longer than secular ones, on the whole) and finding that the communities persist longer when those underpinnings (and the lifestyle they lead to) are stricter, more controlling.

Marginal Revolution commented on the same article, hypothesising that similar effects may hold for medicine and media, i.e., that we'd be more likely to believe that doctors are effective when our health is in jeopardy and that we'd be more likely to believe in media accuracy when we believe we need that media information in order to be safe. In all cases, we want to feel that someone is in control.

Solutions: Religion (Notes from Status Anxiety)

2008-07-14T12:00:00+02:00

Notes from Alain de Botton's Status Anxiety (2004). This is the tenth post on this topic; the first is here.

PART II: Solutions

CHAPTER 4 - RELIGION

Death

Tolstoy's novella The Death of Ivan llyich (1886) is a Christian memento mori. Ivan Ilyich is all about status. When he realises he's going to die, he recognises he's wasted his time on Earth by leading an outwardly respectable but inwardly barren life. He always wanted to appear important and to impress people whom, he sees now, don't care for him at all. Those around him love his status, not his true vulnerable self.

The prospect of death may cause us to do what matters most to us and to pay less attention to the verdicts of others. We see we cannot "afford to defer forever, for the sake of propriety, our underlying commitments to ourselves."

Ruins! They comfort us, reveal our "punishingly high-minded sense of the gravity of what we are doing," our own exaggerated self-importance. Our miseries are tied to the grandiosity of our ambitions.

Community

We all have the same vulnerabilities and the same two driving forces: fear, and a desire for love.

The Christian would say that there is no such thing as a stranger, "only an impression of strangeness born of failure to acknowledge that others share both our needs and our weaknesses."

Christianity attempts to enhance the value we place on community -- through ritual (a transcendent intermediary) and through music (great leveller and social alchemist -- we see that others respond as we do, which forges connection).

Twin Cities

Jesus is the model for Christians' understanding of status. He has two different sides, as ordinary carpenter and as the holiest of men. We can see the difference between earthly status (determined by occupation, income, others' opinions) and spiritual status (related to one's soul and merits in God's eyes).

The City of God, Augustine, 427 AD: All human action can be interpreted from either the Christian or the Roman (earthly) perspective, which are different. Christian status derives from humility, generosity, recognition of one's dependence on God, etc.

Divine Comedia, Dante, 1315: Dante's Hell is home to many who enjoyed high status while they lived.

Christian lore asserts the superiority of spiritual over material success and endows its virtues with "a seductive seriousness and beauty" through music, art, literature, architecture, etc. "Through its command of aesthetic resources, of buildings, paintings and Masses, Christianity created a bulwark against the authority of earthly values and kept its spiritual concerns in the public eye."

Heydey of cathedrals, 1130-1530.

Christianity never abolished the Earthly City or its values, but that we retain any distinction between wealth and virtue is largely due to the impression left on Western consciousness by Christianity.

Religion and Polarity

2008-05-25T16:45:00+02:00

Tim Townsend's "Love Thy Neighbor: The religion beat in an age of intolerance" in the May/June 2008 issue of Columbia Journalism Review, is worth the read, in light of the Jeremiah Wright drama and the fundamentalist Mormon news of late here in the U.S., and the ongoing and manifold religious conflicts (and power conflicts cloaked in religion) all around the world.

Townsend is a reporter who has covered religion at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for the last four years. The gist of this essay is that religion is divisive and religious folk -- Jesus, too! -- are polarising. (The Matthew passage he quotes at the start of the essay doesn't convince me, but I agree generally with Townsend that a prophetic message can be polarising, and that Jesus's harsh language at times is divisive. My view is that Jesus disrupts the 'peace' we cling to, the very peace Jesus threatens verbally in the Matthew passage, in order to displace that temporary, violent sort of peace with a shot-through-with-life peace ...)

Townsend suggests that this polarity is nothing new in America, citing Puritan John Winthrop's landing-in-America sermon outlining "a political system whose top priority would be ... 'the duty of suppressing heresy, of subduing or somehow getting rid of dissenters.'" Townsend doesn't state the obvious, that suppressing heresy and marginalising dissenters had been the modus operandi of many in power, or seeking power, long before this.

Later, he speaks of the current chasm in the Episcopal church, which he says isn't about "sex, or even theology, but about power, and who gets to make the decisions that will tie the hands of everyone else." He quotes Cathleen Falsani, a religion columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times: "'Heat is good for a story, and religion is consistently good for that. ... Religion is polarizing. Maybe that's not the way it's intended to be, but it is.'"

I think adherence to religion both is and isn't intended to be polarising; it's intended to bring cohesion among some by excluding, marginalising, demonising, and polarising others, and it's very effective. Townsend quotes Neela Banerjee, religion beat reporter for The New York Times, who, speaking of the 'culture wars' between 'secularists' and 'the Christian right,' says that "'each sees the other as a profoundly dangerous influence on society.'" Kevin Eckstrom, editor of Religion News Service, agrees: "All parties, he says, feel their worldview is under attack." Look at almost any conflict, geopolitical or interpersonal, and you'll see the same mechanism, the same justification: the other is a danger, a threat, to what's good, to what's right.

Quickly, Townsend himself, when in his reporting he sought to respect all beliefs, became seen as the dangerous other and became the target of accusations: "Besides being called ignorant, arrogant, balding, stupid, rude, fat (my new nickname was Burger Boy), lazy, and incompetent, I was depicted as a Satanic baby. My mother was insulted. I was accused of lying about my academic degrees, having a comb-over, being a paid agent of the Saudi government, and acquiring 'numerous social diseases.' I was, apparently, a plagiarist and a terrorist. Someone did a search to see if I was a pedophile." And not only was he accused, his life was threatened.

I think, from a Girardian perspective, one could say that it's never the other who is the danger; the danger -- the real obstacle to love and to life lived fully -- is the perception that it's the other who threatens us and our worldview. (For more, read an excerpt from René Girard's I See Satan Fall Like Lightning at Paul Nuechterlein's Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary).

Truth is a Pathless Land

2008-05-07T15:49:18+02:00

Thinking about Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1996) today after coming across a short quote by him:

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

I don't know that much about him -- his writings are voluminous and some are still being discovered, edited and published. He was Indian, traveled extensively, was involved for a while with the Theosophical Society but broke from them around 1922, during which he experienced several mystical encounters (which he termed "the process") in which he felt a mystical union and immense peace: "Love in all its glory has intoxicated my heart; my heart can never be closed. I have drunk at the fountain of Joy and eternal Beauty. I am God-intoxicated."

By 1929, he had renounced any path as a way to Truth:

"You may remember the story of how the devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of the truth,' said the devil. 'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend. 'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to help him organize it.'

"I maintain that truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect. That is my point of view, and I adhere to that absolutely and unconditionally. Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or coerce people along a particular path." (in Krishamurti: The Years of Awakening, 1975, by Mary Lutyens)

Schools that he and his followers (though he said he didn't want followers) founded in India, England and the U.S. emphasise a holistic vision, concern for humans and the environment, and a religious spirit. He was awarded the United Nations Peace Medal in 1984. Of course, he's on YouTube (I haven't watched these yet.)

Krishnamurti's thoughts on meditation speak to me:

"Meditation is one of the greatest arts in life -- perhaps the greatest, and one cannot possibly learn it from anybody, that is the beauty of it. It has no technique and therefore no authority. When you learn about yourself, watch yourself, watch the way you walk, how you eat, what you say, the gossip, the hate, the jealousy -- if you are aware of all that in yourself, without any choice, that is part of meditation. ...

"Meditation is the emptying of the mind of the known. It cannot be done by thought or by the hidden prompting of thought, nor by desire in the form of prayer, nor through the self-effacing hypnotism of words, images, hopes, and vanities. All these have to come to an end, easily, without effort and choice, in the flame of awareness."

Addiction to the Sacred

2008-04-09T04:00:00+02:00

René Girard and others (particularly, and excellently, James Alison in this post-9/11 essay) talk a lot about how humans use the act of sacralising something or someone -- grief, death, a victim, violence, etc. -- to justify the thing or the one, to make it beyond reproach, to give meaning to a meaningless act, to create unanimity and excitement, and primarily and purposefully, to confer to ourselves by association with the transcendent a heightened sense of identity, stability, and worthiness.

Eric Gans explains the relatonships between sacrifice and 'making sacred': "The word sacrifice contains within itself the paradox of culture. Etymologically to make sacred (sacer + facio), it means both to renounce and to kill. Culture is about renouncing and making sacred, but it is also about killing in the service of these ends."

With this in mind, I was interested to read this in The Economist today, in an article about how science is seeking to explain religious belief as beneficial in an evolutionary framework (the entire article is chock full of intriguing studies and conclusions):

"Richard Sosis, an anthropologist at the University of Connecticut, has already done some research which suggests that the long-term co-operative benefits of religion outweigh the short-term costs it imposes in the form of praying many times a day, avoiding certain foods, fasting and so on." [Non-Orthodox Christian or Jewish Americans might find it difficult to understand how practicising one's religion incurs short-term costs ... ]

"On the face of things, it is puzzling that such costly behaviour should persist. Some scholars, however, draw an analogy with sexual selection. The splendour of a peacock's tail and the throaty roar of a stag really do show which males are fittest, and thus help females choose. Similarly, signs of religious commitment that are hard to fake provide a costly and reliable signal to others in a group that anyone engaging in them is committed to that group. Free-riders, in other words, would not be able to gain the advantages of group membership.

"To test whether religion might have emerged as a way of improving group co-operation while reducing the need to keep an eye out for free-riders, Dr Sosis drew on a catalogue of 19th-century American communes published in 1988 by Yaacov Oved of Tel Aviv University. Dr Sosis picked 200 of these for his analysis; 88 were religious and 112 were secular. Dr Oved's data include the span of each commune's existence and Dr Sosis found that communes whose ideology was secular were up to four times as likely as religious ones to dissolve in any given year.

"A follow-up study that Dr Sosis conducted in collaboration with Eric Bressler of McMaster University in Canada focused on 83 of these communes (30 religious, 53 secular) to see if the amount of time they survived correlated with the strictures and expectations they imposed on the behaviour of their members. The two researchers examined things like food consumption, attitudes to material possessions, rules about communication, rituals and taboos, and rules about marriage and sexual relationships.

"As they expected, they found that the more constraints a religious commune placed on its members, the longer it lasted (one is still going, at the grand old age of 149). But the same did not hold true of secular communes, where the oldest was 40. Dr Sosis therefore concludes that ritual constraints are not by themselves enough to sustain co-operation in a community -- what is needed in addition is a belief that those constraints are sanctified."

Other studies mentioned in the article corroborate the idea that, perhaps, belief in a supernatural being (whether it's G-d or a ghost, as in some studies) creates coherence and a sense of security among group members, and leads to increased cooperation, collaboration, and sharing among members of the group. This seems to accord with the Girardian thought that 'making sacred' is a way to create unanimity, stability, shared identity. It says nothing of the possible cost, which Alison addresses in his essay, talking about the response of many to the terrorist attacks in the U.S. on 11 Sept. 2001:

"And immediately we began to respond, and our response is to create meaning. ... As we were sucked in, so we were fascinated. The 'tremendum et fascinosum,' as Otto described the old sacred, took hold of us. ... The old sacred worked its magic: we found ourselves being sucked in to a sacred center, one where a meaningless act had created a vacuum of meaning, and we found ourselves giving meaning to it. And immediately the sacrificial center began to generate the sort of reactions that sacrificial centers are supposed to generate: a feeling of unanimity and grief. ... Phrases began to appear to the effect that 'We're all Americans now' -- a purely fictitious feeling for most of us [in London]. It was staggering to watch the togetherness build up around the sacred center, quickly consecrated as Ground Zero....

"And there was the grief. How we enjoy grief. It makes us feel good, and innocent. This is what Aristotle meant by catharsis, and it has deeply sinister echoes of dramatic tragedy's roots in sacrifice. One of the effects of the violent sacred around the sacrificial center is to make those present feel justified, feel morally good. A counterfactual goodness which suddenly takes us out of our little betrayals, acts of cowardice, uneasy consciences. And very quickly of course the unanimity and the grief harden into the militant goodness of those who have a transcendent object to their lives. And then there are those who are with us and those who are against us, the beginnings of the suppression of dissent. Quickly people were saying things like 'to think that we used to spend our lives engaged in gossip about celebrities' and politicians' sexual peccadillos. Now we have been summoned into thinking about the things that really matter.'

"And there was fear. Fear of more to come. Fear that it could be me next time. ... Fear and disorientation in a new world order. Not an entirely uncomfortable fear, the fear that goes with a satanic show. Part of the glue which binds us into it. A fear not unrelated to excitement.

"What I want to suggest is that most of us fell for it, at some level. We were tempted to be secretly glad of a chance for a huge outbreak of meaning to transform our humdrum lives, to feel we belonged to something bigger, more important, with hints of nobility and solidarity. What I want to suggest is that this, this delight in being given meaning, is satanic. ...

"When I say satanic, I mean this in two senses .... The first sense is the sense I have just described: the fantastic pomp and work of sacrificial violence leading to an impression of unanimity, the same lie from the one who was a murderer and liar from the beginning, the same lie behind all human sacrifices, all attempts to create social order and meaning out of a sacred space of victimization. But the second sense is more important: the satanic is a lie that has been undone. It has been undone by Jesus's going to death exploding from within the whole world of sacrifice, of religion and culture based on death, and showing it has no transcendence at all. ... The pomp has nothing to do with heaven. It has nothing to do with God."

Obviously, religious communes like those referenced in the Economist article are likely not overflowing with pomp and cathartic grief. A religious commune, or religious order, may well survive not by any contrived sense of unanimity and feverish excitement borne of co-opted tragic grief -- after all, that unanimity and excitement doesn't last, and to believe that they do is to believe the lie -- but perhaps they are characterised more often rather by true transcendence, true cooperation and compassion, a unity achieved through struggle rather than unanimity. The similarity I see between the religious communes, as briefly described in the article, and the response to 9/11 that Alison is talking about, is the simple action of making meaning by referencing the sacred and transcendent, and even by actually making sacrifices (or feeling that one is making them), in an effort to feel, by association, that one has value.

As Alison has said, and points out later again in his essay in examining a passage in Luke 13, it's so very easy to feel justified and morally good when we ally ourselves with the transcendent, to adopt a dualistic viewpoint, to see others who differ from us as bad, as 'them,' as 'other.' It's so easy to think that I am privileged and valuable, because of my experience with the transcendent, in a way that you are not. That my life has meaning in a way that yours doesn't.

Alison again:

[I]f we are caught up in the world of giving sacred meanings, then we will be caught up in the world of reciprocal violence, of good and bad measured over against other people, and we will likewise perish. Once again I stress: Jesus [in Luke 13:1-5, and in Mark 13:1ff] will not be drawn into adding to meaning. He merely asks those who come to him themselves to move out of the world of sacred-seeming meaning. What does it mean for us to learn to look at the world through those eyes? ...

"Jesus not only taught us to look away, not to allow ourselves to be seduced by the satanic. He also acted out what the undoing of the satanic meant: he was so powerful that he was able to lose to its need to sacrifice so as to show that it was entirely unnecessary. We are so used to describing Jesus's cross and resurrection as a victory -- a description taken from the military hardware store of satanic meaning -- that we easily forget that what that victory looked like was a failure. So great is the power behind Jesus's teaching and self-giving that he was able to fail, thus showing once and for all that 'having to win,' the grasping on to meaning, success, reputation, life and so on is of no consequence at all. Death could not hold him in, because he was held in being by one for whom death does not exist, is not even the sort of rival who might be challenged to a duel which someone might win. But if death can only get meaning by having victory, if the order of sacred violence can only have meaning if it matters to us to survive, to be, to feel good, at the expense of someone, then someone for whom it doesn't matter to lose is someone who is playing its game on totally different terms, and its potential for giving meaning collapses.

"Here is where I am heading: We can imagine in the abstract something of the power which has nothing to do with death. What is much more difficult is imagining that power incarnated in a human heart and eyes looking at this world. Yet that is what we are talking about. A human heart and eyes so utterly held by the Creator that they speak the Creator's heart about this world. And not just in word, but by a creative acting out and living so-as-to-lose to the sacrificial game in order to undo it, thus enabling creation to be unsnarled from our truncation of it into a violent perversion and trap.

"Now this is what I find difficult. The heart, the desire, that wants to do something like that. What does it want? Why should it do it? Why not leave us to get on with it, stuck in our charades, thinking the world of our meaning and our death? In other words, the very fact of distracting us, by word and deed from being involved in what Merton rightly called 'pseudo events' suggests a desire for us to be something else. The eye that is teaching us to look away from the lure of the sacred is powered by a heart that wants us to be something else. And we learn our desire through the eye of another. Our learning to see through Jesus' eyes will eventually result in us desiring with Jesus' heart -- which is to say, our receiving the mind of Christ. ...

"Jesus not only teaches us to look away, but models what living from utterly non-rivalistic creative power for which death is not, looks like. There is a desire in this. A desire for us not to be trapped in death. And this is where I think I'm going -- something apparently terribly banal, but I think, of earth shattering significance. The person who teaches us to look away and models for us another way of desiring actually likes us. It is only possible to imagine doing something like that for someone you actually like. And Jesus is doing it for all of us who are caught up in the sacred lie -- which is to say, all of us.

"The staggering thing that this means, for me, is that the most extraordinary fruit of contemplation in the shadow of the violence which we are experiencing is this: God likes us. All of us. God likes me and I like being liked. It has nothing to do with whether we are bad or good, indeed, he takes it for granted that we are all more or less strongly tied up in the sacred lie. In teaching after teaching he makes the same point: all are invited, bad and good. Those are our categories, part of the problem not part of the solution, not God's category. God's 'category' for us is 'created' and 'created' means 'liked spaciously, delighted in, wanted to give extension, fulfilment, fruition to, to share in just being.' We are missing out on something huge and powerful and serene and enjoyable and safe and meaningful by being caught up in something less than that, an ersatz perversion of each of those things. And because God likes us he wants us to get out of our addiction to the ersatz so as to become free and happy. "

Vainpot For Sale

2008-04-05T10:10:00+02:00

Ever since I moved to KC, I find my soul much in demand. Random people from work & play just keep asking me to join their fellowships. Methodist, Baptist, Buddist all competing for my blogspirit. What's going on!? Have I become a recruitment challenge or some sort of conversion trophy?

May be I should auction off my "faith" on eBay. Yeah, just let all those voodoo organizations battling it out. $1M for my church attendance for a year. Do your best/worst to convince me of your particular brand of superstitions.

However, it looks like some very clever bloke from Crooksville has already beat me to it and took the joke one step further~

Debating

2008-04-03T22:12:03+02:00

Blog Readers of America:Hey, I'm Monica and this is my new blog. I'm new to the whole "blogging" thing so you'll have to bear with me if all I write is crap; hopefully it will eventually be better as time goes on. Sort of like America's Next Top Model; where the girls start out as really bad models but then get awesome. Look at Natasha Galkina; and even Eva Pigford. So there you go! I couldn't think of anything to write, so I just decided to talk about some of the things that I discuss with my friends. I have friends who I like to debate with ALL the time. We argue about everything under the sun. War, religion, abortion, and gay rights are just a few of our most common topics. I'll talk about them and my viewpoints here.Starting with the war: my viewpoint makes a lot of people mad because most of America's population is arguing against me. See, I believe the war in Iraq SHOULD be going on. Now most people reading this will be closing this window like 'This girl doesn't know what she's talking about'. And maybe I don't. But here's why I feel this way: remember September 11, 2001? I bet you do. Where were the U.S. Army Troops at that point? Here in the USA. Where are they now? In Iraq, defending us and doing one heck of a job. Have we had any serious bombings like that of the World Trade Center/ Pentagon? Nope. So there's where I see a connection; army troops in USA=larger scale bombings. Army Troops fighting in Iraq=USA is protected and terrorist free! Though I love to argue in a friendly way, I do NOT argue as in "Your opinion is stupid". Instead, say "No, and this is why...". So if you disagree with me, comment why and be sure to back it up. I'll reply to every single comment given!Next issue: abortion. Here we go... I love talking about this and do you know why? Because I have such a strong opinion on this subject. Do I agree with abortion? Absolutely not. I believe that every baby deserves a chance at life, no matter if it was an accident or not. A lot of people don't know about open adoption; it's where you can find a family to raise your baby, but you will still be involved in their life, and still be able to get to know them even if you can't afford a baby. And if you kill your non-born infant simply ecause you are afraid of the pain of childbirth; uh, sory, that's a pretty crappy reason to do it. Getting rid of a life because you're afraid of pain? It's just wrong. And people will say the baby isn't even alive yet; yes it is! It has all its organs and limbs, a brain and a heart, just like any other person, just smaller.And now we talk about religion. You know, I don't even know if I want to blog about this topic because I'm a Christian and of course I'll argue my religionis the right one, which might offend someone who reads this who isn't a Christian. So I'll just stop right here.Well, I'll be discussing more in my next post. Please come back and read, comment, and pass on. Thanks for reading!

Banana God

2008-03-31T08:45:00+02:00

The cultural war between creationists and scientists+everyone else has taken hold on Youtube over the past few year... with videos debunking literal interpretations of "holy" books getting millions of bickering comments.

I too tried to put my 2 cents into the whole ignorant-design debate, only to encounter the unbelievable believers.

A devout Christian yesterday suggested that I should look at the perfect banana, as the evidence that god exist. [Serious!] He said the banana is just too amazing and has to be designed by god for human consumption since it:-

1) Is perfect for the human hands to hold
2) Has non-slippery surface
3) Has a handle at one end to remove the wrapper
4) Has color indication on the surface about it's content
5) Green is too early for eating
6) Yellow is just right
7) Black is too late
.
.
10) Nicely shaped for the mouth

Blimme.

So I wrote back:-

1) Fits 4 monkey hands + elephant trunk as well
2) Not until you step on it
3) Elephants don't peel, neither did stupid humans when banana was 1st popularized 130 yr ago
4) Oh you do have common sense!?
5) U don't have 2 eat green banana only bcos scientists discovered ethylene
6) Not all bananas r yellow. Some red, some purple!
7) Black mushy ones r 4 baking
.
.
10) So is my penis.

[Yes I did.]

A crucial part of Barack's speech in Philly

2008-03-19T18:47:36+01:00

Impressed by Obama's respected pastor, Rev. Wright

2008-03-16T05:55:00+01:00

It is been reported that Obama's long time inspirer, Pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright made very controversial remarks in his Gospel speech. Obama denounced his remarks and he never knew the pastor did it until recently.

I can't find anything so controversial in his sermons.

He, himself is Afro-American, so there is no problem that he uses the word "Niger." He said America is founded on racist culture. I think he talked about slavery and masscre of Native Americans.

The most impressive to me, was he said "We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye," he said. "We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and Black South Africans, and now we are indignant. Because the stuff we have done overseas has now brought right back into our own front yards. America's chickens are coming home to roost."

This pastor is ex-marine. He knew what the war is like. He just criticized the U.S. foreign policy in his radical way, I think.

I don't think he meant to insult America.

For Japanese like us, Americans criticizing Hiroshima and Nagasaki were kind of impressive. Obama was spritually influenced by this pastor. Well, that sounds nice to us. Very humble attitude of Americans. He knows how the oppressed feel. That is why he is becoming popular among the impoverished layer of society including whites.

But I want to tell this pastor he should condemn not only the U.S. for dropping atomic bombs but also Japan who slaughtered many innocent Chinese and attacked on Pearl Harbor in the name of "justice." That is what I expressed in this post on this blog.

I understand why Mr. Obama had to denounce the pastor because today's America is no longer open-minded to radical leftist speech. This is sad thing to know. Isn't America free country any more? You can't criticize your government's policies because such acts are considered unpatriotical.

That is just like Nazi-Germany. I would be proud of a citizen of a country if the country is democratic and tolerates free speech including the things critical of itself.

Sometimes, by becoming anti of your nation, you will know better of your country and drive your country into right direction.

"God Damn America!" can change your country better after being tired of saying "God bless America."

What I'm Reading Online

2008-02-28T11:25:00+01:00

Just catching up on some things ...

----> "Are you going to hell?", a Salon interview by Louis Bayard of former born-again Christian John Marks, whose recent book Reasons to Believe: One Man's Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind details Marks' "two-year investigative odyssey through the heart of Christian America. Listening to the fiery testimony of megachurch preachers, traveling from Easter pageants and Focus on the Family seminars to Christian rock concerts and blogger conferences, Marks experienced firsthand both the promise and the limitations of the faith enterprise -- even as he queried, all over again, the grounds of his own beliefs." Marks hopes the book will lead to increased dialogue between evangelical Christians and others, a conversation which he says will be loud and angry, and which "can be done but only with both sides acknowledging that the other won't change."

Bayard mentions the statistic that "some 40 million unbelievers are attending church services," and aks why, to which Marks responds: "Because they like the church, they believe in what it represents, they believe in the social stances, they believe in the political values. But when you get to this central question -- Do you believe that Jesus Christ redeemed you for all time and do you live as if that's true? -- most people cannot tell you how many real believers there are."

----> Dave Pollard on "responsibility" as "promising back" and the many pitfalls of human interaction, particularly in groups. What he says resonates strongly for me right now as a leader (host, facilitator) of a small group and even as an active member of other regular small groups. I think I am usually aware at the time of hurt or disappointment in reaction or response to my actions and others' actions in small groups, but I often don't know what to do about it, other than to focus my attention on responding skillfully:

"All of these truths are about Responsibility and its burden. When we stand up in front of a group as an 'authority', or talk to an individual one-to-one, or just communicate wordlessly with someone, we are being asked to take some responsibility for their feelings, their understanding, and even their love. When a member of the audience asks us a question and we answer in a way that is unsatisfactory to them (for whatever reason) they are hurt. When we say something to someone that makes them flinch or frown or leads to a 'pregnant pause', they are hurt. When someone looks at us, perhaps in invitation to some further communication and we turn away, they are hurt. It is not intentional. No one is to blame. But there has been a Failure of Responsibility. The word 'responsibility' comes from the Latin words meaning to promise back. All of this pain is the result of unintended broken promises."

----> Which is more environmentally responsible: reading a newspaper in print or online? Brendan Koerner (The Lantern) at Slate says that reading online is better, but only slightly, and he doesn't have the stats to prove it. There's a lot to consider, either way: For paper, there's the tree content, the percentage of the paper's paper that's made of recycled paper, the emissions and petroleum use of the pulping process, and the newspaper distribution environmental costs. (Not to mention the petroleum use and emissions of the machines used to hew and transport the logs, which he doesn't.) For online versions, there's the kilowatt-hours of electricity used by each server (perhaps hundreds of them, including ad servers), the electricity to power the end-user's computer, and perhaps the environmental cost of disposing of all of our computer hardware, though that assumes that reading newspapers is a major reason people have computers -- a dubious assumption, IMO. Then there's the issue of carbon -- online, carbon is released right into the atmosphere; in print, it's 'locked' into the newsprint, which can be recycled or will decompose slowly in a landfill (but doesn't it release into the atmosphere then?).

My head hurts.

May that Glorious Era Never Come

2008-02-21T01:30:00+01:00

Kansas City has a long philanthropic traditions. It is not unusual for the wealthy to donate billions of their fortune to build some of the best libraries, galleries, museums as well as scientific research institutes right here. Without these visionaries, KC would be as plain as the rest of the prairie and I wouldn't be here.

Being a Chinese in middle America is like being an exhibit at the zoo. Trying to find a gay partner in this utopia of MWM-for-MWM (married white men) is basically home wrecking. Doing science in the rotting bible belt is literally a constant battle with religious insanity.

Just imagine there is a church in every single corner of the street, and all of them write to you about jesus who didn't really die.

In Kansas, we have had EVILgelicals successfully got onto the Board of Education, erased evolution from the science syllabus and installed their very own "intelligent design" creationist garbage for 2 whole years.

At my research institute, we have to employ a full team of retired policemen guarding the campus with loaded pistols, in case some crazy religious nut cases come crashing the gate, trying to save precious dead embryos & stem cells that were never there.

... and not to mention our extreme high rate of homicides and the Westboro Baptist Church fuckers that organize picketing at the funerals of AIDS victims. Private Catholic high schools can openly discriminate against the fair sex and banned female referees from presiding over basketball games.

All these SHIT makes it *really* hard to hire qualified scientists, or to be more precise, qualified white scientists who know better. As a result, we have lots of FOB Chinese scientists who are just happy to get out.

With a concentration of lonely aliens stranded here in a vacuum of support network, it was only a matter of time that some of them would find comfort and friendship (and usually more!) at certain free Chinese dinners every Friday night.

So it was no surprise that one morning, I found a poster offering such free Chinese dinner. What shocked me was that it's posted at work, written exclusively in Chinese, and bore the slogan "May the Glorious Era Dawn on Us, When All the Chinese Intellectuals are Converts".

Dar Dah. Welcome to the Chinese Christian Fellowship!! We are now recruiting. Virgins available upon request.

Well, none of my American colleagues wouldn't know what's going on, since the poster wasn't in English; my Chinese colleagues won't flip either, as they aren't aware of anti-soliciting laws.

So the whistle fell on my head, and I did my blowing.

As if the fire alarm has gone off and this was an emergency, the posters were removed immediately and within an hour, there was a frenzy of policy emails addressing every single employee at the institute.

No soliciting. No membership drive of any kind. No nothing not related to science.

Quite impressive, I have to say, and it makes sense.

Can you imagine Nature putting us on their news as the new flagship of "Christian science"?!

That'd be the E-N-D.

As if karma has been connecting the dots, everything came back to me eventually. The killer, according to Sherlock Holmes, always ends up at the victim's funeral. Hence the earlier post: http://vainpot.blogspirit.com/archive/2008/02/06/invitation.html

I should've know that Frank was the "ringleader". Like Frankenstein, he too has a creator plus a collection of DVDs. They should've fired him last year, when he gave his boss a Creationist box set for Christmas!

Virgin Fellowship

2008-02-07T05:05:00+01:00

In a way, I've always known.

There were only 2 possibilities.

I don't really know these mainland Chinese at work and I don't really get invited to their gatherings, as they don't really think I'm Chinese.

But guess what. In the name of the Holy Chinese New Year, I was invited to make dumplings. As soon as the door open, I saw a shrine on one side of the sitting room, a gigantic white cruxifix adorned with benign Made-in-China plastic flowers and nylon drapes.

That was the moment when I realised it was a Chinese Christian fellowship that I have entered. There they were, clusters of shy college girls and awkward boys, so characteristic of such gathering,

As soon as I buried myself in a bowl of raw mince pork, the host made a special announcement.

"His name is Ed and he is SINGLE!"

Cheers.

That was OK, since exactly 10 years ago I made that announcement myself in a Chinese Christian fellowship full of young unattached college girls, as a joke.

So it was both A) and B). They want to convert me as well as finding me a suitable partner. How very nice.

What really made me hide in the bathroom was that they started singing their very own "Jesus, I will always love you".

Coming to middle America is like turning back time. As a godless sodomite, I felt like I've been shoved back into 2 sets of closets.

They encourage to talk to the 18yo girls.

I said they were too young.

I said I'm waiting for the older ones to get divorced.

They didn't like that.

But that didn't stop them from calling me up whenever they needed a lift, to which I duly obliged. Some of my friends accused me of sleeping with the "enemy", but well, it's MY turn to convert somebody!

Huckabee.

2008-01-20T21:13:12+01:00

Slightly terrifying clip on this morning's McLaughlin Group: Mike Huckabee telling an audience that he's in favor of a Constitutional amendment to ban abortion and same-sex marriage. (Pat Buchanan, of course, thought this was a viable possibility.) I'm no political scholar (obviously), but I do know that the purpose of Constitutional amendments is to guarantee rights not already explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. An amendment that would effectively take rights away, therefore, does not make sense in the context of the US Constitution. There was also lots of talk of this country being founded on the freedom of religion. Except, one of the founding principles of America was the separation of church and state, not freedom of religion, or the freedom to work religion into every aspect of American life.

Christmas in Japan

2007-12-16T09:15:00+01:00

Can you believe Japanese celebrate Christmas?

As you know, our people are predominantly Budhist. And even among Budhist, only a small portion of them practice it seriously. Most of our people are atheist.

Unlike Europe and the U.S. Japan's Christmas is basically commericial event. Good for business.

History goes back to late 19th century, Christmas was imported from the West. The below photo is taken from the top page of newspaper in December 1937.

As you see, it says "X'mas," that is misspelling. No ' is needed to spell Xmas (Christmas.) That is the ad of lady's boutique. "Christmas sale for lady's hats and furs." Surprisingly the same page posted the news article of Japanese imperial army's victory in Nanjing battle, former capital of China. That is where Nanjing massacre took place. I can't believe people celebrated the war victory and Christmas at the same time.

I "You Tube" today's Christmas in Tokyo.

Please click on Christmas in Tokyo.

First scene is the flyer for Christmas mass in church.

Second scene is brass band playing Christmas song.

Third scene is Santa Clause from Finland spoke and translater translated what he said.

He said, "I was surprised that there is no snow in Japan. So I had to use good Japanese automobile instead of a sleigh. In Finland, fairies are making presents for good children."

Last scenes were illumination of famous shopping mall, Shinjuku Southern Terrace.

Anyway, MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Reality Program: 30 Days: by Morgan Spurlock

2007-11-28T12:25:00+01:00

I rented the DVD of Morgan Spurlock's reality program titled "30 Days." People in the program experience different worlds including film producer Spurlock himself. He is tall and looks like cock bird.

I first know him by the film "Supersize me." The show described his experience of eating only McDonald's hamburgers for 30 days. He described the obessity issue of America. How McDonald made Americans so fat and unhealthy.

After the success of this film, he then made the documentary programs with the same rule, that is people experience different worlds for 30 days.

There are 3 programs I liked.

1. Morgan and his girlfriend decided to live their lives by minimum wage. They learned minimum wage cannot support standard level of lives and the law should be amended to increase the minimum wage level. If you would be so poor that you cannot even afford to see a doctor.

2. An atheist woman lived in dedicated Christian family's home. There are not so many atheists in America, whereas in my country most people are. Dedicated Buhdists, Christians and other believers are minority and sometimes regarded as weird. In the U.S. Chrisitanity has strong influence in life. Christians cannot understand atheist way of living. Atheists feel oppressed in America. Kind of surprising to us, because America is a new country, why is it so religious?

3. The most impressive program, Cuban immigrant American who came to the U.S. legally when he was a child lived with illegal immigrants family. The Cuban man hates illegal immigrants and supports the governments tougher measure on the illegal immigrants. The family was just normal and happy loving people. The oldest girl was brilliant and thinking about going to the college. It was a big surprise to know that illegal immigrant girl could go to high school and got good grades and participate in golf tournament. Her school teacher supported her goals to achieve. She applied for Princeton and local college.

When I was in California, during 1990's, there was a referendum named Proposition 187, that bans providing services to illegal immigrants. There was a big anti-immigrants movement going on. I kind of understood people's anger towards illegal immigrants. They did not come to the U.S. legally. I never consider them good citizens.

In the program, the Cuban man went to Mexico to meet the relatives of the illegal immigrants family. Where they used to live was like rubble, I could understand why millions of Mexicans crossed the border just like the Cuban man did.

Blaming them cannot really solve this problem. This is the issue of global economy.

The program may include some kind of set-ups just like other documentary shows. But you can learn the importance of learning different worlds by real experiences.

Thank you, Morgan.

Another Problem with Religion

2007-11-10T18:51:37+01:00

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand." -- Bertrand Russell

What I'm Reading: Teens, Happiness, Theology, Music, Violence, Death (the usual)

2007-11-09T00:20:00+01:00

Assorted reading:

1. What teen girls are made of, in Salon: "In their own dark and funny words, four teenage girls tell us everything we need to know about sex, parents and gym class." Excerpted from Red: The Next Generation of American Writers -- Teenage Girls -- on What Fires Up Their Lives Today, edited by Amy Goldwasser (2007). Better than you think it's going to be. (If you're not a Salon subscriber, you may be asked to watch an ad or two.)

2. Two from Gretchen at The Happiness Project:

Four tips for surmounting boredom or irritation. I'm rarely bored but frequently irritated. The one that almost always works for me is: "Take the perspective of a journalist or scientist. Really study what's around you. What are people wearing, what do the interiors of buildings look like, what noises do you hear? If you bring your analytical powers to bear, you can make almost anything interesting."

What’s making you 'feel bad'? I don't think I agree with all she says here, but it seems worth thinking about: The premise is that "removing sources of bad feelings will protect your good feelings from being swamped by guilt, anger, remorse, irritation, envy, fear, anxiety, boredom, and all the rest of that awful family. ... These emotions are unpleasant, but they're VERY valuable. They're showing you what you need to change or accept. These feelings are so unpleasant, however, that we often pretend that we aren't experiencing them, or we try to ignore them. In some situations, this attitude is useful. But for this exercise, really concentrate on your negative moments."

3. What We Learn from the Dying by T.E. Holt, M.D.: A doctor shares what his patients' last moments have taught him, in Men's Health. The incidents are well-selected and well-written (i.e., made me cry).

4. Curing the Religious Disease, Part 4: A/theism by Richard Beck at Experimental Theology. Quoting from Peter Rollins in How (Not) to Speak of God: "We ought to affirm our view of God while at the same time realizing that that view is inadequate. Hence we act as both theist and atheist. This a/theistic approach is deeply deconstructive since it always prevents our ideas from scaling the throne of God. Yet it is important to bear in mind that this deconstruction is not destruction, for the questioning it engages in is not designed to undermine God but to affirm God." ... This approach is "a recognition that negation is embedded within, and permeates, all religious affirmation. It is an acknowledgment that a desert of ignorance exist in the midst of every oasis of understanding." Lots more at ET, including comparison to theologians Tillich and Barth.

5. Violence: A Micro-sociological Theory by Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution. Cowen talks about Randall Collins' new book with this title: "The main argument is that people are not as predisposed to violence as we might think. Collins cites a wide array of evidence, from military behavior in the field to, most intriguingly, video studies of the micro-expressions of violent perpetrators. People are more naturally tense and fearful, sometimes full of bluster but usually looking to avoid confrontation unless they have vastly superior numbers on their side. The prospect of violence makes people feel weak and scared. The greatest dangers of violence arises from atrocities against the weak under overwhelming conditions, ritualized violence enacted in front of supportive audiences, or clandestine terrorism or murder. ... 'Violence is not primordial, and civilization does not tame it; the opposite is much nearer the truth.'" The last line and the bit on ritualized violence in particular could be read as consistent with Girardian thought, but the idea that violence is synonymous with physical confrontation seems plain wrong. People who are fearful of confrontation may act from and cause great violence all the same, and their actions (or inactions) may even lead to physical violence down the line, where it can't be traced back to them. Think about gossip, numerous kinds of passive-aggressive behaviour, actions that derive from envy and jealousy, cruel acts disguised as kind ones, and so on.

Some of the topics sound fascinating: discussions on "the micro-dynamics of the Rape of Nanjing, how British soccer stadium designs were (but now less) conducive to violence, how demonstrations can turn into violent confrontations with the police (lines break down and micro-situations of overwhelming power arise), which children and schools are most conducive to bullying, why basketball has fewer fights than football or hockey (no padding), the dynamics of a mosh pit, and how hired assassins motivate themselves."

6. Looking for a good book? Fall Books: Slate's take on this season's books. Fiction and non-.

This one sounds promising to me: A Secular Age by Charles Taylor: "In medieval times virtually everyone in the Western world believed in God; disbelief was hard since magic appeared to be everywhere. Charles Taylor describes this earlier time as having 'the social grounded in the sacred' and "human drama unfolded within a cosmos." Today belief in God is often seen as 'optional,' most of all in Western Europe. The modern world, Taylor argues, creates an open space where people can wander spiritually. Reason has been exalted as the best road to knowledge, and thus many people choose uncertain detachment rather than commit to one particular religious worldview. Taylor's masterful integration of history, sociology, philosophy, and theology demands much of the reader."

And an engaging review of three short non-fiction titles about classical music: "The Musical Mystique: Defending classical music against its devotees," by Richard Taruskin, in The New Republic (22 October 2007). The books reviewed are Who Needs Classical Music? Cultural Choice and Musical Value by Julian Johnson; Classical Music, Why Bother? Hearing the World of Contemporary Culture Through a Composer's Ears by Joshua Fineberg; and Why Classical Music Still Matters by Lawrence Kramer.

Merton: A Distinction without a Difference?

2007-10-20T21:35:00+02:00

Re-reading Merton's New Seeds of Contemplation for a bookgroup. Got a question for you:

First, in chapter 2, he says (any typos are mine):

"Let no one hope to find in contemplation an escape from conflict, from anguish or from doubt. On the contrary, the deep, inexpressible certitude of the contemplative experience awakens a tragic anguish and opens many questions in the depths of the heart like wounds that cannot stop bleeding. For every gain in deep certitude there is a corresponding growth of superficial 'doubt.' This doubt is by no means opposed to genuine faith, but it mercilessly examines and questions the spurious 'faith' of everyday life, the human faith which is nothing but the passive acceptance of conventional opinion. This false 'faith' which we often live by and which we even come to confuse with our 'religion' is subjected to inexorable questioning. This torment is a kind of trial by fire in which we are compelled, by the very light of invisible truth which has reached us in the dark ray of contemplation, to examine, to doubt and finally to reject all the prejudices and conventions that we have hitherto accepted as if they were dogmas."

From the way Merton talks about it in the book, and from my observation, this is unusual human behaviour, this ongoing and serious examination, questioning, doubting and rejecting of strongly internalised cultural opinion, habit, convention, belief, dogma, bias, etc. Most of us don't do it much. Studies I've pointed to before conclude that people are not prone to even hear something that contradicts what we already believe, much less consider it, or examine and doubt and reject our previously held beliefs and opinions in light of it.

The contemplation that Merton speaks of -- which, by the way, he defines and describes at length, and it's not meditation, ecstatic experience, prayerfulness, a reflective nature, or anything we can cause to happen by will or ambition; it's more like being awake, aware, in awe, and in grateful receipt of life, with an awareness and experience of the source of ths life -- is, and leads to, unusual behaviour.

My confusion, then, comes when in chapter 7 (and further) he warns against spiritual pride, i.e., feeling that we "breathe a different atmosphere from the rest of men," and against "cutting [ourselves] off from other people and building a barrier of contrast and distinction between [ourselves] and other men." We are not to think, like the pharisee, thank God I am not like other men.

My question is: If through contemplation we regularly examine, question, doubt and reject much of what 'other men' accept, aren't we then different, because of that activity, from other humans? That just seems like a fact to me.

Of course it's no basis on which to brag or puff oneself up, because contemplation -- the experience of 'knowing' (or unknowing) God and life -- is itself the experience of unbounded love and compassion; and of course if the contemplative experience leads us to deride or disdain anyone else, it's as false in origin as the other cultural lies Merton talks about. But -- is there a way to acknowledge that contemplation is a different action than complacent acceptance of cultural norms and habits, and that doing it (or letting it be done to one) makes a person different?

Merton ends chapter 7 by saying: "I will never be able to find myself if I isolate myself from the rest of mankind as if I were a different kind of being."

Actually, Merton does seem to me "a different kind of being" in many ways, and it's no surprise that he would be because he lived his life differently than most of us, for whatever reason.

Later, in chapter 8, Merton defines a saint: Saints are saints "not because their sanctity makes them admirable to others, but because the gift of sainthood makes it possible for them to admire everybody else."

Obviously, I'm not in danger of the gift of sainthood, because I can't understand why would one admire people who take the path of least resistance, think the thoughts easiest to think, act in conventional and seemingly safe ways. Like them? Sure. Enjoy them? Sure. Love them? Sure. Wish them well and even work for their wellness? Sure. But admire? Not so much.

Merton immediately continues: "It gives them [saints] a clarity of compassion that can find good in the most terrible criminals. It delivers them from the burden of judging others, condemning other men. It teaches them to bring the good out of others by compassion, mercy and pardon. A man becomes a saint not by the conviction that he is better than sinners but by the realization that he is one of them, and that all together need the mercy of God!"

That section I do understand; but compassion, mercy, love, the realisation that I'm in need of mercy, compassion, and healing as much as anyone else doesn't lead me to admire most of my fellow humans. Or myself.

There's lots more in these chapters that mirrors Girardian thought (or vice versa, really), and eventually I hope to write a post or two about that as well.

Bergman Fest

2007-10-19T13:15:00+02:00

(Don't those words just seem made for each other? :-))

So, I am planning a Bergman film festival in January, the bleakest month I could find in the northern hemisphere. Four weeks, four austere downers, from lightest to darkest.

My plan is to show these films in the order recorded below. I'm posting this here now so that anyone with suggestions for different films, different order, food and drink to serve each time, etc., will be in touch. Re food, my thinking is black and white food, with perhaps strawberries for the first film, and chocolate hob nobs when I show the spoof film at the end ... did you know there is also a wine called Hob Nob? I have a bottle of the Pinot Noir in my house now.

The four films tentatively scheduled are two from a supposed trilogy (Bergman both confirmed and denied, at various times, that "The Silence" was meant to be part of the trilogy; it doesn't feel like it is to me, so I am not including it in this series) and two others, perhaps less well known than Persona, Fanny and Alexander, and The Seventh Seal. All are in Swedish, with subtitles.

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>> Smultronstället -- WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957), 91 minutes, B&W

Synopsis: (A somewhat uneven and overly symbolic film, but the warmest and lightest of the series!) "Explores the disillusionment of an elderly physician, Professor Isak Borg, as he reflects upon his life and begins to perceive his mortality. As he travels to Lund to receive an honorary award after 50 years of medical practice, he finds himself repeatedly affected by intrusive dreams and hallucinations that expose his darkest fears. He slowly comes to realize that the choices he made in the past have created a cold and empty life, devoid of real meaning or value. Finally, he achieves redemption and reintegration through forgiveness and the love of his family." http://www.bergmanorama.com/films/wild_strawberries.htm

Excerpt: "[I]f I should be asked to express an opinion about someone else, I would be considerably more cautious. There is the greatest danger in passing such judgment. In all probability one is guilty of errors, exaggerations, even tremendous lies. Rather than commit such follies, I remain silent. As a result, I have of my own free will withdrawn almost completely from society, because one's relationship with other people consists mainly of discussing and evaluating one's neighbor's conduct. Therefore I have found myself rather alone in my old age. This is not a regret but a statement of fact."

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>> Såsom i en spegel -- THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY (1961), first in the trilogy, sometimes seen as depicting "conquered certainty." 89 minutes, B&W.

Synopsis: "A young woman, Karin, has recently returned to the family island after spending some time in a mental hospital. On the island with her is her lonely brother and her kind, but increasingly desperate, husband. They are joined by Karin's father, who is a world-traveling author estranged from his children. The film depicts how Karin's grip on reality slowly slips away and how the bonds between the family members are changing in light of this fact." http://www.bergmanorama.com/films/through_a_glass_darkly.htm

Bergman on Through A Glass Darkly: "The epilogue has, with some justification, been criticized for being loosely tacked onto the end. In this scene between David and Minus, the boy's final line is 'Daddy spoke to me!' I suppose that was written out of my need to be didactic. Perhaps I put it there in order to say something that had not yet been said; I don't know. I feel ill at ease when confronted with the epilogue today. Throughout the film runs a false tone, hardly detectable to others, which may account for the scene." -- Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Film

"Through a Glass Darkly I feel has a serious element of escapism and gross unveracity about it. A sort of desperate desire for security. An attempt to present a solution. A sort of weariness at always arriving at the question and never getting an answer. "

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>> Nattvardsgästerna - WINTER LIGHT (1962), second in the trilogy, sometimes seen as depicting "penetrated certainty." 81 minutes, B&W. (My favourite Bergman film.)

Synopsis/review: "The middle part of Bergman's trilogy about God's silence, ... and the most austere. Winter Light focuses on a small group of parishioners found at the beginning of the film attending Holy Communion. The village pastor is realizing he has become an atheist since his wife's death. His faith is further tested by an offer of marriage from a school-teacher tortured with eczema, and the solace demanded by a man suicidally depressed by the threat of nuclear war. The pastor fails on both counts, and Bergman gives us an ambiguous ending back in the church service -- what he himself called 'certainty unmasked.' Never a comfortable film, it's finely acted by a familiar Bergman ensemble, and the awesomely cold vistas form a perfect counterpoint to the spiritual freeze." http://www.bergmanorama.com/films/winter_light.htm

Bergman on Winter Light: Bergman told an interviewer in 1964: "I made Winter Light because I really wanted to, and I made it with no concessions to the public. I know it's a difficult film but I think that at last I came close to the truth concerning the spiritual crisis I had been striving for years to describe."

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>> Viskningar och rop - CRIES AND WHISPERS (1972), 91 minutes

Review: "Ingmar Bergman's magnificent, moving and very mysterious new film, Cries and Whispers...[has] a focus so sharp that it seems to have the clarity of something seen through the medium of fever. Every sense has been heightened to a supernatural degree. Fears, wishes and suspicions never spoken occasionally rustle through the house like wind. We can even hear the newly dead talk, distantly and somewhat reproachfully, mindless of the rapidity with which physical decay sets in....[ Cries and Whispers] is not an easy film to describe or to endure. It stands alone and it reduces almost everything else you're likely to see this season to the size of a small cinder."

Synopsis here: http://www.bergmanorama.com/films/cries_and_whispers.htm

Commentary: "Although all the characters in Cries and Whispers have different and very well delineated personalities, they all share a profound agony. In a sense, Cries and Whispers is a film about pain, either emotional or physical, [and it] offers a bleak and depressing portrayal of pain, as all the characters are unable to find any relief from the pain through either medicine or religion. This does not come as a complete surprise. After all, religion's failure to comfort a tormented soul is a theme that dominates Bergman's oeuvre." Marco Lanzagorta, commentary on Cries and Whispers at Scenes of Cinema

"Within the context of the narrative, cries are related to emotional conditions such as pain, anguish, impotency, loneliness, guilt and suffocation. In contrast, whispers are associated with feelings of tenderness, tolerance, love and compassion. All the characters in Cries and Whispers appear to be trapped in a complex web of emotions, unsure if they want to cry or to whisper at any given time, as if they were being torn apart by their conflicting feelings." -- Lanzagorta

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My plan is to follow all of this with the hilarious 7-minute-long French & Saunders spoof of several of Bergman's films (including Persona, The Seventh Seal, and Through a Glass Darkly). (My version doesn't have French subtitles like this YouTube video.)

________________________________________________

Bergman quotes:

"Earlier I played the guardian....My fictional people were not left alone; I interfered with their actions and their destinies. Since Through a Glass Darkly I can let them live their own lives." -- Ingmar Bergman, Dagens nyheter (1962)

"The salvation-damnation issue [portrayed in Bergman's early film and theater work], for me, was never political. It was religious. For me, in those days, the great question was: Does God exist? Or doesn't God exist? Can we, by an attitude of faith, attain to a sense of community and a better world? Or, if God doesn't exist, what do we do then? What does our world look like then?" -- Bergman, Bergman on Bergman: Interviews with Ingmar Bergman by Stig Bjorkman, Torsten Manns and Jonas Sima, 1970

"Our very nature, qua human beings, is that inside us we always carry around destructive tendencies, conscious or unconscious, aimed both at ourselves and at the outside world. ... Unmotivated cruelty is something which never ceases to fascinate me; and I'd very much like to know the reason for it. Its source is obscure and I'd very much like to get at it." -- Bergman on Bergman

"Isn't it a fact that children are always feeling deeply humiliated in their relations with grown-ups and each other? I have a feeling children spend a good deal of their time humiliating one another. Our whole education is just one long humiliation, and it was even more so when I was a child. One of the wounds I've found hardest to bear in my adult life has been the fear of humiliation, and the sense of being humiliated... To humiliate and be humiliated, I think, is a crucial element in our whole social structure." -- Bergman on Bergman

"Well, we're grasping for two things at once. Partly for communion with others -- that's the deepest instinct in us. And partly, we're seeking security. By constant communion with others we hope we shall be able to accept the horrible fact of our total solitude. We're always reaching out for new projects, new structure, new systems in order to abolish -- partly or wholly -- our insight into our loneliness. If it weren't so, religious systems would never arise." -- Bergman on Bergman

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Bergman Resources:

The Religious Affiliation of Director Ingmar Bergman

The Influence of Foreign Films by Dr. Charles Frost, Middle Tennessee State University (scroll down)

Ingmar Bergman, in Memory by Roger Ebert

NYT obituary, 30 July 2007

Bergman at Wikipedia

Roger Ebert on Cries and Whispers

Winter Light: Film Notes

Derek Malcolm on Wild Strawberries, in The Guardian

The Hard Way to Overcome Bias

2007-10-05T18:30:00+02:00

At, pertinently enough, Overcoming Bias, in an article titled "Avoiding Your Belief's Real Weak Points":

"In Modern Orthodox Judaism I have not heard much emphasis of the virtues of blind faith. You're allowed to doubt. You're just not allowed to successfully doubt. [True in other religions, too.] ...

"More than anything, the grip of religion is sustained by people just-not-thinking-about the real weak points of their religion. I don't think this is a matter of training, but a matter of instinct. People don't think about the real weak points of their beliefs for the same reason they don't touch an oven's red-hot burners; it's painful.

"To do better: When you're doubting one of your most cherished beliefs, close your eyes, empty your mind, grit your teeth, and deliberately think about whatever hurts the most. Don't rehearse standard objections whose standard counters would make you feel better. Ask yourself what smart people who disagree would say to your first reply, and your second reply. Whenever you catch yourself flinching away from an objection you fleetingly thought of, drag it out into the forefront of your mind. Punch yourself in the solar plexus. Stick a knife in your heart, and wiggle to widen the hole. In the face of the pain, rehearse only this:

What is true is already so.
Owning up to it doesn't make it worse.
Not being open about it doesn't make it go away.
And because it's true, it is what is there to be interacted with.
Anything untrue isn't there to be lived.
People can stand what is true,
for they are already enduring it.
-- Eugene Gendlin"

Not sure about the benefits of punching and stabbing myself but the poem speaks to me.

Yougogirls!

2007-09-30T07:10:00+02:00

Fellow travellers I have been heartened by news of a small victory in our crusade. You see, the Anglican Church has come one step closer to ordaining women as bishops.

Of course, the peenie-wavers are violently opposed to this change. Arch~~bishop~~enemy "Dr" Peter Jensen says that the issue is "not a male-female thing" and that many women are also opposed to the ordination of women. (Well, maybe so, if they are cowering before some glaring testosteroid ominously jangling his genitalia!)

I mean, really. "Not a male-female thing"? Sure, like the hatred of Muslims is "not a race thing".

Appalling. Just appalling.

Evil and Conformity

2007-09-12T21:05:00+02:00

More in Richard Beck's Everyday Evil series. Today's topic is conformity:

"Christians often tout community as if it is an unmitigated good. Community is a good. Being with and in relationship with others is a great thing. But there is a dark side to community as well. So we need to realize that community is a relative and contextual good.

"We all know some of the bad things associated with groups. Sometimes it is a mindless herd mentality. Sometimes it is groupthink. But sometimes it can be more sinister. "

Books of Faith Expunged from Prisons

2007-09-11T15:19:47+02:00

Saw this article, "Prisons Purging Books on Faith From Libraries," in the NYT yesterday and notebooked it to write about later, but Nancy Hitt at Preaching Peace beat me to it and speaks for me as well. Here's a lengthy excerpt from her response:

"If you were wondering how the war of all against all was coming along, I'd say it was on its way. We have reached a new level of desperation when we start purging religious texts from our prisons in order to keep the nation safe. Not that such texts aren't useful for inciting violence; of course they are! After all, religion, like the law that keeps the offenders behind bars, is meant to contain and control human violence. The texts that are used in service of that goal are powerful, used as easily to meet the goal of containing violence as to inciting it. I'm guessing few of these officials have read the Bible, because there was no mention of removing it from the shelves in the NY Times article reporting on this. If they had, it would have to go too; there are way too many ways to encourage violence by manipulating what's within its pages. However, in time honored human tradition, violence is being used to contain violence. ...

"Of course the characteristic American response to all of this is to file a lawsuit. So far, two of them have been filed focusing on First Amendment concerns. So now we have two of the three pillars of culture at war with each other over violence. Is there no way to stop the madness?

"In my frustration, I've been muttering things like: Mimetic Theory should be mandatory! Then I laugh at myself as I realize I've just replicated the same response that I'm scandalized by, that old idea of using law to enforce understanding and contain human violence. ...

"I'm pretty sure that censoring the religious texts available to prisoners will neither reduce violence (it's more likely to increase it) nor protect the nation from further terrorist activity. But I have to admit that those prison officials are on to something. They are right to recognize that religious texts can be used/misused to manipulate violence."

Religion and Resentment

2007-08-28T16:36:49+02:00

At Flesh & Spirit: Thoughts on Embodied Spirituality, Teresa comments on Roger Scruton's recent article about Rene Girard in Prospect magazine. I'd read the original article and considered blogging about it in the context of a larger article on resentment -- or more specifically, ressentiment, which is not just resentment, but resentment that is a. directed externally at the perceived cause of one's frustration, and b. generates a value system that justifies attacking or denying the perceived source of one's own sense of inferiority. But I didn't, but I may still.

I like her comments, and particularly the quote of Scruton's she (and he) ends with:

"Birth, copulation, and death are the moments when time stands still, when we look on the world from a point at its edge, when we experience our dependence and contingency, and when we are apt to be filled with an entirely reasonable awe. It is from such moments, replete with emotional knowledge, that religion begins. The rational person is not one who scoffs at all religions, but the one who tries to discover which of them, if any, can make sense of those things, and while doing so, draw [out] the poison of resentment." -- Roger Scruton, in 'The Sacred and the Human' in Prospect magazine, August 2007

She also quotes part of Scruton's comments on resentment, which I'll quote slightly more fully here:

"Resentment remains a fundamental component in our social emotions, and it is widely prevalent in modern societies. The 20th century was the century of resentment. How else do you explain the mass murders of the communists and the Nazis, the seething animosities of Lenin and Hitler, the genocides of Mao and Pol Pot? The ideas and emotions behind the totalitarian movements of the 20th century are targeted: they identify a class of enemy whose privileges and property have been unjustly acquired. Religion plays no real part in the ensuing destruction, and indeed is usually included among the targets."

Leave Your Brains and Bookshelves at the Door

2007-08-19T18:50:00+02:00

This has nothing to do with Shakespeare, but everything to do with books.The Unicorn Museum: a clever counter to Northern Kentucky's $27 million Creation Museum. The folks behind the Creation Museum argue that we need to accept the historical record laid out by the Judeo-Christian Bible prior to any biological, chemical, geological, or physical investigation of the Earth. But as you'll see on the Unicorn Museum's site, the young-earth creationists seem to have overlooked the unicorn, a creature referenced nine times in the Bible.The people behind the Unicorn Museum site are seeking to place a billboard near the Creation Museum, and it appears that there's a bit more to their project than simply having a laugh at the expense of creationists. The people most likely to buy in to the "worldview-first-then-shoehorn-shoehorn-shoehorn" approach are children. I'm speaking as a teacher, not necessarily an atheist, when I say this image turns my stomach justalittle.(The image comes from BlueGrassRoots, which offers a walkthrough and some commentary on the "parenting skills" of those who take their children there.)A stack of books versus what I presume to be a single scroll of the Pentateuch/Torah. You could read hundreds of books and spend all day thinking, or you could just believe. The display is an insult to a Judeo-Christian tradition which, despite its supernatural side, has always depended on stacks of books. Orthodox Jews, for instance, may read that scroll from the display as law, but it's law that requires generations of books' and scholars' interpretation and reasoning. And even a quick glance at the Wikipedia digest of Christian thinkers in science suggests that books and reasoning don't quite stand apart from Bible scrolls.Wikipedia aside, I'll be happy to take any comments supplying specific examples of Judeo-Christian thinkers who read (and wrote) books other than the Bible. I suspect that there will be many, many more than the Creation Museum's 'read less, believe more' signs would suggest.

Special Needs and Disability Defined

2007-05-18T18:33:09+02:00

So, lately I have been rather unpresent in the blogging world. Today, I make a come back! (for good, bad or indifferent, I can't say... that is for you to decide.) I have a few things on my mind, and thought it would do me some good to get a bit of it out. This might be a long one... but that's my style.I've been looking for a new job in my field. I have been looking for something with no front-line reception work. That is what I was originally hired to do, but ever since I spent my first summer here full-time, I have had the pleasure of many additional responsibilities... That's where the fun comes in for me. As I have excelled at these additional responsibilities, I have found joy and fulfillment... But as time has gone on, I have felt that telephone cord wrapping tighter and tighter around my neck, so to speak. I have become so much more than a receptionist, and it has become a huge nuisance; I would love nothing more than to cut it loose!That, mostly, is why I have been looking for an alternative that would NOT include being a frontline receptionist. I have recently been interviewing for a couple of jobs, and one in particular caught my fancy. When they asked me if I would mind telling them how much money I currently make, I decided to let that information out. It's not much anyway, and maybe they would feel better about hiring someone "in need." When I told them, they wrote it down and laughed outloud. "You are so rediculously underpaid, you know!" I told them I knew, and that was a reason I was looking for other employment.Later that week, I attended the first of the summer semester of a religion class I have been attending for a year and a half. It's different from any other I have ever attended (and I have attended one religion class or another almost constantly for over a decade) because it is one that incorporates men and women with special needs and/or mental or physical disabilities with "friends" from mainstream living. For the hour we are in class twice a week, each "friend" partners up with one or two people with special needs as we discuss the doctrine and do related activities.In this first day back, I was partnered up with a man I hadn't seen around for a couple of semesters, and I was happy to see him again. He was hit by a car at age 13, and crippled. His motor skills are slow and quiet. But his mind and spirit, of course, are still very in tact. We passed a marvelous time in discussions throughout the course of the class, and this man made some comments to me and to the class that really got me thinking. At one point, he was so in tune and his comment so poignant that I asked myself, "who of the two of us is really disabled? Do we all not have special needs in some way or another?" I realized how truly blessed I am to be able to attend with such high calibur folks as are attending this class.I called that other firm to follow up on my first interview, and was told that it was down to two, and I am definitely one of them. My heart soared and then dropped somewhere in the pit of my stomach. I realized that if I was offered this job - and was to take it - I would most likely NOT be able to attend this religion class with my friends and exemplars.In making a mental decision, I thought about the money I would be getting at the new firm... and the blessing of not having to answer a call unless it was for me or my attorney... the adventure of change... Would it all be worth giving up the joy that comes from being involved with this religion class? Could I live without them right now?I have since had a second interview, and it went relatively well, but I don't know still if they will offer the job to me or to the other candidate... I have, however, decided that my association with the members of this class is more vital to me than the financial and status oriented benefits I might receive at this other firm. Therefore, I have reconciled myself to staying where I am for the time being - making an effort to enjoy it all - and keep a hold of what really matters to me. It's all about finding the right priorities and keeping them in the right order, and I'm truly happy because of it.

Functioning as My Own Savior

2007-05-16T17:35:00+02:00

This, at DashHouse, struck me:

[Theologian Charles] Spurgeon said don't save souls to save our own soul. Dr. [Tim] Keller said that he never used to understand this. Now he realizes that it's possible to save souls to try and fill the hole in our hearts.

At one point, Dr. Keller came to realize that he was seeking his own justification through his preaching. He was being his own functional Savior. We often make the mistake of identifying our self-worth with our ministries.

In the same entry, Darryl writes (based on Keller's talk at a recent President's Breakfast at Gordon-Conwell Seminary):

You can grow your church, and at the same time be almost spiritually dead inside. You can grow a church but it can be driven by insecurity. You can have abilities and talents, and God can use you, but you can lack grace in the heart.

Preaching and pastoring can be effective without grace -- but your inner life, your love and character, can't be.

This seems applicable not only to pastors and leaders but to anyone who ministers to others in the name of God. Effectiveness is not the measurement, because we can be effective and dead at the same time; a spirit of love and compassion, and an active openness to God's movement -- not for how it can lead to our success but in and of itself -- is what matters.

RIP Jerry Falwell (11 Aug. 1933 - 15 May 2007)

2007-05-15T19:40:00+02:00

The Rev. Jerry Falwell, founder and pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, has died after being found unconscious in his office this morning. He was also the founder and president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, and the founder of the politically conservative Moral Majority. NPR aired a good piece on him in June 2006. (AP photo)

Some of his more ... interesting (and less ubiquitously repeated) ... comments:

"God is pro-war." (2004, per Garry Wills)

"The world will certainly suffer if America is monetarily punished." He said this in the context of recommending that strategies to address "any real climate changes" should be "legitimate," i.e., they should "not hinder economic development in our nation."

"The heavenly Father loves everyone, but because he loves you, when you do wrong, he'll give you a paddling." (in PBS Frontline interview)

"It is apparent, in light of the rebirth of the State of Israel, that the present day events in the Holy Land may very well serve as a prelude or forerunner to the future Battle of Armageddon and the glorious return of Jesus Christ." (in an essay titled Bible History, Prophecy and ‘World War III’)

"If I were president of the United States, I would include Moslems in my presidency. And I would do my best to change them. " (Beliefnet interview with Falwell)

"[T]he Aryan Nation movement could consider themselves a religion. That’s why they burn crosses. They’re religious people. But I don’t think we should have any problem at all determining they’re not qualified [for federal funding], because they hate black people and Jews." (Beliefnet interview with Falwell)

"'I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed.'" -- (cited in Cary McMullen, "Falwell: Now Is the Time for Gospel," in the Lakeland (Florida) Ledger (November 12, 2001), quoted from Randy Cassingham, This is True website (18 November 2001).

"That is the ultimate societal outcome if we sacrifice traditional marriage in our nation. In all seriousness, gender will become indistinct and our children will be taught in school to be completely nebulous in terms of their own gender. ... There is no end to the slippery slope of same-sex marriage." (in essay titled New York’s Highest Court Rules in Favor of Traditional Marriage)

"I don't think you go to hell for being gay, or for being promiscuous heterosexually, or for stealing, or for committing adultery, or drug addiction. I think you go to hell for rejecting Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior." (in PBS Frontline interview)

When asked what changed him -- what made him want to build a bridge across to gays and lesbians like he's done to drug abusers (his analogy), by meeting with Christian gay-rights activist Mel White and Soulforce -- Falwell replied: "The violence issue. I never saw a day coming when Christians and gays and lesbians and people who were different would be targeted for violence. ... I never envisioned someone taking a teenage boy out and killing him ... just because he was gay. I began to see that the level of hostility, on both sides, had reached a point where it is very volatile." (in PBS Frontline interview)

"I was taught my faith and family values by my mother who was born in 1895. When I was a child, almost everyone believed what I believe now." (ibid)

Looking Back: 10 May 2007

2007-05-10T17:45:00+02:00

10 May is ...

>>> 740 years since the Synod of Vienna (the Catholic Church) ordered all Jews to wear a distinctive, peaked yellow hat (1267). Jews were forced to wear Pileum cornutum (a cone-shaped headdress) in addition to the yellow badge they were already made to wear. (In the same year, the Council of Wroclaw in Poland created segregated Jewish quarters in towns and ordered Jews to wear a special emblem.)

Sources: Wikipedia: Yellow Badge and Judenhut / Religious Tolerance: Overview of 2000 Years of Jewish Persecution / Jewish Encyclopedia: Judenhut /

>>> 233 years since Louis XVI ascended to the throne of France at age 20 (1774), four years after he married Marie Antoinette, daughter of the empress Maria Theresa. When he became king, after his grandfather King Louis XV died (his father had already died in 1765), France was already impoverished, in debt, and heavily taxed (in 1777, France declared bankruptcy); this taxation, coupled with the lavish spending of the court, led eventually to the French Revolution, beginning with the storming of the Bastille by the French people in 1789, and including the guillotining of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette (among others) in 1793.

Sources: Royal Genealogies / Wikipedia / NNDB

Visual Information: Diagrams

2007-04-29T02:12:56+02:00

This website is devoted to displaying information in diagram form. Historical, political, genealogical, geographical, fantastic, religious, and financial. Fascinating.

Now I know why I've never learned the War of the Roses history.

(Click on diagrams to magnify them.)

Mr Deity

2007-04-14T17:17:46+02:00

I heard about Mr Deity through The Revealer:

"Finally on YouTube: God himself. ... It's a hilarious take on the problem of evil. Slightly cynical, smartly significant. 'God is a concept by which we measure our pain,' we hear. And as the episodes unfold we find that Mr. Diety is really not so comfortable with the elimination of everyone, especially Jews and homosexuals." And spillers of seed (ep. 10). Mr. Deity also doesn't answer much prayer, has a love/hate relationship with Lucifer (Lucy), never intended everyone to rest on the Sabbath just because he did, and can not remember Jesus's name.

The first nine videos are on YouTube (2, 4, 8, and 9 were my favs); the last is at Grouper (link opens video).

Warning: May be offensive to some.

Another Take on 'What's Church?'

2007-04-09T18:57:10+02:00

At Theolog, Old Testament scholar and Columbia Theological Seminary (Decatur, GA) emeritus professor Walter Brueggemann offers sermon starters for the current lectionary readings in Acts.

Because the nascent church is a focus of Paul's words and energy in Acts, some descriptions and definitions of 'the church' emerge in Brueggemann's analysis of the first lectionary reading, expanded a bit to include Acts 5:12-32:

"In the Book of Acts the church is a restless, transformative agent at work for emancipation and well-being in the world."

"[A]n Easter church is a public church that refuses to be defined by the conventional dysfunctions of society." These dysfunctions seems to be, in part at least, "repression, silence and order" that the "settled authority" uses to defend and maintain itself.

"[T]he resurrection ... is a given from which the church moves. I suspect that the task of gospel news in U.S. society now is to address the National Security State and a perpetual state of war that is in the service of a consumerism that robs society of its human capacity. The challenge, first of all, is for the church to hear its own good news and ponder its peculiar place in society as an 'other.'"

Youth Ask/Answer: What's Church?

2007-04-09T18:10:00+02:00

I. Church as Relationship (Body of Christ)

Some ideas and questions about "church" from students at Eastern Mennonite University, via Lora at Young Anabaptist Radicals; most of the comments (including those I didn't extract here) seem to focus on church as relationships among humans:

'Empire is about stability. The church is about movement ... If it becomes stable, it looks like empire after awhile.'

'Is church Sunday morning or is church what we do together?'

'The church is pulled in seemingly two different directions: One is the desire to grow deeply in relationship with each other. And the other is to welcome anyone and everyone and grow in that way. For good relationships to be fostered, they take time. And they take intentionality.'

'One of the things that my group keeps coming back to is how hard it is to foster a community and intimacy when you see each other for three hours once a week and most of it is just you sitting beside each other. If we can get into each other's lives on a day-to-day basis, that intimacy would just follow us.'

'Church is a really ambiguous term that we use for a lot of things. It can be a noun, it can be a verb… If we make church something that we do, and not something that we go to, that community is fostered a lot more.'

'It's sometimes hard to think outside of the box when you are the box.'

'The church will not change, the church will not fulfill what God intends for it without people who lead it who also love it as it is.'

'Christianity should be less of a religion, and more of a way of life.'

II. Church as Army (Onward, Christian Soldiers)

From the April 19, 2007 issue of Rolling Stone, an article by Jeff Sharlet (of the The Revealer) titled Teenage Holy War about BattleCry, a Christian movement of mostly teens:

"'When you enlist in the military, there's a code of honor,' [commander-in-chief of BattleCry, Ron] Luce preaches, 'same as being a follower of Christ.' His Christian code requires a 'wartime mentality': a 'survival orientation' and a readiness to face 'real enemies.' The queers and communists, feminists and Muslims, to be sure, but also the entire American cultural apparatus of marketing and merchandising. ... 'Just as the events of September 11th, 2001, permanently changed our perspective on the world,' Luce writes, 'so we ought to be awakened to the alarming influence of today's culture terrorists. They are wealthy, they are smart, and they are real.' ...

"'The devil hates us,' he exhorts, 'and we gotta be ready to fight and not be these passive little lukewarm, namby-pamby, kum-ba-yah, thumb-sucking babies that call themselves Christians. Jesus? He got mad!' Luce considers most evangelicals too soft, too ready to pass off as piety their preference for a bland suburban lifestyle. He hates what he sees as the weakness of 'accepting' Christ, of 'trusting' the Lord. 'I want an attacking church!' he shouts ...."

You can also hear Sharlet talking about BattleCry on NPR's On the Media. He says that these kids "don't want to be in a war, but that's all they're being offered."

III. Church as a Group of Kind, Humble Friends Who Support Each Other and Help Save the World:

Keith Drury, Assoc. Professor of Religion at Indiana Wesleyan University, names the top 25 characteristics of his students, future church leaders of America. These include:

They think something is very wrong with church and they want to fix it

They are used to, expect, and need a lot of planning, structure, mentoring, agendas, supervision

They value attitudes and treatment of others over "right answers;" Kindness is the most important thing, and "being unkind is a cardinal sin." Tolerance and humility are right up there, too.

They experience every thing and place as holy; church and life aren't separate

They value social action

They value authenticity and simplicity: "they expect everyone to confess their sins even publicly on their blog" and feel that hiding sins is the worst sin; and they think fancy and showy worship is fake

They feel entitled to have what they want with little or no cost

They are very sensitive to anything that smacks of self-promotion or bragging; "IMHO" as an attitude is a must.

They're idealistic: "They are shocked to discover that people in the church can sometimes be critical, argumentative and divisive. 'It isn’t right -- why is this?' They expect a time of prayer will solve most all problems and if people are right with God they wouldn't act this way.

"Their idea church is a collection of people who like each other and 'do life together.'"

Eddie Izzard Clips

2007-03-24T19:35:00+01:00

Eddie Izzard on the beginnings of the Church of England. (Warning for all of Eddie: Language!)

And for pagan fun, Stonehenge ("Fantastic. Building a henge are we? Very good idea. ... Help you push 'em along? All right ... it's not far, is it?")

Another religion: The Star Wars Death Star Canteen ("it does death" .... "I can kill you without a tray.")

Cake or death?

Money and Religion

2007-03-03T11:40:00+01:00

Having just browsed through a current issue of The Birmingham Post (2/3/2007) I read an article in PERSPECTIVE called 'Money doesn't make the world go around' by Ann Pettifor. She sheds a new light on the conflict of 'interest' between Christianity and Islam ... the conflict between our western values and Muslim values.

She points out that in our western society we condone the making of money from money. Our western values are ...'rooted in the accumulation fo wealth and the absence regulation. We call it "liberalisation" and export it all over the world'.

On the other hand, 'Islam has never accepted the legitamcy of interest. To this day Islam prohibits the taking or giving of interest or riba, regardless of the purpose of the loan, or the rates at which interest is charged. Islamic banks are savings institutuions and when they make loans they do so as stakeholders, sharing in risks and losses'.

These two religions are mutually exclusive it seems.

But is it just "money which is the root of all evil" or is religion the true problem - it seems that so many incomprehensible wars and intolerable circumstances foisted upon the citizens of our earth are the result of religion......

With conflicts continuing to rage around the world the media is never short of something to write about or to show pictures of - heart-rending, gruesome, eye-opening photos - we are inundated daily. What do most people, who have the luxury of a safe home and environment do? For the most part we sigh, we comment on the injustices in the world, we feel powerless to do anything really worthwhile. We can certainly contribute to the various fund-raising efforts - but does our money and our good intentions ever arrive? Do they actually every really help those that it is intended for?

"Oh God!", "For God's sake!", "God help us" and "God help them".....familiar phrases - but with little consequence it seems.

Science vs Religion

2006-11-11T00:35:00+01:00

My brain hurts.

Would this world be a better place without God?

Yes, said Bertrand Russell and Richard Dawkins. A lot of attrocities have been committed in the name of religions.

No, said others. Stalin, Hitler (or was he really still Catholic?), Saddam, Mao and Pol Pot did not need God to justify their madness.

Even South Park pitched the Unified Atheist League vs the United Athelist Alliance vs the SeaOtters in Dawkins' Godless future.

So there. Human beings can use anything as an excuse to do nasty things to another human beings. Be it religion, race, greed, whatever.

But just like this world being plagued by AIDS and TB, wouldn't there already be less suffering if we can rid of AIDS and only have to deal with TB?

Would our world be more peaceful, if we can only wage wars for non-religious reasons?

Is that too naive a question?

Imagine no India vs Pakistan.

Imagine no Shia vs Sunni.

Mary Midgley is more pragmatic. "Just focus on fighting against fundamentalism, whatever form they take." But where's the boundary? Isn't religion a sliding scale?