Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Religion. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Friday, February 24, 2012
Lent
Though not Christian, I find the rhythms and structure of the liturgical Christian churches interesting and instructive. This is the season of Lent, which is a period paralleling that of Jesus' time in the desert and is a preparation of inner reflection and outer good works leading to the definitive event of Easter. Even an outsider can always benefit from such practices. Andrew Sullivan, Roman Catholic, put up an interesting post today discussing blogging Lent. He took the opportunity to explore the true nature of his religion and its place in the public square, contrasting it with the politicized christianism which is so powerful now:
I believe this is the way religion should be in public life. Instead of using political power to direct the lives of others through law, Christians should embrace true secularism as a neutral stage on which to explore and explain and witness to their actual faith...
This is my objection to Christianism, as it is to Islamism. Because it obscures the true message: Jesus led by example and non-violence, not by the coercive power of the state. And the message of the Gospels and of the lives of the saints is exactly this: witness, don't control. Let go of such an impulse. Live the truths, and you will find people coming to you. And if the truths are lies, only freedom will allow you to see past them to deeper truths.
How many false attachments are we addicted to - celebrity, money, possessions, news, the web. How much greed we see and how much anger we feel. Jesus liberates us from these things that cloud our culture and soil our souls.
Not surprisingly, this is the message of the Buddha as well. Perhaps it is a good time to reflect on the deep similarities all spiritual traditions have: beyond the organizations and dogmas lies something True if we can only unearth it.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Faith, It's Loss, and the Reason Why
Ironically, it was seminary that inaugurated my leap of unfaith. It was so much easier to believe when living in an uncritical, unquestioning, naïve state. Seminary training with its demands for rigorous and intentional study and reflection coupled with its values of reason and critical inquiry began to undermine my naïveté. I discovered theologians, philosophers and authors I never knew existed. I found their questions stimulating but their answers often unsatisfying. For example, the Bible is rife with vileness evidenced by stories of sexual exploitation, mass murder and arbitrary mayhem. How do we harmonize this fact with the conception of an all-loving, all-knowing God? While many have undertaken to answer this question even in erudite fashion, I found their answers lacking. Once I concluded that the Bible was a thoroughly human product and the God it purports does not exist, other church teachings, such as communion and baptism, unraveled rather quickly. To quote Nietzsche, I was seeing through a different “perspective” – a perspective based on critical thinking, reason and deduction. By honing these skills over time, reason and critical thinking became my primary tools and faith quickly diminished. Ultimately, these tools led to the undoing of my faith rather than the strengthening of it.
Reason and critical thinking are excellent tools in ferreting out the false and in seeking the Truth. Mr. Prowse discovered that just accepting dogma and the stories in the Bible weren't enough to live an awakened and authentic life. As the Buddha put it,
Do not believe anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe anything simply because it is written in your religious books. Do not believe anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe traditions because they have been handed down for generations. But after observation and analysis, when you have found that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Religion and the Human Race
Libyan deputy envoy Ibrahim Dabbashi has told the UN's Human Rights Council that gays threaten humanity, UN Watch reports:
Actually, any rational person (I know, a stretch where religion is involved) would realize that it is heterosexuals that are endangering the human race. Why? Because of their unfettered and selfish creation of more and more human beings which burden an already overpopulated world and super-stressed ecology. What we need is more gays to save the human race from itself.
Protesting the council’s first panel discussion on discrimination and violence based on sexual orientation, scheduled for March 7th, Libya’s representative told the gathering of ambassadors today that LGBT topics “affect religion and the continuation and reproduction of the human race.” He added that, were it not for their suspension, Libya would have opposed the council’s June 2011 resolution on the topic.
In response, council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre said that “the Human Rights Council is here to defend human rights and prevent discrimination.”
In response, council president Laura Dupuy Lasserre said that “the Human Rights Council is here to defend human rights and prevent discrimination.”Actually, any rational person (I know, a stretch where religion is involved) would realize that it is heterosexuals that are endangering the human race. Why? Because of their unfettered and selfish creation of more and more human beings which burden an already overpopulated world and super-stressed ecology. What we need is more gays to save the human race from itself.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Hitch on the Catholic Church
While listening to two of my friends speak of the indoctrination they were subjected to as children by the Roman Catholic Church - the terrible and graphic fears of hell, as well as their self-hatred as gay people - I couldn't help but be overwhelmed by hatred for that evil institution. Yes, I shouldn't give in to such feeling, but I don't think it's unreasonable given the huge load of suffering caused by them. And here is Christopher Hitchens to explain further:
Hitch, you are missed...
Hitch, you are missed...
Monday, January 23, 2012
Heaven and Meaning
Paula Kirby at the Washington Post has an interesting article examining how atheists find meaning in a godless universe. She maintains that we don't need an invisible babysitter in the sky to hold our hands and give us direction and meaning, that we can find these meanings out for ourselves and, in effect, give them greater importance without being directed from above. But it's her point about the Christian heaven which I find interesting:
Life cannot be meaningless so long as we have the capacity to affect the well-being of ourselves and others. For true meaninglessness, we would need heaven.
In the state of permanent, perfect bliss that is the very definition of heaven, ‘making a difference’ is ruled out. If the difference made an improvement, the previous state could not have been perfect. If it made things worse, the result would not be perfect. In heaven, neither is possible. Even being reunited with loved ones could not add one jot to their bliss or yours, for heaven would be, by definition, a state that could not be improved on.
Just consider for a moment the hellish pointlessness of heaven. At least in our real existence our actions have an effect, for better or worse, and it is therefore worth trying to get them right. In an eternal life where we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.
we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.
I've often thought that heaven, as described by the Christians, would be horrible: an eternity frozen in myself with absolutely nothing to do or be or look forward to because everything is perfect just as it is - boring, pointless. Hellish, in fact. What is it about life that Christians hate so much? Despising this existence in favor of some theoretical afterlife is an evasion. What we have is the Now.
Life cannot be meaningless so long as we have the capacity to affect the well-being of ourselves and others. For true meaninglessness, we would need heaven.
In the state of permanent, perfect bliss that is the very definition of heaven, ‘making a difference’ is ruled out. If the difference made an improvement, the previous state could not have been perfect. If it made things worse, the result would not be perfect. In heaven, neither is possible. Even being reunited with loved ones could not add one jot to their bliss or yours, for heaven would be, by definition, a state that could not be improved on.
Just consider for a moment the hellish pointlessness of heaven. At least in our real existence our actions have an effect, for better or worse, and it is therefore worth trying to get them right. In an eternal life where we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.
we can have no effect whatsoever, we might as well be dead.
I've often thought that heaven, as described by the Christians, would be horrible: an eternity frozen in myself with absolutely nothing to do or be or look forward to because everything is perfect just as it is - boring, pointless. Hellish, in fact. What is it about life that Christians hate so much? Despising this existence in favor of some theoretical afterlife is an evasion. What we have is the Now.
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Getting Beyond the Matrix
John Stanley writes an interesting, brief article where he describes the "believing brain" and the nature of psychopathology. Our brains construct their worlds based on beliefs inculcated in us by society, family, school, church, etc., thus enabling us to exist and move about in our worlds. However, when we are confronted with a reality or new set of facts which challenge this ingrained view, how do we respond? With empathy and the ability to change, or with lack of empathy and rejection of those facts (and, often, people)?
Research by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues has more recently identified the circuit in our brain that generates spontaneous empathy for others' feelings. Unsurprisingly, it is underactive in individuals who commit acts of cruelty. Unfeeling cruelty toward others has traditionally been called "evil." Now we have a precise neurogenetic definition: "zero-empathy" is the root of all evil.
He likens this conflict with the choice Neo had in "The Matrix": remain in the Matrix or take the "red pill" and leave the Matrix to join the greater reality. He uses the current conflict surrounding global warming as an example: corporations place profit above empathy for future generations, thus condemning them to catastrophic environmental collapse in the pursuit of short-term gain. This is, literally, psychopathic - or, evil. The Matrix here is the denial of the greater reality of which we are a part, the denial of interrelatedness, and he calls for choosing the red pill.
It's time to break out of our unsustainable zero-empathy matrix. To be or not to be is now the pressing spiritual question before us -- as individuals, as citizens, as a civilization and as a species.
Research by Simon Baron-Cohen and colleagues has more recently identified the circuit in our brain that generates spontaneous empathy for others' feelings. Unsurprisingly, it is underactive in individuals who commit acts of cruelty. Unfeeling cruelty toward others has traditionally been called "evil." Now we have a precise neurogenetic definition: "zero-empathy" is the root of all evil.
He likens this conflict with the choice Neo had in "The Matrix": remain in the Matrix or take the "red pill" and leave the Matrix to join the greater reality. He uses the current conflict surrounding global warming as an example: corporations place profit above empathy for future generations, thus condemning them to catastrophic environmental collapse in the pursuit of short-term gain. This is, literally, psychopathic - or, evil. The Matrix here is the denial of the greater reality of which we are a part, the denial of interrelatedness, and he calls for choosing the red pill.
It's time to break out of our unsustainable zero-empathy matrix. To be or not to be is now the pressing spiritual question before us -- as individuals, as citizens, as a civilization and as a species.
Monday, December 12, 2011
Christless Christmas
There was no one moment that crystallized my thinking or relieved me of my guilt. Rather, it was a series of observations: Most of the classic songs and movies that celebrate Christmas don't even mention God or Jesus. Santa doesn't check church attendance to decide whether he's going to give a child a present—he checks whether she's been naughty or nice. He's the perfect secular judge of moral fiber. To say that the secularists injure the Christmas spirit is much like the claim that two men getting hitched will besmirch the sanctity of marriage. Why should the way I mark Christmas bother anyone? Christians appalled by my secular holiday will no doubt argue that I am depriving myself of the greater joy that comes with accepting Jesus into your heart. But I'm not attempting to take away anyone's right to go to church or to display a Nativity scene. All I need to celebrate Christmas is a tree, stockings, baked goods, some people I love, and some gifts to give (and, yes, receive).
And, of course, there's the idea that so-called "pagan" festivals preceded the modern Christmastide, and that symbols we now associate with it (eg, the Christmas tree, yule log) also had other origins. So, I say enjoy the holiday season any way you want (I recently reread Dickens' "A Christmas Carol), and practice tolerance of the ways others celebrate. It's a time for fun and reflection...and presents!
Friday, November 18, 2011
The Universe
Thursday, November 17, 2011
Religion, a Debate
Slate has a brief article describing a formal debate in New York City between atheists and believers about whether religion does more good than harm in the world. I find this an interesting conversation because it sidesteps the question of whether the religions are true or not, and concentrates on the effect religious belief actually has in the world:
Chapman and Grayling argued that anything good religion does—encouraging ethical behavior, providing comfort and community, promoting charity—nonreligious groups do, too. But along with the good stuff, religion also consigns women to a second-class status, foments division and conflict, oppresses gay people, encourages credulity, and stunts scientific progress. Of course, not all religious people share the same insular perspectives, but most extremists do, Grayling argued. “The extremists are the most honest of the people who have a religious view because they commit themselves to what their tradition tells them, and they stay closest to the text,” he said, explaining that moderate believers often “cherry-pick” the best parts of their religion, ignoring the rest. “Now, if that’s real religion, that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off without it.”
Wolpe and D’Souza maintained that religion does a vast amount of unrecognized good in the world—unrecognized because media outlets won’t run an article with the headline “Religious Man Feeds Hungry Man.” Religious wrongdoings, on the other hand, are exaggerated and overhyped in the news. Wolpe rattled off study after study showing that religious people are more likely to volunteer and participate in civic life, and less likely to do drugs or get divorced. Apparently, believers are even healthier and live longer. Oh, and if you think religious fundamentalists are evil, they’re nothing compared to the atheists. “The crimes of religion, even of Bin Laden, are infinitesimal compared to the nightmare of atheist regimes,” said D’Souza, naming Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Chernenko, Ceaușescu, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot as a few examples. “[They] have killed far more people, in far shorter of a time, and are still doing it right now.” The world without religion, the men said, would be a bleak and impoverished place.
It seems to me that both sides are, at least, partially right. This is a complex question and impossible to deal with in depth here. But I think that religion is inherent in what it means to be human, that we can't really escape some manifestation of it, and that it can be a force for good, as least in individual lives. However, organized religion on the large scale lends itself to the establishment and enforcement of power - religious, governmental, social, etc. - and has much to answer for. I think one can be "spiritual" without being religious - which means we can take what we want from religion and leave the rest. It's when it becomes an organized entity that religion has the most potential for evil.
If Awakening is the goal, we must use any tools available. But we must also avoid the very tools that kept us asleep in the nightmare - and it seems to me that religion is too often one, if not the main, tool which works to keep us asleep.
Chapman and Grayling argued that anything good religion does—encouraging ethical behavior, providing comfort and community, promoting charity—nonreligious groups do, too. But along with the good stuff, religion also consigns women to a second-class status, foments division and conflict, oppresses gay people, encourages credulity, and stunts scientific progress. Of course, not all religious people share the same insular perspectives, but most extremists do, Grayling argued. “The extremists are the most honest of the people who have a religious view because they commit themselves to what their tradition tells them, and they stay closest to the text,” he said, explaining that moderate believers often “cherry-pick” the best parts of their religion, ignoring the rest. “Now, if that’s real religion, that’s honest religion, the world is very much better off without it.”
Wolpe and D’Souza maintained that religion does a vast amount of unrecognized good in the world—unrecognized because media outlets won’t run an article with the headline “Religious Man Feeds Hungry Man.” Religious wrongdoings, on the other hand, are exaggerated and overhyped in the news. Wolpe rattled off study after study showing that religious people are more likely to volunteer and participate in civic life, and less likely to do drugs or get divorced. Apparently, believers are even healthier and live longer. Oh, and if you think religious fundamentalists are evil, they’re nothing compared to the atheists. “The crimes of religion, even of Bin Laden, are infinitesimal compared to the nightmare of atheist regimes,” said D’Souza, naming Khrushchev and Brezhnev, Chernenko, Ceaușescu, Kim Jong-il, Fidel Castro, and Pol Pot as a few examples. “[They] have killed far more people, in far shorter of a time, and are still doing it right now.” The world without religion, the men said, would be a bleak and impoverished place.
It seems to me that both sides are, at least, partially right. This is a complex question and impossible to deal with in depth here. But I think that religion is inherent in what it means to be human, that we can't really escape some manifestation of it, and that it can be a force for good, as least in individual lives. However, organized religion on the large scale lends itself to the establishment and enforcement of power - religious, governmental, social, etc. - and has much to answer for. I think one can be "spiritual" without being religious - which means we can take what we want from religion and leave the rest. It's when it becomes an organized entity that religion has the most potential for evil.
If Awakening is the goal, we must use any tools available. But we must also avoid the very tools that kept us asleep in the nightmare - and it seems to me that religion is too often one, if not the main, tool which works to keep us asleep.
Zen and the Art of Landscape
I found a great site put up by Bowduin College about the Zen gardens of Kyoto, Japan. Kyoto was not attacked during WWII, and is known for its original architecture, particularly the Buddhist temples and monasteries.
The web site is dedicated to the gardens of Japan, and primarily to the historic gardens of Kyoto and its environs, including Nara...Although many of these gardens are located within Zen Buddhist monasteries, this site is not intended to explore the influence of Zen thought on Japanese garden design, an influence that is often a matter of conjecture rather than historical evidence. Instead, the site is designed simply to provide the visitor with an opportunity to visit each garden, to move through or around it, to experience it through the medium of high-quality color images, and to learn something of its history.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
"A Lamp in the Darkness"
I found a short excerpt from Jack Kornfield's book at the Huffpost which I really like. He speaks of awakening to the wonder and love of the everyday, and of going through the experiences of difficulty and pain and coming out the other side to the awareness of which the Buddha spoke:
"The world offers perennial renewal, in the grass that pushes itself up between the cracks in the sidewalk, in the end of every torrential rainstorm and in every newly planted window box, in every unexpected revolution, with each new morning’s light. This unstoppable spirit of renewal is in you. Trust it. Learn that it flows through you and all of life. The ultimate gift of our suffering is to teach us how to properly grieve, heal, and learn compassion. But finally we come to the realization that in any moment we can step out of the body of fear and feel the great winds that carry us, to awaken to the eternal present. It is within our power to experience the liberation of the heart offered to all by the Buddha in these words:"
Live in joy,
In love,
Even among those who hate.
Live in joy,In health,
Even among the afflicted.
Live in joy,
In peace,
Even among the troubled.
Look within.
Be still.
Free from fear and attachment,
Know the sweet joy of living in the Way.
This sounds like a book I'd like to check out. Mindfulness is a took which helps us awaken from the nightmare which is both our personal history and that of the world, and he seems to speak of that here. And the words of the Buddha: "Look within." That is the place where stillness and freedom can be found. As they say in the Program: happiness is an inside job.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Religion and Sexuality
Shorter University has established an official policy banning gay employees:
Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school in Rome, Ga., is forcing its 200 employees to sign a statement declaring that they reject homosexuality. Anyone who doesn't sign the pledge risks losing their jobs.
They also demand their employees several other behaviors they deem "against biblical teachings." Of course, they are a private school and can do as they please. But this illustrates the problem I examined in my post below: modern fundamentalist religion in a panic to keep modernity at bay with a selective interpretation of their holy book and religion. Mind-control, persecution, threats, the abandonment of reason, cruelty - all in the name of preserving something that cannot be preserved. And, of course, gays get it in the neck as usual with the christianist agenda. Of course, why would any self-respecting gay
person want to have anything to do with such pernicious nonsense anyway?
Shorter President Don Dowless told WSBTV that the goal wasn’t to offend people, and that lots of Christian schools have similar pledges. "These are biblical positions," he said.
Interesting how selective the reading of the Bible can be. Here, biblical positions mean exclusion and persecution. Yet, it can also be read, selectively, to mean inclusion and the defense of the persecuted. Why bother with it at all? The beneficial values can be had without all the ignorant crap, after all.
Shorter University, a Christian Baptist school in Rome, Ga., is forcing its 200 employees to sign a statement declaring that they reject homosexuality. Anyone who doesn't sign the pledge risks losing their jobs.
They also demand their employees several other behaviors they deem "against biblical teachings." Of course, they are a private school and can do as they please. But this illustrates the problem I examined in my post below: modern fundamentalist religion in a panic to keep modernity at bay with a selective interpretation of their holy book and religion. Mind-control, persecution, threats, the abandonment of reason, cruelty - all in the name of preserving something that cannot be preserved. And, of course, gays get it in the neck as usual with the christianist agenda. Of course, why would any self-respecting gay
person want to have anything to do with such pernicious nonsense anyway?
Shorter President Don Dowless told WSBTV that the goal wasn’t to offend people, and that lots of Christian schools have similar pledges. "These are biblical positions," he said.
Interesting how selective the reading of the Bible can be. Here, biblical positions mean exclusion and persecution. Yet, it can also be read, selectively, to mean inclusion and the defense of the persecuted. Why bother with it at all? The beneficial values can be had without all the ignorant crap, after all.
21st Century Religion
The Philosopher's Beard blog has a fascinating essay on present-day religion and its discontents. The great thing about this kind of discussion is that it clarifies for me my feelings and views on religion in the west - here, the Judeo-Christian view:
Once upon a time religion was in the world and made the world. Religion made the messy chaotic world legible to human understanding and amenable to human purposes. It fixed things in place, like the stars in the sky and the distinction between men and women. It ordered the flux into the cycle of life: the turning of the sun, seasons, and harvests; birth and death. It explained and justified the social order: why one man is born to wealth and power and another to be a serf. It told us with all the force of a mighty and all-encompassing metaphysics what our lives really meant, and how we should act, think and feel. But no more. Religion has been brought low by its old enemies, philosophy and politics. Religion persists and is even popular. But it is now in the mind, a matter of personal belief projected outwards. In short, religion is now secular.
I focus here on the trajectory of the Abrahamic style of theological religion (other forms of religiousish behaviour require their own accounts). This kind of religion rests on a metaphysical unification of the divine, the social-order, and nature. It gives us an enchanted world and a guarantee that we know our true place in it. The enemies of theological religion have always been philosophy and politics because both present inherently secular ways of grappling with the nature of the world that bypass religion. Their rise has shattered both enchantment and Truth. Religion still creeps about the place, but in a thoroughly subordinate role.
Indeed, this explains what has happened to religion in the west, and the current frenzied attempts to recall the unified view the past (read, Medieval Europe) offered. Still, as he points out, this attempt is doomed: modern philosophy and science has replaced this all-encompassing role with a more coherent and accurate view of how the world works. In this secular age, belief has been fragmented and individualized - even the fundamentalists are affected (thus their rigidity).
But what we have gained from the loss of unified view where belief was felt as well as known, is, in my view, the possibility of a grander and deeper (and more accurate) experience of reality. It has opened us up to many other possibilities for our worldviews and spiritual experience. I can, for instance, investigate Buddhism without fear of official punishment for heresy or civil prosecution (a "religion" which eschews rigidity and forced unity and actively seeks out and accommodates "chaos"). I can also express my sexuality without the fear of religious-inspired persecution (oppression, imprisonment, torture, the stake). I rejoice in the downfall of the Judeo-Christian hegemony and its reduction to creeping about the place in a subordinate role! Who needs dictatorship and mind-control? We are now free to investigate reality without the blinkers and bridle of religion.
Once upon a time religion was in the world and made the world. Religion made the messy chaotic world legible to human understanding and amenable to human purposes. It fixed things in place, like the stars in the sky and the distinction between men and women. It ordered the flux into the cycle of life: the turning of the sun, seasons, and harvests; birth and death. It explained and justified the social order: why one man is born to wealth and power and another to be a serf. It told us with all the force of a mighty and all-encompassing metaphysics what our lives really meant, and how we should act, think and feel. But no more. Religion has been brought low by its old enemies, philosophy and politics. Religion persists and is even popular. But it is now in the mind, a matter of personal belief projected outwards. In short, religion is now secular.
I focus here on the trajectory of the Abrahamic style of theological religion (other forms of religiousish behaviour require their own accounts). This kind of religion rests on a metaphysical unification of the divine, the social-order, and nature. It gives us an enchanted world and a guarantee that we know our true place in it. The enemies of theological religion have always been philosophy and politics because both present inherently secular ways of grappling with the nature of the world that bypass religion. Their rise has shattered both enchantment and Truth. Religion still creeps about the place, but in a thoroughly subordinate role.
Indeed, this explains what has happened to religion in the west, and the current frenzied attempts to recall the unified view the past (read, Medieval Europe) offered. Still, as he points out, this attempt is doomed: modern philosophy and science has replaced this all-encompassing role with a more coherent and accurate view of how the world works. In this secular age, belief has been fragmented and individualized - even the fundamentalists are affected (thus their rigidity).
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Reclining Buddha
See a slideshow at the Huffpost site. Fascinating and beautiful! (I particularly like the smile on the Buddha.)
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Cartoon of the Day
Pain and suffering, a graphic representation indeed. I found this attached to a discussion of pain at the Wisdom Quarterly website. Interesting in its relations to Dukka, or the First Noble Truth.
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