Religion « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Religion ... Web Site/Blog ...

One way to break the world of blogs down is to separate it into spectators versus players. In other words, some blogs talk mostly about the writer’s actual experiences in life, be they in business, family life, school, hobbies, religion, science, sports, whatever. Other blogs are based on observation, like a sports writer talking about football or baseball. Sports writers talk about sports, but they don’t actually play them. And many blog writers – myself included – talk mostly about stuff that we’re interested in but don’t really do. There probably isn’t a clear distinction; the direct participants make general observations, and the observers (including myself) sometimes talk about our own experiences. But in general, I think that you could classify blogs as mostly observing versus actually doing.

And as to which is more interesting to read, well – that depends on your own tastes. Direct experiences may be really interesting if you are involved in the area; a blog written by biochemists discussing their research would certainly be of great interest to other biochemists. Likewise, people raising kids probably enjoy reading about the experiences of other people raising kids (and may benefit from it, may get a good idea here and there). Same for playing softball, homebrewing beer, tending a backyard garden, maintaining a home computer, etc.

As to observations, that’s a tougher sell. Punditry can be a tough field. Not everyone can come up with sharp insights and present them in a timely and interesting fashion. Being a bit of a current affairs analyst and a political observer myself (and not a participant; I have no interest in going door-to-door or handing out literature at a bus-stop for Hilary or Barack or some cheesy local candidate), I can’t help but envy the immensely popular and often insightful Tom Friedman. But not so much Ariana Huffington; no real envy there on my part.

For better or for worse I’m going to keep on writing as I’m able about politics, religion, science, current trends, economics, and whatever else I have thoughts on. This is even though I have very little actual experience in these fields. I’d talk more about my actual life and job, but it’s all pretty boring. So I’ll continue throwing out random thoughts from my perch as an interested observer.

I have an observation or two today about religion. (I used to be involved in religion, but now I’m not.) The first observation is about the general role of writings and scripture in religion. I wanted to take note of what an under-appreciated subject that is! I came across a quick discussion about it recently, and it turned a lightbulb or two on inside my mind. It’s the kind of thing that a handful of religious studies professors and sociologists discuss now and then, but it doesn’t make its way out into the realm of popular thought. And that’s a shame. Religious people would benefit from some “meta-think” about their religion. (Especially since this is often discouraged by their religious establishment – i.e., don’t question us, or you’ll go to hell).

I’m not ready to say very much about books, writings and religion, but I do want to make the point that they do not necessarily go together. Having grown up in the Catholic faith, that notion comes as a bit of a surprise to me. But if you look at history, there were religions that didn’t depend on things being written down. Also there still are religions that don’t depend on “sacred scripture” to the degree that Christianity, Judaism and Islam do. For instance, Buddhism and Hinduism don’t really have “core canons”, although there are plenty of ancient writings that you can consult about them (e.g., the Upanishads or the teachings of the Buddha). And even the “people of the book” (Christians, Jews and Moslems) make somewhat different uses of their sacred books.

In general, the idea of writing down religious stories and laws helps to standardize things and to promote common understandings behind the religion. As such, this makes it possible for power structures to form. These powers-that-be control the sacred writings and spell out how they are to be interpreted. There are pros and cons to that, depending on what you think about heresy. Another dimension to the question of scripture is the historical one, regarding the availability of paper, the development of the printing press, and the number of people able to read. Given the rise of literacy, writings became somewhat of an evangelistic tool (although relatively few people join or convert to a religion solely because of what they’ve read about it; despite C.S. Lewis, it’s usually direct experience that clinches it). Writings also allow high levels of abstract thinking about religion, which was necessary in response to the rise of intellectualism after the Middle Ages.

But on the other side of the coin, too much dependence upon writings can choke off the experiential side of religion, which was prominent way back in the days when religion was mostly an oral tradition. In Latin America, Catholic Christianity is today being challenged by Pentecostalists who pledge fealty to the Bible but who otherwise throw out the writings and provide their followers with a lot of emotional experience. The bishops can condemn this as a dangerous heresy, but it seems to meet the needs of a growing number of people.

That leads me to another big thought about religion, another idea that should be more popular than it is. That thought is called the “rational choice theory”, which has been promoted by an academic writer named Rodney Stark. According to this theory, most people don’t choose to become or remain involved with a particular religion because of doctrine (although the more educated crowd, e.g. the Episcopalian – Quaker – Unitiarian Obama supporters, sometimes do). They get involved because it’s a good economic decision.

I like this theory because it gets down to money. The reality is that money is never beside the point when it comes to religion. If you just want to just go to church on Sunday, maybe you could get away with that on the cheap. But most people get involved with religion for more than a weekly ceremony. They want a bundle of services including help educating and socializing their children, and otherwise tending to their needs be it sickness, old age, unemployment, psychological problems, etc. They also want community, a feeling of belonging. They also want to “give back”, to volunteer their energies in a meaningful way (i.e., this is another service that has economic value).

And after that, they want some transcendence, the affirmation of a “philosophic ontology” whereby the Universe was created by an all-powerful God who cares about us, with some catches (and that’s where the scripture and writings come in). Transcendence comes easy when you are in the middle of a large assembly of people all chanting together the sacred ontology. The fears of doubt are easy to ignore when hundreds or thousands of others are within a stone’s throw of you affirming that it must all be true. That also has economic value – it’s something that people are willing to pay for, through “time, talent and treasure” (as the church fundraisers say).

That’s what you get for your money. Actually, the “rational choice” equation does not just cover collection plate money, although some “suggested love offerings” are pretty steep these days, like $50 a week. Under the rational choice theory, it’s a combination of your voluntary time helping the church and the congregation together with your financial support. E.g., you serve on the picnic committee or teach Sunday school or drive the elderly to and from services or help a young couple find a good pre-school for their first child. Under the rational choice theory, the local churches that demand the most commitment often do much better than those that don’t demand much from their members. That’s because the most demanding churches also offer the most in terms of practical benefits. Perhaps that’s why the more fundamentalist churches are now beating out the mainline Protestant churches.

The rational choice theory is very interesting, especially since it’s not about something far, far away. It’s about something that happens in most every town and city. So I’m disappointed that we don’t see more popular magazine articles and TV shows and best-seller books about this. I’m sure that a lot of ministers and church-goers wouldn’t be too thrilled about it, but controversy can be a good thing. It would certainly be an interesting way to think about Barack Obama’s affiliation with Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.

And finally – even though I’m just an observer with regard to religion, I would take the plunge and get involved again if I could just find the right community. But thus far, I just haven’t found a place that is worth the price to me. I hope that I eventually do, however. Maybe one day I will be a “player” once again.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 12:33 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, April 5, 2008

◊ Hilary broke, the Greek afterlife, and a Woman’s wisdom

Politics ... Religion ... Society ...

Here are three items that came across my desk (or computer screen) over the past few days. They all seem to make a lot of sense, so I thought that I would share them with the small (very small!) handful of people who pay attention to this page.

Number One: Hilary Clinton will quit because she’s running out of money. The Democrats fell in love with Obama, and thus most of the money is going his way. And money talks. Hilary will thus fold soon, perhaps right after the North Carolina primary in early May. She is being outspent by Obama by 3 to 1 in Pennsylvania, and will thus be robbed of the big 10 point plus win that she needs there to stay viable. (Not entirely certain that she will win at all now, given the current trends in the pre-primary polls!) All that will be needed after that will be Clinton’s poor showing in NC; she may not even break 40%, if the current polls are accurate. The cash spigot totally goes dry for her at that point, and she finally reads the handwriting. Obama thus becomes the political “Black Swan” of the 2008 primary season (those of you familiar with Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book know that this is NOT a racial reference; but the irony can’t help but be noted). We shall see if he can take his swan feathers all the way to the White House; I myself think it’s going to be another 2000 election, a real squeeker.

Number Two: Contrary to what most Christians think (and perhaps Muslims too), Jesus of Nazareth did NOT preach that we have immortal souls. That was mainly a Greek notion that was folded into Christian doctrine at a later time. Jesus, like many Jews at the time, believed in the possible resurrection of the body here on earth (but not all Jews, recall the Sauducees). But this was the physical body, not the ethereal soul. Jewish doctrine was rather quiet as to what happens to that body after that resurrection; could you die again? They really didn’t say. In the decades following Jesus’ death, the notion of resurrection was eventually tweaked into “eternal / everlasting life”, as evidenced in the Gospel of John.

But again, the Johnine notion did not necessarily envision eternal life as “spirits in heaven”; it was probably eternal life in the “new kingdom” here on earth, which would be brought forth at the Second Coming. Only a century or so later, when it was pretty clear that Christ wasn’t coming back any time soon, did the Greek notions of spirits in heaven start becoming official doctrine in the Christian Churches. Most Christians don’t appreciate just how Greek their beliefs are, and how much Jesus himself would disagree with them if he could be brought back somehow by science.

Number Three: Here’s a quote from letter to the editor found in the recent Atlantic Monthly, from a woman responding to an article about making compromises in finding a husband:

We women like to imagine ourselves as goddesses who are worthy of a man’s total worship and devotion, and we are incensed when he fails to give us that. Unfortunately, we get bed hair, body odor, wrinkles, thickness in the middle, and bad attitudes. We would not easily excuse such things in men, yet we expect men to overlook them in us.

My goodness, the voice of reason calling out in the desert! To be fair, I have to admit that men have such traits, in droves. But that’s all been said a million times about them (us, given that I’m a guy). Finally, some balance! Too bad that the writer, a Mrs. Parkhurst from Franklin, Indiana, is a MRS. She sounds like my kind of gal! I.e., very lucid, very insightful, very honest, very fair. A common-sense kind of woman. No surprise that she’s married!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:43 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, March 30, 2008

◊ Easter Moon Jesus, semi-Buddhist?

Religion ... Society ...

The great Christian celebration of Easter was last week. (As necessitated by the cycles of the moon; per medieval tradition, Easter is scheduled for the first weekend in Spring when there is a full moon. The moon symbolically reflects the light of the sun, just as Jesus “the son” reflects the greatness of God “the father”.) This got me to thinking again about “the man from Galilee”. Between 1997 and 2004 I put some time into studying the life and times of Jesus from a historical perspective. You can read the result of my intellectual journey here. In a nutshell, I was brought up in the Roman Catholic faith and I still have a lot of regard for it. However, my studies convinced me that Jesus was not “The Christ”, a God-man sent from above to save humankind from its sins. I could no longer participate in services at a Catholic church (or any other Christian church) offering supplications to Christ as Lord and Savior. Ritual and community are good and necessary things to me, but words and ideas also are important – actually, they are sacred, more sacred than ancient mythology.

However, as I have said before, I have not given up on the idea of God. And since Jesus, even as an historical figure, was very interested in God, I thus remain interested in Jesus. So I got out the New Testament again and took another look. Yes, I know that the fab four (Mark, Matthew, Luke and John) do not offer objective historical accounts of what Jesus said and did. I realize that these books were originally written with religious interests in mind, and were later modified by those with further religious interests (i.e., during the formative stages of the non-Jewish Christian Church). But I remain convinced that something of “the real Jesus” can be gleaned through a cautious reading of the Gospels. So over the past few days I’ve been skimming through Biblical chapter and verse (not very cautiously, admittedly), refreshing my memory and looking for new insights.

Well, I can’t say that I’ve had any stupendous new insights; no big light bulbs went on inside my head. But in trying to draw a unified mental picture of Jesus, it struck me just how difficult this really is (and not just because I’m picking from four different writings, five if you count the “Q source” within Matthew and Luke, each of which have multiple authors and redactors). Jesus sometimes sounds like a modern humanist, with his healings and his outreach to the downtrodden and powerless. Even though his methods (e.g., exorcising evil spirits) are based on ancient superstitions, his intentions certainly seemed good. And his overriding mission, i.e. to bring on the apocalyptic revolution, to trigger the coming of God’s kingdom to the dusty soils of Palestine, can be viewed in much the same light. Jesus most certainly was on a mission, a mission to bring forth a world of love and justice, a world where the suffering of the poor and the powerless would be ended.

But then again, there remains the judgmental side of Jesus. That’s the side that many modern people have a hard time with. Jesus clearly did believe that people were ultimately good or evil; a person could make it into the new paradise-like “Kingdom of God”, or be banished to punishment followed by oblivion. He did have some toleration for good people doing bad things, so long as they were willing to be “washed” of their sins in baptism. But his world view assumed that some folk were just plain beyond repair.

This is a question that remains unresolved today. Most of us know ourselves to be mixtures of good and bad, strongly influenced by conditions around us. But can we say that some humans are inherently evil, with no chance of redemption? Yes, history certainly does present many candidates. But the ‘inherently evil’ paradigm seems to deny that every human was created by God and remains God’s child. The old-tyme religion folk would say that God gives everyone free will, and if you use that free will to side with the Devil or the anti-Christ, then God no longer wants anything to do with you. (E.g., in more than one parable, Jesus talks about “not knowing” those who fail to do God’s will but then cry to God when a time of crisis comes). But then what happens to God’s infinite qualities? What happens to infinite love, wisdom and patience? Most human parents, by contrast, manage to hold out hope for a child who has gone far astray; even a homicidal sociopath sometimes has a mother who is still praying for his redemption ….

Here’s where I think that the Buddhists have the better paradigm (even though they ironically don’t have a God, or certainly not one in the Christian sense). In their inscrutable eastern wisdom, they seem to recognize that life is short, tough, and confusing. Not everyone has enough time to get in tune with the eternal truths. So they envision a metaphysics allowing souls to recycle through multiple earthly lives, until the great truths are finally assimilated. (Interestingly, however, this may be an historical Buddhist accretion; the Buddha himself did not emphasize the reincarnation of inner spirits). Only then can they reach the final state of unity with the celestial buddhas in Nirvana (again, this isn’t necessarily the Buddha’s teaching); or delay that final state so as to do some positive work advocating for those still locked in the cycles of earthly suffering (as “Bodhivistas”).

I myself am not a Buddhist; there are too many things about their system that I find unedifying (like the annihilation of self-awareness through awareness meditation). But if God really so loved the world, I think that He or She would be willing to consider some arrangements other than the heaven-or-hell paradigm of old fashioned Christianity (which really originated in Persian Zoroastrianism). I would think that God is big enough to use a good idea where ever it comes from, even if from a bunch of meditating, no-self atheists!

AFTERWORD: When you talk about Jesus, you might as well talk about Elvis. Elvis Costello, that is. The other day I got to thinking about his tunes from the late 70s and early 80s, so I went on Amazon and bought five or six Costello MP3 files. (I’m not getting paid to shill for Amazon, but I think it’s great how they now sell plain old, no-hassle MP3 files, and not those stupid WMA’s that everyone else sells that are set to blow if you rename them or whatever). ‘Twas good to hear that old Elvis cynicism again. It still sounds fresh, thirty years later. Just about as good as any other music coming out these days.

Thirty years, that’s hard to believe. When I was a kid and I first started getting interested in radio and pop-rock music (on WABC-AM), if you wanted to listen to thirty year old music, that would put you in the Great Depression! The music would be totally different; big band, swing, jazz, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, that kind of stuff.

Today, it seems as though thirty years old music isn’t necessarily antiquated; on the rock stations that I listen to (WDHA-FM, WXRK “K-Rock”, WAXQ “Q104”, and the new WRXP-FM), you still hear really old stuff from Led Zeppelin, Van Halen, the Stones, etc. mixed in with Linkin Park and the Foo Fighters and Saliva. You might even hear Elvis’s “Radio” every once in a blue moon. Too bad that they forgot about his other great stuff, like “The Angels Want To Wear My Red Shoes” or “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding”. I recommend the following YouTube clip of Costello performing “Waiting for the End of the World”. That clip is from 1978, thirty years ago. And think about it – the song title also applies in the other direction, to the early Christian Church two thousand years ago! And let’s not forget about “Miracle Man”. Damn that Elvis, he’s good!

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:23 am Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, February 28, 2008

◊ The Stats on Religion

Religion ...

It’s statistics time again. Today’s statistics are about religion, courtesy of a recently released study by the Pew Foundation (more properly, the The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life). The Foundation recently commissioned a telephone survey of over 35,000 people living in America regarding religious preferences and backgrounds. The results are quite interesting for many reasons. But I would like to focus here on a small sub-set of the many statistics derived from this study, as a way to gauge the relative health and healthiness of the major religious choices available in the USA (evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants, Catholics, Orthodox, Jewish, etc.). Admittedly, I’m not ready to provide a precise definition of “health” and “healthiness” with regard to religion. Perhaps the statistics themselves will help explain what I’m after.

The first thing that I’m going to compare is the percentage of people who are still active in the religious tradition in which they were brought up in youth. That should tell you something about whether the religion in question is realistically addressing the life needs of its members, given the realities of life in our country today. The second statistic that I’m interested in is the percentage of those people who have left the religion they grew up in and now practice no religion at all. This gives us some idea of how many people “got a bad flavor in their mouth” from their childhood experiences of religion, and were then turned off to all thoughts of collective worship.

The third statistic of interest is a bit of a “corrective” for the first one. It regard the percentage of people in a particular religion who are immigrants. I think it can be fairly said that immigrants often prefer to stay involved in their childhood religion, because it provides social stability for them as they get used to living in a foreign land. That was certainly the case for my grandparents and those like them who came over from Poland many years ago. Only decades later did their wise-guy grandchildren (including myself) start questioning the old time religion.

Well, let’s take a look at the numbers from Pew and see what they might mean:

CHILDHOOD RELIGION	Percent STILL INVOLVED	Percent NO RELIGION	Percent IMMIGRANT
Evangelical Protestants	71%	12%	7%
Mainline Protestants	60	14	5
Buddhist	50	28	26
Jehovahs Witness	37	33	17
Hindu	84	8	86
Jewish	76	14	10
Orthodox	73	7	38
Mormon	70	14	6
Roman Catholic	68	14	23
Unaffiliated (atheist, agnostic, nothing)	46	0	12
Atheist	40	?	?

I would think that the higher the “Still Involved” percentage is, the more healthy the religion is (if all else were the same, which it never is). The Hindus come in first here, at 84%. The Jehovah Witnesses are the worst at 37%. The next statistic, “No Religion” (meaning “left the childhood faith and not practicing any religion now”), goes the other way; the lower this number is, the more healthy the religion is, or would seem. The Hindus are almost the best in this, at 8% (only the Orthodox are slightly better at 7%). The Jehovah’s Witnesses are again the worst, at 33%. It appears to me that a lot of people get burned out by the Witnesses. It’s definitely a religion for special tastes, and not for children. As to the Hindus, they appear to be the most healthy, but we have to look to the third statistic to put their success into context. The Hindu religion is mainly practiced by immigrants; 86% of those surveyed who grew up in the Hindu religion were born abroad. So it’s not that surprising that the Hindus get such good stats; it’s a cultural thing. The average American thinking about converting to Hinduism would probably not experience the same satisfaction that current practitioners of Hinduism seem to enjoy.

The next interesting thing that grabs my attention is the difference between the Mainline Protestant groups (Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian, Lutheran, Congregationalist) and the Evangelical Protestants (Baptists, Pentecostals, Holiness Churches, etc.). Both have very low percentages of immigrants; they are definitely American religions. But for whatever reason, the Evangelicals seem to be doing better than the more liberal Mainline churches. The Evangelicals held on to 71% of their childhood members in the survey, versus 60% for the Mainline churches. And a slightly lower percentage of childhood members of Evangelicals turned off to religion completely versus the Mainliners (12% versus 14%). I take my hat off to the social justice awareness of the Protestant Mainline churches, but it looks as though they are not doing enough to meet the personal needs of their members. It’s too bad there has to be a dichotomy in that regard; it’s too bad that religion can’t find a way to minister to both those who have suffered injustice, and to those who are living an average American life.

I developed two other stats regarding crossover between Mainline and Evangelical Protestants. In which direction is the traffic heavier? As you might guess, the traffic is heavier for Mainlines going over to the Evangelical side. About 15% of people surveyed who were born in the Mainline tradition went over to an Evangelical church, whereas only 9% of Evangelicals went over to a Mainline church. For better or for worse, the Evangelical Protestants have a better handle on what the average American family seems to expect from religion.

The Jews show a good retention rate of 76%, despite a relatively low immigrant rate of 10%. However, those who do leave Judaism often stay away from religion co
mpletely (14% of those who grew up Jewish became non-religious). The Mormons aren’t much different from the Jews here; they have a retention rate of 70%, an immigrant rate of 6%, and a “no religion anymore” rate of 14%. The two “catholic” style faiths, the Orthodox and the mainstream Roman Catholics, have interesting differences. The Orthodox seem “healthier” with a 73% retention rate and a 7% no-religion rate, versus 68% and 14% for Roman Catholicism. However, some of this difference is explained by immigrant status; about 38% of the Orthodox in the poll were born abroad, whereas 26% of Catholics were immigrants. So you would expect the Orthodox to do somewhat better, although perhaps not by that much. Recall, though, that the Orthodox church is small potatoes in the USA; there are almost 40 Roman Catholics for every Orthodox Catholic.

The Catholics still appear to be doing better than the Mainline Protestant churches. However, if you were to adjust for the higher percentage of immigrants amidst the Catholics, the Catholics wouldn’t seem that much better. The survey didn’t break out numbers for native-born Catholics, but based on the numbers for Hindus and Orthodox, you would expect the retention rate for native-born Catholics to be around 64 or 65%; i.e. not that much better than the Mainliners’ 60%.

As to Islam, unfortunately the Survey did not have good numbers, since the percentage of Muslims is relatively low. What few statistics the Survey does show regarding Islam suggest general stability and high rates of immigrant status, similar to the Hindus.

Interestingly, the Buddhists and the “Unaffiliateds” (atheists, agnostics and “nothing in particular”) don’t look very ‘healthy’ at all. Despite the attractiveness of Buddhism to many disenchanted Catholics and Mainline Protestants, those who are born Buddhist often don’t stay; their retention rate is a relatively low 50%. However, when people leave Buddhism, they often follow the spirit of the Buddha and stay away from religion completely. That percentage is 28%. The Buddhists in the survey were mostly native born, but 26% were immigrants, similar to the Catholics. So, despite cultural ties for the immigrant faction, born Buddhists still seem to be streaming for the doors.

The Unaffiliateds did even worse (these include atheists, agnostics, and “nothing in particular”, whether or not they believed in the supernatural). Only 46 percent of people who grew up in the “unaffiliated” status had stayed in it. The survey said that most of those who left became involved in some religion. The survey provided a statistic for the atheist component alone, showing that only 40% of people growing up in atheist households still considered themselves atheists! Unfortunately, there was not any follow-up on this group regarding what they had become – were they now regularly going to a church or a temple, or were they simply shifting over to “agnostic” or “unaffiliated believer” status? Unfortunately, Pew left us hanging here. Still, the atheist perspective is obviously a tough sell. Many people adopt it in adulthood, but it obviously doesn’t leave a good taste if you were brought up as a child in it.

So you see a lot of “do your own religion thing” here in America, especially for the native-born. Many people who were born into a religion eventually become “unaffiliated” with any religion, but those born “unaffiliated” often become religious. The Jews and Mormons seem to be religions where you usually are born into it and stay in it, even though they are both highly Americanized. The Hindus and Muslims may go that route too in the future. The Mainstream Protestants by contrast are an all-American Church in a nosedive; the native-born component of the Catholic religion isn’t doing that much better. They both seem to fulfill predictions that the secularization trend going on in western Europe will take hold in America; i.e. the Christian churches will become mostly for immigrants. However, the Evangelical Protestants seem to be bucking this trend; they may attain the “born into and hold onto” status of the Mormons and Jews, but on a much larger scale. They are obviously going to remain a political force. They may be tuning into something uniquely American in character and circumstance.

And finally, as to the no-religion or almost-no-religion (Buddhism) options: these factions may be growing in influence in Europe, but they don’t seem to be catching fire here in the USA. Before they can present a relevant alternative for the human family as a whole, they will need to do better with their own children. Otherwise, they won’t ever amount to much more than a refuge for burnt-out adults (like myself) who eventually slip thru a hole in the proverbial fisherman’s net of established religion.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:11 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, February 17, 2008

◊ Ice Skating, Satellites and Wal-Mart Religion

Current Affairs ... Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

I just have three minor, mostly unrelated thoughts to discuss tonight. It’s pretty hard to weave them into a coherent picture, but 0f course, I’ll “go down trying”.

First – here’s a nice little article from the NY Times about the end of outdoor skating during the winter on frozen ponds. Unless you are up in Canada or in the middle of northern Minnesota, it just doesn’t get cold for long-enough periods anymore. Also, because of human development, there is too much road salt and other pollutants that keeps lake water from freezing. That’s a shame. Outdoor skating was a part of my youth here in New Jersey. I was never very good at it, but it could be fun nonetheless. But no, it just doesn’t happen very much anymore. The world has changed.

Second – about that spy satellite that the US military is going to shoot down in a week or so. I can’t help but wonder if they would normally ride something like this out, but now have itchy trigger fingers because of that Chinese anti-satellite test in January 2007. It’s not like the thing would require evacuation of hundreds of square miles of land. It wouldn’t spray toxic rocket fuel for more than a city block or two. They could track it and give advanced warning to any populated areas that it might hit (chances still greatly favor its coming down in the ocean). It’s not some huge crisis.

So I can’t help but wonder if the dramatic response is a message to the Chinese – i.e., you guys managed to hit a satellite in a controlled test with a missile launched from a special base. We can hit a satellite from one of our regular warships in international waters. On any day we want (assuming that the interceptor missile works). Admittedly, there are some technical differences – they hit a satellite up around 500 miles up, whereas we would hit ours at around 100 miles or less. Our situation won’t cause the big space-junk mess that the Chinese caused. But still, I think the intended but unspoken message to China and the world here is that the USA is still the big khahuna with regard to space and military technology.

Third – is competition between religions a good thing? The March Atlantic has an article written by Alan Wolfe about this. In many instances throughout history, competition between differing religious viewpoints led to war, torture, and other bad stuff. Today, in some places, this still happens (e.g., Nigeria). But in the USA, the effects of religious Darwinism will arguably be more peaceful. Since we are a rich nation, there’s not much danger of warfare breaking out between, say, the Mormons and the Pentecostals. But what we are seeing is the “Wal-Mart-ization” of religion.

In the US heartland, the mega-churches seem to be growing at the expense of small, traditional Protestant congregations (actually, there are signs of early mega-church formation here in NJ; e.g., not far from me, a newly formed generic Christian group meets every Sunday in a local Boys Club gym). These big churches offer a variety of worship forms, some featuring modern entertainment, and a wide variety of services including job seekers clubs, social outreach groups, sports teams, study groups, parents’ support ministries, etc. Other types of churches will hang on, but only by finding specific targeted audiences, e.g. gays (at some liberal Episcopalian parishes), educated agnostics (Quaker and Unitarian churches), struggling immigrants (probably where the Roman Catholic Church in America is heading), poor people looking for support (e.g., urban Pentecostal and Islamic congregations), cultural niches (Judaism, Islam, Hindu temples), etc.

So, the days of Currier and Ives are coming to an end in the USA. Paintings of kids skating on a pond under clear blue skies with a quaint small-town church in the background are visions of the past (or fading fast, anyway). Skating now goes on inside a big indoor rink; religion happens inside something like that too. And those skies aren’t so clear and blue anymore, but if you do get such a day, you might see the contrail of a rapidly-climbing anti-satellite missile seeking out an enemy in space (or some falling space junk).

◊ posted by Jim G @ 10:34 pm Read Comments (2) / Leave a Comment

Monday, December 3, 2007

◊ A DUSTY ONTOLOGY

Art & Entertainment ... Philosophy ... Religion ... Society ...

I voluntarily live in a perpetual culture lag; I have no idea what movies, songs, artists, clothes, etc. are going to be talked about 3 months from now. (I once had a girlfriend that made me watch E! with her — arg, bad memories.) So, don’t be surprised that I just found out about “The Golden Compass”, a movie that is now hitting the screens. Or that I’ve just become aware of the theological controversies behind Philip Pullman’s child fantasy novels, on which Golden Compass is based.

Oh good, another child-fantasy movie series. Just what we need. As if Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings weren’t enough (then throw in Naria, although I do very much respect C.S. Lewis). I’m glad that I grew up long before this stuff became required-seeing for every kid. Back when I was young, we walked around by rivers and railroad tracks and factories, and we made up our own fantasy adventures using whatever junk we found lying around. Kids today have their lives completely scheduled and controlled by their parents (admittedly, for their own safety – this is a more perverted world now). Thus, they have to stay indoors and read or watch a movie or DVD about fantasy adventure. Again, I’m glad that I grew up when a kid could still go out by himself after school or on a Saturday and do his own thing. But I digress.

Back to Philip Pullman and the Golden Compass. There’s a bit of controversy going on over Pullman’s “atheistic” message. The big enemy in Pullman’s stories is “The Magesterium”. I believe that God is eventually killed in some meta-cosmic battle. And we’re all the better for it, according to Pullman. With God gone, we can then be natural – and that includes allowing teenagers to satiate their burgeoning lusts without delay. You can see why Pullman would be popular with teens, especially with the guys. But without God and the hovering superego, just what in Pullman’s world keeps our beautiful desires from being sullied by cruelty, power-lust, neurosis and all the other bad tendencies that people actually have? Where would the virtues necessary to sustain our social order come from?

From “Dust”. In Pullman’s imagined world, there are invisible particles of goodness all around us. And they tend to cling to us when we’re in our most honest and natural states. By contrast, dust goes away when the Church and the Authorities start preaching to us in the name of God and Country. If only we’d all just let go, Dust would make it OK. But God and The Magesterium won’t let go, so they have to be done away with by Pullman’s protagonists (which appear to include a polar bear and a 12 year old girl).

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t like to be told what to do by established religion and government. Both institutions go overboard too often, limiting freedom when it’s unnecessary and even counter-productive. I still respect the ideas and ideals of liberalism. But as to just throwing the establishment out . . . well, I guess there’s still a bit of Edmund Burke in me.

But one more queer thing about the Pullman idea. I’ve been listening to some Teaching Company lectures by Daniel N. Robinson lately, so I’ve learned a bit about ontology. I.e., “just what is there” in our universe, just what is the nature of everything. It’s a big question, but that’s the fun of ontology (and philosophy in general). The early Greeks got interested in ontology, and came up with various theories. One Greek idea is called “atomism”. Atomism is the idea that at bottom, there is some tiny elementary particle from which everything is made of. That particle is the end of reality; you can’t get any smaller, can’t break it down, can’t change it. You can only combine it in different ways to get different things, e.g. kites and kittens, Caesar salads and Corvettes, neutron stars and nitrogen gas, etc. The trick was to learn about the basic particle; then you’d know the common characteristics of all things.

Once upon a time, this seemed like a good idea. But over the past 2,500 years or so, science has come up with better views. It came up with field theories (e.g. magnetic fields and gravity, seemingly continuous phenomenon), and then had to modify those field concepts with quantum realities (little units almost like the Greek “atom”, but which jump around and change randomly). So now reality is composed of a whole lot of interacting quantum perturbations in a series of fields (or maybe one ultimate field, if and when physics achieves the unification of all basic forces).

Theologians have simultaneously come up with much more sophisticated theories of what God could be like. God, and our own sentience and awareness, are now seen by some theologians in terms of an emergence based upon large volumes of quantum perturbations of some common underlying field. God is not on one end, with us on another. We’re all part of something common, according to the process theologians. We’re all moving towards something. It seems like a good way to think about ontology and metaphysics given what we now know from the physical sciences.

So, Pullman’s “dust” ontology and theology appears to be a throwback to me. It seems immature. Sure, the Vatican and the many other religious authorities on our planet have a long way to go to catch up with the emerging and sophisticated views that their theologians are proposing. But that’s the way it’s always been; the authorities always need a century or two to adopt a good idea. Pullman doesn’t want to wait; he would imagine doing away with the authorities and going back to a very elementary and immature view of where truth and virtue come from.

“Dust” is something to cough and choke on. Pun intended, even if it’s quite lame. The philosophers and scientists long ago figured out that we ultimately are not dust, and ultimately it is not dust to which we return. And even the more progressive churchmen now emphasize that they are only talking about the body, and not about the soul, when they speak of our dusty mortality. I hope that Golden Compass’ audience of young minds will likewise be able to move away from Pullman’s countervailing but still immature way of thinking about the world and where its truths ultimately lie.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:39 pm Read Comments (10) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, September 9, 2007

◊ A New Bin Laden Video

Foreign Relations/World Affairs ... Religion ... Society ...

OK, so Osama Bin Laden is back with a new video. This time he’s giving us a lecture on the errors of our ways. He’s urging Americans to convert en mass to Islam. That guy has some imagination. But he’s not issuing any threats. Well, that’s different. Is this a kinder and gentler Al Qaeda that we’re seeing?

Yea, right. I’m not an expert on Islam, but I do know that Al Qaeda is trying to justify its brand of violent jihad to the “establishment” of imams and Moslem scholars who define and interpret the Qur’an for the faithful. One theory that seems popular in some quarters of the Islamic world is that violence against dangerous infidels can sometimes be justified, but only after they’ve been warned of the errors of their ways. Thus, I can’t help but wonder if Bin Laden has something big up his sleeve, and wants to get the imams ready to take some heat once the blood starts spilling, once the regular citizens and even children who pose no direct threat to any Moslem get slaughtered. (Even some local Moslems might well get caught in the mix, as happened on 9-11).

But who knows. Maybe he’s just going thru the motions; maybe he can’t really get anything big going with US Rangers just a couple of klicks to his west (but a friendly Pakistani intelligence service to his east). Let’s just hope.

The unfortunate thing is that Bin Laden is playing to an audience (i.e., the clerics and scholars in the Islamic world) that we have no idea how to impress, or even how to get a hearing from. If we could get them to sit down and watch a 30 minute video about “the way of the west”, just what would we say?

That’s the problem. Just what do we stand for? Democracy? A government with elected officials is good, but it still leaves a whole lot of woes (as we see in both Gaza and Iran, two VERY democratic nations). Capitalism and wealth? Yes, capitalism has served the western world rather well; but again, not without causing a whole lot of nasty side effects (e.g., poverty in a rich land is sometimes worse than general poverty, given the insult-to-injury factor; the poor start doing crazy things for some “bling-bling”). Liberalism, in the classic sense of freedom, justice and individual rights? Yes, this stuff is good, but again — it also gives you the right to be terribly poor and to be shut out by the wealthy and enfranchised “old guard”. In America, you have the right to buy excellent health care — if you can afford it. Otherwise, so sorry; you stay sick and die early. Liberalism in the other sense, i.e. increased governmental protection against scams and toxic chemicals and pollution and dangerous workplaces and all that? We tried that, but the voters wanted tax cuts.

I wish I could say that there is one really good thing that we strongly believe in here in “The West”. As an “eternal student”, I propose that to be EDUCATION. If we could say to the Moslem world that WE BELIEVE IN EDUCATION FOR ALL, then maybe the other things would start to fit together. I’d like us to be able to say that education is so sacred in “The West” that everyone can get as much of it as they want regardless of their ability to pay, and they get the same quality regardless of economic status or family connections. Education makes all the other stuff fall into place. Education makes better citizens, better workers, better government officials, better entrepreneurs, better teachers. It just plain makes people better. Not just richer, not just more employable, not just more able to play the system and elect better governments and choose wiser religious beliefs. It does all that — but it adds up to something bigger. It adds up to people living fulfilled lives, doing and being at their best. THAT is what I’d like to tell the Moslem world that we believe in. THAT is what I’d say is their alternative to Osama Bin Laden.

(We could thus call the Islamic world to remember it’s own rich scholarly heritage during it’s golden age!)

Once upon a time, we could honestly tell the world that this was true. When I went to college, at a decent state engineering school, the tuition was next to nothing. The State and Federal Governments were so committed to education that literally anyone who could pass the classes could get a degree. But guess what? That was 30 years ago.

Times have changed. Even the state schools have become awfully expensive. You can still get a scholarship if you’re a real goody-goody. But what about those poorer, lazier types who don’t have such impressive high school records? I went to law school with a guy who was basically a lout; he barely got out of high school and went to work in a factory. Between bouts of partying, he took some evening classes in a community college and he hated it. It was back to partying and factory life for him. But a few years later, he tried again. And that time around, he met a professor that “found” him. Then it was on to completing a four-year college degree, and then on to law school. Today he has a very successful legal practice and is a local councilman. That’s what you get when you let people go to college on the cheap.

I wish I could tell the imams about that guy, how anyone here in the USA can do that. But no, today that can’t be done. The guy would have needed to sign his life away for an education loan. Forget it, it wouldn’t happen if he had to play by today’s rules. People want their tax cuts. People want to shop. That was George Bush’s answer to the last big attack on our country by Al Qaeda — keep on shopping. And so we did. But can we buy protection against a Moslem world that thinks that’s all we stand for? We shall see.

PS, Bush’s homeland security adviser, Fran Townsend, was on TV today taunting Bin Laden for being on the run and powerless. Senator John McCain tried to inject a dose of reality afterward when he said that Townsend’s comments were “not helpful”.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 5:18 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Thursday, August 30, 2007

◊ Lesbian Shock

Religion ... Society ...

A lot of midwestern newspapers, and even some coastal rags (like the Washington Post) have run stories in the past few days with titles such as “Lesbian Being Considered As Next Episcopal Chicago Bishop”. Here’s an example. Just for shock effect, they always begin with the word “lesbian”. I don’t think that most people are at ease with that word yet. The subtext is that it’s bad enough for men to be gay, but for women to go bad like that . . . .

That mentality was drilled into my head by my parents and teachers. They hardly ever used the term “lesbian”. It was something so bad, so far removed from normal life as to be unspeakable. And since my genetics never took me on the journey of homosexual urges, I had little reason to question this notion.

Until I went to law school in 1979, I don’t think I’d ever even seen a “lesbian”. Not that I’d know, anyway (I obviously did see them, given that they make up around 4% of the female population). Only in the legal mill did I encounter any openly gay women and men (some woman named Linda and a guy known as Mitchell – definitely not “Mitch”). And it took another 5 years until I actually started talking to people who I knew were gay or sort-of gay (lots of blurriness out there). By 1990 or so I actually had some gay friends, people I could stop thinking of as gay when I was around them.

And then around 1993 or so I met Tracey Lind — the Reverend Tracey Lind that is. The LESBIAN Reverend Tracey Lind. I was trying out the Episcopal faith and I was looking for a parish with some electricity, some voltage, some juice. Most Episcopal parishes run on AAA batteries in that regard. After reading an article somewhere, I decided to try out St. Pauls in Paterson (NJ), specifically their mid-week evening Eucharist. And guess what? There was some voltage in the air. And most of it was emanating from the presiding minister – none other than the good Reverend Lind.

I hung out at St. Pauls to varying degrees for the next 5 years, and I got to know Tracey — more or less. I can’t say that we became best of friends. I became involved in a handful of parish activities, and I had to deal with Tracey in a variety of ways. To be honest, she could be quite grating at times. And she definitely was a publicity hound. She had her own little cult of followers, comprised of some other bona fide lesbians, some gay guys, some down-and-outers from the inner city looking for a break, and some well-intentioned genteel Anglicans from the middle class looking for “relevance”. I think there was even a transexual in the mix. I used to call this motley crew “the Trace Cadets”. Obviously, I was not one of them, and thus never got the attention and consideration from Tracey that they did.

And yet I kept on schlepping up to Saint Pauls every week or two, to see Tracey up on the altar and to listen to her sermons. Why did I do that? Because she was damn entertaining. Sometimes she could be insightful, sometimes she was humanistic and caring, and sometimes she was just plain off-the-wall. But she was always entertaining. And at bottom, I always sensed that she had a good heart.

Well, finally it was time for her to leave for bigger and better things in Cleveland. And now she’s in the running for even bigger things in Chicago. And not only that – it’s like the whole future of the Anglican Communion is riding on what happens with her. If the Diocese committee were to select her, it would get the Anglican bishops in Africa and England royally peed off, given that she’s quite open about her sexual orientation and is openly living with a female partner. Then the Episcopalian Church in the USA would get tossed out of the “World Communion”, and the local parishes would start choosing whether they were “American Episcopalians” or “International Episcopalians”.

To be honest, I just don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just Tracey Lind. So what if she lives with a woman, and who cares what they do in private (or don’t do – I’ve heard that most lesbians don’t have anything like the scintillating sex life that teenage boys, and the many web sites catering to them, would imagine). And if they hug or kiss in public, well, we don’t have to watch it.

Whatever she does with her partner, Tracey is still a pretty good priest. She has a lot of spirit in her. She’s not afraid to relate to heterosexuals and to minister and preach to them. Despite my quibbles with her, I enjoyed my time at her parish. If she were still in the area, I’d probably still go to church despite my disagreement with the core Christian myths. I still haven’t discarded the most central of those myths, i.e. that God exists. And Tracey definitely hasn’t either. She is a woman of God, a woman who serves God well despite a lot of flaws. It’s sad to see her caricatured in the papers as “LESBIAN”. It’s so impersonal, so political. Well, Tracey is tough; she can handle it. She will land on her feet one way or another. But I do hope that the good Episcopalians burghers of Chicago will decide to take advantage of her talents.

Is Tracey Lind worth having a schism over? Well, if you gotta have a schism, it might as well be over someone ultimately likable, like Tracey. History has seen so much worse.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:05 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Thursday, August 9, 2007

◊ GROUP THINKING, religiously

Religion ... Society ...

One of the reasons why I don’t have much desire to be involved with religion right now is because of GROUP-THINK. I don’t like group-think. Group-think is when a group of people believe in some common idea or set of ideas because everyone else in the group believes in it. If you trace out the logic of it, you wind up with a big circle. John believes because Judy believes; Judy believes because Andrea believes; Andrea believes because Phil believes; Phil believes because . . . and eventually, the trail leads right back to John. Everyone feels good talking about Jesus and the saints (or Moses and the prophets, or the Buddha and the bodhivistas, or Mohammed and the caliphs, or Krishna and all his friends). They feel confident in believing in the sacred myths, because everyone else in the room believes. Loops and loops and loops. Loops from the ancient past making their way across time into the present, and cruising on into the future. No the circle won’t be broken.

But as I’ve said before, I haven’t left religion because I’m an atheist. At best (or worst) I’m a somewhat skeptical agnostic. But I still want there to be a God, and I still haven’t heard an air-tight explanation as to why God doesn’t exist. Some atheistic rationales for the non-existence of God are just as laughable as what the snake-handling Pentacostalists way back in the hollers of West Virginia ever said or did. For example, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (of the Hayden Planetarium and PBS’s NOVA series) gives a presentation citing a long list of reasons as to why the Universe could not have had an intelligent creator. One of Dr. Tyson’s complaints is that for most animals, including humans, the sexual organs are located near the waste excrement apparatus. Personally, I can’t help but wonder if there is a wise lesson in that fact; something along the lines of “remember human that you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return”. Perhaps it was intentional to have the flowery pleasures of new life and the revolting stuff of death juxtapositioned. I myself see a lesson in it, a lesson that a wise creator might well have intended after designing the bubbly, mindless feeling of sex.

(And furthermore, I’ve never heard of anyone deferring from sex because the main physical events occur too close to where the yucky stuff comes out. In fact, certain people seem to enjoy that fact . . . . but I’ll stop there.)

The “new atheism” movement is the only thing worse than group-think religion. The modern anti-God voices (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris … and Elton John, ugh) seem to be growing a group-think of their own. Here’s a blog devoted to debunking it. And I say bravo! I hope the guy will post some more.

The thing for me is that God is too important to pursue through group-think. I personally feel that philosophy is a better approach to God than religion. It’s too bad that philosophy is such a small and limited institution, existing as a rare hot-house flower in a far corner of the academic grove. You can find churches on every other street; but you can go for hundreds of miles before you can find a place where theistic philosophy is discussed and debated. Socrates would surely find that to be a shame; certainly Lao Tsu also (if there was a Lao Tsu). And I think so would Jesus, and Mohamed, and Moses, etc. Ultimately, I believe that they were well beyond group-think religion, and really didn’t want to condemn their followers to drowning in such a mental whirlpool. Too bad that’s what ultimately happened.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:46 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

Saturday, June 30, 2007

◊ Strange Euro Bedfellows

Current Affairs ... Religion ... Society ...

I just read an article about secularism and atheism in Europe. Religion and belief in God is not very popular amidst the native populations of western Europe these days. However, it’s still pretty popular amidst the Muslims, whose numbers are growing a lot faster than the natives. As far as the Catholics go, Pope Benedict is on a mission to “re-Christianize” Europe. I’m sure he’d like to get those heathen French and Belgian folk back into the old cathedrals, but it looks as though his new Euro-Christian army is going to be comprised mostly of African and South American immigrants. Like the Arabs and Turks, they also embrace the old-tyme religion and have a lot of babies.

So, it looks like the European scene is in for some conflict in the coming decades. If the script from the past is followed, the Christians and the Muslims will resort to violence in competing for the right to show the faithless the error of their ways. And the atheists will just write more books about the stupidity and hypocrisy of it all. But you never know – history does have its twists. Perhaps Benedict and the sheiks will find common cause in the campaign (dare I say “crusade”) against modern Godlessness in Europe. Perhaps they will unite in various political campaigns to outlaw abortion, women’s equality, stem-cell research and academic freedom. That will go a long way to cast Europe back into the middle ages.

I think it’s a terrible shame that the Catholic faith, which for a short time back in the 1960s seemed ready to make peace with the modern world, is now on a campaign to bring back the past. Obviously, I’d much rather see Rome engage the secularists instead of going head-to-head with them (just what we criticize the Islamics for doing). But the much-acclaimed Pope John Paul II wasn’t in the mood for accommodating the secularists, and they went their own way. Now his right-hand man is finishing the job. JP2 is still celebrated for helping to reclaim eastern Europe from Communism; but he also has to take the blame for losing western Europe to atheism. It happened on his watch. As with President Ronald Reagan, I think JP2 is over-rated. They were both very good at leadership; the fall of communism made it look as though they were leading in the right direction. But just because you avoid one dead end, doesn’t mean that you know the right way. In the end, both Ronnie and JP found other wrong directions to take their flocks.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:02 pm No Comments Yet / Leave a Comment

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