Religion « The Ramblings of An Eternal Student of Life

Sunday, September 5, 2010

Psychology ... Religion ...

Last I heard, Carl Jung is still the psychologist-icon of choice for liberal Democrats. But perhaps they are forgetting that Jung had some views regarding Islam that might make Obama and Pelosi supporters squirm a bit. Here is something Jung said in 1939:

We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. He is already on the way; he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with wild god. That can be the historic future.

Jung was not a Jew, and does not mention the anti-Semitism that forms the common denominator between the Nazis and some schools of Islam. Nonetheless, rabid anti-Semitism is the sore thumb that sticks out from this quote.

Christopher Hitchens has an article in the September 2010 Atlantic making the point that anti-Semitism has been much more than a Nazi and Islamic fascination. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 6:59 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

◊ Hawking’s Design: Not So Grand

Philosophy ... Religion ... Science ...

Stephen Hawking once wrote that if science ever comes up with a unified field theory (i.e., the grand unification of relativistic gravity concepts with quantum particle mechanics), humankind will then “know the mind of God“. Now Hawking has a new book coming out (“The Grand Design“) that in effect says, “scratch that; there’s no God with a mind to be known”.

Back in the late 19th Century, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche got a lot of press by proclaiming God to be dead (in a book that he titled “The Gay Science”; the future irony was not apparent at the time, obviously). Now, more than a century later, Hawking is back with a science book even more “gay” (in the sense of being joyously self-confident), which buries philosophy as well as God! (Yep, philosophy is dead, per Hawking).

“Grand Design” will be released this Tuesday, and it will probably be many more months until I get around to reading it. But I have read some articles and excerpts and book reviews out in advance of the book, and I believe that I catch the general drift of Hawking’s argument. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 4:31 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, August 22, 2010

◊ Religious Controversy, Contd.

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

I put my 2 cents in on the Catholic parish ‘revolt’ going on out in St. Louis in my last blog entry. So, for what little it’s worth, I shall now move over to Islam and throw a few coins out about the Park51 / Cordoba House mosque that a Sufi imam wishes to build near the former World Trade Center site, a.k.a. nine-eleven ground zero. I think that we all agree on the outlines of the controversy: here in America, the First Amendment guarantees groups like Imam Feisal’s Cordoba Initiative the right to purchase property and put up a center for religious worship. There is no evidence that Feisal would use this facility to forward the cause of radical Islam or to promote terrorism or even anti-American attitudes. No one has suggested that Feisal and his associates would do anything illegal in their planned new mosque. However, the site involved does have a strong 9-11 connection; a part of the landing gear from the hijacked United Airlines flight 175 Boeing 767 crashed into the Park Place building after the plane decimated WTC tower 2. Despite all the mayhem nearby, no one in the building was hurt (this sort-of brings new meaning to the Foo Fighters’ recent hit song, “When The Wheels Come Down”). Obviously, having a mosque at such a site offends many people who lost family or friends on 9-11, given the radical Islamist inspirations of Al Qadea.

So, the argument is not about whether the law can stop the Imam from building. It is more focused on whether he should build, given American sensibilities. The last poll number I saw said that about 64% of Americans are against it. I guess that the next question is, if the Imam does go ahead and build, are the many Americans who have bad impressions of Islam as a whole justified in their attitudes (and thus, in their “sub-legal” prejudice against Muslims, e.g. social shunning, suspicious stares at anyone with an Arab appearance, etc.). In a January, 2010 poll, Gallup reported that about 43% of Americans feel some prejudice against Muslims, and 55% view Islam negatively. I think it is safe to say that these numbers will increase if the Park51 mosque is built. The next question is, should they?

Some writers have pointed out a bit of western hypocrisy, given how America and Western Europe responded to Islamic outrage when the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published cartoons critical of Mohammad and Islam in 2005. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 2:11 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

◊ Schizm at St. Stans?

Current Affairs ... Religion ...

Given that my grandparents all came from Poland and that as a boy I went to church at a Polish Catholic parish, I couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow when I came across a recent NY Times article about the St. Stanislaus parish controversy in St. Louis. St. Stans was a nice Polish church not unlike Sacred Heart in Wallington, where I grew up (although as an urban-based parish, it might be a bit more like Holy Rosary in Passaic, where my mother was raised). About five years ago, the parish got into a disagreement with the St. Louis archbishop (Raymond Burke, at the time) regarding ownership of the land and buildings at St. Stans. It had something to do with protecting diocese property from being seized in law suits stemming from clerical abuse. (Ah, what a tangled web that has been weaved . . .). The board at St. Stans decided to stand its ground about parish control of the property; the secular law was pretty clearly on its side.

However, the priests who performed all the Catholic rituals (masses, confessions, baptisms, marriages, last rites) at St. Stans also agreed that the archbishop was their boss. So, when the bish got ticked off at those stubborn lay people on the parish board, he decided to pull his guys out; no more priests. The idea was to get the parish board to reconsider, given that they now had a Catholic church without any Catholic sacraments happening inside of it. In a nutshell, the parish board decided to see the archbishop’s bet and raise him one, by finding a priest from another parish to come in and get the sacramental mill rolling once again. They found their man in a priest named Marek Bozek, a guy in his thirties who grew up in Poland but who became a priest and served the church in the USA.

For the past 4 years, Bozek has been keeping the holy fires burning at St. Stans. But Archbishop Burke struck back » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:25 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

◊ Jesus ‘n Me (and Paula, Gerd and E.P.)

Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

I got interested in the “historical Jesus” movement about 10 years ago, which was a number of years after the whole thing started getting public attention (given the Jesus Seminar and the best-seller books put out by Dominic Crossan and Robert Funk, arguing that Jesus was really a whole lot like a modern liberal social reformer). I’m always a little behind the curve. Well, about five years ago, after reading several books covering a wide range of positions about who Jesus really was and what he intended, I burned-out on the whole subject. But not before the apocalyptic crowd convinced me that Jesus is better explained by historical factors than by divine salvation. I could no longer go into a Christian church, not even an Episcopal church (the last kind of church that I affiliated with), and proclaim Jesus as the Son of God, true God and true man. From then on, I would still regard Jesus as a key figure in my life, a man from history deserving of much veneration and attention; but I could never again pray to him as a divine being.

So that’s pretty much where things have stood between me and Jesus for the past 4 or 5 years. But I had one more book about Jesus sitting on my shelves that I wanted to get to, by the highly regarded scholar E.P. Sanders (“The Historical Figure of Jesus”). I finally got around to starting that book in late winter, and I finished it not too long ago (it was my lunch-hour read). And I need to say, I found it extremely gratifying. After going thru about 6 or 7 big tomes sifting through the writings about Jesus and the historical / social context of his life, I was forming my own picture of him. It turned out that Sanders’ picture of Jesus was quite a bit like my own. We agreed on one very important point: that Jesus indeed foresaw an immediate “God revolution” in Palestine, the coming of the Kingdom of God in a very literal sense.

Even more important, Jesus did not see himself as a mere observer and prophet of a revolutionary event whose arrival could not be accurately predicted. » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 8:40 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Thursday, July 15, 2010

◊ No Self, No Buddha

Religion ... Spirituality ...

As noted in my last entry, I’ve recently become involved in Zen practice. Of course, this is an “Americanized Zen”, not the real thing from Japan and China. In American Zen, you don’t need to become a dedicated, exclusive follower of the Buddha, as would be expected in Asia. I belong to a sangha whose roshi (i.e., guiding teacher and district-leader of sorts) is a Catholic Jesuit priest. That would be Fr. Robert Kennedy, SJ, who studied throughout his life under various Japanese and American Zen masters. Father Kennedy does not call himself a Buddhist, although he considers himself a student of Buddhist teachings.

So, there’s an ambivalent relationship with Buddhism in our group. We have our Buddha altar and idols, we chant some Buddhist drivel (like the Heart Sutra), and we occasionally discuss basic Buddhist teachings. And yet, our local leader (and many “modern Zen” web sites) tell me that Zen is open to all faiths or no faith. You have to respect the rubrics, he says, but once you close your eyes to meditate it’s up to you what to believe or not.

Well, that’s groovy. But I » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 9:17 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, June 19, 2010

◊ PS, Buddhist Idolitry

Politics ... Religion ...

In my last post, I noted the destruction by lightening of ‘Touchdown Jesus’ down in fundamentalist Ohio, and commented on the tendency of Christianity in general (and evangelical Christianity, in particular) to favor grandiose images of its Savior despite the injunction against graven images from the religion actually practiced by Jesus (i.e., Judaism). I also made some positive references to the philosophies of the Buddhists in contrapoint.

Since then, it has occurred to me that the Buddhists have never been shy about keeping statues of the Buddha, some incredibly large. Interestingly (and also distressingly), some very large and ancient Buddha statues carved into mountain cliffs in Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, blown to bits by dynamite and other weapons.

Archeologists and historians were extremely upset by this; hopefully the Buddhists took it in stride. Huge statues intentionally placed in public view step over the line between spiritual power and world power, between teaching and politics. Buddhists have not been immune to politics, of course, and Buddhist war is not unheard of. But the founders of both Buddhism and Christianity were men of peace; they were teachers and not politicians. Their followers have certainly strayed into politics, often with bad results. Perhaps both Touchdown Jesus and the Buddhas of Bamiyan are good reminders of the wisdom behind the Second Commandment.

◊ posted by Jim G @ 3:09 pm Read Comments (3) / Leave a Comment

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

◊ BUDDHISM: THE RELIGION OF “NO” ?

Personal Reflections ... Religion ...

I’ve been attending a Zen service on Sunday mornings here in Montclair now for a couple of weeks, and I’m rather enjoying it. I have been in group meditation sessions before, and I’ve generally enjoyed them. And Zen is nothing if not meditative. So I’m hoping to make this a part of my routine, at least once or twice a month.

But, Zen is also a very Buddhist thing. Some people cite Zen as a “container” whereby the practicioner may also pursue a more-theistic faith system (Christianity, Judism, Islam, etc.) without any great contradiction. And that may well be true, as Buddhism in itself isn’t terribly doctrinaire. In fact, Zen people seem to bill it as an “anti-intellectual” tradition, or perhaps better said, a “counter-intellectual thing” (since you don’t have to be a dummy to practice Zen; you just have to adopt the right attitude and viewpoint about the mind and its ways).

But still, even in the Zen ceremony, there are Buddhist trappings. There are the Buddha altars in the zendo, and there are Eastern-ish chantings and readings during the ceremony. A key reading is the Heart Sutra, which asserts some of the most difficult things to accept about Buddhism. Why? Because, there are a lot of “NO” and “NOT” statements in this Sutra, and very few positive statements.

That to me is the big problem with Buddhism: it is very contrarian (which is good, in itself), » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 7:13 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Saturday, May 15, 2010

◊ Peter versus Christopher Hitchens

Politics ... Religion ...

Since I’m a regular reader of Atlantic Monthly magazine, I’ve been familiar with writer Christopher Hitchens for some time now. I find his literature review articles to be difficult reading. He doesn’t have any sense of humor that I can detect, and he doesn’t explicate his points for those readers like me who don’t share his literary interests. He may well be brilliant, but he is a bit niggardly with it. His writing is a tad too convoluted and presumptive, for my taste.

I also know that he is an atheist, as he recently published a book (God is Not Great) and gives lectures spreading the good news of his faith in the salvific powers of human rationality. I’m not in any hurry to read this book, given my displeasure with Mr. Hitchens’ writing style, and my overall disregard for “the New Atheism“. I myself would not assert the certain existence of a caring God; I don’t think that we, as humans, can ever know for sure, one way or another. The best I can do is to view the question of God as “the ultimate koan“. And not just view it as such … but also, embrace it, celebrate it, even worship it. Be grateful for our freedom to appreciate an ultimate paradox.

But back to Mr. Hitchens. Given that I don’t read British newspapers or publications, » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 2:35 pm Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

Sunday, March 28, 2010

◊ FRANK TIPLER: GENIUS OR MADMAN?

Religion ... Science ...

I’m always on the lookout for non-fiction books with a new or off-beat approach to a topic that interests me. The problem is that I’m not a fast reader; I like to plod and think things over as I read. So, I have an inventory of books waiting to be read, and they can sit around for years until I get to them. One of the books in my current inventory is Frank Tipler’s “The Physics of Immortality”. I’ve had it for about 2 years now, but I don’t see myself getting to it until maybe later this year. However, I opened it up and started to peruse it the other day in a spare moment, and it got me interested. Not interested enough to start reading it (I’m now trying to slog my way through Steven Pinker’s “How the Mind Works”, a 500+ page tome written in a breezy, chatty style that just begs for a ‘skip-around’ approach). But interested enough to do a Web search for a summary and some opinions on Tipler’s ideas. Enough to hit the ground running when I do finally get to his book.

Tipler is a 64 year old mathematical cosmologist, a legitimate physicist who teaches at Tulane University. Like many modern physicists, he was an atheist most of his life. However, he had a “road to Damacus” experience and decided to affirm God and Christianity, supposedly as a result of his theoretical research. He became noted (perhaps not really “famous”) for his Omega Point Theory, which is explained in “Physics of Immortality” (yes, shades of Teilhard de Chardin).

In a nutshell, Tipler set out » continue reading …

◊ posted by Jim G @ 11:27 am Read Comment (1) / Leave a Comment

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