....civil, respectful conversation about faith

Yes, lumping Beck and the Holy Father in with UBL, on the basis of their supposedly "making followers vulnerable to political, social and sexual exploitation" (sorry, that is the way you wrote it) while shifting focus from the fact that UBL's program is one of violent world conquest is very civil and respectful.

How many fully believe in all that their religion teaches and know the full true history of their religon? Bear in mind man made controls of the membership.

Secular:

Thanks for the links. I especially like the red tongue hanging out. And, really, what's a head or two among friends.

Religion is going out the door, huh?

That would work if Jesus wasn't so persistent in finding the lost. That guy sure has tenacity.

I, myself, find the the Big Mommie goddess with big breasts, four arms, 400 children in the sky (a record, no doubt), standing on a corpse, a Mommie worth considering.

Notes on Big Daddy to follow.

Posted by: farnaz_mansouri2 | September 4, 2010 5:15 PM
_____________________________________________

Sorry I overlooked. The big Mommie(sic) has ten heads, and TWENTY hands. One more small detail wearing the bleeding just severed heads as a necklace. I am not certain about the 400 children. But then I am not a scholar such superstitious nonsense and its nuances of whether 400 means 400 or 40 or may be only 4. I will leave that to the scholars of such nuances.

Big Mommie with ten heads

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mahakali.jpg

Big Mommie with severed head necklace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kaliposter1940s.jpg

Enjoy

The Catholic Church is very mixed up. I do not suppose anyone can blame it all on the current sitting Pope, but it does seem beyond his capacity, even to begin to get things straightened out. I don't know about Irish Catholics living in London, but Catholics that I know, in America, seem to be pulled in every direction at once, with no clear guidance on how to live realistically and preactially.

I know there is a smart Catholic answer for my complaint, but smart Catholic answers to criticsm is not helpful, not good enough, and doesn't seem to be doing any good.

Secular, remember that mary cunningham is a well known rabid catholic on this forum, who seems to have disappeared for a while.

By Eezmamata
_____________________________________________

Thanks for the info

I wonder if that movement, or the movement led by Gandhi in India, could have had quite the same impact without the spiritual connections?

Posted by mindthegap

Actually the Indian independence movement was actually initiated after the first war of independence of 1857, by Secularists for the most part. No doubt a significant leaders were devout within their personal life but were for most part were secular in their public life. In fact Nehru and even Jinnah were really atheists. Nehru was an atheist until he breathed his last. Alas his daughter was not. In fact there is hardly any occasion that I can recall Nehru making any public displays of or feigning any of those ridiculous superstitions for public consumption at all in his 17 years of stewardship.

Him being cremated on a funeral pyre, with the LEECHES of the society - the priests was thanks to his till then an atheist herself Indira. She herself was married to a another Zoroastrian born atheist Feroze Gandhi. The most disgusting of all that happened after Nehru died was the decrypt Catholic church held a mass and performed some ceremonial funeral services for a life long atheist, to ingratiate itself to the ruling Congress party. Such is the debasement of catholic church. These good for nothing religionists cannot let a dead atheist lie dead.

Truly, religion is the monster in humanity's closet, still lurking in the shadows from a time before science and reason, always biding its time to burst its chains and drag us back into the abyss. The Christian God (for example) and its Bible have been used to justify the Crusades, the Inquisition, slavery, genocide and apartheid.

Someday humanity will emerge from its intellectual infancy, take responsibility for itself in the here/now and face the universe without a crutch. In doing so, we hopefully also can discard the mind-boggling arrogance that maintains we are at the center of the universe, and that the supreme force that created everything us in its image (that's really kind of a cute presumption, in an intellectually childish way).

As long as people need a reason to hate others, religion will retain its radical utility.

More thoughts: I read somewhere (I think in the book Carry Me Home, by Diana McWhorter) that the American Civil Rights movement had a mostly secular leadership in its early, less-widely noticed years, but that later, finding pastors to lead and organizing in churches became intentional. I wonder if that movement, or the movement led by Gandhi in India, could have had quite the same impact without the spiritual connections? Would those who took part and often risked their lives have summoned the same courage and moral clarity (encompassing forgiveness as well as the nonviolent fight), or banded together as well, or gained the same respect for what they were doing in the eyes of the world if their rhetoric had been strictly secular? Of course, such movements are by no means typical within any religions...but didn't the religious connections help?

Secular, remember that mary cunningham is a well known rabid catholic on this forum, who seems to have disappeared for a while.

See how she uses things people have written about the jesus christ character in her religion as proof that her particular variant is the only true christian church.

How surprising to see that, eh?

And as always, it is a pure belly laugh to read religious personnel such as her belaboring the logical minds of others.

PS, Secular: If you can pinpoint your very fundamental logical error, I'll respond. Somehow, I doubt your ability to, but I'll keep an open mind.

Posted by: Mary_Cunningham
_____________________________________________

I am not sure what you are alluding to in this post and the one 4 minutes earlier. I had responded to your previous post of indignation that Osama & Ratzinger were put in the same category. While agreed with you on that particular narrow instance, I said as for bigotry goes they will both fall in the same category. If this is in response to that, I am not seeing much point in you long winded copy and paste exercise. I do not read any evidence showing that Ratzinger is not a bigot nor do I see any evidence showing Osama is not a bigot. So I am at a loss as what to say. If this is a some kind of a test by you to me about my cerebral capacities, then I will have to advise you this. I am not and don't wish to be a scholar of biblical inanities and commentaries about them. When I opened genesis and read about talking snakes and trees of knowledge, that was enough for me. I decided I did not need any scholarship in such sill & stupid book. So the ball is back in your court to show that Osam is not a bigot or Ratzinger is not. Which will it be?

Edward Norman

Authority in the Anglican Communion

Part II

Priestly castes have the disadvantage of imploding into small coteries of exclusivity; they frequently become a mere adjunct of ruling élites. Philosophical systems tend to die when the surrounding culture to which they originally related transforms itself or disintegrates. But a living body of people, at the centre of whose religious insights is not a set of ideas but a person, has the verifiable capability of enduring through the centuries, forever changing yet forever the same.

In the essentials of its historical conveyance of Christ, furthermore, this people must be as indefectible as he is, not only because the Church is actually his body, but because Christ himself, in the gift of the Holy Spirit, promised perpetual guidance into all truth. Whatever the apostles were commissioned to do the Church today has the authority to do.

http://justus.anglican.org/resources/misc/norman98.html

PS, Secular: If you can pinpoint your very fundamental logical error, I'll respond. Somehow, I doubt your ability to, but I'll keep an open mind.

@Mind

Re: Can we eliminate the bad from the good in organized religion?

Can you eliminate the bad from the good in people because that is what the Church is composed it. It is not a church for donkeys, although atheists would disagree.

Christ left his body of teachings to a small assembly of people to whom he gave his authority to act in his stead. IMHO this is why the Church has endured through the ages and will continue to do so, howls of angry atheists notwithstanding.

The following will go down badly, I'm afraid--the atheists are too derisory, the sneering seculars deliberately misunderstand--but I'm going to quote him anyway. After all, if Martha Woodruff can include the pope with Osama--how utterly stupid she shows herself, how completely vacuous--why not?

The Church was not founded at Pentecost, as is sometimes said, but by Christ during the course of his ministry in Galilee and Judea. It was he who appointed the twelve to become what today, perhaps, would be called teaching officers, and who commissioned the seventy as a corps of evangelistic missioners. In the ancient world religious knowledge was sometimes committed to sacred writings, sometimes to a school of ideas, sometimes to a priestly caste or an assemblage of cultic observances, and sometimes it emerged episodically through the translations of oracles. Christ, in contrast, revealed his truth to a living company of people - "the People of God" - who, after his corporeal departure became his body on earth. Precisely because the message was thus conveyed organically it remained permanently new: able to adapt to changing intellectual modes and social filtration, capable of bringing forward fresh insights in the successive cultural shifts of a progressive humanity. Written texts do not transmit truth of themselves: they require reinterpretation, over long periods of time, if they are to achieve durable meaning.

So what exactly do we mean by Religion? Do we mean organized religion? Or belief in God? It's possible to have one or both of the above without the other(s). Be that said, there is no doubt that organized religions, creeds, faith traditions, etc. have been a source of violence and discord throughout history. Getting rid of that part would be good. My question is what would replace the GOOD parts--ex., the things that keep me going to a church although I have ambiguous feelings about that church (and would about any). I go to experience the gathering of a community; socializing; dialogue about meanings; the marking of life's passages in celebration and mourning; and working together to make a better world. Sadly, not every churchgoer wants the latter activity. The demagogue Beck advises his flock that if the church they attend talks about social justice, they should run away from it -- yet movements toward a more just and compassionate world often draw power from scriptures and faith (ex., Martin Luther King, Gandhi). Can we separate ethics (justice, compassion) from religion and not lose some of the momentum that it can give toward making a better world?

Mary, & Alex I agree that putting Osama 7 Ratzinger in the same category is a stretch, but depends on how broad the category is. If the category is Bigots, then I don't think it is really a stretch. Have you read his thoughts about other religions, other than Christianity and Judaism? My suspicion is that his inner thoughts may not be as generous about Judaism either. But that is my personal opinion. Coming to the question of whether he has done any harm or not, I think it is best to ascertain the opinions of those poor children of the Irish orphanages, and the choir boys all around the world, before going out on the limb for Mr. Ratzinger.

Trying to find any meaning other than "I'm smart, you're dumb" in most posts of atheists is a fairly fruitless task. My religion hasn't a sky daddy either. We just try to find enlightenment through the lessons of the sage of the Shakyas.

Posted by: edbyronadams | September 4, 2010 7:32 PM

___________________________________________

We atheists are not really into "who is smarter" game. We are only into finding out the rationale for truth claims and challenging, laced with humor, those we find beyond the pale, insofar as lack of substantiating evidence. If providing the evidence is a fruitless task, then let the chips fall, where they may. By the way if he was the sage of Shakyas, then we have no use for him. However, I thought he was just sage, who was a Shakya, whose wisdom everyone can draw on. But then I am no scholar of the nuances of false truth claims

Coming to my taste in women runs more along the petite lines than any thing big, nor anything so fecund. So I am more partial to Indra's apsarasas like Rambha, Vurvasi, Menaka, Thilottama, et al. Although I concede neither do I have his appetite nor his roving eye.

Dear Martha Woodruff,
You request is for an ongoing, civil, respectful conversation about faith . Yet you include Pope Benedict—one of the foremost scholars and philosophers of our age and a man who has never harmed anybody—with Osama bin Laden, who planned devastating attacks and murders upon his myriad enemies, among them the attack on the World Trade Centre.

I would submit, Martha, that it is you who do not practice what you preach.

(Your false dichotomy between ‘religion’ and ‘faith’ is similarly absurd.)

Actually, it's the secular media that has run its course. The Washington Post and other "secular" media (actually, anti-religious media) is losing readers because it continues to attack faithful people who have a hunger for spiritual guidance and discussion. To include Pope Benedict XVI in the same sentence as Osama bin Laden is outrageous. One is a terrorist the other is the most important religious leader of our time. To Catholics, faithful to their Church, Pope Benedict is the Vicar of Christ, a teacher of the faith and a beacon of light at a time when attacks on truly faithful people is the norm. Your story is not debate but pure slander and propaganda

The usual media outlets are being replaced by visionary publishers like Ignatius Press in San Francisco. Ignatius produces books and other materials that fairly and objectively address the information needs of people truly interested in seeking the truth about religion and its impact on their daily lives.

The drop in readership of the traditional medial is about the lack of objective content, not the internet or the cost of paper or labor.

I think the author's question is important. Have organized religions served their purpose? Have some of them become nothing but self-protecting wealthy corporations whose deity(ies) cringe at most of what they do? Are some murderous? Enslaving? Crazed?

Does a building have dibs on transcendence? A crucifix, cross, crescent, star? Does a crowd? A book? A statue?

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."
Posted by: gibsonpolk
---------------------------------------------

That's a somewhat overstatement.
Faith is what you're willing believe even if you don't know it. The word "prejudice" has pretty much the same definition -- belief without proof.

Believing in the divine authorship of a holy text might seem like an acceptable act of faith. Until you start using it to rule people who don't share your faith. Then it becomes more like the kind of prejudice used to justify discrimination.

The gay marriage debate is largely between those who think limiting marriage to its traditional definition is a positive act of faith and those who think it's a negative act of prejudice.

Trying to find any meaning other than "I'm smart, you're dumb" in most posts of atheists is a fairly fruitless task. My religion hasn't a sky daddy either. We just try to find enlightenment through the lessons of the sage of the Shakyas.

edbyronadams, your repartee "The bigger mystery is why such ardent atheists hang around. I know, I know. Huge egos are hard to contain.", duly noted. I know, I know, ya'll pray to sky daddy that we atheists vanish away. Looks like your skydaddy is not very good at throwing thunderbolt, as Zeus used t0

Posted by: Secular
------------------------------
Well, I don't know what religion has a "skydaddy."

However, there is one with lotsa gods, whose adherents pray to statues.

I, myself, find the the Big Mommie goddess with big breasts, four arms, 400 children in the sky (a record, no doubt), standing on a corpse, a Mommie worth considering.

Notes on Big Daddy to follow.

edbyronadams, your repartee "The bigger mystery is why such ardent atheists hang around. I know, I know. Huge egos are hard to contain.", duly noted. I know, I know, ya'll pray to sky daddy that we atheists vanish away. Looks like your skydaddy is not very good at throwing thunderbolt, as Zeus used t0

'Lise is' should be 'life is' in the previous post.

The bigger mystery is why such ardent atheists hang around. I know, I know. Huge egos are hard to contain.

Martha,

I agree with you. A minor discordant note: "I see life as a choice between two ways of being: one where we are open to reality in God's company; and one in which we turn away from reality for our own emotional and intellectual comfort."

Lise "IS". The binary or more varied choice is merely our attempt to organize it so we can try to make sense of it. The binary choice you lay out are really not mutually exclusive. The way you have phrased it, they appear to be more similar than different.

Why is it that all these folks wish to have a relationship with a guy or a character, whose existence cannot even be ascertained with any degree of certainty. If any thing all the evidence points to its non-existence. Every, rationalization offered so far has been shown to be false. The latest being the evolution of Bacterium Flagellum has also been discounted. Why do you insist on occupying, and why does WAPO get suckered to provide the forum, to these folks? I know, I know, they are too numerous to not exploit them.

A person of faith without religion is like being a person of community without government. Once one agrees on a set of tenets, humans must create an organization to promote them or they disappear. An organization, being composed of human beings, is flawed but those flaws do not negate the tenets. They merely reflect the human condition.

Furthermore, those organizations reflect the values of those who join, so that the errors self correct, centered around the shared values. You can be a "person of faith" without religion, but a single person is fairly ineffective in creating change or helping other people. It's a fine position for being sanctimonious however.

"People of faith - awk!"

"People of faith - awk!"

"People of faith - awk!"

"People of faith - awk!"

As if other people have no faith?

I have faith Elder Beck will prevail in exploiting Jesus Christ to defeat Obama, his Bishop Romney will become President, and NASA will build a huge spaceship so Mormons can "hie to Kolob", the planet where they believe God lives, and take the rest of you "people of faith" with them.

Religion in America has been turned into a political tool - it hasn't run its course but has become something more evil and sinister than it was before. Glenn Beck Christian theocracy is coming to America with a bible opened to leviticus in one hand and a moose rifle in the other. (with apologies to Sinclair Lewis)

Typical Washpost tostie hate parading as, um, um, something else.

My answer to her question is, "I would rather die having been active in my church or mosque or synagogue, AND active - as God's partner - in doing my best to be useful out there in the real world."
I would say that, more often than not, usefulness and religious affiliation are intertwined rather than mutually exclusive.

"Person of Faith".

What exactly does that mean? Look at it closely. Does that mean you believe, maybe even prefer to believe, things without evidence, things contrary to reason? How is this different from a delusion? Just because lots of other people believe the same thing? How do you know what other people believe, if you reject your innate ability to reason?

As an atheist, who is trying to respectfully grapple with religion, I am beginning to think that "god" is less of a problem than "faith".

"Faith is believing what you know ain't so."

I'm Catholic which in the above article is equated with terrorism. When advocating that something is better than what is currently happening, I was always taught to shine a positive light on the benefits of the proposed change. I don't see that light. I see political and religious persecution in the Church of Woodruff. Glenn Beck is heckled for speaking and the Pope for being Catholic.