Dawkins the ‘fundamentalist’ takes a left and a right to the chin!

Living in this post-modernist time one of the problems is knowing who the bad guys are.  I’m sure fundamentalism is a bad thing – because it bears bad fruit.

For me Terry Eagleton is the best writer about the human aberration known as fundamentalism.  (SEE Chap 7 of After Theory)

His new book is Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate

Karen Armstrong is the best popular presenter of the historic perspective of religions and their fundamentalisms. (SEE The Battle for God)

Her new book is The Case For God

Saying that science has made religion redundant is rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov, says Terry Eagleton in this gloriously rumbustious counter-blast to Dawkinsite atheism. Eagleton, who is perhaps Britain’s most venerable cultural critic, is not a Christian, though he was in the 1960s. But he continues, unfashionably, to be a Marxist, and his critique of the New Atheists is rooted in the historical materialism of revolutionary socialism, but with a thread of poetry woven through it.

In Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, his starting point, perhaps paradoxically – and paradoxes sparkle throughout this coruscatingly brilliant polemic – is that Dawkins, along with fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens (or Ditchkins, as he mischievously conflates the pair) purport to be advocates of science and reason. And yet they are disgracefully cavalier with both.

Eagleton is not anti-science or reason. He merely points out that science has produced Hiroshima as well as penicillin. And liberal rationalism, in addition to its many undoubted triumphs, has provided the intellectual underpinning for exploitative capitalism and the wanton destruction of the environment on an unprecedented scale. Indeed Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought.

This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic. Ditchkins, he says, makes the error of conflating reason and rationality. Yet much of what seems reasonable in real life turns out not to be true. And much that is true, like quantum physics, seems rationally impossible.

For all that, the book levels a broadside at faith too. The history of religion is “a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology.” Just as communism has misunderstood Marx, he argues, so the Church has betrayed Christ by backing an establishment of warmongering politicians, corrupt bankers and exploitative capitalists for centuries. The Jesus of the gospels, he insists, was as radical a revolutionary who took the side of “the scum of the earth”. The love he offered was as transformative as true socialism. It is easy to see why a lot of people will not be happy with this book. Much of what it says is too true.

Karen Armstrong is radical in a different way in The Case For God which is subtitled What Religion Really Means. What it does not mean, she agrees with Eagleton, is the fundamentalism cited as normative by Ditchkins. Armstrong surveys the intellectual history of religion in a way that is more comprehensive and measured but much less fun. What it shows is that the modern way of thinking about God, as a big bloke with superhuman powers, is a comparatively modern invention. Until 300 years ago almost no-one thought that, and nor do many religious believers today.

Religion, she argues, is traditionally not something that people believe, but something they do – using liturgy, ritual, prayer, meditation and spiritual exercises to discover an awareness of the transcendental inside themselves. It is not rooted in what the Greeks called logos (reason) but mythos (stories which may not be factual but which carry some universal truth about how humans behave). It is not something to be comprehended but something beyond the limits of language which is to be absorbed intuitively like music.

After the Enlightenment, when science and reason became the dominant lens through which we viewed the world, this truth was downgraded. God became a being who stood outside the world to create it, rather than the apotheosis of all that is good in it. This crude reduction suited both fundamentalists and dogmatic atheists alike; atheism in any period always seeks to define the God it doesn’t believe in. The subtlety of theologians like Aquinas, who happily posited the possibility that the world had no origin at all, is forgotten. The intuition of the pre-modern era for spiritual imagination and meditative humility has now calcified into scientific literalism.

So we see a number of revealing shifts in meaning. “I believe” has become scientised to mean “I assert these propositions to be empirically correct.” What it originally meant was “I pledge my heart and my loyalty”. Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity. Similarly the word dogma now means a ruling laid down by authority. But originally it meant a teaching that cannot be expressed verbally but which is intuited through the liturgy.

Fundamentalists, of both the bible-bashing and the Dawkinsite variety, are very anxious to make clear assertions about the God they believe in or reject. By contrast this older apophatic tradition was much keener to assert what cannot be said about God than what can. Ditchkins thinks rationality can bring him to a place of absolute certainty; the old tradition, dating back to Socrates, used reason to arrive in a place where we realise we really know nothing at all. Eagleton makes the same point. Reason operates in a social and cultural context. Modern atheists have their myths and unexamined assumptions too, like the idea that humanity is riding an upward-bound escalator of progress. So wedded is Dawkins to this that he once described the Holocaust as “a temporary setback”. The old Marxist is scathing. “If ever there was a pious myth and a piece of credulous superstition, it is the liberal-rationalist belief that, a few hiccups apart, we are all steadily en route towards a finer world.”

Terry Eagleton’s is a more realistic and darker vision which he characterises as “tragic humanism”. But it holds out the possibility of revolutionary transformation.

Ditchkins’ liberal rationalism, by contrast, is defeatist and has endorsed a cruel and irrational capitalism in which the poor get poorer, the rich richer and the planet overheats. Religion might not have the answers but it asks the better questions.

Richard Dawkins: The God Delusion

The Oxford academic, Richard Dawkins, came to prominence as an ardent atheist, expounding on his gene-centred theory of evolution in his book, The Selfish Gene. His most recent work, The God Delusion, published in 2006, argues that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that faith qualifies as a delusion or false belief. The book has been a runaway success; selling more than 1.5 million copies by November 2007 and translated into 31 languages.

Both are well-reviewed HERE by Paul Vallely

Both according to Vallely make room for God, or at least being human in a non-narrow-materialist way.

Here are a couple of tasters from Vallely’s review.  Firstly about Eagleton;

In Reason, Faith, and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate, his starting point, perhaps paradoxically – and paradoxes sparkle throughout this coruscatingly brilliant polemic – is that Dawkins, along with fellow atheist Christopher Hitchens (or Ditchkins, as he mischievously conflates the pair) purport to be advocates of science and reason. And yet they are disgracefully cavalier with both.

Eagleton is not anti-science or reason. He merely points out that science has produced Hiroshima as well as penicillin. And liberal rationalism, in addition to its many undoubted triumphs, has provided the intellectual underpinning for exploitative capitalism and the wanton destruction of the environment on an unprecedented scale. Indeed Eagleton is stronger on reason than Ditchkins, for he thinks carefully about what his opponents say whereas Dawkins & Co prefer knockabout rhetoric to serious engagement with mainstream religious thought.

This is, then, a demolition job which is both logically devastating and a magnificently whirling philippic.

and about Armstrong,

Religion, she argues, is traditionally not something that people believe, but something they do – using liturgy, ritual, prayer, meditation and spiritual exercises to discover an awareness of the transcendental inside themselves. It is not rooted in what the Greeks called logos (reason) but mythos (stories which may not be factual but which carry some universal truth about how humans behave). It is not something to be comprehended but something beyond the limits of language which is to be absorbed intuitively like music.

After the Enlightenment, when science and reason became the dominant lens through which we viewed the world, this truth was downgraded. God became a being who stood outside the world to create it, rather than the apotheosis of all that is good in it. This crude reduction suited both fundamentalists and dogmatic atheists alike; atheism in any period always seeks to define the God it doesn’t believe in. The subtlety of theologians like Aquinas, who happily posited the possibility that the world had no origin at all, is forgotten. The intuition of the pre-modern era for spiritual imagination and meditative humility has now calcified into scientific literalism.

So we see a number of revealing shifts in meaning. “I believe” has become scientised to mean “I assert these propositions to be empirically correct.” What it originally meant was “I pledge my heart and my loyalty”. Jesus was asking for commitment not credulity. Similarly the word dogma now means a ruling laid down by authority. But originally it meant a teaching that cannot be expressed verbally but which is intuited through the liturgy.

I really hope that Armstrong and Eagleton consider working in co-operation – they are both great truth-tellers.

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To read the article to which this post refers go HERE

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What is it to be fully and positively human?

Introduction to – ‘1000 WAYS OF CELEBRATING THE HUMAN SPIRIT’

NB – All newest posts are below this fixed  ‘Intro’.  Use SEARCH for the subjects you are interested in.

.‘Animated’ racehorse by photographer Eadweard Muybridge -  Source WikiPedia

Celebrating the human spirit is positive, and anyway it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.

In celebrating the human spirit we can also enjoy humour that is made possible from our foolish ways. Humour is a balm and gives us experience and healing that’s a bit like art or true spirituality.

What matters is whether we are fair, kind, creative, truth-telling and wise. Personally I don’t care whether a person is an atheist or religious.  What good things they produce is what matters.

Why 1000 ways?  Well there are many paths to the top of a mountain, but only one summit.

We either believe in a unitive force behind the universe, of which we are all one infinitesimal part, or we believe that chaos reigns supreme.  It doesn’t matter what we believe – what matters is what we do with what we believe.

We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts, we make our world.  (Buddha)

4th July 2009

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See HERE for ‘My other sites and their connections!‘

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INTRODUCTION:

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” – Aristotle, in The Metaphysics.

Celebrating the good things about the human spirit is positive – at the very least it is better to light a candle than curse the darkness!

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I have found no better representation of my combined interests – Art: Science: Education: Photography etc – than Muybridge’s magnificent horse ‘animation’  .    I reflect on it HERE.

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In celebrating the human spirit we can also enjoy humour, made possible from our ‘foolish ways’. Humour is a balm that gives us experience and healing that’s a bit like art, or true spirituality, or carnivals.  Why does you work?  It release stress – and makes us whole again.

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What matters most is whether we are fair, kind, creative, truth-telling and wise.  Such virtues define the depth of our humanity, regardless of belief systems.

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Personally therefore I don’t care whether a person is an atheist or a religionist.  What ‘good things’ each person produces is what matters.  Regrettably many religions and belief systems don’t lead to light and love because they are corrupted with hypocrisy, manipulation and fundamentalism and a host of such curses.  The best of religion is however love and light – you’ll find it beneath the dung-heap of man-made distortions!

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Why 1000 ways?  Well there are many paths to the top of a mountain – but only one summit.

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We either believe in a unitive force behind the universe, of which we are all one infinitesimal part, or we believe that chaos reigns supreme.  It doesn’t matter what we believe – what matters is what we do with what we believe.

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WHAT ARE WE?

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“We are what we think.  All that we are arises with our thoughts.  With our thoughts, we make our world”. – Buddha

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We are a manifestation of energy – or if you prefer we are each a large bunch of atoms through which the life-force flows.

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See HERE for ‘My sites and their connections!’

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If you are hassled and frazzled why not take -

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60 SECONDS TIME-OUT

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Updated 20th Aug 2009 – NB – All the newest posts are below this continuously evolving ‘Introduction’

How I got zapped by 3 truth-tellers in one week – one atheist, one social network site and one Saudi intellectual!

Pat Condell, the social network site MLIA (My Life is Average) and the

Saudi intellectual Abdallah bin Bakhit –

the 3 truth-tellers that zapped me in 1 week

As someone interested for half a century in truth and reality  it is unusual to discover three disparate gateways to these great human concerns in one month.

The first I have previously mentioned – Pat Condell.  That was the truth, reality and art that I found in the work of an atheist.  Beware it is strong – and you have to listen hard beyond the ‘abuse’ and anger to certain spiritual truths that are/should be preeminent in many religions – the Golden Rule, Justice, not imposing your world-view on others, hating the act (where appropriate) and not the actor etc

Pat Condell’s talks are here as MP3s and he also has a channel on YouTube.   That was surprising because that half century has led me to a broadly mystical view of reality and human reality – as say in Ken Wilber and Eckhart Tolle.

How is it that I appreciate Pat Condell so much – as someone who gathers light and inspiration from (parts of) all religions – including Islam?  Briefly, because it would be quite a long appreciation, he is energetically opposing the corruption I see in virtually all religions and, given his belief system, he is a quality of truth-teller almost entirely absent from those who inhabit religious communities.  Not only that he also (seems to) possess, in good measure, the values, qualities and attributes that so many people of religion claim to have – but don’t.  ’Seems  to’ because even truth-telling atheists have to walk the talk – but I suppose persistence in the face of dozens of death-threats means he most definitely is walking the talk.

The second addition to truth-telling in and around the human condition came from the MLIA – My Life is Average site.  Now it would be easy to dismiss this because it is whimsical, trivial and of no great importance but I think it has struck, uniquely, a chord that belonged only to self-deprecating comedians – and its brevity, as with Twitter, is essential.  Here are four examples at random;

Today, while voting on submissions, I stumbled across a story beginning with a “today” that was not capitalized. Offended, I clicked “no”. MLIA.

Today, Billy Mays yelled at me through the TV and told me to buy Oxyclean. I yelled back at him that I wasn’t going to. MLIA.

Today, I told my friends I needed to show them a hillarious Youtube video. I played it for them and when nobody started laughing I said, “Oh this is the wrong one.” Then I pretended like I couldn’t find the right one. MLIA

Today, I made a triple-chocolate sundae and I felt fat. So I topped it off with sugar-free hot fudge and I felt like I was making healthy choices. MLIA

How can I possibly mention in the same breath great human beings and this site of small happenings in the lives and consciences of  the people on MLIA – many of them are youngsters?

Again I must be brief.  Our moral lives are in the decisions we make.  Most are minor ones, most are known only to ourselves.  Many are to defend our self-image, or the self we would aspire to – if only we were a bit more courageous.  But what of the bishops and popes and mullahs who are full of cant and deceit and pomposity, and worse still, lacking in compassion and fellow-feeling and a sense of justice?

Now in this time when many are rightly concerned about the rise and spread of extremist Islam I next want to re-tell a story about Muhammad.

One day a parent came to Muhammad to ask Him to verbally chastise their child who was prone to eat too many dates.  To the surprise of the parent, given the task was small and the child was there, Muhhammad told the parent to return the next day. On the next day the child was told not too eat too many dates.  When asked why a return that day was necessary Muhammad said that it was because on the previous day he had eaten (rather too many) dates!

The story may not be ‘true’ – but the truth of the story is true – and it would be true if it were in the tradition of Hausa people or Inuit or Jewish people.

Now I remain someone whose belief system is broadly-speaking that of a mystical humanist or humanist mystic or universalist.  However I was never zapped by three such disparate ‘tellers of truth’ in quite the same way as in this most recent week – Pat Condell, the contributors to MLIA and the third of these disparate additions to truth-telling in my life the Saudi intellectual Abdallah bin Bakhit.

From Abdallah bin Bakhit I learned the true value of secularism for religious communities – as well as what it takes to be courageous in a state of maximum suppression.  If you haven’t watched his video yet it’s here;

PS If you want to see the kind of courage it takes to be a balanced intellectual like Abdallah bin Bakhit in Saudi Arabia check this out – Kill the Owners of Satellite TV Channels, As the Law Prescribes

Something’s Gotta Give: Islam in the West

This is an intro to the work of Dr Rachael Kohn and to a particular Australian ABC transcript – SEE end of this i.e. MY COMMENT to go to source;

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What’s required to foster better relations between Muslims and non-Muslims in the West? Two Muslims – Irshad Manji & Mehmet Ozalp – give their points of view.

Transcript

Irshad Manji is the author of The Trouble With Islam. She calls for change in Islam to conform with the values of Western democratic societies. Mehmet Ozalp is the President of Affinity Intercultural Foundation, which recently held a conference in Sydney on “Islam and Its Relations with the Other.”

MUSIC

I’ll just give you a minute or two to pretty much observe the domes, observe the calligraphy, the Qur’anic verses, the patterns on the wall and so forth, just for you to have a bit of a look, and then I’ll start hopefully explaining some of them.

Rachael Kohn: An Open Day at Gallipoli Mosque in Auburn, New South Wales.

Hello, and welcome to ‘Something’s Gotta Give: What does it take for Muslims and other Australians to foster a better relationship?’

This is The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, with me, Rachael Kohn.

With the dress requirements there is dress requirements both for males and females. OK, and I’m just going to go through the minimal requirements for both a male and a female.

The minimal dress requirement for a male is from the navel to below the knee area; that is the minimal requirement for a Muslim male. The minimal requirement for a Muslim female is exposure of hands, face and feet. Now some say don’t include feet on that list, but you do have certain areas where opinions will differ.

Now for a Muslim woman, she is required when she comes to a certain age, usually the age of puberty, to pretty much dress the way that I’m dressing, to start fulfilling the dress obligations, or the dress requirements that is expected of her. OK. Now one of the sole reasons why we do it, OK, which is probably one of the most commonsense reasons, is because it’s a commandment from God.

Rachael Kohn: In the larger community, you could say there’s a stand-off between Muslims and non-Muslims. Fear, disdain and ignorance have kept both sides at arm’s length. For Mehmet Ozalp, a second generation Australian Muslim, education is the answer. We’ll hear more from him later in the program.

MUEZZIN

Rachael Kohn: My first guest goes much further, in calling for a reform of Islam itself. Irshad Manji, a Canadian Muslim visiting Australia for the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, believes that it is not only Islam, but democracy, free thought and human rights, which are at stake.

When I spoke to her earlier in the year about her book, The Trouble With Islam, Irshad revealed that her life had been threatened on many occasions for speaking out as she has. I’m pleased to say there was no need for bodyguards when she came to the ABC.

Irshad Manji, welcome to The Spirit of Things.

Irshad Manji: Thanks for having me.

Rachael Kohn: It’s great to have you back on the show again. Six months ago, your book had recently come out, The Trouble with Islam; since then I think you’ve been interviewed all over the world, I doubt if you’ve been home for very long in Toronto. How many copies has the book sold?

Irshad Manji: Well there are different countries in which it’s been released. I don’t have exact sales figures for any one of those countries; things change, but I’m really happy to say that the book made it to The New York Times bestseller list in the US; it has been on the best seller list for months in Canada, which is my home country, and by this time in September, it’ll be out in 20 countries, and I’m really happy to say, if I may just throw this in as well, that the book is being translated into both Arabic and Urdu, Urdu being the major language spoken in Pakistan.

Now that doesn’t mean however that it’ll be published in the Arab world. No publisher has been found to touch this book with a 10-foot pole in the Arab world. So you know, it’s young Muslims from the Arab world who have said to me, ‘Forget the publishing powers-that-be, don’t let the vision be hidebound to them. You get the book translated into Arabic, you post that PDF on your website, make it free of charge to download, and Irshad, when you do that’, they’ve told me, ‘you will get an even bigger audience than you ever anticipated, because if we can read the book in relative privacy, then that means we can read it in relative safety and start discussing these ideas in a way that we couldn’t if we had the book in our hands and were harassed for doing so.’ Very interesting point.

via abc.net.au

MY COMMENT: I wanted to share this resource – many transcripts and audio of programmes presented by Rachael Kohn for Australian ABC. This one is under the category of ‘Fundamentalism’.

Go to

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/spiritofthings/stories/2004/1188988.htm#transcript

to read the full program and to find many others.

Why isn’t the good and glorious side of Islam featured more? – this is my reply to Taufiq who asked the question.

Taufiq Rahim has an article in the Huffington Post.

He says, “As President Obama looks to foster a new dialogue with the Muslim world, I want to give voice to an Islam that is too often ignored in the media in both East and West.”

This is my reply as someone who shares Taufiq’s hopes.

Dear Taufiq

Thanks for your fine article.

I too, as a religious humanist, am inspired by the gifts of Islam. Who can fail to be moved by Rumi, Ibn-Al Arabi, the exquisite nature of the Alhambra, not to mention all of the science that is the foundation of Western ‘civilization’.

Every day I am the beneficiary of His Holiness Muhammad’s, Revelation, peace be upon Him, and the intellectual and spiritual truths discovered by those numberless great women and men who turned to Him.

But you skate over some very inconvenient truths.

I want to encourage you – and those who sincerely think like you – to try to get the ‘moderate majority’ in Islam to stand up and eliminate the hate-filled extremists who perpetrate such atrocities as 9/11.

Even one suspects that now hundreds or thousands are working towards the next 9/11 or much, much, worse. They are poisoned in their minds and paid for by Moslems in your part of the world – Wahabism or whatever. Only for as long as the security agencies are cleverer will the planned-for atrocities not occur. It is generally agreed that it is a matter not of if but when.  (I know there is correspondingly much to be done to change the behaviour of Israel and the US.)

The extremists say they are your fellow believers. There’s the problem for non-Moslems. Is there a moderate majority? If there is why don’t they take control? Do all ordinary Moslems think the same as the extremists – and are simply less active? I know the difference between my friend who is a Quaker or my ex-neighbours who were Catholics and the crazies in the fundamentalist Christian pile. But I don’t know if there is truly a moderate majority in Islam.

I know the faith of sweet, ordinary people – of all faiths – is to be respected. I hear and believe what you say about those in;

the mountains of Tajikistan, the streets of Kabul, the alleyways of Damascus, the villages of South Lebanon, the madrasas of Uzbekistan, the towns of the West Bank, and even in corners of Riyadh.

But given what is happening in the name of Islam are they not victims just as much as the 3,000 who died in 9/11? Is such action not an insult to their faith? Are not more Moslems killed by fellow believers day after day after day? The only currency held in common seems to be hatred, all-consuming hatred. Lighten up.  En-light-en up. It would be a relief if the extremists just loved other Moslems – the same of course is true of all fundamentalists.

I share with you the desire that the fruits of Islam be recognized world-wide and the pure faith of ordinary Moslems be honoured and respected as an example to us all. I shrink from the vile hatred so many other ‘believers in the Book’ heap upon Islam.

You say;
My Islam is foremost about reason. It is about harnessing one’s capacity to understand the complexities of this world and beyond. The mind and the pursuit of knowledge are central to comprehending, to the extent that is possible, what is the divine. One also cannot make conscious decisions about right or wrong without exercising his own judgment. Blindly following the edicts of scholars, is not choosing a path except one that is not your own. When I refrain from consuming alcohol, it is not because I am backward, or uncultured. I refuse drugs because they hinder our judgment and our ability to reason, the trait that God endowed us with that distinguishes humankind from all other beings.

Bravo – no religion has given more to the modern world than the massively enhanced re-presentation of the Ancient World’s knowledge. I know that whilst Europe was literally and metaphorically in the Dark Ages parts of the Islamic world had street lighting and the first university – al hamdulillah!

You say your Islam is about the equality of women, tolerance, compassion, humility. I know all you say about these is true of the real Islam – but will the real Islam please stand up!

Equality of women, tolerance, compassion, humility? – tell that to the 74 year-old widow Khamisa Sawadi, convicted and sentenced recently to 40 lashes for meeting with her late husband’s nephew i.e. he brought her shopping! Is this the Saudi version of ‘meals on wheels’ for the elderly?

In actuality, globally, Dear Taufiq your version of Islam is a fantasy. Your version would be called, by those who dominate Islam, a Western-corrupted perversion. Wahabism rules – you don’t! That’s the world’s plight. You are a) just a minority b) part of a group unwilling or unable to become the dominant majority.Transformation lies in the activation of Islam as a 21stC religion.

It’s not about numbers its about which version of Islam dominates globally – and yours doesn’t because as yet the moderate majority, if they exist, are not willing to say, “Enough, no more!”

No one else is going to restore Islam to its rightful place other than moderate Moslems. Not even the sweet charm of Obama, let alone the insane machinations of Bush’s crowd.

The world, including most of the Islamic world, was held in sympathy for a short time because of 9/11.  Had America then raised 3,000 scholars of Islam instead of 3,000 cruise missiles, the world could soon have been at peace.

The possibility is still there – but only if moderate, modernized Islam moves to the dominant position.

What are you, and those moderate millions you refer to, going to do to ensure the good guys win?  We Kafirs will not be the ones to bring about the change from 8thC Islam to 21stC Islam.

As I write it seems as if Iran – and the rest of the world – is doomed to more craziness.

At least the US has made an effort in electing Obama.

Roger

To read Taufiq’s fine article go to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/taufiq-rahim/what-is-my-islam_b_214432.html

mgc

Beware – some common-sense has broken out!

The Centre of Theology and Philosophy

University of Nottingham

CoTP News || March 12, 2009

BBC2 Documentary: Did Darwin Kill God?

alism

Did Darwin Kill God? — airs tonight!

A new trailer for the documentary can be accessed here (2 min 16 sec).

Airing on BBC2 Tuesday 31st March 7.00pm.

The BBC’s Darwin Season: marking the life and work of Charles Darwin – highlights:

BBC Two

As many of you may be aware, the BBC has launched a ‘Darwin Season’ on both radio and television to commemorate the double anniversary that falls this year for Charles Darwin: 200 years since his birth and 150 years since the publication of his groundbreaking book-The Origin of Species. The received view of evolution’s relation with religion is that the former undermines the latter. Philosopher and theologian Conor Cunningham from the Centre of Theology and Philosophy, University of Nottingham, says this is simply nonsense.

Cunningham who has just completed a new book-Evolution: Darwin’s Pious Idea, which will be published in the autumn, was approached by the BBC and asked to write and present a one hour documentary exploring Darwinism’s apparent impact on Christianity. According to Conor, the cultural war between religion and evolution, most vocally represented by American creationists and scientists such as Richard Dawkins is completely unnecessary and more than that, it is damaging for both religion and science. In his documentary – Did Darwin Kill God? – Conor travels around England, America and Israel interviewing philosophers, Bible scholars and scientists in a bid to discover how this destructive conflict arose, and in the process concluding that it is based on bad science, inaccurate history, inadequate philosophy and even worse theology.

The main purpose of the documentary is to offer a critique of both Christian fundamentalists who reject evolution, doing so, Conor argues, because they display a complete lack of understanding about the Christian tradition, and Darwinian fundamentalists – those such as Dawkins who take Darwin’s theory beyond the domain of science and apply it to all aspects of life, and is so doing undermine the very cogency of evolution as a science. Consequently, Darwinists such as Dawkins are as great a threat to evolution as are creationists. In addition Conor seeks to remind viewers of the orthodox understanding of Christianity’s God, for it is this understanding that makes opposition between Darwin’s theory of evolution and Christianity not only misplaced but impossible.

Also, the University of Nottingham podcast website has added an interview with Conor Cunningham: A plague on both houses (mp3 Friday 13 March 2009; 32.1MB, 34.41mins).

Wow! – Darwin’s theory of evolution is compatible with Christianity – the Vatican claims

Chris Irvine in the telegraph has reported that;

‘The Vatican has admitted that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution

should not have been dismissed and claimed it is compatible with the

Christian view of Creation.’

 

Gianfranco Ravasi: Monsignor Ravasi said Darwin’s theories had never been formally condemned by the Roman Catholic Church Photo: EPA

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said while the Church had been hostile to Darwin’s theory in the past, the idea of evolution could be traced to St Augustine and St Thomas Aquinas.

Well, well well so truth is one but in different modes – fancy that!

To read the article go HERE

What’s the difference between spirituality and religion?

What's the difference between spirituality and religion?

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How do you answer the question above?

Below is how far I have got with this issue.

Spirituality is how we relate to the unknown and unknowable – to Ultimate reality – and the meaning and motivation we derive therefrom.

Our worldview, as a consequence, is how we ‘read’ the world. Our worldview includes that of which are conscious, plus that which derives from enculturation.  Becoming more fully conscious of Oneness, and acting accordingly, is our purpose.

Religion is the agreed set of relationships, teachings and customs held in common with any religious group of which one has membership.

Progress in spirituality is measured by regularly bringing oneself to account – in relation to the standards of your spirituality, world-view and religious group/s (if any).

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Etymological issues:

The English word “religion” is derived from the Middle English “religioun” which came from the Old French “religion.” It may have been originally derived from the Latin word “religo” which means “good faith,” “ritual,” and other similar meanings. Or it may have come from the Latin “religãre” which means “to tie fast.”

Doing your own research:

A very good starting point is provided by the Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance.  See HERE

The definitions I like best from this source are;

George Hegel: “the knowledge possessed by the finite mind of its nature as absolute mind.”

Paul Tillich: “Religious is the state of being grasped by an ultimate concern”

Others are;

The Religious Tolerance group tell us that David Carpenter has collected and published a list of definitions of religion, including:

Anthony Wallace: “a set of rituals, rationalized by myth, which mobilizes supernatural powers for the purpose of achieving or preventing transformations of state in man or nature.”

Hall, Pilgrim, and Cavanagh: “Religion is the varied, symbolic expression of, and appropriate response to that which people deliberately affirm as being of unrestricted value for them.”

Karl Marx: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Don Swenson defines religion in terms of the sacred: “Religion is the individual and social experience of the sacred that is manifested in mythologies, ritual, ethos, and integrated into a collective or organization.”

Paul Connelly also defines religion in terms of the sacred and the spiritual: “Religion originates in an attempt to represent and order beliefs, feelings, imaginings and actions that arise in response to direct experience of  the sacred and the spiritual. As this attempt expands in its formulation and elaboration, it becomes a process that creates meaning for itself on a sustaining basis, in terms of both its originating experiences and its own continuing responses.”

He defines sacred as: “The sacred is a mysterious manifestation of power and presence that is experienced as both primordial & transformative, inspiring awe & rapt attention. This is usually an event that represents a break or discontinuity from the ordinary, forcing a re-establishment or recalibration of perspective on the part of the experiencer, but it may also be something seemingly ordinary, repeated exposure to which gradually produces a perception of mysteriously cumulative significance out of proportion to the significance originally invested in it.”

He further defines the spiritual as: “The spiritual is a perception of the commonality of mindfulness in the world that shifts the boundaries between self and other, producing a sense of the union of purposes of self and other in confronting the existential questions of life, and providing a mediation of the challenge-response interaction between self and other, one and many, that underlies existential questions.”

My final question – “Why are there so many religious intolerance groups?”

To read the full article by the Religious Tolerance group go HERE

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True achievement, success and happiness lie in being fully and positively human –

through our caring our creativity and our criticality –

developed via service to the communities to which we belong.

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All postings to this site relate to the central model in the

PhD. Summaries are HERE

An open letter to all who recognize Oneness

 

Dear Fellow Travellers

 

1) Like your lives my life, (in a modest way), has (for the last 45 years), been dedicated to;

 

‘the advancement of education in the consideration of the basic unity of all religions, in particular by the provision of courses to provide an understanding of the relationship of man to the universe, the earth, the environment and the society he lives in, to Reality and to God.’

 

and right now the global and local opportunities, and dangers, strike me as unparalleled.

 

2) The great challenge seems to me to concern ‘the how’ of getting wider acceptance of Oneness and oneness as in Perennial Philosophy and the The Golden Rule – raised consciousness that will positively affect decision-making in all of the vital arenas of human concern.

 

3) A great shift in consciousness is taking place.

 

The great shift in consciousness is evidenced by two events.

Firstly in just the last few years what was esoteric is now open and freely available to to all.

 

Secondly millions are responding – in some way shape or form.

 

I have in mind especially the work of Ken Wilber, Karen Armstrong and most recently Eckhart Tolle.

 

Tolle’s writing is highly accessible – in the UK most Sun and Daily Mirror readers could handle it.

 

Of course functional literacy and level of consciousness and not directly correlated! But eleven million had by Week 3 tuned in to Tolle’s course run by Oprah Winfrey – see HERE

 

….. Oprah went further with Eckhart Tolle than she has ever gone with a previous author picked for her book club. She chose to present, with Tolle, a 10-week series of “webinars” – online seminars – with one chapter of the book (which she puts on the bedside table of all of her guest rooms) discussed each week. In the first webinar, transmitted on 3 March, Tolle led Winfrey and the millions of viewers who logged on in several different countries in silent meditation; viewers were then encouraged to submit questions to Tolle via Skype. By the third week, 11 million people were logging on.

 

This surely has no parallel in the whole of humankind’s spiritual history. The course is HERE

 

Not only are ‘the books open’ but there is more than Maslow’s 2% willing a new earth.

 

The question is how can their energy be harnessed and focused for the common good – or do we have to wait until the first nuclear war, simply because those who ‘know’ can’t find ways and means to influence those who actually ‘do the doing’ and make our world as it is.

 

4) We need to be thinking ‘outside of the box’. The old ways may not be sufficient. Keeping the candles of light and hope and truth is something that the precious few have done down through the ages, but now the challenge is to shift up to a larger stage.

 

For example inter-faith dialogue may well be effete (and for some cunning PR) compared to the people who really operate at the ‘hot interfaces’ – e. g. diplomats and business-people.

 

5) Absorbing and responding to this fact seems to me to be the challenge that might bring forth balm for suffering being borne by untold millions.

 

A sufficient proportion of America has said ‘Yes we can’ but even more critical than the decisions Obama will be making over the next 4 or 8 years is how can the light of Oneness be brought into the darkened hearts of religious haters and racists. That Oneness is the Tipping Point. The

‘tipping-point’ is realization of that Oneness – and it needs more than abstract assent.

 

6) My personal experience has led me to realize that individuals need something real and living and breathing through which to connect with ‘foreign’ wisdom traditions.

 

I believed in the oneness of religions long before I came across

a) Jane Clark’s article on Ibn al-Arabi – which created for me a living connection to Islam – and

b) the Bhagavad Gita Chanted in English HERE using a text of the Bhagavad Gita in English HERE

NB Try listening to the chanting whilst reading the text – wonderful! – transporting!

These gave me a living connection to Hinduism.

 

7) Starting points:

 

Perhaps looking very closely and deeply at ‘reverse fundamentalism’ is the way to generate programmes of positive action.

 

Karen Armstrong as you probably know is being given the opportunity to raise up the principle of the Golden Rule via her ‘Charter for Compassion’ campaign see HERE

 

Perhaps making celebratory programmes free to all on the internet…..

 

Perhaps Golden Rule materials free online for Heads and school…….

 

Perennial philosophy and the ‘federal’ Golden Rule – the ‘world language’ to be taught, in addition to their own religions, so that all can communicate with those of other faiths ……

 

What do you think?

 

We who have striven to keep the candles alight have to contribute to ways and means of reaching a sufficiently wider audience to get established some of the foundations for a new earth.

 

All blessings on the further development of your work.

 

Roger

Spanish Gene Test – a reason to hate more or hate less?

NICHOLAS WADE in the NY Times reports that;

The genetic signatures of people in Spain and Portugal provide new and explicit evidence of the mass conversions of Sephardic Jews and Muslims to Catholicism in the 15th and 16th centuries after Christian armies wrested Spain back from Muslim control, a team of geneticists reports.

Twenty percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry and 11 percent have DNA reflecting Moorish ancestors, the geneticists have found. Historians have debated how many Jews converted and how many chose exile. “One wing grossly underestimates the number of conversions,” said Jane S. Gerber, an expert on Sephardic history at the City University of New York.

The finding bears on two different views of Spanish history, said Jonathan S. Ray, a professor of Jewish studies at Georgetown University. One, proposed by the 20th-century historian Claudio Sánchez-Albornoz, holds that Spanish civilization is Catholic and other influences are foreign; the other sees Spain as having been enriched by drawing from all three of its historical cultures, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim.

I wonder if the inconvenience of these facts will provide racists and religious bigots reasons to hate more or hate less? 

You can read the full article by Nicholas Wade HERE

Ten ways to bridge and transcend racial and religious hatred

 

 

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The campaign Charter for Compassion are asking for contributions for the final charter.  Here is my first draft contribution;

Compassion and Peace: ten ways to bridge and transcend racial and religious hatred

 

1 See the Golden Rule as the equivalent to a language in addition to your own – “My ‘mother tongue’ is Islam/Christianity/Buddhism etc but I also speak ‘the Golden Rule’ – so that I can be a sister/brother to peoples of all religions and none.

 

2 Implore people like Barack Obama to spend money on deepening cultural understanding – say 10% of the military budget switched to Arabic/Islamic, Chinese and Russian studies. Generate an ‘open data-base’ of experience learned.

 

3 Encourage all countries to massively increase exchange programmes.  Send everyone with a ‘We’ve got these problems how are my host country dealing with them’ pack – and require a thorrough de-briefing upon return to home country – we must see that the most important problems are held in common, and that we must pool answers.

 

4 Use the knowledge as a data-base for university and school respect for other cultures courses – instead of allowing our societies to continue falsely claiming that the mad fundamentalist minority = the reality of the whole communuity.

 

5 Get celebrity goodwill ambassadors for the GR – include business people , they have more interchange with ‘foreigners’ than any other group.  Get pop groups talking and singing about it.

 

Get Barack Obama talking about it – and Nels Mandela, and Archbishop Tutu etc.

 

6 Start teaching the Golden Rule – one school at a time – everywhere.

 

7 Generate badges, widgets and bling for websites, windows, clothing that conveys messages such as – ‘I speak oneness and diversity’. ‘We support the GR’, etc (Get some adverstising agencies working on it).

 

8 Support studies of fundamentalism – focus on ways and means antidotes and prophylactics.  The best writers on fundamentalism may not be in obvious academic fields – the best I have found is 

 

9 Look for ‘out of the box’ solutions such as brilliant comedians such as Omid Djalili and Shazia Mirza.

If you don’t like strong comedy don’t go – but I suspect that Omid, and the others have ‘lanced more religious boils’ for the general population than all of the politicians and academics put put together!

 

10 Support ways and means for deeper applications of the Golden Rule – we need courses from nursery to university epecially based on the brilliant writings and work of a) Eckhart Tolle, b) Ken Wilber and c) Karen Armstrong.

Eckhart Tolle article HERE

Fundamentalism and women

I was pleased to see that the useful list of references in the WikiPedia article on Fundamentalism includes a link to a UK organization called Women Against Fundamentalism.  Let us hope they have more and more success – - and get to nurture sister organizations globally.

WOMEN AGAINST FUNDAMENTALISM (WAF)

WAF members join SBS and supporters in celebrating Southall Black Sisters’ legal victory in the High Court. Read more at the SBS website.

Women Against Fundamentalism is currently focusing its campaigning on:

• the role of religion in the British education system today
• the British Government’s community cohesion and faith agendas

If you would like more information, please send an email to: infoATwomenagainstfundamentalism.org.uk (replace AT with @)

WHO WE ARE

Women Against Fundamentalism (WAF) was formed in 1989 to challenge the rise of fundamentalism in all religions. Its members include women from a wide range of backgrounds and from across the world.

By fundamentalism we mean a modern political movement which is using religion to gain or consolidate power. We do not mean religious observance, which we see as a matter of individual choice.

FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN

Fundamentalism is found in all religions throughout the world, sometimes holding state power, sometimes in opposition to it. But whatever their relationship to the state, all fundamentalists see women’s role as crucial in representing and transmitting the supposedly unchanging morals and traditions of the whole community.

Women who fail to conform to so-called traditional family values are portrayed as placing the wellbeing and future of the whole society or community at risk. The control of women’s minds and bodies is, therefore, at the heart of fundamentalist agendas everywhere.

To go to their site click HERE

The fundamentalism of cultic behaviour

Great movie to show the characteristics of cultic behaviour;

The joy of minimalist art – this time on Evolution v. Creationism

Now this is a form of minimalism that I can really enjoy!

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A great joke accompanies it SEE SoulsCode

‘Has the spirituality been stolen from your religion? Does Eckhart Tolle provide the answer?

Edited Nov 02 2008

If you start to teach spiritual stuff you better make sure you are walking the talk.  I hope that Eckhart Tolle is walking the talk because he has a very powerful message, and is succeeding in communicating it like no other in modern times.

I hope that, with all of the attention he is getting, Tolle can continue to walk the talk.  He did travel through a dark night of despair as a precursor to the personal revelation from which he is teaching, so he has paid some dues.

But what is the most important benefit he is giving us?  He seems to be as sound as Ken Wilber and teaches the same stuff – Perennial Philosophy, the eternal mystical core that is at the heart of all of the world’s great wisdom traditions.

He has managed to attract extraordinary coverage for his teaching – notably the course co-hosted with Oprah Winfrey. 

He and Oprah have attracted a torrent of vilification from the loony fundamentalists. If you want a glimpse of this start with this video;

….but there are loads more like it!

I suggest that the core of his value might be in showing us the eternal mystical truths with an integrity that helps anyone with a religious inklin, or connection, to step back to see more clearly the eternal reality of the mystical core.  For many of us he is enabling us to re-experience the spirituality lost from established religions, as more and more man-made accretions have darkened the glass.  Many religions, whatever their golden core teachings, seem to have forced out the true light, and salvation.

There are a tiny number of people who are seeking to bridge the divide between fundamentalists and  teh Perennial Philosophy-minded.  Louis Bourgeois seems to be one such a person.  He has many videos out there.  This one is specifically about building bridges;

 

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An impressive review of Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now is to be found here;

The more I read of ‘The Power of Now’, the more I was convinced that in Eckhart Tolle’s teachings we had stumbled upon a genuine and profound expression of the non-dual realization, a rare pearl in the shallow tide-pools of new millennium spirituality. via A Review of Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”