Remembering the Farm: Cavell, Leipzig and School Prayer

The one-room school in the now disappeared community of Cavell, where my father almost completed grade 8 and I completed grade 7, is now a museum in Wilkie, a small town about 15 minutes away (30 minutes when I was a kid).  My sister (who never attended Cavell) took pictures when she was there lately.  I was looking at them on FB, stole the two below and it got me thinking about my school days and the then non-issue of religion in schools.

My father was hunting crows eggs in the spring of his grade 8 year, fell out of a tree and broke his arm, so could not write the final exams.  The teacher gave him his grade on condition that he NEVER return to school. I managed to complete Grade 7. They closed the school in June of 1960 along with several other one room schools and we were bused to now disappeared community of Leipzig about 7 miles away where I took my Grades 8 to 12..

Leipzig was a Catholic community, mainly of Volga Germans and others from Germany directly.  There were a few Lutherans in the mix, I believe as there was a Luthern church in town. The Saskatchewan Mother House of the Sisters of Notre Dame was located in Leipzig and the Sisters were our school teachers.  The school was a Catholic school in the Public School system because the vast majority of kids were Catholic.  Religion was taught from 3:00 to 3:30 and we heathen Protestants could do our homework under the watchful eye of one Sister Martina.

Cavell was just a regular public school while Wilkie had a Catholic School under what was known as a Separate School Board and a public school under the Public School Board.

I had often wondered about the fuss today about so-called Christian Schools, where parents don't want their children going to a public school.  I finally realized that in my father's and my time in our part of Saskatchewan there were only Christian Schools - either Catholic or Protestant, with Protestant being the default public school type. Because there were no other religions in rural Saskatchewan.

Religion was not taught per se in the "Protestant" schools as in the Catholic schools but certainly the values were, more indirectly than deliberately.  And looking through my father's old readers and even my Grade 7 and 8 readers, there were excerpts from the KJV Bible which were taught as literature.

At Cavell, if my memory serves me correct (and I hope someone can verify as I am old and my memory sometimes recalls things that didn't happen), in the morning we stood at our desks and sang Oh Canada and said the Lord's Prayer (long version).  When we went to Leipzig, we gathered in the hall in the morning and sang Oh Canada and said the Lord's Prayer (short version).  It was not a problem for our parents because we all to a greater or lesser degree, subscribed to some version of Christianity.

I suspect that this held true for all parts of Canada at some time in their history.  However, as more people moved to Canada from all parts of the world, unless they were Catholic, their kids ended up in the Public School system effectively diluting the Protestant only make up.  So we have public schools with Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, JWs, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, and two dozen other kinds I have never heard of along with people who don't believe in any kind of God or gods.

It is no longer one size fits all.  The world has changed and we have to change with it.  If there is going to be prayer in the schools, then everyone has to divide up into their own groups and pray their own prayers or else no prayers at all. Christmas is THE most important festival season in the Christian world.  School Christmas Concerts used to have bits and pieces about Christmas - carols and mangers and such.  Not any more.  I kind of miss it but recognize that public schools are for all students and must take into account the beliefs of all students as best as possible.

The folks that are hostile about all this, claiming an attack on Christianity etc., are just trying to sound righteous.  What they are really upset about is that the demographic make up of our country has changed and they don't like it.  But rural schools were simpler 50 years ago, I will admit.

Two Different Bibles?

“Mark you this, Bassanio, the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”—from “The Merchant of Venice”

The Religious Right has been claiming the high ground for years to the point of stating that one cannot be Christian unless one holds their conservative values and that liberals seeking social justice are godless. So I was very pleased to run across a website for The Christian Left www.thechristianleft.com which tells me that it is not just the “godless” who are seeking social justice.  Though if it were, it wouldn’t bother me, nor change my politics.  If being a Christians means I have to be anti-sick, anti-poor, anti-oppressed, anti-minorities, anti-women, anti-environment, pro-wealth and pro-war, then I am just as happy to be out of it.

The home page of the Christian Left is quite lengthy but well worth reading*. It begins:

We are The Christian Left. We’re all around you. We’re among the people. Take a look. We’re part of the Body of Christ. We’re Christians. We’re Liberal. We make no apologies. In fact Jesus' ways are “Liberal.” That’s why He was killed. The Pharisees and the Sadducees were the conservatives of their time . . .We’re not ‘Communists’ or ‘Marxists’ either. We reject all such labels. We will not be profiled or pigeonholed and we will not ‘Be Quiet.’ We’re Christians. We’re Liberals. Please get used to it . . . The most common religious viewpoint which might be described as ‘left wing’ is social justice, or care for the poor and the oppressed. Supporters of this might encourage universal health care, welfare provision, subsidized education, foreign aid, and Affirmative Action for improving the conditions of the disadvantaged. Stemming from egalitarian values (and what Jesus Himself said), adherents of the Christian left consider it part of their religious duty to take actions on behalf of the oppressed.

When we have Rick Santorum making statements like Obama’s agenda is some phony theology not based on the bible or others suggesting “liberalism is a hatred of God”, Mike Lux at Crooks and Liars wonders “What Bible is Santorum Reading?” 

[T]he Bible I read…is overwhelmingly supportive of helping the poor, showing mercy to the weak, refraining from judging, treating others as you would treat yourself, calling on the wealthy to give their money to the poor, and all kinds of other liberal, lefty, progressive values.

Several paragraphs such as this one bring out the clear message of social justice:

The anti-immigrant conservative has to ignore Leviticus, which says: "Don't mistreat any foreigners who live in your land. Instead treat them as well as you treat citizens and love them as much as you love yourself." The pro-death penalty conservative has to ignore Jesus who told the Pharisees that he who is without sin should cast the first stone. The anti-labor conservatives have to not worry about Jesus' brother James (the undisputed first leader of the early Christian church according to most historians) saying "Now an answer for the rich. Start crying, weep for the miseries coming to you ... Laborers plowed your field and you cheated them: listen to the wages you kept back, they are calling out: realize the cries of the workers have reached the ears of the Lord."

He continues:

Now, look: people have every right to believe whatever they want to believe about God, Heaven and Hell, sin and salvation, the soul, and all sorts of theology. . . And if you want to believe in a God who doesn't care about the poor, loves the wealthy more than anyone else, and wants you to be selfish, feel free. But when you claim to fervently believe in the holy words of the Judeo-Christian Bible, and your political philosophy is violently opposed to most of what is actually in that Bible, I have to call you out on that. . .

I will go so far as to say that the modern conservative faith is the direct opposite of what the Judeo-Christian Bible teaches: modern conservatives argue that everyone should take what they want and devil take the hindmost, that we are all on our own, and that if you are rich it means that a Darwinian selection process allowed you to succeed, and that you owe nothing to anyone else. Modern conservatives are far more faithful to Ayn Rand, who openly rejected Christianity because of its values of helping the poor and caring for others. Give her credit for one thing: at least she was honest.

Now someone will say “Well, you are just ‘Cherry-picking’.  The whole Bible is inspired by God and you just can’t pick and chose.  ‘[E]ther it’s all God’s truth in all its parts, or none of it is’”.  My answer to that is to refer you to my previous post “Why can’t I own a Canadian?” 

Every religious denomination, every preacher, every bible teacher cherry-picks in the sense that some verses are emphasized and others are ignored.  That is why there are so many different versions of Christianity. During the civil war in USA, Northern Christians used their bibles to prove slavery was wrong while Southern Christians used their bibles to prove slavery was right.  (Hence Southern Baptists – and thanks, Snowbrush).  Martin Luther cherry-picked Ephesians 2:8-10 and justification by faith became the founding scripture of Protestantism.

Contrary to what the fundamentalists would have you believe, the Bible did not “fall from the sky on the 4^th of July” fully formed in its King James version.  The notion that “the Bible (KJV) is without error in all its teachings, including creation, history, its own origins, and salvation” is wishful thinking.  It is Holy Scripture; it is not a history text, biology text, chemistry text nor physics text. As Galileo famously argued, scripture teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.

The books of the Bible were written over the centuries by men for men (and not always by the men whose names appear on the various books.  The bible was translated by men for men, interpreted by men for men; labouriously copied over and over again by men for men, with errors, additions and subtractions deliberate or otherwise until the printing press made such work redundant.  Books were added and subtracted until the present day canon was arrived at.  Roman Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox each have very different canons.  Catholic Bibles have 73 books, 46 in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament. Protestant Bibles have 66 books with only 39 in the Old Testament. Orthodox Bibles have 76 books with 49 in the Old Testament.

See Here for a brief outline of the Church Councils convened over several centuries to agree on biblical canon. Politics, power and money have been part of religion since humans first bowed down to a rock.

So everyone reads the same bible, more or less, cherry-picks the verses to support their ideology and accuses the other of being godless.  More on this subject another time.  I have been all week getting this far but have found some excellent writings (see below) on the subject of reading the bible which I hope you will read.  I hope to come back to it at a later date.

Charles Scriven, Ph.D., chair of the Seventh Day Adventist Forum board (publisher of Spectrum), president of Kettering College of Medical Arts wrote a series of three articles in 2010 in the Spectrum Magazine blog around “Why Can’t I own a Canadian?” examining how people read the bible.  They are Grace, the Holy Spirit, and the Threat of Fundamentalism; Part I and Part II and Biblical Realism as an Alternative to Fundamentalism, Here.  

*Note: You may want to read the comments at the bottom as well before you make up your mind about The Christian Left.  They seem to be banning any commenters from their FB page that raise any issues they do not agree with and do not differentiate between trolling and honest dialogue.  They have no problem with comments on their website though.

Why Can't I Own a Canadian?

Snopes says this been making the rounds of many years but considering the lunacy being promulgated during the current GOP campaign of presidential hopefuls, in particular by Santorum, it seems fitting to run it by again.

In her (1990?) radio show, Dr Laura Schlesinger said that, as an observant Orthodox Jew, homosexuality is an abomination according to Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, penned by a US resident, which was posted on the Internet. It's funny, as well as informative:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God's Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination .... End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God's Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can't I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of Menstrual uncleanliness - Lev15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

4. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my neighbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

5. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

6. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination, Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don't agree. Can you settle this? Are there 'degrees' of abomination?

7. Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

8. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

9. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

10. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn't we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I'm confident you can help. Thank you again for reminding us that God's word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan,

Jim

Righteous Abortion: How Conservative Christianity Promotes What It Claims to Hate

Righteous Abortion: How Conservative Christianity Promotes What It Claims to Hate 
 http://new.exchristian.net/2012/01/righteous-abortion-how-conservative.html

I shared a link to this on Facebook and got comments from two people.

One of the paragraphs in the article stated that in The Netherlands abortion rates were 1/3 that of America per 1000 pregnancies because they "de-stigmatized sexual education, de-mythologized virginity, and invested in broad access to the most effective contraceptives available". One of the comments received pointed out the obvious (though of course the religious right won't see it as such): If we truly want to reduce abortions (which we can all agree is good, right?), then promoting birth control and women's rights works! If we take away education and access to birth control, there are more abortions and more risky abortions which means the mortality rate for the mothers goes up also. That is anti-life.

Of course, the post also attracted comments from one who was shocked by it all: Wow, one of the harshest and most critical things I've every read. Interesting how the writer likes to quote OLD testament. People who read the bible know that Christ came to liberate and save us from that way of life. And it  is quite post-modernist in it's approach - life is all about doing what you want, when you want. It's all about the individual. I won't comment again, but I caution people against this type of diatribe.

Now I totally agree with the first commenter.  The second was more difficult.  Last time I checked, the OT was part of the biblical canon.  Certain verses are certainly quoted enough when they suit the ideology at least, especially by those who claim the Bible is infallible and every word is true and it must be followed to the letter.  This approach would seem to ignore the fact that, as the second commenter pointed out, Christ allegedly lived and died to save us from the letter of the law which brings only "death" because no one can follow it perfectly enough.


And it  is quite post-modernist in it's approach - life is all about doing what you want, when you want. It's all about the individual. I thought "post-modernist" related to a group of artists but I have much to learn.  Being free to do one's own thinking and set one's own course, as opposed to doing what we are told by the religious hierarchy, sounds good to me.  Not sure what the problem is.


And the inevitable warning, not to read such stuff.  You might get a flash of liberating doubt?  You might learn something?  You might begin to think and analyse the nonsense you are being taught? Keeping the peasants ignorant and uneducated has been the methodology of control since the dawn of time.  The religious right frown on higher learning unless it is at THEIR institutions where you are taught WHAT to think, not taught HOW to think. 


At any rate, the article will be preaching to the choir for many of my readers and most of the others won't read it lest they learn something they don't want to hear.

Why People still Prefer Religion

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” Stephen Hawking

The following Career Choice flow chart was stolen from DC Power.  He is an electrical engineer with a long and distinguished career with Saskatchewan Power Corporation which will be coming to an end in 93 days, 9 1/2 hours as I write.  

If you compare it with the flow chart on Religion a couple of blog posts below, you can see why many people still prefer religion to science in spite of Stephen Hawking.  Religion is far simpler and has all the answers.  It also seems to involve a lot of food.

Click to enlarge

Religious Flow Chart

I'm sure I posted this before.  I think I stole it from Violet.at Miserable Bliss

I Believe in God

"The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank". - Dante Gabriel Rossetti. A friend of mine posted this on Facebook a while back. That and Voltaire's quote "If God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent Him*" got me to thinking. Why do I believe in God?

This blog post is mainly for me, to sort out a few things in print and put it out where it is public. It is not intended as a challenge, nor as proselytizing. Many of the blogs I read (because the writers care about people, about justice, about health care and decent wages, about good education and adequate pensions, about workplace safety) are written by people who are declared Atheist or Agnostic, with one Apatheist. I don’t blame them for their non-belief.

They, by and large, escaped from authoritarian fundamentalist “Christian” organizations. Trust me, I don’t believe in the God these organizations represent either. Theirs is a political God used to enforce positions of power. A God who hates women, people of colour, the poor, the sick, the powerless, the gay. A God who loves war, money, and (mainly) white males. In a bait and switch tactic, billed as a God of love and forgiveness, but delivered as a God of fear and guilt. No thanks.

At least they could escape, sometimes with loss of their family, support system, community, sometimes with nothing more than “phone calls from their mother”. There are other religions where one is lucky to escape with their life. Their God hates women with a passion and everyone else too that doesn’t fully subscribe their very narrow definitions of “Godly”. Again, a political God, used to enforce power positions. No thanks.

Part of the problem of believing in God is that we think too small. We look for some kind of Zeus, a human-like being with super powers. Michelangelo’s God. God is often pictured, though likely unknowingly by the speaker, as an angry old man, peering down through a knothole at the world and pounding his fist in anger if he sees a bare patch of skin or people having a good time. I can't prove God exists in any "scientific" manner and if I could then it really wouldn't be a God I would want to believe in anyhow. Too small.


Being trained in the sciences, I am well aware of the many "natural laws" that govern physics, chemistry, biology, life itself. The whole universe pretty much operates on its own, following all these natural laws. Where there are laws, there must be a law giver. All else can and does follow as a consequence of these laws. I have to admit that as science traced the origins of the current universe back multi-billions of years to the split second at which it began, that on the other side, they would find the only explanation was God. I should have known better. Too small.


Stephen Hawking's latest book, “The Grand Design”, which I haven’t read yet, explains how the Universe came into being without a creative moment as we would understand it. That makes God bigger than Steven Hawking and that takes some doing as Hawking likely has a better grasp of what exactly is infinity than any one. Now we know that the universe is finite, we need a new measure to try to imagine infinity. Trying to get my mind around infinity hurts as it doesn't quite stretch that far.

Eternity is another word that is too big to measure. God is eternal. How long is eternal? Longer than the age of our current universe at any rate. (Apparently Heaven and Hell are supposed to be eternal, too. That scares hell out of me. Not the Heaven and Hell part, the eternal part. I cannot imagine doing anything eternally. I mean, imagine living in Hawaii, waking up and looking out the window “Damn, another nice day” and playing two more rounds of golf. For eternity…)

Most of the reasons I believe in God are pretty simple and selfish. When I am thankful and I so often am, for life in general and some things in particular, I need someone to thank, so I thank God. When I wake up at night and worry about friends and loved ones who are far away or with problems I can’t deal with, I leave them with God. I also thank people and I also help people but “knowing” there is a God, makes things much less complicated and eases my mind.


I like to think there is Someone in charge of the universe, of this earth and of everything in it; that life has a purpose. I am not sure what in charge means, certainly not day to day operation and manipulation but maybe a plan of some kind. Humans evolved to the top of the food chain through the functioning of natural laws over a long period of time. Whether it was preprogrammed into the system or occurred randomly is neither here nor there. I prefer preprogrammed. Others can disagree. Like the existence of God, it cannot be proven either way. One is Who and Why, the other is How.

But the things humans do to each other, (never mind what the earth can do to humans; as I write this, NZ is dealing with results of a 6.3 earthquake in the Christchurch area) it is easy to dismiss God for allowing these things to happen, since God obviously doesn’t love creation. Without the existence of an over all long term (eternal) plan, life would be pretty horrible to contemplate and one wonders why people continue to reproduce, struggle to exist, etc. Other than I guess that is programmed in as well. So I believe there is a plan. And maybe even justice somewhere some time, somehow.

I like to think and that there is something beyond the grave for all life – humans, cows, dogs, trees, flowers. They are all alive, they all have life. When one shuts off a car engine, nothing changes except there is no longer a spark. No electricity flows to the plugs, nor to the controls system. The car is dead. I like to think that life does not stop at the time of death on earth. Not just human life but all life, plant and animal. That the spark which is life came from God and goes back to God. What happens to it there is unknowable.

This is pretty long and rambling so I am going to leave it. I have several short essays, written over the years, of things I believe, things I value, my philosophy of life as it were. Interesting to go back and reread them and see what changes and what does not. And I refuse to think about infinity or eternity, other than Tanya needs infinite patience as I take an eternity to get ready to go when she is ready (and of course vice versa).

*I apologize for using the male pronoun Him in reference to God. That was simply the quote. We need a better pronoun to describe God, who is not a He nor a She. God should be referenced accurately in English as IT (neither male nor female) but some will say that demeans God. Really? Then the fact that we say "he, she, it" in that order would mean that God is also demeaned if referred to as She. The implications of that are quite disgusting.

The Mark of the Beast

Sometimes I wonder if the mark of the beast referred to in Revelations isn't going to turn out to be the cross. We condemn moderate Muslims for not speaking out against radical Islam and preventing it from terrorizing the rest of the world.  One could ask what is moderate Christianity doing about these kinds of people?  God help us all if they get into power in America.

Does Bachmann Believe Congress Should be Run by Christians?

Tsarist Russia 1812. Republican America 2012?

"Moscow in 1812 was a sprawling city of about 250,000 inhabitants in fall. Throughout the winter months, when the nobles and their serfs returned from their country estates the population would increase by about 100,000. Rising out of a sea of single story wooden houses, many of them little more than huts, were the great stone palaces of the aristocracy. . . The palaces situated in large gardens were not nearly so numerous as the 6 cathedrals and 1500 churches that tended to the souls of the Muscovites. As elsewhere in Russia a citizen. . . either had everything or nothing. Everyone was either connected to the great families or served them. The small middle class consisted mainly of merchants and those who provided skilled services for the nobles or for the government. Many of these people were foreigners.

"To describe the Russian aristocrats are “conspicuous consumers” would be something of an understatement. . . This was underlined by the summer exodus of the nobility; when the nobles took their service entourages along, the population of the city was reduced by 28%. Yet even this statistic does not iclude everyone connected with the palaces, because staff remained behind to look after these empty “townhouses”.

"In addition to maintaining residences in St Petersburg (and Moscow). . . the great families duplicated their lavish domiciles in their summer residences outside Moscow and often on their vast agricultural domains. There, amid thousands of serfs, they lived in a grand style. To put it plainly, this very thin elite layer atop the Russian social strata was all the counted. The rest of the population were considered of little consequence. . .

"When word of what had happened at Borodino got around, the nobles at once put their serfs to work stripping their Moscow residences of all valuables. . . About 10,000 soldiers, wounded in battle needed to be moved but there were no wagons or draft teams left because everything that had wheels had been used to transport the property of the wealthy."

****

"Invoking the name of God, the aroused peasants committed unspeakable cruelties and almost every kind of torture imaginable to prolong the agony of their victims. In this they were morally abetted by the fact that the average Russian believed that all west Europeans were unbaptized heathens who had been led into holy Russia by the anti-Christ. This was the way the situation had been presented to the uneducated population; from St. Petersburg, Moscow and the Russian army headquarters, manifestos attesting to these “facts” were circulated in every market square."

From: 1812: Napoleon’s Russian Campaign by Richard K Riehn. McGraw Hill 1990.

Pew Survey of Questions on Religion

Some weeks ago, the big news was that in a 32 question survey about religion, atheists beat out everyone else.  Not to be proud of.  Average score was 16 and atheists scored 21.  So this morning while Tanya is in town shopping, I decided to find the survey. 

No big deal.  It is all general questions and pass or fail has not much to do with you as a believer (or not) but more on your education and general knowledge.  Though if you don't know the difference between Moses and Abraham. . .

Here are survey questions from The Christian Science Monitor Pew Survey of Questions on Religion  For some reason it starts at question 32 and works backwards to question 1 which also has the answers.

I got two wrong.  Good luck.  Let me know how you do on the comment section.  Snowbrush, I know you got 100% and would have expected nothing less from you. Number ONE Son, I expect the same from you (no pressure).

I was wrong

I am ashamed and I apologize for my initial reaction to the construction of a community centre several blocks from Ground Zero by the local Muslim community.  Some days I wonder what goes on inside my head.  I had read enough to change my mind by the time I closed comments on Of Mosque and Men but ran into these two articles today which really clinched it for me.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/20/AR2010082004795.html?waporef=obinsite

http://www.slate.com/id/2264754/?from=rss

Of Mosque and Men

Dana from "Life is Good" asked me to make sure I read her most recent post "Few Words Needed".  The post and the comments that follow raise some good issues.  Two other posts Regarding the Mosque Near Ground Zero and Yeah,…,what he said. Sam Harris on building Mosque near Ground Zero from Coyote Sings  are also worth reading on the subject.

Rob-Bear is right in that the US is determined to make Muslims out as the bad guys of the 21st Century.  Starting with Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations.

And they are getting a great deal of help from certain members of Islam themselves.  If you want a list, read the news. At the rate they are going, people are soon going to rise up in a rage and attempt to destroy them off the face of the earth. Maybe that is the plan

A thousand years ago, Islam was the centre of civilization.  Christian Europe was a land of barbaric beliefs and practices. Now they have nicely changed places.  What happened? Lots of books try to come to grips with that issue.  Bernard Lewis has written a number of books on the subject.  Karen Armstrong's Islam, A Short History is a very moderate and balanced look at Islam.

American Muslims have every legal right to build a Mosque where ever they want in United States  if they have control of the property and meet zoning bylaws.  President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg both acknowledge this fact.  They have the right to do it.  And it has been painted in the best politically correct language that they should do it.  They are fools if they do.  First it is in incredibly bad taste.  Second the instant some Islamic preacher uses it as a bully pulpit to celebrate a victory over the infidel and encourage more acts of violence, it will set the Muslim-American community back decades, possibly permanently, in trying to co-exist in America.

And Islam may appear to be THE most serious menace to the world.  They are a Red Herring.  "When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross", Sinclair Lewis.  The Religious Reich bent on a "Godly" society and global hegemony will make the Taliban seem like moderates.  And like Hitler's Jews, Islam will be the made-to-order scapegoat.

All Muslims should not be tarred with the same brush just as all Christians will not want to be tarred with the same brush tomorrow.

The Nature of God

Tomes have been written on the nature of God by highly learned men, which I have no intention of reading unless they turn out to be part of my purgatory.  It is Snowbrush wrestling with the contradictions of theism and atheism that has got me thinking about my own attempts to come to grips with things over the past 30 odd years.  In a number of his blogs, he has forced me to think through my own beliefs and I owe hm for that.  Him and all his readers who comment.  Now he is threatening to leave that topic so I better get busy and write.  I jotted a few things down in previous blogs WHO and WHO & HOW. And please keep in mind, this is the very finite trying to explain the infinite.

The gist of the argument is that if God is so good and loves his people so much how come he allows so much suferring in this world? I quote from Snowbrush's blog:
(1) If God is omniscient, he knows exactly where, when, and how much every creature suffers. (2) If God is omnibenevolent, he doesn’t want any creature to suffer. (3) If God is omnipotent, he has the power to eliminate suffering without eliminating any benefit that suffering might bring. 

Now the nature of God has always been described as omnipotent (all powerful) omniscient (all knowing) and omnipresent (big enough to fill the universe and small enough to fill my heart, as the song says).  I never anywhere heard of omnibenevolent but stand to be corrected (R-B?).

Yes, God knows exactly what is happening and what will happen to all His Creation and I expect it gives Him a great deal of pain to see His creatures suffer and yes, he could change all that "in the twinkling of an eye".  However, He is not going to do that.

We are taught that God has a plan for the redemption of His creation from its current sorry state of affairs.  And given that the earth is 3 to 4 billion years old and the universe much older than that, it is fair to say His planning horizons are not the 5 years in my business planning, nor the 50 years that the Japanese allegedly use, nor the 500 years the Chinese allegedly use in their political maneuverings.

As I understand it, God wants a people who will know Him for WHO He is and love and worship him OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL.  Doing everything for us is not going to help us grow up, nor is magically making us love Him going to be very satisfactory (A very crude comparison - and I know, I know, I 'm going to Hell - is using a date-rape drug vs old fashioned seduction).

So He leaves us to our own devices and so far we have pretty much mucked it up and it hasn't even begun to get really bad yet.  When you compound man's inhumanity to man with nature's inhumanity to man over a few millennia, you arrive at today. Bleah! But humans are not yet convinced they can't fix things themselves (liberals) or they have the upper hand in the game and don't want it fixed (conservatives).  At some point those who are left will come to their senses, realize that they need a power beyond themselves (how is it worded in AA?) and turn to God.

That is the tricky part as there is no end to the folks who assail us daily with the idea that THEY alone have the answers, that God has given them alone the wisdom to understand the Bible as the road map to Salvation and that the rest of us, in order to be saved should shut up and do what they say, unquestioningly. Sorting our way through that minefield is no easy task and no one is going to do it for us.

Please pass the hat.

WHO and HOW

I got some email feedback on yesterday's blog.  Two positive and one accusing me of propagating "atheist opinion".  That puzzled me greatly as Weingarten's column was anything but.  Irreverent perhaps but certainly not atheistic.

Then it hit me - it contained the dreaded "E" word.  Evolution was described in a positive light.  Obviously since Atheists believe in evolution, Christians MUST not.  So therefore the article was atheist.

This is logic of the Middle Ages. Muslims were scrupulously clean, with bath houses, regular bathing, etc.  Since they were wicked infidels, obviously this was also wicked and sinful so "Christians" washed as little and as seldom as possible. There is the story of an elderly nun on her death bed who was proud that in her entire life she had never washed so much as her little finger*.  (Read James A Mitchener's Hawaii for a more modern version of the same logic in 19th century New England Missionaries to the Islands).

Some people look at evolution as proof God does not exist and we are all accidents of genetic randomness.  I look at evolution and conclude that the same God who created the Universe and all the laws governing it also created the laws governing life and living organisms.  How life first appeared on this planet, I don't know, nor in what form.  but I suspect that, like the universe, it was not and then it was.  And from whatever beginnings, living organisms have progressed or changed over the eons until we reach today.

Was it all random or was there a plan behind the seeming randomness.  I believe there was a plan but of course, that cannot be proven.. Nor disproven.

Evolution is a science and as such, it's theories and hypotheses are only as good as today's knowledge.  But at least evolutionists are looking to learn. Does evolution square with a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis?  No, of course not.  Nor should it.

The Bible is Holy Scripture.  It is not a history text book, though it contains much history.  It is not biology/genetics/geology or any other kind of science text book either.  The Bible teaches us how to live, how to treat our fellow humans and our world.  For believers, it teaches us God's plan and purpose for us, how to build a close relationship with God and what God has in store for us.  Why people insist on making the Bible into something it is not, is beyond me.


*She wouldn't have had much trouble keeping her vow of chastity at that rate, anyhow.

And God Said, Let There Be Light in Kansas

Memo to: The members of the Kansas Board of Education

From:     God

Re:          Your decision to eliminate the teaching of evolution as science.

Thank you for your support. Much obliged.

Now, go forth and multiply. Beget many children. And yea, your children shall beget children. And their children shall beget children, and their children’s children after them. And in time the genes that have made you such pinheads will be eliminated through natural selection. Because that is how it works.

Listen, I love all my creatures equally, and gave each his own special qualities to help him on Earth. The horse I gave great strength. The antelope I gave great grace and speed. The dung beetle I gave great stupidity, so he doesn’t realize he is a dung beetle. Man I gave a brain.  Use it, okay?

I admit I am not perfect. I’ve made errors. (Armpit hair—what was I thinking?) But do you Kansans seriously believe that I dropped half-a-billion-year-old trilobite skeletons all over my great green Earth by mistake? What, I had a few lying around some previous creation in the Andromeda galaxy, and they fell through a hole in my pocket?

You were supposed to find them. And once you found them, you were supposed to draw the appropriate, intelligent conclusions. That’s what I made you for. To think.

The folks who wrote the Bible were smart and good people. Mostly, they got it right. But there were glitches. Imprecisions. For one thing, they said that Adam and Eve begat Cain and Abel, and then Cain begat Enoch.  How was that supposed to have happened?  They left out Tiffany entirely!

Well, they also were a little off on certain elements of timing and sequence. So what?

You guys were supposed to figure it all out for yourselves, anyway.  When you stumble over the truth, you are not supposed to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and proceed on as though nothing had happened. If you find a dinosaur’s toe, you’re not supposed to look for reasons to call it a croissant. You’re not big, drooling idiots. For that, I made dogs.

Why do you think there are no fossilized human toes dating from a hundred million years ago? Think about it.  It’s okay if you think. In fact, I prefer it. That’s why I like Charlie Darwin. He was always a thinker. Still is. He and I chat frequently.

I know a lot of people figure that if man evolved from other organisms, it means I don’t exist. I have to admit this is a reasonable assumption and a valid line of thought. I am in favor of thought. I encourage you to pursue this concept with an open mind, and see where it leads you.

That’s all I have to say right now, except that I’m really cheesed off at laugh tracks on sitcoms, and the NRA.

Oh, wait. There’s one more thing.

Did you read in the newspapers yesterday how scientists in Australia dug up some rocks and found fossilized remains of life dating back further than ever before? Primitive, multicelled animals on Earth nearly 3 billion years ago, when the planet was nothing but roiling muck and ice and fire.

And inside those cells was . . . DNA. Incredibly complex strands of chemicals, laced together in a scheme so sophisticated no one yet understands exactly how it works.

I wonder who could have thought of something like that, back then.

Just something to gnaw on.

By Gene Weingarten

Washington Post Staff Writer

Saturday, August 14, 1999;

WHO

I believe in God.  An omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent God.  An eternal God without beginning or end of days.  He always was and always will be.

You cannot prove it scientifically either way.  You believe or you do not believe.

I believe God created the universe and everything in it. Science is busy trying to find out exactly when and how and they are quite close.  I understand they have traced/calculated the universe back to about 1 millionth/1 billionth (???) of a second after the "Big Bang" occurred but not quite to the initial point of the Big Bang itself.  They know roughly how old the universe is and a great deal more about it than I can understand.  Even after reading Stephen Hawking's "A Brief Moment in Time".

Why do I believe God created the Universe and everything in it?  

Because of all the Laws which govern how everything behaves.  Whether physics, chemistry, biology (and every sub-sector within these disciplines), there are certain laws which govern how things happen.  Science is about discovering and understanding these laws.  Physicists have the tough ones as they get out to the edges of the universe and deep inside the workings of sub-atomic particles.  The laws of genetics ensure continuity from generation to generation AND provide enough variation for selection (natural and human assisted) and even for evolution.

Engineers of all stripes take advantage of all the known laws, harnessing them to design and construct various and sundry amazing things. Like cars and rockets and computers and artificial hearts and bridges and electrical grids and . . .

Whenever there are Laws, there must be a Law Giver. Someone who laid down the order by which the universe and everything in it unfolds.

You cannot prove it scientifically either way. You believe or you do not believe.  I believe.

Easter

Easter is one of the two holiest days of all Christian Churches, the other of course being Christmas.  The birth, life and death of Christ brought salvation to the world through redemption from sin.  According to Hebraic Law, blood sacrifice was necessary for forgiveness from sin.  Although the most perfect lamb was chosen, being biological of course, it could not be PERFECT.  Consequently the sacrifice was good for one year only.

Jesus was the "Perfect Lamb of God" without spot or blemish in his life from beginning to end, so was the perfect sacrifice for complete forgiveness for all time.  John 3:16 sums up the whole issue.

My Iowa cousin, Alice, made reference to Maundy Thursday in a recent email.  I had to confess to not being familiar with the days of Holy Week which lead up to Easter Sunday.  I am familiar with the Tuesday before Lent, celebrated by the British with wild pancake parties and by the more sensible folk as Mardi Gras.  Alice sent me the following explanation which I thought was excellent.

On Palm Sunday, Jesus rode into Jerusalem on the back of a colt-ass.   His 12 disciples followed him, and the people who tended to believe in his teaching, preaching, and miracles that they had been seeing & hearing, waved palm branches, laid their cloaks down on the ground before him, and hollered "Hosanna!"  Which means roughly, "Lord, save us!"  They didn't understand the kind of kingdom he came to establish.  (Hey, I don't understand all of it yet either!)   

 

While this was happening there were people watching who didn't like him & his message. (They didn't understand it either.)  The Roman soldiers were standing around, making sure there was no trouble, no religious rebellion or insurrections, anything like that.  And the Pharisees, the head honchos of the Jewish people /temple in the city, were afraid that this self-proclaimed King was gonna take away their power.

 

By Thursday, the general mood of the people in Jerusalem was going downhill.  The place was crowded because of the Passover, the celebration of when the Angel of Death passed over the homes of the Hebrews when they were enslaved in Egypt  several hundred years before, when God chose Moses to lead them out.  The last plague was that the first born of every household would die that night, when the Angel of Death moved thru the city, but the Hebrews were instructed to sacrifice a perfect lamb and to use a brush of hyssop (fragrant plants) to paint blood from the sacriced lamb onto their door frames.   The Angel of Death would pass over those houses with blood on the doors.   This event became a feast, celebrated annually by the Jews, and they came to Jerusalem from all Israel to  celebrate, if at all possible.

 

On Thursday, Jesus did some teaching.   He gave the final form of the commandments of God.  (First, there were something like 603...not sure of the exact figure right now...but there were LOTS of commandments in the early days to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs of the faith.  Second, they were pared down to 10 commandments when Moses received them on Sinai, during the Exodus.  Jesus further pared them down to one-maybe-two:  Love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and love one another.)   The term MAUNDY comes from the same root word as COMMANDMENT........either Latin or Greek....can't remember right now for sure. But it is MANDATORY (another word from that root) that we love God and one another.

 

 Jesus held a Passover feast in the Upper Room of a home.  He invited his 12 disciples, and he did something quite unusual:  instead of having a servant wash the feet of his guests, he did it himself, which taught us servanthood.  Peter that night taught us humility & submission.........I'd really rather wash my own feet & he felt that way, too. 

 

 During the feast, Jesus instigated the practice that would become The Last Supper, Holy Eucharist, Communion, referring to himself as the Perfect Lamb who would lay down his life in sacrifice for all the sins of all mankind for all time..........The Father's perfect plan to overcome the imperfections experienced by humanity ---and even our most grievous & terrible sins---since the Fall from Grace in the Garden.

 

Science and Belief

People develop belief systems trying to make sense out of their lives and the world around them.  Belief systems can and do answer all questions, leaving nothing to uncertainty.

Unfortunately, their answers are not always satisfactory nor factual.  However, belief system power structures usually come down hard on anyone who dares question their answers.  How hard depends on the degree of political power they wield at the time.

Consequently, those who would pursue factual verifiable truth must be to some extent non-believers since the belief systems have all the answers.  I tease some of my relatives that if it were not for atheists we would still be living in caves, lighting fire with sticks and believing the sun went around the earth.  Yet Atheism itself is a belief system in that one cannot prove or disprove there is a Higher Power. But it does free the mind to look for answers elsewhere than in sacred writings.

Belief systems have had a go at eliminating science and failed.  Science is having a go at eliminating belief systems and will also fail.  They deal with two separate issues – the knowable and the unknowable.

Science can only answer the WHAT, WHEN and WHERE of our lives and the earth around us.  Belief systems can only truly answer the WHO and WHY.  Using one to do the other’s work only leads to confusion, bitterness and ignorance.

Belief systems can be absolutely certain.  Science cannot.  Science can only be as certain as the facts before it today.  Tomorrow new research, new findings, new facts can add to what we know or completely turn it around.  The debate is NEVER over.  If science stops debating and only accepts one version, even when confronted with solid evidence, it becomes a belief system and is then totally useless to us.

One of these days, I will blog about my understanding of WHO and WHY.  The last sentence in my last blog about our homeless dog generated a few comments from my readers, as it was intended to do.  They deserve an answer.

Catholic Atheists

Yesterday's blog questionaire about religious beliefs reminde me of a story out of Northern Ireland some years back of a gunman who jumps out of a doorway, holds a gun to a man's head and asks, “Are you Catholic or Protestant?” “Actually,” says the man, “I'm an atheist.” “Ah, yes,” replies the gunman, “but are you a Catholic or a Protestant atheist?”

The question actually makes more sense than it seems. If one is a non-believer, one must be a non-believer of something. What is it that one does not believe in? Usually it is whatever religious culture one was raised in. If I were an atheist, I would have to become a fundamentalist Protestant atheist.

It would be pretty tough for me to be an Orthodox atheist or a Muslim atheist or a Catholic atheist since I never grew up in any of those particular religious cultures.

I could never be an atheist anyhow. It takes way too much faith to believe there is no God.