The Virtues of Godlessnes

Interesting article.

The least religious nations are also the most healthy and successful

..from Nebraska to Nepal, from Georgia to Guatemala, and from Utah to Uganda, humans all over the globe are vigorously praising various deities; regularly attending services at churches, temples, and mosques; persistently studying sacred texts; dutifully performing holy rites; energetically carrying out spiritual rituals; soberly defending the world from sin; piously fasting; and enthusiastically praying and then praying some more, singing, praising, and loving this or that savior, prophet, or God.

But that is not occurring everywhere. I am referring to two nations in particular, Denmark and Sweden, which are probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world. Amidst all this vibrant global piety — atop the vast swelling sea of sacredness — Denmark and Sweden float along like small, content, durable dinghies of secular life, where most people are nonreligious and don't worship Jesus or Vishnu, don't revere sacred texts, don't pray, and don't give much credence to the essential dogmas of the world's great faiths.

In clean and green Scandinavia, few people speak of God, few people spend much time thinking about theological matters, and although their media in recent years has done an unusually large amount of reporting on religion, even that is offered as an attempt to grapple with and make sense of a strange foreign phenomenon out there in the wider world that refuses to disappear, a phenomenon that takes on such dire significance for everyone — except, well, for Danes and Swedes.

What are societies like when faith in God is minimal, church attendance is drastically low, and religion is a distinctly muted and marginal aspect of everyday life?

Read more at the article. I have not read it entirely yet...so, no comments from me. Just thought I'd share it here -- although something like this could probably just be shared through Twitter (which I have started using since February '09) or Delicious (if I used it).

Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life

In less frivolous mode than my previous post, let me share two links that talk about Lincoln and Darwin's lives and their importance today.

1) Brad Hirschfield, who explores the uses and abuses of religion in politics and pop culture in his posts, writes today in a post titled Lincoln, Darwin and Gay Marriage

Of course, there is no moral equivalence between creationists and supporters of human slavery, but it is worth noting that in each case, people used/use religion and scriptural passages to justify their beliefs. I hope that both those in the PCUSA and anyone else who uses sacred teachings to justify their position, whatever it may be, remembers that having a verse to lean on never guarantees that God is leaning your way.

It would be helpful in addressing today's culture wars if both creationists and those who oppose any recognition of the potential sacredness of a committed, monogamous, same sex relationship, without betraying their beliefs, approached these issues with greater humility. It's worth remembering that like those who used the bible to support slavery, they might one day look back, if not with shame, at least with regret over their understanding of God's word....and so might those who support such marriages and unions. If we treated each other with that awareness, whichever we go, will get there together and be the better for it as a nation.

2) A book Review in Time magazine of a recent book: Angels & Ages: A short book about Darwin, Lincoln, and Modern Life by Adam Gopnik.

The faces of Islam

Avoid the stereotypes. Respect people. Celebrate life, in all its myriad manifestations. Enough said. Now enjoy the pictures.

1) Boston.com's fabulous Big Picture blog brings to you pictures from across the world of people of Islamic faith observing Ramadan

Muslim faithful throughout the world are currently observing the holy month of Ramadan. Observant Muslims participate in fasting (sawm), one of the five pillars of their faith, this entire Lunar month (this year it extends from September 1st to the 30th). Eating, drinking, smoking and sexual activity is prohibited from dawn until sunset, when the fast is broken with the evening meal called Iftar. Local customs define varying traditions, including differing types of food used to break the daily fast. The fasting is meant to teach a person patience, humility and sacrifice, to set aside time to ask forgiveness, practice self-restraint, and pray for guidance in the future.

2) Away From Home in Dubai

"One can choose his group here - do you want to be religious? Or do you want to be liberal? You can be both. In other places, this is not really possible. A guy decides to be religious in the West, he will stand out. A guy decides to be liberal in the Middle East, he will stand out. This doesn't happen in Dubai."

"This is Dubai: go to the mosque, it is full. Then go to the disco, it's also full!"

"I'm making my own future. This is one thing in Dubai: you're not part of a family, or a group. You come here as an individual, and this is how people see you."

The above slideshow accompanies an article: Generation Faithful - An Oasis of Freedom, which is the sixth in a series of articles examining the lives of the young across the Muslim world.

Also..some great posts in the related blog set up by NYT to reflect the various voices and opinions from the Muslim world out. I want to highlight something I read in a post by someone called Mona el Naggar:

In Egypt, parents sometimes discipline their children by warning them in Arabic, “You’re free!” By local standards, that’s not a good thing. The implication is that free choice leads to straying from acceptable social norms, a value held widely throughout the Arab world.

But in Dubai, where the community is too diverse for any one culture, religion or tradition to prevail, young Arab men and women speak of freedom and personal space in more positive terms.

“There is no development without freedom,” said Afnan Omar, a 21-year-old Palestinian woman raised in Dubai. “There’s the mosque and there’s the night club and everyone knows where he wants to go.”

It is not that young men and women are necessarily adopting a different set of values. Indeed, many here said that exposure to such a relaxed environment made them see the value of more conservative traditions back home. The difference, they said, was that exposure to such diversity has taken away the impulse to judge others. They have adopted a more accepting attitude.

Like I said...time to stop thinking in stereotypes, in black and white, in terms of right and wrong. Open your eyes!

Related: A previous post about a great essay by George Saunders on Dubai, its ski slopes in the desert, and much more. A delectable read -- one of the few articles that has stayed with me long after I read it. Also, a recent post about it being boom time for the global bourgeoisie has a link to a NYT article about the boom in Dubai.

Fear and Loathing in America

Grrr!

Distribution Of DVDs About Radical Islam In Campaign Home Stretch

.... "distribution of lurid DVDs across America warning of the global radical Islamic threat, in the home stretch of the election? The DVD, which would seem to be helpful to John McCain, is called Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against The West, and it was distributed in small newspapers across the country last weekend"

Apparently, the above DVD apparently equates not just Muslim fundamentalists (who are anti-Semitic like Hitler was) but all of Islam to Hitler's hateful ideas. And of course, there is the continuing not-so-subtle messages of Obama being Muslim running through all this disseminated claptrap!

Read the article for details on how they are spreading bigotry, fear, and hatred by freely distributing this virulent DVD along with newspapers (incl. NYT!) and such! Also, point you to a comment at the post about how some people are trying to suppress and mislead some Hispanic / pro-Democratic people from voting!

One comment says it is "Cut and paste bigotry. Or made to be that way. Shows little kids in madrasas, for example, next to views of huge crowds saluting Hitler."

Another says "They were handing these out outside Mile High Stadium after Obama's acceptance speech."

Another: "I got one of these in the mail on Monday or Tuesday of this week. I tossed it in the trash w/o checking into it. I figured it was the usual right-wing bedwetting BS, which I'm sure is correct. Anyway, I live in Hollywood, Fl, which is between Miami and Ft. Lauderdale on the east coast, and a very blue area. Lots of retired jews in the area and in my building, which I figure is the target of this crap."

Another writes about how the DVD got pushed into her house with the NYT, no less! The same lady also writes later in the thread about attempts going on in battleground states to suppress (Hispanic / pro-Democrat) voters. She writes that the paper also came with:

"two forms for absentee ballots inside. But on the reverse of the address - photos of 4 "bad guys" (Chavez, Osama, Kim Jong Il, and the president of Iran... not gonna try to spell his name). When I went to City Hall I found out that many people had received a mailing telling them to send the request for absentee ballot to the WRONG city!! Our city clerk was annoyed because this costs the city postage, telling someone they sent the form to the wrong place. Or if I had applied under the name as they addressed it to me, I would not have shown up as registered! That was my concern, as I have a hispanic last name - and was concerned I'd been targeted for that reason."

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I was born Hindu and though I am an agnostic/athiest, I probably follow many Hindu customs in my life. However, while faith and religion as a personal lifestyle choice is absolutely ok, I find fundamentalism of any kind - be it from Jews, Christians, Hindus, or Muslims - absolutely ABHORENT.
To be fair the title of the DVD says it is "Radical Islam"'s war against the West. But in portraying the problems that beset Islam today, one has to be very careful not to portray the fundamentalists viewpoints as those of the entire religion. No doubt that many in the Islamic world spew similar bigotry against Jews and other religions. Their actions are to be condemned equally! However, to paint-brush and hate an entire community of people (a really large one at that; though size is of no real significance in this argument) based on the actions of a minority reeks of not just intolerance but also proliferates a certain unabashed, unfiltered and all-encompassing acrimony, which is what I find abhorrent. Also, all religious preachers who rail against other religions come with a certain holier-than-thou attitude that I cannot stand.

Incidentally, I did not realize that Jews in the country (or at least a small number of them) were so vociferously against Obama. To think that they, who as a people have suffered a lot due to such bigotry against their religion, would promote such virulent hatred themselves! Of course, it is NOT all Jews who are so stridently anti-Muslim.... in criticizing the action of a few of them, one should recognize that not every Jewish person out there is railing against Islam; there are many (possibly the majority) who refuse to fall prey to such bigotry and fight for a peaceful settlement in the Middle East - peace coexistence with the Palestinians and not an obliteration of the Palestinian people! For example, here are two examples of Jewish writers who have written criticizing the circulation of the above DVD.

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“Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.” - Mahatma Gandhi

“I never will, by any word or act, bow to the shrine of intolerance or admit a right of inquiry into the religious opinions of others.” - Thomas Jefferson

“No loss by flood and lightening, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature, has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed” - Helen Keller

Yeh Hum Naheen

Brilliant. (For non-Hindi speakers: Yeh Hum Naheen = This is not who we are.)

How a Pakistani protest song is redefining Islam as anti-terrorist

Also: http://www.yehhumnaheen.org

Hat tip to Salil Tripathi for telling me about this song.

It is great to see educated Muslim people standing up to fundamentalist Islamists. Wish someone had done this 10 years ago in India (against rising Hindutva / RSS rhetoric). In the last 10-15 years Advani, with his Rath Yatras, has changed the way India deals with its Hindu-Muslim tensions. If I say this to many Hindus in India now ...they will say..."yes..he changed it. But that's for the good. Enough of dealing with the pandering to the Muslims!" Well... I agree that the Congress has, in many instances, pandered to the Muslims over many decades. But that does not justify a rise in violence against the Muslims (and the reciprocal increase in violence by Islamic fundamentalism driven terrorists in the cities and towns of India.) The Hindutva movement has made the Hindu-Muslim divide in the country worse than it ever was since the 1940s (partition.) Godhra and the general mindset in Gujarat (and also in the mindset of many Hindus in the rest of the country) does not balance out any ills some people in the Muslim community may have committed against the country.

Also, in criticizing and fighting fundamentalists in the Muslim world (jehadis in Kashmir, attackers on the Parliament, or the perpetrator of the Bombay blasts, Jaipur blasts, etc.), we should not become like them - full of hatred for an entire community (instead of certain people who claim to represent that community) and stooping to even justifying violence as a means of dealing with it! Reminds of the Nietzche quote:

"He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster. And if thou gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into thee."

Anyways, it is good that civilized people in Pakistan have taken a step to distance themselves from the fundamentalists that claim to represent them and their religion. More power to them....

God and the "the making of terroristic threats"

Nebraska senator Ernie Chambers, who filed a lawsuit against God last year, appeared in court today and...

..demanded the defendant to "cease certain harmful activities and the making of terroristic threats." Despite Sen. Ernie Chambers' lack of success in petitioning the defendant, he hopes the lawsuit brings to light his stance that no lawsuit is frivolous until the court decides.

The lawsuit accuses God "of making and continuing to make terroristic threats of grave harm to innumerable persons, including constituents of Plaintiff who Plaintiff has the duty to represent." It says God has caused "fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornadoes, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like."

People of Nebraska: Is this what you elected him for? Doesn't he have some real work to do? Some people have too much time on their hands! (No.. I am not talking about myself for blogging about such inanities. What is life if not for occasional moments of mirth and laughter, albeit a bit forced and tinged with a scornful sigh of disbelief.)

Ok. I agree that he has a point:

Chambers said he's been surprised at how many Christians attacked him and his family after the lawsuit.He said Baptists, Methodists and Universalists all urged him to leave the lawsuit with them. But he couldn't, he said, because each of them doesn't accept each other's God.

"For all we know, God was sitting in one of the empty chairs in the courtroom today chuckling at the lawsuit, laughing that he made this guy, Chambers -- if you believe in that sort of thing," Chamber said.

Chambers said he began this lawsuit, which has gained national and international attention, because if he would have stood up in the legislature and said everyone needs access to the courts, people would have yawned.

My point is that he could do this after retiring maybe - on his own time. Not when he has been elected to be a Senator and to work for the people on more urgent topics. (No.. I do not mean the curious issue of a Nebraska cat getting bubonic plague after allegedly being bitten by a prairie dog. :))

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The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he, who in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know my name is the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon thee. -Ezekiel 25:17; as narrated by Jules, the character played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction; can be seen in the last minute of this amazing scene from the movie.

A convenient worldview

Some years back I read about 40 pages of Ian McEwan's Saturday but had not managed to get beyond that - not because I did not like his writing (I am a BIG fan!) but I did not have the time to complete it. I have re-started the book, finding the one paragraph from the first chapter which I had enjoyed so much that I still have it bouncing around in my head every time I fly. Here it is:

Like most passengers, outwardly subdued by the monotony of air travel, he often lets his thoughts range across the possibilities while sitting, strapped down and docile, in front of a packaged meal. Outside, beyond a wall of thin steel and cheerful creaking plastic, it's minus sixty degrees and forty thousand feet to the ground. Flung across the Atlantic at five hundred feet a second, you submit to the folly because everyone else does. Your fellow passengers are reassured because you and the others around you appear calm. Looked at a certain way - deaths per passenger mile - the statistics are consoling. And how else attend a conference in Southern California? Air travel is a stock market, a trick of mirrored perceptions, a fragile alliance of pooled belief; so long as nerves hold steady and no bombs or wreckers are on board, everybody prospers. When there's failure, there will be no half measures. Seen another way -- deaths per journey - the figures aren't so good. The market could plunge.

Like with every other McEwan book, I am quite enjoying the language and sentence structuring in the book. But having recently read some of McEwan's recent views on Islam* (also,the Guardian articles: The day of judgment: part 1 and part 2), I cannot help but read some of Henry Perowne's thoughts about life in a post 9-11 word as reflecting McEwan's own biases and prejudices. For example, read this paragraph from later in the book:

The three black columns, start against the canyon of creamy stucco and brick, heads bobbing, clearly arguing about the address, have a farcical appearance, like kids larking about at Halloween. ..... He can't help his distaste, it's visceral. How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated. At least these ladies don't have the leather beaks. They really turn his stomach. And what would the relativists say, the cheerful pessimists from Daisy's college? That it's sacred, traditional, a stand against the fripperies of Western consumerism? But the men, the husband -- Perowne has had dealings with various Saudis in his office - wear suits, or trainers and track-suits, or baggy shorts and Rolexes, and are entirely charming and worldly and thoroughly educated in both traditions. Would they care to carry the folkloric torch, and stumble about in the dark at midday?

* To be accurate, it is not Islam but Islamism he is against; which as something that I, who am against religious intolerance and fundamentalism from all religions, am also against but not any more than I am against Christian fundamentalists or Hindutva rhetoric spouting goons. McEwan seems to make a distinction because... well...read it in his own words, this excerpt from the aforementioned views on Islamism article:

McEwan's interviewer pointed out that there exist equally hard-line schools of thought within Christianity, for example in the United States. "I find them equally absurd," McEwan replied. "I don't like these medieval visions of the world according to which God is coming to save the faithful and to damn the others. But those American Christians don't want to kill anyone in my city, that's the difference."

A page or two later in Saturday, he writes about what he thinks is a solution to fundamentalism - bright-eyed materialism and consumerism!

The secular authority, indifferent to the babel of various gods, will guarantee religious freedoms. They should flourish. It's time to go shopping. .... Such prosperity, whole emporia dedicated to cheeses, ribbons, Shaker furniture, is a protection of a sort. This commercial wellbeing is robust and will defend itself to the last. It isn't rationalism that will overcome the religious zealots, but ordinary shopping and all that it entails - jobs for a start, and peace, and some commitment to realisable pleasures, the promise of appetites sated in this world, not the next. Rather shop than pray.

How typical! If you are looking down at Islamic fundamentalists, as McEwan probably is when he is writing this, this may even begin to make sense. Not really... but maybe its just a difference of opinion. But it makes no sense at all if you apply it to fundamentalists in the US, say! Fundamentalism cannot be countered by consumerism just as it cannot be countered with spreading more hatred and creating further ill-will and misunderstandings between communities, based on lies and half-truths.

In talking about religious bigotry, I am reminded of these wonderful lines from the Afterword by Stephen Eric Bronner to Will Eisner's last graphic novel, The Plot, which is a fine exposition of the lies people will believe to back up their biases and prejudices. Instead of "the work", read "opinions" and the following sentence is as applicable to the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion" as to any other nonsense spewed by zealots everywhere:

The authenticiy of the work does not seem to matter. But that is because the antisemite, in the great phrase of Jean Paul Sartre, "turns himself into stone." Bigotry becomes his way of explaining the world without having to justify the explanation through evidence or logic. Antisemistism offers a convenient worldview for all the "losers" who feel themselves threatened by the forces of modernity, who fear the future, and who seek comfort in rigid religious and anti-democratic forms of authority. Admitting that these traditional forms of authority are becoming increasingly anachronistic would shatter the bigot's sense of self-worth. Better for the losers to find a "scapegoat".

Note that I am not saying McEwan is a loser. But in fighting bigotry, let us not ourselves become blind and bigoted in making sweeping assertions and broad generalizations about a certain sect of people. Because otherwise, like another philosopher said, in fighting darkness we run the risk of becoming monsters ourselves. (I cannot remember who said it and the exact quote. I think it was Nietzche. I will update this when/if I find the quote I am thinking of.)

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"Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies." - Nietzsche

The Sentries of Romance

Sometimes it's a dog's world (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and news today of this dog that enjoys skateboarding! But sometimes, it is NOT and I am not saying this because some of them are being dragged into court! ;)

Read this news snippet making the rounds today in Western media, which falls into what my friend, Amit would classify under the WTF news of the day:

Every single man knows: Walking a dog in the park is a sure babe magnet. Saudi Arabia's Islamic religious police, in their zeal to keep the sexes apart, want to make sure the technique doesn't catch on here. The solution: Ban selling dogs and cats as pets, as well as walking them in public.

So, somebody tell me where the dogs are going to do what they usually do when walked in public! (Ok: do NOT answer that! It's a rhetorical question.) Maybe the "keep the sexes apart" is only an excuse. After all even robots have feelings and Saudis are just human. In reality, some Saudi minister heard the Seinfeld joke about "What if an alien lands on earth tomorrow and sees human kind traipsing along behind dogs, picking up their you-know-what after them! Who will they think is the master in that relationship?"

I tell you -- it's a mad mad mad mad world (1, 2, 3, 4) that we live in. Even The Onion could not come up with some of the news that we hear every day!

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Not to make light of a serious infringement on human freedoms but isn't satire and humor the only way to deal with such farce. Its lucky they have not banned cellphones yet!

Saudi Youth Use Cellphone Savvy To Outwit the Sentries of Romance

(Also read this older but related news articles: No Oases for Saudi Youths)

Though I must add that last year, one Western reporter thought, albeit based on one observation, that he saw a change in attitudes for the better, albeit a glacially slow change.("Change here is glacial, but there is a thaw.")

The inventory of mortality

Jeez...this is eerie. After waking up this morning, I uploaded my dad's pictures from the 1960s and sent out the mail with a link to the pictures to friends and family, I started my daily routine of surfing around: web-strolling, as a friend wonderfully put it. And two clicks from a Mary Oliver poem I used in my email to family, I land on an essay from May 2008 in the Guardian by (one of my) favorite authors, Ian McEwan.

And eerily it starts with talking about photographs. This excerpted quote really hit home, reflecting some of my feelings this morning!

As Susan Sontag put it, "photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading towards their own destruction ..."

"Photography is the inventory of mortality. A touch of the finger now suffices to invest a moment with posthumous irony. Photographs show people being so irrefutably there and at a specific age in their lives; [they] group together people and things which a moment later have already disbanded, changed, continued along the course of their independent destinies."

The essay is about fundamentalism and apocalypse; with McEwan positing that "with the rise of religious fundamentalism, prophets of apocalypse have become a new and very real danger". This is something I would normally not even begin reading about this morning, but for it being written by someone whose writing I love... and yes...indeed...he delivers once again. Though the above excerpt are words from Susan Sontag, the first few paragraphs from McEwan are oh-so-wonderful. Who else could talk poetry and poets (Borges and Phillip Larkin) in writing about religious fundamentalism!

We are well used to reflections on individual mortality - it is the shaping force in the narrative of our existence. It emerges in childhood as a baffling fact, re-emerges possibly in adolescence as a tragic reality which all around us appear to be denying, then perhaps fades in busy middle life, to return, say, in a sudden premonitory bout of insomnia. One of the supreme secular meditations on death is Larkin's "Aubade":

... The sure extinction that we travel toAnd shall be lost in always. Not to be here,Not to be anywhere,And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

Nothing more terrible, nothing more true. I miss my dad.

Religious Freedom - An oxymoron?

Just ran into this report about an interview with Ian McEwan (which I found through this interesting blog piece - McEwan's silence - by Stephen Mitchelmore), in which McEwan is quoted as having said:

"And I myself despise Islamism, because it wants to create a society that I detest, based on religious belief, on a text, on lack of freedom for women, intolerance towards homosexuality and so on – we know it well."

But "religious belief, on a text, intolerance towards homosexuality" and lack of freedom of choice for women and so on....could be said of some other religions too, no?

By the way, I found Mitchelmore's blog, the rather simply named This Space, randomly through a google-search looking for something else. I have bookmarked the blog, so as to revisit at a later time when there is more time than a tangential stroll permits at the current time. There is much to enjoy at the blog for the literary minded. (Some Mitchelmore related links, for my later reference: 1, 2, 3)

One (Christian) nation under God

Seems....

As "700 Club" co-anchor Terry Meeuwsen explained on today's installment of the popular Christian show, "Each year, just before the first part of the year, Pat (Robertson) goes off alone with the Lord and then comes back to share with us what the Lord has shown him about the coming year.

This year, God told him (above link has a video...no.. not of God telling Pat this but of Pat telling his faithful followers what God told him*):

"What I'm praying about is China. I'm asking for 250 million in China. We haven't had that breakthrough yet but I think we're going to get it. God's going to give us China. And China will be the largest Christian nation on the face of the earth. They're going to come to Jesus."

Thanks, Pat. Good to know. :)

* If God talks to this guy (Bush), then I suppose he could be talking to Pat too! Or maybe its just the voices in his head! Kooky!

Actually, even with Bush, there is reason to believe he isn't talking to the God he thinks he is talking to.. but to Lord Shiva! :) Scott Hartin writes in Harpers this month:

Cartoonists in the United States have regularly given Bush’s God the bodily manifestation and voice of a Yale dropout and retired corporate executive named Dick Cheney. But this lacks imagination. No one doubts the involvement of Dick Cheney in this orgy of blood and destruction, but he himself is merely a mortal vessel serving the god of war and destruction. I’m zeroing in on the Godhead in question, and I’m increasingly convinced that he’s a denizen of the South Asian subcontinent, and in particular the Lord Shiva.

Go read the article for why he picks "The Destroyer" from the triumvirate of Hindu Gods - Brahmā, Viṣhṇu, and Śhiva.

Battleground God

Test your God Logic..

I took the test and this is how I fared...

Take the test and leave a note here on how you fared.

Also from the Friendly Athiest blog, the live Godcam. Click on the cam and go to an article by Sam Harris, who has over the years argued "against irrational faith and its adherents." Also this great blogalogue (that's the first time I'm seeing that word!) between Sam Harris and pro-religion blogger Andrew Sullivan on God, faith, and fundamentalism. Also, here are couple interviews and a talk by Harris, who is the author of the books, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation.

Now you know where I stand on this... not vociferous about it and likely more agnostic than athiestic...but hey...the proof is above -- at least I am internally consistent. :)

Insult my pasta

Chocolate Jesus rises again!

"My Sweet Lord," an anatomically correct milk chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ that infuriated Catholics before its April unveiling was canceled, returns on Oct. 27 to a Chelsea art gallery.

This is like the brouhaha over MF Hussain and his deity paintings. I do not find both so offensive personally that I would ask to ban them. That said, I do think putting a cross in piss and calling it art ('meritorious art', at that!) is NOT art and is definitely offensive. Many may claim it is all perfectly ok under the aegis of freedom of expression but with freedom comes great responsibility. Many people forget that!

Related: Read Amit Varma's article - Don’t Insult Pasta.

Hey Ram!

I had not heard of this hoax until I just read it at BB just now.

Five years ago, "IronKite" submitted this wonderful photo illustration to a Worth1000.com Photoshop contest on the theme of "Archaeological Anomalies." The powerful picture was transformed into an Internet urban legend about the National Geographic Society's discovery of the remains of giant humans in India. Several media outlets reported the story as fact. To this day, the National Geographic Society continues to receive international inquiries about this race of giants. National Geographic News reports on the myth behind the meme:

(One) story went on to say the discovery was made by a "National Geographic Team (India Division) with support from the Indian Army since the area comes under jurisdiction of the Army."

The account added that the team also found tablets with inscriptions that suggest the giant belonged to a race of superhumans that are mentioned in the Mahabharata, a Hindu epic poem from about 200 B.C...

Variations of the giant photo hoax include alleged discovery of a 60- to 80-foot long (18- to 24-meter) human skeleton in Saudi Arabia. In one popular take, which likewise first surfaced in 2004, an oil-exploration team is said to have made the find.

Here the skeleton is held up as evidence of giants mentioned in Islamic, rather than Hindu, scriptures.

Link to National Geographic, Link to Snopes entry.

Lucky that RSS loonies have not gotten hold of this yet - otherwise, after the recent hoo-haa about the Supreme Court's conclusion (later withdrawn) that there is no proof of Lord Ram ever existing, we'll have the right-wingers claiming that this is proof that Ravana or Kumbhakarana existed and so by extension, Ram did exist and everything in the Bible...er...sorry...wrong religion... in the Ramayana is real! :) (What? That's silly? More silly that the loons asking us to prove a negative with statements like: "Nobody has proved that Ram does not exist." ?)

Religious nuts are everywhere

No time for much blogging but quick pointer to a few good posts by Amit Varma at India Uncut.

First up....Hindutva defender BP Singhal, as interviewed by Shivam Vij.

Anybody who wants to denigrate another religion, I call him a Christian. You must find out Ambika Soni’s religion.

Read more at Amit's post on Singhal the Entertainer...

(who needs Cedric when you can have Singhal :))

If there are alternatives, why do they want to demolish the ‘bridge’?
Simply because America is out - have you not been watching the way places of Hindu faith and shraddha have been denigrated!

But what is the motive?
Americans! Americans! Americans and the Christians. I mean, Christians because of Americans and Americans because of Christians, and Christians themselves.

But why?
Do you know what their academy of religion in America gives out? That the trunk of ganesha is like a phallus. For them phallus is visible everywhere. In India it has been called shiv ling. Ling is phallus? What is ling? Ling is the operational part of the particular thing.

Crackpots, I tell you...crackpots. But like Amit Varma writes, sadly a large % of the population in India probably take his comments seriously and share his sentiments. Where have the religious leaders like Harry Fosdick or Vivekananda gone who preached love and equanimity of all people - not just people who thought and believed like they do?


Earlier this week, Amit blogged about another cartoon controversy that irked the religious crackpots in Bangladesh! Commenting about this episode, Blake Hounshell writes:

This story isn’t about hurt feelings; it’s about raw political power. [...] It’s a familiar pattern in Muslim countries ruled by authoritarian governments: Religious conservatives use religion cynically to embarrass the regime and whip up populist sentiment. Over time, they can force the government to make accommodating moves and concede elements of government to the clerics. And the state can’t exactly stand up for the principle of freedom of speech, because it’s usually no great shakes on that score, either.

Well said... though I wouldn't call it a pattern in Muslim countries only or even something that plagues the Indian subcontinent. The US has its own cast of wingnuts, who spew unbelievable religious dogma that seemingly has a lot of followers here too! And Europe has its own share of xenophobia and fascism, not to forget the Aryan supremacyand Ku Klux Klan mentality that was not merely a fringe cult phenomenaon in the not-so-distant past. And then there are the atheist Chinese, who are equally nutty (in different ways) without even believing in a God. Tell you...it is human nature to be such irrational kooks....God is not the problem and religion is only one of the manifestations of this kookiness :))

Related: If u have not read these before, do read Amit's pieces on intolerance in India, Don’t Insult Pasta and God resigns.

The Politics of God

Great article published in the NY Times last week: The Politics of God by Mark Lilla

Here is an excerpt that I found very interesting...

The revival of political theology in the modern West is a humbling story. It reminds us that this way of thinking is not the preserve of any one culture or religion, nor does it belong solely to the past. It is an age-old habit of mind that can be reacquired by anyone who begins looking to the divine nexus of God, man and world to reveal the legitimate political order. This story also reminds us how political theology can be adapted to circumstances and reassert itself, even in the face of seemingly irresistible forces like modernization, secularization and democratization. Rousseau was on to something: we seem to be theotropic creatures, yearning to connect our mundane lives, in some way, to the beyond. That urge can be suppressed, new habits learned, but the challenge of political theology will never fully disappear so long as the urge to connect survives.

So we are heirs to the Great Separation only if we wish to be, if we make a conscious effort to separate basic principles of political legitimacy from divine revelation. Yet more is required still. Since the challenge of political theology is enduring, we need to remain aware of its logic and the threat it poses. This means vigilance, but even more it means self-awareness. We must never forget that there was nothing historically inevitable about our Great Separation, that it was and remains an experiment.

Followup: An interesting article in the Times of London.

In God we doubt

This is not an intellectual game. Even if we know what is true – and we don’t – you cannot reduce life to a set of provable realities. Humanity is too complex for that. In the end, it comes down to whether the world would be a better place without religion; and that is a matter of judgment, not certainty.

Hitchens

Hitchens does not mince any words voicing his opinion about Islamic fundamentalism:

The most noticeable thing about all theocracies is their sexual repression and their directly related determination to exert absolute control over women. In Britain, in the 21^st century, there are now honor killings, forced marriages, clerically mandated wife-beatings, incest in all but name, and the adoption of apparel for females that one cannot be sure is chosen by them but which is claimed as an issue of (of all things) free expression. This would be bad enough on its own and if it were confined to the Muslim "community" alone. But, of course, such a toxin cannot be confined, and the votaries of theocracy now claim the God-given right to slaughter females at random for nothing more than their perceived immodesty. The least we can do, confronted by such radical evil, is to look it in the eye (something it strives to avoid) and call it by its right name.

He has been quite vocal against Islamic fundamentalism recently - which is good as he takes on fundamentalists of other religions in similar vein (see below^). However, in my (and other people's opinion) 9-11 turned him from being a liberal leftist person into a psuedo-neocon, and so his boorish arrogance is quite off-putting.

Anyways, some other recent articles by Hitchens are archived here. Also this plastic.com thread: Dear God: Did You Make Mankind After We Made You?, which is about Christopher Hitchens latest rant* and begins with a great quote from Aldous Huxey that I had not seen before today.

"You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough." -Aldous Huxley

Well said!
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^ Example of Hitchens taking on Christian fundamentalism:

See this video of Hitchens taking on Fox TV's Hannity after Jerry Falwell's death - discussing what the "legacy" of Falwell is.... no mincing words being polite to the dead (and rightly so, I say)

"it's a pity there isn't a hell for him to go to"

"if you gave Falwell an enema, he could be buried in a matchbox."

...and there is more - see the video! :) His arguments may be a tad overstated and simplistic in some senses but the video is still very enjoyable and the message is still valid.

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* Hitchens has also gotten on the anti-God bandwagon lately, with his recent book, God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

I would much rather read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion first and probably won't get to Hitchens' book ever but here are some related op-eds:

• Hitchens vs. God
• Christopher Hitchens Tries, And fails, To Disprove God
• Even someone who has been vocal against the Christian right, Chris Hedges, finds Hitchen's "moral certitude and arrogance" quite disturbing.

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The new 10 commandments

Almost sounds like something the Onion would come up with -- Pope replaces old 10 commandments with the "Drivers' Ten Commandments"..or something like that! ;)

10 commandments from Vatican
The Vatican on Tuesday issued a set of the "Drivers' Ten Commandments," telling motorists to be charitable to others on the highways, to refrain from drinking and driving, and to pray you make it before you even buckle up.

Elsewhere, other religious leaders also go crazy....with Egyptian religious leaders indulging in a fatwa free-for-all!

First came the breast-feeding fatwa: It declared that the Islamic restriction on unmarried men and women being together could be lifted at work if the woman breast-fed her male colleagues five times. Then came the urine fatwa: It said that drinking the urine of the Prophet Muhammad was deemed a blessing.

WTF, you say? Yes...I had the same reaction. Read the details in the article!


And of course the self-appointed moral police in India finds new reasons each day to find umbrage over myriad topics! (I have blogged about one such instance just earlier this week).

Evolution and Peanut Butter

Kooks! Do not want to say anything else...the video speaks for itself! I cannot tag this with Science. Has to be filed under Humor, no?

God is a man

Don't have to say this..but this post is about George Carlin. So, it may be NSFW due to the use of at least one of his 'seven dirty words'. Do NOT click on the youtube videos embedded and then complain to me if you get fired!

First up, George gives his take on religion and God.

"If there is a God, then it has to be a man. No woman could or would f--- things up like this"..

There are too many gems in here to quote them all.. just go see it. Absolutely brilliant.

Also, hear

George Carlin's expound on his Ten ..er..Two Commandments. Brilliant. Although you need to see it to hear him dwindle down the 10 to 1, here are some excerpts which I loved.

- Loved his explanation of why there are 10....because it was "a pure marketing decision" :)

- And this, which we have heard before but does not make it cliched due to its validity and truth.

"Religion has never really had a big problem with murder...more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason....

... the more devout they are, the more they see murder as being negotiable.

It's negotiable depends.. depends..depends on who is doing the killing and who is getting killed."

Just realized it is Sunday morning and this is my first post. I'm going to hell! :)