Religion Dispatches
…ular with American newspapers until now, with the revised map of the night sky and its influence on human destiny. Just as the revision of the Zodiac had induced popular outcry—people who had long self-identified as melodramatically emotional Pisces were suddenly told, for instance, that there were actually under the influence of Aries, which resulted in fiery rage and general confusion about one’s nature and destiny—so too this news from Allstate…
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…Butler Bass HarperOne (October 8, 2015) Bass seeks out God in soil, water, sky, and in fellow human beings and their communities. “A shift in our conception of God is at the basis of a cultural reorganization, a cultural rebirth, and I think we’re actually fighting in our culture about God,” she says. “It’s not really about politics. I think we’re really fighting about God. I think that Glenn Beck and I have a fundamental disagreement about who Go…
Read More…rendered as a political myth born in the minds of ancients staring at the sky, raised up by the Romans to control their empire, and put to work as a functional myth by modern ruling elites in need of a force to control the masses. Using a voice-over from George Carlin, the film argues that religion is just “bullshit” meant to control people and turn them against one another. Religion in general, and Christianity in particular, the film argues, se…
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…ntered state of the will that often goes by the name of love. Whatever our highest conception of love might be, God is very much not that. The third level is the most difficult but the most important. This is second-order negation, or the inversion of the inversion. Here we would say, “God is not a fire, but God is not a not-fire either,” and “God is not love, but neither is God not-love.” God transcends the (human-based) distinction between love…
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…eligions could not have accounted for. But eisegesis and wishful thinking are only so convincing. God delivering the Ten Commandments to Moses at Sinai can just as well be read as coming from a UFO—and who’s to say that it’s really more far-fetched than a big invisible man in the sky? But then reality kicks in. Proto-religion didn’t account for everything. That’s when scholars and theologians alike must seek the spirit of their texts to pronounce…
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…elopment of modern astronomy, more than half of the brightest stars in the sky have Arabic names. But for some Muslims today, that’s not enough. Even if we concede the colonial legacy of GMT, what would justify Mecca to be the replacement reference point for the entire world? Things start to get messy pretty fast. There is now a widespread belief amongst Muslims that one can prove “scientifically” that Mecca is really the true “center of the world…
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…writing, Indonesia’s Mount Merapi is still spewing clouds of ash into the sky, and the death toll from the eruptions that began two weeks ago has grown to 191, with more than 350,000 people displaced. Gunung Merapi (“The Mountain of Fire”) is the most active volcano in Indonesia and one of the most active in the world. Merapi is located approximately 30 kilometers north of Yogyakarta, a city of approximately 500,000. On clear days, views of the m…
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…hould add up the costs—and heft them carefully—before we decide pay such a high price for doctrinal purity. This is the direct cost, but it is not the only cost. Aside from the human suffering it supports, Elder Packer’s view represents an open invitation for homosexuals to leave the Church (and to not let the door hit them on the way out). If we, as a community, value the fellowship and contributions of our gay brothers and sisters, then this sor…
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…The evidence is actually very mixed. For example, many studies show that a high level of involvement with organized religion correlates with positive outcomes for youth such as less experimentation with sex, drugs and alcohol, lower juvenile crime rates, etc. But we don’t know if it’s religion that benefits kids, or just being part of an organized community with other caring adults who regularly interact with your child. As the secular movement co…
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…ounded by a predominantly Jewish neighborhood. Schools were not closed for high holidays but then there’d only be a half dozen of us per class. When I left home at 14, I lived with families of different faiths: Jewish, Unitarian Universalist, Catholic, and atheist. Questions of ultimate concern always interested me, and as soon as I got to college I actively pursued the answers given to these from faith systems outside my own. Eventually I came to…
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