Interesting reading in the Atlantic

One World, Under God by Robert Wright:

There’s no denying that this view threatens the claim that Christians, in worshipping Jesus, recognize God’s one physical appearance on Earth and thus have special insight into divine purpose. Still, as debunkings of scripture go, this one is fairly congenial to religious belief, for it does leave open the prospect of divine purpose generically. In fact, it underscores that prospect. The story of early Christianity highlights a kind of moral direction in human history, a current that, however fitfully, has repeatedly expanded the circle of tolerance, even amity. And if history naturally produces moral insight—however mundane the machinery that mediates its articulation—then maybe some overarching purpose is built into the human endeavor after all.

In any event, whether or not history has a purpose, its moral direction is hard to deny. Since the Stone Age, the scope of social organization has expanded, from hunter-gatherer society through city-state through empire and beyond. And often this expansion has entailed the extension of mutual understanding across bounds of ethnicity, religion, or nationality. Indeed, it turns out that formative periods in both Islam and Judaism evince the same dynamic as early Christianity: an imperial, multiethnic milieu winds up fostering a tolerance of other ethnicities and faiths.

Now, as we approach the global level of social organization—and see the social order threatened by strife among these Abrahamic religions—another burst of moral progress is needed. Success is hardly guaranteed, but at least the early history of Christianity and indeed of all Abrahamic faiths gives cause for hope. However bleak a globalizing world may look at times, the story could still have a happy ending, an ending that brings out the best in religion as religion brings out the best in people.

I'm still around

That cracked me up! Apparently France is the home of the World's Biggest Whiners and Ireland is home to the most content:

Britons come second to their Gallic cousins in the moaning stakes, followed by Sweden, the United States and Australia. Japanese workers have the lowest morale, but don't complain so much.

Jerry Falwell is dead. I'm sure his family will miss him, but I'm glad the world is spared any more of his moronic, completely stupid, bullshit. If there is a God, I hope he gives Jerry hell.

Praise Yeshua, it's a Boy!

Did these stone chests contain the body of Christ and his wife?

Archaeologists have reportedly deciphered the names on the tombs, including Yeshua (Hebrew for Jesus) son of Joseph, Mary, Mary and Judah, son of Yeshua. In New York yesterday, Cameron unveiled two of the coffins he claims belonged to Jesus and Mary Magdalene. "I think this is the biggest archaeological story of the century," he said.

Lawdamighty, the shit is gonna hit the fan. Airing on the Discovery channel on Sunday, March 4.

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As of last night Dad was still in Norwalk hospital. There is a 70 percent blockage of the left carotid artery - he had the right side "cleaned" in mid-January. The doctors were going to run another MRI today.

Blessed Art Thou

The above painting is by Kate Kretz of North Carolina.

"My intention was to ask a question and get people to think," Kretz said in a telephone interview Friday from Miami. "I had no idea so many people would be asking a question and thinking."

On her blog, Kretz, 43, said the painting addresses "the celebrity worship cycle." She said she chose Jolie for the subject "because of her unavoidable presence in the media, the worldwide anticipation of her child, her 'unattainable' beauty and the good that she is doing in the world through her example, which adds another layer to the already complicated questions surrounding her status."

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God Denies Talking to Pat

It's all about freedom

Public service announcement: Gradatim Ferociter.

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Democrats eating their own will not help anyone: Ex-Dem. Party boss blasts Kerry in book. They need to come together with a cohesive strategy to fix the nightmare mess Bush has left this country in, instead of Monday-morning quarterbacking a campaign from three years ago. No one needs to read about Affleck and Paltrow making out a decade ago either.

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Extremism never works: Atheists challenge the religious right ~ and I'm all for that. But, as the article points out:

These offerings are so intolerant of religion of any kind - liberal, moderate, or fundamentalist - that some scientists and secularists have critiqued their peers for oversimplification and for a secular fundamentalism.

"They undermine their own case by writing in a language that suffers from many things they say are true of believers - intolerance, disrespect, extremism," says Alan Wolfe, a professor of religion at Boston College, who is a secularist and author of several books on American religious perspectives.

On the one hand you could say that Dawkins and Harris are only fighting fire with fire. But it will backfire on them. I think most people, theist or not, prefer a more moderate stance. Religious, dogmatic, people piss me off to no end, and I've ranted about it often enough. People of faith I can deal with because they usually have no agenda, no need to force me into their mold. The dogmatic atheists are no different from the fundamentalist religious - they are as determined to force the people to see the universe only from a rational point of view, just as the religious insist on the rest of us viewing the universe from a god-centered point of view. I, and I think many people, aren't going to listen to either side and will just be put off both messages.

Many nontheists don't share this militant perspective, but have decided that keeping silent in religious America no longer makes sense. They are astonished that a majority of Americans question evolution and support teaching intelligent design in the science classroom. They are distressed over polls that show that at least half of Americans are unwilling to vote for an atheist despite the Constitution's requirement that there be no religious test for public office. And they contend that in recent years, Congress has passed bills and the president has issued executive orders that have privileged religion in inappropriate and unconstitutional ways.

As a result, seven organizations of nontheists - including atheists, freethinkers, humanists, and agnostics - began the Secular Coalition for America (SCA), a lobby seeking to increase the visibility and respectability of nontheistic viewpoints in the United States.

Sadly SCA also stands for SCA, which is bound to confuse the hell out of everyone. Anyway, if they stick to their stance: "Still, the group makes clear on its website that while it promotes reason and science as the bases for policymaking, it also supports religious tolerance." they'll have my support.

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This is the internet as it is meant to be. How to go to M.I.T. for free.

"We believe strongly that education can be best advanced when knowledge is shared openly and freely," says Anne Margulies, executive director of the OCW program at MIT. "MIT is using the power of the Internet to give away all of the educational materials created here."

OCW

Bits and pieces

I love this story!

Kansas woman, 95, prepares for final exams:

On Friday, the last day before fall break, her family and fellow classmates threw her an impromptu birthday party during her Biblical Studies class. Her son, Alan Ochs, flew in from Jetmore for the occasion. Her granddaughter, Alexandra Ochs, didn't have to travel as far — she's in the same class as her grandmother.

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Deja Vu isn't just a movie starring Denzel Washington. White House Brushes Off CIA Report on Iran

"The CIA found no conclusive evidence, as yet, of a secret Iranian nuclear weapons program running parallel to the civilian operations that Iran has declared to the International Atomic Energy Agency," according to the article.

Read also: White House ‘Stovepiping’ Iran Intelligence.

Israeli forces launch raids in Gaza

"I emphasize that our hand is outstretched in peace, but anybody who rejects it ... should know that ... we will do all we can to sever the hand which uses terror," Peretz said in a speech carried by Israeli radio.

"We have no intention of making concessions to anybody, we have no intention of being dragged in to reoccupying Gaza, but we have every intention of protecting our citizens."

Six Muslim Imams removed from U.S. airliner

The six Muslim scholars were returning from a conference in Minneapolis of the North American Imams Federation, said Shahin, president of the group. Five of them were from the Phoenix-Tempe area, while one was from Bakersfield, Calif., he said.

Three of them stood and said their normal evening prayers together on the plane, as 1.7 billion Muslims around the world do every day, Shahin said. He attributed any concerns by passengers or crew to ignorance about Islam.

“I never felt bad in my life like that,” he said. “I never. Six imams. Six leaders in this country. Six scholars in handcuffs. It’s terrible.”

Five years of being terrorized by our own government leads to this. We're afraid of six men praying. So it isn't surprising to read that U.S. is most unfriendly country to visitors.

Gore Vidal: Living Through History, an interview with Robert Scheer.

Fantastic interview. There are some great lines here:

I’m now a creationist. Because the distance from George Washington to George W. Bush makes a monkey out of Darwin.

There are a few crazies who want to cheer the flag and this yappy little terrier as though he were a real president—well he’s not a real president. He’s a thing, a chimera who was put together by the supreme court, first time around, and reelected by Diebold, Sequoia and some other interested parties. Everybody knows he isn’t there. Or what is there isn’t for us—it’s not our president. We do have a real, uh, a shadow president in vice president Cheney, whose wife is a famous novelist given to tales of unnatural love...But Lynne, more power to you. She’s my kind of novelist.

And sobering:

So this election, coming up, although it’s a mere off-year, this is the on year election of all our lives. And if we don’t turn it around the right way, we’re not going to have representative government. We’re not going to have the people’s voice ever again expressed quadrennially in the presidential election, because they can falsify it each time now. So now’s the time to use a new Congress, hoping we get one, to tidy up.

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Where do you stand on God:

This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith.

The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

Warning: this is seven pages long. Well worth reading, however.

Restoration of sanity and other stuff

O.J. Simpson book, TV special canceled.

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When religion loses its credibility

The suffering that gay and lesbian people have endured at the hands of religion is incalculable, but they can look expectantly to the future for vindication. Scientific facts, after all, are a stubborn thing. Even our religious beliefs must finally yield to them as the church in its battle with Galileo ultimately realized. But for religion, the future might be ominous. Watching the growing conflict between medical science and religion over homosexuality is like watching a train wreck from a distance. You can see it coming for miles and sense the inevitable conclusion, but you're powerless to stop it. The more church leaders dig in their heels, the worse it's likely to be.

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Orgasm for Peace.

I'm liking this.

California couple calls for orgasm for peace.

"The orgasm gives out an incredible feeling of peace during it and after it," Reffell said Sunday. "Your mind is like a blank. It's like a meditative state. And mass meditations have been shown to make a change."

Spread the word: Global Orgasm.

I either have to stop paying attention to the outside world

or start taking massive doses of prozac.

Bush went to the UN yesterday and lied. Huge surprise, no?

Wanna be depressed just like me? Read the UN News Centre. I imagine Mr. Annan is glad his job is over at year end, regardless of what he said at the end of his speech.

No, I will not share my drugs with you.

Gaza: The Children Killed in a War the World Doesn't Want to Know About, by Donald Macintyre.

Okay... less depressing fare ~

Thai Coup Leader Promises to Hold Elections by October 2007.

That's good. Except... there were supposed be elections in October 2006.

Tuesday night's coup was the first in 15 years and the 18th successful or attempted military takeover since the country became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.

"It's part of who we are," says Rosenbaum. "It's not enough [to feed the poor]. We have to say, 'What needs to change so they're able to feed themselves?' "

Fascinating article from the Christian Science Monitor from February entitled "The power of nun: taking a lead role in shareholder activism" by G. Jeffrey MacDonald.

Check out their list of articles on Ethical investing.

Church May Fight IRS Summons Over Anti-War Sermon:

The probe surprised Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a watchdog group that has filed 58 complaints of improper church politicking over the last decade and a half. The grievances were roughly evenly divided between liberal and conservative religious groups.

"What perplexes me about All Saints," said Barry Lynn, a group spokesman, "is that I have never heard of a church being asked to undergo such a sweeping, broad and deep investigation on the basis of a complaint about a single sermon by a guest speaker."

I'm confused. Don't politicians routinely speak in churchs and synagogues?

In any event, good luck All Saints. Fighting the IRS is apt to bankrupt your congreation. Truthdig has Reverend Bacon's sermon available for reading.

While at Truthdig, see Molly. Even when she doesn't make me laugh.