THE FAITH STORY OF KAREN ARMSTRONG UNTIL SHE REALIZED "GOD WAS A PRODUCT OF THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION" OF MAN, AND GOD "SLIP QUIETLY AWAY".*

As a child, I had a number of strong religious beliefs but little faith in God. As I grew up, I realized that there was more to religion than fear. I read the lives of the saints, the metaphysical poets, T.S. Eliot and some of the simpler writings of the mystics. I began to be moved by the beauty of the liturgy, though remained distant, I felt that it was possible to break through to him and that the vision would transfigure the whole of created reality. To do this I entered a religious order and, as a novice and a young nun, I learned a good deal more about the faith. I applied myself to apologetics, scripture, theology and church history. Strangely enough, God figured very little in any of this. Attention seemed focused on secondary details and the more peripheral aspects of religion. I wrestled with myself in prayer, trying to force my mind to encounter God, but he remained a stern taskmaster who observed my every infringement of the Rule, or tantalizingly absent. The more I read about the raptures of the saints, the more of a failure I felt. I was unhappily aware that what little religious experience I had, had somehow been manufactured by myself as I worked upon my own feelings and imagination. Sometimes a sense of devotion was an aesthetic response to the beauty of the Gregorian chant and the liturgy. But nothing had actually happened to me from a source beyond myself. I never glimpsed the God described in the prophets and mystics. Jesus Christ, about whom we talk far more than about "God," seemed purely historical figure, inextricably embedded in late antiquity. I also began to have grave doubts about some of the doctrines of the Church. How could anybody possibly know for certain that the man Jesus has been God incarnate and what did such a belief mean? Did the New Testament really teach the elaborate - and highly self-contradictory - doctrine of the Trinity or was this, like so many other articles of faith, a fabrication by theologians centuries after the death of Christ in Jerusalem?

Eventually, with regret, I left the religious life, and, once freed of the burden of failure and inadequacy, I felt my belief in God slip quietly away. He had never really impinged upon my life, though I had done my best to enable him to do so. Now I no longer felt so guilty and anxious about him, he became too remote to be a reality. My interest in religion continued, however, and I made a number of television programs about the early history of Christianity and the nature of the religious experience. The more I learned about the history of religion, the more my earlier misgivings appeared justified. The doctrines that I had accepted without question as a child were indeed man-made, constructed over a long period. Since seemed to have disposed of the Creator God, and biblical scholars had proved that Jesus had never claimed to be divine. As an epileptic, I had flashes of vision that I knew to be a mere neurological defect: had the visions of raptures of the saints also been a mere mental quirk? Increasingly, God seemed an aberration, something that the human race had outgrown.

Despite my years as a nun, I do not believe that my experience of God is unusual. My ideas about God were formed in childhood and did not keep abreast of my growing knowledge in other disciplines. I had revised simplistic childhood views of Father Christmas; I had come to a more mature understanding of the complexities of the human predicament than had been possible in kindergarten. Yet my early, confused ideas about God had not been modified or developed. People without my peculiarly religious background may also find that their notion of God was formed in infancy. Since those days, we have put away childish things and have discarded the God of our first years.

Yet my study of the history of religion has revealed that human beings are spiritual animals. Indeed, there is a case for arguing that Homo sapiens is also Homo religiosus. Men and women started to worship gods as soon as they became recognizably human; they created religions at the same time as they created works of art. This was not simply because they wanted to propitiate powerful forces; these early faiths expressed the wonder and mystery that seem always to have been an essential component of the human experience of this beautiful yet terrifying world. Like art, religion has been an attempt to find meaning and value in life, despite the suffering that the flesh is heir to. Like any other human activity, religion can be abused, but it seems to have been something that we have always done. It was not tacked on to a primordially secular nature by manipulative kings and priests but was natural to humanity. Indeed, our current secularism is an entirely new experiment, unprecedented in human history. We have yet to see how it will work. It is also true to say that our Western liberal humanism is not something that comes naturally to us; like an appreciation of art or poetry, it has to be cultivated. Humanism is itself a religion without God - not all religions, of course, are theistic. Our ethical secular ideal has its own disciplines of mind and heart and gives people the means of finding faith in the ultimate meaning of human life that were once provided by the more conventional religions.

When I began to research this history of the idea and experience of God in the three related monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, I expected to find that God had simply been a projection of human needs and desires. I thought that "he" would mirror the fears and yearnings of society at each stage of its development. My predictions were not entirely unjustified, but I have been extremely surprised by some of my findings, and I wish that I had learned all this thirty years ago, when I was starting out in the religious life. It would have saved me a great deal of anxiety to hear - from eminent monotheists in all three faiths - that instead of waiting for God to descend from on high(theistic-jnr) I should deliberately create a sense of him for myself. Other rabbis, priests and Sufis would have taken me to task for assuming that God was - in any sense - a reality "out there"; they would have warned me not to expect to experience him as an objective fact that could be discovered by the ordinary process of rational thought. They would have told me that in an important sense God was a product of the creative imagination, like the poetry and music that I found inspiring. A few highly respected monotheists would have told me quietly and firmly that God did not really exist - and yet "he" was the most important reality in the world.
________________________________________
*Excerpt taken from the Introduction of Karen Amrstrong's book, A History of God: A 4,000-Year Quest by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, pp.xvii-xx. Karen Armstrong's book was "The New York Times Bestseller." This book is most helpful for seminary professors, students, pastors. It's also readable for laypeople because the author has used a language with less technical terms.
 
Reposted May 1, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections,etc., you can log to any of my other sites: YouTube-John Riingen; john riingen/google; juan riingen/facebook.

Why neuroscientist Sam Harris Believes Science Can Determine Human Values?*

"In my view, morality must be viewed in the context of our growing scientific understanding of the mind. If there truths to be known about the mind, there will be truths to be known about how minds flourish; consequently, there will be truths to be known about good and evil."

Harris continues: "Many critics claim that my reliance on the concept of 'well-being' is arbitrary and philosophically indefensible. Who's to say that well-being is important at all or that other things aren't far more important?
.................................................................................................................................
"It seems to be that there are three, distinct challenges to my thesis, put forward thus far:

1.There is no scientific basis to say that we should value well-being, our own or anyone else's. (The Value Problem)
2. Hence, if someone does not care about well-being, or cares only about his own and not about the well-being of others, there is no way to argue that he is wrong from the point of view of science. (The Persuasion Problem)
3. Even if we did agree to grant "well-being" primacy in any discussion of morality, it is difficult or impossible to define it with rigor. It is, therefore, impossible to measure well-being scientifically. Thus, there can be no science of morality. (The Measurement Problem)

"I believe all of these challenges are the product of philosophical confusion. The simplest way to see this is by analogy to medicine and the mysterious quantity we call 'health." Let's swap 'morality' for 'medicine' and 'well-being' for 'health' and see how things look:

1. There is no scientific basis to say we should value health, our own or anyone else's. (The Value Problem)
2. Hence, if someones does not care about health, or cares only about his own and not about the health of others, there is no way to argue that he is wrong from the point of view of science. (The Persuasion Problem)
3. Even if we did agree to grant"health" primacy in any discussion of medicine, it is difficult or impossible to define it with rigor. It is, therefore, impossible to measure health scientifically. Thus, there can be no science of medicine. (The Measurement Problem).

Harris adds, "While the analogy may not be perfect, I maintain that it is good enough to nullify these three criticisms.
___________________________________________________________________
*The Moral Langscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris, pp.198-199. Note: Sam Harris, apparently, is the first scientist to claim that science does not only provide facts, but it can also provide or "determine" human values.

THE SCIENTIST FRANCIS COLLINS FEW PEOPLE KNOW*

     Francis Collins, currently the director of the National Institutes of Health, having been appointed by President Obama: he is a physical chemist, a medical geneticist, and former head of the Genome Project. He is also, by his own account, living proof that there can be no conflict between science and religion.
    In 2006, Collins published a bestselling book, The Language of God, in which he claimed to demonstrate a "consistent and profoundly satisfying harmony between twnety-first century science and Evangelical Christianity. The Language of God is a genuinely astonishing book. To read it is to witness nothing less than an intellectual suicide. It is, however, a suicide that has gone almost entirely unacknowledged.
   Collins is regularly praised by his fellow scientists for what he is not: he is not a "young earth creationist," nor is he a proponent of "intelligent design." Given the state of the evidence for evolution, these are both very good things for a scientist not to be. But as director of NIH, Collins now has more responsibility for biomedical and health-related research than any person on earth, controlling an annual budget of more than $30 billion. He is also one of the foremost representative of science in the United States.
    Here is how Collins, as a scientist and educator, summarizes his understanding of the universe for the general public (what follows are a series of slides, presented during his lecture at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2008:
Slide 1: Almighty God who is not limited in space and time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago
             with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods
             of time.
Slide 2: God's plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living
             things  on our planet. Most especially. that creative plan included human beings.
Slide 3: After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced "house" (our human brain), God gifted
             humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the Moral Law), with free will, and with an
             immortal soul.
Slide 4: We humans use our free will to breal the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God.
             For Christians, Jesus is the solution to our estrangement.
Slide 5: If the Moral Law is just a side effect of evolution, then there is no such thing as good and
             evil. It's all an illusion. We've been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially strong atheists,
             really prepared to live our lives within this worldview?
....................................................................
Here is Collins story about his Christian conversion:
"A full year had passed since I decided to believe in some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, as I was hiking in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."                                                                                                                                                  Here is another statement of Collins:
        "As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator; you are right to hold
         fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no
         answers to the most pressing questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the
         certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.

        God, who is not limited to space and time, created a universe and established natural laws that
        govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, plants, and
        animals of all sorts. Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise
        to special creatures who would have intelligence, a knowledge of right and wrong, free will, and
        a desire to seek fellowship with Him. He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to
        disobey the Moral Law.
Here's what Collins said before he accepted the chairmanship of the Human Genome Project:
        "I spent a long afternoon in a little chapel, seeking guidance about this decision. I did not 'hear'
         God speak - in fact, I've never had that experience. During those hours, ending in an evening
         service that I had not expected, a peace settled over me. A few days later, I accepted the offer."

    Collins argues that science makes belief in God "intensely plausible" --the Big Bang, the fine-tuning of nature's constants, the emergence of complex life, the effectiveness of mathematics, all suggest to him that a "loving, logical and consistent" God exists. But when challenged with alternate (and far more plausible) accounts of these phenomena -- or with evidence that suggest that God might be unloving, illogical, inconsistent, or, indeed, absent - Collins declares that God stands outside of Nature, and thus science nannot address the question of His existence at all. Similarly, Collins insists that our moral intuitions attest to God's existence, to His perfectly moral character, and to His desire to have fellowship with every member of our species; but when our moral intuitions recoil at the casual destruction of innocent children by tidal wave or earthquake, Collins assures us that our time-bound notions of good and evil cannot be trusted and that God's will is a perfect mystery. As is often the case with religious apology, it is a case of heads, faith wins; tails, reason loses.
     Like most Chrsitians, Collins believes in a suite of canonical miracles, including the virgin birth and literal resurrection(bodily) of Jesus Christ."
______________________________________________________________________________
*Excerpts taken from Sam Harris's book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Moral Values, pp.160-66.   Sam Harris is a neuroscientist and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The End of Faith (Winner of the PEN Award for nonfiction) and Letters to a Chrstian Nation. His writings has appeared in Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Times (London), The Boston Globe, The Atlantic, The Annals of Neurology, Foreign Policy, and many other publications. Dr.  Harris holds a degree in philosophy from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in neuroscience from UCLA. He is cofounder and chairman of Project Reason. Please visit his website at www.samharris.org.

Posted April 28, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections,etc., you can type either one of these:   YouTube-John Riingen;  john riingen/google;  juan riingen/facebook)


   

THE MARTIN LUTHER VERY FEW KNEW*

Dr. Martin Luther (1483-1546)

Luther, a German theologian and religious reformer, initiated the Protestant Reformation through his controversial writings. His theology and writings not only challenged the authority of the Roman Catholic Church but his writings reached France, England and Italy, and the Reformation eventually split Western Christianity and forever weakened the power of the Catholic Church. His influence extends beyond religion to politics, economics, education and language. In 1505, after receiving a bachelor's and master's degree, he suddenly abandoned studies, entered the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt and became a monk. In 1517, Luther became a controversial figure when he published his Ninety-Five Theses, opposing the indulgences (release from the penalties for sin through the payment of money by the Catholic Church). His refusal to retract his writings at the demand of the Pope led to his excommunication. His influence resulted in the major Protestant denomination of Lutheranism where their churches today use Luther's name. Protestant Christians so admire Martin Luther that he stands as a respected "Patron Saint" to their beliefs and morals. Christians often quote him, theologians write books on him, and many people use his name as theirs (Martin Luther King, Jr., for example).

Unfortunately few popular books or television documentaries on Luther go into detail about Luther's anti-Jewishness, or even mention that he had a hatred for Jews at all. This has resulted in a biased outlook towards Martin Luther and Christianity. This unawareness of Luther's sinister side, while honoring his "righteousness" leads to a ratcheting promotion of Luther which supports a "good" public image while also transporting his Jewish beliefs to those who carry the seeds of anti-Semitism. This will present an unwanted dilemma for many Christians because Luther represents the birth of Protestant Christianity as well as the genesis of the special brand of Jewish hatred that flourished only in Germany.

Although Luther did not invent anti-Jewishness, he promoted it to a level never before see in Europe. Luther bore the influence of his upbringing and from anti-Jewish theologians such as Lyra, Burgensis, (and John Chrysostom, before him). But Luther's 1543 book, "On the Jews and their lies" took Jewish hatred to a new level when he proposed to set fire to their synagogues and schools, to take away their homes, forbade them to pray or tech, or even utter God's name. Luther wanted to "be rid of them" and requested that the government and ministers deal with the problem. He requested pastors and preachers to follow his example of issuing warnings against the Jews. He goes so far as to claim that "We are at fault in not slaying them" for avenging the death of Jesus Christ. Hitler's Nazi government in the 1930s and 40s fit Luther's desires to a tee.

So vehemently did Luther speak against the Jews, and the fact that Luther represented an honorable and admired Christian to Protestants, that this written words carried the "memetic" seeds of anti-Jewishness up until the 20th century and into the Third Reich. Luther's Jewish eliminationist rhetoric virtually matches the beliefs held by Hitler and much of the German populace in the 1930s. Luther unconsciously set the stage for the future of German nationalistic fanaticism. William L. Shirer in his "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich," puts it succintly:

"Through his sermons and his magnificent translations of the Bible, Luther creatred the modern German language, aroused in the people not only a new Protestant vision of
Christianity by a fervent German nationalism and taught them, at least in religion, the supremacy of the individual conscience. But tragically for them, Luther's siding with the princes in the peasant uprising, which he had largely inspired, and his passion for political autocracy ensured a mindless and provincial political absolutism which reduced the vast majority of the German people to poverty, to a horrible torpor and a demeaning subservience. Even worse perhaps, it helped to perpetuate and indeed to sharpen the hopeless divisions not only between classes but also between the various dynastic and political groupings of the German people. It doomed for centuries the possibility of the unification of
Germany."
____________________________________________________________________________
*Excerpts taken online: "Martin Luther's dirty little book: On the Jews and their lies: A Precursor of Nazism, by Jim Walker. Originated: 07 Aug. 1996' additions: 20 Nov. 2005.

THE EARLY STRUGGLES OF THE ABOLITIONIST MOVEMENT: "THEY DID NOT KNOW THAT THEY DID NOT KNOW WHAT FORM IT SHOULD TAKE"

The abolitionist movement was based upon a moral frenzy, not an economic discontent. After about 1830 almost all abolitionists were resident in the North. For the most part they were middle-class people who had no material stake in the conservation or destruction of the slave system, which was in the most literal sense none of their business. Since slavery was a moral rather than an economic injury to them, they came to look upon it as an economic institution but as a breach of the ordinations of God. Abolitionism was a religious movement, emerging from the ferment of evangelical Protestantism, psychologically akin to other reforms - women's rights, temperance, and pacifism - which agitated the spirits of the Northern middle classes during the three decades before the Civil War. Its philosophy was essentially a theology, its technique similar to the techniques of revivalism, its agencies the church congregations of the towns. "Our enterprise," declared Wendell Phillips, "is eminently a religious one, dependent for success entirely on the religious sentiment of the people." The conviction that SLAVERY IS A SIN is the Gibraltar of the cause." Theodore Weld, one of the most effective leaders of the Western wing of the movement, once wrote:

       In discussing the subject of slavery, I have always presented it as pre-eminently a moral question,
       arresting the conscience of the nation. . . .As a question of politics and national economy, I have
       passed it with scarce a look or a word, believing that the business of the abolitionists is with the
       heart of the nation, rather than with its purse strings."

They had, to be sure, originally planned to make their campaign an appeal to the conscience of the slave-owners themselves, but sober observation of the Southern minds soon showed the hopelessness of such an effort. The minds of the masters were closed, and the abolitionists had precious little access to the minds of the slaves - nor did they want to incite insurrection.
.................................................................................................................................................Other abolitionists, feeling that it would be impossible to make a quick jump from slavery into freedom, and realizing that slavery in the United States was not legally a national but a state institution, which might be dropped in one place while it was flourishing in another, played with the metaphysics of "immediatism" by calling for "immediate emancipation which is gradually accomplished." Gradual methods, in short, should be immediately begun. Thus James Thome receded from the high ground of the Garrisonians: "We did not wish (the slaves) turned loose, nor even to be governed by the same Code of Laws which are adapted to intelligent citizens." To Garrison's followers this sounded like a proposal to leave the Negroes in some kind of subject condition, like a plan for forced labor --"the substitution of one type of slavery for another."
...................................................................................................................................................
The abolitionists were even less clear on how the Negro was to become an independent human being after he was freed (188). Southern proslavery apologists were quick to seize upon this weakness of the abolition case; they grasped all too well the anticipated difficulties of emancipation, and expounded them with the tenacity of the obsessed. Lincoln, who struggled conscientiously to imagine what could be done about slavery, confessed sadly that even if he had full power to dispose of it he would not know how. The abolitionists likewise did not know, but THEY DID NOT KNOW THAT THEY DID NOT KNOW (caps mine-jnr :-) The result was that when formal freedom did finally come to the Negro, many abolitionists failed entirely to realize how much more help he would need or what form it should take. Wendell Phillips, however, had learned to transcend Garrison thought. In the critical hour of Reconstruction he dropped the veil of dogma and turned to the realities.
_____________________________________________________________________
*Excerpts taken from The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It, by Richard Hofstadter, pp.185-188

WHY THE CULTURE WARS BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE ALWAYS ENDS IN IMPASSE?*

"Both sides present what they take to be excellent arguments to support their positions. Both sides expect the other side to be responsive to such reasons. When the other side fails to be affected by such good reasons, each side concludes that the other side must be closed minded or insincere. In this way the culture wars over issues such as homosexuality and abortion can generate morally motivated players on both sides who believe that their opponents are not morally motivated."
________________________________________
*The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris, p. 88.

Posted April 25, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections,etc., go to one of these: YouTube-John Riingen; john riingen/google;  juan riingen/facebook)

GENETICIST FRANCIS COLLINS BELIEVES IN EVOLUTION AND GOD

During a lecture Collins gave at University of California, Berkeley in 2008, he presented a series of slides, presented in order:
Slide 1: Almighty God, who is not limited in space or time, created a universe 13.7 billion years ago with its parameters precisely tuned to allow the development of complexity over long periods of time.

Slide 2: God's plan included the mechanism of evolution to create the marvelous diversity of living things on our planet. Most especially, that creative plan included human beings.

Slide 3: After evolution had prepared a sufficiently advanced "house" (the human brain), God gifted humanity with the knowledge of good and evil (the Moral Law), with free will, and with an immortal soul.

Slide 4: We humans use our free will to break the moral law, leading to our estrangement from God. For Christians, Jesus is the solution to our estrangement.

Slide 5: If the Moral Law is just a slide effecdt of evolution, then there is no such thing as good or evil. It's all an illusion. We've been hoodwinked. Are any of us, especially strong atheists, really prepared to live our lives within that worldview?
...............................................................................................................................................................

But the pilgrim continues his progress: next, we learn that Collins' uncertainty about the identity of God could not survive a collision with C.S. Lewis. The following passage from Lewis proved decisive:

       "I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him:
       "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God."  That
        is the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic -
        on a level with the man who says He is a poached egg - or else He would be the Devil of Hell.
        You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or
        something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit as Him and kill Him as a demon;
        or you can fall at His feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing
        nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left open to us. He did not intend
        to."

Collins provides this pabulum for our contemplation and then describes how it irrevocably altered his view of the universe:

         "Lewis was right. I had to make a choice. A full year had passed since I decided to believe in
          some sort of God, and now I was being called to account. On a beautiful fall day, I was hiking
          in the Cascade Mountains during my first trip west of the Mississippi, the majesty and beauty
          of God's creation overwhelmed my resistance. As I rounded a corner and saw a beautiful and
          unexpected frozen waterfall, hundreds of feet high, I knew the search was over. The next
          morning, I knelt in the dewy grass as the sun rose and surrendered to Jesus Christ."

This is a self-deception at full gallop. It is simply astounding that this passage was written by a scientist with the intent of demonstrating the compatibility of faith and reason. And if we thought Collins's reasoning could grow no more labile, he has since divulged at the waterfall was frozen into three streams, which puts him in mind of the Holy Trinity.

It should go without saying that if a frozen waterfall can confirm the specific tenets of Christianity, anything can confirm anything. But this truth was not obvious to Collins as he "knelt in the dewy grass," and it is not obvious to him now. Nor was it obvious in the editors of Nature, which is the most important sceintific publication in any language. The journal praised Collins for engaging "with people of faith to explore how science - both in its mode of thought and its results - is consistent with their religious beliefs." According to Nature, Collins was engaged in the "moving" and "laudable" exercise of building "a bridge across the social and intellectual divide that exists between most of U.S. academia and the so-called heartlands." And here is Collin, hard at work on the bridge:

         "As believers, you are right to hold fast to the concept of God as Creator, you are right to hold
          fast to the truths of the Bible; you are right to hold fast to the conclusion that science offers no
          answers to the most pressing questions of human existence; and you are right to hold fast to the
          certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.

          God, who is not limitede to space and time, created the universe and established natural laws
          that govern it. Seeking to populate this otherwise sterile universe with living creatures, God
          chose the elegant mechanism of evolution to create microbes, plants, and animals of all sorts
        . Most remarkably, God intentionally chose the same mechanism to give rise to special creatures
          who would have intelligence, a knwoledge of right and wrong, free will, and a desire to seek
          fellowship with Him. He also knew these creatures would ultimately choose to disobey the
          Moral Law."
..............................................................................................................................................................
There is an epidemic of scientific ignorance in the United States. This isn't surprising, as very few scientific truths are seldom-evident and many are deeply counterintuitive. It is by no means obvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with both the housefly and the banana. It can be difficult to think like a scientist (even, we have begun to see, when one is a scientist). But it would seem that few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than an attachment to religion.
_______________________________________________________________________________

*The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, by Sam Harris, pp.160-176.

THE MORAL LANDSCAPE: HOW SCIENCE CAN DETERMINE HUMAN VALUES, by NEUROSCIENTIST SAM HARRIS

WHY DID NEUROSCIENTIST SAM HARRIS WRITE HIS BOOK?                                           

This is what he said:

"My goal is to convince you that human knowledge and human values can no longer be kept apart. The world of measurement and the world of meaning must eventually be reconciled. And science and religion --being antithetical ways of thinking about the same reality -- will never come to terms. As with all matters of fact, differences of opinion on moral questions merely reveal the incompleteness of our knowledge; they do not oblige us to respect a diversity of views in definitely."*
___________________________________
*The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Moral Values, Sam Harris, p. 10

Posted April 23, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections, etc., go to one of these sites:  YouTube-John Riingen;  john riingen/google;   juan riingen'facebook)

Book: The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, By Sam Harris

Here are some what reviewers say about Sam Harris's book:
"I was one of those who had unthinkingly bought into the hectoring myth that science can say nothing about morals. To my surprise, The Moral Landscape has changed all that for me. It should change it for philosophers too. Philosophers of mind have discovered that they can't duck the study of neuroscience, and the best of them have raised their game as a result. Sam Harris shows that the same should be true of moral philosophers, and it will turn their world exhileratingly upside down. As for religion, and the preposterous idea that we need God to be good, nobody wields a sharper bayonet than Sam Harris."
                                                                      --Richard Dawkins, Oxford University

"Reading Sam Harris is like drinking water from a cool stream on a hot day. He has the rare ability to frame arguments that are not only stimulating, they are downright nourishing, even if you don't always agree with him! In this new book he argues from a philosophical and neurobiological perspective that science can and should determine morality. His discussions will provoke different perspectives that there always will be an unbridgeable chasm between merely knowing what is and discerning what should be. As was the case with Harris/s previous books, readers are bound to come away with previously firm convictions about value of science and reason in our lives."

                                                    --Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor and Director of the
                                                      Origins Project at Arizona State University and author of the
                                                      Physics of Star Trek and Quantum Man: Richard Feynman's Life in
                                                      Science.

"This is an inspiring book, holding out as it does the possibility of a rational understanding of how to
  construct the good life with the aid of science, free from the accretions of religious superstition and
  cultural coercion."
                                                                                 --Financial Times

NOTE: I will be posting on this site some of the major ideas from this book. If you wish to read them, type this on your search engine: jnriingen@aol.com.post.    I will also post them either here: "john riingen' google"  or here: "juan riingen/facebook"; or here: "YouTube-John Riingen"

THE REASON THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS WAS EXCLUDED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON*

The Gospel of Thomas....claims to offer secret teaching - teaching quite different from that of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John. According to Mark, for example, Jesus first appears proclaiming that "the time is at hand; the kingdom of God is drawing near. Repent, and believe in the gospel" (1:15) According to mark, the world is about to undergo cataclysmic transformation: Jesus predicts strife, war, conflict, and suffering, followed by a world-shattering event - the coming of the Kingdom of God (13:1-37).

But in the Gospel of Thomas the "kingdom of God" is not an event expected to happen in history, nor is it a "place." The author of Thomas seems to ridicule such views:
     Jesus said, "If those who lead you to say, 'Lord, the kingdom of God is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you.' (NHC II.32.19-24).

"Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father" (NHC II.32.25-33.5).

But the disciples, mistaking that kingdom for a future event, persist in naive questioning:

          "When will . . .the new world come?" Jesus said to them, "What you look forward to has
            already come, but you do not recognize it: (NHC II.42.10-12).

According to the Gospel of Thomas, then, the kingdom of God symbolizes a state of transformed consciousness. One enters that kingdom when one attains self-knowledge. The Gospel of Thomas teaches that when one comes to know oneself, at the deepest level, one simultaneously comes to know God as the source of one's being.
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*Source: The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels, pp. 70-71.

Posted April 20, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections,etc., you can go to:  jnriingen@aol.com.post;  YouTube-John Riingen;  john riingen/google;  juan riingen/facebook)

WHY WAS THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS AND THE OTHER GOSPELS EXCLUDED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON?*

Why was the Gospel of Thomas suppressed, along with many others that have remained virtually unknown for nearly two thousand years? Originally part of the sacred library of the oldest monastery in Egypt, these books were buried, apparently, around 370 C.E., after the archbishop of Alexandria ordered Christians all over Egypt to ban such books as heresy demanded thair destruction. Two hundred years earlier, such works had already been attacked by another zealously orthodox bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons. Irenaeus was the first, so far as we know, to identify the four gospels of the New Testament as canonical, and to exclude all the rest. Distressed that dozens of gospels were circulating among Christians throughout the world, including his own Greep-speaking immigrant congregation living in Gaul, Irenaeus denounced as heretics those who "boast that they have more gospels than there really are . . .but really, they have no gospels that are full of blasphemy." Only the four gospels of the New Testament, Irenaeus insisted, are authentic. What was his reasoning? Irenaeus declared that just as there are four principal winds, and four corners of the universe, and four pillars holding up the sky, so there can be only four gospels. Besides, he added, only the New Testament gospels were written by Jesus' own disciples (Matthew and John) or their followers (Mark, disciple of Peter, and Luke, disciple of Paul).
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*Source: The Origin of Satan, by Elaine Pagels, p.69.

Posted April 20, 2013

IS SALMAN RUSHDIE'S "SATANIC VERSES" FOUND IN THE KORAN?

The story of the Satanic Verses is not mentioned either in the Koran or in any of the early oral or written sources. It iss not included in Ibn Ishaq's Sira, the most authoritative biography of the Prophet, but only in the work of the tenth-century historian Aby Jafar at-Tahari (d.923). He tells us that Muhammad was distressed by the rift that had developed between him and most of his tribe after he had forbidden the cult of the goddesses and so, inspired by "Satan," he uttered some rogue verses which allowed the banat al-Lah to be venerated as intercessors, like the angels. In these so-called "Satanic" verses, the three goddesses were not on a par with al-Lah but were lesser spiritual beings who could intercede with him on behalf of mankind. Later, however, Tabari says that Gabriel told the Prophet that these verses were of "Satanic" origin and should be excised from the Koran to be replaced by these lines which declared that the banat al-Lah were projections and figments of the imagination:

          Have you, then, ever considered (what you are worshipping in) al-Lah, al-Uzza, as well as (in
          Manat, the third and last (of this triad)?. . . These (allegedly divine beings) are nothing but
          empty names which you have invented - you and your forefathers- (and) for which God has
          bestowed no warrant from on high. They (who worship them) follow nothing but surmise and
          their own wishful thinking - although right guidance has now indeed come unto them from
          their Sustainer.

This was the most radical of all Koranic condemnation of the ancestral pagan gods, and after these verses had been included in the Koran there was no chance of a reconciliation with the Quraysh. From this point, Muhammad became a jealous monotheist, and shirk (idolatry; literally associating other beings with al-Lah) became the greatest sin of Islam.
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*Excerpt from the book A History of God: A 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Karen Armstrong, pp.147-48.

Posted April 20, 2013

THE MUSLIM SAUL OF TARSUS*

Qurayshi Umar ibn a-Khattab had been a virulent opponent of Mohammad, and ready to assassinate the Prophet. But this Muslim Saul of Tarsus was converted not by a vision of Jesus the Word but by the Koran. His conversion comes in two versions. The first has Umar discovering her sister, who had secretly become a Muslim, listening to a recitation of a new sura. "What was the balderdash?" he had roared angrily as he strode into the house, knocking poor Fatimah to the ground. But when he saw his sister was bleeding, he probably felt shamed because his face changed. He picked up the manuscript, which the visiting Koran reciter had dropped in the commotion, and being one of the few Qurayshis who were literate, he started to read. Umar was an acknowledged authority on Arabic oral poetry and was consulted by poets as to the precise significance of the language, but he had never come across anything like the Koran. "How fine and noble this speech!" he said wonderingly, and was instantly converted to the new religion of al-Lah" (Koran 75:17-19)In the other version of Umar's conversio, he encountered Muhammad one night at the Kabah, reciting the Koran quietly to himself before the shrine. Thinking that he would like to listen to the words, Umar crept under the damask cloth that covered the huge granite cube and edged his way around until he was standing directly in front of the Prophet. As he said, "There was nothing between us but the cover of the Kabah" - all his defenses but one were down. Then the magic of the Arabic did its work: "When I heard the Koran, my heart was softened and I wept and Islam entered into me." It was the Koran which prevented God from being a mighty reality "out there" and brought him into the mind, heart and being of each believer.
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*Excerpt from the book A History of God: The 4,000 Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, by Karen Armstrong, pp.145-46.

Posted April 20, 2013

Is The United States of America a Christian Country?

It's just fitting that, with the increasing violence happening in many parts of the country today, we can ask: Is the United States of America a Christian country? Or, does religiosity correlates with morality?
      In his Letter To a Christian Nation, neuroscientist Sam Harris says:

     "While political party affiliation in the United States is not a perfect indicator of religiosity, it is  no secret that the 'red (Republican) states' are primarily red due to the overwhelming political influence of conservative Christians. If there were strong correlation between Christian conservatism and societal health, we might expect to see some sign of it in red-state America. We don't. Of the twenty-five cities with the lowest rates of violent crime, 62 percent are in the 'blue' (Democrat) states, and 38 percent are in 'red' (Republican) states. Of the twenty-five most dangerous cities, 76 percent are in the red states, and 24 percent are in the blue states. In fact, three of the five most dangerous cities in the U.S. are in the pious state of Texas. The twelve states with the highest rates of burglary are red. Twenty-four of the twenty-nine states with the highest rates of theft are red. Of the twenty-two states with the highest rates of murder, seventeen are red."*
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*Cited by Richard Dawkins in his book, The God Delusion, p. 229. Note also that these colour conventions in America are exactly the opposite of those in Britain, where blue is the colour of the Conservative Party, and red, as in the rest of the world, is the colour traditionally associated with the political left.

Posted April 19, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections, etc., you can go to: "YouTube-John Riingen";  "john riingen/google";  "juan riingen/facebook")

WELCOME TO MY BLOGPOST

I will post here some of my personal readings and reflections for friends to read and also listen to their feedbacks/comments, which I believe enhances healthy interaction and exchange via the internet. I will include some significant excerpts from books, articles, written by some outstanding secular and religious authors (modern and post-modern) whose works include the following subjects: Religion and Ethics, Science, Politics, Economics, History, Sociology, and other related sciences. Occasionally, I will also post some ideas of Christian fundamentalist/conservative thinkers and try to highlight some of their ideas that need some redirection, and refer my readers to read some of their works.

In this blogpost, I will follow one simple dictum: Perception, ideas, then and now, no matter how great they are, are never written on stones. With this, I mean I believe in Tradition, but more importantly, in the Traditioning/reformulation process. I believe, finally, life is always in the "process of becoming". My hope is that someday all Christians, including other faith traditions, will finally see what Sam MacKintosh (and thinkers like him) calls in his blogpost, "the convergence of science and religion."

John Nalundasan Riingen
Revised/Posted April 19, 2013 (for my other readings/reflections you can go to: "YouTube-John Riingen";  "juan riingen/facebook"; "john riingen/google"

Why I Wrote Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World*

Several years ago, while in  England, I was invited to participate on a two-hour television program hosted by Melvin Bragg, on the UK's ITV channel. The topic was the future of religion in general and of Christianity in particular. There were three other panelists one of whom was Cristopher Hitchens, well known as a literary and political critic, but he had not yet published his bestselling attack on religion entitle God Is Not Great.

In the course of that panel discussion, Hitchens, attacking Christianity, tossed out many of his verbal grenades that would someday show up in his book. He sought to demonstrate both the inconsistencies and the contradictions found in supernatural religion as well as in the pages of the Bible. He spoke of the damage done to human beings as a result of religious claims and biblical teaching. To his surprise, I, as a representative of institutional Christianity, agreed quite publicly with him, citing the fact that biblical scholarship over the last 200 years has come to these same conclusions long before Hitchens discovered them. My problem with Hitchens was not his analysis, but that he obviously knew very little about contemporary Christian scholarship. In the televised debate I sought to articulate an understanding of Christianity radically different from the simplistic version he was attacking so scathingly.

Following this debate, Cristopher Hitchens was heard speaking with Melvin Bragg and criticizing my membership on the panel since I was not what he called an "adequate representative of Christianity." I was certainly not the "representative Christian" that he had so easily demolished in the past. Over the years the charge of not being an adequate Christian has been leveled against me many times by conservative Catholics and Protestant evangelicals. This was, however, the first time I had been found unacceptable to an atheist! I was delighted.

That experience served as the background for writing my newest book for it seemed to me to capture the problem facing institutional Christianity in our day. There is an enormous gap at present between the Christianity understood in the great academic centers of learning in the world and the Christianity understood by those who occupy the pews and, in some cases, the pulpits of our local congregations. Knowledge that is commonplace in the academies is frequently heard in the pews as profoundly controversial, probably heretical, and even as an attack on all that they hold sacred. This in turn causes critics like Cristopher Hitchens to attack Christianity because they are unaware of any form of Christianity other than the literalized supernatural view that so frequently emerges in and from our churches.

This enormous gap between the academy and the pew is openly fed by ecclesiastical leaders from the Pope to the various denominational heads, who do not make it easy for the people in the pew to access to biblical scholarship. They instead create and participate in a conspiracy of silence. They fear that the people they serve will be scandalized if they knew the truth. The fact remains, however, that both the common theistic definition of God as an "external, supernatural being, who does miracles and answers prayers" and the understanding of the Bible as a book of authoritative divine revelation of the "Word of God" are not now taken seriously in Christian academic circles and this has been the case for almost two hundred years! Church leaders seem to prefer for their Sunday worshipers to remain in the dark. Let me illustrate this by stating some little known, and among scholars, not controversial biblical facts.

The gospels were not written by eyewitnesses, They are the products of a time between two and three generations after the crucifixion of Jesus. The gospels were written in Greek, a language neither Jesus nor the disiples could either speak or write. We can find no evidence that miracles were associated with the memory of Jesus prior to the 8th decade. The stories of Jesus' miraculous birth to a virgin did not enter the developing Christian tradition until the 9th decade. The account of Pentecost and the ascension of Jesus are 10th decade additions to the story. Resurrection was not understood to be the resuscitation of a deceased body until the 9th decade. Paul does not seem to be aware of the story of Judas as a traitor nor does he ever refer to the narrative of his Damascus Road conversion, which was not written until Paul had been dead for thirty or so years. Furthermore, there are no camels in the biblical story of the wise men and there is no stable in the Bible in which Jesus was presumably born. The New Testament does not agree on who the twelve disciples were or on the details of the Easter story. That is just the beginning of facing the gap between the academy and the pew.

Let me turn to theological topics for a moment. Ni biblical scholar today, post-Darwinians as they are, will defend as literally accurate either of the creation stories in the book of Genesis. More importantly, no educated person in the 21st century believes either the astrophysical formula in which the Bible portrays the earth's relationship to the universe or the dominant anthropological ideas that underlie the classical way in which Christians still tell the Christ story. The familiar narrative posits an original perfection for both the world and for human life, which was presumably ruined by the disobedience of the heretofore sinlass human beings, which brought about a fall into "original sin." That "fall," in turn, necessitated a rescue operation, which this storyline suggests was accomplished by Jesus' death on the cross. How can one fall from a perfection human beings have never possessed if all of us to have evolved? How can we then be rescued from a fall that never happened? How can we be restored to a status we have never possessed? The story breaks down in a thousand ways.

Yet Protestant preachers and lay people still say things like "Jesus died for my sins" and Catholics still refer to the "sacrifice of the Mass," as the moment when they reenact liturgically the drama of salvation of the price God required Jesus to overcome the fall. So, because we know the alternatives to this traditional formula we modern Christians either close our minds  to reality in order to remain believers or we abandon Christianity because it no longer makes sense. This almost unchallenged vision of the past in turn provides the fodder for the secular critics like Cristopher Hitchens to attack the traditional Christian articulation as if they are the first to dicover its inadequacies,  revealing in the process their own biblical and theological ignorance.

It was to speak to the gap between the academy and the pew that I wrote Reclaiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World. In this book, I seek to open the windows into Christian scholarship and to make it available to ordinary people. I want to challenge the cover up engaged in by clergy who know better, but who seem to believe that truth, honesty and scholarship will "alienate the faithful." I want to force the religious debate into a new arena of honesty. I want to call people to look at a new way to read the scriptures, a new way to be the church in the 21st century. So in this book I have walked through ther Bible from Genesis to Revelation, facing and revealing its contradictions and even pointing out places where the biblical text seems to endorse and support attitudes that most of us today regard as immoral. Should slave be taught in the name of God to be obedient? Of course not! Yet for centuries we Christians quoted Colossians and Ephesians, among other biblical sources, to perfume the indignity of slavery and then segregation. Should wives be taught to be subservient because that was God's plan? Of course not! Yet the fact is that the apostle Paul seems to think that his definition of the inferiority of women is "God given!" and on the basis of that definition we Christians have not just denied educational opportunities to women, but also refused to allow them the right to vote until the twentieth century. Should homosexuals be discriminated against or even put to death? Of course not, but we Christians have done that to countless numbers of gay and lesbian people and justified it by quoting the book of Leviticus. These attitudes reflect nothing other than uninformed prejudice and are based not only on a profound ignorance of the Bible, but also of the origins of homosexuality. Should wars be blessed and birth control condemned because of quotations from "Holy Scripture"? I shake with rage at such conclusions!

To look at the Bible from the perspective of contemporary scholarship is to call the traditional understanding of the Bible and of Christianity itself into question, yet despite the fear that religious npeople feel at this prospect, to fail to do so is nothing other than a prescription only for a slower death. Why would any church or church leader choose to walk that path?

I have two audiences in mind in the writing of this book. One is a church audience made up of people who appear to know that the old words no longer make sense, yet in the absence of an alternative still cling to the meaningless past. The second audience is made up of those who have abandoned traditional Christianity because for them it has become unbelievable. I want them to know that there is a view of Christianity beyond the one they have abandoned or the one that Cristopher Hitchens attacks. It has just never been introduced in the pews. My goal in this book is to take people beneath both literal and contradictory words of the Bible and the convoluted concepts of theology to explore realms of spiritual truth present but unseen.

I believe Christianity has to do not with guilt and sin, but with increased humanity and heightened awareness; with breaking barriers that separate us from one another in our quest for survival and with calling us to move beyond self-consciousness into universal consciousness where, I believe, we touch the edges of eternity. Will this book succeed in this mission? Time will tell, but, regardless, the need to address these issues is real and I have now made that effort.

I want to live to see a new Christianity for a new world. Indeed I want to assist in its birth. This book is designed to be a shot across the bow to inaugurate that campaign.

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*Bishop John Shelby Spong is one of the leaders of the Center for Progressive Christianity in America today. His works had been quite controversial, especially among fundamentalist Christians. So far he has received 16 death threats. He is a retired bishop of the Episcopal Church of America and now resides with his second wife in New Jersey.

U.S. Undocumented Immigrants are Optimistic of their Future

As of today, there are at least 11 million undocumented immigrants who are now in the U.S. They are called "TNT" (tago ng tago). But lately, after president Obama got reelected for his second term, there seems to be some sign of optimism among these TNTs.

 Frank Sharry, executive director and founder of America's Voice, said "this optimism comes from a confluence of factors: 'The president promised it, the Democrats want it, the Republicans need it, the American people support it and the immigrant rights movement is strong enough to deliver it."

Now, we will wait and see.
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(Frank Sharry was quoted by Elena Shore in her article, Immigration Reform: Who Could Be Left Out?, Filipino Press, March 3-8, 2013 issue, p. 4)

DUAL CITIZENSHIP OFFERED FOR FILIPINO-AMERICANS

About five years ago, I was asked by a representative of the Philippines to apply for a dual citizenship. He told me all the advantages and opportunities I can enjoy if I accept his offer. But I told him (in tagalog, of course): "Tama na ang isang nanloloko sa akin. Ayaw kong dagdagan ko pa ng isa."(One is enough in fooling me. I don't want to add one more).

My sentiments about the politics in the Philippines is just what Greg Macabenta wrote this past week about the politics in the Philipines(Filipino Press, Mar. 2-8, 2013 issue, p.7). He wrote: "The dynasties own most of the land, control most of the businesses, occupy the choicest positions in local government, and are the sources of employment, loans and favors for their constituents.
"It's a virtual master and serf relationship."

Dual citienship? No, thank you.

DO REPUBLICANS REALLY HATE ILLEGAL ALIENS?

Well, here's the latest news report published by San Diego Reader, March 7, 2013 Issue. The article is entitled "Fleeing Filner, San Diego Hoteliers Decamp for Texas"  I'll copy the whole article:

For Texas governor Rick Perry, it was a matter of right place, right time. The Lone Star leader had been on a big-game hunting expedition in California, his sights set on the state's trophy businesses: Apple, Facebook,ebay, and more. "I understand that business owners in the Golden State are frustrated with excessive government strangulation - er, regulation," said Perry. "They're collapsing under burdensome tax rates levied by out-of-touch legislators who keep ouring money into the broken system that they created. The California government drilled holes in the bucket, and now they want more water from the guys who built the well. Well, enough is enough. I'm here to invite all y'all to Texas, where we will understand why people headed out West."

He was just wrapping up his visit with a couple of days of R&R in America's Finest City when he got wind of socialist overlord mayor Bob Filner pushing the city's hotels to fork over a chunk of their room fees and provide something he calls "a living wage" to the fortunate people who get to work in America's playland. "I was staying in the Manchester Grand Del Mar, when  I read in the hotel's newsletter - what's it called, the U-T something? - about this cloun's attempt to horn in on a deal that got made before he even took office. As a Texan, I salute the big brass ones it takes to pull a stunt like that; but, as a Republican, I'm horrified at this intrusion of government into business. I got on the phone to the San Diego Hoteliers Association, and four hours later, I had the five largest chains in town ready to pull up stakes and turn Corpus Christi into the city that San Diego used to be."

"We had the boys in accounting to do a little homework overnight," says Mission Valley Double Tree general manager Ollie Garck, "and it turns out that actually dismantling our hotels brick by brick, hauling the pieces to Texas, and reassembling them would cost less than meeting all of Filner's demands. You know, as long AS LONG AS WE USE ILLEGALS FOR THE GRUNT WORK."(emphasis mine -jnr)

"Gnosis"*

A word can be understood in different meanings, depending upon ther context it is used. Each meaning of a particular word tells a person's state of being - physically, intellectually, or spiritually. Elaine Pagels, in her book, The Origin of Satan, uses the word "gnosis" which, she says, literally and most commonly translated as "knowledge." But, she says, "the translation is somehwat misleading, since gnosis differs from intellectual knowledge (as in phrases like "they know mathematics," which is characterized in Greek by the word "eidein," from which we derive the English word "idea." The English language, she says, is "unusual within its language group in having only one verb, "to know," to express, or mean, different kinds of knowing. The Greek word "ginosko" from which "gnosis" derives, refers to the knowledge of personal relationship, as in the phrase, "We know Christ," or in the words, "Know thyself." She offers a better term - and meaning - of "gnosis" as "insight," or "wisdom." A teacher, she says, "encourages his/her students to seek "gnosis" within themselves." To understand "gnosis" as wisdom or insight within oneself could then mean, to the one speaking, something much deeper and more personal. It reveals "who we are, and who we have become; where we are going; whence have we come; what is birth, what is rebirth." She goes on to say that to know "is that the gospel of Christ can be perceived on a level deeper than the one shared by all Christians." That the gospel, she says, is "more than a message about repentance and forgiveness of sins; it becomes a path of spiritual awakening, through which one discovers the divine within." (p.167). When one knows onself "at deepest level, one comes to know God as the source of one's being."

Elaine Pagels cites the author of the Gospel of Philipn(one of the Christian literatures suppressed by the bishops who were authorized to determine the New Testament Canon). The writer of the Gospel of Philip, is one of the followers of Valentinus, (gnostic teacher). In the Gospel of Philip, Pagels says, the author uses "gnosis" to mean as "a natural progression from faith."

"Unlike the radical Christians of the "Reality of the Rulers," or the Secret Book of John" (all these gospels were excluded in the NT canon), Valentinus and his followers did not reject the moral injunctions taught by priests and bishops;  they did not despise or invert the Hebrew Bible, nor they did deny openly the authority of the priests and bishops. Instead, they accepted all these, but with a crucial qualification: they accepted the moral, ecclesiastical, and scriptural consensus as binding upon the majority of Christians, but not upon those who had gone beyond mere faith to gnosis - those who had become spiritually mature'". (p.167)

Valentinus is a Gnostic teacher who, together with his followers said that in the churches during their time "there were two different kinds of Christian. One kind is what they call, "ecclesiastic," or "psychic" Christian (p.168), that is, those who "function on the level of psyche" - which means the gnosis of Irenaeus, and the rest of what the Orthodox Christian Churches, know or believe, are "not deep enough," or "mature enough."

Valentinus and his followers offers another meaning of "gnosis" as "insight" or "wisdom," which, Elaine Pagelsa says, a secret initiation called "redemption" henceforth regarded themselves as "mature" Christians, they who have "advanced from mere faith toward spiritual understanding of "gnosis."(p.168)

Elaine Pagels mentions that Irenaeus and Tertullian, both representing the orthodox Christian churches's beliefs, are the true defenders of the true and "mature" faith of Christians, not Valentinus and his followers. This is why Irenaeus and Tertullian, and the rest of the orthodox Christian churches (which was of the majority group) won over Valentinus and his followers. And this also explains why the bishops who were recognized by the majoritynas ntheir officially designated "experts"(jnr) to determine the final NT Canon, which excluded many, if not all, the works of Valentinus and his followers.

But, thank you, Elaine Pagels, for letting us know how the New Testament Canon was determined. They were chosen, not because the books represented the Truth, and the only Truth, but the NT Canon, as we have it now, were finally decided because of a "majority" vote. As I learned before, voz populi is not always voz dei (the voice of the people (majority) does not necessarily mean the voice of God).

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Source: The Origin of Satan," by Elaine Pagels

"Parking" As a Business Term

How is this practiced? According to SEC (Aug. 30 - Sept. 5 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek, p.76), a certain company ships hundreds of thousands of merchandise to distributors and repurchase them after they had booked the sales, disguising the repurchase as "assorted product." Effect: Huge business deductions as "capital investment." The truth: They only repurchased their own products.

This is what Bloomberg calls as "Grand Theft." That's why in 2005, Senator Hillary Clinto called for a federal investigation. A $7.5 million in penalties was "awarded" to one sneaky toy company in that same year. The said company paid a penalty without admitting wrongdoing. Plus, in 2007, this company's CEO was also "awarded" another $7.26 million for falsifying records in a stock option. Thank God this CEO has been fired by the company's governing board.

Another meaning of the term, "Parking," is when a businessman (or company) sends his profits to offshore banks and use these banks as tax havens, thus the businessman (or company) won't be paying taxes. Recently, it was reported that Mitt Romney used offshore banks in the Cayman Islands and other offshore banks to "park: or hide his money from Uncle Sam. This practice is a loophole found by investment "experts" and many investors use it.

Moral of the story: NO PARKING!
Posted March 10, 2013

Daniw: Silahis*

Adda maysa a banag a nasken unay nga iparangko,
Ta immapay a nangsukisok ti ricna toy gayyemyo,
Isu nga inkarigatanna ti nangpatibker barukongna,
Tapno adda turedna a mangyeg kadakay amin ita,
Kadaytoy maysa a banag a dinan pulos maidulin.

Tay tao a kapadatayo, binatilyo man wenno nataengan,
Adda riknana a di maawatan dagiti kapadana a parsua;
Adu a tawtawen  nga inna pinampanunot ken indulin,
Dagitoy a rikna iti tukot puso ken panunotna,
Ket no saludsodenyo no sinno daytoy: "Silahis" a cuna.

Nadumaduma a tattao ditoy, idiay ken ti met aglawlaw,
Agsusupadi ti ammoda panggep ken "Silahis: a kaduada,
Adu kadagitoy ti agpungtot no makitada,
Tay gunay tay kabsatda ta "saan nga umisu" kunkunada.
Dida pay kaabay ta amangan kunada a kakolkolorda.

Dagiti kakabsat a makunkuna a pasurot ni Cristo Jesus,
Ukradenda tay libroda a tawagenda, "Nasantuan a Biblia,"
Tapno ibasada dagiti pinilida a paset dayta a libroda
Dagiti bilbilin dagiti immun-una maipapan ken "Silahis."
Awan pagnaan ti naurnos a sarita ta narikpanen ti ridawda.

Ti met bangir padpadasenda a sukimaten tay naun-uneg,
No apay kastoy ti gungunay tay kabsatda nga "Silahis".
Agsaludsodda kadagiti ad-adut ammona a kaarrubada,
Tay pagsasao nga englis, "psychologists", ken "geneticists."
Ket ad-adu ti agcuna kadakuada: "nayanak dagitoy a kasta."

Umanay daytoyen ti agmalem nga sinniplag,
Ta tay bangir naigameren ket dinto pulos mabalbaliwan.
Ngem kuna tay bangir dida koma met unay agdardaras,
Ta no maysa a ramay ti pangitudoda, tallo met ti bagida,
Tayla tanganda ti mangtangtangel tay tallo a mangitudo.

Ditoy illi a simmangladantayo, adu metten ti naruk-atan,
Ngem ad-adu pay laeng dagiti matmata a siririkep,
Ta ammo ti kaaduan "manangbasol" ni kabsat "Silahis."
Adu pay ti nainayon: manursuro, husgado ken politico,
Ad-adalenda no ania ti baro a dana a masapul a surotenda.

Ammok a dagiti rikriknayo masair ken mapnot' riru,
Ta nabayagen unay a kayattayo ti nalawlawag a dalan,
Ngem nayunantay coma ti nawadwadwad a panunot,
Ta daytoy a banag dakkel ti ibagbagana iti siak ken sika,
Tapno ditay koma maitapuak iti nauneg unay a lugnak.

Daydi tatangko managbasa ken nasaririt bassit ti utekna,
No ukradem tay Bibliana adut paspaset a kinuloranna;
Ket nasarakak a ni tatangko silulukat ti panunotna,
Kadagiti banbanag ken panunot makasali ti pammatina.
Kunkunak iti bagik, "maaringan to met koma tay anakna."

Ala ngarud ituloyko tay saok ken kabsattayo a "Silahis."
Ket padasek nga iturong panpanunotyo iti baro a dana,
Didakto met koma laisen, iwaksi kas maysa a gayyem,
Ta ti panangad-adalko kas met la pudno daydi tatangko;
Ket padasentay met koma a suroten tay dana a makaruk-at.

Ta ditay mabalin a sublien dagiti dandanatay idi kalman,
Ti laeng mabalintayo a suroten ket tay dana nga agpadaya,
Ta no agpalaudka, lilennekan ni Apo Init ti tumpuaram.
Ngem no agpadayaka, adda baro a bigat a sumabet kenka.
Partakam ti kumamakam ta adut kadduam nga immun-unan.
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*Silahis = bakla, bading, gay

Pinutar ni Manong Juan

BUTYOG (Ilocano Daniw)

Adda maysa a gayyemko a di pulos makatalna,
Ta agparangen dagitay kuribetbet ti kudkudilna;
Kasta met tay puraw ken naing-pis nga bubuokna,
Amanganto ket no awanton tumaliaw kencuana,
Adun ti ag-agas nga us-usarenna a "cosmetics" a cuna.

Ngem cunak pamarang laeng dagitoy a pamuspusan,
Ket dida magabenan tay panagkessen ti pammagida,
Kasta met kadagitay mangpabaro ti dumaanen a ruprupa,
Ngem ad-adda ketdi nga rusanger ti pagmurdonganna,
Dida met mabaelan a sukatan ta naungkurandan piman.

Adda met dadduma idiay "24-Hour Fitness" a pappapanak,
Napalalot' ling-etda, ken nadadagsen dagiti bitbitenda;
Adda met lallaki a sarsarunnuenda piman tay buksitda,
Ta barbareng mapucawton tay kunatayo a butyogda,
Ta bareng manayunan tay ungtot' biagda a maymaysa.

Addada met babbalasang nga umabay iti pagarsisuak,
Saludsodek no dinnot' pagtrabahuanda ket ti sungbatda
"McDonald," "Burger King," wenno "Church's Chicken"
Sa isarunoda tay french fries, onion rings ken soda.
"Dagitoy ti mangpabutyog kadakami," ikatkatawada.

Adut' tagtagainepda maipapan ti masakbayan dagiti annakda,
Isut' gapuna nga ar-aramidenda amin a kabaelanda tapno
Kadi matungpal tay pagsayaatan dagiti adu nga annakda,
Ta didanto ket maulila a nasapa gaput' tangken ul-uloda,
Ta adun ti kakasta a pasamak ket dida koman mairaman.

Malagipko dagiti mannalon idiay away a naggappuak,
Inaldaw nga agmalmalemda iti kapagayan wenno kamaisan,
Ket uray no tay agtegtegerger a teltel ti baboy ti iyaponda,
Awan met tay kuna a "high blood pressure" kadakuada,
Naammuak a ti gapuna ta naduyos ti panagayus ling-etda.

Isut' gapuna ingungutek a kakabsat ditoy America,
Mapalagipantay koma tay baro a "lifestyle" a cuna,
Panangtarakentay' a naimbag bagbagitay' ken salun-at;
Tapno ditayto koma pumada kenni butyog a kaarruba,
Ta nadaras a napasamak ti iyu-una daydi maysa a kabsat.

Pinutar ni Manong Juan

INTO THE STORM, NO MATTER WHERE*

Public workers didn't hunker down. When Hurricane Sandy was bearing down on the East Coast we did what AFSCME(American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees) always does: We surged forward, leaned into danger and took up our posts to help our fellow citizens.

We were dispatching ambulances and driving them. Shoring up utility and drainage systems ahead of the storm and repairing them after. Making sure citizens were getting the information they needed about the looming storm and helping them navigate the recovery process afterward. Evacuating infants and the elderly and disabled, even as power grids failed. Ensuring our communities were safe.

It's what we do, no matter what's raining down on us.

Too often though, politicians are raining a different type of disaster down on us. Attacks on retirement security, collective bargaining and the right to organize to strengthen our union are intensifying. Our resounding victory over anti-worker politicians in November election may have temporarily slowed the opponents of working families, but they're not going anywhere. We've got news for them though: neither are we. From Maine to Hawaii, we'll push back against efforts to undercut the very things that built the American middle class - strong unions, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Because we are AFSCME, and we will weather any storm.

Lee Saunders, President                                            Laura Reyes, Secretary-Treasurer

35 International Vice Presidents

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*The AFSCME is the largest voting bloc in the country, which catapulted president Barack Obama for his second term in November 2012 election. AFSCME is a member of AFL-CIO. Historically, no political candidate, federal, state or local, could be elected without the support of AFSCME.

Post-Modern Thought vs. St. Augustine

St. Augustine's doctrine of Original Sin has been challenged by post-modern thought and creativity. According to Augustine, humanity has fallen from his original condition because Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. To recover human's original condition, Augustine claims, our faith in Jesus Christ can rescue us and help us recover the image of God.

One professor of post-modern thought and creativity, however, told his students that "creativity is about making mistakes. In fact, there is no such thing as 'mistakes', in the creative process; there are only different ways of doing things.

"We should not be afraid to make mistakes. The moment we are afraid, we limit our chances of exploring new creative avenues. If our mistakes, or sins, do not lead us to anything creative this time, at least we can learn from them. Next time we'll know which steps to avoid to be closer to our goal."

"Do you mean Augustine was wrong?" his student asked.
"He didn't know he was wrong," his teacher answered. "That's always been the problem of Christians ever since," he concluded.
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*Source: CreativXpert.com/travel/accidental-discovery-port.

Christian Fudamentalism

The term refers to central elements of the traditional Christian teaching, such as the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Second Coming, heaven and hell, and inspiration and authority of the scriptures. It holds firm its belief in the doctrine of personal salvation and literal interpretation of the scriptures.

Because of its insistence that the scriptures are the word of God, fundamentalism stands in radical opposition to Roman Catholicism, and the historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. The roots of fundamentalism go back to the denominational orthodoxies of the 17th century and the revivalist movements of the 18th and 19th centuries. The conservative evangelicals or fundamentalists of the present era share with their forbears an apologetic mode of theology reflecting an historicist notion of truth as well as an insistence on the "fundamentals", especially creation, sin and redemption, the second coming, the Virgin birth and the divinity of Jesus, and the literalist interpretation of miracles. Their point of view is represented through preachers such as Billy Graham and Herbert Armstrong, Pat Robertson, and most of the American televangelists, as well through the press, for example, Biblioteca Sacra, the Evangelical Quarterly, and the publications of the Intervarsity Press.*

But many of their constituents are becoming more enlightened and they move out to seek other progressive church groups. One other reason they leave their church is they discovered their church leaders as involved in extra-marital relationships, and they also are secretly using their church funds for their own personal use to enrich themselves. That's why most of them have become multi-millionaires.
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*Source: The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Theology. Alan Richardson and John Bowden, eds.

Physics of the Future, by Physicist Michio Kaku

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives, by Michio Kaku (by a book reviewer):

In Physics of the Future, Michio Kaku - the New York Times bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible - gives us a stunning, provocative, and exhilerating vision of the coming century based on interviews with over 300 of the world's top scientists who are already inventing the future in their labs. The result is the most authoritative and scientifically accurate description of the revolutionary developments taking place in medicine, computers, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, energy proiduction, and astronautics.

In all likelihood, by 2100 we will control computers via tiny brain sensors and, like the gods of Greek mythology, move objects around with the power of our minds. Artificial intelligence will be dispersed throughout the environment, and Internet-enabled contact lenses will allow us to access the world's information base or conjure up any image we desire in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, cars will drive themselves using GPS, and if room-temperature superconductors are discovered, vehicles will effortlessly fly on na cushion of air, coasting on powerful magnetic fields and ushering in the age of magnetism.

Using molecular medicine, scientists will be able to grow almost every organ and cure genetic diseases. Millions of tiny DNA sensors and nonparticles patrolling the blood cells will silently scan our bodies for the first sign of illness, while rapid advances in genetic research will enable us to slow down or maybe even reverse the aging process, allowing human life span to increase dramatically, perhaps even ten times longer.

In space, radically new ships - needle-sized vessels using laser propulsion - could replace the expensive chemical rockets of today and perhaps visit nearby stars. Advances in nanotechnology may lead to the fabled space elevator, which would propel humans hundreds of miles above the earth's atmosphere at the push of a button.

But these astonishing revelations are only the tip of the iceberg. Kaku discusses emotional robots, antimatter rockets, X-ray vision, and the ability to create new life-forms.

He also considers the development of the world economy, and addresses the key questions: Who will be the winners and losers of the future? Who will have jobs, and which nations will prosper?

All the while, Kaku illuminates the rigorous scientific principles, examining the rate at which certain technologies are likely to mature, how far they can advance, and what their ultimate limitations and hazards are. Synthesizing a vast amount of information to construct an exciting look at the years leading up to 2100, Physics of the Future is a thrilling, wondrous ride through the next hundred years of breathtaking scientific revolution.
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*Michio Kaku is a professor at the City University of New York; cofounder of the string field theory; the bestselling author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Hyperspace and Physics of the Impossible - the basis for his Discovery Channel Science TV show, Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible - and the host of two radio programs, Explorations and Science Fantastic, broadcasting to over 400 radio stations.

LETHAL GIFT OF LIVESTOCK

Doctor asks his patient the wrong question which enrages his patient's wife. Here's what Professor Jared Diamond reports:*

"The links connecting livestock and crops to germs were unforgetably illustrated for me by a hospital case about which I learned through a physician friend. When my friend was an inexperienced young doctor, he was called into a hospital room to deal with a married couple stressed-out by a mysterious illness. My friend was also stressed-out from a long week of hospital work, and from trying to figure out what unusual risk factors might have brought on the strange illness. The stress caused my friend to forget everything he had been taught about patient confidentiality: he committed the awful blunder of requesting the woman to ask her husband whether he'd had any sexual experiences that could have caused the infection. As the doctor watched, the husband turned red, pulled himself together so that he seemed even smaller, tried to disappear under his bedsheet, and stammered out words in a barely audible voice. His wife suddenly screamed in rage and drew herself up to tower over him. Before the doctor could stop her, she grabbed a heavy metal bottle, slammed it with full force onto her husband's head, and stormed out of the room. It took a while for the doctor to revive her husband and even longer to elicit, through the man's broken english, what he'd said that so enraged his wife. The answer slowly emerged: he had confessed to repeated intercourse with sheep on a recent visit to the family farm; perhaps that was how he had contracted the mysterious microbe."
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*Source: Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, by Jared Diamond, pp. 195-196

Jesus' Dualism and the Early Church's Theistic Understanding of Jesus as Savior or Rescuer*

Jesus was very definitely dualistic in his worldview. Fundamental to his entire religious understanding were the two opposing pairs of soul and body, and God and the Devil. The Gospel of Mark stands as a key to his basic viewpoint: "What will it profit one to gain the whole world and lose one's soul?" (Mk. 8:36).

The "world" to which "soul" is opposed consists of two separate entities: the "world" of the body and the "world" of the Devil. Both worlds are intended in the passage from Mark just quoted, for Jesus had just said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan!" (Mk. 8:33). Both views of the world appear in Jesus' most famous parable as well, the Parable of the Sower. The Parable of the Sower sows seed on four types of ground. Three types fail to bear crops: the first because the Devil takes away the seed; the second because of persecution; the third because of the worries of the world and the lure of riches (Mk. 4:14-20). The types of ground - that is, the hearers of Jesus' teaching - are faced with two major obstacles, one internal and one external. The internal is the natural desire to have a good life in this world, a desire that often draws one away from following the gospel. The external is "the world" as a spiritual system run by the Devil, opposing anyone wishing to follow Jesus.

Faced with these obstacles, human beings needed help from outside. It was no longer a case of being obedient to the law while living in a good "place," the world created by the God of Genesis. The world was, in reality, not such a good place anyway: life was short and difficult, full of diseases and hardships. But now people had souls that they could lose and did not know their danger; in addition, they were living in the enemy's camp. They were trapped.

That is the point of the scriptural story about tying up the strong man cited in Chapter 4: "No one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered" (Mk. 3:27). the "strong man" is the Devil; his "house" is the world system he rules. Jesus came as the Savior, as the Devil's opponent from outside his "world," to plunder his house; he came to rescue his people. Those who came to have eyes to see, as in the story of the Samaritan woman at the well, could say, "This is truly the Savior of the world." (John 4:42).
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*Excerpt taken from The River of God: A New History of Christian Origins, by Gregory J. Riley, pp.217-218.

Preachers Misusing Funeral Sermons

Howard Thurman tells of being seven years old when his father died, and he has never forgotten the trauma he experienced when the guest preacher delivered a funeral sermon that did violence to his father's memory. That guest preacher handling the funeral had not known Saul Thurman. Yet that preacher dared to assess Saul Thurman's nonmembership in the local church the family attended as evidence that he was a nonbeliever, and he forthrighly declared him lost and in hell. That preacher wanted to make the occasion an object lesson for all who were "outside the church."

As young Howard sat on the mourner's seat, he kept saying to his mother beside him, "He didn't know Pappa? Did he? Did he, Momma?" Alice Thurman, Howard's mother, held her calm through the service and gently patted her son's knees to comfort him as the verbal violence ate away at his young mind and spirit. It was the handling of that sermon by that preacher, Thurman tells us, that turned him against the church for awhile during his youth. Lacking intimacy with the family, that preacher would have been wiser and more helpful if he had chosen to comfort the family rather than interpret the life of the deceased. That preacher used the occasion as an evangelistic opportunity. This type of sermon is common among fundamentalist Christian preachers.
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(Source: Excerpt taken from Designing the Sermon: Order and Movement in Preaching, by James Earl Massey. William D. Thompson, editor, pp.78-79)