Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Distinct from Biblical Studies. Includes studies in origins and nature of religious ideas; posts on religions in history and contemporary world (e.g. Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism.) Should this include post-biblical Christianity and rabbinical Judaism of late antiquity, the direct outgrowths of Second Temple era? Also includes various types of Christianity (e.g. fundamentalism) and debates with atheists. Posts on atheism and atheist world views per se are also included, of course. It does not include Islamism as the matrix of terrorism — that goes into Politics and Society. But here we get into a grey area. Compare social attitudes towards and criticisms of Islam related to Islamism and terrorism.
Continuing notes from Marlene Winell‘s Leaving the Fold:
The Burden of Shame (pp. 118-119)
Biblical passages lie at the base of it. But there are modern adaptations of these passages that parents use in the process of disciplining their children and that drag down a child’s self-esteem (Winell’s list, p.119) — Continue reading “Dysfunctional fundamentalist families (2): the Shame Burden”
One of my helps when I had decided to leave religion was hearing a radio interview with psychologist Marlene Winell (link is to her website) and subsequently reading her book, Leaving the Fold. In her book Marlene makes the disturbing claim that the dynamics found in a fundamentalist family are often the same as those at work in other dysfunctional families, including those of alcoholics.
I could not deny her observations. They probably relate to the well-known fact that many areas noted for their religiosity rank higher than average in rates of child abuse, unwanted pregnancies, domestic violence, rape, and other crime. (I’m sure it has a bit to do with the way many fundamentalists react with arrogance and judgmental disdain towards anyone who seriously questions their beliefs.)
The following comments, and in particular her lists of characteristics often found in common among dysfunctional families — whether families of alcoholics or fundamentalists — are from her book (with her permission). The list summarizes the work of Bradshaw (1988), Satir (1972), Whitfield (1987) and Marlene’s own clinical experience. (p.129)
Continue reading “Dysfunctional fundamentalist families (1)”
I am not interested in “disproving the Bible”. My interest is in understanding it and its origins. I do not believe that that interest — or any longterm worthwhile interest — is served by taking it at face value and rationalizing the contradictions that inevitably arise when we do that. Nor does graphical detail establish eyewitness testimony.
The point of this post is to offer one of many possible demonstrations of the fallacy of the taking the bible at face value or assuming graphical detail arises from eyewitness reports. So I’m tossing out here, for comparison with assumptions made about the Gospels, a few passages from a report of the eyewitness tale by Ms Head that The New York Times has exposed as a fabrication.
How much more inspiring and hopeful for all is the story of Dr Caitlin McOmish recovery than being told, “It was a miracle”.
Armed with nothing but knowledge of the plasticity of the human brain Caitlan’s schoolteacher and science graduate parents worked to heal her brain through an intensive physical and mental exercise and stimulation program. When a baby, Caitlan contracted mumps and was diagnosed with irreversible brain damage as a result. She has now just completed a PhD in neuroscience at the Howard Florey Institute in Melbourne. Who would want to swap the thrilling details — the human passion and the marvels of the brain — by hiding all that in the opaque lump of the copout line, “God did it”?
How much more useful for humanity that Caitlan used her recovery experience to generate an interest in finding a potential cure for mental illnesses such as schizophrenia than promoting prayer and faith.
Check out the story on the here.
Recently remarked on one aspect of Robert Pape’s study that potentially explains why Singapore has not been a target of suicide bomb attacks. But there’s another possible explanation also raised by Pape. And it may relate to the reason Christian fundamentalists have failed to push their Intelligent Design assaults on scientific reasoning in the public education sector in Singapore. Continue reading “two fundamentalisms under an authoritarian state”
Amid all the sights to attract a tourist in Singapore one that drew my attention was the t-shirt of a young Chinese girl traveling in the same train floor space on my way to their famous zoo. It was a “We are more than conquerors through him who loved us – Romans 8:37” t-shirt, with that phrase encircling the word “Conquered!” stamped over what I took to be a stylized map of Singapore. Happily the girl who wore it and her companion did not look like fearsome conquerors, and their cheerful conversation did not give any hint of either being among the humiliated conquered. It seemed almost like a unseemly invasion of their privacy for me to try to think of them communally praying for and singing of the conquering power of Christ in their lives, so I kept my thoughts at the sociological and historical level. Continue reading “T-shirts, Basilicas and the appeal of Power in Christianity”
Two unexpected sights have hit me since being here for a conference this week: a Gideon’s bible in the hotel room and a huge yellow banner on a gate advertizing a pentecostal church. The Gideons was sitting with another volume on the teachings of Buddha and the pentecostal church looks oddly out of place where I had quite liked the way one historic christian church compound has been converted into a centre for shops, restaurants, bars and clubs.
A few enquiries have led me to understand that it many of the youth from the Chinese population here that are the ones who are converting to this form of christianity. I wonder if that has to do with a price of cosmopolitanism. The Chinese are, I understand, more likely to be Buddhist or Taoist if anything, and it can be argued that these are more philosophical systems than religions. And living in a city that prides itself on its cosmopolitan ambience may not be particularly conducive to a strong sense of close community. Especially in a city-state that is only about 40 years old, with much of the now dominant Chinese population migrating there from as recently as the 60’s.
I have already addressed here the way I see certain forms of christian religion filling in a family-need gap in people’s lives.
I don’t know of course, but it seems reasonable to think that international flavours are best coupled with strong cultural traditions that are capable of serving one’s need to feel a meaningful part of a community. Much of Europe seems to have both.
On the other hand, many parents in computer-literate countries like ours (and Singapore) probably worry overmuch about the time their youngsters spend now on their computers talking with friends they have never met face to face. But these communications are enabling children (and not just children) to establish meaningful and confidence-building relationships. Sure it is not the environment that any other generation has ever known before. And it is easy to fear or assume the worst too quickly about the unknown, but researchers who have studied this new phenomenon of the “virtual world of friendships”– NOT “the world of virtual friends” – have noticed the confidence and meaningfulness it can bring to many people’s lives. (Links and refs will have to wait till I get back home.)
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that this Web 2.0 world of MySpace and FaceBook etc can fill a need of belonging that arises out of real relationships (mediated in the virtual world — as opposed to being virtual relationships) — can eventually offer something more real in people’s lives than ancient and medieval belief systems.
But back to the hotel room — I am no Buddhist, but I did read the first chapter of the Buddhist book left beside the bible in my room. It was so refreshingly light and positive in its inducements for readers to follow the way of eliminating suffering. It began with Buddha (or the one to become Buddha) feeling the pain of seeing a worm being taken by a bird. The appeals from then on are to the better nature in us all. So unlike the Sermon on the Mount that commands people to love one another and never get angy for fear they will be thrown in hell if they don’t.
Such a pity that Pentecostalism is drawing people away from such a gentle philosophy. Wouldn’t it be nice if Web 2.0 can offer more than just a technological change in the future.
Gee, maybe we are not immortal souls wrapped in mortal coils after all. Check this Reuters article for the details.
And another (maybe slightly better) link here at BBC news.
Richard Dawkins has a section in his God Delusion (pp. 222-226) that discusses Marc Hauser‘s Moral Minds: How Nature Designed our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.
Hauser conducted a study with Peter Singer to test whether atheists differ in their moral intuitions from religious believers. The expectation was that if people need religion to give them their moral values then there should be a significant difference between the moral values of atheists and the religious.
Three hypothetical dilemmas were the focus of the comparison: Continue reading “Atheist and religious Moral Minds / Dawkins on Hauser”
Have just completed Michel Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto and can’t go past the review of the book you can find at that link — so won’t bother with my own. (The original French title could more literally be translated “Tract on Atheology” which would do more justice to the contents of the book, it being less a rationale for atheism per se than a polemical essay against the respected status and functions theology has long held among inheritors of the Judea-Christian and Moslem worlds.)
It is refreshing to see in print ideas that one has arrived at on ones own and only hitherto shared with trusted audiences. I imagine many who have rationally worked their way from faith to atheism have similarly found themselves afterwards thrilled to find such luminaries as Nietzsche having long before paved a way in the direction are now treading. Although as Onfray rightly reminds us, to learn from Nietzsche is to pave one’s own path, not to walk in his same steps.
Anyway, Onfray’s book reminded me of a list of ethical values that to my mind would be one huge advance on the current values that dominate our species. Most are not even hinted at in his essay, so this is really my own list of some of the changes — rooted in science and humanism as opposed to archaic mythical views of what makes us human — that I would think would make for a far more humane society: Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics: a list spun off from Onfray’s Atheist Manifesto”
The foundational institutions, attitudes and values of our modern societies are still based on a legacy of Christian and pre-Christian assumptions of human nature that take no cognizance of the modern advances in biology, neurology, genetics, psychology. The power of the black book still binds our ethical senses. Continue reading “Beyond Christian ethics – crime and punishment”
“The essential principle of totalitarianism is to make laws that are impossible to obey. The resulting tyranny is even more impressive if it can be enforced by a privileged caste or party which is highly zealous in the detection of error. Most of humanity, throughout its history, has dwelt under a form of this stupefying dictatorship, and a large portion of it still does. Allow me to give a few examples of the rules that must, yet cannot, be followed.” (God is Not Great, p.212)
Hitchens then cites the biblical command forbidding people to even think about coveting goods. I’m not sure there is a command not to even think about it, but the principle is certainly there. The New Testament certainly echoes this with its injunction which says that to even look on a woman in the wrong way is to actually already have committed adultery.
There can only be two possible responses to such commands: Continue reading “Paul’s torment and notes from Hitchen’s “God is Not Great””
Christian Zionists are Christians who believe that the Bible prophesies and validates the migration of Jews to Palestine as a sign of the imminence of the Second Coming of Christ. They support the establishment of the Jewish state in the Middle East today, and their claim to the whole land of Biblical Israel, and accordingly deny Palestinian rights.
Gary Burge contributed “Theological and Biblical Assumptions of Christian Zionism” (originally as a conference paper) for Challenging Christian Zionism : Theology, Politics and the Israel-Palestine Conflict (2005). He discerns six steps by which Christian Zionist theology is developed (pp.51-53): Continue reading “Christian Zionism: assumptions and a humanist’s critique”
There is another more subtle way that the Sermon on the Mount has the potential to cripple true believers psychologically. (I have already addressed the self-absorbed, fear-driven, irresponsible submissiveness that its supposedly noble teachings actually promote.) Some of its most exalted sayings are really guidelines for anyone taking them seriously to go through life playing the victim game. (But firstly, I am well aware that there are two types of victims: there truly are those who have been cruelly victimized, but there are also many who find the victim game an alternative to getting on with more positive and productive mentality. Unfortunately few among one of those types can tell the difference.)
Blessed are the poor, the mourners, the meek, the merciful, the pure . . . . Continue reading “Victimhood and the Sermon on the Mount”