Hey, even if nothing actually happens between now and the election, like another Tampa or bomb threat in Australia, all the govt has to do is keep issuing travel warnings re Indonesia as per http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/09/1973454.htm and beautiful! that alone should be enough to keep many voters fearfully sheltering in the cold arms of the coalition’s policies.
Doctor terrorists: Comparing media treatment of the Arab and American Jewish varieties
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by Neil Godfrey
In 1994 a “Jewish Settler” walked into a mosque and gunned down Arab worshippers. Media generally referred to Dr Baruch Goldstein as a “Jewish Settler” or a “crazed gunman”. One can still find old media references to him on the net. His doctor status was shocking but it was not the main thrust of the media labels at the time.
In July 2007 news headlines spoke of non-white terrorists with medical qualifications as:
Doctors caught in UK terror plot net (Sydney Morning Herald)
An Iraqi Doctor was led into court . . . (CBS)
We all know from near daily reminders that the horror of these men is that they are “doctors” — sworn to do no harm to life.
Yet one must question why the doctor status of the white American Jewish terrorist and mass killer was not so forcefully accentuated.
One is reminded of the Children Overboard mendacity of a few years ago — the Howard government finding a ready reception among the larger population to think of Arabs as somehow beyond the pale of humanity — without any of the normal standards of decency.
A Jewish killer is primarily a crazed gunman or jewish settler and his doctor status is secondary, almost apologetically applied; an Arab killer, if a doctor, is an Arab who knows no normal bounds of ethics — he is all the more evil for being a doctor.
As long as the western media continues to be oblivious to its implicit racism towards much of the Islamic world it will be supporting the imperialist attitudes and policies that are now after about a century are finally beginning to “blowback” on us.
2007-07-08
Rationalist Hitchens vs Eyewitness Bauckham
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by Neil Godfrey
Any encounter with Christopher Hitchens’ talent with words is always a richly rewarding experience. And while reading his newly published “God is Not Great” I was at times painfully reminded of my failure at this point to have completed my review of the last chapter of Bauckham’s Eyewitness book on this blog. (I really will complete that soon, promise.) Not that I have any reason to think Hitchens has read Bauckham, but some of Hitchens’ plainest observations about religion and reason reminded me by contrast of the convoluted nonsense twisted through the keyboard of Bauckham as he attempts to justify branches of medieval and ancient scholarship against post-Enlightenment rationalism.
Eyewitnesses of a Medieval Miracle! Continue reading “Rationalist Hitchens vs Eyewitness Bauckham”
2007-07-07
Is this a mentally ill person?
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by Neil Godfrey
Imagine a person who withdraws from the world and unrealistically wants things “just so” — to be perfect. This person cannot accept reality and demands to live in their own view of paradise, seeing the real world as hostile to their fantasy of the ideal. This person will go to strident lengths to oppose anything that comes between them and their ideal existence. Continue reading “Is this a mentally ill person?”
2007-07-01
4th Century Image of Christ from Dorset
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by Neil Godfrey
Another image I found of interest in the British Museum — 4th century mosaic of Christ on a wealthy family’s floor (not ceiling or wall) adjoining a room with a floor mosaic of a pagan hero interpreted as a Christian symbol (and more …. pity about the slight camera movement for the 4th pic) . . . . Continue reading “4th Century Image of Christ from Dorset”
2007-06-29
10 characteristics of religious fundamentalism
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by Neil Godfrey
Fundamentalism is a term applied to various Islamic, Christian, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Judaic groups, and even to some secular (economic and environmental) groups. All different.
Yet Tamas Pataki in his newly published Against Religion lists what he sees as “criss-crossing similarities — family resemblances — in certain basic beliefs, values, and attitudes” (p.27) that characterize the various religious groups labelled “fundamentalist”. Continue reading “10 characteristics of religious fundamentalism”
science vs faith, creation etc
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by Neil Godfrey
Some might be interested in a discussion on faith and creation vs science and evolution hidden away under my post about Judas — beginning from the comment dated 23rd June 07
2007-06-28
an old pic . . . my angle . . . (nothing more)
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by Neil Godfrey
While visiting the British Museum I took this pic of Mithras Slaying the Bull from this angle because it shows (more than other images I can recall) how the scorpion is, like the snake and dog, sucking in the life juices of the bull — whether its blood from the dagger wound or the testicles. (Okay, the blood sucking dog and serpent is clearer as such in other images, but this angle does display the scorpion’s target of attack in this particular statue.)
So what does this have to do with the Gospel of Mark? Who knows…. David Ulansey may have something to say about it. So, in close step with Ulansey, might Michael Patella, who similarly sees the origins of Christianity embedded in cosmological developments otherwise known to practitioners of Mithraism. Continue reading “an old pic . . . my angle . . . (nothing more)”
Did Iranian leaders really call for genocide of Jews and nuking of Israel?
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by Neil Godfrey
There have been several rebuttals of the western media’s outrageous uncritical relaying of neo-con and “Bush-it(e)” propaganda asserting that Iranian leadership has called for the wiping of Israel off the map.
No such claim was made, and the fact that the mainstream western media reported it as fact speaks disheartening volumes about that media’s complicity with the corporate elite or lack of any principle other than $$ and ratings.
If you have been left with any impressions that Iran really did call for Israel to be “wiped off the map” then do please check out this latest rebuttal and forward to friends:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17925.htm
That such incredible lies can be perpetrated in the time of so much ability for a sincere media to really expose such nonsense for what it is, ….. what can one say, if not simply that when another mass killing happens that it will be the “fourth estate” as much as any who must be held accountable!
Richard Dawkins compounds the Sam Harris error on suicide bombers
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by Neil Godfrey
There is much to commend The God Delusion as a clear presentation of a wide range of reasons for viewing atheism as not only a rational but a wholesome and positive alternative to religion. I will probably address some of these in future posts. (The book is also far by miles from being the rabid polemic against religion that it has been promoted as being in many quarters.)
But there is one area where the book disappointed me — it follows Sam Harris’s End of Faith in simplistically reducing the fundamental cause of Islamic suicide terrorism to the belief that a martyr’s death will translate into heavenly and/or virginal bliss.
At least Dawkins acknowledges that there are other factors pressuring such terrorists to their acts, but he still comes down on this fanciful belief as being the bottom line that enables such actions.
The reason I think it worth addressing this claim is that I believe it has the potential of stoking the flames of intolerance, especially against a large part of non-western humanity, and contributing to western blindness that can only serve to perpetuate the whole problem. Continue reading “Richard Dawkins compounds the Sam Harris error on suicide bombers”
2007-06-26
The problem of understanding anonymous texts (e.g. gospels)
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by Neil Godfrey
There’s an interesting passage in Steve Fuller’s Kuhn vs. Popper: The Struggle for the Soul of Science that strikes me as having a most cogent critique of those who assert that the most honest and true way to read the gospels is to simply take them at face value:
Even if ideas and arguments should be evaluated independently of their origins, we must still first learn about their origins, in order to ensure the evaluation is indeed independent of them. The only thing worse than accepting or rejecting an idea because we know about its originator is doing so because we know nothing of the originator. Ignorance may appear in two positive guises. Both are due to the surface clarity of relatively contemporary texts, which effectively discourages any probing of their sources: on the one hand, we may read our own assumptions into the textual interstices; on the other, we may unwittingly take on board the text’s assumptions. In short, either our minds colonise theirs or theirs ours. In both cases, the distinction between the positions of interpreter and interpreting is dissolved, and hence a necessary condition for critical distance is lost.
pp. 71-72 (italics, Fuller’s; bold, mine)
Substitute for “relatively contemporary texts” the canonical gospels and read a commentary about texts, in this case the gospels and Acts or the Epistles, that present a “surface clarity”. Such a “surface clarity” — especially in a case when we know nothing of the origin of those texts — presents a huge problem for any interpreter. This is contrary to many who would see ignorance of authorship and provenance as irrelevant and who believe that the plain meaning of the text compels belief in the truly fair-minded.
So what is Fuller’s point and what relevance can this have for our reading of the gospels? Continue reading “The problem of understanding anonymous texts (e.g. gospels)”
2007-06-06
Mark’s Parable of Easter Sunday
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by Neil Godfrey
Mark’s gospel concludes with a scene that contains several bizarre elements that defy logical explanation. One of these is his narrative of the women bringing spices to anoint Jesus’ body but wondering as they go: Duh, has anyone worked out a plan for how we are going to get through the door of the tomb? (Mark 16:3)
The story, as told, does not make narrative sense. Yes, one can imagine a whole array of factors to make it work, but then it becomes the story of whoever is doing that imagining, and it is no longer Mark’s story as he has given it to us.
But the story, as told, does make profound and cogent sense as a parable or allegory. It recalls two stories in the early chapters of the gospel: Continue reading “Mark’s Parable of Easter Sunday”
Making more sense of Jesus . . .
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by Neil Godfrey
One can argue that the author took historical traditions and sayings and edited them to give them a theological spin, but this is to make two assumptions when it is much simpler to make but one: that the author created the stories and sayings as theological parables.
Just as the healing of the paralytic is told in the shadow of the death and resurrection of Jesus (both laid in dug-out places, both rise and go through a massive block that prevents others from entering), so the withered hand miracle is also told as a reverberation of the withered growth in the parable of the sower (Mark 4:6) and the withering of the fig tree to mark the end of Jesus.
Thus the story and words of Jesus make sense when and only when they are read as an allegory. To read the story as a literal healing is to ruin the story and to disconnect the sayings of Jesus from the story. Continue reading “Making more sense of Jesus . . .”
2007-06-05
Making sense of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark
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by Neil Godfrey
Jesus’ words often make contextual sense only if his acts to which his words refer are viewed as allegory. They make no sense, and open him to false charges, if his acts are read literally. Mark did appear to say that Jesus did not speak without his words being a parable.
But without a parable he did not speak to them (Mark 4:34)
Yet readers generally take his sayings at face value and his healings as literal events. What if we look at both as parables? That is, his healings are parables and his words explain them as parables. Otherwise, the reader falls into the trap of siding with the enemies of Jesus and seeing him as a lawbreaker, even if they excuse him, unlike his enemies. Continue reading “Making sense of Jesus in the Gospel of Mark”