“In Saudi Arabia, no woman can travel, work, marry, get divorced, gain admittance to a public hospital or live independently without permission from a “mahram,” or male guardian. Men can beat women who don’t obey them and fathers or brothers have the right to prevent their female relatives from getting married if they don’t approve of her suitor.” -Maggae Mitchell. But lest anyone think our close ally is no better than the Taliban, who the U.S.supposedly opposed due to their treatment of women, Saudi Arabia is building a soccer statium with booths and balconies for women. No word on how they’ll get to the game if they can’t drive. For more Click here

Interesting analysis of the U.S. case against Iran from an Asian perspective. To read, click here

No surprise here, people tending toward bigotry are having problems coping with complexity and change. What might this suggest about strategies to overcome prejudice?

click here

Not too long ago, a woman asked me a very important question. “Why doesn’t your church recite the Apostles’ Creed every week?” It is commonly believed that this creed contains the basic truths of Christianity and should be recited every week to form a Christian community. There wasn’t time to finish the conversation but the question deserves an answer.

In my opinion, one of the greatest areas of immaturity in Christianity today is in our view of the creeds. By reciting creeds what are we hoping to do? Are we repeating them to pretend we believe things we have no way of testing? Are we repeating them to be a part of a team? Are we repeating them to have a sense of meaning?

It is true that reciting words will give us a powerful sense of meaning, any hypnotist can tell you that, but what kind of meaning comes from repeating the same words over and over? Even the sense of unity brought by reciting creeds is suspect. To be sure, a strong bond is formed by reciting words in unison, but such bonds are formed whether it is a church reciting sacred formulas or drunken sailors huddled in a bar singing of the sea.

I’m sure many of Hitler’s followers dutifully repeated the Apostles’ Creed every week of their adult lives., but because they saw the creeds as dogma, their actions were unaffected. Like us, they were using the creeds as self-contained meaning systems. Their Lutheran use of the creeds did not make them better followers of Christ, only better citizens of an empire.

Before they became dogma, the creeds were originally sacred songs. They were calls to love the sacred and serve life. Today, the creeds are the idols of the Protestant church just as rituals have become idols for the Catholic faith. Modern clergy rationalize superstition and injustice by finding verses in the creeds. It was St. Paul who said that words without love are like clanging brass. It was St. John who said anyone who loves has God. The essence of Christianity is not found in any creed. The essence of Christianity is love, and love we cannot say.

part 4 of my interview witn Alex Doherty…

4. What does the word “God” mean to you?

There are many religious forms that do not personify experience using a concept of God at all. Non-theist religion has a rich heritage when it isn’t being burned by theists. So a personal God is not necessary, but can a helpful symbol for doing elementary metaphysics- which is addressing questions like “what’s it all about?” We cannot really answer the question, but our minds will construct some such frame.

Einstein would often use the word “God” as a shorthand metaphysical device probably to save time and give a charm to his imagery. He did not believe in a personal God, but he found the symbol useful for talking about everything at once. Our minds need a frame to begin the task of understanding our experience. The universe is a boundless verb, but our minds need the closure of nouns. Hegel said religion is putting philosophy in pictures. That’s an over simplification, of course, but it states a truth I think.

“God” is a human symbol that allows us to speak of everything that is too big, too deep and too strange for our ordinary understanding. In Hebrew, the divine name of God is YHWH which is a verb form of the word “being.” The other names for God are like facets on that one diamond. The point is not to believe in a being, but to illumine various aspects of being itself. .

To see the whole article Click here

With our electorial process under the under the influence of the new Super PACs, will our elections look less and less like Lincoln/Douglas and more and more like professional wrestling?click here.

What follows is an interview of Leon Panetta justifying the Obama policy of assassinating U.S. citizens without due process, along with analysis by Glenn Greenwald
Click here

“Why does an appendectomy in Germany cost roughly a quarter what it costs in the United States? ($3,285 compared to $13,123). Or an MRI scan cost less than a third as much, on average, in Canada? ($304 compared to $1,009).”

“Americans continue to spend more on health care than patients anywhere else. In 2009, we spent $7,960 per person, twice as much as France, which is known for providing very good health services. And for all that spending, we get very mixed results–some superb, some average, some inferior–compared with other advanced nations.”

To read Nader’s article Click here

This is part three of an interview I did with Alex Doherty of New Left Project. He wanted to know if there could be a form of Christianity that led to healthy politics. I’m still groping for a title for the series.

3. You view the gospels as having a radical message – how is it then that the Church has so often sided with forces of oppression?

The church was radical for several centuries but was co-opted by the Roman Empire about the time of Constantine. The reason for this hostile takeover is pretty obvious. It is the same reason corporations buy protest songs and turn them into commercials. Religion deserves much of the blame it receives for historical monstrosities such as the crusades and inquisitions, but more often, religion falls captive to political bullies who use it for very secular purposes. The war in the Middle East isn’t really about religion at all. It is a fight over land hiding behind the cloak of religion. I doubt very seriously that the primary motive for the Crusades was rescuing the holy lands from Islam. I suspect the booty captured by “pious” European kings was much more to the point.

The role of religion in violence may be closer to the role alcohol plays in domestic abuse as a “dis-inhibitor”. If you blame abuse on the alcohol, you may be missing the real dynamics of bullying. I think Voltaire was right to say those who believe absurdities are much more likely to commit atrocities, but the real question for me, is can there be a religion that honors reason, science and universal human rights? If we use “religion” as a synonym for supernaturalism, the answer is, obviously, is no. But I think it is a conversation worth having.

To see the whole article Click here

I believe it was Aristotle who said that wonder is the beginning of philosophy and Emerson who contended that stars are the daily bread of the soul. Great minds seem to make time for musing on life’s mystery.

As I write these words, beams from the sunrise are streaming from behind my shoulder.  There were ages when the entire village would have risen to greet this miracle, but on this morning, the entire village seems to be dutifully entering the ramp of the nearby interstate highway.  I can see people move their visors to block the irritating rays of the morning sun.  I can imagine them mindlessly turning on the car radio, and moving like granules of an amoebae into the heart of the city.

This absence of wonder produces an enormous poverty in our lives.  Nothing else in life quite fills that void.  For many, the world seems to have lost its luster, but it is our own eyes that have grown dull.  “The one who cannot wonder,” Carlyle claimed, “is but a pair of Spectacles behind which there is no eye.”

It is not enough to console ourselves with miraculous stories of how some religious hero calmed the storm or was lifted to the sky.  Our souls hunger to experience miracles of our own.  And, in fact, miracle stories were intended to meet just that need.  It is not that Jesus was physically lifted into the sky, but that the minds of the disciples were lifted to see Christ everywhere.  It’s not that Jesus changed the weather pattern, but that the disciples learned to see the peace of God in the middle of their storms. The stories of scripture were not written to teach use about magical people and places somewhere else. They are intended to inspire us so we can move to greet this day with reverence and awe.

It is a poor imagination which can only see the miraculous in violations of nature. If we go out to the nearest woods and really listen, we will soon be overwhelmed by the intelligence expressed in that spot.  Looking in the eyes of a beloved pet, we soon feel an eerie sense of intelligence that transcends our ordinary perspective.  To wonder at such things is the very food of our souls.