Mother tongue: Polish Joined: February 18, 2003 Location: Poland
RE: Women bridging through submission ...
Originally written by Nanna Mercer on September 11, 2009 4:38 PM
“Wimpy theology makes wimpy women”
Not only women...
Former president Jimmy Carter went on the record to point out that he believes that racism is at the heart of the great deal of the extreme animosity being leveled at President Obama (NBC News September 15). Carter identified himself as a Southerner with an insider's understanding. There's something he didn't mention however: the special culpability of his own religion -- Evangelical Christianity -- for the anti-Obama hyperventilating and furious reaction to our first black president. And that reaction has less to do with race and more to do with the ugliest side of religion. http://www.alternet.org/story/142755/right-wing_hatemongering_fueled_by_christianity
Mr. Wright begins "The Evolution of God" by wondering not whether faiths are true but why they proliferated in early society. His conclusion is that the initial impulse of faith was the self-interest of its administrative class. "Whenever people sense the presence of a puzzling and momentous force," he writes, "they want to believe there is a way to comprehend it. If you can convince them you're the key to comprehension, you can reach great stature." ...
What is the contemporary equivalent to the tribal shaman? Stockbrokers. Like shamans, stockbrokers claim the ability to augur hidden forces -- and, like shamans, Mr. Wright says, their advice is almost always worthless. In general, customers (ancient farmers needing rain, modern investors) want to believe that someone has secret, mystic knowledge of a powerful unknown (the natural world, Wall Street). Like investment advisers today, mediums of the far past claimed mystic knowledge and charged for it. In some old tribal cultures, Mr. Wright adds, the word shaman meant roughly "politician." Angling for religious power was thus essentially the same as angling for tribal leadership.
Originally written by Jacek K. on June 25, 2009 12:17 PM
Actually, "The Evolution of God" never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history.
Now a dialog on The Evolution of God by Robert Wright:
The title of my book refers not to biological evolution but to the evolution of the human conception of God. So it's odd that The New Republic chose a biologist, Jerry A. Coyne, to review the book ("Creationism for Liberals," August 12). But it turns out that Coyne's misplaced expertise wasn't the main problem. Of his many serious misrepresentations of my book, most seem rooted in a simple failure to read it--or read it attentively, at least. Here is a small sample of Coyne's errors....
To which the reviewer, Jerry A. Coyne, now responds:
Robert Wright fails torespond to my main criticism: that there is no "scientific" evidence for a transcendent force which, by coupling social interaction to theological change, pulls humanity toward ever greater morality. Instead, his defense rests on selectively quoting his own book. (I've posted a longer response at http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2009/09/13/response-to-robert-wright/.)
An interview with His Holiness The Dalai Lama
by Amy Edelstein
WIE: The goal of Buddhist practice is said to be enlightenment. While the word "enlightenment" is now commonly used in the West, there are many vastly different definitions of what enlightenment is. In your approach to your own practice, when you think about enlightenment, what are you striving to achieve? What does the goal of enlightenment mean to you personally?
H.H. THE DALAI LAMA: So, enlightenment! "Consciousness" or "mind" has cognitive ability—there is something throughwhich we know. Usually, we say: "I see, I learn, I know, I remember." There is one single element that acts as a medium for viewing all objects. At our level, the power or ability to know is very limited, but we have the potential to increase this ability to know. "Buddhahood" or "Buddhahood enlightenment" is when the potential of this ability to know has been fully developed. Merely increasing that capacity of knowing is also a level of enlightenment. So, the term "enlightenment" could refer to knowing something that you did not know or realizing something that you had not realized. But when we speak about enlightenment at the state of Buddhahood, we are speaking about a fully awakened state.
That is why, according to Buddhism, all our efforts ultimately should go to training or shaping our minds. Emotions such as hatred or strong attachment are destructive and harmful—we call them "negative emotions." So how can we reduce these negative emotions? Not through prayer, not through physical exercise, but through training of mind. Through training of mind we try to increase the opposite qualities. When genuine compassion, infinite compassion, or unbiased compassion is increased, hatred is reduced. When equanimity is increased, attachment is reduced. All of these destructive emotions are based on ignorance, and the opposite, or antidote, of ignorance is enlightenment.
Five decades ago, Paul F. Knitter, then a novice studying to become a Roman Catholic priest, would be in the seminary chapel at 5:30 every morning, trying to stay awake and spend time in meditation before Mass.
Last Wednesday, at the same early hour, he was sitting on his Zen cushion meditating in the Claremont Avenue apartment he occupies as the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, World Religions and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York.
A few hours later he was talking about his pointedly titled new book, “Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian” (Oneworld). The book is the outcome of decades of encounters with Buddhism — and of struggles with his own faith.
[…]
What does it really mean for Christians to profess belief in an almighty “God the Father” personally active in the world, or in Jesus, “his only-begotten Son” who saved humanity through his death and bodily resurrection, or in eternal life, heaven and hell?
However much he tried, Mr. Knitter found that certain longstanding Christian formulations of faith “just didn’t make sense”: God as a person separate from creation and intervening in it as an external agent; individualized life after death for all and eternal punishment for some; Jesus as God’s “only Son” and the only savior of humankind; prayers that ask God to favor some people over others.
He was not asserting, as some people have, that religions like Christianity and Buddhism are merely superficially different expressions of one underlying faith. On the contrary, he insists that they are profoundly different. Yet “Buddhism has helped me take another and deeper look at what I believe as a Christian,” he writes. “Many of the words that I had repeated or read throughout my life started to glow with new meaning.”
[…]
One need not have a stake in that outcome to find “Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian” a compelling example of religious inquiry.
Elite Veteran Mother tongue: German Posts: 848 Joined: December 31, 2002 Location: Mexico
RE: Bridging The Religious Divide (3)
Originally written by Nanna Mercer on October 9, 2009 10:51 PM
Yet “Buddhism has helped me take another and deeper look at what I believe as a Christian,” he writes.
This reminds me of a famous Karate master who said "Since I started studying Kung Fu, my understanding of Karate has become much more profound."
And when you compare the traditional Chinese logic with the Western (Greek) logic, the outstanding difference is the "implication", which happens to be the weakest point of both of them, reflected in the rules "ex falso quodlibet sequitur" and "verum ex quodlibet sequitur"..
[Edited by Harry Bornemann on October 9, 2009 5:26 PM]
Elite Veteran Mother tongue: German Posts: 848 Joined: December 31, 2002 Location: Mexico
RE: Bridging The Religious Divide (3)
Originally written by Nanna Mercer on October 9, 2009 10:51 PM
BTW, Harry, have you settled in again?
Not yet, I am in transit in Germany and will go to Mexico on 1st November for 6 month, to find out whether I should learn Amharic or Spanish, or maybe both?
[Edited by Harry Bornemann on October 10, 2009 2:15 AM]
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never grapples with the most basic religious question -- the existence of God. Instead it charts the twists and turns of how God's personality has kept changing over the centuries, and specifically, how the rough-and-tumble politics of the ancient Middle East shaped the Abrahamic religions. The book is filled with richly observed details about the Bible and the Quran, though Wright wears his learning lightly as he guides us through several thousand years of religious history.
