Tag-Archive for » religion «

What I’ve Noticed
June 05th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

The existence of god in general might be difficult to disprove (as is the existence of invisible flying purple elephants), but the existence of a specific gods is all to easy to debunk.  For example, the Bible story and Jewish genetics don’t match at all.

Israel is doing a great job of getting on everyone’s bad side.

In light of BP’s abysmal safety record and incompetence so huge it seems deliberate, their current mistreatment of people cleaning up the spill isn’t at all surprising.  I wonder if this spill will push us towards alternative energy since this disaster is ultimately a product of our own habits.

The women-trapping-men-with-babies trope has a lot of traction in our culture, and while there are certainly cases where it does occur, it ignores that fact that controlling women’s bodies and reproduction has been and continues to be a primary way men control and abuse women.

Veggie and vegan diets aren’t necessarily better for the environment than diets that include domesticated animals, but eating bugs would go a long way towards creating a sustainable diet.

The media often does a terrible job reporting on science.  Ed Yong sets them straight on what the research actually says about acupuncture.

Crip Sex from Mia Mingus on Vimeo.

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How do you ascend?
March 29th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

Although it is clearly culturally conditioned, this kind of “ascent” seems an incontrovertible fact of life.  However we choose to interpret it, people all over the world and in all phases of history have had this type of contemplative experience.  Monotheists have called the climactic insight a “vision of God”; Plotinus had assumed that it was the experience of the One; Buddhists would call it an intimation of nirvana.  The point is that this is something that human beings who have a certain spiritual talent have always wanted to do.  The mystical experience of God has certain characteristics that are common to all faiths.

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An Outside Perspective
March 03rd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

I grew up in an extremely conservative, strange, and cult-like church.  It took me a long time to figure out that there wasn’t something wrong with me, that the problem was the church.

When I was in elementary school, the music minister’s wife, Patty Jo, disappeared.  We learned years later that her husband had killed her after years of abuse.  Quiet Moments tells the story from the perspective of Patty Jo’s niece, who wasn’t a member of the church.  This is how Patty Jo’s niece described the church:

Members of Rick and PJ’s church were huddled around the front of the church as if forming a human shield….The church members watched us warily, even stared, and were reluctant to talk with us… The unfriendly atmosphere made me feel creepy…

The River of Life Church was located in a private community called Sonshine Farm. It was surrounded by houses owned by members of the church, most of whom lived within walking distance.  The women of the church wore little or no makeup and simple clothes, were as unfriendly as the men, and seemed to be comfortable that their husbands were in charge.  Their lack of friendliness made me feel put off.  Unlike those women, PJ was a friendly, gracious person, always the perfect hostess.  But like them, her domestic talents of sewing, crafting, and painting and her dedication to her husband indicated to me that, for reasons I didn’t fully understand, she fit in pretty well….

Some of the men had long beards, which isn’t strange. What was strange was that they always wore dark glasses and neither they nor the women ever made eye contact with us.  There was a hippie type of look and a seemingly strong nonconformity to everything.  They clearly didn’t like to welcome anyone who didn’t fit the mold of their ways, and they seemed wary that we might find out something that they knew.

Patty Jo was very gentle and kind and I cared for her as a child.  I remember being so upset and confused when she disappeared.  I don’t remember Patty Jo’s family, but I was there that day. It’s fascinating to read how someone else saw those same events and vindicating to see how apparent the wrongness of the church was to an outsider.

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Religious truth doesn’t describe the world
March 01st, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

Science demands the fundamental belief that there is a rational explanation for everything; it also requires an imagination and courage which are not dissimilar to religious creativity.  Like the prophet or the mystic, the scientist also forces himself to confront the dark and unpredictable realm of uncreated reality.  … [T]he scientific vision of our own day has made much classic theism impossible for many people.  To cling to the old theology is not only a failure of nerve but could involve a damaging loss of integrity. The Faylasufs attempted to wed their new [scientific] insights with mainstream Islamic faith… Yet the ultimate failure of their rational deity has something important to tell us about the nature of religious truth.

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Just one reason we shouldn’t be nation-building
February 15th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

Politics is not extrinsic to a Muslim’s personal religious life, as in Christianity, which mistrusts mundane success.  Muslims regard themselves as committed to implemented a just society in accord with God’s will.  The ummah has sacramental importance, as a “sign” that God has blessed this endeavor to redeem humanity from oppression and injustice; its political health holds much the same place in a Muslim’s spirituality as a particular theological option (Catholic, Protestant, Methodist, Baptist) in the life of a Christian.  If Christians find the Muslims’ regard for politics strange, they should reflect that their passion for abstruse theological debate seems equally bizarre to Jews and Muslims.

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And that arrogance has led to so much trouble
January 25th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

Denys’s God has two aspects: one is turned toward us and manifests himself in the world; the other is the far side of God as he is in himself, which remains entirely incomprehensible.  He “stays within himself” in his eternal mystery, at the same time as he is totally immersed in creation.  He is not another being, additional to the world.  Deny’s method became normative in Greek theology.  In the West, however, … some imagined that when they said ” God,” the divine reality actually coincided with the idea in their minds.  Some would attribute their own thoughts and ideas to God – saying that God wanted this, forbade that and had planned the other – in a way that was dangerously idolatrous.

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What I’ve Noticed
January 23rd, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

Most people who want to help in a disaster actually make things worse.

The United States just legalized corruption.  Really government, corporations AREN’T PEOPLE.

If a person was knowingly endangering the water supply of so many people, he/she would get more than a slap on the wrist fine.

Interestingly, corporations fight hard for their own personhood, but not for the personhood of actual people, like Yemenese women and girls.

This really just makes me want to accuse fervently praying people in airports of suspicious behavior.

Solving complex networking problems with slime mold is genius.

Rita Trudgett, wicket keeper, Australia, 1930s by Sam Hood

Rita Trudgett, wicket keeper, Australia, 1930s by Sam Hood

Overpopulation and lack of family planning services in Pakistan hurt education and breed religious fundamentalism.

Cops and prosecutors in New Orleans are disgusting.

A great post on what patriarchy is and why getting rid of it is good for women AND men.

A recent study on why men pay for sex turns up a whole lot of misogyny. Interestingly, while feminists are often blamed for the idea that all men are potential rapists, some men in this study make a similar, but more disturbing claim – that without sex, men can’t help but rape. Most feminists today would argue that men are actual human beings, as opposed to animals that can’t possibly contain their “urges.”

Debunking the “God must exist because Earth is perfect for life” myth.

Losing species can create dangerous feedback loops.  The loss or decline of a number of plant species has created a poorer diet for honeybees, leading to a decline in their population. Fewer honeybees means fewer pollinators means fewer seeds means fewer plants.

This week I was glad I have a steep roof.

A very good account of the Creation Museum.  Especially good, I think, is the way it describes how the particular breed of Christianity that promotes creationism is very, very far from what could be considered good things in religion – a sense of unity, beauty, and a universe bigger than ourselves – and is instead “more replete with proof than a Soviet show trial” and “bereft of any soul.”

Prison rape isn’t funny and it’s a real problem.  This is a fantastic ad campaign dealing with the issue.

Grandma and Grandpa and the old Ford Explorer

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If only God hadn’t made women . . .
January 18th, 2010 | Author: sarcozona

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

A religion which teaches men and women to regard their humanity as chronically flawed can alienate them from themselves.  Nowhere is this alienation more evident than in the denigration of sexuality in general and women in particular.  Even though Christianity had originally been quite positive for women, it had already developed a misogynistic tendency in the West by the time of Augustine.  The letters of Jerome teem with loathing of the female which occasionally sounds deranged. Tertullian had castigated women as evil temptresses, an eternal danger to mankind …. Augustine is clearly puzzled that God should have made the female sex: after all, “if it was good company and conversation that Adam needed, it would have been much better arranged to have two men together as friends, not a man and a woman.” Women’s only function was the childbearing which passed the contagion of Original Sin to the next generation, like a venereal disease.  … Western Christianity never fully recovered from this neurotic misogyny …

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What I’ve Noticed
December 20th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

More evidence that our drug policies are just wrong.

Evolving to eat meat helped humans live longer.

American evangelical influence is likely to cause Ugandan gays to be executed.

How did health care reform turn into a subsidy for health insurance companies?

It makes me livid when good ideas get shut down because politicians are more interested in support from corporations than their constituents.  Pharmaceutical companies freaking out about having to become more competitive are how we lost one great cost-saver in the health care bill this week.

HIV is a tricky bastard. A promising microbicide failed to work in large scale trials.

If we found other intelligent life, would we be able to communicate in any meaningful way? I recommend we start trying with octopuses.

A great story demonstrating that the pay gap is alive and well, sexism still has large effects in women’s lives, and that women are just as qualified as men.

I made these pancakes, but with whole wheat flour and extra buttermilk.  They will make any day better.  I promise.

Sexism makes you worse at math.

Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media

Bill Smith, untitle (calibreted arterial system), detail, 2006, mixed media

You aren’t funny, you’re an ass.

Dear Obama, please stop being such a failure.

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Special snowflakes sure do kill a lot of innocent people
December 07th, 2009 | Author: sarcozona

From Karen Armstrong’s A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity and Islam:

The Jews have often been criticized for their belief that they are the Chosen People, but their critics have often been guilty of the same kind of denial that fueled the diatribes against idolatry in biblical times. …  Western Christians have been particularly prone to the flattering belief that they are God’s elect.  During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the Crusaders justified their holy wars against Jews & Muslims by calling themselves the new Chosen People … Calvinist theologies of election have been largely instrumental in encouraging Americans to believe that they are God’s own nation.  As in Josiah’s Kingdom of Judah, such a belief is likely to flourish at a time of political insecurity when people are haunted by the fear of their destruction.  It is for this reason, perhaps, that it has gained a new lease of life in the various forms of fundamentalism that are rife among Jews, Christians and Muslims [today]. A personal God like Yahweh can be manipulated to shore up the beleaguered self in this way, as an impersonal deity like Brahman can not.

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