This interesting article from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life (found via one morning’s Schwartzreport) may be found at http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=275. (The original includes charts that I can’t figure out how to get into this post.)
It is interesting not least as an unconscious indicator of the bias known as scientism. The article says,
Continue reading When science and religious beliefs conflict
When Paul Blakey posted a response to “So You Think Your Life Was Wasted (9)” I emailed him, “Would you care to say more, in the form of an entry I could post? Your previous one sparked quite some response.” Here is his response.
Continue reading Paul Blakey: More on the Dreamspell calendar
Michael Tymn is a member of a forum I belong to. I don’t know him, but when I saw this, I asked permission to reprint it here, which he graciously gave me. Mr. Tymn said, “I wrote the below item yesterday for the commentary section of the Honolulu Star Bulletin. They probably won’t use it. I’m sure many will disagree with me.”
The Downside of Science Education
by Michael E. Tymn
At first glance, President Obama’s recently-announced campaign aimed at encouraging middle and high school students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math classes and careers seems like a very worthwhile one. (SB, 11/23/09 pg. 16)
Who can possibly find fault with such a plan? Perhaps the Amish or some religious cult that rejects modern medicine, maybe even extreme religious fundamentalists who see science as a threat to long-established dogma and doctrine. I have no such religious beliefs, but I have real reservations about encouraging more education and careers in science and technology.
Sometimes a blog can be a time machine. For some reason unknown to my conscious mind, a minute ago I went looking in the March 2009 Archive and found this, which I find extraordinarily interesting, and which I can’t quite remember reading, let alone posting.
Gives me hope that my past-life review will be more interesting than I sometimes think! But then, I am so rarely really “here,” really conscious, that I have said that much of my past-life review will be a first-run movie!
Anyway, this extraordinarily interesting message from a man who calls himself the internet monk.
http://hologrambooks.com/hologrambooksblog/index.php/2009/03/11/the-coming-evangelical-collapse
Given the interest readers showed in Paul Blakey’s post on how he uses the Mayan calendar in his daily life, I thought it worthwhile to post this comment on the movie 2012. Dr. Carl Johan Calleman is author of several serious books about the Mayan Calendar, among them The Mayan Calendar and the Transformation of Consciousness, a study of the processes measured by the Mayan sacred calendar. Naturally, he takes a dim view of the latest cynical Hollywood fantasy exploiting a theme it knows nothing about and cares nothing about. (So what else is new?) This blog entry appeared in The Mayan Calendar Portal http://www.maya-portal.net/blog
My friend Jim sent me (and the others on his list) an extremely interesting article titled “Zimbabwe: A Fresh Start.” (To read it, go to http://www.kitco.com/ind/Field/nov112009.html.) With others, Jim thinks that the U.S. dollar is going to “go Zimbabwe.” Maybe so, maybe no. History is rarely predictable, and almost never apocalyptic. But, who knows, maybe this is one of those times. One would hope that the economic gurus would be able to see a danger so obvious. In fact, it is inconceivable — literally — that they would not. On the other hand, think of all the things obvious to us on the ground that is apparently opaque to the experts in finance, politics, industry, the “news” media, etc., etc.! We’ll see. My interest in this story centered on two aspects scarcely mentioned: One is the unanticipated consequences of activism, and the other is what we might call Southern Christianity.
Continue reading Two lessons from Zimbabwe’s past and present
John Anthony West derides what he calls the Church of Progress. Me too. I am really tired of people pretending they are profound when in fact they are merely sheep following trends. The trend of the past tiresome century, and this one to date, is to regard religion as superstition, as if blind faith in “progress” or in “science” were anything but superstition.
A friend’s comments since I posted this reminds me that I should make clear that of course I did not mean that everyone who rejects religion does so only because it is fashionable to do so – merely that it is the fashion to do so, and the sheep do go that way. As to creeds, I believe it was Jung who said that the gods never reinhabit the temples they once abandon. Similarly, the old formulaic Christianity (and Judaism, and Islam, and Buddhism, and Hinduism, I would argue) is not something we can or should go back to; however, it (whichever one we were raised in) is likely part of what we step off from.
This piece, via my brother who called it to my attention a while ago, from The New York Times http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/03/god-talk/?emc=eta1 .
Stanley Fish
In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance – science, reason, liberalism, capitalism – just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”