Atheism, Agnosticism and the Pointlessness of "Absolute Certainty"
Pigeon #39;s introduction, deconversion story and some thoughts about atheism, agnosticism, and the possibility of absolute certainty in a universe with no god.
By: Pigeon Ward
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Atheism, Agnosticism and the Pointlessness of "Absolute Certainty" - Video
By BETH WINEGARNER
A decade or so ago, when Columbia University lecturer Hisham Aidi worked as a journalist covering youth culture in New York's Harlem and the Bronx, he discovered that Muslim kids from around the world were making pilgrimages to what Aidi calls "the Mecca of hip-hop": the Bronx, where the genre was arguably born. They would come in order to meet some of the genre's founders, including Afrika Bambaataa and DJ Kool Herc; to trace the pathways of the place where hip-hop and Islam first mingled; and to visit the grave of Malcolm X, whose Islam-inspired messages of black empowerment had found a new voice in the music.
Those pilgrimages helped give rise to Aidi's new book, "Rebel Music: Race, Empire, and the New Muslim Youth Culture." His book provides an intense tour of some of Islam's most fertile zones in America, Europe, and the Middle East -- places teeming with music, faith, ideas and, frequently, the tension between popular culture and the messages of conservative Muslim leaders. Aidi is in the Bay Area as a part of UC Berkeley's Fifth Annual Conference on Islamophobia Studies. He's featured on a panel titled "Islamophobia in Australia, Austria, Belgium, and the UK" that runs from 11 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. on Saturday, April 19 at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law.
Although music isn't explicitly mentioned in the Quran, "there is a centuries-old debate of whether music is permissible in Islam," Aidi told me in an email interview earlier this month. Many factions, including literalists, Sufi scholars, and others, have weighed in. But these days, it's the conservative Salafis who are most well-known for opposing music, and even banning it outright. In other countries, such as Iran, pop music in all forms has been outlawed, Aidi says.
Meanwhile, Aidi notes that Muslims in Africa, the Middle East, and America are constantly inventing new ways to fuse Islamic ideas with genres such as jazz, punk, and heavy metal. For most Muslims, the act of making music isn't itself rebellious; the book's title instead is a reference to the album from Bob Marley, one of the patron saints of an Islamic reggae style known as Gnawa. This style is connected with a Moroccan Sufi order that is, in turn, aligned with the descendants of formerly enslaved West Africans. Gnawa aims to heal people who are possessed by the jinn -- by summoning beneficent spirits and saints. Aidi says, in Gnawa, Marley himself is included among those spirits who can heal.
"Rebel Music" also digs into the world of Muslim punk, a genre born from Michael Muhammad Knight's 2003 novel "Taqwacores." In true punk fashion, taqwacore band Kominas went after popular Sufi-rock band Junoon -- which itself had once been banned in Pakistan for "belittling the concept of the ideology of Pakistan" -- after Junoon won favor with heads of state in the Middle East and the West. Kominas penned two songs slamming Junoon, "I Want a Blowjob" and "I Want a Handjob." The musicians in Kominas ran into their own trouble with the government of Pakistan, which took issue with their anarchism and agnosticism.
The tangled alliances between popular music and Islam are no more apparent than in the world of hip-hop, whose stories are woven throughout "Rebel Music." Aldi writes that hip-hop is the music of choice among many Muslim youth across the world, for its entertainment value , as well as its ability to communicate Islamic ideas. That latter aspect is so powerful, in fact, that the U.S. State Department in 2005 began sending "hip-hop envoys" to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East in an effort to change the perception that Muslims in the U.S. are oppressed. Meanwhile, pop and hip-hop artists in the West have occasionally co-opted Islamic symbolism in their work -- Lil' Kim wearing a burka while saying "Fuck Afghanistan" or 50 Cent's song "Ghetto Qu'ran."
"The relationship between Islam and hip-hop is complex and dynamic," Aidi says. It appeals to Muslim youth, in particular, because of its many Islamic references, which in turn come from its urban-American roots. "Hip-hop disseminates African American Islam the way reggae broadcasted rastafarianism in the 1970s. So rap introduces non-Muslim youth to Islam, and Muslim youth to black history, transforming cultures and identities." To illustrate his point, Aidi has provided SF Weekly with an annotated playlist.
MC Koringa - "Dana Sensual"
This is the funk soundtrack to Brazilian telenovela Salve Jorge, which addresses relations between Brazil and Turkey and caused a mania for Turkish things in Brazil.
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Rebel Music Author Hisham Aidi on the Relationship Between Hip-Hop and Islam
Widow of writer: 'our agnosticism brings us nearer to God'
(by Francesca Ambrogetti) (ANSA) - Buenos Aires, April 16 - Many years ago, the celebrated Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges met with Jorge Mario Bergoglio - today, Pope Francis - an event that many recall with fondness. "During the years in which Borges was a professor of literature, Bergoglio invited him to give a lesson to high school students where he taught and asked (Borges) to write a prologue to a book of their stories," recalled the widow of Argentina's leading writer, Maria Kodama. Bergoglio is a great admirer of the author's work, The Aleph, and at a certain point, many years ago, the lives of the two crossed paths. This fact is well known, but in Buenos Aires, it again became a topic of conversation after a presentation of the Courtyard of Gentiles, a meeting place between worshippers of different religions and non-believers, inspired by Benedict XVI and supported by Pope Francis. "With Borges, one spoke often of the fact that perhaps our agnosticism brings us closer to God, if he existed, because we took a parallel path for trying to understand in the only impossible way: reason," Kodama remembered in a letter during the presentation of the event, scheduled in November both in Buenos Aires and in Cordoba, where round tables, debates, seminars, shows and exhibits will take place. Echoing the long years spent with Borges, Kodama also remembered her first meeting with the pope last year in which she gave him the complete works of the writer. "As I waited to introduce myself, I remembered the poetry in which Borges said 'we had a homeland and we lost it'," she recalled. "I said to myself that perhaps faith, or a religion, represents the homeland of the soul, a homeland that we had, because we were both baptized and then, as agnostics, we lost it". Kodama did not hide her own satisfaction in knowing that both the pope and Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, the president of the Pontificate Council of Culture promoting the event, are readers of Borges as well as supporters, among other things, of the idea of giving his work prominence, in particular to numerous Borges-influenced writings that tackle the theme of transcendence. http://popefrancisnewsapp.com/
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Borges' widow recalls highschool meeting with pope
Template:Certainty
Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claimsespecially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claimsis unknown or unknowable.[1] Agnosticism can be defined in various ways, and is sometimes used to indicate doubt or a skeptical approach to questions. In some senses, agnosticism is a stance about the similarities or differences between belief and knowledge, rather than about any specific claim or belief.
Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist, coined the word agnostic in 1860. However, earlier thinkers and written works have promoted agnostic points of view. They include Protagoras, a 5th-century BCE Greek philosopher,[2] and the Nasadiya Sukta creation myth in the Rig Veda, an ancient Hindu religious text.[3] Since Huxley coined the term, many other thinkers have written extensively about agnosticism.
Demographic research services normally list agnostics in the same category as atheists and/or non-religious people.[4] Some sources use agnostic in the sense of noncommittal.[5] Agnosticism often overlaps with other belief systems. Agnostic theists identify themselves both as agnostics and as followers of particular religions, viewing agnosticism as a framework for thinking about the nature of belief and their relation to revealed truths. Some nonreligious people, such as author Philip Pullman, identify as both agnostic and atheist.[6]
Thomas Henry Huxley defined the term:
Agnostic (Greek: - a-, without + gnsis, knowledge) was used by Thomas Henry Huxley in a speech at a meeting of the Metaphysical Society in 1876[7] to describe his philosophy which rejects all claims of spiritual or mystical knowledge. Early Christian church leaders used the Greek word gnosis (knowledge) to describe "spiritual knowledge." Agnosticism is not to be confused with religious views opposing the ancient religious movement of Gnosticism in particular; Huxley used the term in a broader, more abstract sense.[8] Huxley identified agnosticism not as a creed but rather as a method of skeptical, evidence-based inquiry.[9][10]
In recent years, scientific literature dealing with neuroscience and psychology has used the word to mean "not knowable".[11] In technical and marketing literature, agnostic often has a meaning close to "independent"for example, "platform agnostic" or "hardware agnostic."
Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt.[12] He asserted that the fallibility of human beings means that they cannot obtain absolute certainty except in trivial cases where a statement is true by definition (i.e. tautologies such as "all bachelors are unmarried" or "all triangles have three corners"). All rational statements that assert a factual claim about the universe that begin "I believe that ...." are simply shorthand for, "Based on my knowledge, understanding, and interpretation of the prevailing evidence, I tentatively believe that...." For instance, when one says, "I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald shot John F. Kennedy," one is not asserting an absolute truth but a tentative belief based on interpretation of the assembled evidence. Even though one may set an alarm clock prior to the following day, believing that waking up will be possible, that belief is tentative, tempered by a small but finite degree of doubt (the alarm might break, or one might die before the alarm goes off).
The Catholic Church sees merit in examining what it calls Partial Agnosticism, specifically those systems that "do not aim at constructing a complete philosophy of the Unknowable, but at excluding special kinds of truth, notably religious, from the domain of knowledge."[13] However, the Church is historically opposed to a full denial of the ability of human reason to know God. The Council of the Vatican, relying on biblical scripture, declares that "God, the beginning and end of all, can, by the natural light of human reason, be known with certainty from the works of creation" (Const. De Fide, II, De Rev.)[14]
Agnosticism can be subdivided into several categories. Recently suggested variations include:
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Agnosticism - Religion-wiki
President George W. Bush once told a group of visitors over lunch that he had an advantage over Winston Churchill. I believe in God, the president said, referring to the famous agnosticism of Britains leader in World War II.
I found myself thinking of that remark with Bushs debut as an artist, with portraits of leading figures including a piercing painting of President Vladimir Putin. It sent me to fetch one of my most treasured books, a short primer penned by Churchill called Painting as a Pastime.
In it, Churchill outlines his plans for when he gets to heaven. But first he opens with a little essay on the avoidance of worry. He writes of cabinet making, chemistry, bookbinding and even bricklaying. It was painting, he writes, that, during a low spot in his life, came to my rescue.
Churchill warns the newcomer that real artists attain their abilities by long, hard, persevering apprenticeship. He was talking about something less ambitious. We cannot aspire to masterpieces, he writes. We may content ourselves with a joy ride in a paint box. What a wonderful phrase.
And what wonderful advice for the artist known as W. Churchill confesses that he turned to painting in circumstances that one can imagine were similar to those that beset President Bush on his return to Texas. After five years as governor and eight as president, he was suddenly at loose ends.
This happened to Churchill in May 1915, when he was out as First Lord of the Admiralty after the disaster of Gallipoli. He was still in the Cabinet but without authority, so that he knew everything and could do nothing. Writes Churchill: The change from the intense executive activities of each days work at the Admiralty to the narrowly measured duties of a counselor left me gasping.
Churchill compares himself to a sea beast fished up from the depths. While he was inflamed to action, Churchill writes, he was forced to remain a spectator of the tragedy, placed cruelly in a front-row seat. Then, one day, he picked up a childs paint box.
Next Churchill went out and bought a full set of oils, brushes, and canvas. He did much of his painting at his country home, known as Chartwell. He writes of how painting changed the way he sees and fit right in with his temperament.
In all battles two things are usually required of the commander-in-chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve, he writes. Both these are also obligatory upon the painter.
President Bush tends to judge by the paintings he has shown so far to focus on people, whether himself in a shower or portraits of his fellow statesmen. His canvases include Tony Blair of Britain and John Howard of Australia. He has an uncanny ability to capture a likeness.
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The artist known as W
Atheism, Agnosticism, and Perfect Belief: The Parameters of the Jewish Conceptions of God
A panel discussion about Jewish belief in God. Facilitated by Prof. Joel Gereboff of Arizona State University. Members on the panel are: Rabbi Pinchas Allouche of Congregation Beth Tefillah...
By: Valley Beit Midrash
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Atheism, Agnosticism, and Perfect Belief: The Parameters of the Jewish Conceptions of God - Video
John Hubley's "Harlem Wednesday."
In the 1950s, when Senator Joseph McCarthy was nodding his head in demagogic agreement with himself, animation pioneer and Hollywood blacklist member John Hubley was tapping his toes to the rhythm of jazz. His experimental animation seemed uncontainable wildly singular visions that owed more to Hans Hoffman than Max Fleischer. Hubley (whose films are currently touring the country to celebrate his 100th birthday) gave audiences intimate glimpses into the lives of those who were often ignored by major animation studios, and tackled topics such as nuclear war, agnosticism, and social justice. While children hunkered down in front of big, boxy televisions to watch Silly Symphonies, John Hubley was recording his children's voices and using them to create socially-conscious animated films.
Hubley tackled topics such as nuclear war, agnosticism, and social justice.
Hubley started his career painting backgrounds and layouts for Walt Disney Studios in 1935, when he was 22-years-old. He worked on the first classic Disney film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and acted as art director for "Bambi," "Dumbo" (uncredited), the "Rite of Spring" section of "Fantasia," and "Pinocchio." Of these projects, "Rite of Spring" best hints at the ambitious, idiomatic vision of his personal projects that was percolating just beneath the surface: the harmonious marriage of music and animation, and the lush, boundless backgrounds, and Hubley's penchant for breathing life into nebulous entities. "Rite of Spring" has a massive, cosmic scope, of course; Hubley would scale down these aesthetic peculiarities and funnel them into intimate exposs on quotidian life.
After leaving Disney during the strike of 1941, John Hubley joined the United Productions of America, for whom he created the Oscar-winning "Mr. Magoo." In 1952, Hubley was forced to leave UPA consequent of his blacklisted status. He subsequently founded Storyboard Studios, which acted as an alias, and started turning out wildly popular animated commercials. Though they didn't bear his name in the credits, Hubley's animated ads were wholly his own, stamped with his invisible signature; they felt simultaneously out of place within the advertising establishment and, somehow, in some inexplicable way, connected to each other, coursed by a common thread that tethered them to the unnamed artist behind the animation, like episodes of a television anthology.
Hubley's famous 1956 "I Want My Maypo" commercial featured his young son's voice, which lent the ad an authentic air (the child's whininess is undeniably that of a child who wants his Maypo). Hubley's triumph was unexpected, as the commercial was intended to be a failure: Heublein, Inc. planned on dumping their money into a bomb of a commercial for the poorly-selling Maypo in order to create huge loses and get tax-deductible expenses, so they hired Hubley, known for being independent, uncompromising, and antipodal to a capitalistic enterprise's desires, with the simple instructions of making a "slice of life."
The commercial didn't bomb, of course it increased sales by an average of 78%. In the wake of this immense success, animated commercials proliferated, and the cowboy hat-wearing child, dubbed Marky Maypo, became a household name.
The irony of churning out commercial advertisements while maintaining the aspirations of an artist wasn't lost on Hubley: In his ten-minute live-action short "Date With Dizzy," a Hubley stand-in instructs iconic trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie on scoring (or "dubbing," as he calls it) a short commercial for an instant rope ladder. Gillespie and his band watch the cartoon with ambivalence (it's all very silly, as one might expect from a commercial for an instant rope ladder), and they break into a swinging number, which, while aurally stunning, has very little to do with selling instant rope ladders.
The director hangs his head in desperation as Dizzy's quartet lets the music flow. The commercial director tries, in vain, to get Dizzy and crew to play more commercial-apt music, but the real artist remains incorruptible, even as he tries to work with the careerist, whose inability to appreciate art is obvious. Hubley's subversion was subtle but not invisible: The mockery of commercials, capitalism, and the usurpation of art for the sake of the almighty dollar in Hubley's short burns like a freshly-struck match.
"Date With Dizzy" acts as a lens through which we can decipher the filmmakers career. As John Sayles aptly notes in the recent film issue of The Believer Magazine (which features a DVD of films Hubley made with his wife, Faith, spanning 17 years, including "Date With Dizzy"), Hubley's cartoons feel alive, attuned to the syncopated rhythm of the world. Sayles likens Hubley's effect on animation to that of Miles Davis on jazz. Sayles remembers how Hubley's cartoons and commercials seemed to infiltrate the drive-in theater screen, those sneaky, subtly subversive clips slipping into the otherwise milquetoast pre-programming galre of kiddy cartoons, as the sun receded and the screen glowed in the night. Sayles succinctly describes his pre-filmmaker impression of the cartoons: "It's one of those again!"
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Why John Hubley Was One of the Best Animators You've Never Heard Of
Atheism and Agnosticism Laurence Brown
For more Islamic Videos, Full MP3 Qur #39;an audio files, full collection of authentic hadithes or eBooks on Islam please visit us at: http://www.islamicmedia.info.
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Origin: Greek gnst(os), variant of gntos not known, incapable of being known (a- a-6 + gnts known, adj. derivative from base of gignskein to know) + -ic, after gnostic; said to have been coined by T.H. Huxley in 1869 Related forms
agnostically, adverb
Synonym Study Agnostic, atheist, infidel, skeptic refer to persons not inclined toward religious belief or a particular form of religious belief. An agnostic is one who believes it impossible to know anything about God or about the creation of the universe and refrains from commitment to any religious doctrine. An atheist is one who denies the existence of a deity or of divine beings. Infidel means an unbeliever, especially a nonbeliever in Islam or Christianity. A skeptic doubts and is critical of all accepted doctrines and creeds.
Word story The word agnostic was coined by the English biologist T.H. Huxley in the late 1860s as a member of the now defunct Metaphysical Society, in response to what he perceived as an abundance there of strongly held beliefs. The original usage of the term was confined to philosophy and religion, and referred to Huxley's assertion that anything beyond the material world, including the existence and nature of God, was unknowable. Today the word can be seen applied to questions of politics, culture, and science, as when someone claims to be a political agnostic. In a more recent trend, one can be agnostic simply by not taking a stand on something. In 2010, President Obama called himself agnostic on tax cuts until he had seen all available options. At a forum on sustainable energy in 2008, GE CEO Jeff Immelt said he was fuel agnostic fundamentally. In technology, software or hardware can be said to be agnostic as well. Computer code that can run on any operating system is called platform agnostic, and such services as phone and electric may be considered agnostic if not dedicated to a particular carrier, device, or user interface.
Popular references Agnostic Front: A New York punk band, considered at the forefront of the New York hardcore music scene. Founded in 1983, in existence for over 25 years.
It [agnostic] came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the gnostic of Church history who professed to know so much. T. H. Huxley, Agnosticism Collected Essays, Volume V; Science and Christian Tradition: Essays (1894)
In theory he [Prof. Huxley] is a great and even severe Agnostic,who goes about exhorting all men to know how little they know. R. H. Hutton, Spectator (January 29, 1870)
Militant Agnostic: I don't know, and you don't either Bumper sticker, Northern Sun (Accessed 2010)
Melville is a political agnostic in Billy Buddhe doesn't know with finalitynot because he is indifferent, but because he sees too much. Robert Midler, Exiled Royalties: Melville and the Life We Imagine (2006)
The whole point of it is to make sure that all ideas are on the tableSo what I want to do is to be completely agnostic, in terms of solutions. President Barack Obama, Obama Agnostic on Deficit Cuts, Won't Prejudge Tax Increases Bloomberg Businessweek by Rich Miller (Feb. 11, 2010)
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Agnostic | What is the Definition of Agnostic ...
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) April 02, 2014
WorldReligionNews.com continues its featured contributor series with an article from human rights advocate Margaret Rose Becker, which calls on all to sign a petition to protect the freedom of religion in Europe.
According to Becker, the legislation is a move towards religious discrimination and hatred. Some of the entities that signed the petition are the European Interreligious Forum for Religious Freedom (France), Central-European Religious Freedom Institute (Hungary), Church of Scientology National Affairs Office (United States) and Soteria International (Denmark).
Read the article here.
WorldReligionNews.com has established its "Featured Contributor" program to offer both writers officially affiliated with all faiths and belief systems, as well as independent writers and authors of note, a public platform from which to publish religion focused articles that will reach not only WRN visitors but also appear via syndication partners on sites like CNN, FOX, New York Daily News and others.
If you are an officially affiliated spokesperson/writer who would like to be considered for a "Featured Contributor" article placement on WRN, contact us here: http://www.worldreligionnews.com/contact-us/.
About WorldReligionNews.com WRN exists to cover the news generated by ALL major world religions, A to Z, from Agnosticism to Wicca and all in between, in ways that will inspire, challenge, enlighten, entertain & engage within a framework wired for a connected and distracted world. http://www.WorldReligionNews.com/.
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Religious Freedom as a Human Right Featured in World Religion News Featured Contributor Series
In the video, you can see a small, dark object go whooshing past parachutist Anders Helstrup around the 29-second mark, followed by a slow-motion replay. It sure as hell looks like a rock falling from above the sky, which would presumably be space, but what do I know? A Professional Rock Guy, a.k.a. a geologist, believes it's a meteorite.
Helstrup's jump occurred in the summer of 2012, according to Norway's state broadcaster NRK. (A legit news source, which matters very much in a story like this one.) He says he didn't notice anything during the jump, but saw the object streak past him upon watching the video.
"When we stopped the film, we could clearly see something that looked like a stone. At first it crossed my mind that it had been packed into a parachute, but it's simply too big for that."
Helstrup shared the video with experts at Oslo's Natural History museum, and it quickly became a sensation among "meteorite enthusiasts." They aided Helstrup in searching the area, which has been narrowed down to 10 square kilometers. But no luckit's damned hard to find a rock, especially when it may not necessarily stand out.
Judging just from the video, geologist Hans Amundsen believes it must be a meteoritespecifically, a small chunk of a larger body that likely broke apart miles above Helstrup.
"It can't be anything else. The shape is typical of meteorites a fresh fracture surface on one side, while the other side is rounded."
But we'll never know. My headline being constructed as a question is not meant to invoke Betteridge's Law, but reflects a genuine agnosticism. Would I love to believe this is the first ever image of a meteorite in "dark flight," after it has decelerated to terminal velocity and no longer carries a bright tail? You bet. It could also be Jimmy fucking Kimmel.
[NRK]
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Does This Video Show A Skydiver Nearly Being Hit By A Meteorite?
Caller: Agnosticism is not the same as Atheism
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Caller: Agnosticism is not the same as Atheism - Video
It was Mamata Banerjee who can be credited for winning an Assembly election on the issue of crony capitalism via, among other things, the Tata-Singur imbroglio. But 2014 would be the first national election in which the issue of crony capitalism has acquired some traction, thanks to Narendra Modi's pro-business stance and Arvind Kejriwal's anti-corruption one. But anyone who thinks that this signature campaign in Varanasi will provide an unequivocal answer against or in favour of business and industry is likely to be disappointed. Now that they've clearly drawn the battle lines between them in this spiritual centre that is perennially enriched by the brisk business of religion, Messrs Modi and Kejriwal appear to have reverted to type.
The "Har Har Modi" chants adopted by the indefatigable followers of the Bharatiya Janata Party's prime ministerial campaign (quickly withdrawn after the outrage of orthodox Hindus) were designed to be an unabashed appeal to the Brahmin and middle-caste majority in this holy city.
These extreme expressions of Hindu orthodoxy should not be surprising, given that Mr Modi's foot soldiers are drawn from the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. But they are noteworthy in the light of Mr Modi's unabashed courting of powerful business interests on the quasi-secular platform of good governance these past few years - and good governance, in this context, essentially meant creating an enabling environment for business. Packaged on a nebulous construct called the Gujarat Model - commentators still fiercely argue over its efficacy - Mr Modi managed to imbue his proto-campaign with an agnosticism that partially allayed any misgivings related to 2002. More to the point, it enabled a brisk rise in campaign contributions from a variety of deep-pocketed industrial houses.
Mr Kejriwal's recent actions have been more of a surprise. Neither religion nor caste played a role in his popularity in Delhi, and in other upscale cities, indeed, he shied away from the slightly saffron-hued tint in the movement led by Kisan Baburao Hazare. It was his blunt, if somewhat unorthodox, approach to the very real problem of corruption and venality that made him the most exciting phenomenon on the political scene since Jayaprakash Narayan. Climbing up electricity poles to cut illegal connections, lying on a pavement to demand more control over Delhi's police, filing FIRs against the central government's gas pricing decision - this is the kind of derring-do middle-class and upper-middle-class people long to emulate but lack the gumption to do so.
Mr Kejriwal has been forthright, too, in his criticism of industrialists Mukesh Ambani and Gautam Adani, singling them out for what he sees as beneficiaries of political favour, allegations that few people would dare to openly express. Mukesh Ambani, it may be recalled, was uncharacteristically eloquent at last year's Vibrant Gujarat summit. "In Narendra Modi, we have a leader with a grand vision," he had said. He was outdone only by his younger brother, Anil Ambani, who extravagantly described the Gujarat chief minister as "king of kings" (Anil Ambani's power companies in Delhi were briefly at the receiving end of Mr Kejriwal's power price campaign). By corralling the alleged practices of big businessmen into his anti-corruption rhetoric, Mr Kejriwal had drawn a straight line between business, corruption and the sufferings of ordinary people.
Coming as it did on top of the serial business-related controversies in telecom, coal, iron ore mining, tax evasion and black money, Mr Kejriwal managed to build a platform that certainly resonated with a certain section of urban India. It is striking that many of his followers have been post-reform businessmen and executives - players who are fundamentally uncomfortable with the old paradigms of political patronage and pelf that continue to scar the reputation of Indian business.
Given that, it was disturbing to see, on the day he announced his candidature from Varanasi, photographs of Mr Kejriwal's skinny, lungi-clad torso being lowered into the murky waters of the Ganga in a cleansing snaan and his forehead smeared with the sandalwood paste of a puja.
To be sure, Mr Kejriwal is fully entitled to his personal religious beliefs, as much as Mr Modi. But he was visiting Varanasi in his capacity as a public, political contender on a platform that has - so far - been notably non-religious in content. And though his speeches did focus on his favourite theme of Mr Modi and Rahul Gandhi's surrender to corporate interests, the hollowness of Gujarat's "development" et al, it is hard to deny the subliminal message conveyed by his very public religious observances. It is also worth wondering what all this conveyed to the nearly 19 per cent of Muslims who make up this constituency. It is possible that Mr Kejriwal is trying to build some degree of commonality with Mr Modi to compensate for the lack of solid governance experience that his rival undoubtedly has. But his actions certainly diminish the prospects of this campaign rising above the same old tired issues of caste and religion.
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Kanika Datta: Great leaps back
Is there anyone alive who doesnt have a special, secret fondness for Shakira? Besides maybe that famously angry sea lion who attacked the singer in 2012 and was presumably unaware of her selfless work with the United Nations and had probably never even heard She Wolf, because he would have really liked it.
Everyone else seems to have long ago succumbed to Shakiras hip-swiveling charms. Shes an avatar of pop-culture globalization a Colombian singer-songwriter of Lebanese descent whose songs are a multicultural grab bag of melodies from the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and, most prominently on her new, self-titled album, the American South. Shes a social-media giant. Statues have been erected in her honor. (Okay, one statue. Made of metal, not the hand-chiseled marble she deserves. And it depicts Shakira wearing pants she probably would never wear. But its a start.)
Shakira has weird, very specific tastes: Shakira is not her first album to feature near-lethal doses of reggae and 90s alt-rock, as if she hasnt realized that those things are mostly awful. Yet she also has the broadest canvas of any pop diva in memory she can contain multitudes, from cumbia to country, and still sound instantly, recognizably like herself.
Shakira, her charming, awkward, immensely appealing new disc, tests this theory. It was assembled by a murderers row of expensive producers and writers, including Dr. Luke, Max Martin and Cirkut. Any student of recent pop history knows what comes next: dignity-killing, one-size-fits-all dance-pop songs predestined for success and oblivion in the same month.
Shakira submits to Dr. Lukes dehumanizing ministrations and manages to come out the other end sounding only slightly less like herself. Dare (La La La) doubles as the background music for Shakiras new commercial for Activia yogurt, and it sounds like something Lady Gaga would have made before she became ridiculous. Its wonderful.
Most of the rest of Shakira seems like an uneasy bargain between what she wants (rootsy, often acoustic-based pop with a rangy feel and an affinity for early Alanis Morissette) and what the producers want (hits). Its familiar territory for the singer, who has routinely employed of-the-moment production teams to contemporize (and Americanize) her sound, but seldom has the divide seemed so great.
The best tracks split the difference: The new wave/reggae hybrid Cant Remember to Forget You is an energetic duet with Rihanna, pops favorite inanimate object. Loca por Ti (one of a handful of Spanish tracks on the standard edition of the album) is 80s jukebox country, finely rendered. The midtempo Latin pop track You Dont Care About Me recalls vintage Marc Anthony.
Shakira has four fully formed emotions Reproachful, Cheery, Lets Dance and I Want to Do Things to You. Thats two more than Dr. Luke usually has to work with, and she also has a voice thats hiccupy and distinct, especially at the wildest, warbliest reaches of her register. To make Shakira sound like everybody else takes some effort. On the discs weakest track, Spotlight, she sounds unerringly, depressingly, like Taylor Swift; the song sounds like a reheated Red outtake, and the vocal similarity is too marked to be accidental.
Swift is the unlikeliest of specters. But, if only because she is one of Shakiras few rivals who can credibly deliver a slender love song backed by an acoustic guitar, she also haunts the folk ballad 23, one of the albums starkest and best songs. Shakira has never been much of a lyricist, but 23 is clunkier, and braver, (I used to think that there was no god/ But then you looked at me with your blue eyes/ And my agnosticism turned into dust) than Swift would ever dare to be.
Shakiras comfort level seems to ebb and flow throughout the album: Shes commanding on the Spanish-language songs, playful on the bangers, subdued on the songs that are obviously ill-suited for her, such as the Nashville ballad Medicine, a collaboration with Blake Shelton, her fellow judge on The Voice. Its one of those duets where two famous people from different genres are joined by their business managers in pursuit of a crossover hit. They sing at each other and both sound as if theyd rather be anywhere else. Shelton, also at half-wattage, treats her with unusual delicacy, as if he was enlisted partly for his hit-making skills and partly to stop her from running away.
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Shakira review: Another appealing album from a charming pop star
Right from when I first met him in 2004, when his corpus of written works was huge and his reputation huger, I found Khushwant Singh remarkably untouched by arrogance never mind the scary sign outside his door warning uninvited visitors not to ring the bell. For a man with his formidable experience and scholarship of history, politics, current affairs, comparative religions, he was not in the least condescending to a journalist less than half his age. And for all the crass sexuality of some of his fictional passages, he turned out to be a gentlemanly conversationalist. Interestingly, the conversation with this self-declared agnostic often turned to matters of faith.
Although on the first occasion when his novella Burial at Sea had just come out he did mention that he didnt waste any time in prayer, and that spirituality is a lot of humbug, admitting, he didnt understand it, we still spent time on the topic. In 2005, after his collection of obituaries was published (Death at my Doorstep), perhaps it was only natural that the discussion veered towards the afterlife. Having decided that of the major belief systems Hebraic, Judaic, Islamist on the one hand and Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Sikh on the other theres no basis for believing either, he asked me what I thought of reincarnation. Giving my views on the karma theory a patient hearing, he dismissed me, just as genially, saying it was only because I was brought up a Hindu.
When his collection Why I supported the Emergency: Essays and Profiles was released in 2009, apart from the topic at hand, he reiterated his continuing agnosticism, saying he had an interest in all religions and thats why he could debunk them all. Having taken a swipe at the standard of newspapers with their mixture of Hindi-English-Urdu, he complimented The Hindu as one he respected. But soon he added, One thing I cant read in The Hindu is the column on religion. Otherwise, it is like a reliable grandma.
By 2010 when The Sunset Club a closely kept diary of one year presented as a novel came out, he was describing himself as having reached the vanaprastha stage of life, borrowing from scriptural terminology to denote his winding down. But his definition was not in the conventional mode of celibacy and abstinence. His protagonist Sardar Boota Singh was lustful, explicit and a hearty drinker, and the whole reason Singh chose the fiction format was, You have to add mirch masala to a factual life, or it would be very dreary.
And though no organised religion offered him answers to questions like, where we come from, what happens to us when we die, he admitted he wanted to withdraw from socialising a waste of time and attempt to bring peace of mind through the daunting task of doing nothing. Meanwhile, he quoted Ghalib, Humko maaloom hai jannat ki haqeeqat, lekin dil ko khush rakhne ko Ghalib ye khayaal achcha hai (We know the truth about Paradise: it is a good idea to beguile the mind).
Perhaps Khushwant Singh now knows the answers to the questions of life and death. We cant ask him anymore. But just like he wrote his own obituary long before he died, he also left us a hint, courtesy Hilaire Belloc, on how he would like to be remembered: When I am dead, I hope it may be said, His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.
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He believed in life
San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) March 21, 2014
Donald A. Westbrook is the latest writer to join the WRN Featured Contributor series on WorldReligionNews.com with his article Freedom of Religion as a Human Right: The Council of Europes Upcoming Vote on Establishing Sect Observatories.
Westbrook is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Religion at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA. He holds a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley and M.A. in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.
His article explores the lack of a separation of church and state in some European countries, specifically France.
At Claremont, Westbrook is preparing a dissertation on the Church of Scientology based on extensive fieldwork in the United States that includes interviews with Scientologists from Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, and Italy. Westbrook has also lectured on new religious movements in the United States, Belgium, and England.
WorldReligionNews.com has established its "Featured Contributor" program to offer both writers officially affiliated with all faiths and belief systems, as well as independent writers and authors of note, a public platform from which to publish religion focused articles that will reach not only WRN visitors but also appear via syndication partners on sites like CNN, FOX, New York Daily News and others.
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WorldReligionNews.com Featured Contributor Series Continues with 'Religious Freedom As A Human Rights Issue' by Donald ...
I was saddened to read that Khushwant Singh passed away in his sleep last week. What a quiet end for so loud a man. How the gods mock the mocking.
Contradictions surrounded Khushwant at every stage of his life. He strove to give the impression that he was a drunken slob yet he was one of the most hard-working and punctual men I knew. He professed agnosticism and yet enjoyed kirtan as only few can and do. He was known nationally as a celebrated lecher but for the past thirty years at least it was a hot-water-bottle that warmed his bed. He devoted his last years in the service of a woman who decisively spurned him in the end. He made a profession of living off his friends' important names and yet worked single-handedly to diminish that very importance. Empty vessels make the most noise but Khushwant was always full of the Scotch he had cadged off others.
He was a much misunderstood man. So before the limp eulogies start pouring in (how Khushwant would have hated them!) let me set the record straight. As Khushwant once said, the obituary is the best place to tell the truth for dead men file no libel suits. (An agnostic to the end he didn't believe in the Resurrection.)
Khushwant was born in 1915 in a rich but not particularly educated home. They were Khuranas from Sargodha who made good in Delhi. His father, Sir Sobha Singh, was the contractor who built the city of New Delhi and who in consequence received a knighthood. In '47 it used to be said (somewhat inaccurately it must be admitted) that ninety-nine per cent of New Delhi was owned by the Government and one per cent by Sir Sobha Singh.
After his initial education Khushwant was sent to England to appear for the ICS. He didn't make it. Later he would tell a story of how he had made it to the Merit List but how that year there was a reserved place for a non-Jat from Phulkian state (later PEPSU) and how some- one with less marks than him filled that place. But Khushwant was always a great raconteur so it is difficult to know what to believe.
Once bitten, twice shy. Khushwant didn't try for the ICS again but instead enrolled himself at the London School of Economics from where in the course of things he acquired a BA. The examiners decided to place him in the Third Class. After his degree Khushwant read for the Bar where he was equally successful. (His brother Daljit, now a businessman, was always the better scholar of the two.)
When Khushwant came back after six years in England a family friend asked his father: 'Kaka valaiton kee kar ke aayaa hai? (What has the boy done in England?) Sir Sobha Singh replied 'Time pass kar ke aaya hai jee.' (He has been marking time.) It is unlikely the canny con- tractor was joking.
After the Partition Khushwant joined the Indian Foreign Service and this phase of his career took him to London, Ottawa and Paris. In this period he began publishing short stories on rustic themes. In '55 he shot to fame when a novel of his won a large cash award set by an American publishing house in order to attract manuscripts. It was a mediocre Partition quickie called Mano Majra (later published as Train to Pakistan).
Years passed. Khushwant kept writing books, on the Jupji, on the Sikhs, on India, stories, translations: many of them provocatively titled and indicative of his deepest desires, "I Shall Rape the Nightingale", "I Take This Woman" etc. Some of these attempts were successful.
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Khushwant: RIP
A preliminary plan for the sale of artworks in the collection of St. Charles Borromeo Seminary should be announced by the end of March, seminary officials say.
The seminary is home to about 200 paintings, including six portraits of clerics by Thomas Eakins and others by Alice Neel and Philip Pearlstein. The Inquirer reported Monday that the seminary was considering sales from its collection to help defray the costs of consolidation and renovation of its Wynnewood campus on City Avenue.
"Sometime by the end of March we'll have a better idea of how we will proceed," said Bishop Timothy Senior, rector of the seminary. "We need to do more work to determine what will be sold."
The seminary has said it is formulating a plan that could include sale of its Eakins paintings, plus the Neel portrait of Archbishop Jean Jadot, commissioned by the diocese in 1976. The fate of the Pearlstein portrait of Cardinal John Krol, paid for by Krol himself, is also in play. But it is the Eakins paintings that have captured the attention of scholars and critics.
The earliest portrait, of Archbishop James Frederick Wood, who oversaw completion of the Cathedral of SS Peter and Paul and the seminary campus, and who became Philadelphia's first archbishop, dates from 1877.
Eakins, despite his agnosticism, was fascinated by Wood's intellect and achievements, asked him to pose, and gave him the finished work. Unfortunately, a botched 1930 restoration ruined much of the painting, which hangs in the seminary's Eakins Room.
By the turn of the century, Eakins and his studio mate, sculptor Samuel Murray, were biking through Fairmount Park on Sundays to the seminary, where Eakins loved chatting with seminarians, discussing complex theological and philosophical problems, and listening to the chants of vespers.
He developed several friendships at St. Charles and asked each friend to pose. When the painting was done, he would give it to the sitter.
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Eakins sale plan due by month's end
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March 17, 2014|10:37 am
British atheist professor Richard Dawkins tweeted a YouTube video by an American atheist, JaclynGlenn, who argues that "agnosticism" is not a stand-alone term and that many atheists "wrongly" identify as just being agnostics. She urges them not to do so any longer.
JaclynGlenn, who is from Los Angeles, Calif., and has about 22,000 followers on Twitter, says she made the video after many religious people asked her why she doesn't say she's an agnostic. "But the thing is ... agnostic is not a position of belief," she says.
Dawkins, who's got more than 900,000 followers on Twitter, tweeted the video last week, saying, "Agnostic atheists (& agnostic theists). The stylish @JaclynGlenn's impeccable etymology will be much misunderstood."
Atheism means without "theism" or belief, JaclynGlenn explains. And agnosticism means without "gnostic" or knowledge of religion or God. "It's a position of knowledge, not of belief." Everyone should say she or he is agnostic, because you can't prove there's God, she adds.
The only people who do not identify as being agnostics are "super-Christians," she charges, adding that they think they know the answer and all the facts, but they are "flat out wrong."
"Atheism is just a lack of belief in God. We're not claiming to know that God doesn't exist. Therefore, atheists are agnostics. But if you claim that you're only agnostic, that's nothing," she tells her viewers.
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Many people think they are neither Christian nor atheist, and that's why they call themselves agnostic, she says. While that's not correct, it's still better than being a certain type of a Christian, she adds.
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Richard Dawkins Highlights US Atheist's Video on Agnostic Atheists, Agnostic Theists