IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END? – Oherald

11 Aug 2020 | 04:27am IST

Mariano H Correia

If you read and ponder minutely the various happenings occurring in this chaotic and disorganised world, one cannot deny that it could be a bad omen to humanity. Most precisely now in the 21st century many distasteful events are on the rise. There is no justice and peace amongst Nations, one sees the other as its foe and as such it looks like the world is heading for a massive catastrophe.

In the newspaper it is routine to read more unpalatable news then otherwise. News of floods, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, terrorism, rapes and murders corruption at higher levels, cases of dacoity and terrible accidents both in the air and on land engulfs the whole newspaper. There is no space for good news as there exists none. Humankind is more prone to fast buck making by hook or by crook, come what may. Man has forgotten the idea of God and for most of them money and power are their Gods in this materialistic world.

Spirituality has taken a back seat and has been replaced by apostasy, debauchery, promiscuity, and sexual immorality. Atheism has prevailed over theism. The pandemic of COVID-19 that we are presently facing is the price we have to pay for our actions and wrongdoings. We know that the Almighty is just, all loving, merciful and compassionate, slow to anger and prompt to forgive and forget. This pandemic of COVID-19 which originated at Wuhan in China is giving sleepless nights to one and all, to the elite and the poor alike around the globe. The whole world so to say is waging a war on this invisible, tiniest of the tiny nano particle sized virus called the Novel Corona Virus 2019 as it started showing its ugly head in the fag end of December 2019.Millions and millions of people are affected and infected throughout the world and lakhs of people have succumbed to it. Its transmission is at a lightning speed.

The medical fraternity and research scientists the world over are burning midnight oil to come out with an effective vaccine to curb the same. It is still many more months away from being tried on humans, so as to ascertain its preventive effects on the deleterious symptoms and morbidity in acute and critical cases. You may say I am a pessimist, which I am. Some may agree, some may not.

Instead of worshipping, praising and thanking God, we adore mammon (money) and worldly power as our gods. Our God being a just, loving, merciful and compassionate one, at the same time a jealous God who does not want or tolerate other idol gods before him. That is why I say God has sent this scourge of this pandemic of COVID-19 to make his creation (mankind) aware of the apostasy that has been committed by man. God has lot of patience and is expecting to see how long will man keep aloof from Him, when He is waiting anxiously with open arms to embrace him. Likewise, the beginning of the universe God had warned humanity of the various possible catastrophes that would happen if His people desert Him, and go after other gods who are just idols having eyes, but cant see, having ears, but cant hear and having mouths but cant speak.

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IS THIS THE BEGINNING OF THE END? - Oherald

Adin Steinsaltz, 83, Dies; Created Epic Translation of Talmud – The New York Times

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, a towering scholar of the bedrock Jewish texts who spent four and a half decades writing a 45-volume translation of the Babylonian Talmud and made it accessible to hundreds of thousands of readers, died on Friday in Jerusalem. He was 83.

Shaarei Zedek Medical Center confirmed his death. A publicist for the Steinsaltz Center for Jewish Knowledge said he had had acute pneumonia.

For centuries, the study of Talmud in 2,711 double-sided pages, the record of rabbinical debates on the laws and ethics of Judaism heard in the academies of Babylonia (modern-day Iraq) between A.D. 200 and 500 was confined mostly to yeshivas. There, students, young and old, hunched over dog-eared volumes of Talmud, sometimes without teachers, would teach one another the meanings of what they were reading, largely in Aramaic, and argue the implications.

Rabbi Steinsaltzs achievement was to take the Talmud out of this relatively exclusive sphere and, with a Hebrew translation, allow ordinary Jews, taking the Long Island Rail Road to work or gathering in a cafe in Tel Aviv, to study those texts on their own. The Hebrew edition has been translated by publishers into English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Rabbi Steinsaltz, a rumpled, bespectacled figure with an unruly white beard, completed the entire Talmud in 2010, often working 16 hours a day.

He brought the Talmud into the 20th century, said Samuel Heilman, distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College specializing in Orthodox Judaism.

Rabbi Steinsaltz embarked on his lifes great work in 1965, when he was 27. His translation encompassed the ancient commentaries along the margins in the Talmud, written by revered figures like the medieval scholar Rashi.

He also provided his own commentaries on the often labyrinthine text, added biographies of the various rabbinical commentators and offered explanations of Talmudic concepts. His work, he said, was intended to accommodate even beginners with the lowest level of knowledge.

My idea was that Im trying to substitute a book for a living teacher, he said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times.

President Reuven Rivlin of Israel called Rabbi Steinsaltz a modern-day Rashi and a man of great spiritual courage, deep knowledge and profound thought who brought the Talmud to Am Yisrael the Jewish people in clear and accessible Hebrew and English.

Random House, its American publisher, translated and published 22 English volumes then stopped. Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd. has since 2009 been publishing the Steinsaltz English translations and completed the entire 45-volume set.

The Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud was not the first English translation. Soncino Press, a venerable British firm, completed a 30-volume translation in 1952, but it did not have the line-by-line commentary that can sustain self-study.

In 2005, Art Scroll/Mesorah Publications of Brooklyn brought out a 73-volume edition that has become the most popular version for many Orthodox Jews, and for tens of thousands of others who participate in Daf Yomi, the seven-and-a-half-year challenge to complete a study of the entire Talmud by analyzing a page a day.

Rabbi Steinsaltz was a disciple of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, and his Chabad-Lubavitch school of Judaism, which embraces nonobservant Jews and proselytizes among them. That sometimes put Rabbi Steinsaltz at odds with more hard-line Orthodox rabbis, including prominent ones, who treated him as a heretic and told their followers to spurn his works.

Rabbi Steinsaltz, a prolific and wide-ranging writer and a sharp observer of humanity, wrote more than 60 books on philosophy, mysticism, theology and even zoology. His study of kabbalah, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, is considered a classic and has been translated into eight languages.

He also translated the Jerusalem Talmud, the less comprehensive and less studied record of legal debates by rabbis in Jerusalem between A.D. 350 and 400 A.D.

Invited to impart some spiritual guidance to the staff of a magazine, The Jerusalem Report, in the early 1990s, Rabbi Steinsaltz gave lessons on lashon hara, the Jewish injunction against speaking evil. He taught that while most parts of the human body had their limits arms could carry only so much weight, legs could run only so fast the tongue could do infinite harm and therefore was set in a cagelike jaw as a reminder to guard it.

Surprisingly, he was raised in a secular household and was drawn to observant Judaism only as a teenager, when he studied with a Lubavitch rabbi.

By nature I am a skeptical person, he said in an interview with The Times a decade ago, and people with a lot of skepticism start to question atheism.

Rabbi Steinsaltz who adopted the additional surname Even-Israel (Rock of Israel) at Rabbi Schneersons urging that he take a Hebrew name was born on July 11, 1937, in Jerusalem in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. His parents, Avraham and Leah (Krokovitz) Steinsaltz, were active in a socialist group, and his father went to Spain in 1936 to help defend the leftist Republican government against Nationalist rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco.

He attended Hebrew University, where he studied chemistry, mathematics and physics, while also undergoing rabbinical studies at a yeshiva in the Israeli city of Lod. At age 24 he became a school principal; he went on to found several experimental schools.

He lived most of his life with his family in Jerusalem, although his travels took him in one instance to the Vatican, where he had a private audience with Pope Francis in 2016. He is survived by his wife, Sarah; his sons Menachem and Amechaye; a daughter, Esther Sheleg; and 18 grandchildren.

In 1965, Rabbi Steinsaltz founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications and began his monumental work of interpreting the Talmud for the masses. Since he was running schools at the time, he called the Talmud translation his hobby, but it became his crowning achievement. He told the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2009 that he hadnt fully considered the immensity of the work that would be required.

Sometimes when a person knows too much, it causes him to do nothing, he said. It seems its better sometimes for a man, as for humanity, not to know too much about the difficulties and believe more in the possibilities.

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Adin Steinsaltz, 83, Dies; Created Epic Translation of Talmud - The New York Times

God, Healing and the Unified Field – Omaha Reader

God, Healing and the Unified Field

by Michael Braunstein

America is becoming a secular nation. Younger Americans of the Gen X, Gen Z and Millennials are more likely to identify as agnostic, atheist or nothing in particular than previous generations. And half of todays teens and Millennials say they need factual evidence to support their beliefs. Well, were here today to deal some out.

A few decades ago, I started using the axiom, Let Science lead you to Spirit. Let Fact lead you to Faith. Here is how I got to that.

Grecian Formula 440 BC The science of physics deals with observable fact. Though Plato came up with the basics of Atomic Theory nearly 2500 years ago, it was a couple of other Grecian geniuses who used the word atomos to describe the smallest building block in creation. Leucippus and his student Democritus started using the word which means uncuttable to describe what they intuited to be the smallest building block of the universe. But weve come a long way, baby. Heres what we have found out.

Those guys were wrong. The atom can be cut. Splitting the atom is what gives us nuclear energy and, atomic bombs. And over the years, science has been looking into what an atom consists of. We find that its broken down into smaller and smaller objects. There are leptons, quarks, mesons, bosons, upside-down quarks, charmed quarks, muons, neutrons, protons and on-and-ons. The most basic of the objects in an atom are the nucleus (made of a bundle of objects) surrounded by electrons that fly around the nucleus at a distance at blazing speed, much like planets fly around the sun in the solar system. (Unless youre a Gen Z and never learned that you are not the center of the Universe.)

And here is the most important understanding of the architecture of every atom: the nucleus of any atom is separated from its electron(s) by a relatively great distance. Now, atoms are tiny. Nuclei are tinier still. Electrons can be even smaller. We all know that. But to understand how far away the electrons are from the nucleus in their scale, here is an analogy from Heinz Haber, a German scientist who came to America as part of Operation Paperclip.

If that tiny nucleus and electron were bumped up to the size of a toy marble, to represent how far the electron is from the nucleus the electron marble would have to be circling at a diameter of 300 feet! Imagine. Nucleus marble is in the center and the electron marble would be 150 feet away, half a football field.

Now, at first one would think thats a lot of empty space in an atom; you know, between the electron and nucleus. But that space is not empty. That space in an atom is filled with the very thing that keeps those two particles from running into each other: energy.

And as a matter of scientific fact, each particle we uncover in the atom of any element in the universe is built basically the same way. Its made entirely of energy. Atoms only have the illusion of being solid matter.

Okay, just make the simple leap now. Energy fills every atom and particle of the universe. There is nowhere in this universe where you can go that there is not energy. That universal energy might be called the Unified Field that Einstein made famous; a field of Energy yet to be understood or quantized that unites all the subcategory forces of energy. Or as Tolkien might have put it, One Ring that unites them all.

So were left with this fact of science that no matter (pun noted) where you go, Energy is there. And add in the scientific fact from thermodynamics that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. It always was and always will be. It can go up and down the quantum scale but it will always exist. Thats science.

Heal. Heal is a powerful verb. Its etymology traces to Germanic and Saxon iterations. Haelen was a word often used to describe patching a thatched roof in fiefdom days. It meant to make the roof whole again. And its meaning is carried over to any instance that requires making whole again. To heal the body, to heal the mind, to heal society is to make whole again.

There is no clearer way to envision our world as whole than to understand and acknowledge the oneness among us. There is no clearer mindfulness than to realize we can not be separated from each other. We are bound by the Unified Field that flows through all of creation, all of us. Nowhere is there nothing. There is nowhere where energy is not. It is in you, through you and all around you. It is what binds us. And recognizing that is what will make us whole and healed.

We would fare better if we taught a little Physics in our Theology classes and some Theology in our Physics classes.

Be well. Be healed.

Heartland Healing is a metaphysically based polemic describing alternatives to conventional methods of healing the body, mind and planet. It is provided as information and entertainment, certainly not medical advice. Important to remember and pass on to others: for a weekly dose of Heartland Healing, visit HeartlandHealing.com.2020.08.11

Atheism Doubles Among Generation Z

https://www.physlink.com/education/askexperts/ae622.cfm

https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/vol-58-no-3/operation-paperclip-the-secret-intelligence-program-to-bring-nazi-scientists-to-america.html

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God, Healing and the Unified Field - Omaha Reader

Usaa, the Greatest Revolutionary Barber After Upali, Dies of Covid-19 – The Citizen

Usaa Barber (Uppumavuluri Sambashivarao), a well known social reformer, anti-caste ideologue and anti-Brahminism fighter, succumbed to Covid-19 on July 25. He died because of the Indian medical system, which could not meet the challenge posed by the new coronavirus.

Over a century after Savitribai Phule and her son Dr Yashwantharao died of bubonic plague in 1898, Usaa Barber (whom I so named), as committed as Savitribai and Mahatma Phule to the abolition of caste and untouchability, died of the brutal Covid pandemic.

Usaa was a legend in many ways. From his student days he was a staunch atheist, and would compose songs and poems to motivate the masses. For a boy who came from a poor barber family from a village, Brahminkoduru near Tenali, known as a centre for cunning Brahminism in Andhra Pradesh, it was a surprisingly bold step.

Such a beginning of his was unexpected. Barbers have to lead a slave life by going from house to house to shave the heads of those rich unproductive castes, who keep insulting them. They were supposed to behave like skilled slaves, and eat the meagre food they were offered and survive.

In the 1960s, a barber going to school in that region was rarest of things. Usaa was put in school and later in college by his elder brother. His school teacher seems to have given a date of birth: 19 February, 1951

But unusually this barber boy, instead of shaving the heads of Brahmin poojaris who needed a clean shaven head with a scalp like that of Mahatma Gandhis at the apex of the head to perform pooja, archana, offering pure vegetarian food items to Brahmanised Hindu gods, revolted against their God itself.

The poojari life and pooja was ultimately to make money to lead ones life without doing any productive work, either in the family or at the community level. A barber had no right to enter the temple along with Dalits. For ages together the poojaris were habituated to live as parasites, justifying this sort of life as holy and worthy by use of a spiritual fascism.

God for them is free food and a good life provider. This deception was understood by the atheist Babar quite early in his life. Barbers of the area in those days were designating themselves as Nayi Brahmins to get some respect, but Brahmins were never to give them that respect.

They treated them as spiritual and social slaves meant to shave their body on a daily basis for priests and for their women who had become widows, and so would have to lose their beauty, dignity and human life, and live like a Brahmin female slave within the four walls.

The Brahminism of Andhra was brutal. Brahmin reformers like Gurijada Apparao and Kandukuri Veereshalinam Panthulu initiated some reform for a better life for their own Brahmin women, but a barbers life remained unreformed and unupgraded.

Leaders, writers and thinkers were not supposed to come from that community even in the freedom movement. They were supposed to shave the leaders heads into a beautiful and clean shape for their elegant public appearance. This was considered to be their contribution to nationalism, without any respect and livelihood.

If a barber aspired to the role of a leader, he would be snubbed and pushed back into his shaving job. The Indian freedom struggle was not anti-caste or a struggle to change the millennial occupational stagnation and indignity of labour.

Nobody had the right to change their oppressive caste occupation. The lowered caste occupations, in fact all productive occupations, were treated as undignified, lower than the most unproductive occupation like pooja and purohityam.

No Brahmin god was pro-production, and the Shudra productive god images were pushed into what was inaccurately called the little tradition by the Brahmin intellectuals of the freedom movement. The Communist intellectuals, having come from the same cultural roots, did not think of changing it, rather they reinforced it with loud silence.

Usaa Barber joined the radical left movement once it began. He was in jail during the Emergency, and later worked in the Tribal areas to conduct an armed struggle. In the plains he mobilised farmers and labour for irrigation and drinking water resources. He contested elections and challenged the so-called conservative Communists of the CPI, in the Nalgonda district of Telangana. He worked with me to expand the notion of human rights to starving masses, to caste atrocities and womens rights in the 1980s.

He was a tireless mass lover and lived with them. He was expelled from his party for his stand on Ambedkar and anti-casteism.

Usaa compared and understood the civilised barbarism with the Brahmanised radical left, and started writing and speaking against their loud-silence on caste culture in Telugu quite eloquently.

All the Communist intellectuals were upset, angry with him. If he had only come out of a radical Maoist party he would perhaps have been attacked physically, as there was a bad culture of accusing every dissenter of being a police agent. But he was from the moderate Tarimela Nagireddy (a Shudra Reddy) and Devulapally Venkateswar Rao (a Brahmin) group.

Democratic centralism destroyed the sense of democratic dissent in the Communist structures of India. It was a most unmarxist culture but well developed there. Once Brahminism operates as democratic centralism it uses only Vishnuchakra to resolve differences.

Usaa was the first full-time worker rebel in the Telugu region and oppressed caste leader who, within no time, was identified as a leader, writer, thinker, poet, composer of course, singer.

Singing in the revolution was always left to Dalits/Shudras, as Gaddar and many others did all their life without having the stature of leaders. Although they were popular among the masses, they were never given a leaders stature.

This boy started questioning the very existence of their God in the temples. Afterwards this man challenged the Brahminism within Communism. This was what the first barber Upali did by joining Gauthama Buddhas system as his close confidant in the fifth century BCE. Since then, in all known history, only Usaa Barber did so at a very young age. He never turned back.

He was in haste to fight exploitation and the oppressive system, hence joined the most militant Naxalite (Maoist) movement to kill the enemies as soon as possible at the point of a gun. He mobilised the poor Dalits and Shudra (Other Backward Class) labouring masses to rebel against landlords and oppressors.

Meanwhile in 1975 the Emergency came in. He was arrested and kept in Rajahmundry jail for two years.

Then he went into a deep tribal area called Kondamodulu and organised Tribals to fight for their lands with bows and arrows. He was a tribal among Tribals eating everything from root to raisin and rat to rabbit. Afterwards he shifted to Nalgonda to organise farmers to fight for irrigational and drinking water, and became a famous peasant leader. He contested from Motkuru in 1984 against a Communist Party of India landlord leader and lost the election. He was not sparing anybody.

He realised that even in the revolutionary movement Brahminism was playing a key role. There was a Brahmin (pure vegetarian) leader called Devulapally Venkateswar Rao (DVR) who was claiming all theoretical authority on Marx, Lenin and Mao as if they were like Vedavyasa, who wrote Mahabharat, or Kautilya, who wrote the most dangerous BrahminState craft book, the Arthashastra, or Manu who wrote the Manudharmashastra that was publicly burnt by Ambedkar.

Theirs was a culture of read and recite among their families, hence they would pick up quotations from Marx, Lenin and Maos writings and write funny documents asking the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi cadre to apply to themselves the concrete conditions of Indias class system, as if there was no caste in the India of their mind. What an understanding of the concrete conditions of India.

Usaa sensed DVRs Brahminism in the revolutionary movement. DVR was treating as unworthy a much better revolutionary leader, Tarimela Nagireddy, who is a Shudra and the author of a famous book of economic theory called India Mortgaged. Usaa stood by Nagireddy to finish DVRs revolutionary Brahminism. But Nagireddy never saw the Brahminism in Communism and died unsuccessful.

Usaa was married to a Brahmin woman within the party. The DVR camp tried to set his wife (Padma) against him. But he could take her with him. She finally became a state government officer with a Mangali (barber) caste certificate. He was the first man to successfully navigate an extreme inter-caste married life, between a barber and a Brahman, by converting Padma into his caste, and she became the breadwinner to support his full time socio-political work and educate their only daughter, Hima Bindu.

Both of them lived all along with an unfriendly kitchen at home. The caste-denying Communist Brahminism did not realise a barber whose home preferred food was/is mostly meat and fish across Telugu society and country, and that was/is their food culture and pride.

Padma comes from a family that could not even tolerate the smell of meat or fish. Her family, caste, even her out-eating system, was always confined to pure vegetarianism, as their God was believed to be a vegetarian at home and also in Brahmin society.

All Shudra gods are considered to be meatarians. Usaas childhood food was his Gods food, whom he rejected in later life and turned to Buddha.

Padmas food culture was not a choice-based but was a caste-trained food culture. Communists should have understood that caste is in the blood and class is on the body.

Padma and Usaa had to struggle a great deal to navigate between two opposite food and work cultures as wife and husband. Like Gandhi, DVR thought that all Indians should become vegetarians, only to die after his communism comes to go to Hindu swarga. But they managed with great difficulty to be under one roof until their death, as Padma died in 2015 in his lap. Thereafter Usaa became a Buddhist and carried on his work.

In the process of fighting against DVRs so-called Braminic-Marxist theory, Usaa mastered Marxist-Leninist theory quite seriously. Later he developed differences with the Nagireddy group leaders on understanding Mahatma Phule and Ambedkar, and integrating it into a caste-class revolutionary movement, in the context of the Karemchedu massacre of Dalits by Kammas in 1985.

Although the main leaders in Telugu states were Shudras (Kammas and Reddys), their intellectual rigour was very weak and could never perceive the role of Brahminism in this Communism. It was a green snake in the green grass. A barber who knows how to identify a snake of any colour anywhere and kill it, he located this green snake in the green grass.

None of the leaders who hailed from Shudra highered caste background studied the history of Hinduism and Buddhism as rival schools to Brahminism. And, none of them read what Ambedkar wrote on Indian history.

In the life of the Indian Communist movement, only Brahmins wrote theory who never had an agrarian or artisanal productive mind. And they only became intellectual leaders -- a tragedy at that. This was a paradox. Dange, Ranadive, Charu Mazumdar, EVS Namboodripad, DVR, Vinod Mishra and so on became leaders and dreamt of becoming like Lenin or Mao. Hence Marxism became Vedamantra, not a scientific theory that could adapt itself to caste cultural conditions.

Usaa challenged that Communist Brahmin heritage. No Kamma, Reddy, Jat, Yadav, Nair, Patel, Maratha could become a well known theoretician from the Communist ranks. This barber changed that hollow Shudra house into an intellectual salon.

No Shudra leader could acquire intellectual and philosophical stature even from the Communist school, exactly along the lines of what happened in the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh school.

Usaa even with his limited English could perceive this. The RSS Brahmin intellectuals construct a consent system among the Shudra/Dalit/Adivasi activists about the Hindu spiritual system, which is completely under the grip of Brahmins as priests, philosophers as part of the necessary parampara. Productive Shudras have to live as spiritual slaves.

The Communist Brahmin intellectuals never allow a serious discourse on the Hindu spiritual system, quite consciously, as that would overthrow their hegemony in the Communist structures under the rubric that they believe in atheism not in religion. They refused to realise that no Shudra could become a priest in a temple like Tirupati or Jagannath, while being treated as Hindu.

Usaa has opened this shell of silence in the Communist ranks. The bogus theory that base structure and superstructure are separate guarded the Hindu Brahminical system within the Communist parties. Usaa told them that these two structures are interdependent and you are operating on hypocritical humanism.

He was expelled from the Nagireddy group, few others along with me in 1986 on the same question, of caste and Ambedkarism. He worked with me in human rights protection and feeding the poor people dying of drought conditions in Mahabubnagar district. In 1987 I wrote a small book called Annihilation of Caste - A Marxist Approach in Telugu in which he helped.

The Communist Brahmins mainly tried to make State as the agent of attack, leaving the oppression of Dalits/Tribals/Shudras through caste atrocities as myth. Caste according to them was/is a myth; class was/is material reality. They decided to see only the human body not the soul.

This theory came from Bengali and Marathi Brahmin intellectuals into the Communist revolution exactly on the lines as it came into the RSS from Maharashtra Brahmins. This barber realised it was a deceptive ideological framework that certainly does not allow even social reform, leave alone revolution.

The Shudra/Dalits who worked in leftist structures believed Marxism was a given divine truth, just as Brahmin nationalism is a God given truth in the RSS. In neither mainstream Communist party could Shudra/Dalits become intellectual leaders, as they still cannot in the RSS.

In the CPMs Politburo there is not a single Dalit/Adivasi member even now. This is where caste disease destroyed human creativity.

To sustain such Brahmin intellectual hegemony, many wings -- literary, cultural, student and so on were started in the Communist parties. The Brahmin youth were trained to read and write. Others were made to do the mass work, as if it was like tilling land again in the revolution, which no Brahmin does. And they became poojaris of Marxism.

Usaa became an all-rounder in this struggle. He became a poojari of his own gods, Phule and Ambedkar, and started shaving the head of Brahminism rather clean.

They abused him as a renegade, reactionary and lackey of imperialism. Usaa said my foot get lost. His tongue and pen became sharper and shaper. He travelled into the nooks and corners of both Telugu states preparing youth for a leaderless #BlackLivesMatterlike leaderless #ShudraDalitLivesMatter movement any time in future.

So far no Communist leader in Bengal or Kerala or Maharashtra has done that. We do not even know of a single Shudra/Dalit intellectual leader from these two states, even though the Communists ruled them for decades. Usaa Barber, a college dropout who left after his II year B.Sc, perceived this quite well.

In the literary and cultural field in the Telugu states, P. Varavara Rao led that strategy of Brahmin control. In the organisations a Brahmin is given the hold over the written word. Even if others, Shudras/Dalits/Adivasis come into that field, marginalising their written word or making it invisible has been a historical strategy. Varavara Rao with his friends did that quite consistently.

Since the Communist movement gives more weightage to the written word the theory they made Marx into a Brahmin in India and others could never counter it with a strong autonomous strategy of the written word.

Usaa hence started his own journal, a small YouTube studio in his house at the time of his sudden death. Corona took him away from his busy work. However, he made it difficult for the Communists to continue their longtime caste-blind approach and continue Brahminism into the future a life that never rested till he breathed his last.

Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd, a long-time associate of Usaa Barber, is a political theorist and author

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Usaa, the Greatest Revolutionary Barber After Upali, Dies of Covid-19 - The Citizen

What is Atheism? | American Atheists

Atheism is one thing: A lack of belief in gods.

Atheism isnot an affirmative belief that there is no god nor does it answer any other question about what a person believes. It is simply a rejection of the assertion that there are gods. Atheism is too oftendefined incorrectly as a belief system. To be clear: Atheism is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods.

Older dictionaries define atheism as a belief that there is no God. Clearly, theistic influence taints these definitions. The fact that dictionaries define Atheism as there is no God betrays the (mono)theistic influence. Without the (mono)theistic influence, the definition would at least read there are no gods.

While there are some religions that are atheistic (certain sects of Buddhism, for example), that does not mean that atheism is a religion. To put it in a more humorous way: If atheism is a religion, thennot collecting stamps is a hobby.

Despite the fact that atheism is not a religion, atheism is protected by many of the same Constitutional rights that protect religion. That, however, does not mean that atheism is itself a religion, only that our sincerely held (lack of) beliefs are protected in the same way as the religious beliefs of others. Similarly, many interfaith groups will include atheists. This, again, does not mean that atheism is a religious belief.

Some groups will use words like Agnostic, Humanist, Secular, Bright, Freethinker, or any number of other terms to self identify. Those words are perfectly fine as a self-identifier, but we strongly advocate using the word that people understand: Atheist. Dont use those other terms to disguise your atheism or to shy away from a word that some think has a negative connotation. We should be using the terminology that is most accurate and that answers the question that is actually being asked. We should use the term that binds all of us together.

If you call yourself a humanist, a freethinker, a bright, or even a cultural Catholic and lack belief in a god, you are an atheist. Dont shy away from the term. Embrace it.

Agnostic isnt just a weaker version of being an atheist. It answers a different question. Atheism is about what you believe. Agnosticism is about what you know.

In recent surveys, the Pew Research Center has grouped atheists, agnostics, and the unaffiliated into one category. The so-called Nones are the fastest growing religious demographic in the United States. Pewseparates out atheists from agnostics and the non-religious, but that is primarily a function of self-identification. Only about 5% of people call themselves atheists, but if you ask about belief in gods, 11% say they do not believe in gods. Those people are atheists, whether they choose to use the word or not.

A recent survey fromUniversity of Kentucky psychologists Will Gervais and Maxine Najle found that as many as 26% of Americans may be atheists. This study was designed to overcome the stigma associated with atheism and the potential for closeted atheists to abstain from outing themselves even when speaking anonymously to pollsters. The full study is awaiting publication inSocial Psychological and Personality Sciencejournal but a pre-print version is available here.

Even more people say that their definition of god is simply a unifying force between all people. Or that they arent sure what they believe.If you lack an active belief in gods, you are an atheist.

Being an atheist doesnt mean youre sure about every theological question, have answers to the way the world was created, or how evolution works. It just means that the assertion that gods exist has left you unconvinced.

Wishing that there was an afterlife, or a creator god, or a specific god doesnt mean youre not an atheist. Being an atheist is about what you believe and dont believe, not about what you wish to be true or would find comforting.

The only common thread that ties all atheists together is a lack of belief in gods. Some of the best debates we have ever had have been with fellow atheists. This is because atheists do not have a common belief system, sacred scripture or atheist Pope. This means atheists often disagree on many issues and ideas. Atheists come in a variety of shapes, colors, beliefs, convictions, and backgrounds. We are as unique as our fingerprints.

Atheists exist across the political spectrum. We are members of every race. We are members of the LGBTQ* community. There are atheists in urban, suburban, and rural communities and in every state of the nation.

We have more than 170 affiliates and local partners nationwide. If you are looking for a community, we strongly recommend reaching out to an affiliate in your area.

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What is Atheism? | American Atheists

atheism | Definition, Philosophy, & Comparison to …

Atheism as rejection of religious beliefs

A central, common core of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam is the affirmation of the reality of one, and only one, God. Adherents of these faiths believe that there is a God who created the universe out of nothing and who has absolute sovereignty over all his creation; this includes, of course, human beingswho are not only utterly dependent on this creative power but also sinful and who, or so the faithful must believe, can only make adequate sense of their lives by accepting, without question, Gods ordinances for them. The varieties of atheism are numerous, but all atheists reject such a set of beliefs.

Atheism, however, casts a wider net and rejects all belief in spiritual beings, and to the extent that belief in spiritual beings is definitive of what it means for a system to be religious, atheism rejects religion. So atheism is not only a rejection of the central conceptions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam; it is, as well, a rejection of the religious beliefs of such African religions as that of the Dinka and the Nuer, of the anthropomorphic gods of classical Greece and Rome, and of the transcendental conceptions of Hinduism and Buddhism. Generally atheism is a denial of God or of the gods, and if religion is defined in terms of belief in spiritual beings, then atheism is the rejection of all religious belief.

It is necessary, however, if a tolerably adequate understanding of atheism is to be achieved, to give a reading to rejection of religious belief and to come to realize how the characterization of atheism as the denial of God or the gods is inadequate.

To say that atheism is the denial of God or the gods and that it is the opposite of theism, a system of belief that affirms the reality of God and seeks to demonstrate his existence, is inadequate in a number of ways. First, not all theologians who regard themselves as defenders of the Christian faith or of Judaism or Islam regard themselves as defenders of theism. The influential 20th-century Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, for example, regards the God of theism as an idol and refuses to construe God as a being, even a supreme being, among beings or as an infinite being above finite beings. God, for him, is being-itself, the ground of being and meaning. The particulars of Tillichs view are in certain ways idiosyncratic, as well as being obscure and problematic, but they have been influential; and his rejection of theism, while retaining a belief in God, is not eccentric in contemporary theology, though it may very well affront the plain believer.

Second, and more important, it is not the case that all theists seek to demonstrate or even in any way rationally to establish the existence of God. Many theists regard such a demonstration as impossible, and fideistic believers (e.g., Johann Hamann and Sren Kierkegaard) regard such a demonstration, even if it were possible, as undesirable, for in their view it would undermine faith. If it could be proved, or known for certain, that God exists, people would not be in a position to accept him as their sovereign Lord humbly on faith with all the risks that entails. There are theologians who have argued that for genuine faith to be possible God must necessarily be a hidden God, the mysterious ultimate reality, whose existence and authority must be accepted simply on faith. This fideistic view has not, of course, gone without challenge from inside the major faiths, but it is of sufficient importance to make the above characterization of atheism inadequate.

Finally, and most important, not all denials of God are denials of his existence. Believers sometimes deny God while not being at all in a state of doubt that God exists. They either willfully reject what they take to be his authority by not acting in accordance with what they take to be his will, or else they simply live their lives as if God did not exist. In this important way they deny him. Such deniers are not atheists (unless we wish, misleadingly, to call them practical atheists). They are not even agnostics. They do not question that God exists; they deny him in other ways. An atheist denies the existence of God. As it is frequently said, atheists believe that it is false that God exists, or that Gods existence is a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

Yet it remains the case that such a characterization of atheism is inadequate in other ways. For one it is too narrow. There are atheists who believe that the very concept of God, at least in developed and less anthropomorphic forms of Judeo-Christianity and Islam, is so incoherent that certain central religious claims, such as God is my creator to whom everything is owed, are not genuine truth-claims; i.e., the claims could not be either true or false. Believers hold that such religious propositions are true, some atheists believe that they are false, and there are agnostics who cannot make up their minds whether to believe that they are true or false. (Agnostics think that the propositions are one or the other but believe that it is not possible to determine which.) But all three are mistaken, some atheists argue, for such putative truth-claims are not sufficiently intelligible to be genuine truth-claims that are either true or false. In reality there is nothing in them to be believed or disbelieved, though there is for the believer the powerful and humanly comforting illusion that there is. Such an atheism, it should be added, rooted for some conceptions of God in considerations about intelligibility and what it makes sense to say, has been strongly resisted by some pragmatists and logical empiricists.

While the above considerations about atheism and intelligibility show the second characterization of atheism to be too narrow, it is also the case that this characterization is in a way too broad. For there are fideistic believers, who quite unequivocally believe that when looked at objectively the proposition that God exists has a very low probability weight. They believe in God not because it is probable that he existsthey think it more probable that he does notbut because belief is thought by them to be necessary to make sense of human life. The second characterization of atheism does not distinguish a fideistic believer (a Blaise Pascal or a Soren Kierkegaard) or an agnostic (a T.H. Huxley or a Sir Leslie Stephen) from an atheist such as Baron dHolbach. All believe that there is a God and God protects humankind, however emotionally important they may be, are speculative hypotheses of an extremely low order of probability. But this, since it does not distinguish believers from nonbelievers and does not distinguish agnostics from atheists, cannot be an adequate characterization of atheism.

It may be retorted that to avoid apriorism and dogmatic atheism the existence of God should be regarded as a hypothesis. There are no ontological (purely a priori) proofs or disproofs of Gods existence. It is not reasonable to rule in advance that it makes no sense to say that God exists. What the atheist can reasonably claim is that there is no evidence that there is a God, and against that background he may very well be justified in asserting that there is no God. It has been argued, however, that it is simply dogmatic for an atheist to assert that no possible evidence could ever give one grounds for believing in God. Instead, atheists should justify their unbelief by showing (if they can) how the assertion is well-taken that there is no evidence that would warrant a belief in God. If atheism is justified, the atheist will have shown that in fact there is no adequate evidence for the belief that God exists, but it should not be part of his task to try to show that there could not be any evidence for the existence of God. If the atheist could somehow survive the death of his present body (assuming that such talk makes sense) and come, much to his surprise, to stand in the presence of God, his answer should be, Oh! Lord, you didnt give me enough evidence! He would have been mistaken, and realize that he had been mistaken, in his judgment that God did not exist. Still, he would not have been unjustified, in the light of the evidence available to him during his earthly life, in believing as he did. Not having any such postmortem experiences of the presence of God (assuming that he could have them), what he should say, as things stand and in the face of the evidence he actually has and is likely to be able to get, is that it is false that God exists. (Every time one legitimately asserts that a proposition is false one need not be certain that it is false. Knowing with certainty is not a pleonasm.) The claim is that this tentative posture is the reasonable position for the atheist to take.

An atheist who argues in this manner may also make a distinctive burden-of-proof argument. Given that God (if there is one) is by definition a very recherch realitya reality that must be (for there to be such a reality) transcendent to the worldthe burden of proof is not on the atheist to give grounds for believing that there is no reality of that order. Rather, the burden of proof is on the believer to give some evidence for Gods existencei.e., that there is such a reality. Given what God must be, if there is a God, the theist needs to present the evidence, for such a very strange reality. He needs to show that there is more in the world than is disclosed by common experience. The empirical method, and the empirical method alone, such an atheist asserts, affords a reliable method for establishing what is in fact the case. To the claim of the theist that there are in addition to varieties of empirical facts spiritual facts or transcendent facts, such as it being the case that there is a supernatural, self-existent, eternal power, the atheist can assert that such facts have not been shown.

It will, however, be argued by such atheists, against what they take to be dogmatic aprioristic atheists, that the atheist should be a fallibilist and remain open-minded about what the future may bring. There may, after all, be such transcendent facts, such metaphysical realities. It is not that such a fallibilistic atheist is really an agnostic who believes that he is not justified in either asserting that God exists or denying that he exists and that what he must reasonably do is suspend belief. On the contrary, such an atheist believes that he has very good grounds indeed, as things stand, for denying the existence of God. But he will, on the second conceptualization of what it is to be an atheist, not deny that things could be otherwise and that, if they were, he would be justified in believing in God or at least would no longer be justified in asserting that it is false that there is a God. Using reliable empirical techniques, proven methods for establishing matters of fact, the fallibilistic atheist has found nothing in the universe to make a belief that God exists justifiable or even, everything considered, the most rational option of the various options. He therefore draws the atheistical conclusion (also keeping in mind his burden-of-proof argument) that God does not exist. But he does not dogmatically in a priori fashion deny the existence of God. He remains a thorough and consistent fallibilist.

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atheism | Definition, Philosophy, & Comparison to ...

Atheism | Definition of Atheism by Merriam-Webster

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1a : a lack of belief or a strong disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods

b : a philosophical or religious position characterized by disbelief in the existence of a god or any gods

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'atheism.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

1546, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Middle French athisme, from athe atheist, from Greek atheos godless, from a- + theos god

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Atheism. Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/atheism. Accessed 10 Aug. 2020.

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Atheism | Definition of Atheism by Merriam-Webster

Atheism is incompatible with the scientific method, according to this Templeton Prize-winning physicist – Explica

Marcelo gleiser has become the first Latin American to win the Templeton Prize, which is awarded for contribution to the affirmation of the spiritual dimension of life.

In an interview about the award, this Dartmouth College physics professor argued that atheism is inconsistent with the scientific method.

Literally, Gleiser argued this way:

I believe that atheism is incompatible with the scientific method. What I mean by that is, what is atheism? It is a statement, a categorical statement that expresses belief in unbelief. I dont believe, although I have no evidence for or against, I just dont believe. Point. It is a statement. But in science we dont really make statements. We say, Okay, you can have a hypothesis, you have to have some evidence against or in favor of that. And then an agnostic would say, look, I have no evidence of God or any kind of god (Which god in the first place? The Maori gods, or the Jewish, Christian, or Muslim god? Which god is that?). On the other hand, an agnostic would not recognize any right to make a final statement about something he does not know.

Gleiser reminds us that we are on an island of knowledge in the middle of an ocean of the unknown. As knowledge advances, we become more aware of what we do not know.

Given all the times scientists have said something was already safe and later found out it was not, it could well turn out that the statement there is no God could end up being similar to saying, No balloon or plane will be able to fly into the future a century ago. Similarly, the skepticism of the claim X does not exist is also important in science since X could one day appear.

Gleiser is right. But it does because it is defining skepticism and, by extension, atheism in a very restricted way.. Surely there are atheists and skeptics who reason that way, but atheism is also defined as I dont think about this hypothesis because it doesnt give me anything to solve the problems I face. That is to say, that one is an atheist with respect to God as he does not believe either that he lives on a television set and is continuously being deceived, or that he lives in a dream, or that a magician has bewitched him and he does not know anything about the real world, or that even everything that appears in the cinema is true but the government hides it.

To be agnostic would be to affirm that everything is possible. And that is obvious. Everything is possible. But admitting that everything is possible is not the same as introducing all the possibilities (each and every one of them, to infinity) when reflecting on how the world works. Simply, trying to climb the mountain of knowledge step by step, proposing humble hypotheses that we can progressively test. To propose the hypothesis of God is simply to set ourselves at the top, at the highest level of knowledge possible, and to propose a total explanation of everything. So, is there a greater show of daring and ineffectiveness than proposing a hypothesis that explains everything?

Or put another way: atheists are also agnostics: of course they do not know with absolute certainty that God does not exist, as they do not know anything absolutely. What atheism proposes is that it is a too vague and daring hypothesis, as well as impractical, wondering if God exists, if there are four thousand parallel dimensions, or if we are actually in an alien circus entertaining the masses without being aware of it.

All of this is possible, but do we waste time deciding it? No. First, many other hypotheses much more plausible and, above all, affordable for our narrow space of knowledge must be falsified.

Bertrand Russell He explained it very well with his famous kettle. While it remains true that humility can be a good thing, that we do not know what we do not know, and that it is impossible to prove the negative claim that God does not exist, Bertrand Russell reminds us that we can be rational in saying that we do not believe in something of which we cannot disprove the existence:

I must call myself an agnostic; but, for all practical purposes, I am an atheist. I dont think the existence of the Christian God is more likely than the existence of the gods of Olympus or Valhalla. To take another example: no one can prove that there is no porcelain kettle rotating in an elliptical orbit between Earth and Mars, but no one believes that this is likely enough to be taken into account in practice. I believe that the Christian God is equally unlikely.

What Russell is saying is that just because a point that is made without evidence cannot be disproved does not mean that it is unreasonable to think that it is not true. Furthermore, Russell places the burden of proof on the person making the positive claim (God / the kettle exists) and not on the person who questions that claim.

The astronomer Carl sagan He made a similar argument about the existence of a dragon in his garage in his book The World and Its Demons:

Suppose I seriously make such a claim to you. You will surely want to check it out, see for yourself. There have been countless dragon stories throughout the centuries, but no real evidence. What an opportunity! Show me, you say. I take you to my garage. You look inside and see a ladder, empty paint cans, an old tricycle, but no dragon. Where is the dragon? You ask. Oh, shes here, I reply, waving vaguely. I forgot to mention that she is an invisible dragon. You propose to spread flour on the garage floor to capture the dragons tracks. Good idea, I say, but this dragon floats in the air. Next, you will use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire. Good idea, but invisible fire has no heat either. You will spray paint the dragon and make it visible. Good idea, but its a disembodied dragon and the paint doesnt stick. And so. I counter every physical test you come up with with a special explanation why it wont work.

What is the difference between a floating, disembodied, invisible fire-breathing dragon with no heat and no dragon? If there is no way to refute my argument, no conceivable experiment counting against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists? The inability to invalidate a hypothesis is not at all the same as proving it as true. Claims that cannot be proven, claims immune to refutation are truly useless, whatever their value in inspiring us or exciting our sense of wonder.

Sagan, as Russell, holds that the burden of proof rests with the person making the claim. Since there is no evidence of the dragon, it is unscientific to say that one does not believe the dragon is there.

Is it going too far to say that God does not exist? That depends on where you want to place the burden of proof and how much evidence (or lack thereof) is needed to make such a claim. Given that we are talking about God (the most mind-blowing supernatural thing we have on record), maybe we should ask for millions and millions of proofs and quintals of evidence at the very least. More than anything else weve been able to discover in all of human history. Or put another way: even laureate physicists should study a little more epistemology.

Corollary proposed in the following video: do not believe in anything that is not proven, and propose hypotheses that can be falsified (God is not one of them because we do not even know what it is, it is only a human word to refer to the unknowable):

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Atheism is incompatible with the scientific method, according to this Templeton Prize-winning physicist - Explica

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Who Made the Talmud More Accessible, Dies at 83 – The New York Times

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, a towering scholar of the bedrock Jewish texts who spent four and a half decades writing a 45-volume translation of the Babylonian Talmud and made it accessible to hundreds of thousands of readers, died on Friday in Jerusalem. He was 83.

Shaarei Zedek Medical Center confirmed his death. A publicist for the Steinsaltz Center for Jewish Knowledge said he had had acute pneumonia.

For centuries, the study of Talmud in 2,711 double-sided pages, the record of rabbinical debates on the laws and ethics of Judaism heard in the academies of Babylonia (modern-day Iraq) between A.D. 200 and 500 was confined mostly to yeshivas. There, students, young and old, hunched over dog-eared volumes of Talmud, sometimes without teachers, would teach one another the meanings of what they were reading, largely in Aramaic, and argue the implications.

Rabbi Steinsaltzs achievement was to take the Talmud out of this relatively exclusive sphere and, with a Hebrew translation, allow ordinary Jews, taking the Long Island Rail Road to work or gathering in a cafe in Tel Aviv, to study those texts on their own. The Hebrew edition has been translated by publishers into English, French, Russian and Spanish.

Rabbi Steinsaltz, a rumpled, bespectacled figure with an unruly white beard, completed the entire Talmud in 2010, often working 16 hours a day.

He brought the Talmud into the 20th century, said Samuel Heilman, distinguished professor of sociology at Queens College specializing in Orthodox Judaism.

Rabbi Steinsaltz embarked on his lifes great work in 1965, when he was 27. His translation encompassed the ancient commentaries along the margins in the Talmud, written by revered figures like the medieval scholar Rashi.

He also provided his own commentaries on the often labyrinthine text, added biographies of the various rabbinical commentators and offered explanations of Talmudic concepts. His work, he said, was intended to accommodate even beginners with the lowest level of knowledge.

My idea was that Im trying to substitute a book for a living teacher, he said in a 2005 interview with The New York Times.

President Reuven Rivlin of Israel called Rabbi Steinsaltz a modern-day Rashi and a man of great spiritual courage, deep knowledge and profound thought who brought the Talmud to Am Yisrael the Jewish people in clear and accessible Hebrew and English.

Random House, its American publisher, translated and published 22 English volumes then stopped. Koren Publishers Jerusalem Ltd. has since 2009 been publishing the Steinsaltz English translations and completed the entire 45-volume set.

The Steinsaltz edition of the Talmud was not the first English translation. Soncino Press, a venerable British firm, completed a 30-volume translation in 1952, but it did not have the line-by-line commentary that can sustain self-study.

In 2005, Art Scroll/Mesorah Publications of Brooklyn brought out a 73-volume edition that has become the most popular version for many Orthodox Jews, and for tens of thousands of others who participate in Daf Yomi, the seven-and-a-half-year challenge to complete a study of the entire Talmud by analyzing a page a day.

Rabbi Steinsaltz was a disciple of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, and his Chabad-Lubavitch school of Judaism, which embraces nonobservant Jews and proselytizes among them. That sometimes put Rabbi Steinsaltz at odds with more hard-line Orthodox rabbis, including prominent ones, who treated him as a heretic and told their followers to spurn his works.

Rabbi Steinsaltz, a prolific and wide-ranging writer and a sharp observer of humanity, wrote more than 60 books on philosophy, mysticism, theology and even zoology. His study of kabbalah, The Thirteen Petalled Rose, is considered a classic and has been translated into eight languages.

He also translated the Jerusalem Talmud, the less comprehensive and less studied record of legal debates by rabbis in Jerusalem between A.D. 350 and 400 A.D.

Invited to impart some spiritual guidance to the staff of a magazine, The Jerusalem Report, in the early 1990s, Rabbi Steinsaltz gave lessons on lashon hara, the Jewish injunction against speaking evil. He taught that while most parts of the human body had their limits arms could carry only so much weight, legs could run only so fast the tongue could do infinite harm and therefore was set in a cagelike jaw as a reminder to guard it.

Surprisingly, he was raised in a secular household and was drawn to observant Judaism only as a teenager, when he studied with a Lubavitch rabbi.

By nature I am a skeptical person, he said in an interview with The Times a decade ago, and people with a lot of skepticism start to question atheism.

Rabbi Steinsaltz who adopted the additional surname Even-Israel (Rock of Israel) at Rabbi Schneersons urging that he take a Hebrew name was born on July 11, 1937, in Jerusalem in what was then the British mandate of Palestine. His parents, Avraham and Leah (Krokovitz) Steinsaltz, were active in a socialist group, and his father went to Spain in 1936 to help defend the leftist Republican government against Nationalist rebels led by Gen. Francisco Franco.

He attended Hebrew University, where he studied chemistry, mathematics and physics, while also undergoing rabbinical studies at a yeshiva in the Israeli city of Lod. At age 24 he became a school principal; he went on to found several experimental schools.

He lived most of his life with his family in Jerusalem. He is survived by his wife, Sarah; his sons Menachem and Amechaye; a daughter, Esther Sheleg; and 18 grandchildren.

In 1965, Rabbi Steinsaltz founded the Israel Institute for Talmudic Publications and began his monumental work of interpreting the Talmud for the masses. Since he was running schools at the time, he called the Talmud translation his hobby, but it became his crowning achievement. He told the Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth in 2009 that he hadnt fully considered the immensity of the work that would be required.

Sometimes when a person knows too much, it causes him to do nothing, he said. It seems its better sometimes for a man, as for humanity, not to know too much about the difficulties and believe more in the possibilities.

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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, Who Made the Talmud More Accessible, Dies at 83 - The New York Times

The one theology question nagging all others throughout history – Patheos

This will only take a few seconds to absorb.

But fully appreciating its massive implications might take longer.

It is an important question only rarely asked (if ever) by theologians among themselves:

What if were mistaken about all of it?

This embedded Snoopy cartoon puts it a little differently: Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong? the fictional title of a book the canine character is supposedly writing about theology.

Has it, indeed.

Throughout the history of Christianity, at least, it is quite evident that if serious theologians (not to mention the great kneeling masses) ever wondered whether the being they worshipped existed at all, they didnt stay there for long.

In fact, especially in the Middle Ages, such thoughts if expressed publicly and not ultimately recanted could get you burned at the stake, sometimes after you were eviscerated and your tongue pulled out by glowing, red-hot tongs.

The medieval Catholic and later Protestant ecclesiastic establishments clearly frowned, shall we gently say, on heresy of any kind, much less atheism (which at the time was actually inconceivable to most folks, so worshipful were Western Europeans of the day). Medieval Muslim imams in the exotic East were slightly less rapacious but not much less as time passed.

Christianity in particular has a very long history of aggressively not considering the possibility that its supernatural dogma is may just be invented nonsense. In fact, venerated church fathers such as Augustine of Hippo, Thomas Aquinus and Protestant Reformation firebrand Martin Luther all subscribed to the idea that it was a sin to too closely investigate nature because it might cause doubt in the divine and was thus dangerously useless. All anyone needed to think about or consider in existence was the will of God, as portrayed in the Bible, they preached.

Science? Puh!

Its not so different today except perhaps for the stake burnings. The current Republican moment is characterized by a belligerent, anti-science religiosity, in which an imagined militant secularism is demonized and fundamentalist Christianity is embraced. Atheists are godless bogeymen to the Christian Right, as is anyone who couldnt give a fig about religion.

What makes all this so disturbing, as it has been for centuries to doubters and heathens, is that not only have the faithful never been able to materially prove the tenets of their faith, they demonize anyone who might try.

So the most likely answer to the question above Has it ever occurred to you that you might be wrong? would seem to be no or only briefly.

Apparently, for true believers, its better not to question the question too closely, with too much reason.

But thats exactly how hazardous religious fantasies perpetuate as truths.

Even today, I am shocked to meet people who are clearly still shocked that I dont believe in a supreme divine, or that anyone doesnt, in fact.

To paraphrase American author William Faulkner, the Middle Ages isnt dead, it isnt even past.

Buy either book on Amazon, here (paperback or ebook editions)

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The one theology question nagging all others throughout history - Patheos

History column: The church window | The Westmorland Gazette – The Westmorland Gazette

ONE of Milnthorpe's most popular artistic features is the parish church's east window.

But, gallingly, it was described as 'bad' in Pevsner's 'Buildings of England' 1960 guide to Westmorland, and as 'quite bad' in the 2005 revised edition.

No doubt the distinguished German professor was taken aback by the dozen or so stereotypical children's Bible-type scenes of the life and death of Jesus, one of which shows the risen Lord with a spiky halo sprouting from each side of his body, suggesting that he was standing in the middle of a circular saw.

Yet, altogether, the rich purples, bright reds and royal blue hues enlivened the church when it needed decorating, and go well with recent, more tasteful, decor.

Historically, the window has an odd history. It was the gift, in 1872, of the Whittaker family, who had made a fortune by importing guano manure through the port of Milnthorpe.

It was designed by a local artist - Frederick Burrow, of Sandside.

His stained glass is set in Milnthorpe's two almshouses and in private homes such as Owlett Ash House.

Despite his work being displayed in many local churches, including Arnside, Heversham and Holme, it came as a surprise when his obituary stated that his views 'tended towards atheism'.

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History column: The church window | The Westmorland Gazette - The Westmorland Gazette

Why Science and Atheism Don’t Mix. Really? – Patheos

Aah, John Lennox. So long since Ive considered you. I remember attending a talk you gave in Southampton years ago on your faith (I cant remember the subject exactly, but it may have had connections to you being a mathematician).

Lennox has written recently in the Discovery Institutes Evolution News & Science Today (excerpted from his new book), that wonderful repository for all things since and evolution The title is Why Science and atheism Dont Mix2.

Or not.

At all.

Here it is:

Science proceeds on the basis of the assumption that the universe is, at least to a certain extent, accessible to the human mind. No science can be done without the scientist believing this, so it is important to ask for grounds for this belief. Atheism gives us none, since it posits a mindless, unguided origin of the universes life and consciousness.

Charles Darwin saw the problem. He wrote: With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of mans mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.

Similarly, physicist John Polkinghorne says that the reduction of mental events to physics and chemistry destroys meaning:

Thought is replaced by electrochemical neural events. Two such events cannot confront each other in rational discourse. They are neither right nor wrong. They simply happen . . . The world of rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly that cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so.

Polkinghorne is a Christian, but some well-known atheists also acknowledge the difficulty here.

Ah, could we be approaching an invocation of the Argument from Reason, something about which I have recently written?

Lets see if Im right.

In his bookMind and Cosmos,leading atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel says:

If the mental is not itself merely physical, it cannot be fully explained by physical science . . . Evolutionary naturalism implies that we should not take any of our convictions seriously, including the scientific world picture on which evolutionary naturalism depends.

That is, naturalism, and therefore atheism, undermines the foundations of the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever, let alone a scientific one. In short, it leads to the abolition of reason a kind of abolition of man, since reason is an essential part of what it means to be human.

Of course Im right.

Atheism in no way leads to the abolition of reason any more than atheism leads to keeping tigers. Yes, you might be an atheist who keeps tigers, and you might be one who is devoid of reason, but it is not a necessary pathway.

There are plenty of arguments to rebut the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism in its many guises (such as the Argument from Reason). One of the simplest being that if evolution didnt select for truth-finding mechanisms in the brain or in animals then animal life would just cease to exist. If we were unable to inductively rationalise, or see that certain things approached some kind of objective truth, then it would be game over. If a frog repeatedly had no connection between his senses and reality, then he wouldnt be able to accurately stick his tongue out and catch flies, and learn from this to improve and work out ways to best catch the best flies. And so on.

Evolution adaptively selects for truth.

In terms of humans, evolution, for a whole host of reasons, has meant we have ended up with this brain that is amazing for problem-solving. We co-opt abilities to verbally communicate and use tools to transfer information over geography and generations, and build up our maps of the world, which are anchored in some meaningful way in the reality of sad world. To argue that evolution cares not a jot about truth and reasons correct in some agentic sense of evolution it has no cares but it does include mechanisms that have produced us, and we can reason both excellently and very badly, and also (on a good day) tell the difference between the two.

Alas, Lennox continues:

Not surprisingly, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But that is not my only reason. I also reject it because I am a mathematician interested in science and rational thought. How could I espouse a worldview that arguably abolishes the very rationality I need to do mathematics? By contrast, the biblical worldview that traces the origin of human rationality to the fact that we are created in the image of a rational God makes real sense as an explanation of why we can do science.

Science and God mix very well. It is science and atheism that do not mix.

Oh dear.

Moths routinely fly into flames and kill themselves but not because they have evolved to do so. Well, in this case, we have evolution producing mechanisms that allow moths to use the moon to navigate, mate and reproduce. Fires and lights come along, and moths mistake these lights for the moon and a significant proportion end up dying as a result.

Humans evolved a number of cognitive characteristics that get misused and, well, religion is invented, explaining all sorts of then inexplicable things. Our tools, language and minds allow these falsehoods to maintain over geography and time. This certainlyisan example of evolution not selecting for truth because abstract truth like this (as opposed to the locations of insect prey) is not essential for short term survival and reproduction.

So, in an odd sense, Lennox is right or, at least, his thesis is sometimes right. Evolution has selected for religion in most societies of the world because of the benefits it can convey, particularly in the geographically tribalistic and ignorant contexts in which it was often set. The psychological, sociological and attributional benefits that religion has been able to afford many of its adherents (at least the ones in power positions) has meant it has maintained over time, despite them all being false. In terms of being a Christian, all other religions are false, and these false memetic networks of every other religion still need to be explained in terms of OmniGod, and the mental gymnastics necessary is far more contorted than for the atheist.

Look, reasoning exists the ability to make connections in the abstract, to use logic. either this is best explained by evolution or is best explained by God.

But with each explanation, we must also explain the worst misuses of it: the moth flying to its death. With an OmniGod, who apparently cares so much that he has sacrificed himself to himself to sit on his own right hand in heaven for eternity, this must all still be explained. So, he cares, right? He cares enough to create reasoning for us to createatomic bombs, chemical warfare, international conflict, mass murderers and serial killers, rapists, torture devices and torturers and so on, ad nauseam.

Naturalism perfectly explains this and one does have to mentally gerrymander in order to fit moral evaluations into the analysis and theory. There are all sorts of systems and mechanisms that get co-opted, under an evolutionary and naturalistic understanding of the universe, that end up looking like all sorts of different manifestations of moths flying into flames.

But for the theist?

Theodicy after theodicy after theodicy after skeptical theism because, you know, OmniGod has to survive the rational onslaught.

The fact that Christianity and Islam and Hinduism exist, side by side, as competing worldviews, that murder, warfare, rape, atomic bombs and so on is much better explained as moths flying into candles than OmniGod, who supposedly has the best intentions and the love of all humans at heart.

Science, reason, and atheism are far, far more compatible than science, reason and Christianity.

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Why Science and Atheism Don't Mix. Really? - Patheos

What You Need To Know About Humanism And Race, August 10 online – Patch.com

Monday, August 10, 2020 at 7:30 PM online video HFFC event.

Two of the leading African American Humanists in the country have been invited by the Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County (HFFC) to engage us in a conversation about race and racial justice. Mandisa Thomas, founder and president of Black Nonbelievers Inc., and Freethought Heroine for 2019, will be returning (virtually this time) and will be joined by Dr. Anthony Pinn, Harvard University, Humanist Chaplaincys 2006 Humanist of the Year, Professor of Humanities and Professor of Religion at Rice University, Professor Extraordinarius at University of South Africa, Director of Research for the Institute for Humanist Studies, the author of over 30 books, and a leading scholar of African American humanism.

The online video event will be on Monday August 10 at 7:30 pm. The public is invited free of charge. To get the link to register, email hffc@optimum.netwith Pinn as the subject.

Drawing from his book, "When Colorblindness Isnt the Answer", Dr. Pinn calls on humanists to understand and act in the world in light of the implications of race. He writes Life in the United States is and has always been tied to race, and has always been marked by racism. And he offers a set of dos and donts meant to help people get race right.

Mandisa Thomas, founder and President of Black Nonbelievers, will discuss the ongoing question of diversity and inclusion within the secular community, what can be done to confront subconscious biases, and how people of color and the organizations thus created should be supported.

Mandisa has many media appearances to her credit, including CBS Sunday Morning, CNN.com, and Playboy, The Humanist, and JET magazines. She has been a guest on podcasts such as The Humanist Hour and Ask an Atheist, as well as the documentaries Contradiction and My Week in Atheism. Mandisa currently serves on the Board for American Atheists and previously for Foundation Beyond Belief, the 2016 Reason Rally Coalition, and the Secular Coalition for America. She is also an active speaker and has presented at conferences/conventions for the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Secular Student Alliance, and many others. As the president of Black Nonbelievers, Inc., Mandisa works to encourage more Blacks to come out and stand strong with their nonbelief in the face of such strong religious overtones.

Mandisa was named the Freedom From Religion Foundations Freethought Heroine for 2019, and was also the Unitarian Universalist Humanist Associations 2018 Person of the Year.

The Humanists and Freethinkers of Fairfield County, Connecticut, espouses Reason and Compassion, and seeks to promote Humanism and free thought in our community. It holds general meetings, film events, book discussions, solstice celebrations, and science roundtables. Learn more at hffcct.org

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What You Need To Know About Humanism And Race, August 10 online - Patch.com

Lake Wales (FL) Officials Can’t Handle an Atheist Invocation on the Agenda – Friendly Atheist – Patheos

Back in May, Sarah Ray, the co-founder and director of the Atheist Community of Polk County (in Florida), gave an invocation in front of the Board of Commissioners that urged officials to make decisions which root our policymaking process in these values that are relevant to all Polk County residents.

Very sensible advice. Not controversial at all.

This Tuesday, Ray is schedule to give a speech at a meeting of the Lake Wales City Commission. Her presence at the meeting is already creating a stir among the commissioners, according to the Lake Wales News.

Its not because of what she plans to say; its because of what she might say.

Who will she be praying to? asked Commissioner Al Goldstein, who said he plans to set his Bible on the dais and exit the room when Ray speaks.

Commissioner Curtis Gibson said he likely will join the meeting online but may turn his back on Ray, noting I dont just let anyone pray over me.

Goldsteins question is ignorant because it doesnt matter what the answer is. Both men have the right to act like petty children by putting a Bible on the dais or turning his back on her, but its telling that theyre only doing this because the speaker isnt Christian. They fully expect speakers to worship their God, oblivious to how non-Christians feel every time we have to hear Jesus believers pray at these meetings.

And make no mistake, Christians are typically the only people who give invocations:

The Lake Wales City Commission in the past has restricted its invocations to city chaplain Dr. James Moyer, or in his absence, the mayor or a commissioner. Moyer did the invocation in 24 of the last 38 meetings.

We always have our Christian chaplain give invocations! If not him, then one of the Christian commissioners! Why would anyone have a problem with this?!

He answered his own question.

One official even said he would speak with the citys attorney about this.

Interim City Manager James Slaton said he would be talking more about the issue to City Attorney Chuck Galloway, but that it appears that a recent federal appeals court ruling against the Brevard County Commission may give the city no choice.

Slaton wants to speak to a lawyer who will eventually tell him Rays invocation is perfectly legal. Whats especially troubling about that whole exchange, though, is that it may provide cover for the whiny commissioners. It allows them to say We dont WANT an atheist to give an invocation, but the courts are MAKING us! Blame them!

Last night, I asked Ray what she thought about all this.

She told me she was originally planning to deliver the invocation over Zoom to lead by example but if these commissioners cant handle her presence, she may well show up in person. If nothing else, it gives her a chance to make eye contact with some of these people while also putting her group front and center. Its also a better way to build relationships with city leaders. (I dont think theres anything selfish about doing this for the sake of visibility. Thats part of why people volunteer to give invocations! To represent a group in front of city officials.)

As for the contents of her invocation, I wouldnt expect anything divisive. That wasnt the case before and thats not likely to change now. Its obvious that Rays words dont matter to these commissioners anyway; her atheism is more than enough to upset some of them.

(Thanks to Joseph for the link)

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Lake Wales (FL) Officials Can't Handle an Atheist Invocation on the Agenda - Friendly Atheist - Patheos

What is atheism? | CARM.org

by Matt Slick

The word atheism comes from the negative a which means no, and theos which means god. Hence, atheism in the most basic terms means no god. Atheism is the lack of belief in a god and/or the belief that there is no god. By contrast, theism is the belief that there is a God and that he is knowable and that he is involved in the world. Most atheists do not consider themselves anti-theists but merely non-theists.

I've encountered many atheists who claim that atheism is not a belief system while others say it is. Since there is no official atheist organization, nailing down which description of atheism to use can be difficult. Nevertheless, the following are some definitions offered by atheists. Whichever definition you accept, atheism denies God.

There are two main categories of atheists: strong and weak with variations in between. Strong atheists actively believe and state that no God exists. They expressly denounce the Christian God along with any other god. Strong atheists are usually more aggressive in their conversations with theists and try to shoot holes in theistic beliefs. They like to use logic and anti-biblical evidence to denounce God's existence. They are active, often aggressive, and openly believe that there is no God.

Agnostic Atheists, as I call them, are those who deny God's existence based on an examination of evidence. Agnosticism means 'not knowing' or 'no knowledge.' I call them agnostic because they state they have looked at the evidence and have concluded there is no God, but they say they are open to further evidence for God's existence.

Weak atheists simply exercise no faith in God. The weak atheist might be better explained as a person who lacks belief in God the way a person might lack belief that there is a green lizard in a rocking chair on the moon; it isn't an issue. He doesn't believe it or not believe it.

Finally, there is a group of atheists that I call militant atheists. They are, fortunately, few in number. They are usually highly insulting and profoundly terse in their comments to theists and particularly Christians. Ive encountered a few of them; and they are vile, rude, and highly condescending. Their language is full of insults, profanity, and blasphemies. Basically, no meaningful conversation can be held with them.

Atheist positions seem to fall into two main categories. The first is the lack-of-evidence category where the atheist asserts that the supporting evidence isn't good enough for him to affirm God's existence. The second is the category where the atheistbelieves that the idea of God's existence is illogical and contrary to the evidence at hand. To simplify, one position says there isn't enough evidence to conclude that God exists, and the other position says the evidence is contrary to God's existence. For those atheists who simply lack belief and exercise no energy in the discussion, neither category applies because they are not involved in the debate. But, some of those who claim to lack belief in God are often involved in discussions where they are arguing against God's existence.

A typical argument posed by an atheist to show why God does not exist is as follows: God is supposed to be all good and all-powerful. Evil and suffering exist in the world. If God is all good, he would not want evil and suffering to exist. If He is all-powerful, then He is able to remove all evil and suffering.Since evil and suffering exist, God is either not all good (which means he is not perfect and not God), or he is not all powerful (and limited in abilities and scope). Since either case shows God is not all good and powerful, then He does not exist. Of course, the problem is that the criticism is a false dichotomy. In other words, there are more than two possibilities; namely, God might have a reason for allowing evil and suffering; man's freedom might require the allowance of evil and suffering, etc.

Presuppositions are important to us all. We look at the world through them. The atheist has a set of presuppositions, too. As I said, there is no definitive atheist organization that defines the absolutes of atheism, but there are basic principles that atheists, as a whole, tend to adopt. I've tried to list some of them below. Please note, however, that not all atheists accept all of these tenets. The only absolute common one to which they hold is that they do not believe in a God or gods.

For the Christian, atheism clashes with many aspects of our faith. Some atheists openly attack Christianity--citing apparent contradictions in the Bible, perceived philosophical difficulties related to God, and what they consider as logical evidences against God's existence. But the atheists' criticisms are not without very good answers as you will see in the coming papers.

Link:

What is atheism? | CARM.org

YOUR VIEWS: Letters to the Editor, July 25 – Opinion – Utica Observer Dispatch

SundayJul26,2020at3:45AM

Only one choice in November

There should be no guesswork left to this November's Presidential election.

If you are for illegal immigration, eliminating ICE, defunding police, abolishing borders, tearing down historical statues, not incarcerating rioters and looters, and support the legal requirement of Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing which Joe Biden does (this would end single-family zoning in suburbs), then you will vote Democrat.

The "radical left" is an embarrassment to America.

Don Laible, Ilion

Weve lost our way

We search to find answers for the source of our unprecedented national and global turmoil. It's difficult to pinpoint exactly when our nation began its descent, but my belief is that Darwin's "Origin of Species" was the impetus.

There was opposition to God before Darwin but the theory of evolution is man's attempt to deny God's existence and to prove we don't need God.

At its core it is atheism. A century later we witness the result of removing God. We no longer have school prayer yet teaching evolution is mandated and taught as a fact, not theory (it isn't).

The mention of creationism sends evolutionists/liberals/atheists into a frenzy. We saw this in Holland Patent earlier this year.

Then came abortion and its rejection of the sanctity of life followed by same-sex marriage and its rejection of God's design for marriage -- one man, one woman. To its shame, the Roman Catholic Church endorses evolution as do most mainline Protestant churches.

This is blasphemy!

The past several generations in this country have grown up in a godless school system, a godless society and godless churches.

Our problem is godlessness and only repentance and seeking Jesus Christ is the solution.

Bob Morris, Utica

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YOUR VIEWS: Letters to the Editor, July 25 - Opinion - Utica Observer Dispatch

Cub Sport: Theres a lot of guilt tied to religion that doesnt need to be there – NME.com

Cub Sport lead singer and songwriter Tim Nelson vividly remembers the day he chose to be baptised. After walking through a small stage door at his church in north Brisbane, he approached a large pool with cameras trained on its surface. He was asked to accept Jesus into his heart before being dunked beneath the pools waters.

I think I just really wanted to get in that pool, to be honest, Nelson tells NME. I made the decision to get baptised and be a born-again Christian when I was six.

Nelsons life in the church may have begun innocently, but as he grew older his experience with institutional religion and education at his church (and at the attached Christian school) would have profound implications on his life, from suppressing his queer identity to reinforcing stigma about his body and masculinity.

Years on, Nelson has found a balm in his band and their music. On Cub Sports new album LIKE NIRVANA, he reconnects with spirituality on his own terms and unshackles himself from masculine, heteronormative power structures (Nelson identifies as free, saying his gender experience most likely falls under the term non-binary, though using an ambiguous term feels more appropriate for me right now).

Tim Nelson. Credit: James Caswell for NME

LIKE NIRVANA was recorded quickly, with its first song coming to life around the release of the bands self-titled 2019 album. But its creation was also the product of what Nelson describes as a cocktail of tiredness, anxiety and joy. The band had been kicking goals: selling out more than 10,000 tickets on an Australian and New Zealand headline tour, completing headline tours of the UK and the US, and performing at major festivals including Life Is Beautiful in Las Vegas and Falls in Australia.

But returning to normality in Brisbane left time for self-reflection and introspection that led Nelson to face personal issues hed buried for years.

I feel like a pretty big theme that came through when I was writing [the album] were feelings of inadequacy around being a man, says Nelson. I was going to this church seven days a week and everything about the culture and values there was conservative. The men that were popular and respected were always these very alpha male, masculine, physically fit and strong men. Anyone who had a higher voice or was more feminine mainly queer guys who couldnt actually say thats who they were just came off as weird or embarrassing.

It was also tied into a religious world where it felt like being a good person was also tied to these other conservative views and ideas of how youre meant to be, says Nelson. Its this weird struggle of feeling like I just wasnt good, as well as being embarrassed about how I would act and how I looked.

Cub Sport on the cover of NME Australia #08

Breaking bonds of shame and self-loathing is hard when its all youve known. Nelson attended both the school and church for his entire pre-tertiary education and describes being bullied by his fellow students for his weight and mannerisms.

In one traumatic incident in Year 7, an older boy found Nelson trying on an extravagant hot-pink tulle dress in the school drama room. He dragged Nelson out the front of the school tuck shop to shame him in front of the other students.

I remember that being a pretty hectic moment of feeling very embarrassed but also still not looking at what [that person was] doing as being terrible but more like, I was doing something embarrassing, says Nelson. Its only in the last few years that Nelson has managed to break away from wanting to fit in with the kind of men that once ridiculed him, he says.

The truth is I dont wanna be one of the boys / The truth is living by a gender makes me feel annoyed / The truth is I still feel like I dont fit in anywhere, sings Nelson on the albums opening song Confessions.

That tulle dress feels analogous to the sonic textures on LIKE NIRVANA, which play with opacity and its capacity to obscure or reveal. In harsher moments, like on Confessions or Best Friend, the songs feel like theyre reverberating through a chain link fence, a barrier that can alternately imprison or protect.

At their most delicate, like on the albums stunning seven-minute centrepiece Break Me Down featuring Mallrat, the songs are filtered through a lace of Auto-Tune. Sometimes, like on the album highlight Be Your Man, the veil is lifted completely, allowing Nelsons voice to burst forth and refract through an emotional prism into multitudes of love.

Sam Netterfield. Credit: James Caswell for NME

Nelsons husband and bandmate Sam Netterfield remembers recording Be Your Man in an Los Angeles studio at the end of the bands 2019 US tour, which along with 18 were his first major writing credits on a Cub Sport album. Netterfield sat down at a Rhodes piano and began playing two simple chords. Nelson began improvising lyrics, resulting in a moment of blinding majesty thats the very same take you hear on the album:

Baby Im so tired / I know you feel it too / Ive been feeling everything, the changes with the moon / But baby Ill hold onto you / No matter what, you know that Ill hold onto you.

It never gets old, that feeling of knowing a songs about you. I love it, I love the fact that I have someone who writes such beautiful songs about me, says Netterfield. I hold them very dear to my heart but I also try and keep them as their own separate part. I dont let them dictate how I feel about any moment in time, or our relationship, or either of our self-worth. I like to hold them as this separate entity thats a reflection of our love and not internalise it.

Netterfields other album credit, for 18, came from a writing session halfway through their last US tour while driving from Salt Lake City to Denver. It was the middle of summer, but suddenly a snowstorm engulfed their tour van. Netterfield quickly laid down chords and pitched 808 drums before passing the instrumental to Nelson.

At that point of the tour, youre in a rhythm thats super exhausting of repeat and rinse, the same thing every day. I remember feeling the snowstorm was beautiful, peaceful and exciting, but also quite raw. It felt like a beautiful encapsulation of how I was feeling. I felt like I was writing that storm, says Nelson.

It never gets old, that feeling of knowing a songs about you Sam Netterfield

Although the lyrics on LIKE NIRVANA are specific to Nelsons personal experiences and emotions, they often resonate in the experiences of Netterfield and Cub Sports multi-instrumentalist Zoe Davis. All three band members went to the same school, where they lived through a culture that suppressed their true identities. The bullying Cub Sports members experienced can happen at any school, but when homophobia is reinforced at a curricular level, its effects can be even more damaging. The trio say they were taught that same-sex relationships are wrong, and Davis remembers a speaker once telling the congregation that they had gay thoughts but just pushed them aside.

Theres a lot of stuff in the music from before we knew each other as well: formative years as children, but even in those I see so many parallels, says Netterfield. We had the same upbringing in different homes, the same Pentecostal Christian environment and a lot of the same childhood experiences.

Credit: James Caswell for NME

Nelson and Netterfield both came out after high school to the support of their parents. On the other hand, the derogatory way queer people were talked about by Davis fellow students meant she didnt acknowledge her own sexuality until she was 18. Four years later, during which time shed been in a same-sex relationship, she was still afraid to come out to her parents.

I was a bit too scared to come out while I was living at home because Id seen other kids who went to the school get kicked out of home when they came out. I was living in a bit of fear that would happen, says Davis, who was accidentally outed by another parishioner with a gay son. She found out her parents knew while waiting at Los Angeles airport to return home from Cub Sports 2014 US tour, and spent the flight home crying in fear.

It was a long journey from there dealing with it, and having my parents come to terms with it, says Davis, whos now engaged to her fianc Bridie. Theyre great now, they couldnt be prouder, which is nice but it was pretty hard for a while.

LIKE NIRVANA, Davis says, is a continuation of the journey of evolving and becoming more of who we really are There are parts of the album that feel more vulnerable than the other albums, [parts about] learning to become at one with your feelings and accepting the highs and the lows of that.

Zoe Davis. Credit: James Caswell for NME

In embracing vulnerability, Cub Sport have flourished. Its nice to see your friends just be themselves, says drummer Dan Puusaari, who is straight. One thing I really like about Cub Sport is that theres an element thats a lot bigger than ourselves it gives young queer kids something to look at and go, Oh wow, three-quarters of this band are queer and look what theyre doing.

After coming out, Nelson spent several years as an atheist before undergoing what he describes as a religious reckoning and conceptualising spirituality for himself.

In the years that followed that hard swing to atheism, I started to feel much more connected to the universe the idea that you keep being reborn into the world in these different combinations, says Nelson. It just feels like a much bigger concept, I guess, than just being born into this body and then dying and youre done.

Finally admitting to myself that I was queer and in love with Sam, when I was 25, that was definitely somewhat of a rebirth Tim Nelson

On Saint, Nelson sings about freeing himself from the constraints of institutional religion and reconnecting with spiritual forces in the process:

Im done with that now / Im done, Im out, Im out, Im out / Im never coming back / My mum seems kind of sad / Scared that Ill end up in hell / Dont you see thats where Ive been? / Dont you see thats where we fell? / So Im raising myself up now / Im living in my own god power / Im moving like a tidal wave / I am on a mission to save.

That song, Nelson says, sums up my experience of throwing out the idea of God and spirituality that made me feel really shit about myself where Im at now with embracing that power within [to] empower and uplift myself. I feel like theres a lot of guilt tied to religion that doesnt need to be there with spirituality.

Dan Puusaari. Credit: James Caswell for NME

In Dharmic religions including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, achieving Nirvana a potted definition: a state of blissful emptiness, perfect quietude and freedom requires liberation from samsara, which refers to the endless cycle of life, death and rebirth. Nelson and Netterfield, who insist theyre still at the beginning of their spiritual journey, are quick to note theyre not claiming the concept as their own.

I dont feel like I can really speak to the experience of people in religions that are heavily based around achieving Nirvana. To me its about transcending the heaviness of life and finding a more peaceful, content state, says Nelson.

Hermann Hesses Siddhartha was an influential book for him, Nelson says. The novel tells the story of a young wanderer who decides against following the teachings of the Buddha, and chooses to seek out his own personal truth which feels much like the journey Nelson set himself on since leaving institutional religion. Years after he was first reborn at six in a pool, Nelson has since found that rebirth can happen far, far beyond the walls of churches, temples and monasteries.

LIKE NIRVANA is very much breaking any chains of expectation of what is expected of me, or what is safe or sensible Tim Nelson

I think finally admitting to myself that I was queer and in love with Sam, when I was 25, that was definitely somewhat of a rebirth, says Nelson. I guess going from a place of feeling like I had to filter and hide basically everything about myself from everyone in my life to then being like, This is actually who I am, I dont want to feel like I have to hide anymore. That felt like the start of a new life.

And LIKE NIRVANA is its own rebirth, Nelson says. Its very much breaking any chains of expectation of what is expected of me, or what is safe or sensible. That applies, too, in the sonic sense: The record marks a drastic shift away from the glossy pop of Cub Sport to something more textural and impressionistic. A confident and daring expression of creativity, LIKE NIRVANA feels unconcerned with accommodating the music industrys capitalist logics.

Credit: James Caswell for NME

LIKE NIRVANA ends with the hymn-like Grand Canyon, which was actually the first song written for the record. Its synthesised church organ and layered, crystalline vocals shine down like light refracting through stained glass. Nelson says without realising it hed written the song about a friend, another queer person from a religious upbringing, whod recently gone through difficult personal circumstances.

At the time, it was kind of just coming through me. I realised that I was writing it as an encouragement [of] the strength and power that I see when I look at her, says Nelson. And its also ended up serving as that same sort of boost for me as well: It can be a good reminder of the greatness and the power that every living being has inside of them.

Cub Sports LIKE NIRVANA is out now

CREDITS: Hair and make-up by Ginelle DaleClothes supplied by Contra

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Cub Sport: Theres a lot of guilt tied to religion that doesnt need to be there - NME.com

In God We Trust becomes the official motto of U.S. – LubbockOnline.com

By More Content Now

Religious events in history

On July 30, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs a law passed by the 84th Congress declaring "IN GOD WE TRUST" as the national motto of the United States.

The phrase first appeared on one-cent and two-cent pieces in 1864 after the passing of the Coinage Act of 1864. The phrase continued to be inscribed and printed on U.S. currency into the Cold War era. During that time, the U.S. government was looking to distinguish itself from the state atheism practiced in the Soviet Union and a resolution was introduced to create the national motto.

The resolution passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate and was signed into law by President Eisenhower. On the same day, Eisenhower also signed into law a requirement that "IN GOD WE TRUST" be printed on all U.S. currency and coins.

Religion calendar

July 28: The Hajj (Islamic)

July 29: Tisha B'Av (Jewish)

July 30: Eid al-Adha (Islamic)

Aug. 1: Lughnasadh (Pagan and Wiccan)

Aug. 15: Feast of the Assumption (Roman Catholic)

Aug. 16: Paryushana (Jain)

Aug. 19: Islamic New Year (Islamic)

Sept. 1: Pitru Paksha (Hindu)

Good book?

"Defined by Moments: Leadership Lessons from Gideon the Biblical Judge" by Joel E. Medley

"Defined by Moments" breaks down the life of Gideon into 13 critical decisions that either advanced or diminished his leadership. Defining moments are not the grand successes or failures for which we are remembered but are the moments, hardly noticed by others, that create those public milestones.

- Westbow Press

The Word

yahrzeit: In Judaism, the anniversary of the death of an immediate family member, marked by the lighting of a yahrzeit candle that burns for 24 hours.

- ReligionStylebook.com

Religion around the world

According to the CIA World Factbook, the religious makeup of Singapore is:

- Buddhist: 33.2%

- Christian: 18.8%

- Muslim: 14%

- Taoist: 10%

- Hindu: 5%

- Other: 0.6%

- None: 18.5%

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In God We Trust becomes the official motto of U.S. - LubbockOnline.com

Blood Brothers #40: The Enlightenment, European colonialism and New Atheism – 5Pillars

In this special episode of the Blood Brothers Podcast, Dilly Hussain speaks with prominent Muslim apologists and debaters, Subboor Ahmad and Imran Hussain from IERA.

In this in-depth conversation, Dilly questions Subboor and Imran about the clashes of personalities and ideas within dawah organisations and how to overcome disagreements.

Imran who is the founder of the Epistemix YouTube channel explains how the rise of atheism didnt occur in a vacuum and was intrinsically linked to the industrial revolution and European colonialism, while Subboor (Darwinian Delusions YouTube channel) argues that geopolitical and material interests ultimately dictates ideas and ideologies of powers.

Topics of discussion also include the ongoing persecution of Uyghur Muslims in China, priorities for Islamic revival, and a fiery exchange between Subboor and Dilly on the topic of Muslims allying with Christians and Jews against secular liberalism.

SUBSCRIBE, DOWNLOAD AND LISTEN TO THIS PODCAST VIA:

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Blood Brothers #40: The Enlightenment, European colonialism and New Atheism - 5Pillars

The Book That Changed My Life – Rewire.org

A good book can entertain, inform and, at the very least, provide a short escape from the daily grind.

But a great book a truly influential work can shift the trajectory of your life.

The best books make you feel more alive, help you through difficult times, transform your worldview, show you what it means to be human and inspire you to create a better future.

Rewire recently asked a group of young folks, each accomplished in their respective field, to discuss the books that have had the greatest impact on their lives. Their responses celebrate and pay tribute to the works that have meant the most to them.

Over a decade ago, I suffered a concussion after being rear-ended at a stoplight by a car traveling nearly 70 miles per hour on a semi-residential road. In the time that followed, I experienced post-concussive symptoms like vertigo, tinnitus and significant memory issues.

It was as if my memories had been knocked out of their files, haphazardly gathered, then transported to a storage unit in another country. New memories stacked without sense or order.

In an attempt to recover who I was before the accident, I shuffled through music on an old iPod.

In the seconds-long pause between songs, on a day en route to somewhere I no longer remember, I suddenly heard the voice of Terrance Hayes recite one of "The Blue Terrance" poems from Wind in a Box. I listened on repeat to believe the lines, "Thump. Thump. // Thump. Everything I hold takes root."

That poem so resonated that I committed it to memory before seeing what it looked like on the page. Until that collection, with its insistent repetitions, nothing stuck. The book rooted me.

Janine Joseph is the author of Driving Without a License (Alice James Books, 2016) and an assistant professor of creative writing at Oklahoma State University.

On 18th Street, a door mural painted by Rufus Linus Jr. reads: "Bless the Children of Pilsen."

I often wondered what it meant, at first connecting its meaning to the violence I had normalized growing up in the neighborhood.

Street photography and books about segregation such as The Color of Law were some tools I utilized to seek answers. But it was Lilia Fernndez's 2012 book, Brown in the Windy City, that made it clear how my life was a part of something much bigger.

Pilsen was not only a place I called "home," it became a neighborhood with historic contributions to the labor movement and home-making through organizing and art. It was on every wall, mural, street name, park, high school, food, sounds things that can be photographed and written in books.

Sebastin Hidalgo is an award-winning photojournalist and digital producer who uses photography as a tool to engage with many social and humanitarian issues affecting communities of color. View a selection of his Pilsen photography in the New York Times.

I read Giovanni's Room each year from the age of 16 to the age of 25. Baldwin made me understand the deep fear, the resistance, the self-loathing, the damage and the passion that loving a person you don't want to love can cause.

Now that I have fallen in love and left the country, now that I have lost people I defined myself in relation to, I have come to understand that there are moments that can change your life for the better if you'll simply say yes.

As the character Jacques says: "Somebody, your father or mine, should have told us that not many people have ever died of love. But multitudes have perished, and are perishing every hour and in the oddest places! for the lack of it."

Maya Marshall is a writer, editor and co-founder of underbellymag.com, the journal on the practical magic of poetic revision. Her debut full-length collection is forthcoming from Haymarket Books.

It's impossible to choose a single book that changed my life, as I trace my understanding of why I care about the things I do to some of the earliest books I read. But I want to highlight a revolutionary work I read last year that enriched that understanding by putting language to so many of the reasons I care about those things: This Life by Martin Hgglund.

Hgglund argues that if, like me, you don't believe in God, you should consider time our most precious resource. Because of this, he says nontheists ought to have profound concern for how all people spend the tremendously short time we get, and that this concern should move us to dismantle capitalism and all of the dehumanization that accompanies it.

Though Hgglund argues for philosophical and political beliefs I already hold (atheism and democratic socialism), this book made me care about them anew.

Urgent, accessible, and moving, This Life is the first nontheistic book for which I've wanted to proselytize. Not to "convert" others to atheism, but rather to help them understand why I think all of us atheist or not should desire a society in which everyone can live a life of meaning. This book offers the tools to both imagine and build that world.

Chris Stedman is a writer, speaker and community organizer who teaches in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Augsburg University. He is the author of IRL: Finding Realness, Meaning, and Belonging in Our Digital Lives (forthcoming from Broadleaf Books).

The book that changed my life was Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed. I had just gone through a really intense breakup that shattered me.

Up until that point in my life, sadness was an emotion I tried my hardest to avoid, because it was too painful. But Strayed's deeply personal collection of advice showed me the beauty of the human spirit, gave me the tools to be kind to myself and, most importantly, taught me that sadness and grief are things one must move through, not avoid.

Now I'm much more comfortable letting myself sit in those hard feelings in order to heal. (I also recommend her other book, Wild!)

Melissa Li is a composer, lyricist, performer and writer based in New York City and Baltimore. Her upcoming projects include works commissioned by Playwrights Horizons, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Weston Playhouse, Keen Company and more.

The book that changed my life is An Ember in the Ashes by the lovely Sabaa Tahir. This magical young adult fantasy put a spell on me when I read it after college.

It was the first book that made me want to be a great writer, and it lit a fire in me to try and write something that deserved to share a shelf with that masterpiece.

And, if that wasn't enough, the wonderful woman who wrote this life-changing novel is even more amazing than her stories. If you haven't read it, grab it today because it will sweep you away.

Tomi Adeyemi is a creative writing teacher and the Hugo & Nebula award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling books Children of Blood and Bone and Children of Virtue and Vengeance.

In Gravity and Grace, Simone Weil considers the essential conditions of salvation, the mysticism of work, differences between time and eternity, the importance of necessity and many other topics, all of which focus on the relationship between human existence and God.

Her writing bewilders: It is sometimes difficult to discern whether the book is written in Chinese or English. The rhythm of the passages and the timbre of Simone's language are reminiscent of traditional Chinese texts, such as the Tao Te Ching.

I often walk away from these pages having accrued no new knowledge. And yet, this lack is precisely the reason I am able to return to them, again and again.

One of my recent artworks is titled Device for a Child Standing at the Mouth of a Labyrinth. I am that child. Gravity and Grace is the device that I use for contemplation and protection.

Hong Hong is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans sculpture, performance, printmaking, and installation. Her work explores the human perception of landscape in contemporary settings and the conditions that shape it.

I first discovered this book in undergraduate school at Montana State University and quickly obtained my own copy. I continue to refer back to Richard Throssel's photographs of my community and have been inspired by his work to create my own images that capture the vibrancy of the Crow Nation.

Wendy Red Star is an Apsalooke (Crow) photographer based in Portland, Oregon. Her work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance.

The author that continues to change my life is Toni Morrison.

Right now I am reading The Source of Self-Regard, a collection of her essays, speeches and meditations. To pinpoint one way that she impacts me is impossible; suffice to say I often find myself in humble, grateful tears when I read her work.

She has helped me think, feel and love in new ways. I believe Morrison's combination of profound empathy and stunning intellect will be a gift for generations to come.

Lisa Sanaye Dring is a writer, director and actor. She recently founded the Evolving Playwrights Group with Circle X Theatre Co., a writing and mentorship program for emerging and mid-career playwrights.

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The Book That Changed My Life - Rewire.org